bittersweet sinfonia

Via the always engaging Things Magazine, we are pleased to make the acquaintance of the phenomena known as the Portsmouth Sinfonia—fifty years too late, the orchestra founded by students of the art school open to all and sundry regardless of training or talent.
Originally staged as a piece of performance art (see also here and here), the dedicated volunteer ensemble—over the ensuing decade—gave concerts and produced six record albums including one charting single and were even invited to perform at the Royal Albert Hall to sold-out crowds. Much more to explore at the links above, including a fun musical medley referred to as the world’s worst playlist.

how are you tree, asked the boy

Via Waxy, we discover the latest instalment in a series by playwright and artist Topher Payne that gives new treatments to beloved but problematic classics of children’s literature, working up an alternative ending to Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree (see previously) which doesn’t seem nearly as entitled and off-putting that’s free to download with your consideration to make a donation to help support the arts and live theatre during the covid-crisis.

6x6

nestbox: Czech firm designs a modular trunk extension to turn any car into a camper

kintsugi court: a rundown basketball blacktop restored with the ancient Japanese art that cherishes the cracked

your 2020 bingo card: researchers discover a population of sharks thriving in an undersea volcano

earth science: a treasury of minerals mapped out—via Maps Mania

green tea ice cream: Linda Diaz’ soulful rendition wins the NPR Tiny Desk competition

cosmic architechtonics: multipart exploration of Eastern Bloc monolithic housing estates

lighthouse customer

With quite the opposite reception than the above synonym for an early adopter, the British Office of the Admiralty and Marine Affairs dismissed the recent invention of Sir Francis Ronalds (*1788 – †1873, considered to be the Father of Electrical Engineering and Telegraphy) in which he demonstrated that signals could be transmitted virtually instantaneously over a substantial distance by laying an eight mile length of iron wire in the garden of his mother as a superfluous gimmick on this day in 1816.
Authorities were satisfied with the range and clarity of semaphore-based com- munications, despite Ronalds’ knighthood for his innovation and pontificating: “Why add to the torments of absence [and distance] those dilatory tormentors, pens, ink, paper, and posts? Let us have electrical conversazione offices, communicating with each other all over the kingdom.” The commercialisation of the telegraph was delayed for decades. Coincidentally on this day in 1858, the first transatlantic undersea cable was completed, spanning from Telegraph Field in Foilhommerum Bay on County Kerry’s Iveragh Peninsula (see also) to Heart’s Content station in eastern Newfoundland, under the direction of businessman Cyrus West Field. The first message was transmitted on 16 August.

bytedance

Though arguably characterising the popular short video montage application as some Trojan Horse infiltrating Americans’ households and siphoning their data to China is a hackneyed red herring with it hitting closer to home with many taking to the platform to insult and ridicule Donald Trump, it is instead worth noting the change in tenor on allowing TikTok to continue to operate within the US from an outright and immediate ban to suiting a quick and slapdash takeover. User data is still collected, presumably pursuant of the same sort of demographic profiling but will graciously be stored on domestic servers and not exported. Though TikTok is Chinese-owned, the app is not available in China. Pressuring the parent company to divest itself of a big part of its business under duress is the stuff of mafia bosses—especially so when Trump thinks that the US government deserves a cut of the sales for having negotiated such a favourable deal.

all presidents rail against the press—it goes with the turf

Sharing the same birthday as President Obama (*1961), reporter and author Helen Amelia Thomas (†2013) was born on this day in 1920.
A veteran member of the White House Press Corps, Thomas had a career as a correspondent that covered ten US presidential administrations, beginning with coverage of President-elect John F. Kennedy in 1960. Over the decades establishing herself as an unrelenting fixture of news media and commanding respect of all world leaders, when asked once what was the difference between democracy in America and democracy in Cuba, Fidel Castro quipped that he did not have to answer to Helen Thomas—which Thomas took as a great compliment.

sant sezni

Having immigrated from his namesake village in Cornwall to the Breton coast and there founded a monastery, according to local lore, Sithney, who is venerated on this day († c. 529), was appointed by God to be the patron of young women seeking husbands. The saint however pled that he would never be at peace and would rather be the patron of mad dogs. Invoked against rabies and for the recovery of the afflicted, water from wells in both Sithney and Guic-Sezni are considered to have restorative properties for our canine friends.

escape artist

Miniature modeller Tatsuya Tanaka (see previously) has been faithfully producing new dioramas of everyday objects repurposed into creative tableaux daily since 2011 and has recently taken to transforming face masks—symbols of the pandemic—into the outdoor summer scenes that we are foregoing for the time being for the sake of each other. Much more to explore at the artist’s website and at the links above.