This day marks the one-year anniversary of the United Kingdom imposed with a national lockdown to quell the spread of COVID-19 so that health services would not be overwhelmed, reversing earlier thinking once we were better informed epidemiologically that suggested we should aim for herd-immunity rather than curfews and quarantines. The announcement coincided with the restrictions on movement placed on residents of Wuhan were being cautiously rolled back after two-months of total shutdown and followed measures enacted earlier in the month in Italy and France. The stay-at-home order banned non-essential travel and in person contact, the closure of most businesses with the mandate to telework when possible and those with symptoms to self-isolate. Measures were gradually eased in June through July with a resurgence in October, a so called second wave, that resulted in another month-long shutdown.
Tuesday 23 March 2021
Monday 8 March 2021
6x6
ribbit: frogs use their lungs effectively as noise-cancelling devices—via the new Shelton wet/dry
oculus: architect envisions Rome’s Pantheon as world’s largest camera obscura (previously) with a conceptual installationfetish-free commodities: Existential Comics attempts to demystify Marxist marketplaces—via Nag on the Lake and Memo of the Air
radiant baby: a brief biography of artist Keith Haring told with drawings and song
ipa: an iconographic dictionary that corresponds to each phoneme of human language
marshmallow test: cuttlefish demonstrate self-control and delay gratification, passing a cognitive benchmark designed for human children
Friday 19 February 2021
6x6
polar flare: examining every map projection and how it distorts our world view at once—see previously
simon says: a vast archives of electronic handheld and table-top games and consoles from decades past—via Swiss Miss
fabian society: capitalism coexists with constructivism in Czech city of Zlรญn
hello world: the newest Martian probe beams back its first images
Tuesday 2 February 2021
invisible hand
Friday 29 January 2021
8x8
testi stampati: the riotous typographical illustratrations of Lorenzo Petrantoni
painterly realism: Nathan Shipley trained a neural network to turn portraiture into convincingly true-to-life photographs
civilian climate corps: a vision of how putting people to work on conservation projects can help save both the environment and the economynarratology: a purportedly exhaustive list of dramatic situations—see also here and here
stonx: a long thread explaining the GameStop short-squeeze—via Miss Cellania
paradoxical undressing: National Geographic forwards a new theory to account for the Dyatlov Pass Incident (previously) of 1959
butler in a box: before digital assistants there was domestic aid in the late 1980s
will success spoil rock hunter: Art of the Title looks at the opening montage of the 1957 CinemaScope classic
Thursday 21 January 2021
domestic agenda
Signalling a radical shift in policy priorities, Joe Biden for his first day and a half in office signed a tranche of executive orders reversing the direction that his predecessor (lest we forget the catalogue of horrors) had taken the country and the first steps to positioning America as a leader and innovative force. Redressing the pandemic crisis, Biden’s spending proposal for economic aid and relief and accelerating vaccination comes in at just under two trillion dollars, imposing a mask mandate on federal property and interstate transportation, extend student loan deferments and a moratorium on evictions and re-join the World Health Organisation. Moreover, Biden moved to bring the US back into the Paris Climate Agreement plus reimpose pollution restrictions recently relaxed and cancel the Keystone XL pipeline project that would shuttle a particularly pernicious type of petroleum from Canadian fields to American refineries. On immigration, Biden has directed the travel ban on some Muslim-majority countries to be repealed, reversed the inhumanly cruel practise of separating immigrant families at the border and ended the declared National Emergency that funded the Wall. In the Oval Office, the bust of Winston Churchill (previously) is replaced—in the background—by one of Cรฉsar Chรกvez.
Wednesday 13 January 2021
safer at home
In the style of ex-voto devotional miniatures, Los Angeles artist Esther Pearl Watson lets these small vignettes reflect the tumult and strangeness of the past year of isolation, uprising and uncertainty with the same sense of reverence and memorial that the folk art genre recognises inception and intercession in forces greater than us. Learn more and visit the artist’s exhibition at Hyperallergic at the link above.
