cheeseboard

Via fellow internet caretaker and turophile, Nag on the Lake, we are directed towards this thorough, wholesome and circumspect guide of how to serve and store almost any sort of cheese from an expert cheesemonger.  The pictured painting is called Still Life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels (Stilleven met kazen, amandelen en krakelingen), created by Dutch artist Clara Peeters circa 1615.

your daily demon: furcas

Depending on one’s sources, our thirty-first spirit is a mighty president that presents as a strong man riding a steed and governs from today through 27 August, when the Sun moves into the House of Virgo. Versed in logic and ethics as well as the virtue of herbs and precious stones, Furcas is an accomplished tutor and can provide good counsel to make for a long and prosperous life. Ruling over twenty-nine legion, Furcas is opposed the guardian angel Lekabael.

easy-bake coven

Via the Awesomer, we learn that the gag children’s book cover parody has been expanded into a whole series of retro-inspired educational texts for precocious young witches and warlocks and other delinquents—see also. Be sure to Steven Rhodes’ complete Sinister Seventies line and My Little Occult Book Club collection at the links above.

6x6

1:1: a growing collection of architectural models appearing in film and television—via Everlasting Blört

brutsch 200 spatz: an unproduced concept microcar trialled in 1954  

hej, hello: the first episode of a Finnish television programme that taught English language skills featuring two very British bobbies and a cat on the Moon 

subway: a comprehensive map of subterranean Washington, DC—via Things Magazine  

purple prose: the 2021 Bulwer Lytton (previously) literature prize winners and dishonourable mentions—via Web Curios  

demosaicking: a biographical history of the pixel and its correspondence to reality

referens b𝑤ks

Courtesy of Weird Universe, we’ve previously encountered this forty-three letter script called Augmented Roman in which each glyph makes a distinct sound, allowing for a fully phonetic English orthography—textual examples of which we can recall looking and being thoroughly confused as young readers. We failed to realise however that the politician, publisher and educational reformer who developed the Initial Teaching Alphabet (i.t.a.) was Sir James Pitman (*1901 - †1985), grandson of Sir Isaac Pitman, who of a similar disposition, had developed a popular though far longer-lived stenographical system.

little twelvetoes

Having considered myself pretty familiar with the entire Schoolhouse Rock! catalogue (see previously here and here) and enjoying them as a kid, I was taken aback to be introduced to this segment that not only teaches one the twelves multiplication table but also about the duodecimal system and other bases—plus acceptance of actual polydactyly. Including My Hero, Zero and Three is a Magic Number, Bob Dorough performed and produced a dozen (the number one not given an episode) maths shorts during the course of 1973.

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.

qed

In plane geometry, according to the theorem proved by mathematician John Horton Conway (see previously, *1937 - †2020), when the points of a triangle are extended by the length of the side opposite each vertex, the six points fall on a circle which shares the same centre as the triangle. Computationally, logically, this geometric construct demonstrates something that could have easily been included in Euclid’s Elements but took several millennia to be discovered.

your daily demon: astaroth

Our twenty-ninth spirit is an infernal grand duke ruling from today through 17 August is part of the unholy trinity along with Beelzebub and Lucifer and likely derives his identity from the goddess Astarte, consort of Ishtar. Presenting as a fallen angel and commanding forty legions, Astaroth chiefly lures individuals to do wrong through laziness, self-doubt and rationisation but can be compelled to impart skill in mathematics and handicrafts as well as the power of invisibility. Treasurer of the Underworld, Astaroth is countered by the guardian angel Reyiyel as well as appeals to Bartholomew the Apostle who can repel the archdemon’s vices.

place your slag somewhere safe, as you might want to melt it again to remove excess silver

We found this developing narrative for the Wikihow article (see previously) on silver smelting, smithing a delightful example of storytelling and elaboration that we hope to see continue—eventually limning out an entire cinematic universe and franchise for the character, who could be either a safety-conscious crafty Christian, vampire-hunter or both.

9x9

form follows function: a Bauhaus poster generator—see previosly—via Kottke 

reddy made magic: a gallery of images plus the Walter Lantz theme song for mascot and industry shill, Reddy Kilowatt   

dining car: vintage railway menus (see also) illustrate the evolution of American cuisine—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links  

δ δ δ, can I help ya, help ya, help ya: a guide to joining the right sorority this fall  

jeux de la xxxiiie olympiade: the upcoming Paris games will be sustainable and moderately priced—see also  

attention k-mart shoppers: Americans emerge from the pandemic less patient, less empathetic than before and the service industry culture that fuels the cruel fantasy  

cycles pour animaux: a 1907 patent for a bicycle for horses to amplify their speed and le cheval-vapeur 

divergent association task: help science gauge creative reflexes by thinking up ten words as different as possible (in English only for now)  

betaplex: colourful retro cinema space in Ho Chi Mihn City recalls Saigon’s Art Deco architecture

adoxography

Brilliantly the titular term is derived from the New Latin for paradoxical, in turn from the Ancient Greek obscure (ἀ + δόξα = against expectations), and in rhetoric refers to refined writing on minor, trivial or base subjects or praise of things of dubious value or the exercise thereof beginning with the revival of the art of loquacious, persuasive speech with the pivotal publication of Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly (Moriæ Encomium). Surveying the field in classical and contemporary education, a non-exhaustive list unworthy subjects of erudition included ageing, infirmities, promiscuity and pests.

aw:

Dispatched the day before from Cambridge, Massachusetts using the CSNET (Computer Science Network) platform Informatik and economics student Michael Rotert (“rotert@germany”) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology became on this day in 1984 the first recipient (see also) of an email in West Germany, with project director Werner Zorn on the cc-line. The body read “Wlikomen in CSNET! Michael, This is your official welcome to CSNET.”

