humbug and hyperthermia

Grumpy Cat is stopping at NO but the rest of us here at PfRC are getting into the spirit of the season, despite the eschatological forecast and unseasonably warm weather.

5x5

tiki-chic: fascinating story of Harry’s Habour Bazaar of Hamburg, floating curio-cabinet packed full with idols, voodoo dolls, fetishes and shrunken-heads

post-script: gallery documenting America’s disappearing rural post-offices

last starfighter: awkward, kind of lame platform from UK government to identify and train cyber-security savants

thrones and dominions: John Paul II nominated Saint Isidore, a seventh century monk who tried to capture the whole of human knowledge, as the patron of the internet—with an invocation against trolls

china syndrome: incredible photographic essay of Fukushima almost five years after the disaster and its local and global legacy, via Messy Nessy Chic 

upvote, a condé nast publication

After some time spent in development, Reddit—“the front page of the internet,” having launched a fleet of discoveries and not without controversy, is spinning-off its most well-attended submissions, social bookmarks as a news channel. Upvoted has the look and feel of a conventional news-feed and does not have the social interface that makes Reddit a fickle one to court, but already—just days after the debut, the articles, which are not totally tamed and sanitized and retain those interactive qualities that have sustained Reddit, seem really well-chosen and interestingly enhanced by the format. Besides—it is obvious that a lot of news organizations with staff and budgets act on leads from that site all the time, and Reddit users ought to receive credit for their original research.

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mind the gap: month rental prices for a one-room flat in London superimposed on the Underground map

divining-stick: successful dowsing in drought-struck California causes people to challenge their inner-skeptics

night gallery: curation of paintings by producer Thomas J. Wright for the macabre anthology

diorama: a dedicated California artist recreates faithful miniatures of New York’s disappearing store-fronts

treuhand: EU high court rules that social media giants may not freely repatriate international user-data as the integrity of it cannot be guaranteed 

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alba amicorum: the Dutch friend books of the seventeenth century, via the Presurfer

optotype: via Kottke’s extensive archive of Quick Links, a gorgeous history of eye chart typography

percival lowell’s canals: NASA confirms that briny water is flowing on Mars presently

magic kingdom: Banksy’s Dismaland will be deconstructed and repurposed to house refugees in the Jungle Camp in Calais

legacy system: Norwegian government pressures its physicians to give up their beloved, reliable floppy discs

kalends oder guthaben

Finally having a telephone contract with all calls being free, I’ve graduated somewhat from being miserly about returning calls and reached a new plateau of parsimony, I’m afraid, with one’s monthly data allotment. I’ve adjusted to rationing my browsing and usually don’t deplete it until the end of the month (Kalends, as it was known to the Romans, and hence the calendar that counted backwards from the end, the Ides and the Nones from the month prior), but also lacking a land-line, wary to enter into a commitment for what’s a temporary housing situation—during the work-week, it can get a bit frustrating when there’s something interesting to research and investigate and particularly when it comes to posting something fun. There’s no real opportunities to poach a Wi-Fi connection—unless one is willing to loiter at a pay-phone converted into a hot-spot. It’s a strange, trifling dilemma to traffic in such abstract limitations. Slow I don’t mind but sometimes things just time-out and I think there’s plenty of incentives for decelerators, and I suppose I could always top-up but with just a few days remaining in the cycle, I try to avoid this little luxury.

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sword and sandal: jazzy Italian cinematic score to enjoy

cogwheel: insects had evolved gears long before humans discovered mechanical advantage

rubbing elbows: any and every New Yorker cartoon wants you to join them on LinkedIn

potus: obscure, offensive 1967 “Super President” cartoon pilot

pig-pen: each human has a distinctive cloud of germs that shadows us

rebus oder panda, pizza, oselot

There is how PfRC translates into emoji, according to the service Linkmoji.  This demonstration, that comes to us via WIRED!, is a little baffling linguistically, I admit, plus a bit recursive as we are just linking back to this site.  So share with us how your website looks in webdings or however this sequence is generated.  It seems to come out differently each time and there are poo and non-poo versions available.

graphic dynamism or baby bells

Saul Bass gave Ma Bell a crisper corporate logo in 1969 that was in use until 1983 when Bass himself pitched the Death Star design to a dismantled and reorganised AT&T, as Kottke shares with some more background and promotional featurette. That blogger has also noted that lately what goes around, comes around in design and branding.

