Print Magazine’s Daily Heller invites us back to The Peculiar Manicule (see previously) to peruse through the curated collections of semi-retired graphic designer David Day’s mod and Day-Glo-adjacent artefacts and ephemera, particularly the series of psychedelic calendars produced by the Hallmark greeting card company in the 1960s—under the influence of illustrator R Crumb—growing chronologically more abstract and subversive as the months and years passed until the aesthetic, parallel with Mid-Century Modern, changed and an unexpected part of the company’s portfolio. Much more at the links above.
Wednesday, 23 April 2025
push-pin studios (12. 406)
Friday, 14 February 2025
8x8 (12. 231)
shiroposuto: the last of Japan’s discrete adult reading material disposal boxes
reinfection: bovine testing for bird flu virus suggests that the H5N1 is spreading silently—see previously
with guns as my retirement and war as mistress: more protest anthems from Jessie Welles

remember the giver: an assortment of Valentine’s Day letters
tipping point: how things change slowly—then all at once, as illustrated by Kiki and Bouba
morbidity and mortality weekly report: US Centres For Disease Control see research and outreach efforts hampered by Trump’s assault on the agency—see previously, see also
enmusubi: the gathering of eight million gods play matchmaker for human relationships in this seaside prefecture
synchronoptica
one year ago: 1924’s Die Niebelungen (with synchronoptica), the endless news cycle plus assorted links to revisit
seven years ago: photographing a single atom, the illustrations of Giovanni Fontana, retro social media platforms plus street name diplomacy
eight years ago: more links to enjoy plus Germany votes
nine years ago: developing the .jpeg format, contention over US Presidents’ Day plus holograms to discourage non-disabled drivers taking handicapped parking spots
eleven years ago: forensics and biometrics plus pop culture Ottoman miniatures
Monday, 10 February 2025
7x7 (12. 222)
vandalising purposes—in this economy: one hundred thousand eggs are stolen in Pennsylvania
we stand on guard: a ten year old graphic novel about a US invasion of Canada is surging in popularity
narrow meaning: a love poem revealed by holding the page level with the eyes, foreshortening the characters—see previously here and here
sandbox game: an omnibus appreciation of The Sims on their twenty-fifth anniversary—via MissCellania
antipodes: an exploration of obscure islands
read-ahead: a pre-summit release from the Munich Security Conference (previously) suggests that due to its imperial aspirations, the US no longer a trusted partner
the price of eggs in china: inflation and rationing in America
Tuesday, 28 January 2025
be my valentine, charlie brown (12. 190)
Premiering on this day in 1975 on the CBS television network, the thirteenth prime-time animated special based on the Peanuts comic strip, deals with the subject of rejection and heartbreak when Sally first misinterprets Linus’ heart-shaped box of chocolates for his teacher as an overture
for her non-requited affection and our protagonist receiving only one treat, a chalky candy heart with the message “FORGET IT KID!” during the class party—the teacher departing early with her boyfriend. A belated greeting arrives from the Little Red Haired Girl and Charlie Brown gets a regifted card from Violet. Optimistic that these pity Valentines might sustain a trend and he’ll get more next year, but Linus warns his friend not to get his hopes up. The score with the opening theme “Heartburn Waltz” was recorded by Vince Guaraldi’s Orchestra. The card which Sally reads and acted out by Snoopy is the entirety (see also) of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese (№ 43), which opens with “How do I love thee? Let me me count the ways.”
synchronoptica
one year ago: USA for Africa’s We are the World (with synchronoptica) plus the zombification of the abandoned internet
seven years ago: pedometers and privacy, Thamesmead Housing Estate plus Aloha Wanderwell
eight years ago: governance per Tweet, assorted links worth revisiting plus Little Englanders
nine years ago: a time-capsule apartment in Chicago, ranking passports plus the game Go
ten years ago: hydrophobic materials plus a superb cartographical collection
Tuesday, 21 January 2025
so call me maybe (12. 169)
Via Quantum of Sollazzo we are directed towards a really insightful, disabusing and longitudinal study that demonstrates that romance is not dead from The Pudding. There is a significant decline but on balance the frequency of the love song has remained steady as a genre once one admits tastes have undergone a paradigm shift from the serenade to ballads of heartache, breakup and amour-propre. The interactive data-driven treatment is loaded with playable clips, from Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” to Lizzo’s “About Damn Time,” “Angel of the Morning” from Merrilee Rush & the Turnabouts to the collaboration from Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, as examples of tracks charting from 1958 to 2023.
Tuesday, 13 February 2024
comet and cupid (11. 347)
Via fellow internet peripatetic Messy Nessy (much more to dsicover there), we are introduced to the eighteenth century artist Michelangelo Maestri and his school through his series of water-colours of putti, cherubs driving chariots pulled by various creatures as an allegory to depict different types and stages of love—agape, eros, xenia, philia. Inspired by the frescos of Ancient Rome, especially the then recent excavation of well-preserved examples in Herculaneum and Pompeii, his studio’s works were extremely popular and produced en masse and were often purchased as souvenirs by those on their Grand Tour.
synchronoptica
one year ago: spec scripts for Star Trek: TNG plus a webring to check out
two years ago: more Excel art, West African musical artists plus separated by a common language
three years ago: assorted links to revisit, a dinosaur park plus animation techniques
four years ago: more links to enjoy
five years ago: out-of-place archaeology, Sony World Photography winners, Mandombe script plus more links worth revisiting
Sunday, 11 February 2024
sweethearts (11. 344)
Our intrepid AI wrangler, Janelle Shane, repeats a battery of experiments—this time using magnitudes more computational power—by having Chat GPT-3 design those chalky conversation confectionaries with an inscribed message. Far from the quirkiness on order it seems to illustrate the struggle that machine learning has with text, even if more orthographically plausible, and labels but begs the question, even that chatbots are recursive and have probably mined data from Shane’s earlier popular iterations, if it is not drawing from those and influencing the outcome. “Soe Coed,” “I ll Sont, ” “Le Yas,” and “Lov Shov” are pretty good but nothing could ever top Mouthy Hamster.
Tuesday, 6 February 2024
saint mรฉl (11. 329)
Son of Saint Patrick’s sister Darerca and eventually accompanying his uncle to Ireland for missionary work, this itinerate bishop with no fixed see during his ministry, this patron of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, supported himself through manual labour and subsistence farming, residing with his aunt called Lupait during a portion of his ministry. In order to quell rumours and preserve the good reputation of their evangelising work, Patrick went to investigate himself, with both aunt and nephew producing miracles (carrying burning coals and fishing a fish from a field) to prove the innocent and chaste nature of their relationship, and the two went to live apart—following the patriarch’s suggestion, who also raised the great hill called Bri Leith between their respective new settlements in Mรฉl’s home parish and Druimheo, further east where Lupait relocated, they separated. Invoked by those falsely accused of incest, the feast of Saint Mรฉl, venerated either today or on the seventh, has become a local holiday of singlehood (there being quite a few other saints devoted to the unpaired but all with the designs of marrying well) with customs including sending cards to oneself ahead of Valentine’s Day and hosting mixers that extol the good things about being confirmed bachelors and bachelorettes.
Tuesday, 25 July 2023
7x7 (10. 905)
home taping is killing record industry profits: the 1981 moral panic over mixtapes
lisa lionheart: labour force participation through the many careers of Barbie

