Currently on exhibit at the National Arts Club in New York City, we are finding ourselves preoccupied with the presentation of Greg Colson and his studies in pie charts that reflect our collective and dissected anxieties and fear, surveyed as they are suggesting that each wedge might be susceptible to reduction or expansion in a way that’s wiser than the format seems at first glance. More at Hyperalleric at the link above.
Thursday, 26 January 2023
statistical breviary (10. 499)
catagories: ๐จ, ๐ฅ, ๐️, ๐ง , libraries and museums
Tuesday, 24 January 2023
8x8 (10. 495)
super 8: Kodak background orchestral ensemble for home movies (1961) would make a good soundtrack for any clip
memory hole: unearthing—with surprising difficulty—an iconic, defining moment of 90s US political pop culture

whw: an interview with the ousted Kunsthalle collective who wanted to showcase all sides of Vienna
poissons de diverses couleurs et figures extraordinaires: exquisite disco fish (1719)
geyser relays: a rather pie-in-the-sky proposal for irrigation using a series of water canons
parade route: revisiting the would-be arrival and presentation of Ganda the Rhinoceros
sympawny № 4: a short arrangement to pay tribute to a beloved cat
Thursday, 29 December 2022
7x7 (10. 368)
press pool: NPR station photographers swap memorable images from 2022

pre-bunking: intelligence agencies should engage in more public outreach to fight disinformation
mallory gallery: top exhibitions of the year
golden eye: reindeer retinas change colours with the seasons—via Nag on the Lake
fido: dogs with human names—via Waxy
mmxxii: year in review—news and journalists
Thursday, 1 December 2022
dwa (10. 349)
Organised by VisualAIDS in New York City in 1988 and first observed the following year, Day Without Art (corresponding with World Aids Day), now a global event observed by art institutions, is a day of action and mourning for those who have died of the disease. Museums close their doors and send staff to volunteer at AIDS services centres or sponsor special exhibitions that confront the visitor with the chilling prospect for a future without art or artists, one of the most arresting displays hosted in 1991 by the Museum of Modern Art that featured a gallery of empty frames and pedestal.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐จ, ๐ณ️๐, 1989, libraries and museums
Friday, 25 November 2022
7x7 (10. 334)
the winnowing oar: an itinerant floating city in the Pangeos Terayacht and other mega projects from Saudi Arabia—via Things Magazine
mรถnitรถr nรธn: previously unheard audio from the first gigs of British rock band The Fall
imperial isolate: gold coin in a museum cupboard proves existence of Sponsian, an emperor heretofore dismissed as fake—via Digg

purple tomato: an anthocyanin-rich vegetable is a heuristic for exploring the distinction between genetic modification and selective-breeding—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links
feed-back loop: schema for artificial neural networks from the 1940s up to the present—via Web Curios
anyox: an abandoned copper mining operation in British Columbia is Canada’s largest ghost town
catagories: ๐จ๐ฆ, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐, ๐ค, ๐งฌ, ๐ข, libraries and museums, Middle East
Sunday, 13 November 2022
recursive centaur alert (10. 301)
We quite enjoyed perusing this growing gallery of bad book covers (see previously) from our friends at Pulp Librarian. This omnibus post has too many choice works to pick favourites but we did quite like this anthology from author Ray Bradbury, referencing the Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass collection—whose title was not added just over a decade later, as which each poem, though in this case being that the term was not yet common currency. Originally in turn entitled “My Beautiful One is Here,” the eponymous story accounting a family selecting a robotic grandmother as a surrogate nanny to a brood of recently motherless children and their revelation that they won’t again be abandoned. Much more to explore at the links above.
catagories: ๐จ, ๐, libraries and museums
Tuesday, 1 November 2022
8x8 (10. 261)
allhallowtide: the artwork of Mike Egan that references elements of Dรญa de Muertos—via Everlasting Blรถrt
famous artist dies penniless and all alone: the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s archives of artists’ obituaries

forma: Federal Occult Range Management Administration
mapping out the month: the thirty day charting challenge returns
eleiรงรตes gerais: Brazilian artists herald the return of President Lula
ghost bride: a centuries-old tradition practised in some communities in Kerala
ofrenda: a guide to making an altar to celebrate the lives of loved ones who’ve passed
Friday, 14 October 2022
whistle-stop tour (10. 222)
On this day in 1872, a century and a half ago, the first rail-route—between Shinbashi and Yokohama—went into service, and to mark this occasion and everything that trains represent in terms of very freighted culture and technology the Tokyo Station Gallery has collected and curated artwork and ephemera from around Japan from your consideration.
catagories: ๐ฏ๐ต, ๐ , ๐, libraries and museums
Thursday, 13 October 2022
catalina caper (10. 218)
Also released under the alternative title Never Steal Anything Wet, the 1967 comedy musical mystery starring Tommy Kirk and featuring the talents of Little Richard and Mary Wells, the Lee Sholem property was subjected to the MST3K treatment (previously) for the first time on this day in 1990. The movie features a group of swimsuit clad old teens investigating the theft of a museum artefact, an ancient Chinese scroll, discovering in the process that the parents of one of the beachgoers are responsible. “Ok—now everybody wear eye-protection, there’s a lot of loose-ends flying together all at once.”
catagories: ๐ฌ, ๐, ๐บ, 1967, libraries and museums
Wednesday, 28 September 2022
7x7 (10. 176)
moonage daydream: an interview with Brett Morgen on the subject of his latest documentary—see previously

