do you think there will ever be a time when you’ll be hung as a thief?

On this anniversary of the first day of recording sessions in 1965 at Columbia studios in New York City with the artist producing “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and Subterranean Homesick Blues,” we’re directed towards Bob Dylan’s interview and press-conference held at the end of that same year after going electric. Much more at the link above.

aaron brrr, sir

Via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake (whose site is sporting a sleek new look), we are treated to this list of snow-plough names of the vehicles in the Michigan state Department of Transportation fleet—see also. Visit the links above and tag yourself.

resegregation

In 1995 during a convocation delivered at Howard University, author Toni Morrison, as a preamble to a future when our fears have been serialised, our rights sold and sloganised and our ideas ‘market-placed,’ addressed the creeping, gradual nature of fascism and the inuringness of America’s particular brand of racism and apartheid Construct an internal enemy, as both focus and diversion.

Isolate and demonize that enemy by unleashing and protecting the utterance of overt and coded name-calling and verbal abuse. Employ ad hominem attacks as legitimate charges against that enemy.

Enlist and create sources and distributors of information who are willing to reinforce the demonizing process because it is profitable, because it grants power and because it works.

Palisade all art forms; monitor, discredit or expel those that challenge or destabilise processes of demonisation and deification.

Subvert and malign all representatives of and sympathisers with this constructed enemy.

Solicit, from among the enemy, collaborators who agree with and can sanitize the dispossession process.

Pathologize the enemy in scholarly and popular mediums; recycle, for example, scientific racism and the myths of racial superiority in order to naturalize the pathology.

Criminalise the enemy. Then prepare, budget for and rationalise the building of holding arenas for the enemy — especially its males and absolutely its children.

Reward mindlessness and apathy with monumentalized entertainments and with little pleasures, tiny seductions, a few minutes on television, a few lines in the press, a little pseudo-success, the illusion of power and influence, a little fun, a little style, a little consequence.

Maintain, at all costs, silence.

Much more to explore at the links above, including the speech in its entireity archived by C-SPAN.

archisuits

Via the always excellent Everlasting Blört, we are directed towards Sarah Ross’ fashions to adapt to hostile architecture and the trend in Los Angeles (and other places—see previously) to install building elements to block people from sitting or lying down, not to discourage loitering or lingering but rather present as incommodious to the unhoused.

eeny, meeny, miney milliters

Via our peripatetic friend, Messy Nessy Chic, we are enjoying this 1978 Schoolhouse Rock! style campaign (from the same creative team) to bring the metric system to United States of America (see also) whose success and legacy presently is dubious at best.

night stalker

Based on the then unpublished Jeff Rice novel The Kolchak Tapes, the ABC Movie of the Week, airing on this day in 1972, features Darren McGavin as an investigative reporter researching a spate of murders in Las Vegas, coming to suspect that the serial killer is a vampire. The most popular made-for-television-movie to date and spawning a miniseries and a sequel for the franchise, remembering this event in TV history, shared by some seventy-five million households in the US, inspired Chris Carter to later create The X-Files.

6x6

curiosity cabinet: virtually explore the museum house of Sir John Soane (previously)—via Things Magazine  

glitchy terrain: users and clients report bugs in fly-over features (see previously)—via Super Punch  

debate club: let’s thrash out these ongoing arguments once and for all  

low, heroes, lodger: a look at the Eastern European literature that influenced David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy and beyond  

medico-mechanical gymnastics: the nineteenth century work-out regiment of Gustave Zander—see previously 

 ex libris: a look into some of the great libraries of Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Austria

think different

Developed in great secrecy under code name Project Purple, the first generation of the iPhone—given the retronym 2G to establish its place in the lineage among some thirty-three different models made, Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs introduces the public to the concept of the revolutionary, universal smart mobile phone on this day in 2007 during a keynote address during the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Models would go on sale at the end of June, on the anniversary of the first trials of the Apple I by Steve Wozniak back in 1975.