8x8

the santaland diaries: a holiday classic from David Sedaris 

by jove: more on the complex system of Jupiter and its moons—including Valetudo, which crosses between the prograde and retrograde orbitals—see previously  

mimicry and mutualism: the monkey slug caterpillar (Phobetron pithecium, the larva of the hag moth) that evolved to resemble a tarantula  

where do i begin: Erich Segal’s Love Story at fifty

posse commmutatus: a fresh tranche of pardons (previously) from the outgoing and impeached Trump is an assault and insult on justice 

tree fm: for those who can’t readily go forest bathing or hug a perennial friend, tune into the soundscape of woods around the world—via Things Magazine  

pork-barrel politics: Trump frames riders in COVID aid bill as disgraceful after seven months of contentious negotiation, demands revision 

suggested serving: wintry cocktail and hot toddy recipes from eastern Europe

palæomixology

The ever adventurous team of explorers at Atlas Obscura bring us the story of a university palæontologist celebrating his first published paper—on archaeopteryx feathers—was taken to commemorate his accomplishment with a signature cocktail for the occasion, sharing the recipe and toasting remotely with his friends and colleagues over a video conference call. Afterwards the hobby bartender was inspired to create more drinks honouring other prehistoric icons including Lucy and a ginkgo mimosa. What other dinosaur and dinosaur-adjacent cocktails might you mix up? Much more to discover at the link up top. Here’s a slightly modified version of the namesake drink of the Urvorgel (see previously) with appropriately German ingredients.

• Two full shot-glasses (a shooter glass—three ounces) worth of black-berry or black currant (Schwarze Johannisbeere) soda or syrup 
• One shot Jägermeister 
• One shot lime juice 
• One shot of Stone Fruit (Pfirsich oder ähnliches) syrup 
• One dash of activated charcoal plus 3 dashes of bitters 

Mix all the ingredients in a couple (a broader, shallow stemmed flute) glass, saving the charcoal for last and garnish with a black feather—the colour of the plumage (the cocktail by the same name is however brandy, Cointreau, vermouth plus bitters) being one of the conclusions drawn from the paper.

scarlet gn

The above compound also known as Red Dye Number 4 (E number, European standard, E125—that’s a strange tale too) was banned for use in all foodstuffs or ingestibles—still used in cosmetics, by the US Food and Drug Administration when the chemical was found have carcinogenic properties including horrendously causing tumours in the bladders of dogs. Formerly cocktail maraschino cherries were exempt with the rationale that they were mostly decorative and not to be eaten.  There are now safe alternative but red-colouring is mostly avoided by association.

the cogito ergo zoom

Via JWZ, mindful that the upcoming fall semester, however classes are held, will be a challenging one for academics, we appreciated this growing list of cocktails from author and historian Philipp Stelzel. Pictured is the Inaccessible Archive:

6cl gin, 2cl green Chartreuse, 3cl fresh orange juice.
Stir and serve with an orange zest.

The recipe notes that the high cost of Chartreuse is offset by not having to go into the physical archives. The titular drink calls for bourbon, tart cherry juice, bitters and simple syrup. I don’t think precise measurements matter—just maintain the proper ratio. Many more to be found at the links up top.

6x6

télévision œil de demain: a prescient 1947 short about the future ubiquity of screens

zeus mode: alternative phone casings featuring accessories including a built-in stun gun

harvey wall-banger adjacent: click on grid mode to see how these cocktail ingredients compare—via Nag on the Lake’s always excellent Sunday Links

corona cosplay: understanding Americans’ aversion to wearing masks—via Duck Soup

we’ll celebrate once we have a reason to celebrate: revisiting (see also) Fredrick Douglass’ 5 July 1852 speech

ipertesto: Agostino Ramelli’s sixteenth century bookwheels recreated by modern designers

