unchartered

Inspired by a transcontinental bicycle trip, we discover via Kottke, covering the US and Canada in a big loop, artist Peter Gorman has created a series of what he describes as barely maps, remixing memories of intersections, boundaries, city layouts, empty spaces and other inventions and interventions of civil engineering. While these minimalist maps may have relinquished some of their value as a guide, they certainly still convey the iconic quirks of the familiar—like the patterns one conjures out of stellar constellations, as Gorman depicts state metropolises relative to each other in the stars. More to explore at the links above.

6x6

the voyage home: studying whale communication for its own sake and as a gateway to talk to alien life

new car smell: the odour that’s a premium for American customers does not enjoy universal appeal 

the midnight parasites: a surreal 1972 animated short by Yōji Kuri set in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (previously)—an alternate source

notes on a place: visual artist Kimmo Metsaranta helps us appreciate architecture’s unnoticed corners and angles

casting out demons: US priests find themselves fielding more and more requests for exorcisms

😂: a Swedish word with a quite broad regional variation

phileas fogg

Though a far more serious investigative journalist earning her credentials for her undercover exposés on working conditions in factories and mental institutions, reporter and foreign correspondent Nellie Bly (the nom de plume of Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman) was dispatched on this day in 1889 on a round-the-world voyage—with only two-days’ notice, to match or best the record established by the Jules Verne novel.
Editors at Bly’s newspaper had been contemplating this sort of publicity race (at Bly’s suggestion) for some time and the last-minute dash materialised once a competing New York publication announced that they’d be sending out their writer Elizabeth Bisland also on a quest to circumnavigate the globe—but in the opposite direction, westward-bound and then steaming across the Pacific.
A missed connection in England ultimately cost Bisland the contest, with Bly returning triumphant (only informed of her competitor by the time she arrived in Hong Kong) in New York after seventy-two days. Bly’s sponsorship by a daily newspaper rather than a monthly magazine as Bisland with constant coverage and a prize on offer for the reader who could guess the date and time of her return was also a motivating factor for the intrepid traveller.  Bisland finished four-and-a-half days later, both adventurers beating the benchmark set by Verne.

city hopper

Though there’s not yet a projected date for the inaugural journey yet, plans are well underway for the first Hyperloop route (previously) in Europe, linking Amsterdam’s Schipol with Frankfurt am Main airport with commissions already being tendered for the design of hub city stations for the movement of people as well as goods.
Moving at nearly the speed of sound, the carriages will be able to cross the four hundred-fifty kilometre distance in under one hour with intervening stops in Bonn, Köln, Düsseldorf, Eindhoven, den Bosch and Utrecht not only offsetting a significant amount of pollution but also revolutionising business and leisure travel and our approach to commuting as the network expands across the continent.

transit hub

Though quite the committed walker myself, I’ve never quite mustered the occasion for the sort of point to point travel on foot from terminal to downtown that Ian Rose has developed into a rather intriguing pastime, sharing his routes and results—as we learn from Nag on the Lake and Things Magazine.
Ages ago I recall out of obstinance walking from Marco Polo airport to Pisa but that was only about an hour’s walk under relatively pedestrian friend conditions, and ages before that being told by a cab driver that he wasn’t licensed to take passengers to the airport servicing Havana and stopped on a parallel road and was told to dash through the intervening field of sugar cane to reach the airport. We don’t fly very often but do pass Frankfurt Flughafen on a pretty regular basis and I’ve wondered about those seemingly hard-to-access areas and industrial estates not meant for human perambulation. I think that this bears some further investigation.

when life gives you lemons

Derived ultimately from the Arabic word for swindler, mafioso did not necessarily carry the negative connotations on the island of Sicily where it took on the qualities of swagger and fearlessness and the mafia itself arose, as presented quite fascinatingly by Æon Magazine, due at least in part to the success of another Arabic transplant, the lemon.
The unification of Italy (previously Sicily was ruled by a Bourbon dynasty and the residents of the island probably viewed the mainland as just another in a long succession of colonial powers) intersected with the medical insight that citrus would prevent scurvy in sailors on long ocean voyages and translated to a huge windfall for those who kept orchards on the island. More and more groves were planted to keep up with demand and in order to prevent loss of the valuable fruit through theft, guards were employed to supplement the unreliable or non-existent defence that local police or the courts could provide. Eventually such protection, merited or otherwise, became customary with a growing cut of the proceeds going to wardens who had established themselves as fixtures of the marketplace and de facto authority.

