8x8

i’m ready for my close-up: a selection of vintage Hollywood test shots

emeco: a look at the indestructible chair commissioned by the US navy in 1940 that could withstand the blast of a torpedo 
columbo: US ambassador to the Holy See, Callista Gingrinch, returns a pilfered letter penned by Christopher Columbus to the Vatican Library

fjallkona: Iceland picks a drag queen to be its national personification, the Lady of the Mountain

flare-up: periodically the Sun erupts

jankó layout: an alternative keyboard to the traditional piano format

pitchforks: main-stream media is ignoring the protests of poor peoples in the US

x-ray vision: Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers harness ambient radio signals and WiFi to see through walls

signs and symptoms

Though yet to implement as far as we know, back in 2016 an exploitative ride-hailing company (previously) applied for a patent for non-invasive artificial intelligence technology that would be enlisted to distinguish drunk passengers from sober ones. What do you think about that? In theory through the passive screening process, the company would hope to mitigate undesired outcomes.

cantiche

Though well within our rights to read Purgatory and the Inferno described in Dante Alighieri’s epic poem The Divine Comedy (previously) as metaphorical there have been nonetheless earnest and noble attempts, as Open Culture informs, from the Renaissance to modern times to diagram and map out Dante’s decent, guided by the Roman poet Virgil, into the lands of the departed. Check out more charts and infographics that illustrated Dante’s vision of Hell at the link above.

deep state

The always brilliant Nag on the Lake directs our attention to a very interesting Cold War chronicle, an office artefact that I’m regretting not having taken up and created during my own tenure, something reminiscent of medieval manuscripts or the Bayeux tapestry. Click the images to enlarge.

An anonymous general schedule (GS) analyst and conscientious bureaucrat like myself working at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas back in the 1980s during the Reagan-era illuminated his government-issued desk calendar (something which I usually rejected for reasons of unnecessary clutter and not necessarily speaking to my organisational skills) noting momentous occasions, personal achievements and airing his grievances with higher headquarters. Find more months in detail documenting the decade at the link above.