Renowned artist Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderรณn, known for her numerous works of self-portraiture (Autorretrato) and murals executed in a naรฏve folk style with an element of magical realism that examined topics of class, race, gender, identity, post-colonialism and her personal experience with chronic pain, having recovered from a disabling case of polio as a child and, aged eighteen was a promising and gifted student headed to medical school was on this day in 1925 in Mexico City was nearly killed in a serious accident when the bus she was a passenger in collided violently with a streetcar. Sustaining numerous injuries, including a fractured spinal column—never fully recovering her mobility—for the next two years Kahlo (see previously here and here) was confined to her bed whilst her body healed. During this long convalescence, she returned to her childhood aspirations, also prompted by an extended period of recuperation and resignation, of becoming a painter. Kahlo’s parents provide an easel and supplies arranged where she could work reclined and mounted a mirror on the ceiling so she could study herself bedridden and produced among many other painting the pictured aristocratic self-portrait in a velvet dress. The mannerist piece was later considered Kahlo’s seminal project and first professional painting, and was gifted to her boyfriend at the time, during a fractious time in their short relationship, which aided in a brief reconciliation, though he moved away to Europe while Kahlo remained in Mexico, toughening up her self-image and rejecting the expectations of the male-gaze.
Wednesday, 17 September 2025
la casa azul (12. 736)
Thursday, 24 July 2025
afuera adentro (12. 602)
Via Messy Nessy Chic, we are directed to self-taught outsider artist Martรญn Ramรญrez whose remarkable output is sourced to the last fifteen years of his life remanded to a mental institution in Auburn California in the 1950s and 1960s. Coming to the US from Jasico for work during the Great Depression, Ramรญrez was picked up for vagrancy and committed as a catatonic schizophrenic.
Withdrawn and hardly speaking to anyone, Ramรญrez took up drawing and a psychologist by the name of Dr Tarmo Pasto recognised his talent as well as the potential for an expressive outlet, supplying him with art materials and organising public shows of his works that fuse migration and memory with iconography of his personal journey and elements of both Mexican and American culture. Appearing in galleries and selling for six-figure sums, in 2015 the US postal service issued a stamp bearing the design of his 1954 piece “Untitled (Tunnel with Cars and Buses).” Much more at the links above.
synchronoptica
one year ago: St Christopher (with synchronopticรฆ), how location data compromises security and intelligence, every map of China is inaccurate plus SCOTUS orders Nixon to release the tapes (1974)
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
10x10 (12. 241)
bustin by numbers: bizarre 1990 edit of a Peter Greenaway film featuring an instrumental version of Young MC’s hit
mazinibaganjigan: the art of birchbark bitings, practised by the Objiwe and Algonquian peoples
twenty-two nautical miles: Mexico threatens to sue Google over the change to the gulf’s name

acolyte: a profile of the actual Nazis overrunning the US government—via Kottke
paypal mafia: Trump administration is clawing back funds already disbursed and has designs to gain control over banking and wire-transfers
the molotov-ribbentrop pact: historic examples—with devastating consequences—of not inviting all parties to the negotiating table—via Damn Interesting
deemed accomplices: Sheinbaum warns us renewed legal action for US gunmakers over complicity if drug cartels are designated as terror groups
a very large faucet: water-sharing treaties between Canada and its neighbour to the south have attracted unwanted attention
you say neato, check your libido and roll to the church your new tuxedo: that’s Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers on jazz bass
Monday, 3 February 2025
8x8 (12. 204)
de sneeuwpoopen van 1511: some historical, lost sculptures of snow and ice
mad man across the water: grim-triggers, bluffs and other tactics in game theory
mspaint: famously chonky pixel-editor with its own special aesthetic is getting an AI-infusion for some reason
letters from an american: Heather Cox’ somewhat becalming analysis of the DOGE Putsch
waterblasies: poaching and the illegal trade in southern African ornamental succulents
pulling back the curtain: DeepSeek’s open-source code may be the biggest step towards democratising the web since its inception
juice now worth the squeeze: pause on tariffs includes US concession to staunch the flow of guns to Mexico—see previously, see more
the air is on fire: revisiting David Lynch’s snowmen
Sunday, 12 January 2025
counteroffer (12. 172)
After newly elected Mexican president Sheinbaum responded to Trump’s musing that the gulf be renamed and suggesting instead that the historically accurate appellation of Mexican America be applied to the northern portion of the continent, a law-maker in Canada also snapped back that the western Pacific states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California petition to become a new eleventh province—not only shielding from retributive tariffs but also with the guarantee of universal healthcare and sensible gun control-measures which the US has failed to provide.