7x7

en nat på bloksbjerg: the incredible art work of Dutch illustrator Kay Nielsen—see previously, whom contributed to Fantasia but Disney let go

band camp: an overlooked and not unlistenable resource: Can This Even Be Called Music?—via Kicks Condor

theire soe admirable herbe: English colonist discover what the natives have been smoking in seventeenth century India

winter stations: interactive installations of Toronto’s beach to encourage outdoor play in the cold months

cabin-crew: the JFK retro TWA terminal hotel (previously) turns the body of a vintage jet into a bar and museum space

salon d’automne: a neural network trained on cubist art produces an infinite stream of paintings, via Waxy 

a parade of earthly delights: scenes from recent annual aquatic celebrations of Jheronimus Bosch (previously) held on the waters of ‘s-Herogenbosch—the next event begins in mid-June

8x8

it putteth away dumpishness & sadness, and bringeth mirth: a 1559 recipe for mulled wine

fox and liberty forever: the chaotic General Election of 1790, the polling and purdah lasting from 16 June to 28 July, via Strange Company

the power of youth: the photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva behind the iconic image of Greta Thunberg’s TIME cover—we personally found this honour to be pretty moving as well

link in bio: the insidious nature of Walled Gardens (see previously) and social media’s attempts to corral the free Internet

the land of the asuras: a Buddhist monk leads a solemn ceremony to eulogise untaken time off from work in Japan—hardly done despite legislation that all workers take a minimum of five paid vacation days per year

🙀: this feline face filter underscores how poorly we understand our cats’ cognition

flight and blight: a survey of some of the historic character lost in New York City over the past decade

your branches green delight us: a tour of London’s Christmas trees 

gilded age or singapore sling

Though a beautifully brooding building, Parkview Square of downtown Singapore, the office complex that hosts embassies and art galleries on its twenty-four storeys, also boasts a multi-level bar at its core, complete with a “library” of some thirteen-hundred varieties of gin from around the globe (the signature cocktail was invented at the venerable, nearby and more authentically Art Deco Raffles Hotel on Beach Road). Prior to acquiring its current theme—which offers no less of an experience, the space hosted a wine bar with the sommelier on duty magically hoisted up and down by a wire to retrieve bottles from the high stack of shelves.

8x8

von neumann probes: perhaps autonomous, self-replicating interstellar explorers are destroying each other, accounting for their lack of evidence

bahnhofsuhr: the iconic Swiss train station clock designed by Hans Hilfiker

dactylography: an interesting survey of ancient latent fingerprints and the scientific rigour of forensics

incidental music: a cocktail party version of the main Star Trek theme exists in the Star Trek universe

parclo interchange: the elegant engineering of Japanese freeway junctions from above

a rabbit’s revenge: a further study of the prevalence of bunnies committing violence on humans (previously) in medieval marginalia

breakfast at mondrian’s: studio Brani & Desi translate the Dutch artist’s geometric works to floors and furnishings in a concept apartment

aerography: huge rivers coursed across the Martian surface for billions of years, via Slashdot

5x5

betamax xmas: we get reintroduced to a nostalgic, internet classic—via Waxy

optician sans: a sleek free font from ANTI Hamar and Fábio Duarte Martins

i heard you on the wireless back in ‘sixty-two: a whole universe of pre-MTV music videos

première arabesque: guitarist Kyle Schaefer arranges and performs Claude Debussy’s early masterpiece in progressive rock style

modernistmas: an updated gallery (previously) of Brutalist and Post Modernism gingerbread houses for the holidays 

7x7

val-eri, val-dera: a fantasy map that put the world’s tallest peaks side by side

downside up: excerpts from a 1984 film that shifts perspectives

still life: a podcast from NPR producer Ian Chillag whose guests are all inanimate objects, via Waxy

postdictive processing: an audio-visual illusion from Caltech researchers

theatrical properties: stories behind an assortment of iconic film props, via Miss Cellania

feet dragging: a look at America’s despicable inaction on climate change

petunias: a range of cocktails inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings 

moscow mueller

None of these Trump cocktails from McSweeney’s contributors Wendy Aarons and Mariana Olenko seem for anyone but your sturdiest of drinkers and may not be so effective for drowning one’s sorrows but the menu (both instalments) is certainly worth checking out. We especially liked The Harvey Wallbuilder: vodka, orange juice and Galliano l’Autentico, garnished with an IOU from Mexico—though now we’ve graduated to Impeachment & Cream.

state of inebriation

We are treated to another example of persuasive cartography (previously) in this 1931 map of the Isle of Pleasure published by Houston, Texas draughtsman and architect H. J. Lawrence, two years before the experiment with Prohibition in the United States (1920-1933).

