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⚠️: a pictogramatical survey of caution wet floor signs—via Pasa Bon!  

load-bearing bifurcation: engineers incorporate sturdy, often-discarded tree forks in construction  

thameside tv: clips from London’s first pirate station—see also  

no tofu: the Noto typeface (previously) a suite of emoji  

unit patch: the more inscrutable badges of the US Space Force—see previously  

pocket mac: the process of designing a fake vintage product 

☿: Unicode Consortium’s growing list of astronomical glyphs, magical charms

diggi-loo diggi-ley

Winning the twenty-ninth installment of the Eurovision Song Contest (previously) hosted by Luxembourg City on this day in 1984, the clean-cut Swedish trio of the brothers Herrey were referred to once by fellow contestant and performer Tommy Körberg (Anatoly from Chess) as the “dancing deodorants” which stuck in the press and followed them their whole career. An English-language version was released as “Golden Shoes” at a later date, the more expository title affords non-Swedish speakers a glimpse into the lyrics about the lead singer discovering a magical pair of shoes that make him dance in the streets and wishes everyone in the world could have the same experience. In 1985, the group—the original boy band ahead of the later boom—won the Sopot International Song Festival with “Sommarparty,” and was the first Western band to be invited to tour behind the Iron Curtain.

fan mail from a flounder?

Given the MST3K treatment for the first time on this day in 1999 in their tenth season, the surpassing bad 1971 sci-fi horror film also released under the titles Z_aA_t (the name of the chemical compound), Hydra and Attack of the Swamp Creatures relates the plot of a mad scientist first to transform himself into a catfish-like monster (sort of like the hybrid God-Emperor primate-sandworm) then drug an entire town’s water supply with the same serum to create a community of merpeople. The mad scientist then turns his focus to revenge on his fellow researchers who ridiculed his work.

hollywood on the tiber

Dedicated on this day in 1937 by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, the sprawling studio complex in Rome, Cinecittà, was built in accordance with the motto ”il cinema è l‘arma più forte“—that is, movies are the most powerful weapons. Their aims however were not exclusively for propaganda with the primary goal of reviving the country‘s flagging film industry, which had virtually collapsed in the early 1930s. Subject to bombardment during World War II and post-war was host to an encampment for displaced persons. Rebuilt in the early 1950s, the studio site garnered the titular nickname with over three-thousand productions, including Roman Holiday, Quo Vadis, Ben-Hur, Cleopatra, The Agony and the Ecstasy plus numerous films by Franco Zeffirelli and Federico Fellini. More recently the the studios were the set of the BBC/HBO co-production Rome and The Young Pope, a full-scale mock-up of St Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel on site, just a few kilometres away from the actual location.

you are not drinking a piña coladas at trader vic’s, young man, you’re just not old enough

First aired on this day in 1997, the 1957 b-movie I Was a Teenage Werewolf starring Michael Landon (Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven) as troubled youth Tony Rivers was lampooned by MST3K. A fight in school garners Tony (Landon) the attention of the local detective who persuades him to speak with a staff psychologist who proposes a regimen of hypnotherapy to help deal with his bouts of anger.  Reluctant at first but then convinced he needs to seek help to curb his violent (often dairy-based) inclinations after another brawl during a Halloween party, Tony submits to seeing the doctor, who has the patient pegged rather as the ideal test-candidate for an experimental serum developed to regress personality and bring out primitive instincts. One side-effect of the treatment is of course lycanthropy.

ident and interlude

We thoroughly enjoyed this introduction to the authentically analogue off-set animation, printmakingtechnique called risography (リソグラフ)—a form of mechanical-duplication for high volume reproduction using soy-based inks and toners—through the rejection of digital media and the phenomenon of reimporting the tried and true mimeograph technology as embodied in the introduction for the news programme Hōdō Station as animated, frame by frame, by artist Hiromu Oka for TV Asahi. Longer and more involved than the pause for station identification were the montages—now discontinued—for sign-ons and sign-offs (see also) at the beginning and end of the broadcasting day called Hato no Kyūjitsu (鳩の休日—that is, “Dove’s Day Off”).  More about the technique and graphic designer at It’s Nice That at the link above.