Tuesday, 7 January 2025
what a beautiful name—and it’s appropriate, it’s appropriate (12. 153)
Fresh from threatening to annex Canada through economic and not military means after long-service prime minister Trudeau announced his intention to step down as the nation’s leader and his idiot spawn is touring Greenland as a prospect buyer, Donald Trump, bemoaning the way that US neighbour to the south was taking grave advantage of his largess through trade and immigration, suggested to reporters during an impromptu interview that the Gulf of Mรฉxico should be reflagged as the Gulf of America. It seems since his first term, he has gained the aspiration of imperial expansion from role models like Vladimir Putin. One of Trump’s most vile and vocal cheerleaders, Marjorie Taylor Greene, immediately pledged to introduce legislation to officially rename the oceanic basin off the Yucatรกn peninsula, which some states share a coastline and first subject to detailed European exploration by cartographer Amerigo Vespucci, the continents’ own namesake, has been listed as such for navigation since 1497. Would you like Freedom fries with your order?
Sunday, 5 January 2025
8x8 (12. 147)
black swan event: futurist forecast a host of unpredictable geopolitical scenarios for 2025—via the New Shelton wet/dry
it’s schoolhouse rocky—that chip off the block—of your favourite schoolhouse, schoolhouse rock: a rather incredible thrift store find of Smash Mouth’s Steve Harwell performing some numbers from the educational cartoon series—see previously

to unalive or not unalive: the resurgence of the term was prompted by a way to get around advertiser blacklists with euphemisms—see more
reboot: the Landauer Limit, thermodynamics and more efficient computing—see also
post-scarcity, post-singularity: it’s still easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism—via Duck Soup
the eagle & child: Oracle’s Larry Ellison has purchased the Oxford pub frequented by Tolkien and C S Lewis—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest
the year that was and wasn’t: The Morning News interviews some of their favourite journalists about the most and least important stories and trends of 2024—see also the dumbest timeline
Friday, 3 January 2025
9x9 (12. 139)
eixample: Barcelona’s nineteenth century urban revival and characteristic octagonal blocks
๐ฆ: adding fourth colour to traffic lights for safer sharing of roads with human drivers and autonomous vehicles
willkommen zu hause: a somewhat older documentary on club culture and techno in former East Germany with a connection to H has made it to Youtube

2-step authenication: secure passwords should require a performance like Liza Minelli tries to turn off a lamp—will a Fosse neck do it?
the monkey chew tobacco on the street car line: the Meters’ Hand Clapping Song
lycurgus cup: the fuzzy and fluorescent vases of Maxwell Mustardo evoke Roman amphorae—see previously
stairwell of the quarter: twelve months of superlative flights and storeys
beaded curtain: a look at the fragmented nature of the border wall on the US southern frontier—via Super Punch
Wednesday, 27 November 2024
when the moon is in the seventh house (12. 034)
Courtesy of fellow internet caretaker, Messy Nessy, we are directed to a lavish performance of the medley The Age of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In by the indomitable Miss Raquel Welch. Filmed in 1968 just one year after Hair and The Fifth Dimension’s popular rendition, it was shot on location at the Pirรกmide del Sol in Teotihuacรกn originally to promote the Mexico City Olympic Games (see previously here and here)—but probably more people retain a hazy memory, or fever dream, of this sequence for its inclusion in the 1970 CBS television special Raquel! with extravagant musical numbers set in exotic, cosmopolitan locales. The elaborate zodiac costumes were designed by Bob Mackie—dresser of such icons as Cher, Bette Midler, Barbara Streisand, Liza Minnelli, Tina Turner, Oprah among many other luminaries.
Sunday, 15 September 2024
inspeccionando las tropas (11. 847)
Via Super Punch, we discover Mexico’s newly elected president, Claudia Sheinbaum, visiting one of the country’s military academies and addressing an audience of cadets and alumni ahead of her inauguration ceremony scheduled for next month. Though by far the most interesting story is victory of this progressive individual with little significant dispute from her competition and the peaceable transfer of power, but the venue is also worth noting with those hulking modern buildings that look like something built by the Galactic Empire, the Heroico Colegio Militar’s Tlalpan central campus, completed in 1976. Located just south of the capital, it was designed by famed sculptor, poet and architect Agustรญn Hernรกndez Navarro, recognised internationally for his monumental and futuristic ensembles, with references to pre-Columbian heritage, the Brutalist abstraction of the main hall is meant to invoke the Mayan god of rain Chaahk, also associated with warfare.
