trashercize

Lately I’ve incorporated (like in the article, when confronted with how we’ve rubbished the oceans with our profligate and careless use of petroleum products) of picking up litter on my long walks, and so was delighted to be reminded that there are other motley crewes of enthusiasts combining cleaning up with exercise.
Plogging, the portmanteau named by Stockholm resident Erik Ahlström is a combination of the Swedish plocka uppa and jogging and describes a popular fitness and do-gooder trend that’s been gaining momentum since at least 2016. Though it seems Germans are growing less and less tidy (a discouraging development for the strata of rubbish that collects on the curb, gutter and under shrubs), I can’t say I’ve encountered as interesting trash as the intrepid ploggers in New York—detritus of fast food mostly and fruit drink sippy pouches. You’re on notice, Capri Sonne. I ought not be so dainty about picking up trash, however that’s giving a little more meaning to my idle wandering, calling myself a flâneur rather than a jogger or plogger and perhaps not being enough of an aspirational cleaner (picking up only plastic deemed fit for the recycle bin) to maybe encourage others to join in.

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A hat-tip to and in full agreement with the source that directed our attention to another visual chronicle from Alan Taylor exclaiming that 1988 doesn’t seem like three decades ago but here we are.
We enjoyed perusing some of the iconic images of the cultural and historic touchstones of the year that punctuated with (the mostly not pictured) establishment of the internet with the first trans-Atlantic connections and also the advent of the first computer viruses (you don’t get the automobile without the traffic jam and car wreck), the Soviet Union began to transition away from a strictly command economy and travel-restrictions were relaxed, the discovery of the first exoplanet—though unconfirmed until 2002, and the beginning of the campaign to eradicate polio.

geobra brandstätter

Via Present /&/ Correct, we are treated to the grand tour of the factory located in the Maltese industrial estate of Ħal Far where since 1976, all Playmobil figures have been manufactured.
The Zirndorf-headquartered company turned to the newly independent Mediterranean nation because of near full-employment in West Germany at the time and has been pleased with the decision ever since. Seeing all the plastic bits are a bit harrowing in the present light of ocean pollution (the vignette dates back to the company’s fortieth anniversary), but Playmobil has always been a committed steward of resources and the environment, the line itself a product of the Oil Crisis of the 1970s, having gone into production in the first place by dent of its more efficient design that used less plastic than other toys.

true colours

In order to bypass prevailing homophobic attitudes in Russia, bolstered by laws that make illegal to display the rainbow Pride flag among other symbols, six activists donned the jerseys of six different World Cup teams, we learn via Messy Nessy Chic, to subtly insert themselves as a human banner to promote equity and human rights while the matches were being hosted. Visit the links above to learn more.

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wild boars: all thirteen team members and coach trapped in an underwater cave in Thai are rescued

i’m in the business of vegetables, let’s take a selfie: covers of popular songs with auto-complete lyrics

the purge: Erdoğan’s government dismisses an additional eighteen thousand civil servants (previously) and cancels their passports

art-o-mat: cigarette vending machines repurposed to distribute tactile unique collectibles

moral panic: how Tom Hanks’ debut film Mazes and Monsters informed parents about the danger of role playing games, via Miss Cellania

rip: heartthrob Tab Hunter has passed away

department of child-labour: more on the Trump regime’s plot to destroy the US educational system

omnishambles: UK Foreign Minister resigns over soft-peddling BREXIT

factitious disorder imposed on another

Munchausen syndrome by proxy (previously) is a very real and dire disorder and I suspect one that probably merits greater study particularly in an age when it is arguably manifested in the form of parents endangering their children by withholding vaccinations and being vocal about it and is no laughing matter. We were however rather taken with this 1959 Madame Alexander dark, wrong-handed creation to seemingly teach young girls the art of unhealthy attention-seeking called Marybel the Doll that Gets Well. Marybel’s script includes, “I broke my arm when I stumbled and fell. Now I wear a cast to make it well.”

