découpé

It’s hard to stay mad at the internet for long, especially when (via Twisted Sifter) we learn of a sub-reddit dedicated to taking to disparate animated memes and combining them.

utilidors

By way of a new documentary that covers its history and the vision that was far ahead of its time, City Lab introduces us to the space-age utopia that was never realised, a modular, scalable settlement that could accommodate a quarter of a million individuals, conceived by geophysicist and oceanographer Athelstan Spilhaus in the mid-1960s and designated Minnesota Experimental City (MXC).  Aspiring to what EPCOT was originally meant to be Spilhaus’ ambitious plans anticipated the rise of working and shopping remotely and was centred around recycling, energy efficiency and generally minimising mankind’s environmental footprint.
Prohibiting internal combustion vehicles, the compound was to make use of a novel, dual-carriage mass transit network that addressed the last-mile conundrum that continues to vex public transportation and discourages people from taking the bus. MXC, however, proved too revolutionary and support began to flag once Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr (a fellow Minnesotan and avid cheerleader for the project along with architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller) lost his bid for the US presidency to Richard Nixon and locals began picketing the proposed site. It’s sad to think that such a bold departure from toxic urbanisation seems just as unachievable today as it did all those decades ago—and even less so in some places.

onomastique

With the name Kevin too having been an explosively popular choice for a generation of newly reunified Germans as well, we appreciated this examination by French edition of The Local about how expectant parents were infatuated with the Hollywood-propelled but accented version of the name.
Although Kévin appears in the official rolls of recognised prénoms—which dictated, coincidentally, what parents were allowed to name their children up until 1993, two years after the phenomena that so captured the attention of mothers and fathers swept the continent—as the namesake of an Irish saint that was not uncommon in Brittany, the popularity soon faded and this class of like-named boys and their parents became (like in Germany) targets of mild ridicule and derision. The French government, like that of Germany, still retains discretion on what names might be inappropriate and therefore not allowed—which I believe is a sound and appropriate policy and does strike me as an expatriate associated with an American community with babies and young people named Maverick, Voilà, etc. as something highly advisable.

nosce te ipsum

Despite the prevalence, pedigree and seeming verisimilitude and versatility of the maxim, Know thy Self, Professor Bence Nanay writes it is a potentially dangerous directive, making a pretty persuasive case that we’re wilfully blind to the gradual changes in our personalities, tastes and characters and sticking with the self-same choices and preferences, which are importantly within our control but yet may be misinformed or no longer complimentary to the person we’re becoming, may help perpetuate this delusion.
Not that there are no consistent qualities and abiding principles in our lives, but holding tenaciously on to a self-image that may not be an accurate reflection of oneself is a potential source of tension.  It is also impetus to keep doing things that one does not particularly care for and even resents, because we mentally shroud the contradiction with cognitive dissonance that makes us think our choices are own rather than a resigning to habit because we’ve squandered all of our energies on self-censorship and keeping up appearances. What do you think? We especially liked the quote from André Gide on how “A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.” We ought to strive to reacquaint ourselves with ourselves daily to avoid repairing to vanity and pandering.