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The 2020 Tokyo Games pictogram family is in homage of that same venue’s 1964 designs to appeal to an increasingly international gathering of athletes and audiences as we’ve previously explored, and now Present /&/ Correct refers us to a document from the Centre of Olympic Studies that profiles all fourteen intervening sets (like this 1988 version for Seoul) and the artists who created them.

hurdling the language-barrier

Via Nag on the Lake, we are privileged with a preview of the pictogram set from graphic desiger Masaaki Hiromura for the 2020 Tokyo Games. The artist, back in 2004, famously exhibited his Kitasenju—rebus symbols (below) to stimulate both hemispheres of the brain and focus one’s attention. These Gestalt sports symbols conveying athletes in action have a long tradition, first created in response to the growing international character of participants and spectators and each Olympiad gets their own bespoke signage.
This current offering is nearly as visually compelling, captivating and reflective of a certain vernacular of place and venue as Lance Wyman’s iconography (the transport connection is worth considering) for the 1968 Mexico City Games. Much more to explore at the links above.

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bathdoom: interior remodelling as a first-person shooter game

philosophical zombies: the Turing Test for AI consciousness

waste management: budget cuts are rubbishing recycling programmes and good intentions on the municipal level in the US and elsewhere, via Digg

das botenkind: a radio host who broadcasted for the US Army in West Berlin had her sobriquet translated as “Newsbabe”

human hoberman: an mesmerising synchronised dance on a slick floor

brick-and-mortar: gorgeous letterpress posters of artful arranged Lego reminiscent of printed circuit boards

lotus eaters: parrot junkies are having the poppy harvest in Madhya Pradesh

parcours du combatant

Building on the training regime developed by French naval officer Georges Hébert at the turn of the last century, which espoused people be above all limber and spry—as indigenous tribes hunting in Africa he observed whilst stationed there—father and son Raymond and David Belle codified a range of movements to overcome obstacles by the path of least resistance during the 1980s before proliferating into popular culture as parkour.
The philosophical component of reclaiming spaces and individual humility in practise and challenge surpass the athleticism of leaping (pylometrics are study of jumping and the like) and vaulting of the participants—a traceur or traceuse, as they trace a path through the course. It’s of course something that takes a lot of slow, deliberate training and not something one just dives into without risking injury, so be careful out there but it’s certainly something to fantasise about and work towards bouncing off walls and scaling buildings like a stunt-double.

achievement unlocked

In a move that makes the Olympics seem a little more relevant and meaningful—rather than an expensive showcase whose benefits are very, very fleeting for the venue—the always brilliant Nag on the Lake informs that for the 2020 Tokyo Games, in order to make a bold statement about sustainability and what we toss away with our mounting trash heaps of electronic waste, athlete’s medals will be sourced essentially fully from recovered precious metal. The symbolic recycling reflects Japan’s growing more conscience of the impact that such rampant consumption has for the planet and will hopeful influence more not just to prospect but to reduce buying what’s disposable and apt to be superannuated in the first place.

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don’t seem to rouse themselves for anything besides the birth and death days of idolised rock stars: a Stasi guide of negative-decadent youth subcultures in East Germany

backboard: neglected community basket ball courts revived and rehabilitated as canvases for monumental paintings

sandbox: the development of electronic music owes a debt to songs aimed at a very young demographic

what pedantry is this: more questions and answers from the Chicago Manual of Style—via Coudal Partners

i’ll be waiting for you on the dark side of the moon: Earthrise from above the lunar far-side from the Longjiang-2 orbiter

tilt-shift: an immersive tour of the North Korean capital

you said it would last but i guess we enrolled

Our faithful chronicler informs that on this day, among many other momentous occasions, during a US Super Bowl commercial break—a showcase and vehicle for maximising the exposure of new releases—Apple aired its “1984” advertisement (previously) directed by Ridley Scott. Thought police pursue a rogue runner through a monochrome, dystopian landscape but fail to prevent her from hurling a sledge hammer at the main telescreen where Big Brother—portrayed by David Graham (voice actor who played the Darleks and several characters on Thunderbirds Are Go!—is addressing the gathered throngs of labourers:

Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology—where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests purveying contradictory truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!

