ny-12

On this day, US election day a half a century ago, not only did Richard Nixon defeat incumbent Democratic vice president and presidential contenders Hubert Humphrey and George C Wallace, Shirley Anita Chisholm (*1924 – †2005)—as depicted here by illustrator and regular contributor to the New Yorker, Kadir Nelson, commissioned in 2008 by the US House of Representatives to posthumously create her official portrait—became the first black woman elected to congress. Serving her constituency in Brooklyn and Queens for seven terms from 1969 to 1983, Chisholm also campaigned for president herself in 1972.

7x7

gooey, crunchy, cheesy, yummy: Pizza: the Musical by Anthony Clune, Sarah Fiete and Eric Tait, via Everlasting Blört

craft master: paint by numbers with Dan Robbins, an appreciation from Nag on the Lake plus lots more to discover

bauhaus 100: Dezeen continues its special series on the upcoming centenary of the art movement with a profile of Walter Gropius

corporate identity: a retrospective look at the design studio of Massimo Vignelli (previously) and cohorts

rock, paper, scissors: agitating militia groups expected to surge at the border present a more dangerous challenge than the refugees

ghastlygun tinies: MAD magazine remixes Edward Gorey’s macabrely doomed children for the era of school shootings, via Boing Boing

the shape of water: vintage illustration of the alien beauty of the nudibranchia (previously here and here)

creative-commons

Open Culture publishes a very open love letter to the US Library of Congress, one the country’s most enduring and non-partisan institutions that ensure peace amongst the stacks and shelves no matter who one’s ideological neighbour is.
The institution’s staff has ensured unfettered access to the knowledge and made available many of its collections before in digital formats but its latest offering, Free to Use and Re-Use, categorised by vast, archival sets from WPA posters to Japanese prints, is a resource sure to occupy one’s time for hours on end. For an institution whose business end is to monitor and police for copyright infringement according to the interpretation of other agencies, it has done the world a pretty good turn in getting out and keeping access open for what should be free and the lien-hold of none.

olfactory bulb

Via Marginal Revolution, we are introduced to artist Sissel Tolaas celebrates the olfactory when the world becomes estrangingly deodorised, enshrining everything that’s visceral and memorable about the often derided sense of smell.
Her brave and unabashed landscapes perfumed with perhaps what we’d as soon forget create a odour distinctive to time and place and craft a unique narrative with each waft—telegraphing specific characteristics that rather defy digitalisation and the usual heraldic shorthand, though our sensibilities seem to shy away from confronting the vulgar without detergent. Tolaas has even crafted a compliment of vials containing bespoke smells never smelt before to break in case of an event that one wants to create an indelible memory for. It’s assuredly a good thing that we must needs be present for the perception that is most immediate and unmitigated to the brain (though whole industries are devoted to building those barriers) and to perform witchcraft, chemistry and biology, unable to elevate ourselves above the miasma that was formerly blamed for all maladies.