danza de la lluvia

Apparently not contended with contributing to the respiratory distress of millions by manipulating its emissions data, one German automotive manufacturer operating in Cuautlancingo in the Mexican state of Puebla has decided to go full on evil mad scientist with a weather-control machine.
The plant (the largest outside of Germany) employed sonic cannons to disrupt the formation of hail, which threatens to ruin the shiny new paint jobs of cars made there. Local farmers complain of the practise saying it has exacerbated drought conditions and ruined their harvest. Developed over a century ago and mostly used to protect crops from hail damage, scientists are skeptical if the sonic cannons have any effect at all, intended or otherwise. For its part, the automobile manufacturer is reaching out to the community and pledges that the disruptors, which were apparently on stand-by at all times, will only be operated manually as weather forecasts indicate and the company will be hanging a protective netting over its lot as a long-term solution.

seetroën

Via Weird Universe, we discover what’s purported to by the first spectacles that help to recalibrate and re-orient the senses and reduce incidents of motion sickness and vertigo through a meniscus of flowing liquid that is interpreted by the brain as level ground—introduced by French automobile manufacturer Citroën.
It’s a clever idea that apparently works, but it also strikes me as finding a remedy for the intolerance for reading or consulting one’s devices while in a moving vehicle to which a bit of nausea seems like a natural and healthy consequence. From the Greek for seasickness, the feeling arises as a defence against having accidentally eaten neurotoxins, eliciting what the brain understands as hallucination, feeling motion but not seeing it, and encourages one’s stomach to reject what was last put into it. That said, I know others suffer from it acutely, over screen-time or not, and hope that they can get some relief from these glasses.

living daylights

The European Commission is soliciting feedback on the option to end the requirement for harmonisation across the EU for daylight savings time, citing the potential for negative health consequences caused by the bi-annual change and prompted by Nordic members who’ve dutifully sprung forward and fell back despite the fact that no hour of sunshine at these higher climes is won or lost.
Railway and telegraph networks necessitated synchronisation and standardisation in the late eighteenth century and the concept of adjusting the clocks with the seasons was first proposed by an insect collector and astronomer (and frequent train passenger) named Charles Hudson in 1895 and was not implemented until the spring of 1916 with the German Sommerzeit as a way to conserve coal during the war. The current EU compact dates to 1980, in response to the energy crisis of the 1970s, and if repealed, the change wouldn’t be automatically nullified, just the participation of each member state. What do you think? Modern time-keeping devices can assuredly handle the changes and dispensing with the ritual will be certainly welcomed by many but time and tide admit politics and identity as well.

post-dated post script: lago benàco

Framed by the edge of the Dolomites—between Venice and Milano—Lake Garda (originally Benacus in Latin, both stemming from the Germanic root for warden and guard) and hewn by glaciers, we found ourselves lured out on the waters for another, extended boat trip that afforded us the chance to see most of the towns and villages along the shore and experience the majestic sweep of the forested foothills that rose steeply into mountains, the Gruppo del Baldo.
We passed camp at Isola San Biagio with Isola dei Conigli (the isle of the rabbits) no longer connected by a land bridge and thus isolating the bunnies. I had wondered about this change since first arriving and noting that one couldn’t walk there any longer and wondering if there was that much more snow melt flowing down into the valley or if before we had just visited at a particularly dry time.   In any case, I was impressed by the efforts of the residents to curb plastic waste by installing rubbish bins exclusive for recycling packaging along side every regular receptacle.
We also inspected the larger Isola de Garda where Francis of Assisi founded a monastery originally in the eleventh century (now marked by a Venetian façade), the promontory of Sirmione with its Veronese defensive castle, the bathing spot at San Felice del Benaco, Torri del Benaco and Salò, once the seat of government of Socialist Italy.
Not long after we docked at the old port in Manerba and returned our boat, there was the sudden and intense onset of a storm that first kicked up a lot of dust into the air and turned the sky a quite peculiar and ominous shade.
The geological history of this region informs very a favourably mild Mediterranean, to include support for citrus fruits, generating winds (i venti—all of which are named for their characteristics) at the mountain tops that rush into the valley, only to return to higher altitudes at the end of the day. I was a little worried about the ducks but they seemed to take to the surf and the rough waters like champions and seasoned veterans—even the babies.
The swans too seemed especially dramatic, staying together and blending in with the white-capped cresting waves and the buoys that bounced around. Protected as we were in the cove, I couldn’t imagine what it might have been like on the open lake. It grew stormy over the next few nights but by morning, all appeared back to normal and the hot, still conditions returned, with hardly a trace of wind or rain.