walk the plank
2021 is the year of the sea shanty pic.twitter.com/ohOAGvkbtC
— Tim - Poster of Hugo Pics (@Beertheist) January 11, 2021
catagories: ๐ถ, ๐ด☠️, ๐ข, labour, networking and blogging
Sunday 10 January 2021
arbeiter nr. 11811
Debuting on this day in 1927 at the Ufa-Palast-Zoo cinema in Berlin, the silent, expressionist dystopian drama Metropolis was director Fritz Lang’s vision of the eponymous science-fiction novel by Thea von Harbou. Filmed during the optimistic days of the Weimar Republik and informed by the philosophy of such attendant movements as Bauhaus, the ground-breaking piece forecasts, presciently, a bleak and oppressive future technocracy with a huge chasm separating the classes. With a legacy of immeasurable influence and launching numerous homages, it was inscribed on the UNESCO register of Memory of the World—the first film to receive this honour. The message of the movie, whose allegory is of course not meant as an instruction manual, is summed up in the final intertitle: „Mittler zwischen Hirn und Hรคnden muss das Herz sein“—that is, “The mediator between the Head and Hands must be the Heart.”
Saturday 26 December 2020
psychogeography
Being a committed and rather incurable flรขneur myself, learning about the playful praxis that combines elements of anarchy and the surreal in urban exploration and understanding how built environments and pathways influence residents and guests struck me as engrossing and endearing for its vagaries of association and membership.
One central tenet—though more nuanced than I am describing it—is that of dรฉrive, drift, and how we’re attracted to those zones that conform to our neighbourhood and comforts and to let oneself go and take a penny-hike like I used to do (and still sometimes at an unknown crossroads) and flip a coin at a corner to decide if you’ll proceed right of left. Of course, proper reconnaissance admits more directions and apparently there’s an app for that too. Societies once dedicated to this movement that I could find seem to have gone inactive in the past few years but organised activities including loitering with intent, scavenger hunts, immersive challenges and workshops that called out gentrification, overtourism and eroding public transportation schemes as well as unearthed the legacy and vestigial signs of the architecture of exclusion. It seems like a good time to revive interest and start our own psychogeographical chapters.
catagories: ๐บ️, ๐ง , architecture, labour
Wednesday 23 December 2020
8x8
the santaland diaries: a holiday classic from David Sedaris
by jove: more on the complex system of Jupiter and its moons—including Valetudo, which crosses between the prograde and retrograde orbitals—see previously
mimicry and mutualism: the monkey slug caterpillar (Phobetron pithecium, the larva of the hag moth) that evolved to resemble a tarantulawhere do i begin: Erich Segal’s Love Story at fifty
posse commmutatus: a fresh tranche of pardons (previously) from the outgoing and impeached Trump is an assault and insult on justice
tree fm: for those who can’t readily go forest bathing or hug a perennial friend, tune into the soundscape of woods around the world—via Things Magazine
pork-barrel politics: Trump frames riders in COVID aid bill as disgraceful after seven months of contentious negotiation, demands revision
suggested serving: wintry cocktail and hot toddy recipes from eastern Europe
Friday 11 December 2020
zucked
Much like the laisse-faire champion of free-markets who only thought it was the government’s place to intervene in monopolies when there was demonstrable consumer harm—never mind about democratic harm or erecting barriers to entry—the US judge and Solicitor General Robert Bork (and author of such titles as Slouching Towards Gomorrah) whose name became a verb for those (righteously) villifed and held to account by the mass media, the anti-social media conglomerate (previously) has finally generated enough ill-will to call to action the Federal Trade Commission joining suit with forty-six states attorneys general plus Guam and Washington, DC to get roundly borked and broken up.
Since the last times the American government was compelled to take legal and legislative actions against Ma Bell and then Big Blue, tech and telecos have seen few restrictions and rather nurtured and coddled to become some of the most powerful companies in the world. The FTC is charged with protecting consumers from cartels and monopolistic and monopsonistic practises and while perhaps a bit too timid over the past couple of decades, it has gathered up its courage and decided to push forward during this lame-duck session. Of course this corporate bully, armed to the teeth yet claiming it’s being undermined and unfairly assaulted—is formible with virtually unlimited resources to lobby, leverage the public (the fight comes to us too and we can continue to not dally in that walled-garden) and rail against regulation and dial-up the victimhood. These staid giants of industry are built on the model of suppressing or absorbing the competition and know no other route to success.
catagories: ⚖️, ๐ก, ๐ฑ, labour, networking and blogging
Thursday 10 December 2020
recap
Via Duck Soup, we are directed to another year-in-review told through the editorial board and camera pool of The New York Times, month-by-month of 2020, which serves as an incredible reminder to headline the lack of correspondence between the world depicted in the first quarter with what was just over the horizon. All captioned and curated, one can explore these pivot-points, especially those that receed apace from the present, in this interactive retrospective. As indelible as 2020 seems, it’s surprising what iconic images seem to belong to another time and place.