afforestation: a volcanic eruption is helping to rewild island
eyewall: Hurricane Ian’s path of destruction as it reaches Florida
omnishambles: the budget plan of PM Truss and Chancellor Kwarteng garners rebuke from Germany, the US and the IMF as the Pound Sterling approaches parity with the dollar
mahsa: the death of a young woman in the custody of Iran’s morality police has touched off protests against the government
let all the children boogie: an Australian museum brought the original hand-written draft of David Bowie’s Starman at auction
Saturday, 3 September 2022
ausflug thรผringenersee (10 107)
H and took a summer’s end quick excursion to the dammed Saale river valley to tour the landscape that developed around the reservoirs (Stauseen) and how the natural intersects the artificial.
First we stopped to take a guided tour of the Saalfeld Fairy Grottos (die Feengrotten), a set of caverns in a former mine for alum shale (see previously) remarkable for their colourful mineral veins, called speleothems, owing to the porous soil.
Commercial operations halted in 1850 (the use of potassium aluminate as a preservative was antiquated) and was opened to tourist as early as 1914 due to the reputedly curative properties of the ambient radiation present, after the discovery of the third chamber, the Mรคrchendom—the Fairy Tale Kingdom and the Grail Castle after various interpretations of the sedimentary creations.
Seeing this tableau inspired Siegfried Wagner to pattern the set design for his father’s opera Tannhรคuser for the Bayreuth Festspiele in the 1920s.
catagories: ⚒, libraries and museums, Thรผringen
Friday, 26 August 2022
6x6 (10. 086)
chaoskampf: examining the mythology of dragons across cultures
hurrian hymn № 6: learn about and listen to the oldest known song—see alsopublic convenience: the best museum rest rooms curated—via Miss Cellania
out of the fusion of two languages, two outlooks has emerged a great canadian metropolis: Montrรฉal by Night (1947)
persepolis: a virtual tour of the ancient imperial capital (see also) from the Getty—via Maps Mania
legendary large serpentine creatures: a contentious ranking of the fifty best literary dragons
catagories: ๐จ๐ฆ, ๐, ๐ถ, libraries and museums, myth and monsters
Saturday, 20 August 2022
erlebnis bergwerk (10. 073)
Decommissioned since 1993 but revitalised since as a living museum and working mine and venue, I had a chance to visit with H’s father the salt and potash (Kalisalz, used as an important agricultural fertiliser) extraction operation near the village of Merkers on the Werra river not far from Bad Salzungen.
Aside from the long history of mining and a comprehensive lesson on the enterprise and geology that bores under the Rhรถn mountains, the location is also the hiding spot for hundreds of tonnes of gold, silver and paper currency (amounting to around eighty percent of the holdings of the Reichsbank at the end of the war) and many priceless works of art looted by the Nazis, discovered per chance by the advancing United States army (tipped off by slave labour transporting treasures to the mine) who then worked quickly to clear it out of Soviet occupied territory before the borders were demarcated.After being lowered in safety gear—like actual miners beginning their shift—in a hoisting cage that descended into the dark, and driven in flatbed transports from five to eight hundred metres below the surface through a network of tunnels that covers an area the size of Munich.
Though the vehicles were only taking the dips, curves and ascents at under twenty kilometres an hour, the darkness, wind and narrowness of the shaft made it seem much faster, like a roller coaster ride stretched out for some two hours, with intermissions, lastly in the above Goldraum, a pair of excavated former bunkers that now serve as a machine exhibit, theatre and a concert hall with uncommonly good acoustics and unique crystal grotto with accompanying bar for refreshments—the deepest in the world.
catagories: ⚒, ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ข, ๐จ, Hessen, libraries and museums, Rhรถn, Thรผringen
Sunday, 14 August 2022
9x9 (10. 059)
i’m sorry but this is quite clearly a haunted murder panda and/or the protagonist of moshfegh’s next novel. do not buy: an assortment of random oddities that one preeminent author is selling her online emporium—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links (check it out!)
quasi-modal: apparently “thy shall be done” is a thing now

