5x5

first rule – don’t talk about fight club: bacterial cock-fighting may lead to new antibiotic therapies, via Dangerous Minds

don’t pay the ferry man: mysterious figuring punting in an Australian lake dressed as an undertaker, traveling via open casket

nightmare of dishpan hands: vintage laundry shaming

disrobed, disarming: 3D printed model of the Venus de Milo allows art history scholars to guess what she might have been doing with her hands

gravity assists: a thoughtful explanation and reflection of the slingshot effect in space propulsion via BLDGBlog 

malkunst oder we’re having a heat-wave, a tropical heat-wave

I have always had a fondness for such murals cast onto the rather monotonous concrete (Beton) façades of buildings—celebrating perhaps a hobby of the owners, industry, religious and regional motifs, hope or hospitality, especially vintage 1960s and 1970s (during the rebuilding boom mainly of the post-war period) for their abstract, modern design—and have used a lot of these images previously, like this homage to pigeon-fanciers or this mosaic on the side of the bank in Bad Karma and many others that I struggle to find as I have not bothered curating them properly.
On the hottest day since a dozen years, when the mercury rose to 40º Centigrade (an unnatural, wilting and disgusting 104° Fahrenheit) we ventured out to have a refreshing dip in a pool in a the nearby village of Schönau.
 Along the way towards the bathing installation (which was quite nice and didn’t feel overly crowded even though everyone else in a twenty kilometer radius had the same idea as us), I noticed quite a trove of such decorations, and I knew that I had to return, despite the unflagging heat, and take a few pictures before the go the way of the Gartenzwerge (lawn gnomes) or church bells (something that people aren’t always sentimental for or even tolerant of) and are torn down or spackled over in the name of progress.

siss boom ba

Just in time for US Independence Day (and probably equally valid for Bastille Day), Mental Floss presents an animated field guide for identifying the various standard effects used in pyrotechnic displays. I never knew that they had specific names, other than “ohh” and “ahh.” The image used of a frozen firework in bloom is a long-exposure image captured deftly by the brilliant photographer David Johnson at a show in Australia with more examples at the link.

manifest destiny

Though the timing and the title of columnist Dylan Matthews’ piece for Vox, ‘Three Reasons Why the American Revolution was a Mistake,’ is perhaps a little overboard and ire-drawing—surely begging commentary that begs whether one actual read the article, it is something that’s worth the read and reflection.

Albeit that the world would be a very different and not necessarily better place if many uprisings and coups d’État, Putsch, pronunciamientos and other peaceful, textured and dyed revolutions had or had not transpired and we can never know, but it is not misguiding to suspect that the universal abolition of slavery might have been a quicker and more peaceful matter had the colonies not seceded—and despite national myth-building, this was very much a motive. The native population too might have received better treatment. The above would be more than reason enough and thirdly, the received politics also goes without saying, that the framework of democracy where no one is de facto illegitimate leads to loggerheads and partisanship. What sort of alternate history can you imagine?

5x5

gazetteer: an interesting and indemnifying collection of global maps

cuisine de rue: an in depth guide to the street specialties of European cities

dragnet, gumshoe: via our friends at Nag on the Lake, the non-profit group Sea Shepard is spearheading a campaign to create sneakers made exclusively from trash dredged from the oceans

moku hanga: Lucasfilm commissioned a master artist to create traditional Japanese woodblocks of the Star Wars saga

opening credits: a tribute to the iconic film title work of Saul Bass