4x4

no bueno: a look at the evolution of the logo of a Tex-Mex-ish fast food chain via Super Punch

pleasure capsule: the pimped out Panthermobile, from the creator of KITT and the Bat Mobile, is finally street-legal—via Nag on the Lake

omoshirogara: the private propaganda kimonos en vogue from 1900 to 1945

ur-fascism: an examination of the key features of totalitarianism

scare-quotes

If you’re gullible enough to believe the so-called experts in their Ivory Towers, Oxford dictionaries has pronounced “post-truth” as the international word of the year. 

The formal definition for the adjective that beat out the terms alt-right, Brexiteer, and hygge and the polar opposite of last year’s honouring of an emoji reads “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Though seemingly born of the moment, post-truth has been in parlance since 1992 essay addressing the Iran-Contra Affair and the first Gulf War.

dead letter office or dashing off to the post

Listening to an editor bemoaning the lost art of correspondence whilst trying to turn his readership’s interest to the epistolary novel—or rather the collected letters of a particular personality, I agreed that there’d be little merit in or love for a compendium of tweets or the bulk of emails—although there’s plenty of room for sentiment and composure there that I imagine has as much to do with legacy as the fact that one’s retrospective isn’t immediately served up with each engagement.
I did, however, find myself contending the assertion that the letter is wholly unassailable. Not because there are notable exceptions in our untaxing communications landscape since it’s always a personal choice whether or not to devote more or less energy in sharing a story, but rather due to another format for whom the rumours of death are at least slightly premature strikes me as proof that the art form is not yet moribund, and I’m given to wonder if the lowly blog isn’t somehow the successor to sending out missives. Not quite journalism and not quite a diary, maybe this hybrid, a bit abused and sometimes the subject of ridicule for being outmoded and without the audience shares of other social media, is letter writing transmogrified. The updates and outreach of that the retired format is of course not the exclusive reserve of blogging but I think that maybe the notion behind crafting something—hopefully thoughtful and worthwhile for both author and audience—well compliments the deferred satisfaction of reaching across time in penning a letter, even one that goes undelivered.

don’t know much geology, don’t know much psychology

In Chichibu Japan there is a lovingly curated collection of stones that resemble faces—and not just your usual run-of-the-mill pareidolia either but specific celebrities—amassed over a half a century.
I know that the forces that shape evolution and stuff that looks like things is very different and human agency is limited—though bias is magnified—in both, but taking a brief tour of this museum made me think of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and his particularly convincing though gentle as one arrives at the conclusion all on one’s own of the fishermen and the samurai crabs of the Heike clan. Haunted by superstition and ancient lore, people were compelled to toss back any of their catch whose shell resembled a human face and over the centuries, human intervention helped select for this trait. What do you think? It’s interesting how we will automatically prise out patterns.

first we take manhattan, then we take berlin

The Local’s Spanish edition has a nice tribute for Leonard Cohen that explores the extent to which Spanish poetry and music influenced his own.
Radical futurist poet and playwright (Salvador Dalí was his set designer) Federico García Lorca who was executed for sedition at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War lends Cohen’s daughter her given name and made a strong, lasting impression on the artist. Seminal so too was Cohen’s fated encounter with a flamenco guitarist in Montreal who taught him a few chords and awakened something inside. Be sure to visit the link above for more of the story and see Cohen honoured with the prestigious Prince Asturias Award for literature in 2011.

sic transit gloria mundi

Avid photographer and friendly neighbourhood paramedic Chris Porsz of Cambridge- shire sampled much of the local colour nearly four decades hence and framed a sizable collection of stunningly candid images of the people he’d encounter. Amazingly, in these last few years, Porsz has started tracking down his subjects from way back then and convinced them to pose one more time for a new anthology that bridges the intervening decades called “Reunions.”