6x6

roll for perception: the official video for the 1987 Rick Astley hit (previously) surpasses one billion views   

until proven safe: EURIDICE, the eponym from the mythological Eurydice who Orpheus failed to retrieve from the Underworld, is the acronym for European Underground Research Infrastructure for the Disposal of Nuclear Waste in a Clay Environment  

a clokey production: a bot scours Gumbasia for random screen-grabs

pelagic waters: exploring the oceans’ midnight zone beyond the reach of the sun’s rays

portrait of a teenage alcoholic: a 1975 after school special starring The Exorcist’s Linda Blair and Star Wars’ Mark Hamill  

an eternal golden braid: some crib-notes and a course on the 1987 classic Gödel, Escher, Bach

the manhattan project

The phenomenon of nuclear fission only just discovered and prompting the United States to eventually establish its own research programme, with the endorsement of Albert Einstein Hungarian physicist Szilárd Leó (*1898 - †1964) dispatched his letter to president Franklin D. Roosevelt on this day in 1939. Immediately comprehending the ramifications for energy production or warfare having conducted experiments with less fissile materials and unable to sustain a chain-reaction, Szilard first in mid-July thought to warn Belgium as their colony in the Congo held the largest known reserves of uranium and was fearful that the Germans could persuade them to part with it handily, not realising what they were trading away and had recruited Einstein to speak on his behalf through consular channels as Einstein was friends with the Belgian royal family. With the closing salutation, “Yours truly,” the letter began: 

In the course of the last four months it has been made probable – through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America – that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future. 

Specifically citing the suspension of the sales of uranium from occupied Czechoslovakia and on-going research in German universities, Szilard further conjectured that while it probably was not feasible to miniaturise the components necessary for a nuclear reaction for portable bombs and mobile warheads, he did believe it likely that the process could be accommodated on board a ship that could attack a city from the harbour. FDR (his reply pictured) was delivered this executive summary plus a longer, more detailed explanation of the science underpinning his forewarning.

your daily demon: ronové

Our twenty-seventh spirit is a monstrous marquis governing from today through 7 August and whose office is to teach the art of rhetoric, persuasive speaking and language arts in general. Controlling nineteen legion and sometimes described as a taker of old souls—coming to harvest those decrepit and approaching death, Ronové is countered by the guardian angel Yorethael.

home on the range

Via Web Curios, we are directed to the rather outstanding and one-of-a-kind insight of the twentieth century American western frontier through the lens of Lora Webb Nichols (*1883 - †1962), postal worker, cook and journalist running her own local newspaper, The Echo, who took over twenty-four thousand photographs over the course of six decades, most

of the environs of a copper mining town in the state of Wyoming called Encampment. Nichols early in her career established a photo studio with a dark room to develop and finish film and would loan out equipment for other aspiring picture-takers. Her images, articles and diaries are curated by the state university library system for one to peruse.

glossographia

Writing for Æon Magazine, Arika Okrent presents a compelling argument that the overwhelming inconsistencies of the English language in its written form has less to do with the mixing of peoples on the British Isles but rather the incidents and accidents of early-adoption of the printing press and with the attendant increase in literacy, conventions like adhering to uniform and phonetic spelling (previously) could be set and propagated by any author, especially with English falling out of common-parlance (see also) only to re-emerge after a hiatus of nearly three-centuries, only separated by a few generations the introduction of publishing.

alternative work site

In a rollicking, wide-ranging look at the precedents for the creator economy in correspondence course—notably of our scribe stenographer Sir Isaac Pitman—and the move that originally tethered us to office space, sourced to in the Uffizi in Florence, where bureaucracy and administration were centralised in 1560 as a cadet branch of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, now a world-class gallery gifted to the city after the Medici line died out.

Afforded the opportunity to work remotely and knowing arguments for compelling staff to return are specious at best—synergy and presence packaged as the benefits we are missing out on away from colleagues I think are the opaque justifications for accountability and the passkeys of those supervisors who like to play house at the office because they’re denied it at home, the informing past is an interesting and advisable lens to re-evaluate custom and workplace culture as crisis and contingency hopefully begin to ebb. Technological advance can be regressive in its demands and requirements to fill the time. Much more to explore and contemplate at Tedium at the link up top.

queenhithe

The Gentle Author of Spitalfield’s Life directs our attention to a new, epic mosaic along the Thames path that illustrates two millennia and more of human history with the estuary’s natural course at the inlet named ‘the Queen’s Harbour’ after Matilda granted around 1104 the establishment of a dock there and the excise of duties on goods delivered. Learn more at the link above, including a treasury of panels from the procession, pictorial chronicle of the ages.