5x5

ærodrome: Kottke wonders if the circular aircraft runway might ever take off

no mister bond, i expect you to die: movie villain dermatological trends

my beautiful launderette: the Pope opens a free laundromat for the poor and homeless of Rome with plans for expansion

nakkaşhane: scenes from cult films depicted in Ottoman miniature style by Murat Palta, whom we’ve admired previously

bring a whistle to a knife fight and pretend you’re the referee: Texas is tendering legislation to name an official state gun—with the Bowie knife being a top-contender, via Weird Universe 

411, 404

As we learn that US government websites are being savaged and historical content is being stripped away and sequestered from public-access—like reports on animal welfare for various commercial research facilities or weather or jobs statistics, so no one might be informed of realities inconveniently counter-factual to the official party lines, there was this one strangely prescient compilation that was a challenge to come by:
a freedom of information act (FOIA) request was filed in December of 2014 and was granted within a few months, delivering a list of all .gov domains that had been terminated for one reason or another over the past decade. There are some horrid examples of early web design brutalism that’s worth conserving for its own sake, and most—until now I suppose, had their content migrated and put under the stewardship of centralised web-masters. A few quietly disappeared, like wmd.gov (weapons of mass destruction, c. 2003-2009) that’s its own punchline, 404 error – not found, and I am sure that in this current political environment, Wokey the Bear and Ranger Smith’s fiddlers’ corner would be summarily embargoed.

fare-zone or metro-link

Back in 2013, graphic designer Mark Ovenden drafted his concept of a world connected by their existing subway systems, well before the engineers and visionaries behind Hyperloop One might make such an arrangement of swift and environmentally sustainable mass transportation possible. Inspired by Harry Beck’s iconic diagrammatic transport map of the London Underground, this work endures as a useful conversation-starter when it comes to holding a dialogue on investment in infrastructure and what a radical new mode of transportation means for the future where borders are meaningless and commutes rather tractless as well. More of the latest developments on the monumental project can be found at the link up top.

speech coach or elocution

In the near future, algorithms analysing voices might supplant recruiters and hiring officials, we learn via Marginal Revolution. Of course, everything’s an audition already and we’re all singing for our suppers but it seems unwelcoming and strangely paternalistic for a machine to judge your potential in ways that are far more accurate than we are resigned to accept.
Of course once computers begin to encroach on the bailiwick of human resources, it won’t just be one’s next promotion hinging on one’s tone or feigned enthusiasm—especially as machines and automation take more jobs from the market. The practical good—although we need to remember that formulæ aren’t completely above human bias since they’re programmed to look for specific criteria by humans—is finding the best fit for the employer and employee but being dismissed at the first peep would be heartbreakingly demotivating and I’m sure some would be encouraged to try to game the system. Maybe such analysts could also be programmed to collude with the connected world at large to spare our feelings and nudge us towards the ideal, algorithmically-determined vocation without our even realising it or having to face rejection. What do you think? Computation-coddling I think wouldn’t be very character-building but I imagine that those fortunate enough to be born into that environment would know nothing other than brilliant luck and impeccable timing.

hauntology or down in the underground

Our favourite alternate reality British town, we discover, interestingly supports a public mass-transit system—albeit many stationed are closed due to possession or accessible only on the astral-plane. The problems with Scarfolk’s metro sound much more endemic and long-term that the current spate of tube strikes but let’s hope the former’s predicament is not exorcised while the latter’s for London is something of an awful last-resort.

forty-winks o siestario

Demonstrated health benefits aside (provided that one’s work and life framework can support it), the Spanish government is considering labour-reforms that may curtail the tradition of the siesta. Interestingly, as ingrained as it seems in Spanish lifestyle and it is common-place across the Mediterranean as a way to avoid working through the hottest part of the day, the connotation of the prolonged afternoon nap with that country probably has more to do with advertised or perceived business-hours than cultural prevalence, the extended lunch and workday being formally instituted in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, when it was necessary for everyone to hold multiple jobs to make ends meet.
As there was little in the way of public transport, workers were granted a two or three hour break to make it to their second job and to work a full-shift, hours extended until late in the evening. The situation was exacerbated when Spain’s time zone was aligned with Berlin—out of solidarity with Nazi Germany though geographically much closer to London. As economic conditions gradually improved, this work-schedule took on the reputation of labourers being able to sneak home for a nice long and refreshing nap and worked until later in the night. The reality, however, sociologists believe is that the siesta-ideal is far from practical and is exacting too high a toll on workers and their families. The Spanish word for the concept of a power nap is siesta poderosa. In reality, few live close enough to their workplaces to consistently get away and take advantage of siesta-time and it causes havoc for your children and parents—rarely being able to settle down and turn in until after midnight. What do you think? Compared to counterparts in other European countries, Spaniards are just returning from lunch as others are getting ready to go home for the day, and for more and more something to be envious of. Alternatively, we could all institute a culture of napping and be a bit more flexible with what we think of as an honest day.

