8x8

queen bee: a review of the 1955 Joan Crawford film that informed Mommie Dearest  

solar sail: speculation that the mysterious interstellar interloper Oumuamua (previously) might be a remnant of an alien propulsion system

oobi land: “I contain a message to another human being. Please further my journey an inch, a foot or a mile.”

envir-o-can: a beer can touted as more ecologically-friendly due to the absence of a pull-tab

ad astra: an ode to the immeasurably expanding achievements of the nine-year Kepler mission that discovered over twenty-five hundred exoplanets

development hell: former cast and crew reflect on earlier attempts to make The Other Side of the Wind

ask the past: how to eat a pumpkin, 1597

innuendo: Queen’s lesser-known, soulful operatic anthem

the yellow emperor’s inner canon

I first heard about this provocative project a week ago or so when the individual behind it Kuang-yi Ku got an honourable mention at Dutch Design Week for his thought-experiment but thought the gross-out factor was a bit too high—and while the images are still disturbing, Project Tiger Penis, drawing on emerging advances in the biomedical sciences and the ability to grow, print meat in the laboratory to produce authentic substitutes for articles of Traditional Chinese Medicine (Zhōngyī, 中医) did seem to resonate as a way of protecting endangered fauna and flora that are often tortured or poached for their ingredients, whose pharmacological merits are sometimes a matter of dispute.
It becomes even more relatable, I think, given the context that some religious figures have expressed a willingness to deem artificial meats in general and lab-sourced pork specifically as kosher or halal. What do you think? While reserving qualms for putting energy and efforts into making exotic potions might seem reasonable to non-practitioners at first blush (especially when examining it in isolation and outside of the customs that inform it), it behoves us to reason out that it’s presently highly questionable what good we derive from eating animals to begin with, while so many of us do as a matter of upbringing.  Without considering the impact and consequence of appetites for a moment, taste and choice are different than what can be subjected to science but one approach and way of thinking ought not to be privileged above the other because neither has found the panacea or cure for ageing. 

pykrete

Channeling the inventive spirit of World War II English mad scientist Geoffrey Pyke (previously) who among other suggestions to the Admiralty, recommended that bombing runs be staged from aircraft carriers with runways made of ice, reinforced with a mixture of sawdust and wood pulp called Pykrete, a London-based food studio has developed an assortment of frozen treats able to resist melting in 24°C heat for one hour, substituting fruit fibre for sawdust.
It might at first glance seem a frivolous thing to worry about but this second look at a composite material that was abandoned during the war due to other priorities and pressures could indeed translate to other applications from ways to keep foods and medications cooler for longer in places without reliable refrigeration or even something more ambitious that what Pyke envisioned himself as girders and frames to help stabilise and hold together ice sheets and icebergs until they can heal themselves. Pyke’s cousin, incidentally, Magnus was a radio and television presenter and celebrity, hosting many programmes on the topic of nutrition and food science and was the Home Doctor for Thomas Dolby’s 1982 song, She Blinded Me with Science—the one who interjects, “Science!” Maybe science and innovation can indeed save us yet.

out to pasture

Via Kottke, we’re directed toward a rather powerful and immediate way to visualise land-use in the United States of America by projecting percentages on to a map of the contiguous states. Each pixel represents one million acres (about four hundred thousand hectares) and an enormous amount is allotted to ranches, ranges and pasturelands for livestock and for raising feed for the animals with crops for human consumption dwarfed in comparison. One would think that in this day and age, one could find a better use for more than a third of one’s territory than the upkeep of cattle and wonder how other countries and regions rank.

fishmonger

Diverted by our familiars at Strange Company, we thoroughly enjoyed sharing the discovery of an 1803 chapbook found at the Bishopsgate Library with illustrations of the cries and criers of London.
The pictured Hot Cross Buns! was our favourite but there were many more choice one to be found at the link above with dozens of other collections to peruse, specific to certain streets, markets and characters plus the opportunity to own a handsome volume that collects much of this ephemera to relate an ethnography seldom told and definitely worth a look around besides.

time-lapse

We know it’s an advertisement for a major food manufacturer but this spot from Japanese conglomerate Ezaki Glico (probably best known globally for their pocky snacks) that illustrates the stages and milestones of life with seven-two actresses (aged the year of life that they each portray) is really rather a poignant one. Even though Japan enjoys a much longer life-span, the company choose the number to highlight the fact that the world-wide average life-span for women is 71.8 years—though an astronomical improvement over what it was a century ago at a mere thirty-one years.

parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

Ever since learning to my horror that a seemingly innocent and well-intentioned campaign by a breakfast cereal company to include seeds to help the bees spread invasive plants that would actually cause more harm to their environment, I’ve been a little wary of consumables that purport to support the ecosystem, but these clever lollipops that we discover via Everlasting Blört seem to be the genuine article. After enjoying the candy (certainly more appetising than these ecological treats)—whose flavour is the essence of the heirloom seeds that come with it—one can plant the biodegradable stick to grow flowers and herbs.

universal favourite

As a spinoff for a project that they did for a particular client, an Australian design studio and local confectionary experts collaborated to create gourmet chocolate stair-step wedges in exotic flavours that are paired with a complementary piece to form a cube, Universal Favourites, that’s not only pleasing to the palette but aesthetically as well, since food ought to be photogenic and look too good to part with casually.