Thursday, 4 July 2024
๐ฅ (11. 661)
On this day in 1924, the Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana by restaurateur of Italian-extract Caesar Cardini, from Baveno on the shores of Lago Maggiore, in his eponymous dining establishment. Caught unprepared by the large number of Americans crossing the border to legally purchase liquor otherwise unavailable during Prohibition for the long holiday weekend, Cardini improvised to stretch his food supply by mixing a large salad in the middle of the main dining hall, making due with what he had a surplus of on hand with the addition of tableside tossing by the proprietor for some dramatic flair. Several food columnists and Julia Child, who sampled the original sometime in the 1920s, helped popularise the dish whose reputation proceeded it, with the latter celebrity chef helping to codify the recipe with the help of Cardini’s daughter in the 1970s, romaine lettuce and croutons dressed with lemon juice, olive oil, eggs, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, black pepper, Dijon mustard, anchovies (substituting capers and tahini for a vegetarian version) and Parmesan cheese.
synchronoptica
one year ago: the US national anthem (with synchronoptica), David Bowie’s trans-Siberia railway journey plus Uncle Sam’s predecessor
seven years ago: a botched memorial
eight years ago: a space probe arrives in Jupiter’s orbit plus the chemistry of a candle
nine years ago: pyrotechnic effects
ten years ago: hyper-capitalism plus anti-migrant sentiment
Saturday, 13 April 2024
national treasures (11. 486)
The government of president Andrรฉs Manuel Lรณpez Obrador has declared a clowder of nineteen feral cats that have free range of the palatial executive complex grounds to be “living fixed assets”—part of the furniture like the official mouser of 10 Downing Street—but the first animals to be bestowed with the investment term that obligates the country’s treasury to feed and care for them for the rest of their lives. With no area off limits to the gatos palicios and the felines often making cameos during press conferences and escorting staff and visitors, they have become a symbol associated with the presidency and beloved by tourists—but one suspects that the population, especially after this development, won’t stay at this level for long.
Tuesday, 2 April 2024
the fabiola project (11. 463)
Via Messy Nessy Chic, we are acquainted with the extensive portfolio Mexican artist of Belgian extraction Francis Alรฟs through a travelling installation of some three hundred reproductions of the fourth century figure Saint Fabiola based off the profile and pose created by Jean-Jacques Henner in his 1885 portrait. The original was lost in 1912 but the image was copied over the decades by painters around the world, and sourced from flea markets and rummage sales in the Americas and Europe, mostly attributed to anonymous, amateur studies and naive artist, Alรฟs’ 1994 exhibit explores the precedents and antecedents that inform and flow from popular replicas and what constitutes an icon. The fourth century Roman noblewoman who filed for legal separation from her insufferable husband and remarried, contrary to Catholic practise but was welcomed back to the congregation for her works, turned to a life of charity under the influence of Jerome, is fรชted on 27 December in the calendar of saints and includes in her patronage divorced people, the hospice movement—establishing many care centres throughout Italy and the Near East as well as attending patients herself as a trained physician after lodging with Paul (see above) during a pilgrimage to Bethlehem, and is called on for intercession in difficult relationships.
one year ago: assorted links to revisit
two years ago: Me and Bobby McGee (1971), a rogue archivist, Russian-America, more MEUTE plus more links to check out
three years ago: Wishing Well (1988), fuchsias, the Yellow Fleet (1967) plus St Francesco
four years ago: naming houses
five years ago: sonic disruptors, plant based burgers plus decision fatigue
Sunday, 31 December 2023
la montaรฑa sagrada or a funny thing happened on the way to enlightenment (11. 231)
Via a New Year’s obscure filmic tradition, we are re-introduced to the spectacle of Alejandro Jodorwsky’s (previously) 1973 Holy Mountain and considering a re-watch. The sacrilegious, surrealistic movie produced by Beatles manager Allen Klein with financial backing of John Lennon and Yoko Ono relates the narrative of a thief marketed as Jesus returned and collaborates with an alchemist (played by Jodorwsky) to transmogrify and transfix himself along with a constellation of characters representing the
houses of the zodiac, ultimately breaking the fourth wall and give up this quest. Prior to filming, principal cast members underwent three months of spiritual training drawn from various practises including the I Ching, yoga, Zen Buddhism and the Kabbalah as well as communal living prescribed dosages of LSD and psilocybin. After premiering in Cannes, the Holy Mountain was screened in limited-release in New York and San Francisco in November and was not widely available until three decades later.
