bürgewald

It’s bad enough that the majority of human history is myopic and making a public declaration of it seems even worse—one shouldn’t be rewarded for being “self-aware” indiscriminately.
Consigning a small remnant of a primeval wood outside of Köln to axe to expand a lignite extraction operation seems incredibly short-sighted—saying that Germany’s immediate energy needs outweigh the patch of twelve thousand year old Hambacher Forest, home to a unique ecosystem and archaeological sites that have never been properly assessed. Protesters have occupied the forest in tree houses in order to protect it for the past six years but have recently been evicted by police, and activists and some panel members on the coal company’s board of directors (which own the land) believe any decision should be deferred until the terms of Germany’s strategy for withdrawing from the mining business altogether are finalised.

mean streets

In 1876, journalist and social activist Adolphe Smith and photographer John Thomson undertook an unprecedented ethnographic study in documenting—with pictures and in depth interviews the poor of London, as Kuriositas relates.   The highly successful and best-selling book that was the product of their investigations stunned the upper classes and prompted the creation of some foundations and charitable institutions as a social safety net that helped to lift at least some out of the cycle of poverty was published as Street Life of London, released episodically beginning in February of 1877, and has been curated and released in 2012 into the public domain by the London School of Economics. Learn more and find a whole gallery of compelling images with an accompanying story about the people depicted at the links above.

apoplectic

A Syrian artist and activist, known only as Saint Hoax, debuts his latest performance piece called MonuMental—an inflatable tank with the bust of Donald Trump crowning the turret—is menacingly marauding through the streets of Beirut. Part of an overarching theme exploring how celebrity is a crisis of character, Saint Hoax hopes to reveal the underlying pathos that contrasts public façades. Learn more at Hyperallergic at the link above.

glissando

Digging into the discography of Scott Bradlee’s and his interpretation of the American Song Book, Miss Cellania treats us to a very jazzy merging of George Gershwin’s 1924 Rhapsody in Blue and Queen’s 1975 suite from A Night at the Opera. A talented composer and arranger, Bradlee is also a frequent collaborator with the rotating musical collective Postmodern Jukebox, an initiative he founded in 2011, the same year as he created this musical number, and has since amassed a huge following, attracted guest artists and has held concert tours, performing contemporary popular music in the style of Big Band, swing, cabaret, Dixieland, ragtime or doo-wop.

pdrc—you know, passive daytime radiative cooling

Slashdot refers us to a team of researchers at work at the Columbia School of Engineering who are developing a paint-like coating that can be applied to virtually any surface—rockets on re-entry, cars, pavements, roofs and entire buildings, that radiates and reflects heat far more efficiently than the pigments that we are used to without relying on cooling systems that ultimately contribute more to nascent heat and climate change.
These so called hierarchically porous polymers contain nanoscale cavities that redistributes heat along the surface, multiplying the effect of colour as a thermal mitigator alone and prevent energy from settling in and causing overheating that diverts resources to restoring a balance and demonstrate universal potential—especially for those areas heating up too quickly where traditional air-conditioning is impractical and a drain.

earth, wind & fire

It escapes me how so many of us missed the twenty-first night of and are now rushing to remember the eponymous 1978 hit on the last day thereof but here is a medley (of two) of homages for your enjoyment. First listen to the musical styling, courtesy of Laughing Squid, of Leonid and Friends perform a fantastic cover of the song with the accompaniment of a string and horn section. Afterward, while the tune is stuck in your head, mediate on these couplets of rejected lyrics from McSweeney’s contributor Gary M Almeter. “Ba de ya—Chrissie Hynde is a Pretender.”

rent gap and rehabilitation

Via the always brilliant Nag on the Lake, we are invited to play an unauthorised edition of the board game Monopoly whose rules and scoring invoke the spirit of the original version of “The Landlord’s Game” far better than the Parker Brothers’ interpretation or regional variants.
The art collective Chinatown Soup’s Chinatown edition features anchoring shops and local businesses rather than more or less desirable properties for development and poses challenges to players to save neighbourhoods from the blight of gentrification rather than be rewarded for it as a virtue and promotes socially responsible growth. One has to rehouse, for example, displaced residents priced-out of their homes—another reason that the board is not given addresses owing to the amorphous nature of gentrification that’s not bounded by certain streets or districts and people are moved to the margins. Learn more about the collective’s activities and activism at the link above.