port authority

Though we’ve previously encountered some of these fantastic, never realised plans for buildings and infrastructure in New York City as isolated proposals, like a gargantuan skyscraper by Antoni Gaudí or an elevated ten lane highway crossing Manhattan, having the chance to see many of this past visions as an ensemble superimposed on a scale-model of the great metropolis is completely transformational.
Among the many innovative and utopian ideas that we were introduced to by this nicely researched and curated exhibition to be held in the Flushing neighborhood of the bureau of Queens the urban air authority was our new favourite—a massive airport and runway built over the docklands along the Hudson River.

co-morbidity

Some cancers are more pernicious than others oncologists are finding due to bacteria that can metabolise a certain strain of cancer-fighting medications taking up refuge in tumours and gobbling up the drugs before it can be used to combat the malignancy. Developing resistance to traditional treatments is potentially catastrophic and if we lose the efficacy of all antibiotic remedies we’ll find our healthcare reverting to that of the Middle Ages but this seemingly novel resistance through a sort of unintended symbiosis certainly bears out further study and may be more prevalent than expected—all the more reason to protect what resources are in our quiver.

sign and shingle

An exhibit at San Diego’s Mingei International Museum features sixty nineteenth century kanban (billboards or hoardings) commissioned by shop-keepers from professional artisans who handcrafted them. These Edo-era pieces were designed to be attention-grabbers and often were crafted in the form of the wares on offer to allow shoppers to navigate crowded commercial streets and markets intuitively, like the pictured canting kanban for a spectacle shop. Be sure to visit Hyperallergic at the link up top for more curious curations.

omphaloskepsis

One hears the phrase navel-gazing bandied about quite often in a (mostly) figurative sense to call-out egotism or indulging in self-absorbed pursuits, but we failed to realise that contemplating one’s belly-button is an ancient prescribed practise rooted in yogic and Eastern Orthodox traditions. Mediating on the navel—the seat of the sacral chakra—is a heuristic tool that aids in reflection on the self and the wider Cosmos or inducing a trace-state.

any port in a storm

Taking advantage of a constitutional crisis that has promulgated the dissolution of parliament (I can remember when a nation’s collapse into chaos garnered more coverage), neo-Nazi internet refugees behind the publication of The Daily Stormer have taken up residence in Iceland, and not because of the country’s pledge to create a sanctuary of internet freedoms but rather because enshrined within that legal framework it is stipulated that only the executive can revoke an .is domain and it appears that they’ve won at least a few weeks’ worth of reprieve since Iceland is lacking one. As repulsive as hosting such a presence might be, Iceland ought to be proud of this technicality and have some extra motivation to form a stable coalition to be rid of this parasite soon. The present editor-in-chief to the publication is heir to Julius Streicher’s (Gauleiter of Franconia) original Der Stürmer that focused chiefly on the problems of miscegenation, an unofficial weekly digest for useful idiots which became a growing embarrassment to the Nazi party who was nonetheless executed in Nuremberg for war crimes.