the ghost of christmas pluperfect

Collectors’ Weekly has a nice reflection on the diaphanous and sparkly things that have fuelled how we frame Christmas time, hitting on how strange it is to think that our shared nostalgia—even having lived in Germany for all these years, a place stepped in its own tradition and exporter (in the Victorian Era—and much later, their glassmaking expertise) of many of the standard customs—for the most part don’t reach back to time immemorial but rather to post-war America and Mid-Century Modern style.
Despite all the fossilised lyrics of carols, in fact, almost all that’s not the reserve of the space-race and the burgeoning atomic age seems to be sourced back to the nineteenth century, and with Christmas’ revival (which quickly became something terrible and consumer-oriented), Victorians sought to keep it something pure and authentic—turning away from machines and mass-production and launching the Arts and Crafts movement. The spectre of materialism was always there but was particularly difficult to stave off after the austere years of all manufacturing going to the war effort and then industry finding itself surfeit with raw materials and excess capacity and beat swords into plow-shares—and tinsel and coffee-makers and vacuum-cleaners. Santa Claus was even accredited as an astronaut (and as a cosmonaut) to be tracked by NORAD. Reaching back even further, the holiday, supplanting Saturnalia, has always had its share of ulterior motives and customs that have the most curious and conflated origins but it’s no reason to humbug Christmas—nor to despair over its meaning and its keeping
.

non-state actors

I am indebted to the Happy Mutants at Boing Boing for bringing to our attention a matter of Brexit negotiations first proposed two weeks hence (I suppose none of us can be too hard on ourselves for missing the sensical compromises that present themselves every so often in this shrill and demanding newscape), seeing that we had completely overlooked the notion of ‘associate-citizenship’ that might be extended to UK citizens residing in the EU, so that they might be allowed to stay and afforded the same freedom of movement as enjoyed before.
Coming just as the British government announced a firm date to invoke Article 50, to tender its divorce-papers, this offer shows a tremendous amount of goodwill has been held in trust and whilst corporate entities might not expect nor deserve such kindnesses, it was hopeful to see that individuals might still be able to choose their affiliation with sovereignty independent of their representative governments. It is possible that the current regime might reject the proposal for its potential to undermine the will of the people it’s championing at the moment and the only recourse is paradoxically petitioning one’s local council that was either committed to leave or bremain in the first place. It also has me hopefully, personally, as a long term US expatriate, wondering if I might too be granted such an option, especially considering what by force I might be repatriated to.

above the line

While so far the idea of abating the creeping and insidious traps that come with low income and institutionalised poverty with a universal basic income have failed in the Netherlands and Switzerland, Ontario is ready to embark upon this experiment in the coming year.

A former provincial senator will spearhead a pilot project that will eventual replace some of the entrapment of welfare programmes that can sometimes prove demeaning and arguably counter-productive with a $1320 monthly income. What do you think?  The new programme will have a lot of unanswered questions (and the effects of social nudges) vested in it and trials will certainly be under due scrutiny, but Canada really deserves applause for trying to redress financial and time (having the luxury to pursue higher education rather than entering the workforce straightaway or having to tend after a sick loved one or young child alone and having to choose between a career and care) poverty and social disparity.

colour by number

Far more than just previsioning the popularity and therapeutic nature of the colouring book for grown-ups, British illustrator Walter Crane was one of the most prolific and influential of his generation and really embodies the spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Crane’s contributions were numerous and across many different formats, but Crane found himself increasingly isolated and was blacklisted for his Socialist leanings, his work appearing in many anarchist and social justice publications and scandalised himself by defending his American cousins who incited the riots that lead to the Haymarket Massacre. Unable to curb his compulsion to draw and create—with or without a public outlet, Crane turned to children’s literature, including this 1889 Painting Book of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Although denied a proper voice among his contemporaries, Crane inserted his thoughts on design and composition and what the æsthetic of the age ought to be within the details of his complex and allegorical illustrations.