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mutually intelligible: interlocutors with no common language gravely overestimate the success of their getting the message across 

let’s have church: mystery artist of gospel album covers—via Nag on the Lake  

partygate: Prime Minister and cabinet members fined for violating lockdown protocols 

toto, i have a feeling we’re not in kansas anymore: watch an Iowa television station transition from monochrome to living colour  

coin-op: a comprehensive look at Gachapon (ガチャポン) across Japan  

1-bit: summon demons with this slightly racy tarot reading  

light verb variation: why some people make decisions and others take them

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improper fraction arena: Via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake’s superb Sunday Links and the depths of Wikipedia comes a list of articles submitted and ultimately rejected by dint of insanity  

possible to express in words: a useful term with a surprisingly sparse corpora 

reprise: another look at Davie Bowie’s 1973 The 1980 Floor Show through some raw footage—see previously 

a moveable feast: a look at the mode, median and mean dates for Easter and the method of computus  

a kitty bobo show: Kevin Kaliher’s pilot that went ungreen-lit in favour of Kids Next Door  

micromachines: researchers developing tiny molecular motors that could be deployed en masse to suck carbon from the air, supplement our own organs—via Slashdot  

did you know: from the depths to the Main Page

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r/place: Josh Wardle’s (previously) first viral success with this collaborative subreddit  

modern screen: an annotated read along of a February 1961 celebrity magazine  

hey hey, rise up: Pink Floyd reunites to support Ukraine  

see you later, percolator: a gallery of vintage, commercial coffee makers  

spotifictional: a streaming back-catalogue of bands from television and the movies 

cheese heist: dairy crime-rings around the world—see also  

scratchcard lanyard: a song from Dry Cleaning 

explordle: guess the global cities as webcam images flit by—via Web Curios

roche ripple

Its peaks removed by one of the biggest controlled explosions in history and a major feat of engineering on this day in 1958 to mitigate potential navigational hazards and the event covered live in one of the first national, coast-to-coast televised broadcasts, Ripple Rock is a seamount in the Discovery Passage, an inlet between Vancouver Island and the mainland of British Columbia. The geological formation was so named as the summits were only metres below the surface and made a unique standing wave in the fast currents of the strait.

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un robot quadrupede al servizio dell’archeologia: SPOT to patrol ruins of Pompeii and protect the site from looters—also raising a quandary for future archaeologists 

satanic panic: the full 1993 (!) cult awareness pamphlet (see previously)—via Weird Universe  

dans l’ombre du star wars kid: the National Film Board of Canada’s documentary on the internet phenomenon  

entrée: a family-run Tbilisi-based artisanal bakery expands into East London 

the atlantean: after Dallas (debuting on this day in 1978), Patrick Duffy appeared as a merfolk-hybrid hero

intonarumori: Luigi Russolo’s experimental sound machines

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health officials warn of “second wave” of immersive van gogh exhibitions: symptoms to be on the look out for include a flattening of the artist’s legacy and an intense desire to watch Emily in Paris  

a book by its cover: the absurdist collages of Paperback Paradise  

match game: flawless digital recreations of classic TV game show sets  

111 west 57^th street: super tall, slender residential tower tapering from Steinway Hall is an homage to the piano-maker  

earendel: the Hubble space telescope images the oldest, most distant star  

old dutch master: a series of fifteenth century Flemish style portraits recreated in an airport lavatory—see also—via Things Magazine  

achieve hover status—everyone else will want to hover but can’t: an AI (see previously) comes up with pranks to play on the user

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the fiume endeavour: Neutral Moresnet and other countries that fell off the map 

international male: thirty-three national costumes from the 2022 Mister Global pageant via Miss Cellania  

odette and odile: a diminutive chihuahua and human handler perform Swan Lake  

smpte colour bars: a BBC test pattern jumper and mural—see also  

bad actor mode: an AI normally tasked with developing new, novel medications had its parameters switched seek out toxicity and suggests tens of thousands of chemical weapons and poisons in the space of a few hours—via Slashdot 

 cameo appearance: Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams portrayed the President of United Earth on the season finale of Star Trek and brought the planet back into the Federation 

state-of-the-art: ten breakthrough technologies online now that could change our trajectory for the better—via Kottke  

