5x5

ration card: the wartime UK version of Monopoly had to make concessions to the fighting effort

cosmopolitan: beautiful overhead views of world cities

pet sounds: Cornell University digitised their huge library of animal calls and bird-song

sakoku or ttp: nineteenth century Japanese woodcuts of exotic, visiting Americans after America insisted on diplomatic ties

isobar: Stockholm airport invites passengers to experience the weather at their destination before departing

pequod

Via the Everlasting Blort comes a really keen vignette from the archives of Brain Pickings on an almost two year project undertaken by artist Matt Kish to illustrate, page by page, the entirety of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; or, The Whale using mixed media and found canvases in the form of discarded paperbacks. Melville himself labored almost to the day the same amount of time to author his great work. There’s an evocative gallery of artwork to peruse that really stirs the observer to reflect on all the complex themes and motifs aloft in that story—the action of the drama contrasted with the poetic mediation that defies the usual literary architecture.

5x5

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

psychobabble

The resplendent blog Mind Hacks confronts us with an elucidating list of fifty terms native to the industry—call them jargon or what you will—that ought to be avoided or especially refined from the way they are popularly featured and consumed. This catalogue of “maven” vocabulary is rather like the presumptuous way that connoisseurs describe, experientially and lusciously, the act of wine tasting, “velvety while a bit twiggy with a hint of brisk after-shave and the surprising suggestion of a soggy bonnet.” This warrant to speak of a nip in such rarefied language is a direct inheritance of the idea of dining libations as a medicinal complement to balance one’s humours, unsurprisingly like the prognoses and diagnoses of mental and behavioural conditions that fall under the protection of a certain ægis. Some words are better put back in the cabinet.  Such florid and expressive terms of the cognizanti that try to gain a purchase on unique cases ought not be banished from polite mention but should be used to forward dialogue on the common currency.