users are losers

Commissioned by the US National Crime Prevention Council as a mascot to raise public awareness on personal safety and security in 1979 and named the following July in a nation-wide contest, McGruff the Crime Dog has waged a on balance a helpful outreach campaign. Though best remembered for his message to prevent kidnapping and taking common-sense precautions to deny crime the chance to occur in the fist place, McGruff was also enlisted to discourage bullying and as on this 1986 gem of an album below, the use of drugs.

macroalgae

Instead of the usual plastic cups or bottles of water offered to parched runners, for this past London Marathon participants were handed out some thirty thousand gulps of a sports drink encapsulated (previously) in a seaweed-based edible container. Among the newest wonder material, designers and the industry are just beginning to appreciate the potential of seaweed as a sustainable bio-plastic which, incorporated dietarily, can also combat the bio-genesis of methane.

walpurisnacht

Our faithful chronicler reminds that on this night, the date shared with many other momentous occasions including the annexation of Hawaii (1900), the fall of Saigon (1975) and the coming out of the tv character of actor and comedian Ellen DeGeneres (1997), Beltane Eve is observed (previously here and here) in the northern hemisphere, coopted locally as the syncretion of the day before the feast day of Saint Walpurga, an abbess and Anglo-Saxon missionary from Devonshire to the Frankish Empire.
Converts were encouraged to pray to her for intercession and protection from witchcraft—though Walpurga’s patronage was restricted to hydrophobia, odd given the witch connection, and sailors in distress. Though there’s a lot of regional variation in the way the holiday is kept across northern Europe, common customs include bonfires—a ceremonial burning and/or celebration of the diabolical and a sort of sealing off the portal, marking the last opportunity that the supernatural can cross over from the nether world, until Halloween.

6x6

attention kmart shoppers: an audio archives of in-store music and sales promotions from the late 1980s and early 1990s

it’s dangerous to go alone! take this: a scholarly exploration of the psychology of Legend of Zelda franchise

as seen on tv: a collection of fine products from Obvious Plant—previously

the medium is the mess: antiquarian JP Ptak’s card-catalogue of Outsider Logic

the legend of the visnaga: a turn of the century confectionary craze nearly wiped out barrel cactus of the southwestern US

afghan twin: some interesting musings on the unsounded market in sonic camouflage 

blind house

We’re directed to an exhibition from artists Paloma Muñoz and Walter Martin whose collaboration has produced a disquieting portrait of human habitation with the windows seamlessly edited away.
This subtle erasure has profound affects on perception and prompts a conversation and reflection on the nature of screen time, how windows are made for looking in as well as looking out and how we’re to understand and uphold our private sphere with so much voluntarily given to public inspection—though what we put on display is not always the invitation to repackage it and sell it back to us at a premium. Continue touring the exhibit at the link above.

on diversion

Via the always excellent Nag on the Lake, we are treated to the brilliant still life photographic compositions informed by the upholstery found on board bus lines in London (previously and see also here and here) of Emilia Cocking. Her extensive portfolio focuses on built environments and recognising and appreciating those intersectional coincidences of finding art in the everyday. Much more to explore at the links above.