playthings

It seemed a much simpler when toys came to life by dint of their personalities and one’s imagination and whatever extra features or accessories were attached were just bonuses.
The pretend of yesterday, however, is approaching companionship and one has to wonder what it means to educate and then abandon for the next entertainment. Perhaps it is this ability to learn and keep us engaged that makes it less likely for us to move on—since I hope that we learn too that play is not just some frivolity that one matures out of. By the same token, we ought not to resign what we create to the same indenture as our own formative freedoms sometimes unobligingly enters into through circumstance and necessity (and cannot escape) and not make present toys tomorrow’s involuntary labour-force. What do you think? Not to be too serious over matters of fun and games, but our Yoda would indulge some philosophic-sparring and it does seem far less palatable to be trafficker than to be trafficked oneself and to be making inferiors with superior capabilities.

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.

major arcana

Despite the banal and unsurprising nature of the cards we are dealt by our daily social media digest, it’s still nonetheless exciting to forecast one’s fortune and fate. One clever illustrator from Italy named Jacopo Rosati, we were introduced to by Dangerous Minds, obliges with a collection of tarot cards that make up a narrative of the typical user experience.

in vino veritas (in aqua sanitas)

As a follow-up to last year’s reprinting of a most sublimely surreal cookbook, the German publishing house TASCHEN will re-issue Salvador Dalí’s liberally illustrated field guide to wine grapes, viticulture and history, The Wines of Gala, which was last in print in 1978. The artist’s pairings were emotional driven and classified his wines based on how the contrasted or complimented his moods, with groupings like the Wines of Generosity and Wines of the Impossible.