7x7

and in flew enza: an encyclopaedic investigation into the estimated six-hundred-fifty thousand US deaths—out of fifty million globally—of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, via Kottke’s Quick Links

deconstructivist tendencies: postmodern architectural wonders of the 1970s and 1980s added to the UK’s National Heritage List—according them protected status, via Things Magazine

one year times two: the musical art installations of Trond Nicholas Perry, via ibidem

sundries for the modern workspace: contemplating the function of colour in defining manufacture, learning and healing in 1930s schematics, via Nag on the Lake

let’s try to get our core business right before trying something else: Facebook exploring minting its own cryptocurrency

pneumonic spelunking: a look at Elon Musk’s boring project beneath Los Angeles

dies irae, dies illa: a trio of (possibly not ordained) Catholic priests form a hard rock band in 1974 to broaden their missionary work

6x6

coif: a collection of headshots of alpacas with good hair, via Everlasting Blört 

boring bricks: Elon Musk tunneling operation to sell interlocking building materials made out of excavated dirt

elevation: a documentary from architecture magazine Dezeen on how drones will change urban dwelling

whiter-than-white: chemists engineer a ultra-white non-toxic coating based on the scales of a ghostly scarab, which could make painting roofs and roads white environmentally sensible

pulp fiction: a digital archive of over eleven thousand vintage fantasy, science-fiction and true crime magazines

the fourth plinth: Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz recreates the winged bull-human chimera that guarded the ancient city of Nineveh destroyed by ISIS to be showcased in Trafalgar Square, via the always brilliant Nag on the Lake

6x6

нова нада: the Star Wars saga posters of Soviet Europe (plus a notable knock-off)

treemaps: classic oil paintings pixelated algorithmically

turbofolk: Serbia’s kitschy pop-folk music scene runs counter to  Western stereotypes about alternative lifestyles acceptance in the former Yugoslavia

lunchbox on wheels: former Google engineers create a driverless delivery vehicle to counter the last-mile problem

reasonable accommodation: a US airline declines to allow an emotional support peacock to board a flight

lexical gap: a jury of linguists declare “influencer” to be the German import of the year

locavore or on the growth of plants in closely glazed cases

Writing for the Atlantic, Jen Maylack invites us to reflect on how a seemingly elementary idea, the not-so distant ancestor of the modern terrarium, changed the course of the world—heralding in not only global trade but also the spread of Western colonialism and the spread of invasive species.
As basic as the principle underlying it is the Wardian Case was so revolutionary as to be the realisation of all the past endeavours of the alchemists—achieving a hermetic seal, that is, staving off the advance of time that defines all us mortals—with just as far reaching repercussions albeit in an unexpected form: a self-regulating environment that would capture in microcosm a plant’s natural habitat and perpetuate it at least long enough for it to become a transplant in a botanical garden or another area that afforded similar climes and growing conditions. The invention of the portable greenhouse came about just in 1829 when a physician and garden enthusiast (with a special obsession for ferns), one Dr Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, lamented how London’s polluted air was killing off his prized collection and learned through trial and error that if prepared correctly that the right moisture levels could be maintained within a closed-system, by extension enabling the possibility of long-distance shipping incrementally to our present world of year-around availability fresh fruits and vegetables, regardless of one’s location—which of course have collateral environmental and geopolitical costs associated with them.

