no hypnosis like a mass hypnosis because a mass hypnosis isn’t happening

Part of their growing Dial-a-Song repertoire, “Lake Monsters” by They Might be Giants is set to a cute music video crafted by artist Hiné Mizushima with stop-motion needlepoint and embroidery. The song reminded me of MST3K’s Kaiju Rap. Learn more about the band’s projects and the artist at Laughing Squid and at the links above

offred

More tone-deaf than the spec-script for an all female version of Lord of the Flies, this predictably sexist Sexy Handmaiden Brave Red Maiden Costume really does project the message “I am aware of popular culture, but I don’t understand it” (as one commented) or worse doesn’t care. I’m a bit nauseated and I think it’s in awfully bad taste. What do you think? I recall reading that a cosmetic company pulled its witchcraft starter kits after backlash from the Wiccan community. Maybe together we rally for more refinement from businesses that peddle crudeness.

8x8

deuterocanonical: ranking depictions of Judith beheading Holofernes, via Things Magazine

miami vice: a look inside the Mutiny Hotel where Scarface was filmed

stylite: an investigation into the doctored photograph of an ancient ruin reveals an ascetic tradition

knight industries two thousand: a banjo version of the Knight Rider theme

second skin: special membrane that transforms inanimate objects into multifunctional robots

plosive fricative: in English, counting from zero upwards, one’s lips won’t touch before one million, via Kottke’s Quick Links

biggs is right, i’m never getting out of here: animator Dmitry Grozov creates a brilliant anime trailer for Star Wars: A New Hope

pigpen: researchers isolate the chemical, microbial shadow that accompanies all of us

game of optional goals

Had I not learned otherwise, I would have thought that this alternative reality version, meritocratic of the board game Monopoly was some sort of commission from some No Such Agency to communicate with its field agents but Careers from Parker Brothers was introduced in 1955. In addition to the outer track, there are several internal loops, career paths to try and many more regular opportunities to draw cards of chance and a rather involved scoring system (recorded on a Magic Slate Paper Saver pad) to monitor progress and achieve a sort of work-life balance with a Success Formula of money, fame and happiness. Designed by sociologist, ethnographer and author James Cooke Brown (*1921 - †2000), players could aspire to be an astronaut, farmer or a uranium prospector among other things and landing on the same square as another knocked the first player to “the park bench”—intimating that they were out of work and fallen on hard times. Later versions of the game were adapted to better reflect the cultural milieu.

ye butcher, ye baker, ye candlestick-maker

Public Domain Review features a slim, quirky volume that at first glance seems like eighteenth century pulp fiction but is actually a 1908 light-hearted lament over the modern state of everyday occupations (to wit), satirising a host of old professions with ballads that address contemporary and resonant scourges—like over-regulation, quackery, fake news and copyfight, some perhaps landing a bit too close to home.
Click on the image to enlarge plus a word on the anachronistic use of “ye olde:” it should be and was always properly pronounced with the th sound, Early Modern English employing the now obsolete Old English letter thorn (þ), which in handwritten form could look like a y, especially when used in the scribal abbreviation of the article, the e a sort of superscript. Be sure to visit the link up top for more discoveries from the world’s print archives.

then and now

I regret not encountering this sooner—plus anything I might have done to make International Talk like a Pirate Day more significant than taking a moment to acknowledge the hard and ongoing struggles of women to achieve political parity with Suffrage Day, which is observed on 19 September to mark the passage of the Electoral Bill in 1893 granting women franchise.
Women were not eligible to stand for Parliament until 1919 but saw significant advances in the meantime and during the ensuing decades. To commemorate this one-hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary, female members of the nation’s legislature plus the prime minister (New Zealand’s third woman to hold the position) plus her infant daughter posed to recreate a photograph from 1905 to illustrate how democracies can evolve and be a force of enlightenment. Seeing the juxtaposition made me happy and relieved to know that there are still places and constituencies that value and cherish progress and diversity.

tomorrow is coming together

Via Boing Boing, we are acquainted with the brilliant and inspired handiwork of artist Future Punk who has imagined a suite of retro intros, outros and logos for internet companies had they existed in the late 1970s to early 1980s. The undertaking was inspired by the original promotional films produced by computer pioneers which can be found at the link above.