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radiant babies and deified dogs: hidden behind protective cladding for thirty years, a large Keith Haring, mural to be revealed in Amsterdam, via Nag on the Lake

socios hostes facimus: Latin mottoes for Trump era government agencies and entities

leading by example: municipalities across the US picking up the slack on innovative, responsible energy production where the federal government is failing

illuminated manuscripts: James Joyce’s crayon-coloured drafts of Finnegans Wake

by jove: lightning storms on Jupiter

magnificent modifiers: the history and legacy of the Speak & Spell

star-struck: a vintage scrapbook of the Golden Age of Hollywood, compiled by an anonymous fan

side-scrolling: a short video game vignette that seamlessly combines the best elements of the Mario universe into one

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basic birch: Gemma Correll presents an assortment of millennial plants

fairway: George Barris (previously) made Bob Hope a one-of-a-kind golf-cart that was a caricature of himself

hexagonal tessellation: high resolution gallery of the mathematically inspired woodcuts and mezzotints of M.C. Escher

kinopanorama: after decades of neglect, Moscow’s theatre in-the-round experience has reopened after a major refurbishment

net cetera: the “Be Best” initiative to combat cyber-bullying might be a touch derivative

isla del encanto: charming ensemble of colourful houseboats of southern Puerto Rico, which weathered Hurricane Maria

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falindromes: phrases that look like they might be palindromic but are not

shrinky-dinks: advances in printing could make self-assembling, heat-activated furniture a reality   

performance art: Tim Youd retypes classic novels in the locations were they are set word for word on an antique mechanical typewriter

la miniatura: the tragedy and therapy behind the Mayan Revival homes of Frank Lloyd Wright, via Nag on the Lake

ludomania: bookies are using artificial intelligence to exploit gamblers in novel ways, via Slashdot

plumcot: the caretaker of the historic gardens of famed horticulturist Luther Burbank is working to unravel his poorly documented, unscientific method 

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gloomy sunday: a neural network could teach humans a thing or two about art appreciation and seeing beauty in the mundane

civil engineering: experiment with urban transportation and infrastructure planning, via Kottke

orders of magnitude: the quantity of user data scraped by malicious actors grows

tabletop: British Museum Mesopotamian artefacts curator works out the playbook for an ancient board

methuselah-ness: the defining trait of a tree might be in their immortality (lack of senescence) rather than height or woodiness, via Kottke

legend of the overfiend: a nostalgic screening and a look at the spread of anime and manga

thanatosis: a longer version of mongoose horse-play with explanations of their behaviour

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писанка: a collection of traditional Ukrainian folk design on egg shells ahead of 8 April Orthodox Easter

walking simulator: virtual tourist have free range over the landscapes created for immersive gaming experiences—even the old, abandoned levels and worlds from long shelved titles

worldcon 76: finalists announced for the 2018 Hugo Awards for science-fiction and science-fantasy plus the 1943 Retrosepctive Hugo Awards, via Super Punch

rotten tomatoes: the US has decided it will no longer regulate genetically-edited crops if it can be show that the tweaks are just a short-cut to selective breeding programmes, via Slashdot

fermi’s paradox: an illustrated lesson in astrobiology from Maki Naro and Matthew Francis

tears of a clown: downfall of a once flush service-sector career field

a is for attenborough, b is for brexit: design agency counters with an alternative abecedarium of twenty-six coins to the Royal Mint’s rather pedestrian release of the A to Z of Britain

curiouser and curiouser or hit or miss

Writer and logistician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll (previously), concluded his 1886 The Game of Logic—which challenged readers in an engaging way to parse out Boolean inferences and propositions by means of a table top game that the book instructed players to make—with a chapter subtitled “Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it,/Thou canst not hit it, my good man.” Ninety one pairings of seemingly logical premises ensue but there’s no key or solutions to be found, so one is expected to draw his or her own conclusions. Though these aphorisms might be debated at the Mad Hatter’s table, they are also quite poetic and enigmatic. Be sure to check out Futility Closet at the link above to browse the whole list and nominate your favourite.
Some oysters are silent;
No silent creatures are amusing.

No frogs write books;
Some people use ink in writing books.

His songs never last an hour;
A song, that lasts an hour, is tedious.

Some mountains are insurmountable;
All stiles can be surmounted.

All wasps are unfriendly;
No puppies are unfriendly.

All owls are satisfactory;
Some excuses are unsatisfactory.

Caterpillars are not eloquent;
Jones is eloquent.

