motown

Via the always excellent Things Magazine (with several other utopian visions to explore and debate in this instalment), we learn about Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe (*1900 – †1996), town planner, landscape developer and architecture and his 1959 project Motopia, which despite its automobile-centric name, really was dedicated to the prevention of sprawl and spill-over and the preservation of green spaces where no car or lorry could encroach—see also. Instead what Jellicoe envisioned was a grid of mixed-used residential towers connected by elevated jetways, whose intersections were all roundabouts following the roofline of the blocks with the option to spiral down to one’s home or office, leaving the land below pristine and even wild. Though never realised according to plan, districts like Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Radio and Television Tower were informed by Jellicoe’s design. Much more at the links above.

pequod

Prior to the arrival of the pilgrims the small, isolated island of Massachusetts Bay Colony whose name in Wampanoag means “sandy, sterile soil tempting no one” and the brunt of many a Limerick was home to a small and sustainable population of Native Americans, evicted by the rapidly increasing settler numbers, soon realising that Nantucket lived up to its name. And so not content with their misguided incursions, the colonisers looked to the sea to support their growth, including whaling operations. Public Domain Review has collected dozens of visually brilliant ship’s logs and personal journals of crew sourced mostly to the cusp of the age when waters were depleted and boats had to venture further and further for their quarry and cheaper alternatives to the risky enterprise presented themselves.

8x8

ruminant digestive process: whilst bovine flatulence makes the headlines, burps are the chief source of methane and could be neutralised with a special mouth guard—via the New Shelton Wet/Dry  

caporegime: via ibīdem, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project names Jair Bolsonaro Corrupt Person of the Year, trouncing with a narrow margin Trump, Erdoğan and Netanyahu  

commander-in-cheat: First Minister Nicola Sturgeon won’t allow Trump to visit his golf course in Scotland during the pandemic lockdown to bow out of attending the inauguration in Washington, DC 

georgia on my mind: Reverend Warnock declared winner in Senate race and Democrats poised to take control of the Upper House  

grogu pains: The Mandalorian reimaged as 1990s sitcom  

die abenteur des prizen achmed: the incredible silhouette animation technique of Lotte Reiniger—more here  

population density: housing ten billion humans in one mega city could help vastly reduce our footprint, freeing up the remaining land mass for rewilding and argiculture 

all the trimmings: for this traditional day of ceremonially discarding the tree, ways to transform it into garnish and a tasty treat

8x8

before times: one narrative of 2020 as told through fifteen objects and artefacts—see previously

marsha, marsha, marsha: Trump acknowledges months’ long cyber-attack on US government networks for first time—oddly defensive about Russian involvement 

systemic bias: when bad decisions are blamed on algorithms, bad actors are exculpated and trust in science erodes  

breakthrough listen: musing on the nature of signal detected from Proxima Centauri by the Murriyang Radio Telescope 

tape/slide newsreel group and friends: brilliant early 80s photo archive showing Hackney to Hackney—via the splendiferous Things Magazine   

engineer, agitator, constructor: the visual vernacular of utopian graphic design  

creek and culvert: the movement to resurface and revive long buried urban waterways—see previously  

off-limits: virtually visit nine sites not accessible to the public in Washington, DC 

a modern hanukah miracle: there are extra doses of vaccine in each vial—stretching out supplies to inoculate twice as many individuals than expected

6x6

message in a bottle: researchers tagged plastic waste with electronic trackers to monitor their journey—from the same team that brought us Mister Trash Wheel 

pfizer-biontech: British nonagenarian first to receive the coronavirus vaccine  

wunderpus photogenicus: deep sea diver photographs an incredible infant octopus with a transparent head

toot your own horn: more butt trumpets and other bizarre imagery in manuscript marginalia 

catsa lander mark-1: a gorgeous space-age cat bed—though our feline friends would be more pleased with a shoebox

2014-076a: Hayabusa2 (previously) successfully returns its asteroid sample to Earth

the past is another country

Two years ago—after the mid-terms—the Centre for American Politics and Design conducted a meta-survey of recently concluded political races and challenges for all types of public office to better understand the role of typography and graphic design in voting and campaigning, and are doing the same for every jurisdiction and elected official on the tickets for 2020. Explore some of the data and sample the logos (from president to dog-catcher and everything in between) included at Print Magazine at the link.

