Sunday 3 July 2016

5x5: link roundup

the hand-held’s tale: fascinating essay from ร†on magazine would we went from a world where the powerful and elite only deigned to hold and handle symbols of power (ceremonial orbs and scepters) to a world where the slave and tycoon wield the same gadget

it’s sew easy: DIY Space Invaders kimono

avenida diagonal: Parisian graffiti artist’s huge mural on an apartment block in Portugal looks like a portal to another dimension and reminds us of disruptive camouflage

mirabilia: gallery of images from a thirteenth century Arabic treatise called “Marvels of Thing Created and Miraculous Aspects of Things Existing”—mirabilia being the genre of study that aims to help explain some of the world’s geographical and cosmological puzzles

obvious plant: in efforts to make museum visitors slow their frantic pace and take time to really appreciate the art, British galleries are turning the experience into a scavenger hunt of sorts to find the fakes hidden among the masterpieces 

Saturday 2 July 2016

antication or computer says no

Though am I certain that more frequent- (and more sadly, first-time) fliers have far worst horror stories with far more invested and every once and a while we all need the rough reminder why it is that we have a splendid little caravan to ramble about in and have mostly forsaken the air-carriers for what they are (great-attractors of dormant Icelandic volcanos and terrorism), it was really sobering to experience one’s weekend holiday plans so transformed into their opposite.
Albeit air-travel might only be about reassurance (since there’s little else outside of the engine-room and shipyard that one can do) and the industry ought to attract such people with a native talent for customer-service, or at minimum—deflection, I cannot really blame the ground crew, since their silence and distain were clearly products of the received kind, fearful of losing their jobs if they went off script, it was extremely challenging not to be in the here and now when information was withheld about incremental flight delays until it was too late to find alternative transportation on one’s own.
This crowded and copy-cat market of discount providers has brought a lot of amateurs to the field, and I do assign blame to the business model whose overhead is on the knife’s edge and any cost-cutting measure, opacity and intimidation being foremost because they’re free, will be deployed. Admitting culpability is an expensive prospect, though the rioting mob of declined vacationers both coming and going either for business or pleasure whose simple request were rebuffed was incorrigible. Security was called in as angry fliers breached the counter and took pictures of the staff, distracting them while another captured what was on their computer screens. No goon-squad dispersed the lingering throngs but the host airport did not do much to correct the conduct of this under-performer. I would recommend doing research in one’s carrier’s track-record except that these issues are far too common-place, whether it be a discounter or a private jet. This was the first time that security-theatre was not the most harrowing part of flying, and for the privilege of being born aloft, for the time it took, we well could have driven there. Besides the employees themselves, I feel especially sorry for those who couldn’t have.

Friday 1 July 2016

atlas obscura

Messy Nessy Chic shares her discovery in a beautiful and winding gallery of the amazing art nouveau backdrops of Belgian illustrator Franรงois Schuiten.
Son to a dual-architect family and with echoes of the surreal, Schuiten was able to conjure up fantastic urban landscapes the graphic novel series Les Citรฉs obscures that debuted in the early 1980s and whose franchise—with spin-offs and with different collaborators over the years—continues to this day about the splintering of a parallel humanity into sovereign city states that fosters unique cultures and styles—sort of like the future that some internet tycoons have imagined of ocean-plying floating islands (or lassoed asteroids) of independence and popular consent. Schuiten’s imaginative artwork is furthermore a revolt (especially in the volume called Brรผsel) against the phenomenon known as Bruxellisation, one not exclusive to his native city and perhaps a rejuvenation effort that his parents were complicit in (or rallied against), wherein historic district were demolished in favour of utilitarian, almost brutally so, modern buildings—perhaps the vision of the above tycoons. Browse the extensive arcade of images and learn more about Les Citรฉs obscures and their contributing civil engineers at the link up top.

rectified readymades or metamix

Sometimes the remastering gets to be a little too much, like those list of factoids, listicles or treacly stories of unlikely animal friendships (like the very special but short-lived relationship between a grizzly bear and a pastrami sandwich) or zombified anything, for me at least. This gallery of “Twelve Disney Princesses Reimagined as Cats Reimagined as Sharks that are not Disney Princesses,” courtesy of Kottke’s Quick Links, perfectly captures that descend into absurdity and perhaps dankhood.