Once the weather seemed to stabilise, H and I took a short train journey to the seaside resort city on the Bay of Gdaลsk to take in the sights and learn about the history of the place, first meeting the home army mascot Wojtek the Bear (more here) memorialised in the churchyard visited by John Paul II in 1999. Among the first spots in the modern era to cultivate thermal cures and health-tourism, Sopot / Zoppot recovered quickly from the war with enduring institutions on balneotherapy and reoccurring music festivals—from Wagner to jazz. The main, pedestrianised thoroughfare is dedicated to the memory of the Battle of Monte Cassino, the costly and destructive stand-off to break the Winter Line with the regrouped Polish II Corps joining Allied forces against Nazi Germany to advance into Rome—the tumult and violence later inspiring American bomber who participated in the razing of the ancient monastery to pen A Canticle for Leibowitz, and whose heroes counted among their ranks our above ursine friend. The main street includes several shopping arcades and Krzywy Domek (the Crooked House), a fairy tale-inspired mall and terminates with the lighthouse and similarly constructed Church of the Holy Saviour and Grand Hotel on the beach, yet extends over half a kilometre further out over the sea with the longest wooden pier in Europe and among the longest in the world.
Saturday 20 November 2021
Thursday 18 November 2021
colour reference card
Effectively calibrated to recognise and register lighter complexions as standard, 99% Invisible—through
the artefacts called “Shirley Cards” that were distributed to film developers (see previously) to adjust their laboratories and perpetuate the built-in bias—explores how technology, deliberately, natively, naively or not, privileges whiteness by making it de facto more photogenic. The defaults of cameras, film and flash—and still the case to an extent with digital photography but we’re slowly growing wiser to our own shortcomings and their consequences (though the problem is a big one that goes far beyond pictures and is reflected in body of medical literature that is derived from too few female or minority subjects) makes it more challenging to capture compelling images of darker complected individuals and effects how people are seen and limits expression. Much more at the links above.Friday 12 November 2021
santa claus isn’t coming to town
With an extreme shortage of Santa’s Helpers available and unwilling to work and risk life and limb with a resurgent pandemic expected to get worse before it gets better (many of the usual candidates in character being older and larger individuals considered more vulnerable), many malls—worldwide—are turning towards a new Yuletide tradition and installing the red-light, green-light killer robot from Squid Games (previously). Adults queuing up at a shopping centre in Manchester even were served dalgona—the fragile sugar cookie-cutter candy from one of the challenges—whilst they waited patiently to have their picture taken with the giant doll. Not to fret, however, since unlike one’s typical Mall Santas, the actual Father Christmas is immune and designated as an essential worker.
Monday 1 November 2021
woty: vaxx
Though very much a carry-over from the past year’s extraordinary multiplicity of choices to limn an extraordinary year, from fully-vaxxed, anti-vaxxers, to vax cards and vax apps vax passes demonstrates that lexically, our common-parlance still places us firmly in the midst of the moment. The Oxford English Dictionary’s choice by September as the jury was finalising its list of nominees was cited in print fully seventy-two times more frequently than the year prior. Aside from addressing our social and cultural moment, I wonder about the stylistic consensus to double the x in this clipping and can’t decide if it’s apothecary’s shorthand or just slang, the root coined by physician and scientist Edward Jenner to describe cowpox and his method to immunise people from the more severe smallpox through exposure and variolation.
Saturday 30 October 2021
the brain that wouldn’t die
First airing on this day in 1993 during the series’ fifth season, the lampoon of the Rex Carlton and Joseph Green 1962 collaboration from the crew of Mystery Science Theater 3000 helped elevate this film about a mad scientist who is working on methods of preserving dismembered bodily organs to allow for future viability who experiments on the his decapitated girlfriend whilst keeping a Frankenstein’s monster captive in a broom closet to the status of a cult classic. Because of an imperfect copyright notice, it entered into public domain upon theatrical release and was in 2018 the subject of one of the first fully machine produced movies. The episode was long-time writer Michael J. Nelson’s second appearance as host and features a segment with Mary Jo Pehl as Jan in the Pan, the actor to later replace Dr. Clayton Forrester in their secret underground lair, Deep 13.