♨

The always brilliant Present /&/ Correct directs our attention to a website dedicated to exploring the bathhouse (sentō, 銭湯) culture of Japan. 

There are lots of resources to dip into plus plenty of photographs of interiors in all their pastel glory. These communal spas—meant for relaxation and engender feelings of empathy by proximity and vulnerability, for are distinguished from onsen (温泉, the above map symbol or the hiragana character ゆ, yu, mark their location on maps and signage), another type of public facility, which are fed by hot springs.

9x9

dry dock: a drone surveys a cruise ship graveyard  

one of these things is not like the other: match memes described as having the same energy—via Waxy 

anti-trust, anti-social: leaked documents show how viciously Facebook (previously) plans to fight regulations and its forced break-up

verticalisation: photographer Manuel Alvarez Diestro has Chongqing in frame a decade after his first visit 

rephotography: vis-à-vis, the above, staging the same photos decades later—via Things Magazine  

we bid a hasty retreat from his lair: School House Rock’s Unpack Your Adjectives  

begagnade varor: IKEA to open a second-hand outlet in Sweden—via Kottke  

space ghost coast-to-coast: a retrospective of comics illustrator Alex Toth 

even keel: a tiny, personal boat to navigate Amsterdam’s canals

7x7

cut-throat competition: gig workers are tethering their smartphones in trees to gain an edge of miilliseconds over others for a limited number of contracts

the hackney year: season after season of recorded back garden bird song and other sonic gems via Things Magazine

october surprise: a cynical campaign ploy threatens to erode public trust in science and medicine

a transparent corridor in the air: a design firm completes the longest glass-bottomed suspension bridge along the approach to Three Gorges

ascii art: artists creates “typicitions” on his vintage typewriter

snitches get stitches: the prohibition against social gatherings are polarising college campuses

eula: monopsonistic on-line retail giant deploys union-busting tactics to perpetuate myth of “freelance” work-force and maintain their impressment

a short conchological glossary

Though not presented as a tongue-twister nor with any other context or accompaniment that might appeal to anyone outside the academic community of cockles and mussels or shell-collectors, this odd exercise in splendid enunciation—via Weird Universe—has a soothing, dulcet quality that is only to be found I think in a subject this niche. Click through to download the recording as an MP3.
It makes me think about the admonishment of not being critical of others for mispronouncing a word as they might have only ever encountered that word in print beforehand—I know my head pronunciation of things can be sometimes a mismatch, and we probably ought to bring back the pronouncing album. The opening disclaimer that there no official—only customarily correct way of saying these Latin names does not dissuade us from listening to more from R. Tucker Abbott, PhD (*1919 – †1995), preeminent malacologist, who made up the names of many of the species himself.

march march

Via Nag on the Lake, we are directed to the powerful protest anthem with accompanying music video that rallies all of us to be agitators and allies from the band The Chicks, who fortunately for everyone DID NOT just shut up and sing. “If your voice held no power, they wouldn’t try to silence you.”

making waves

Having achieved the goal the group was originally constituted for, the Don’t Make a Wave Committee—established in British Columbia in October 1969 to protest underground nuclear weapons testing in a wildlife refuge on the Aleutian Islands by the US government and halted further tests, the founders revaluated their mission and the power of organising and broadened it to officially be known as Greenpeace from this day onward in 1972.
The devastation of the 1964 Alaskan Earthquake still fresh in residents’ minds, there were fears that the tests could trigger further quakes and tsunami, sparking the initial rallies under the banner “It’s Your Fault If Our Fault Goes”—which failed to stop the US from detonating the bomb but accrued support for the opposition, which eventually prevailed, the protesters blocking the access to the island chain with a flotilla of private fishing boats, including the eponymous trawler, that stood up to the US navy.

hydrological regime

While meandering for just over a kilometre, the shortest river in France that we visited several years back dwarfs these watercourses, it is nonetheless interesting to hop about the map and consider these shortest of rivers around the globe and wonder how we define our topography. For instance, the pictured Ombla, stout though only thirty metres in length, satisfies all the essential criteria plus supplying neighbouring Dubrovnik with drinking water.  More to explore with Amusing Planet at the link above.