Lawrence makes his opinion on the temperance movement and the constitutional amendment that outlawed alcohol fairly clear as he charts his longing to return to the days when liquor was free flowing and not something reveled in covertly and at a high premium due to the black market. Be sure to visit the link above to see more detailed insets and instructions for mixing some of the Prohibition-era cocktails referenced on the map.

shirley temple or taste/ip

Via the always discerning Nag on the Lake, we are introduced to a clever gadget—a virtual cocktail glass—that uses a combination of lights, wafting aromas and most importantly a mild electric stimulation to the tongue and taste buds to convince us we are experiencing flavours that aren’t really there. What do you think? This gustatory hallucination apparently can transform a glass of plain water into a fine scotch, and I suppose as the technique becomes more refined and shared widely, it will be able to recreate the most subtle notes and expressions for those who cannot or should not partake of adult-beverages and seems like a better substitute than having a mocktail.

burn after reading

To honour the conclusion of Sunshine Week, our intrepid friends at Muckrock—serial freedom of information act (FOIA) filers are kicking back the with the second best disinfectants—provocatively named cocktails to take the edge of redaction and glomarisation, like the Shirley Temple (Herbert Hoover style), Deep State, Intelligence Report, and We Were Never Here. I’d add Mistakes Were Made, and just need to figure out the ingredients.
The infuriating “Glomar response” is when the government declares its refusal to speculate on an ongoing investigation or address matters of national security and comes from the name of a salvage vessel that the Central Intelligence Agency commissioned to recover a sunken Soviet submarine in 1975. The plausibly deniable boilerplate that would go on to preface many more secrets went, “We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the information requested but, hypothetically, if such data were to exist, the subject matter would be classified, and could not be disclosed.”

green fairy, ruby slippers

Nag on the Lake beckons to us to join her on the hunt for Italy’s answer to absinthe served up in a ruby red concoction called Tamango by a mysterious bar in Turin of the same name.
Just as one has to have reverence and respect for the Green Fairy, one also has to drink this signature cocktail very gingerly or face hallucinatory consequences. The travelogue is fraught with rather terrifying tales of patrons who failed to choose wisely. These poor souls could not straightaway click their heels together to go home. Cin cin!—but an abundance of caution is advised.

5x5

vapour-lock: intoxicating atmosphere of the breathable cocktail chamber

cachepots: origami planters that grow with the plants they hold

loving-cup: whimsical, personal hand-crafted trophies (not pictured)

shiver ye timbers: EU Pirate Partei representatives save freedom of panorama

dot-dash-diss: in 1903 a white-hat hacker disrupts Marconi’s telegraph demonstration, via Kottke

valance or tinley bar

Food Beast presents this brilliant and systematic presentation of classic cocktails arranged in Periodic Table form by designer Mayra Artes.

Click on the image to enlarge but be sure to visit the gourmand blog, as well. The columns are arranged by family of liquors and in descending order of alcohol content—thus chemical reactivity. I like how the Gin Group is located where one would find the Noble Gasses and the listing of the Rare-Earth elements. Here's a toast to the science of taxology. I think a perfect project for an expert cheesemonger (l'artisan fromager) would be to adapt families of cheeses to this format.

sympathetic resonance or the drink-whisperer

An intrepid roving reporter with The Atlantic magazine, after seeing bar-tenders in a trendy, stylo-milo joint in Vancouver, neither shook, nor stirred nor scuttled their signature martinis but rather tuned them with a tuning-fork of a certain pitch, is now experimenting with the method himself, with various cocktails and applications. Results so far seem inconclusive, but I rather like the idea that a particular harmonic vibration could be the proper and professional way to mix a good drink and really bring out the flavour and subtler notes. What do you think—is it just gimmicky and like water drawn during a full moon or magnetic insoles (which ought not to be dismissed out-of-hand either maybe) or might the right combination be struck?