the rivers and harbours act: Texas Department of Justice sues governor for refusing to remove a stretch of buoys that violates federal and international law—see previously
sickbay: the Pirate Surgeon’s Journals—via Strange Company
comeuppance: it’s time for the annual census on the River Thames—see previously
a lot of skill, hand-eye coordination—it’s cheap and legal: video arcade addiction was seen as a threat to prevailing social values in 1982
synchronoptica
one year ago: Ullapool and environs plus Wester Ross
two years ago: a colour advertisement on black-and-white TV (1967), Einstein on the Beach (1976), Thomas ร Kempis plus a mosaic along the Thames
three years ago: Trump’s mental fitness, proto-Wikipedia (2000), more on the US Space Force, St Cucuphas, Nixon in China vis-ร -vis today’s relations plus more on stock characters and archetypes
four years ago: RIP Rutger Hauer plus a doctored presidential seal
five years ago: a neo-classic Delphic festival (1927), a student project that may have unwittingly identified targets of value in the Gulf War, anti-social media, Mid-Century Modern minimalism plus the hunt for subsurface water on Mars
Sunday, 23 July 2023
9x9 (10. 901)
effective altruism: FTX lobbyist tried to purchase the island nation of Nauru as a doomsday bunker and create a genetically enhanced human species
getting drunk at a disco: 1977 found footage of an evening not necessarily going downhill
this is not a love poem: a round-up of favourites that are not all lovey-dovey—via tmn

1975: Kuala Lumpur authorities shut down the Good Vibes festival after headliner Matty Healy criticised Malaysia’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws
point of no return: time is running out on the Climate Clock
stooping: trend adopted by Chinese young people involves decorating with cast-off furniture left by the curb
smokey, this is not ‘nam—this is bowling, there are rules: Big Lebowski (previously) inspired bowling alley via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links (lots more to explore there)
typoglycemia: bypassing chatbot’s ethical subroutines using word scrambling and transposed letters
Saturday, 11 February 2023
((DV)) (10.541)
In an annual tradition tradition, the team at NPR’s Planet Money takes a moment to consider the things they love and dispatch valentines accordingly. While we really enjoyed the opening segment and the affection for venturing down a logistics and supply-chain rabbit hole with ImportYeti, a website that aggregates bills of ladening and customs sea shipment records and yields exacting insights on where component parts and completed goods come from (give it a try with any product marked made in China and drill down on the details), we would be compelled to send our overtures as well to Audio Description (see also)—something we’ve tried and will continue—for film and television programmes—a feature mandated by regulation and very prevalent but that affords all audiences the chance to attend in all circumstances, as if watching in company, closely and turns every episode into a podcast experience and narrated play-by-play.
Wednesday, 8 February 2023
roses are red (10. 534)
In an ongoing and evolving experiment, our AI Wrangler Janelle Shane (previously) has again essayed and assigned generative chat bots to create increasingly sophisticated greetings and indulged their versical graps by taking suggested illustrations, verso and recto—including on the back ‘Excleeze Me” below a red heart. It’ funny how the algorithm focuses on pagination equally with presentation and notably addressing recipient Jack as a carnivorous plant. In its dreadful excellence our old romantic ChapGPT rendered “Roses are red / Violets are blue / This card may be old / But my love for you is brand new,” optimised for fluency and familiarity above all other sentiments.
Tuesday, 3 January 2023
6x6 (10. 433)
shift happens: a comprehensive history of keyboards by Marcin Wichary—via Waxy
luni-solar: the people who are living in multiple timelines—see previously