The screen shatters into smithereens at the Big Brother proclaims victory and the grey scenery is replaced with the company’s rainbow logo.

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aaron burr, sir: Alexander Hamilton’s mostly fraught relationships with the first five US presidential administrations

four baths in the course of a month: how to bathe in January, according to seventh century philosopher Hierophilus the Sophist

faux châteaux: drone footage reveals surreal failed real estate development project between Ankara and Istanbul

messrs. 1569 and 1571: some of the strangest declassified artefacts that are stumping the investigative team at Muckrock

got to catch ‘em all: custom-tailored Pokémon dress shirts

népzene: a quick-sort algorithm demonstrated by Hungarian folk dancing

heatseekers: night time skiing guided by overhead flares, via Memo of the Air

muzzy von hossmere: a fond appreciation of the life and career of the late Carol Channing (*1921 – †2019)

the president shall from time to time give to the congress information of the state of the union: until 1913, most State of the Union addresses were delivered in writing

sneakernet

German multinational Puma would like to remind everyone that digital pedometers and quantifiable data aren’t exactly the newest thing under the sun with the revival of its vintage 1986 RS running shoe.
Cables are required, however, for changing the module in the heel and not for interfacing with one’s home computer. Steps and other fitness telemetry will be transmitted over Bluetooth for the limited reissue. Only eighty-six pairs will be made available worldwide and will probably unfortunately never see any actual street wear.

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black mirror: a local Chinese business woman is publicly pilloried when an AI misinterprets an ad on the side of a bus as the jaywalking CEO—via Slashdot

cover art: vintage, non-fiction paperback jackets animated by Henning M Lederer

drainspotting: a memory-match game played with decorative Japanese manhole covers (previously here and here)

wallflower: Cecilia Paredes camouflages her subjects against bold floral patterns

l’anis del mono: artist Omar Aqil models Pablo Picasso’s abstract paintings in three dimensions with everyday objects

christmas evil: White House continues the decorating tradition of transforming the residence into a nightmarish hellscape

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spitzmaus mummy in a coffin and other treasures: Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum’s guest curators, Wes Anderson and Juman Malouf

siss-boom-bah: antique Japanese fireworks catalogues

invaderz: a twist on the classic arcade game whose advancing armada evolves (relatedly) during play

a declaration of future independence: antiquarian JF Ptak shares the scarce text of Czechoslovakian president Edvard Beneš’ nullification of the Munich Agreement, which was promised to usher in “peace in our time”

not the stockholm syndrome: Swedish capital takes a stand on the privatisation of public spaces (previously), via Super Punch

暦:dioramist and art director Tatsuya Tanaka (previously) is sharing a daily calendar of his miniatures assembled from the everyday, via Nag on the Lake   

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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

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mystery machine: a 1999 Scooby-Doo parody of “The Blair Witch Project” from Cartoon Network

the history league: jerseys for fantasy sports teams centred on momentous events, via Shadow Manor’s Art of Darkness

popular science: though presently mostly relegated to children’s literature, pop-up books were once the stuff of serious textbooks

feng shui: the opening of Kyoto’s first dispersed hotel promises visitors an authentic, immersive experience in the old capital

public service announcement: contemporary artists offers updates on the iconic vintage series from the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal organisation

siren song: the micronation of Užpis, an enclave in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius

gashapon

Colossal shares a select gallery of some of the over twenty-five hundred miniature dioramas and landscapes that artist Tatsuya Tanaka has been furnishing on a daily basis for the past seven years.
His cast of tiny figurines and a keen eye for texture, decontext-ualized from everyday objects and office supplies has attracted millions of followers and fans and periodically compiles his best work into books and calendars, which we take a leaf from here. The title refers to the vending machine capsule toys (ガチャポン) where the little model people might have come from—the term being an onomatopoeic one for the cranking sound of turning the wheel and the sound of the capsule landing in the collection tray.