take only photographs, leave only footprints

A pun on the way English-speakers used to refer to Volkswagen, abbreviatedly, as veedubs, a company in North Yorkshire is championing the electric, green revolution of the recreation vehicle and camping industry with eDub Trips.
To reduce the impact of the camping trip—ahead of the automotive manufacturer’s pledge to offer alternatively powered vehicles by 2022—eDub is converting classic VW mini-buses into fully electric models and in order to finance further effort, renting out the campers for weekend excursions. As nice and hopeful as the latest advancements in cleaner energy and electric-vehicles are, there’s always the point of return on investment to aspire towards—with presently the amount of pollution generated to build that brand new car won’t ever be balanced out by the tidiness of its performance throughout its lifetime. I’d dare suggest that putting out on the market anything less is just green-washing, but I think what eDub Trips is doing with its modernization campaign represents genuine progress in the right direction.

hms semaphore

One automobile manufacturer recently outfitted a test-pilot as an empty driver’s seat in order to gauge public, man-on-the-street reaction to autonomous vehicles, not so much for the rubbernecking effect that driverless car illicit but rather a means to study how such cars might signal their intentions and how quickly traditional vehicles and pedestrians sharing the road might pick up on that newly minted language. Presently drivers get a lot of mileage out of a tap of the horn or flashing high-beams but apparently a more sophisticated system is needed to interact with human controlled traffic. While some useful data was gleaned off of the stunt, the methodology reportedly was not the best.

ballast and binnacle

An 1815 travel guide to Madeira and the Caribbean is illustrated with a series of supplemental plates that contain sort of a first-mate’s log and the account of parallel trade voyage pictographically—with hieroglyphs, as the author states. These little drawings that capture the day’s events (or lack thereof) is a rather a novel story-telling device for the time and of course prefigure the idea of scripting oneself in emoji. Be sure to visit Public Domain Review at the link above to browse the full volume and to discover more antiquarian delights.

carriage return

Serendipitously, coming across this article in Amusing Planet about the green cabmen’s shelters of London that date back to one particularly blustery morning in 1875 when no cabs could be hailed as all the drivers were hunkered down in a pub (absent any other place to go without leaving their horses unattended) and in no mood to brave the elements keyed us onto what this grey structure might be that we pass downtown on a regular basis.
To remedy the situation and to discourage drink-driving, a group of philanthropists commissioned the building of sheds scattered throughout the city that could house (rather trans-dimensionally, like another London street icon) a dozen drivers and was equipped with a full-kitchen with subsidised meals. Thirteen out of sixty-one original shelters remain and are still in operation and the exclusive reserve of taxi drivers. If Wiesbaden ever had such a hide-away for cabbies, it’s certainly no longer accommodating. See a gallery of the little buildings plus take a peek inside at the link up top.

import/export

On display at the corporate headquarters based in Memphis, Tennessee is by good fortune and foresight the overnight shipping and cargo airline firm Federal Express’ first delivery van, a second generation Ford Econoline van from 1973. Founded in the same year by Fred Smith, confident that time’s value was on an upward trajectory, the company now has the rather redundant title of FedEx Express and more competition from courier services have come on to the scene but the corporation still remains the leader in overnight deliveries—plus had the wherewithal to conserve its humble beginnings. Be sure to visit Just a Car guy at the link above for more automotive wonders.

home improvement

An omnipotent electronic, on-demand retail empire has had its furtive plans to use its fleet of delivery drones (previously) to survey and assess the state of the customer’s abode and garden and recommend fixes—or at least subtly advertise suggested products or services that one might be interested investing in, as Super Punch informs, receive official endorsement in the form of letters patent and the sole intellectual-heir to such fly-bys.
Not only would this buzzing and strafing let one know that the roof over one’s head might be in need of repairs, collusion between marketers and insurance providers might also inflate one’s rates and liabilities accordingly. What do you think? It might also spot dangers early so that catastrophes might be prevented. Convenience has its costs in any case and this development, which seems far more fraught with potential for abuse and manipulation, is following right after the maker of autonomous vacuum cleaners made a pledge not to sell on data the units had gleaned in respect to the layout and manifest of owners’ living spaces.