hydraulic press interpretive dance: the impressive choreography of Sarah “Smac” McCreanor—see previously
nangajo: prominent figures of the Japanese design community present their greeting cards for 2023 (see previously), the Year of the Rabbit
franklin ace 100: the Apple clone (see previously) with a bizarre users’ guide—via Waxy
Monday, 26 December 2022
may all jollity lighten your christmas hours (10. 413)
For Second Christmas, our AI wrangler Janelle Shane (see previously) hit upon another ingenious application for generative networks, remedying in one fell prompt the inscrutability of Victorian greeting cards and the relatively anodyne nature of contemporary cards, to enliven the iconography and sentiment for the industry.
Yearly good tidings and descriptions were issued by machines fed on the corpus of inaccessibly weird cards, and where possible, illustrated by our programmer. The unrenderable caption that goes with the above 1889 motto calls for “a jester puppet with magic hat holding a leaping, toothed bird which brandishes a cane as it leaps.” Another favourite was for 1890—May You Feel Sturdy and Gay—picturing an elegant naiad lifting a pianoforte and wearing a striped bathing suit. Much more to explore at the links above.
Sunday, 18 December 2022
modernmas (10. 393)
Courtesy of the Everlasting Blรถrt, we really enjoyed this re-introduction to the portfolio and biography of graphic designer, architect and Modernist Master Paul Rand through this collection of hand-painted original Christmas cards. Rand was one of the first American commercial artists to adopt and champion the International Typographic Style (otherwise known as the Swiss Style), whose hallmarks were asymmetrical layouts and legibility. Much more at the links above.
Sunday, 13 November 2022
9x9 (10. 299)
enแธซeduana: the fourth incarnation of the four-thousand year old Mesopotamian priestess who is the world’s first named author
rip: founding member of the Clash and Public Image Ltd Keith Levene passes away, aged 65—via Nag on the Lake
this is jim rockford. at the tone, leave your name and message. i’ll get back to you. [beep]: the mid-1970s detective drama intro faithfully recreated in LEGO
tic-toc—let’s talk: Watch Dog and a nightmare clown teach children to read an analogue clock
hush city: interactive mapping applications to chart out one’s urban soundscape and mark out those quiet spots
51/49: Democrats retain control of the US Senate with a win in Nevada and the run-off election in Georgia ahead
hawkwind: space music pioneer Nik Turner has died, aged 82
the civilisation of llhuros: an artist exhibited, convincingly, a mock Iron Age culture with fantasy folkways and artefacts—via the New Shelton Wet / Dry
Tuesday, 8 November 2022
7x7 (10. 284)
big bounce: some astrophysicists suspect that things were happening in the Cosmos prior to the Big Bang—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links
nogoodnik: Russia reactivates its bot and troll army to muddy the US mid-term elections

jazz harp: the musical stylings of Turiyasangitananda—a.k.a. Ms Alice Coltrane—via Messy Nessy Chic
false prophets: a denunciation of America’s Christian nationalism—via Miss Cellania
battleground states: artists reflect on the consequential American election
hero’s journey: avoiding the perils of the monomyth in storytelling
Sunday, 9 October 2022
world postal day (10.207)
The Universal Postal Union (see previously here and here) has designated this day for the annualcelebration on the anniversary of the establishment of the UPU in 1874 in Bern—the first commemorative congress called in 1969 in Tokyo. Since then, themed campaigns have been held under the auspices of this UN agency to underscore the civic importance of a reliable and accessible mail system and recognises the best postal services in a global competition.
Tuesday, 20 September 2022
6x6 (10. 151)
teenage rampage: 70s sing-a-long pop was edgier than one thought
on tyranny: twenty lesson on unfreedom and defending democracy
heptominos: geometric magic squares from Lee Sallows—see also
cross-hatched: dozens of security envelope patterns
quiet quitting: these scenes of office drudgery are a form of protest
rainbow quest: Pete Seeger’s 1960s folk music television show
Monday, 14 February 2022
billet-doux
Via Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day, we are introduced to the French for literally a “sweet note” that has been adopted in the common-parlance since the seventeenth century as an alternative for a romantic missive. Pronounced Billy-DOO, the plural form is billets-doux.