Tuesday, 26 September 2023
tarotic art (11. 025)
We appreciated this introduction to surrealist painter and social justice activist Leonora Carrington through her esoteric series inspired and informed by the iconography of the Major Arcana, whose symbolism is reflected everyone when one is ready for it. First exposed to the movement in the works of Max Ernst at the International Surrealist Exhibition, both artists later met, bonded and married, collaborating on projects and supporting one another’s work. Having settled outside of Paris, French authorities arrested the German Ernst with the outbreak of World War II as a “hostile alien.” Remanded to Germany, Ernst was taken into custody again by the Gestapo as a promoter of degenerate art. Dealt quite a hand and inconsolable over the detention of her husband (Ernst later was able to escape and flee to the US with the help of Peggy Guggenheim) and on the verge of a psychotic breakdown, Carrington agreed to a course of treatment in an asylum in Spain and underwent a regiment of electroshock therapy and powerful drugs. Carrington’s parents decided to then send her to a sanatorium in South Africa for continued care. Escaping en route in Portugal, Carrington sought refuge at the Mexican consulate and arranged a marriage-of-convenience to the ambassador so as to be liberated from the custody of her family and given the diplomatic immunity to travel. Ernst married Guggenheim, with Carrington joining a community of exiles in Mexico, where she was also a champion of women’s rights. Carrington’s body of work reflects Mesoamerican folkways and matriarchal traditions that whose points of departure limn her own biography. More from Hyperallergic at the link up top.
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ฒ๐ฝ, ๐, ๐จ, libraries and museums
Saturday, 12 August 2023
barrel traps or buoy knife (10. 939)
Though it kind of seems otherwise, we know we haven’t dedicated more reportage to the Texas governor’s pontoon-bridge to deter immigration from Mรฉxico than Trump’s bombastic Border Wall. The prop is political pandering of course to worst elements of the Republican Party’s constituents assembled by subcontractors and will likely break apart and damage infrastructure or be disassembled as a violation of international law. We did not know, however, that between the orange buoys, there’s a circular saw, nearly hidden from sight. Barbaric and overly-aggressive, calling this modern enhancement medieval is unfair to our pre-Enlightenment progenitors, and as with machines of torture back then, there was no industrial push to equip every castle with chamber of horrors with threat and rumour being more coercive and corrective and the surplus of such devices the handiwork of enterprising tour guides. Something as gruesome as the Iron Maiden was misconstrued reconstruction of the much tamer—yet humiliating Schandmantel (Coat of Shame—a wooden vessel sometimes lined with metal on the inside to be worn for punishment) which has an analogue in the image of the bankruptcy barrel. The Texas implements of inhumanity are very real.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Scientology’s Sea Org Day, the first Model-T (1908) plus assorted links to revisit
two years ago: Willy Wonka (1971), the closing ceremony of the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics, an exhibit of ephemera from events cancelled due to COVID, a Roman fast food kiosk, a WikiHow illustration worth a thousand words, a handbag inspired by a pasta box plus Avon paperbacks
three years ago: more on the new US Space Force, the Democratic ticket, the first IBM PC plus the martagon lily
four years ago: preparing to revisit the Bretagne
five years ago: the cart before the horse, silver thistles plus a photograph from Art Kane featuring the Harlem music scene
Saturday, 8 July 2023
lone star (10. 867)
Truckloads of giant meter-diameter buoys arrived on the Rรญo Bravo to be assembled into a floating chain of obstacles to prevent individuals from Mรฉxico from crossing the river and into Texas as part of larger programme to deter migration, but as David Martin Davies reports, like many other initiatives facing legal challenges, this experimental yet unoriginal and pricey idea may not only prove ultimately ineffectual, dangerous to life and limb and result in further negative environmental impact for the beleaguered waterway, it may also flaunt international law, potentially altering the flow and the border between the US and Mรฉxico. Opponents also note that the buoys could become unmoored—no infrastructure or ecological assessments were conducted prior to the planned installation (end product visualised)—and float downstream and cause damage to bridges.
Saturday, 17 December 2022
7x7 (10. 392)
the gate of the exonerated: a new entrance to be named in honour of the falsely accused Central Park Five, Raymond Santana, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise and Kevin Richardson
mighty mikko: a 1922 adaptation of Finnish fairytales

mpi: social contagions, mass psychogenic illnesses, can lead to physical maladies—see also, and certain platforms may be superspreaders
feliz navidad: beautiful vintage Christmas cards by artist Alejandro Rangel Hildalgo—via Marco McClean’s Memo of the Air
blue light special: more Kmart reel-to-reel soundtracks—this one from December 1974
heroes act: US supreme court admits more challenges to Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan
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
Sunday, 2 October 2022
8x8 (10. 187)
vendedores ambulantes: the sonic landscape and signature cries (see also) of the street vendors of Ciudad de Mรฉxico—via tmn
from erdapfel to equator: a globemaker’s glossary of cartographic terms—via the Map Room

anti-cyclone: a proposal to tow a barge laden with jet engines blasting to dissipate the strength of an oncoming hurricane
hyla orientalis: black tree frogs in Chernobyl demonstrate evolution in real time—via Slashdot
blogoversary: a belated congratulations to Diamond Geezer on twenty years of posting
the feral atlas: a journey of discovery and triangulation through our made environments from Stanford University and via Web Curios
tlaltecuhtli: the iconography of the Aztec pantheon