7x7

figgy pudding: 1970s era Sainsbury’s Christmas dinner packaging

fun-size: definitive ranking of convenience store movie scenes

dalí atomicus: teacher and photographer Karl Taylor recreates the 1948 iconic, action-filled photograph of the artist with flying cats

the shape of water: a Hollywood theme park produced a Creature from the Black Lagoon musical

ghost of christmas future: retro-future ventriloquist Paul Winchell brings the War on Christmas to the Moon

alta vista: a look at some of the internet’s memorable relics

and a happy new year: a curated collection of the New York City Public Library System’s cartographic greeting cards

6x6

oumuamua: that interstellar asteroid that visited our solar system has an unexpected shape 

session replay: the most popular websites log every keystroke and dalliance of every visitor and sell it to the highest bidder, via Slashdot

cryptogram: artificial intelligence enlisted to hunt the Zodiac Killer apparently writes creepy poetry in its spare time

kerning: fresh off the assembly-line, typewriters were put through the paces with “Amaranath sasesusos Oronoco initiation secedes Uruguay Philadelphia”

gastro obscura: our intrepid adventures have a spin-off food and drink blog

nori: the story behind the volunteer Manchester researcher who saved Japan’s post-war seaweed harvest, known as “Mother of the Sea” for her contributions

regnum, cladus, ordo

Though only introduced (I believe despite having grown up in their natural range) to the oversized fruit via a vicarious taste-test just a little while ago, I was pretty intrigued by the suggestion that the Osage orange (Maclura pomifera, known by a variety of names including hedge apples ) might be a remnant of days when mega-fauna roamed the plains of North America. In evolutionary terms, ten thousand years—especially for long-lived, hardy trees (there was a campaign to plant them across farming regions as wind-breaks after the Dust Bowl) has not given the species sufficient time to notice that there are no longer giant sloths, mammoths or buffalo to propagate their seeds and shrink their fruit down to something more portable and appetising.
The avocado might be another candidate as a prehistoric hold-over—though our intentional cultivation efforts has caused major changes in the past epoch to the taste and size of fruits and vegetables as well and in the wilds, left to themselves, take other paths for other palettes.

gyuunyuuya

Via Present /&/ Correct, a blog updated frequently about all and sundry that’s always worth checking out, we learn that in Japan the milkman (ぎゅうにゅうや, gyuunyuuya) is still making his appointed rounds but instead of leaving the bottles on the stoop or porch, they go into a storage box hung near the doorstep. One can find a massive gallery at the links (the later would take a person functionally literate in Japanese to properly navigate but I am sure you’ll get your fill of these antique, distressed wooden boxes too at the former) and there are plenty still around—although newer models come in plastic with insulation.

sphagnum, p.i.

From the science desk at Gizmodo we learn that algae are not monopolising the bio-fuel revolution and there’s another contender in the lowly but amazing moss. The superficial achievement of engineering a fragrant plant so a patch of one’s garden might smell of patchouli oil is just the beginning. If developed responsibly, moss could become a universal, self-sustaining medium (peat, turf was until modern times after all the only fuel resource we knew how to effectively collect and use) that could be genetically tinkered with on demand and deliver flavoured, edible, nutritious compounds to be moulded and presented as a mealtime skeuomorph, effectively the replicator from Star Trek.

tambo āto

For nearly the past quarter of a century the villagers of Inakadate in Aomori prefecture have strategically, meticulously planted dozens of varieties of heirloom and modern rice to create a colourful canvas out of their surrounding paddies. The scale and complexity of the works of art has grown every year—including Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji in 2007—have helped revitalise local tourism and is truly a community effort. Be sure to visit the link up top for more landscaped murals and a video presentation on rice paddy art, or tambo āto as it is called in Japanese.

gentleman farmer

Writing for the Awl, correspondent Clinton Crockett Peters shares the biography of that charismatic megafauna, kudzu, that has invasively engulfed much of the southern United States and is spreading. Growing up in east Texas, Georgia and Alabama I can remember those kudzu monsters, how trees covered and choked with the vine were propped up and seemed like dinosaurs in the dark, and how aggressively out-of-place it seemed but I never knew its provenance and how it was once peddled as get rich-quick-scheme.
While certainly not without merits if kept under control, kudzu—which was introduced to the American public at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia alongside ketchup, root-beer and the telephone—is native to Japan and afforded greater range will spread with devastating consequences including damage to other agriculture and ecological changes in carbon-cycles, not to mention the pesticides that some resort to beat back its advance. The versatile vine is useful for preventing erosion—though the Dust Bowl still occurred—recharging over-farmed soil and as food for people and livestock, but as with other short-sighted schemes it seems incredible in retrospect that kudzu was subsidised and its planting was encouraged, championed by celebrity “front-porch farmer” Channing Cope through weekly radio broadcasts, and took nearly another century to classify the vine as a noxious weed and begin to realise the effects of introduced species. Read all about it at the link up top.