we have met the enemy and he is us

First observed on this day fifty years ago and now celebrated in every polity around the globe as the largest secular holiday of them all, organisers in colleges and universities brought out roughly twenty million individuals into the spring sunshine to peaceful demonstrate for environmental reform.
The original impetus was a devastating oil spill of the coast of Santa Barbara, California that was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of marine creatures during the previous winter with city solemnly marking the one-year anniversary of that disaster in January with an Environmental Rights Day, further advancing the idea for a day of action generally for ecological responsibility and justice. For the occasion, illustrator Walt Kelly created an anti-pollution poster with his comic strip character declaiming the above quotation, parodying a missive sent by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry (older brother of Commodore Matthew Perry) to General William Harrison on his victory, more confident and less contrite, in the Battle of Lake Erie—another environmental mess we are trying to remediate—“We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”

flotsam and jetsam

Via Present /&/ Correct, we are introduced to a new form of beachcombing, mudlarking (see also here and here) that’s pivoted for one Cornwall resident from shells and lost treasures to the plastic detritus of modern times in LEGO Lost at Sea, who has nonetheless continued to collect what she can scavenge from the shores and displays them in their dismaying beauty. Learn more at the links above and share your own meticulously arranged collages of castaways.

bed, bath and beyond

We are quite pleased with the way our interior design came together and one of the more pleasant aspect was visiting showrooms and browsing through catalogues to select faucets and fixtures.
Not looking to redecorate any time soon mind you, we enjoyed quite a bit leafing through this American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Corporation (today the rather sedate Trane Inc., having divested itself of its bathroom division) brochure from 1940 with some fantastic period pastels and palettes to choose from. Much more to explore from Present /&/ Correct at the link above.

沢登り

Via tmn, we learn about a particular subset of mountaineering called sawanobori—literally stream-climbing that involves ascending a tributary to its source be that up and over ravines and waterfalls and always against the current. Although speciality gear is usually now employed—as the video advertises—traditionally climbers wore straw-rope shoes called waraji (草鞋), differentiated from other sandals by how the toes protruded over the edge to help one gain a purchase whilst hiking up an incline.

downspout

Researchers from the City University of Hong Kong are developing a new technique to harness the power of falling rainwater and convert it into electricity for passive applications and battery recharging.
One water drop alone under this novel way of converting and redistributing its kinetic energy can generate enough of a spark to light up a matrix of one LED bulbs. While the rain may not be appropriate for energy-intensive scenarios, the project leader believes that the field effect transistor method could be overlaid with other energy harvesters to multiply their efficacy—on rooftop solar panels, for instance, to ensure a steadier power-supply even when the conditions aren’t so sunny, or even one’s own umbrella whose cane would become a power-wand. Learn more at the link above.

holy mackerel

Though I am sure our friend Lew Zealand would gladly help spawning fish to navigate man-made obstacles that block their migratory routes, we also appreciated this artificial-intelligence aided system that creates a portal to help fish mount dams blocking rivers by gently launching them through a pneumatic tube up and over the top. Dams harvest hydropower—a sustainable and reliable energy source, but such interventions often clash with the environment and creatures that share these waters, but systems like the ones being developed, in tandem with fish-ladders and existing ways to shuttle, can help lessen the impact. Read more about the Whooshh Passage Portal at Dezeen at the link above.

saturn vi

Though exploration of the Cronian satellite cannot begin before 2034 (distant-seeming but only fifteen years hence), NASA has committed, choosing among twelve contending proposals, to send a fleet of aerial drones to survey Titan, more planet than moon-like with a dense atmosphere, complex terrain, weather and methane driven precipitation similar to the water cycle on Earth, only sustainable at much lower temperatures, to seek out alien life.

Extra special care and precautions are being factored into the Dragonfly mission so as to not disturb the primordial conditions of the surface as the craft take samples of the moon’s chemistry. Under this frozen substrate (see also), which while having the necessary building blocks for life as we conceive it, scientists believe there is a water-ammonia lies a panthalassic ocean where abiogenesis is suspected to have occurred.