mechanical turk or singing for one’s supper

JF Ptak delves into a very modern topic of discussion through the lens that the long shadow that innovation has cast over jobs-security and the notion that robots will create mass-redundancy with musicians, once the mainstay of entertainment with live, orchestral accompaniment, finding themselves shoved aside with the advent of talkies and canned- or robotic-soundtracks punctuating the experience.
Colluding with the advent of telephony that made written correspondence a less attractive means of communication, various leagues and lobbies back in the 1930s rallied on behalf live bands—though there’s no incipient doubt yet of the humanity of the composition, just perhaps the emotional quotient of the performance. A Mechanical Turk is a human employed, at a pittance, to perform repetitive tasks that could be automated—thus stealing jobs from robots—but given the circumstances, it’s more efficient to have a person perform it, like squirrels running in wheels to operate a complex juggernaut.

the way ahead

As the brilliant Kottke informs, Barack Obama has written a thoughtful letter to his successor on crucial areas of “unfinished business in economic policy.”
Confronted by questions of America’s place in the world buffeted on all sides by anxieties and insecurities over globalisation and the quickening pace of change, which makes many yearn nostalgically for a time and a place that never existed (or at least we’d never want to return to, given all the trade-offs), the incumbent was prompted to recognise that many of these fears were waylaid—not rooted in prosperity and security alone, but by way of preamble was rather hijacked by division and disengagement, looking back (among others) to the Know Nothing Party of the 1850s. Obama admonishes his successor that America’s stance can still be a force of good, globally, and America must continue to craft and enforce laws and regulations that will decrease the income disparity between the richest and the poorest, restore innovation and mobility of opportunity and build a stronger foundation that includes a sufficient infrastructure and legal framework that prevents loopholes and the incentivising of profits at the expense of the exploiting the work-force or environment. Read the entire letter on The Economist at the link up top.

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The Guardian encapsulates the past century and a score of Russian history with a gallery of photographs whose moments show the changes as the decades pass.
This glimpse, however, is not from the archives of a single museum but just a slice of the material collected by an ambitious project called “Russia in Photo” that has solicited submissions from museums and private collections all across the country. Individuals are encouraged to share their historic photographs as well.

much coin, much care or the beagle boys versus the money bin

Part of the unintended but certainly foreseen consequences of holding interest-rates at historic lows has not provided the incentive for banks to loan money rather than hoard it.
And now faced with negative interest rates and the prospects of penalties on liquid assets with no end in sight, as Boing Boing reports, financial institutions are not backed into a corner but are rather redeeming their æthereal electronic funds for hard currency to avoid the fines put in place to stimulate the economy. The commercial bankers don’t strike me as protesting the policies of central banks—or even smugly side-stepping the regulators, merely taking the next logical step. Maybe we do not get to rush them with pitch-forks after all.  Though somewhat of a liability and inconvenience, banks are looking to secure all that physical cash in hidden vaults, just waiting for the tipping-point when negative interest becomes more costly than the price of guarding and moving around all that coinage. What do you think? I wonder if such an evasive manoeuver might hasten the demise and access to physical tender. I guess the next step would be to store one’s wealth in real-estate and start the boom and bust cycle all over again.

couplet and quatrain

Appreciating, like the troubadours of yore, that news and current events are especially good subjects for verse and there a quite a few social mediators out there doing just that. These are not ballads, quite (I tried that once during a long car trip in Ireland, “Heiko in his Aygo, he was a sheep-dodger!” and was asked to please stop) but rather poems adapted for genre and format of immediacy of meaning that can be teased out in a few choice words.
There is one superb individual, writing under the pseudonym Brian Bilston, whose been accorded the title of poet laureate for his moving and pithy works. I only found out about Mr. Bilston having heard tell that he’s been recruited by the traveling circus of the rich and powerful that will be descending on der Zauberberg later this year for the World Economic Forum as sort of a court-minstrel, but unbound by any patronage. His most famous poem that earned him the laurels, entitled “Refugees,” tweeted in March of this year, appears below. Please do heed the author’s request (and I promise, the effect is arresting) after reading it from top to bottom, re-read it from bottom to top:

Refugees

They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or I
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way

(Now please re-read from bottom to top)

protocol and perfidy

No wonder Oslo withdrew its candidacy for the 2022 Winter Games, leaving it to Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan to duke it out amongst themselves for the dubious honour of hosting the Olympics, given this rather unappetizing list of demands hurled at them by the steering committee.
Via the always brilliant Boing Boing, we are given a taste—and mind you, this catalogue is not on behalf of the athletes and does not even begin to address larger matters like venues, onerous security and logistics, just the bed and board for the organisers—of what the queen bees had expected, causing Norway to laugh them out of the country:

• The hotel bar at their hotel should extend its hours “extra late” and the minibars must stock Coke products.
• The IOC president shall be welcomed ceremoniously on the runway when he arrives.
• The IOC members should have separate entrances and exits to and from the airport.
• During the opening and closing ceremonies a fully stocked bar shall be available. During competition days, wine and beer will do at the stadium lounge.

