mikronárod

Earlier this month, on a small but serviceably large (bigger than the Vatican and Monaco) patch of terra nullius, a disputed area along the borderlands of Serbia and Croatia, an enterprising Czech politician founded a new micronation called Liberland.
Although the fledgling nation is not officially recognised by any traditional legitimising authority yet, the boundaries are already on the map thanks to a concerted marketing and branding offensive that rivals those of many well established countries. The profile from Quartz Magazine features links to Liberland’s extensive virtual presence with designs to have a permanent, physical presence in the near future. Given the successful organising charter and faith of volunteers and aspiring citizens, it makes one wonder what constitutes a state and who else might be able to pull it off.  Do the trappings and symbols of state confer statehood alone?  What do you think?

apple-core, baltimore

Quartz Magazine, punctuated with the hashtag #History-Matters, presents, I think, an important respectful overview of the dynamics behind urban decay and the general neglect and disdain of white-flight and corporate-flight that has led to the creation of this tense situation, simmering out of mind for decades. Just as onlookers find it incredulous that residents would burn and loot their only grocery outlet in their neighbourhood, no one is asking the more fundamental question why there was only an overpriced drug store and not a grocery market available to them and no one asks why the world is now captivated but hardly concerned with the long history of the city’s decline and the decisions that undermined its institutions and infrastructure.

five-by-five

street-legal: a look at Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion

submitted for your approval: Futility Closet’s clever podcast episodes

escourt-service: pretend to be whisked along by a mysterious companion with the Selfie Arm

blank-on-blank: rediscovered 1972 animated interview with Ray Bradbury

backpedalling: learning to ride a backwards bicycle requires one to unlearn how to ride a normal one

casual dining

Heard on National Public Radio, I learnt of this quirky and humourous blog project to document the demographic shift in fast-food culture by charting the demise and repurposing of one of the more recognisable architectural follies of a certain franchise. The standard blue-print of a Pizza Hut with its distinctive mansard roof is hard to hide once the former proprietors vacate the building and it is masked by new tenants, ranging from other fast-food restaurants, chapels, car-rentals, to mortuaries.

It’s certainly strange to consider how the failure of one market can be mapped due to the figure it limns—though most new franchises are installed in non-custom places now, and in part, I guess the lovely ruins are testament to the shift in diners’ taste, preferring to order-in rather than dining out. Also, while the popularity of pizza is not exactly on the wane, I suppose people are more health conscious—or at least make the requisite noise to pretend to be—what with the campaign against gluten or the reversal on fats, eschewing buffets, etc. and that’s a factor as well. Though it’s far too late for these transformed huts, with charging awareness and created taboos, there also seems (of late at least) a certain degree of fetishising the forbidden that one sees in the deep-fried anything and everything, the glutinous portmanteau of the cronut or making vaping something fashionable but maybe such fixations will make for a neo-classic revival for such red roofs.

bridges and islands

To alleviate traffic congestion, a law-maker in the State of Washington is proposing lashing together some retired aircraft carriers as sort of a permanent pontoon bridge. If it materialises, it would be a keen enough idea on its own but the suggestion has caused the brilliant author at BLDGblog to launch into some really delightful, signature brainstorming. By leaps and bounds, he imagines how the ships’ hulls could become a unique business environment for all sorts of ventures and more akin to the bustling bridges of the Middle Ages and not just a way to unsnarl one’s commute.