we are a culture, not a costume

The discovery of a class of bacteria—which are everywhere, in the soil and among our beneficial gut population—which can only be described as vampiric took place several years ago and while I am not sure what direction the research has taken, this strain seems especially timely given that one local hospital was found to be harbouring Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA oder Multiresistante Krankenhauskeime) in some of its wards.
News like that incited a panic among some of the clientele, battle-weary from the likes of Ebola—even though it’s endemic to most treatment facilities already and all would forego the negative publicity. These Micavibrio aeruginosavorus and related specimen called Vampirovibrio chorellavorus are purely predatory and cannot live even in nutrient-rich environments, shunning them, unless there are some other hapless bacteria to feed on—making their study rather difficult since the sample is always a contaminated one, latching on to their victims with enzyme fangs and sucking the life out of them. Subsequent culturing made pathologists hopeful that a living, evolving antibiotic agent could be used to combat those familiars (coming from the word midge, a nigget is a small insect—perhaps like Jiminy Cricket or a flea-circus—that was used as a witch’s minion, and I bet that the same terminology could apply to tinier things like germs) of our own drug abuse and hygiene.

6x6

onionoise: the Viennese Vegetable Orchestra performs Radioaktivität from Kraftwerk

placebo button: expecting more underneath the casing of a fire alarm

one teaspoon of unicorn tears: excerpts from absurdly challenging gourmet recipes

maltese falcon: interesting abstract of ancient forgeries

free-range: a look at different fruits, vegetables and nuts growing in the wild, via Presurfer

washington, this is kallstadt calling: Spiegel International visits candidate Trump’s ancestral family home in a village near Mannheim—the same place whence the Heinz dynasty hails

ringxiety or push-notification

I don’t often keep my mobile device in such close proximity to my person so as to make it an extension of my senses (say, something akin to an artist’s paint brush or a seeing impaired person’s walking stick), but sometimes when I am marching along with my phone in my bag, I’ll get false alarms that cause me to pause and check, only to find it was in my imagination.
This happens especially I think when I’m anxiously expecting a call, and I always feel a bit silly. I knew I was not quite alone in suffering from this phenomenon but had no idea that it was common enough to earn a forum, clinical studies and even a name: Phantom Vibration Syndrome. Researchers are not quite sure what causes these ghostly cues but most believe they are harmless, tiny muscle spasms that would otherwise go unnoticed (perhaps like a nascent version of Restless Leg Syndrome, which apparently becomes insufferable for some people and dreaming, twitchy dogs) that are at an amplitude sympathetic to the subsonic silent mode of our phones. Such prompts also indulge our sense of separation anxiety as these same calls and responses are our social towropes that connect us to the wider world. What do you think? Have you been haunted by phantom vibrations?

sensory reparation

Dangerous Minds has a brilliantly curated piece on the psychedelic architects of late 1960s Vienna, Hans-Rucker-Co, who first appeared on the scene and began long quite long and distinguished careers (with installations and buildings in Kassel and Düsseldorf and long-time champions of design as the founding members of the documenta exposition) with their radical Mind Expanding Programme that aimed to place wearers, bearers and inhabitants in altered states of being through transformative environments. Their creations are iconic and certain the architecture that was their later legacy was not mainstream, but it strikes me as wonderfully anachronistic that these individuals came together and developed their art first around this project. In addition to these “fly head” helmets that atomized one’s outlook, be sure to check out the mind-expander loveseat, ball pit for adults and the primogenitor of the voyeuristic fishbowl experience in Oasis Number 7 and more at the link.