fictophone

The editors at Public Domain Review are treated to the grand tour of the Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments by its curators and invite us to tag along.
One might suppose that instruments never created either due to impracticality, impossibility or cruelty (there are sadistic specimens of an organ and a clavier that were to produce notes and chords from the torture of humans and cats respectively) would not have much truck with with reality or cultural currency, having not existed, but there is an interesting under-current championed by writers throughout several ages that use hypothetical horns, woodwinds and acoustic chambers as a philosophical lens and prevision all manner of things, from electronic music, music therapy and technological progress, just as much ones you’d encounter in the orchestra pit.

oh weal, oh woe and quid pro quo, so little time, so much to know

Via the peripatetic par excellence Dangerous Minds, comes this interesting and provocative book review from the Guardian of the encroaching post-capitalist era that’s taking place almost despite of ourselves. I hope against hope that the prognosis and synthesis is correct—that it is time for us to be utopians and maybe no longer be ingrates to the comforts that we’ve inherited that past visionaries would have surely deemed realised. The capitalists system is failing us and will moreover be our downfall if not more carefully mitigated, but it seems that no lessons from the distant or recent past have made much of an impression. I fear that revolutionaries and reformers have woefully underestimated the insidiously opportunist and adaptive nature of their opponent. The wealth gap, the disparity between rich and poor, is a significant measure—but I am starting to think that it is only that, a measure.

While certainly a problem and has enabled modern day slavery and serfdom to continue and grow unabated, I wonder if computer-generated alternatives, the sharing economy won’t just be creating more capitalist-controls in different guises. The creation of markets always results in winners and losers. Something that’s very dear but dangerously under-priced I think might be the engine that keeps the old system of avarice going. Governments and corporate influence through lobbying comes cheap and it’s the working classes and environment that pay. Peddling a little influence has led to massive deregulation and a virtual defanging of those mechanism meant to protect those loser disadvantaged by emerging markets, off-shoring, outsourcing, tax avoidance (that makes the position of the scoff-laws stronger) and most importantly, in my opinion, the dismantling and privatisation of public institutions and services contracted out. The battlefield is littered with all sorts of examples that have resulted in monumental miscarriages of the public good—from mercenaries in Iraq to the horrendous response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans—but the phenomenon perhaps most disturbing and far-reaching consequences is the breakdown of the educational system with rising tuition costs, for-profit colleges, defunding public schools, and sponsored educational material. Without even addressing the hardships and degradations that teachers face, the students themselves are matriculating into a system where competition goes unquestioned (because the classes are over-priced but obviously will deliver the same riches in kind upon graduation) and critical thinking is discouraged in favour of obsequiousness and thus the system is perpetuated. What do you think? Can the Sharing Economy run rings around old-money or will computers simply put us all out of our jobs?

5x5

sweded, swissted: minimal, moderne typographic calling cards for punk bands

shibui: fourteen Japanese words that make any language complete

trollface: candid photographs of the Der Fuhrer deemed unfit for public release

29 dresses: a look at the life and career of Bohemian designer Emilie Flöge who costumed Gustav Klimt’s models

the sphinx without a riddle: fascinating and comprehensive article on the Egyptian landmark

noonie, noonie, noonie, noo

For your viewing pleasure, here is the Typewriter Tip Tip Tip! sequence from the 1970 Merchant Ivory Bollywood musical Bombay Talkie—nearly as good as anything Busby Berkley could dream up.  *** Updated video montage.

noble lies oder lüggenpresse

Madame Chancellor is getting quite the armchair beating and baiting lately. Not to say that her response to an unscripted plea was measured in reducing a young girl to tears or that her views of marriage equality—rather matrimony as defined, are either correct or callous, instead those interpretations are reflective (and very much so, I think) of the realities of European Union bureaucracy—unable to act on any resolution without unanimity that failed to address a Greek tragedy that was not inevitable (another source of vitriol, deservedly or not)—and populism, both broad and narrow. For economic reasons, Germany enjoys this strange type of mandate that’s lost on other member governments, whose politicians—despite the will of the public that they represent—are instead beholden to the Union and regimes and coalitions topple over curried-disfavour.
This encounter with a young refugee was unexpected and I believe was conducted in a human and sympathetic manner—insofar as possible, but maybe politicians ought not stop seeking out such photo-opportunities to portray themselves as kind aunties and uncles and instead pledge to do more to build prospects in the places where these asylum-seekers come from, but was constrained by her support-base, the polls. I bet the Chancellor was ashamed of herself but by the way she snapped at the minder, I think she didn’t care much for her image at that moment and did not try to backtrack. In the domestic arena, there would be a revolt among her political partners, not as an excuse or being an apologist for such attitudes, and alienation of a substantial voting bloc if she expressed more progressive views on gay marriage. As with an immigration policy which is at its core quite accommodating and is attacked for being too liberal, the Chancellor’s positive reforms towards greater tolerance and equality have really been in-stead with much of the rest of the world, but some factions become fixated on the word marriage—which the twice-married Chancellor reserved as a matter of choice and to placate her party. The same EU that’s the Sword of Damocles hanging over Greece could also dictate, by the same mechanisms or lack thereof, that marriage equality be universal among members. What do you think? Might does not confer sole entitlement to the exercise of democracy—or the illusion of such—and it becomes the tyranny of the privileged and useful.

5x5

sapience: engineering students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute may have created a trio of robots that are self-aware, tested with a proverbial riddle adapted for machines

geoponica: fascinating look at underground urban agriculture and its potential for growth

banishment: Atlas Obscura explores historical locations for exiled leaders with contemporary equivalents

bubbler: interesting survey of the history of drinking fountains and what their decline means, via Super Punch

for the queen to use: gorgeous vintage science fiction and space images from the British Library, via the Everlasting Blort