Tuesday 26 October 2021
7x7
in the stacks: museum curators uncover what may be the oldest depiction of a ghost on an ancient Mesopotamian tablet
1928 porter: a look at the 1965 short-lived sitcom (see also) My Mother the Car this climate does not exist: visualisations of one’s neighbourhood under the climate crisis from Nag on the Lakeev: more outstandingly odd electric vehicles from the on-line market Alibaba—via Things Magazine
reasonable person: “a moron in a hurry” is codified in Anglophone legal statute—via the New Shelton wet/dry
graphics processing unit: glitch art in medical imaging—via Waxy
don’t go wasting your emotion: the ABBA classic, as performed by a vampire—via Everlasting Blรถrt
Wednesday 20 October 2021
artemius of antioch
Invoked for relief of hernias and maladies afflicting the testicles—for no ostensible reason that we could divine—Roman general Flavius Artemius is feted on this day, venerated as a saint in the Catholic rite and a megalomartyr in the Orthodox church. Though the chronology seems somewhat off, Artrmius supposedly played an influential role in the court of Constantine and fought heroically in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (later placed in charge of missions seeking relics and recovering the bodies of the apostles), only to be later put to death by the emperor’s successor, his cousin Julian (called the apostate) that rejected Constantine’s state sanction for Christianity and returned the empire to pagan pantheism.
Monday 18 October 2021
obtundo
Saturday 9 October 2021
7x7
the boy on the bike: a trip down Golden Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset with a beloved bread advert directed by Ridley Scott with music by Dvoลรกk
dedication—devotion, turning all the night time into the day: more on the hypothesis (see previously) that the Dire Straits song can improve any movie endingthe hauntening: various AIs try their hand at spookifying, exorcising Victorian mansions—previously
outbreak: a timelapse of COVID-19 cases in the United States over the past eighteen months
just the punctation: what text without words reveals to authors about their style—via Waxy
abecedarium: a 1968 Alphabet (previously) of the Dada movement hosted by Hans Richter (caution, some rapid, flashing images)
raลกรญnovo embankment: revitalised Prague riverfront features vaulted arches for cafes and gallery spaces
Friday 1 October 2021
born to the purple
Via Strange Company’s Weekend Link Dump, we very much enjoyed learning about young aspiring chemist William Henry Perkin’s accidental discovery of one of the first synthetic dyes whilst trying to extract quinine, the sole treatment for malaria known to Victorian London, from coal tar—a considered a waste by-product of burning coke and coal but in reality quite useful. Purple was still very much en vogue—signalling that wearers were otherwise porphyrogenita though to harvest the mollusks that were its natural source, the Murex snail, was exceedingly hard to come (as the species was nearly driven to extinction by dint of the royal colour) by and substitutes were quick to fade and wash-out. The substance that Perkin’s experiments yielded stained fabric and appeared to be colourfast, and capitalising on tradition, originally deemed it Tyrian purple, later naming the product, the first to be marketed commercially and leading to an revolution in chemical research, to mauveine after the French term for the mallow (Malva sylvestris) wildflower.
computerised axial tomography
On this day in 1971, the first CAT scan (nowadays usually referred to as a CT scan) was conducted at Wimbledon on an unidentified patient on a diagnostic machine developed by engineer Godfrey Hounsfield and physicist Allan MacLeod Cormack. The duo were recipients of the 1979 Nobel prize for their collaboration and the former is the namesake for the quantitative gauge of radiopacity—that is the ability of electromagnetic radiation to penetrate a media with air at -1000 HU (Housfield Units), water at the baseline of zero and bone set at +1000 at the other end of the spectrum, with identifiable values for various fats, tissues and ligaments.
Wednesday 22 September 2021
7x7
ppe: an enigmatic update to COVID guidelines
i don’t want to live on this planet anymore: a supercut of Futurama gags that have endured
norm macdonald has a show: an appreciation of the comedian’s (†) early standup
ernie and the emperors: a Giant Crab discography (1969)
grandmaster: the mental and physical tolls of chess
appareil: gorgeous French brick patterns from a 1878 catalogue
tireless research: Ruben Bolling showcases great scientists of the twenty-first century
Tuesday 21 September 2021
Saturday 18 September 2021
amerithrax
Beginning a week after the 9/11 attacks and continuing over the next month, a bioterrorist—likely a scientist at the US government’s biodefense and research labs in Fort Detrick, Maryland—posted letters laced with anthrax spores to several media outlets and the offices of two US senators, killing five individuals, mostly mailroom staff and infecting a further dozen with the bacteria. Compared to the hunt for the Unabomber for its range and time to identify a culprit and motive, the FBI operation named with the above portmanteau pursued a number of false leads, the attacks spawning, several copycat hoaxes. The notes in the envelops which purported to come from a non-existent grade school contained variations on the message:
09-11-01
YOU CANNOT STOP US.
WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX.
YOU DIE NOW.
ARE YOU AFRAID?
DEATH TO AMERICA.
&c.
Al Qaeda and Iraq initially blamed, focus not turning to the possibility that it was a domestic actor within the government until 2006, forensic geneotyping just reaching the sophistication needed to trace the particular bacterial strain back to its source, though the ordered destruction of all anthrax stockpiles limited the chance for future research into the crime. The US mail service is still hyper-vigilant over suspicious packages and prone to false-alarms.
Monday 6 September 2021
6x6
circumhorizon arc: a rare Fire Rainbow photographed—via TYWKIWDBI
mars & beyond: Walt Disney’s robot pal Garco takes us on a speculative journey in search of extraterrestrial liferip: legendary NBC weather man Willard Scott has passed away, aged eighty-seven
escape artist: immersive exhibits speak to our communal sensory experience
valley of the dolls: Peerless Playthings pretend pills
cloudspotting: the World Meteorological Organisation added aspertias as a supplementary feature in 2017 Cloud Atlas—see also
Thursday 2 September 2021
your daily demon: gaap
Our thirty-third spirit is an infernal prince who governs from today through 7 September and controls sixty-six legions. Gaap’s office is to teach philosophy and the liberal arts, can engender romance, transport people around the world on his back, steal away familiars from competing exorcists and impart knowledge regarding medical care. Formerly of the angelic order post postestates, Potentates, Gaap is the cardinal spirit of the south and opposed by the ShemHamphorash guardian angel Ieuiah.
Tuesday 31 August 2021
6x6
slough off old skins: the rise and demise of an Internet Onion—via Kicks Condor
posture pals: a gallery of awkward, outstanding stances
gravy boat: kitschy vintage table settings
a little pick-me-up: the lovely Flowers for Sick People project by Tucker Nichols—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links
news at eleven: screen grabs of 1990s reporting captions
more like a simile: an experiment searching the web with AI contextualised natural language—via Web Curios
Thursday 26 August 2021
apostles’ creed
Via the New Shelton wet / dry, we are referred to a study from the Annals of Improbable Research (previously, the group also behind the Ig Noble Awards) ranking the popularity of saints to pray to for protection and intercession against COVID. There’s methodology is the survey, though I suspect it might be rather self-selecting since respondents were polled on social media but we nonetheless appreciated the efforts and the occasion to revisit some of our holy helpers, like Saint Roch (number two), Saint Sebastian (number three, here pleading with Jesus for the life of the gravedigger during the Plague of Justinian), and coming in last at a tie, SS Expedit and Corona.
Saturday 21 August 2021
scunthorpe dilemma
In tribute to a dear friend recently deceased, one individual has pledged to make a sojourn on moped across a circuit of UK settlements and in some cases streets with what’s generally deemed the rudest toponyms and odonyms to be found on the map in order, we learn via Strange Company’s Weekend Link Dump, to raise funds to combat the cancer his friend succumbed to.
The charity tour begins in the ancient hamlet of Shitteron in Dorset whose name means “farmstead on a stream used as an open sewer.” Be sure to check out the links above to see the entire itinerary and explore a global map of unfortunate, purple place names, including Fucking, Austria and how you can support their cause. The title refers to the over-zealous censorship of internet traffic monitors flagging substrings of text (the above and others) out-of-context.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ, ๐ฌ, ๐บ
Wednesday 18 August 2021
harper valley ptsa
Whilst the governor of Texas, who has contracted COVID-19 himself, has countermanded any sort mask mandate for public schools and institutions of higher education within the state, executive authority has met its match in the school board, whose trustees have elected to make amendments to dress codes and make masks a requirement “for all employees and students to mitigate flu, cold, pandemic and any other communicable diseases.” The board, at the advice of health experts, will reconvene monthly to determine if prevailing conditions still warrant the use of personal protective gear.