printers’ auxiliaries: a beautiful 1940 book of typefaces from the Gujarati foundry
if marisol and nilofer are the only non-white women at the staff meeting, how frequently will each be called by the other’s name: word problems for female professionals that aren’t so non-sequitur
pulp power: the mainstay illustrative style of 1930s and 40s serial fiction
heat dumping: searching for the etymology of the adaptive behaviour of splooting—which is referred to in England as squirrel “pancaking”
world englishes: the OED on Irish’s contribution to language—see previously
a lamb himself: an excerpt from Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel Lapvona
Thursday, 4 August 2022
7x7 (10. 037)
@artbutsports: juxtaposing scenes from professional sports with classical painting
nearly right: an intriguing Chinese language t-shirt circulating on social media

flying down to rio: a profile of movie star Lolita Dolores Martรญnez Asunsolo Lรณpez Negrette
requiescat in pace: an obituary of antipope Michael, who believed that there had been no legitimate pontiff since Vatican II
wikenigma: compiling a compendium of unknowns—via Pasa Bon!
pop cars: visit an exhibit of Andy Warhol’s colourful automobiles alongside the classic models that inspired them
Saturday, 16 July 2022
7x7 (9. 999)
featherbase: a consortium of ornithologists join their collections and make them freely accessible on-line—via Web Curios
cut-up technique: Artbreeder (previously) creates collages with your help—via Waxy

deep scatter library: stellar cartography mapping a billion stars in the Milky Way
culmen > columna > compagna colonnella > coronnel > colonel: explore etymologies with this interactive tool from the creators of Interlinear Books and Language Hat
unsleeved: an exhibit on the art of the record cover and designer Alex Steinweiss
trainspotting: an obsessive database of European rolling stock—also via Web Curios
catagories: ⚖️, ๐ถ, ๐ญ, ๐ค, ๐ชถ, ๐, language, libraries and museums, networking and blogging
Thursday, 14 July 2022
7x7
nag on the lake: a new viewing platform with spectacular views of the Falls

smart brevity: the prevalence of bulletin-point journalism
light cycle: the lost TRON (previously) arcade documents—via Things Magazine
true colours: Metropolitan Museum of Art presents statues from Antiquity with their original paint jobs—see previously
granite & rainbow: the book jackets of Virginia Woolf
restored to its polynesian/craftsman/medieval-colonial revival/queen anne glory: an architectural doppelgรคnger of the Little House
bonne fรชte nationale: images from Bastille Day from over a century ago
sluicehuis: a cantilever housing bloc in Amsterdam’s IJburg district
catagories: ๐จ๐ฆ, ๐ซ๐ท, ๐ฌ, ๐พ, ๐, ๐, architecture, libraries and museums
Thursday, 30 June 2022
a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition
Curated and organized under the supervision of art director Harald Szeemann, the fifth edition of documenta (see previously), opening on this day and running through October (a hundred days) in Kassel, West Germany, with the theme of “Questioning Reality—Pictorial Worlds of Today” (Befragung der Realitรคt – Bildwelten heute) established the exhibition’s reputation as the most important, post war modern art show and set the model for future biennials. Wanting to liberate art and artefact from the museum setting, it strove to recontextualise work in politically critical and the provocative milieu that inspired them. documenta 5 also showcased Fluxus and happening art, which had not yet appeared by the last iteration. In all, there were over two hundred thousand visitors and dozens of participating artists and collectives including Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Adolf Wรถlfli, Marcel Duchamp and Yoko Ono.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐จ, 1972, libraries and museums
Saturday, 25 June 2022
8x8
morning chorus: a suspended hotel suite in Sรกpmi cladded with three-hundred fifty birdhouses
meanwhile margaret atwood says hold my beer: teach and student, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, spar over which dystopian vision is more plausible

makeup and monobrow: a quick survey of the female eyebrow in art
border and backsplash: the mosaic tile museum of Gifu—over ten-thousands exemplars, many rescued from buildings slated for demolition
i had hoped that god would work one of his signature miracles and spare me from is also signature “horrible pain in childbirth” curse: the Virgin Mary reclaims her nativity narrative
stonk-and-go: the US Securities and Exchange Commission weighs sweeping change to curtail meme-driven trades
a doghouse for eddie: charmingly, Frank Lloyd Wright (previously) builds a home for a canine and his human companion
catagories: ⚖️, ๐ธ๐ช, ๐จ, ๐ณ️๐, ๐ฑ, ๐, ๐ชถ, architecture, libraries and museums
Friday, 17 June 2022
7x7
accepting payment in magic beans: professional scammer who bilked people and companies out of hundreds of thousands by posing as a German heiress turning to NFTs

great choice: award-winning short comedy-horror by Robin Comisar, via Super Punch
the brautigan library: a repository of unwanted, unpublished manuscripts
not reading the room: consumption and consumerism overshadow commemoration
cat righting reflex: รtienne-Jules Marey’s 1894 short is the first motion picture to feature a feline, demonstrating how it lands on its feet—see also
web3 saint laurent: digital cosmetics for one’s avatars and more metaversal makeup from Web Curios