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pastafarian: avatar of the divine flying spaghetti monster spotted underseas

umbrella corporation: a web search engine redefines it corporate profile

hall-tree and hutch: Dangerous Minds explores how sci-fi films require long, branching corridors

fun house: revisiting Lucas Samaras’ 1966 mirrored room installation

baumbastik: a visit to the small Alpine village of Neuschönau and the world’s longest tree-top trail

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markov-chain: a sub-reddit that harnesses the property of memorylessness by and for robots

memory & function (& memory): Nag on the Lake keeps us updated on what is afoot in Scarfolk, a township forever trapped in the 1970s

le grand huit: hundreds of brightly coloured café chairs form a static roller coast in Nantes

tempest in a tea cup: an interesting look at the anti-saccharine movement and the fickle sweet-tooth of Percy Bysshe Shelley who boycotted sugar and other staples that drove the slave trade in the Empire

spaceship earth: celebrating Star Trek’s pushing the envelop with George Takei

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warp factor: speed ratings of the fastest space ships in the galaxy

a gossip of mermaids: a delightful compilation of supernatural, ghoulish collective nouns, via the Wunderkammer that is Nag on the Lake

bling: uncompromisingly luxurious wrist watch that has an iWatch on the underside

plastic arts: prototype demonstration of a motorized sculpting glove

ennuigi: arcade game betrays Mario’s brother’s existential woes, world-weariness

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kool & the gang: Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem rock out to Jungle Boogie

shill: dreadful social media spoof campaign that perhaps hits too close to home

avtovaz: gorgeous gallery of vintage Soviet automobile advertising

good libations: an animated history of adult beverages

parallax barrier: guide to rigging one’s smart phone to project a holographic image

mad dash or beyond thunderdome

Via the incomparable Dangerous Minds, comes a brilliant and believable blending of the 1963 mad-cap comedic treasure hunt directed by Stanley Kramer, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and the latest Mad Max instalment, Fury Road. There is a good plot synopsis at the link and the classic is worth revisiting in its own right.  The mashup is really wonderfully choreographed and one of my new favourites from this genre—previously the best, in my opinion, in the cinematic category was Broke Back to the Future. What are some of your nominees for best contender for imaginative trailers?

significant digits or wholly unscientific post-script

By way of an update and smattering of reflection, I found that the brilliant Jason Kottke shared in the absolute stupefaction and wonder when it came to the Fibonacci sequence revealed in a rather tame division problem. I also really appreciated how Kottke channelled Carl Sagan—namely his novel Contact—and pondered if this sort of coincidence wasn’t something akin to the code buried in the number ∏ that showed that the intelligence behind the design of the Universe was intentional and knowable. Also an explanation was offered that was by no means disenchanting—as if it was just a numerical sleight of hand, like the pictured recursive mathmagic, brain-teasing trick I was surprised to find reproduced in Hocus Pocus. I had come across a variant of this one before, which is I think something quite different, and aside from fact-checking, can you see where the delusion that cancels everything out lies?  Do you think the Fibonacci numbers will also be shown to be some kind of misapprehension too?

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turing compleat: two chat-bots chat each other up

field-shower: a wand for washing your dog from all angles at once

spoonerism and bowdlerize: unsung holidays and observances in July

sabbatic goat: Satanic Temple of Detroit to unveil its massive Baphomet (whom the Knights Templar, Masons and the Cathars were accused of worshipping incidentally) statue later this month and take it on the road

driving that train: the Pope will chew coca leaves on his visit to Bolivia to show his support for defusing the mission-spill of the war on drugs

#grexit, #PRexit

Patriotism aside, the USA and the EU are in many ways organised around the same basic principles. Although I am sure that many would like to back away from such a comparison by pointing out important distinctions and the fact that the US is a more (or less, depending on one’s point of view) coherent bloc, despite or because of varying jurisdiction, taxes, etc.

The US cannot exactly boot out the recalcitrant and the under-performing and succession has been made an illegal-fiction—and while the fledgling EU has untried provisions to kick-out members or let them leave voluntarily, and perhaps more importantly, on balance with the insistence that this experiment will work, the ability to selectively invite new partners—which really isn’t a possibility for America—and the core of badly-behaving Europe achieve a new and hopefully better character in expanding its borders. Though many of the contiguous territory, in my opinion, are in far worse financial straits, the Colombian Union is baiting and beating up on one of its colonial outliers in insolvent Puerto Rico with mounting attention that may well match captivation that the Greek tragedy is providing.  Receivership does not seem like an option that will do anyone any good, other than the lenders of last resort.

namely: peristeronic

From the Oxford English Dictionary Online Word of the Day comes a timely and useful bit of vocabulary in the adjective peristeronic—that is, relating to or suggestive of pigeons.