mister fezziwig

Dangerous Minds shares a holiday tradition that channels a recitation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas (to wit) to be enjoyed by in whatever medium one prefers—though I’d agree that this séance with the venerable narrator Vincent Price ought to be one’s first resort.
It’s been argued that Dickens’ novella created and established the holiday in its received customs—nearly with a single, resonating stroke that elevated the celebration to his current status, but the classic story that gave Christmas and charity new leases (apparently both under attack) was originally envisioned as a pamphlet. The draft whose working title An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child encapsulates Dickens’ motivation and concerns was penned in response to the network of crushing debt, obligation to work and dehumanising competition among employers sprinting towards efficiency. Realising that such a petition would only reach a limited audience (perhaps persuaded by spirits himself), Dickens decided he could possibly affect more social change by telling a story.

copasetic

The ever-engrossing Mind Hacks performs quite a nimble triangulation on the nature and origin of the so-called safe-space—that is a social venue that’s set aside and made exclusive for any particular set of people that identify with one group or another, for which outsiders are excluded.
Self- segregation, rather than an ostracism that’s imposed from privileged sources, is supposed to open up a forum of discussion free from harassment but in theory, not free from dissent or controversy, but one has to wonder how balanced groupthink can hope to be when its sheltered and fostered. This concept seems very much couched in terms of modern political correctness, but the safe-space goes back further and is rooted in the ideas of corporate climate surveys and the research of psychologist Kurt Lewin, who while trying to avoid associations of reinforcement, did crucially acknowledge that concepts that Lewin imparted like (which can now sound like latter day office woo) sensitivity-training, feedback, input, toxicity in leadership, workplace morale needed to be engendered in an environment free of reprisal and openness. What do you think? Have these ideas been brought to a place where they improve social dynamics or have they become merely hallmarks of strife and censorship?

timeliness, objectivity and narrative

Building strong partnerships with leading museums and educational institutions around the world to help bring the iconography and language of modern art to the broader, internet dwelling public, the clearing house Artsy is wonderful resource for discovery and triangulation.

Learning enough to pique one’s curiosity to learn more about the inter- connectedness of the community and their contemporaries—through the lens of their portrait of Dorothea Lange, for example, whose evocative Migrant Mother (probably for most one of those archetypal images that we hold in the quiver of minds) captured while under commission for the American Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, but there’s really a more elusive, evasive quality in this photograph and its framer that settles after the initial, unmediated impression. The network of related artists—most of whom I’ve never heard of but seem quite worthy of further investigation—imparts context, but it’s really taking a step back, through biography and scrutiny, that helps to disabuse one—after a fashion—for what we as an audience might take for granted. I think I’d rather conflated Migrant Mother and the haunting blue-eyed Afghani girl from that National Geographic cover in my mind—making the Depression-era photograph colourized—perhaps because the identities of both subjects was once anonymous but are now identified: Florence Owen Thompson and Sharbat Gula. It takes a commitment on the part of the viewer, which is I suppose what powerful and memorable art demands, to see the humanising portrayals and to take something too away from the setting. Though history and poverty always best themselves, it is impossible to imagine the backdrop of abject poverty and starvation that the government attempted to stave off through resettlement and relocation. This scene also conjures up another one of Lange’s programs—documenting the forced internment of Japanese and other foreigners, which was suppressed at the time. I’ll be sure to visit this resource again to get my bearings and discover someone new.

golden years

Though governments still will enunciate the fact that a huge class, cadre will reach retirement age all at once and stop contributing to state pension schemes and leave the labour force all at once—which is the greater threat to those funds solvency—it seems more convincing to instead raise a spectre that all can relate to, perhaps out of fear of derision should one group (to which a majority of officials surely belong) be made to bear the entire burden.

Increasing longevity is cited as the prevailing argument for raising the retirement age, and while many people are living much longer on average than the sixty-five years of age that was suggested in the late nineteenth century as a social safety net was stitched together, that milestone was understood as the threshold of feebleness and general uselessness and rather not as the mark whence one had contributed his or her share to the system and could enjoy the next third or more of his or her adult life in retirement. Notching up the age redefines sixty-seven or however much it climbs as the new redundancy and further fails to respect the fact that there are profound differences, dependent on one’s employer and career-path, in benefits and retirement packages. Those best equipped and willing to keep working are reaping those years of good custody and care, and those who continue working are the fittest among us to begin with. On the other hand, those compelled to keep up their jobs because their pensions would provide insufficient income or are just counting the days have not only been robbed of a sense of purpose, no reciprocity lays ahead. What do you think? Though the welfare and will may be there to increase our useful life-spans, it seems to come at the expense of our Golden Years.