heirloom variety

Indeed a thing we would not know if they did not blog intermittently, the distinction of open-pollination explained succinctly:
allowing crops to breed naturally, either assisted by resident pollinators, the wind or self-pollinating to produce offspring consistent with the desired traits of the parent plant.  We became impatient in the name of efficiency and the resultant, sustainable population explosion that came with the discovery of the Haber process at the turn of the century, which also ushered in the decline of open-pollinators. Monocultures and hybridisation have meant that the resultant seeds (a hybrid inbred) will not germinate or at least not in a predictable way, which is why modern agriculture has become reliant on a handful of seed providers—and the pesticides designed for them. At least one group is actively working to establish seed banks and a cooperative to educate consumers and farmers and give them a viable alternative.

appellation d'origine contrôlée or blessed are the cheesemakers

Though I will be the first to admit that I am a woefully inadequate copy-editor and do a poor job proof-reading my own material, this apparent typo on the recently unveiled war memorial in Columbia City, Indiana seems mute testimony to sloppiness and the need for a second set of eyes for those situations where a squiggly underscore isn’t there to help.
But I say apparent because perhaps there’s an outside chance that the engraver is making a statement. Protections for regional—sometimes very, very specific locations, artisanal produce and delicacies are quite different than raging nationalism, but that difference is nonetheless by degrees and not in kind, I suppose. It’s still a dichotomy among vintners, cheese mongers and other specialists that creates an in- and an out-group that holds that there’s something imparted by the land and habitat where the food or drink is sourced. Is it placist and a sign of insecurity to believe so and to believe that those coming from elsewhere are somehow impure and of lesser quality? What do you think? I don’t believe that was the message, but most wars that anyone has prosecuted seem to be justified around the same narrative (land sometimes substituted with blood) and I wouldn’t be surprised if America didn’t enter into a trade war that informs future monuments—but not for those on the losing side.

gipfel oder hanseatic league

The CDU party economic summit earlier this week may have gotten a fore-taste of what’s to be expected from the G20 summit that’s to take place in less than a week in Hamburg when Dear Leader’s commerce secretary, due to a scheduling conflict, attended by looming video teleconference and droned on well beyond his allotted time, chiding NATO partners for not paying their fair share, accusing Germany of protectionist trade policies that presented a barrier to entry for the US, unwillingness for the EU to buy genetically modified and untested crops or hormone laden beef—for which there will be consequences.
Event organisers eventually muted the US commerce secretary in mid litany, repeating the grievances that Dear Leader had already expressed and cut the video-feed.
Some in attendance at the Berlin conference centre applauded and laughed. The Chancellor was next to speak—but I believe she realises that what’s coming will be even more fraught with difficulties and there will be no kill-switch for the race-baiting, misogynistic and selfish court of amateurs that are coming.
The American regime has demonstrated itself to be far misaligned with the rest of the world when it comes to immigration, the environment and especially trade—preferring bullying and bluster to negotiation and dialogue and seeking to bust down those institutions that have given smaller nations leverage against tyranny and hegemony.
As America is poised to shirk more and more of its global commitments—not just the voluntary reduction goals of the Paris Climate Accords but also the financial regulations put in place to prevent another banking sector collapse like in 2008 and for which the G20 was created as a safeguard against it reoccurring, Germany is taking the lead on forming a united front upholding those values of a free and open market that have become rather inimical to the US. Hopefully Dear Leader is not foolish enough to precipitate a trade war.

7x7

what sorcery is this: seemingly magical, Möbius-burrito method of putting the cover on a duvet (Plumeau, Bettdecke)

journeyman: large format, industrial three-dimensional printer installed in its own shipping container for ease of transportation

ретрофутуризм: 1960 Soviet vision of the year 2017

gluggaveður: a winter’s trek to Iceland’s Arctic Henge

furkids: funny and effective animal shelter promotional presentation produced on a shoe-string budget

f-bomb: despite older brother’s protests baby prodigy gets rather sweary

vinification statt gentrification: tiny urban vineyard in Berlin that was also home to the first programmable computer from the laboratory of Konrad Zuse

7x7

so disappoint: vast gallery of retail fails of products that did not live up to expectations, via Boing Boing

a la carte: NYC Public Library system is transcribing historic menus to see how diets and tastes have changed over the years, via the always marvellous Nag on the Lake

exhibition, exposition: collection of creative art installations from the past year

found footage: honoured among the worst films ever made, Turkish ‘Star Wars’ is being conserved

no static at all: despite lack of enthusiasm from the listening public, Norway’s FM radio broadcasts are about to sign-off

entropy, zoetrope: hypnotic biological simulations that are collaborations from Max Cooper and Maxime Causeret

intercalary: artsy and hopeful collection of calendars for chronicling 2017