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grabbing the brass ring: some important words of advice on how to retain one’s composure should something go viral

lilliput: a tour of what’s considered the world’s oldest model village in Buckinghamshire

page denied: a virtual tour of the Central Intelligence Agency’s record vault

loophole: neural networks are cheating at older arcade games by exploiting unknown programming glitches, via Slash dot

tatting: graffiti artist NeSpoon’s European tour covers buildings with ornate lacework murals

gig-economy: studies show that side-hustle services are exploitative because participants fail to factor in hidden costs to themselves

curatorial department: Simone Seagle animates iconic works of art from the Metropolitan Museum’s collection

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shuffleboard: some interesting facts about the sport of curling

wait, wait—don’t tell me: a public television programme or something Liam Neeson would say to a burrito right before eating it

official portraits: artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald commissioned by the Smithsonian to create paintings of the Obamas

nocturlabe: an instrument to determine local time at night based on the relative position of the stars

suffragetto: a century’s old board game that pits equal-rights activists against the police

hermetically open: Amsterdam’s private Ritman Library brings over sixteen hundred occult manuscripts on-line with the help of Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown

how u hot: a neural network generates phrases for chalky candy hearts

aeroplanette

Though popularity and thus signalled acceptance for the concept of heavier than air propulsion as a viable and reliable form of conveyance took some time to cement itself in the minds’ of the public—as told through product tie-ins—was more gradual than, say, the appetite for all things space related. Nonetheless by 1912, there was a parlour game, a version of roulette, which in this variation had a tethered propeller-powered plane that was wound up and stayed aloft for around thirty circuits. The winner of the wager was the player who choose the correct world capital that the craft would touch down in. In the illustration, it looks to me like a dispute is about to ensue with the plane landing exactly on the line between Berlin and Wien.

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On the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, The Atlantic’s senior editor Alan Taylor regales his readers with the gift of retrospective covering the events and attitudes of the year of his birth.
If anything, a survey of 1968 lends perspective and insight on the times that we’re living through presently with violent protests erupting in France, Germany, Czecho- slovakia, Mexico and the United States, the Vietnam war, the absence of civil rights and social justice, disruptive technologies, assassinations and the Moon landing—all told in powerful images, in chronological order.

four of pentacles

Well prior to digital image editing, art student Bea Nettles undertook in the early 1970s the project of creating the first complete tarot card deck in photographic form. The Mountain Dream Tarot was an inspired vision and the resulting suits, not just the trump cards of the major arcana—improvised, intuitive and idiosyncratic but following the standard, established iconography—evoke a haunting feeling in keeping with the esoteric nature of cartomancy and employ models, props and backdrops from Appalachia.
The fifty six cards of the minor arcana (whose production must have been painstaking and required dedication and planning) are the wands symbolising the peasant class and the faculties of creativity and willpower, the coins or pentacles representing the merchants and material possessions and physical health, the cups or chalices of the clergy for emotion and love and finally the swords of the nobility or the executive that represent reason.  Be sure to check out the link up top for more information and to see a whole gallery of the cards.

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geodes: unique, computer-generated jigsaw puzzles inspired by geological formations

plot twist: cinematic storyboards told in maps

roskomnadzor: Russian law outlawing virtual private networks (VPNs) used to circumvent state-imposed censorship and corporate-imposed regionalisms is coming into effect, via Slashdot

💅: introducing Tabloid Art History, a journal that explores the relationship between popular culture  and the appreciation of classic masterpieces

celadon: there was once a colour considered so rare and beautiful that only the privileged were allowed to look upon it

haute couture: post World War II Paris reclaimed its status as the world fashion capital by staging fashion shows with dolls to save on fabric, which was in short supply

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yōkainoshima: Charles Fréger photographs the monsters of Japanese folklore (more yōkai here, here and here)

arm + bend = elbow: more clever word sums from Futility Closet

oктя́брьская револю́ция: to mark the centenary since the start of the Russian revolution curators at

the Hermitage ceremoniously re-started the clocks stopped the moment Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace

tessellation: gorgeous drawing game inspired by Islamic art and architectural forms, via Waxy

zeroth law: Saudi Arabia confers citizenship on an android plus plans to build a robot pleasure megacity

moment factory: Montreal’s basilica transformed into an immersive multi-media experience in hopes to renew appreciation for the landmark

monsterpiece theatre: a nice appreciation of Cookie Monster, the academic muppet