geopolitics: charting the advance of democracy

i’ll do my exploring in the laboratory, if you don’t mind

First subjected to the MST3K deluxe treatment on this day in 1997, Terror from the Year 5000 is a Samuel Z Arkoff and Robert J Gurney Jr. collaboration from 1958 about a science experiment that first involves an exchange of objects and artefacts from the distant future, sort of like the show’s regular invention exchange segment. Eventually (about an hour into the movie) this trading beckons a disfigured, Greek-speaking envoy to travel to the present and present a warning about the nuclear holocaust in the hope intervention will change the timeline. The Observers’ forcing Bobo and Dr Pearl Forrester to engage in combat is a reference to “The Gamesters of Triskelion” when the disembodied minds called The Providers demanded Uhura, Kirk and Chekov fight to the death.

earthship ark

Our gratitude to the aptly recursive and veteran podcast Stop Podcasting Yourself (previously) for the viewing recommendation in the ambitious and acclaimed Canadian sci-fi series from author Harlan Ellison (as Cordwainer Bird) and featuring the adaptions of stories of Ursula K Le Guin, Arthur Heinemann and others which despite the trappings of low production-value is genuinely intriguing and compels one to watch more. Starring Keir Dullea from 2001: A Space Odyssey and only lasting for a single season in 1973, the sixteen episode arc of The Starlost is set in a multigenerational colonial ship of dozens of connected biospheres in the late twenty-fourth century of Earthling refugees seeking a new home after the destruction of their own.

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orientation: Ivan Reitman’s (RIP) student film

times contrarian: Neil Young (previously) publishes his own digital newspaper

le docteur qui: Bill Bailey (previously) reinterprets Dr Who theme as swinging Belgian jazz  

twosday: a once in a life-time quirk of the calendar—be sure to celebrate this mirror day 

a notoriously unpredictable english tetragraph: all the different ways to say -ough  

genehmigung gestoppt: German halts approval process for pipeline (previously) bypassing Ukraine after Russia invades 

 mother-in-law-doors: elevated thresholds in Newfoundland have a questionable origin (see also)—via Miss Cellania’s Links

the week that changed the world

Having arrived the night before with an audience of sixty million viewers in the US alone (despite the time difference with the three main broadcast networks pooling resources to cover the eight-thousand dollar per hour cost of satellite usage for the eight day event), Richard M. Nixon (see previously here and here) became the first US president to visit the People’s Republic of China, signalling a thaw in almost a quarter-century of hostile relations with his strategic outreach and overture. Normalising trade with the capitalist West, the summit with Mao Zedong and other senior leadership had the immediate result of straining cooperation between communist China and the Soviet Union.

sammy’s visit

The highly acclaimed and impactful American television sitcom based on the BBC programme Till Death US Do Part from Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin, All in the Family, was pioneering for its depiction and discussion of controversial topics not before shown on network television including racism and antisemitism, infidelity, homosexuality, cancer, abortion, rape and Vietnam and aired one of its most memorable episodes on this day in 1972. Moonlighting as a taxi cab driver, one of Archie Bunker’s passengers turns out to be Sammy Davis Jr.

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Though antecedents exist especially with opening captioning on the BBC and PBS for episodes of The French Chef, closed-captioning technology that would become commercially available by the end of the decade was first demonstrated on this day in 1972 to students a Gallaudet College (the day before the anniversary of the prestigious school for the deaf and hard-of-hearing’s founding in 1864 in Washington, DC). A unit separate from the television set interpreted and displayed the embedded code for an episode of the ABC police procedural drama The Mod Squad.

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heiti and songti: the typefaces that helped China transition to the digital age 

no soup for you: the Fay-Cutler malapropism (see previously) of the week 

memphis milano: iconic design studio of Ettore Sottsass (previously) acquired by Italian furniture company  

earn it act: controversial bill restricting encryption—presented as an anti-trafficking and child safety initiative (see also) passes committee in the US Senate  

quantitative easing: lampooning practises that exacerbate inflation and speculation, an artist in Kuala Lumpur opens Memebank  

all hail hypnotoad: Futurama (previously) returns for an eighth season—with most of the original talent  

dingbats: a typographic homage to pre-emoji Webdings—see also for one carry-over