rubric

Like when learning there was an algorithm, a certain method to solve for Sudoku, I lost interest in it without really having given a try—dismissing it as an unworthy challenge, I think I was guilty of adopting the same attitude towards Ernő Rubik’s ingeniously engineered, elegant puzzle and could appreciate the correspondent’s initial outlook attending an educational outreach workshop ran under the auspices of the toy.
The brute numbers gave me my dénouement: there are forty three quintillion possible positions, which at a rate of trying each every second (as a computer would do) would take over a trillion years to arrive at the single solution out of those seemingly infinite possibilities. Unsure whether it could even be solved, Rubik played with his prototype for a whole month before arriving at a solution. Some of us are virtuosi while many of us just plod along but with persistence and a willingness to step outside of one’s self we can all be the cube.

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contemporary scolds: take this quiz and guess whether writers’ are complaining about e-scooters or new-fangled velocipedes

art house cinema: a look at some of the experimental documentaries that defined Icarus Films

dabangs: South Korean “stress cafés” are a revival of an older tradition supplanted by the invasion of Western chains

anatomy of the ai: a smart speaker depicted as an anatomical chart intersected by natural resources, data and human labour by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler

tunteet: a large Finnish research project to identify, classify and map the range of human feelings

slithery sam: the life and work of printmaker, illustrator and upholsterer Enid Marx

a soft murmur: adjustable background noise for any occasion, via Dave Log 3.0

lenticular lens: this thousand piece jigsaw puzzle changes colours depending on the viewers’ angle—via Kottke’s Quick Links  

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spomenik database: ten year’s worth of documenting Eastern European monuments from Darmon Richter, via Present /&/ Correct

clip-art: an appreciation of the medium, discontinued from the Microsoft Office suite of programmes in 2014

clean-up operation: Boyan Slat’s system of floats (previously) designed to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is to deploy soon

86ed: a look, in increasing weirdness, that led to the security clearance questionnaire of a politician running for office being leaked to her opposition

globus gömb: a vintage Hungary Rubik’s globe puzzle

balustrade: a series of the spiral staircases of Budapest by Balint Alovits 

may day: a visual lesson on why and how work is celebrated differently in the US (previously)

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secret garden: Google Earth leads a team of researchers to an untouched mountaintop rainforest in Mozambique

ultima thule: on its encore mission, Pluto probe beams back its first image of its next target

comnenian period: an exploration of Byzantine architecture from draughtsman Antoine Helbert, via Kottke

amos rex: a subterranean museum opens in Helsinki  

seven points of articulation: a visual history of the past four decades of LEGO Minifigs (previously)

drainspotting: a tour of the manhole covers (elsewhere) of Massachusetts  

hyperpolyglot: what the people who’ve mastered dozens of languages can teach us, via Digg

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subraum: underground photography from Gregor Sailer—via Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals

hängematte: an inviting house of hammocks in Vienna’s museum district

this too shall pass: inspired biodegradable packaging for foodstuffs

audio artefacts: Conserve the Sound curates disappearing noises of obsolete technology

demersal zone: oceanographers discover a hidden deep water reef off the Carolina coast in the Atlantic, via Slashdot

your show of shows: the New York Times shares a nice tribute to academic and playwright Neil Simon 

drachenfest

H and I took a drive in the country and it was not materialising as a day for exploration, it seemed, but just on the Thürginer side of the border we saw that they were holding a kite (Drache, from the Chinese tradition) festival with some professional models and pilots on the Dachsberg.

We stopped and watched for a while and the sea creatures dove and undulated as if they were swimming. People were flying their kites in the open field on the hill’s slope below a former East German border patrol tower that’s been conserved alongside a peace cross (das Weltsfriedenkreuz).