sometimes you feel like a nut

6x6

radio goo-goo, radio ga ga: discover songs by country and decade, via the splendiferous Everlasting Blört

subtitle: Emojini analyses images and assigns the appropriate pictorial captions

fail: the internet responds in kind when a doctored photograph is lauded by a big camera company

take me to the renaissance festival anon: report of the world’s largest medievalist congress held in Kalamazoo, Michigan, via the always interesting The Browser

lossless: long departed computer scientist David Huffman not only gave the world data-compression techniques but also applied mathematical origami to all sorts of things, like automobile air-bags

prestidigitate: despite rumours to the contrary, cartoon characters exported to Japan are not given a little finger to show that they are not affiliated with the Yazuka mafia; on The Simpsons, only the hand of God has five digits, via Reddit 

acuity or my way or the highway

Typefaces are important, especially in public-works, and establish a corporate and even a national identity and much unseen thought goes into font design. The iconic typeface of German licence plates, called unromantically DIN 1451, was created to balance visibility with difficulty in altering one’s plates, a J cannot be turned to an I or a 3 into a B.
Moreover signage on roadways has to meet up to exacting uniformity and expected standards. The recent decision of the US government, as Quartz reports, to decommission the use of an artisanal typeface adopted more than a decade ago to return to a previously used one—called “Highway Gothic,” has gotten some quite upset with the bureaucracy. Though the change is being officially spurred by older drivers and poorer legibility from a distance, advocates for the welfare cues embedded in design are seeing this decision as quite a setback. I wonder if it’s the visual acuity of driverless carriages that’s driving this change, like the illerate move on British roadways a few years ago that was an assault on punctuation.

haute couture or are you a good witch or a bad witch

First seen on the equally fabulous Neatorama, we were directed towards an investigation into one of the more benign and be-knighted cults to come out of 1950s California: the Unarians. Siding with Marx that religion is the opium for the masses, the collective’s founder vehemently held that the philosophy of Unarius (an acronym for UNiversal ARticulate Interdimensional Understanding of the Sciences) is a revealed system of thought that flows from an extraterrestrial brotherhood and the transmigration of souls.
The movement spread and boasts a few international chapters as well as the academy in California, which operates to this day—though the Unarians lost some impetus when their predicted first-encounter did not take place in the year 2000, but no one committed suicide over it. It was, however, with the passing of the founder and his wife and partner taking the mantle as Archangel Uriel that things really got ratcheted-up a notch. Under her leadership, pupils began past life regression therapy to repair and gird their karmic energies through elaborate play-acting—called psychodramas—and equally assiduous crafting. If not exactly true to the period, designing and making costumes (like the krewes for Marti Gras and similar spectacles) was also an important component to working through one’s former transgressions. Be sure to visit the links for more outfits that would make Liberace and Lady Gaga seem rather conservative and public-access television footage of some their rites.

tolle tagen

A lot of customs and seasonal trappings have in them stereotypical elements that might cause mild (or grave) offence, like the indeterminate amount of black men that are Sinterklaas’ helpers or the traditional Faschings costumes of the swarthy Middle Easterner wearing a fez, the pirate, the harlot or various spirit animals. Someone innocently brought in these treats for our office’s Prunksitz and with the agonising and the hand-wringing over making the wild abandon of the last days before Lent enjoyable for all, the newly arrived groups of refugees as well, I wonder if such get-ups are still (or were ever) appropriate. What do you think? Are we too worried about aggressions, macro- and micro-? Sensitivity training is something in broad circulation and not without contention.

blonde ambition oder i’m fantastic, made of plastic

Via the resplendent Nag on the Lake comes a look at the less wholesome inspiration for the Barbie franchise.
Barbie’s ingénue, a call-girl from a Hamburg tabloid’s funny-pages, had ambitions but rather than becoming a doctor or a lawyer or an astronaut, the original Lilli character aspired to be a gold-digger and secure herself a sugar-daddy. Nonetheless, Lilli was quite liberated and had a keen fashion sense. The panel’s appeal led to novelty figurines that were marketed to adults, like pin-up girls and gag-gifts for bachelor parties. They also proved to be pretty popular playthings for children though they weren’t intended for that and most parents disapproved. Whilst touring in Europe, one of Mattel’s founding designers brought a few of these biker-bitch Barbies back to the States with her, and having purchased the rights from the German newspaper, began producing Barbie dolls in 1964.