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general strike: Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger calls for a boycott of social media as a Declaration of Digital Independence, via Slashdot

imts: an exploration of mobile telephony (see also) from the 1940s onward

move fast, bank things: a helpful primer on a social media giant’s currency roll-out

a different kind of energy: US presidential contender Marianne Williamson

hang a yield sign in your rear window to prevent cars from passing: driverless vehicles are highly susceptible to spoofing

soffa sans: IKEA releases a new font in response to people testing the limits of their Vallentuna sectional planning tool

one of these things is not like the others: nepotism is not easy on the eyes

swedish neatballs

Exclusive to Dezeen, we are treated to three sustainable, future-proof recipes to try at home from IKEA’s laboratory Space10. By releasing a cookbook and encouraging individuals to experiment in their own labs and incubators, IKEA is hoping to come closer to closing “the gap between future trends and real life” and enable people to become active and engaged agents of positive change. Check out recipes and learn more about Space10’s test kitchen at the link above.

peak curtains

Via Nag on the Lake, we learn about a couple of new and innovative IKEA undertakings that aim to augment and improve environmental conditions on a personal level which hopefully scales up.
Scheduled to go on sale in stores next year, the Gunrid drapes are made with a textile with a photocatalyst material that passively breaks down and absorbs air pollutants. The other development, based off the design of its toy boat the Småkryp, has already been pressed into service, trawling Deptford Creek in southeast London and collecting trash, twenty kilogrammes a go. This demonstration project is set to expand and the Good Ship IKEA are remotely controlled—as well as autonomous units—equipped with web cameras that provide a live-feed and shipping-report on conditions as they ply the waters. Much more to explore at the links above.

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yo gabba gabba: Canadian researchers explore drug therapies that appear to rapidly reverse age-related cognitive deterioration in mice—via Slashdot

some assembly required: trace the evolution of furnishing trends through the covers of IKEA catalogues (previously) from 1951 onwards—via Nag on the Lake  

if i can make it here, i’ll make it anywhere: online retail giant abruptly cancels plans to build a second headquarters in New York City

hollywoodland: mapping the remaining iconic neon signs and other illuminated installations of California’s Electric Products Corporation

the doctor is in: a “public philosopher” takes deep and probing questions from strangers

deal or no deal: an overview of how UK expatriates living in the EU will be impacted post-Brexit

please won’t you be my neighbour: an appreciation of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood’s friendly Officer Clemmons 

vilshult

Having a couple IKEA masterpieces at home and at work ourselves—though not this particular one—but being somehow informed or inspired to frame and shoot a similar scene, we were also intrigued about the story behind this ubiquitous (but joyfully so) poster of a canal in Amsterdam, courtesy friend of the blog Nag on the Lake. Do watch the short investigative documentary by Tom Roes, one of the nearly half a million owners of this picture, and learn what he discovered. You’ll be happy you took the time and won’t be able to glance over or dismiss it as something derivative or commercial again.

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auto-stitch: winners and honourable-mentions in the Epson panoramic photography competition

members elect: a set of emojis illustrates the stark contrast in diversity between the newly elected Democrat and Republican representatives matriculating in the 116th US Congress in January

peak curtains: IKEA updates its 2002 lamp advertisement with the same principal prop

introducing the hemimastix: researchers in Nova Scotia uncover a microbe radically out of place in defined biological kingdoms, via Marginal Revolution

drei haselnüsse für aschenbrödel: legendary German actor Rolf Hoppe, who played iconic and memorable roles as fairy tale kings, cowboys and frightful villains, has passed away

coal in your stocking: classy company (previously—not really I think but just as tasteless) is producing a knock LEGO set of Trump’s border wall

fully-interlocking: jigsaw puzzle manufacturers tend to use the same patterns for multiple puzzles—resulting in surreal compositions, via Nag on the Lake 

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au bout du fil: a surreal animated short by Paul Driessen from the National Film Board of Canada

busytown 2018: mansplainers and swamp drainers (previously), via Kottke

creative commons: potential changes to European Union’s intellectual property law could give rise to censorship machines and a link tax

off the wall: an analysis of Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”

foremal: IKEA partners with Per B Sundberg to create a line of homewares with a gothic aesthetic

going up: researchers at Shizuoka University to conduct a proof of concept trial for a space elevator, via Slashdot 

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zoëtrope: a group of humans on a merry-go-round create an astounding animated effect—previously

estate sale: mystery surrounds the discovery of a priceless Willem de Kooning painting among the effects of an unassuming couple who recently passed away

in-flight entertainment: LEGO Minifigs present the pre-takeoff safety video for Turkish Airlines

streptomyces grisus: New Jersey poised to become only the second state in the union to designate an official bacterium, the first significant antibiotic strain discovered there since penicillin was isolated

䷩: the I Ching is as much about divination as it is about keeping an open mind and being receptive to new angles

gratulera: IKEA celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary by re-issuing some vintage lines

we’re here all week, folks: Ordinance Survey Maps Fan Club performs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 

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coming attractions: Bob Canada’s box office predictions for the winter and spring

reforestation: the UK plans to repopulate the sparsely wooded area of northern England and create a coast-to-coast band of trees, from Hull to Liverpool

la dame aux chats: director Jean Cocteau’s affinity for felines

sundvik: IKEA advertisement for a bassinet is also a pregnancy-test

a mosquito, my libido: switched from a minor to major key, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit becomes a upbeat pop song

split-flap: an internet-enabled mechanical message board harks back to a bygone era

marble run: patient artist DoodleChaos, who previously synchronised Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, now assays Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers”
 

toponym

Via fellow internet caretaker Messy Nessy Chic, we discover that lexicographer Lars Petrus has undertaken the task of defining the creative names for IKEA furniture and accessories. Many items are named for geographical features in Småland, but many other are quite abstract and poetical, like NUTID (present tense) and ÖDMJUK (humble). What are some of your favourites?