Sunday 6 December 2020
bonnet, or tout, or mump and gag
Via Everlasting Blรถrt, we directed to another old friend’s find in this menacingly brilliant rhythmic rendition of the Villon Song by Stick in the Wheel, a recitation of the late Victorian poet and literary critic William Ernest Henley’s—best-known for his 1875 “Invictus” and being the peg-legged inspiration for the character Long John Silver of Treasure Island—translation, interpretation of fifteenth century Franรงoise Villon “Tout aux taverns et aux filles”—Villon’s Straight Tip to All Cross Coves. Henley is here represented by a bronze bust of him executed by sculptor August Rodin in 1868.
Friday 6 November 2020
8x8
photos veritables: antique pre-prepared vacation picture albums
necessitous men are not free men: FDR’s 1944 second, more equitable Bill of Rights
conformal cyclic cosmology: Nobel winning astrophysicist Roger Penrose shares his Universe origin hypothesisla sape: Tariq Zaida documents the fashion of the sapeurs and sapeuses of Brazzaville and Kinshasa—reminding me of this other subculture
author, poet, composer: the amazing virtuosity of Gordon Parks
das neue europa mit dem dauernden frieden: revisiting an early proposal for the European Union, divided into Kantons converging on Vienna (previously)
dss43: Deep Space Communication Complex re-establishes link with Voyager 2
scarfolk & environs: a road & leisure map for uninvited tourist
Thursday 5 November 2020
iww
Marking the heightening tension between labour organisers and business executives in the US Pacific Northwest, the Everett Massacre, occurring on this day in 1916 was a flashpoint exacerbated by global economic downturn and depression. Dock workers and police authorities in service of commercial interests regularly clashed, and International Workers of the World members (Wobblies) were dispatched in support of an ongoing strike action and rally for fairer pay and better working conditions. In response to these demonstrations, local business enlisted and deputised more union-busting mercenaries and the standoff quickly escalated into armed conflict. The culpability for the violence and death is yet questioned, with some describing the IWW as a radicalised and over-zealous advocate for political and labour reform with other scholars and historians placing the blame on agents provocateur and corporate spies infiltrating the union members’ ranks.
Wednesday 4 November 2020
i got an empty cup, pour me some more
Tuesday 3 November 2020
novemberrevolution
Lasting through August of the following year, the revolt and uprising that replaced the constitutional monarchy of Germany and led to the formation of the Weimar Republic (previously) began on this day in 1918 with the Kiel Mutiny (Kieler Matrosenaufstand)—a revolt by a sailors of the High Seas Fleet (Hochseeflotte) demoralised and defeated in a senseless war. As testament to the social tensions between the general population and the aristocracy, the movement expanded outward from the city’s port and garnered some forty thousand rebels from the ranks of the navy, the army (which had been dispatched to quell the situation) and sympathetic workers, and by the next day they were able to organise articulate fourteen points outlying the revolutionary council’s demands: resolutions and demands including the release of political prisoners, complete freedom of the press, halting censorship of correspondence, cessation of fighting and the separation of being on- and off-duty (see also). By the seventh, King Ludwig III of Bavaria capitulated and announced the creation of a People’s Free State, and by the ninth, Emperor Wilhelm II abdicated and went into exile and Germany was declared a republic.
Saturday 24 October 2020
the past is another country
Tuesday 20 October 2020
7x7
whose side is justice department hunk trant finglepoz on, anyway: a treasury of Hallmark Channel movies counting down to the American election
moving pictures: TIME magazine showcases one hundred of the most influential photographs
malochio: an appreciation of the iconic, inspired CBS eye-logo
giant steps: exploring the overlapping sensory experience of synaesthesia (previously) to the musical stylings of John Coltrane
nazcat lines: archaeologists uncover a feline geoglyph in the Peruvian desert
stranger danger: Patch the Pony transformed into a Halloween soundtrack
fiscal cliffication: continued delays and deferment on financial aid will make it harder for the US economy to recover