It turns out of course that it was never breeding pigeons that was considered not halal, given that pigeon exhibitionism is well-nigh impossible and not suggestive of anything except maybe when the male gets all puffed up and cooing to woo a reluctant mate. Rather—arguably equally incredulously, the keeping of pigeons was banned (despite the rich and long heritage that this practise has in the Arab world, including distinct strategic advantages with homing and messenger pigeons already in antiquity) was because some lecherous spies were using it as an excuse for being on the rooftop and from that vantage point, peeping at neighbours. Peristeronic. PfRC invites readers to build their treasury of words as well by visiting the OED Online and subscribing to the Word of the Day.

panorama or bread and butter

With this news item and its repercussions overshadowed by the visit of the Queen and then understandably wide-spread panic over the financial viability of Greece and the coordinated terrorist attacks that targeted tourists, it took me some time to realise that there is truly a landmark decision—pun very much intended, on the docket for the EU parliament. Standardising the so-called Panoramafreiheit, named after the German concept that images either framed or incidentally with art installations and works of architecture that are on display to the general public can be shared openly without fear of reprisal or accusations of commercial infringement, has suddenly become a priority. And while some are championing the German model be taken up in other lands where legal entanglements can make publicising a picture, especially of modern buildings whose likeness is controlled by some individual or brain-trust, difficult, others fear that the interpretation and enforcement of commercial-use could swing the other way in favour of the lien-holders. Tacky souvenir-shops seem to have gotten away with selling kitsch for years, whether copyrighted or not—Paris owns the right to the picture (and reminiscences thereof apparently) of the Eiffel Tower illuminated at night—and while I don’t think it’s necessarily right for some fly-by-night opportunist to profit at the expense of the labour of some genius architect and the outlays of a municipality by 3D-printing charm bracelets of some newly built sports stadium named after an on-line loan company—supposing there’s a market for such trinkets, no one should need to get permission and pay royalties for making their own personal postcards and sharing them.
The fact, however, that the venues where such things are shared are mostly unabashedly commercial ventures, the legal wranglings, suits and disappeared images would be soon to follow. Given that they are the bread and butter of the industry of sharing and of the gadgets that make this level of snapshots and selfies possible such candid postcards prompted this discussion—and probably gave someone a whiff of money to be made, it strikes me as ironic and necessary that there might be a degree of cooperation between those prying giants of the internet and their usual antagonists, the libertine Wikipedia and your friendly neighbourhood Pirate Party. It is strange to think of them being potentially on the same side.  I imagine that the social media networks would wither on the vine should the environment become as restrictive about broadcasting one’s whereabouts (with pictures) as bootleg has become.  Should the lawyers get their way, what is to stop it from progressing to even natural monuments, claimed as trade-mark by states unable to glean any tax-revenue off of those same internet giants that get off scot-free (which really does mean duty-free, hors taxes) though profiting greatly with local operations? Be sure to let people know how you feel about this and photograph everything as that’s the new graffiti.

feuilleton

Quartz presents a really fascinating and under-appreciated glimpse on the strange, strained affair that the Chinese government has with Western social-networking heralds and mavens.

The dominant sites are banned from public-consumption, although it is not as if the average Chinese citizens were unaware of their existence and most businesses and state organs maintain their own internet presence on the same blocked sites. Possibly in order to curb curiosity and assuage rebellion, the state news agency Xinhua is featuring a segment of selected tweeted and shared items to give its audience a glimpse of how China is portrayed around. The articles seem pretty anodyne and cherry-picked to cast the country in the best light, but then again most regimes have highly propagandised mouth-pieces. Learning of this and of the sobering, unfamiliar mirror universe of applications that the Chinese make do with reminded me of the living tradition of the “lectores”—that is, news-readers, of the Cuban cigar factories, which is a really rich and fascinating story in its own right. The scope is of course very different and attestedly, the individual whose job it was to read to the workers as they rolled cigars usually elevated by popular consent, there for the emendation of the others. The juxtaposition of someone first anchoring the national, official newspaper, however, and the moving on to literature in the afternoon—whether subversive, unvetted or otherwise, makes me wish that this broadcast feuilleton might prove just as entertaining and broadening.