iconoclasm

For its Branded in Memory project a marketing and demographics website challenged one hundred and fifty Americans (most of the corporate logos are global brands but there are some specific to American markets) to recreate—without peeking—a batch of famous marque emblems and afterwards arranged the entrants from least to most accurate. The results are pretty insightful and illustrate what logos reside in our conscious and which are somewhat less ingrained. Colours were consistently correct (unless one was attached to a logo that the company retired long ago). How would you fare? I think it would be a fun project to recreate this experiment for those (probably woefully uniform) shops on your local high street or for the labels from your usual grocery shopping inventory.

köttbullar

Charmingly, Nag on the Lake shares these recipe placards previewed in partnership with IKEA Canada. After arranging the ingredients according to the instructions (in the Nordic furniture purveyor’s signature style), the recipe can be popped into the stove too, being printed on parchment paper with edible ink.

älmhult almanac

Via Kottke’s quick links, we’re given an overview of the evolution of style and expansion of its global reach (from its humble beginnings as a single home furnishings store in the town of Älmhult, Sweden to the point of self-awareness in the acknowledgement we have reached “peak curtains”) through the lens of every IKEA (originally Ikéa) catalogue cover from 1951 to 2015. It’s funny how taste is cyclical and the latest iterations don’t seem much different than the earliest annuals.

recharging station

Acknowledging that furniture shopping can be a very fraught activity, especially in the labyrinthine confines of an IKEA, as we learn from Swiss Miss, we liked this emergency relationship station that ought to be installed in every store to triage and diffuse those tense moments of indecision and commitment hot-potato. Click through at the links up top to see more of the work of Jeff Wyaski, the comedian behind the Obvious Plant solicitous, thought-provoking pranks.

victory garden

Via Nag on the Lake, we discover a collaboration between a Swedish furniture and lifestyle magnate and SPACE10 has resulted in an open-source, free to replicate pavilion called the Grow Room for planting and raising one’s own sustainable produce, even in an urban setting. Given the motivation and basic carpentry skills, anyone could set-up their own personal farm with some seed, soil, plywood and a jigsaw.

after all, you’re my wonder wall

Swedish lifestyle and furniture giant offers a flat-pack solution to defending the US southern border which comes in at a price that’s below the other cost estimates, though there’s some assembly required. Another popular item new to the store’s catalogue is the Läddr, capable of scaling heights of up to ten and a half metres.

retail therapy

Though I’ve always had an appreciation for the story behind the naming convention of IKEA furnishings—giving sobriquets rather than model numbers because that’s how the founder’s brain associated things, I am finding this new advertising campaign to be pretty funny and a nice complimentary look at the struggles we have sometimes with the accessories that we feel obligated to buy and assemble—despite the fact that we’re in sort of an admitted post-consumer, peak-curtains state. In addition to the cabinet or couch’s proper name, each item in their special-edition catalogue is given a description gleaned from the most common familial or relationship advice sought in Sweden. This tongue and cheek treatment comes to us via Bored Panda, which features some of the furniture giant’s other recent creative projects, including instruction manuals that turn the potentially frustrating and argument-inducing experience of putting together a HEMNES daybed into an act of foreplay.

tables and triage

Before the design duo created furnishings that defined the Mid-Century Modern era, Charles and Ray Eames developed splints, prosthetics and a body litter (a stretcher, a gurney) for the US Navy ahead of America’s entry into World War II.
More on the Eames’ other surprising projects here and here. The skills honed in mass-producing these medical devices conferred on them the talent and feel for working plywood that was expressed a few years later in their iconic, undulating lounges. Every item in this chain, from the form-fitting splint that could protect a wounded leg to the classic chairs, reflects real homage to the human body and how it carries itself. Take a peek at the splints as part of an exhibition in Leeds courtesy of Hyperallergic that explores the place of sculpture and design in prosthetic limbs and the process of healing and making whole.

møbel

There’s a new film that could be described as a modern-day, Scandinavian retelling of Don Quixote called Kill Billy (DE)—a play on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.
A frustrated purveyor of traditional home furnishing (solid, quality pieces that were to last forever) is forced out of business by a Swedish furniture and lifestyle giant—maker of the eponymous and ubiquitous billy shelving-system—and thus resolves to kidnap the company’s executive officer. Though the Swedish magnate could not be reached for comment, it appears the company’s reception of the film was a positive one as well—after all, they were frank enough to admit that we’d reached peak curtains.

stør or edugraphics

IKEA instruction manuals getting a send-up with the time-honoured Simpson’s Couch Gag gave me a tickle.
Surely a bigger accolade than more ephemeral recognitions like being doodled (though still no smål achievement), this running visual joke began as a buffer to make the episode adhere to scheduled commercial-breaks has been a regular sequence since 1989 (with some repetition but used as an element of fore-shadowing as well). This news also makes me realise that I’ve no idea when the show premieres for domestic audiences, as the last I recall, The Simpsons was airing on Thursday’s line-up and led to the demise of the The Cosby Show, with its similar signature opening fanfare.