8x8

getränkekiste: photographer Bernhard Lang features bottle crates from novel perspectives, via Nag on the Lake

россумские универсальные роботы: a 1979 children’s book series illustrated by Mikhail Romadin (*1940 – †2012) of Tarkovsky studios, whom went on to draw for Ray Bradbury and others

uranometria: stars captured on older stellar charts now seemingly vanished could point incognito alien civilisations, via Strange Company

accessory dwelling unit: architecture graduate creates prefabricated homes out of Hawaii’s problematic, invasive Albizia trees

fiat tender: giving cash as a gift but at the same time keeping the personal touch

i demand a recount: “Me and the Boys” voted community choice Meme of 2019, followed closely by “Woman Yelling at a Cat”

chinampa: a look at the fading, ancient practise of floating farming along the canals of Xochimilco

64x64: favourite photographs of the year by as many photographers

smygflyga

We completely understand and empathise with the fact it’s hard to settle on a favourite—especially when one is spoilt for choice, so we are enjoying pouring over this list of notable neologisms that Sweden’s top linguists at the Institutet för språk och folkminnen have identified that helped define the past year.  The gretaeffekten of course looms large having rightly been recognised for their overwhelming importance to the age by no less than two august language authorities and with the derivative title word—flying on the sly, not disclosing one’s travel itinerary because one failed to plan ahead so one could train-brag so as to avoid flight-shaming—plus other well-deserved honours besides, shared amongst all allies. We further enjoyed how the registry included internet terms like deplatformering and ASMR, clarified to readers as a hjärnorgasm and not some further Marvel Cinematic Universe appropriation of Norse mythology.

suspended judgment

Via the always excellent Nag on the Lake, we find ourselves affronted with those awful low-points of anti-scholasticism that makes one bid good riddance to the past decade, which in many ways has all the hallmarks of regression and should have by all rights set our species on the trajectory to the cutting-room floor—and perhaps still will.  Take solace while perusing this hall of shame that you don’t rank among them—the climate change deniers, the flat-earthers, the anti-vaxxers, the incels and their ilk and hopes that one never does. Condemnation of what’s wrong and misguided is of course justified but can also serve to cement one’s beliefs, grounded or baseless.

bunkermuseum

Travelling on a bit north of the Rennsteig (previously here, here and here) and taking advantage of the bright but frosty weather, H and I went to a part of the vast nature reserve known as the Frauenwald and took a tour of a compound that was once maintained by the East German Army (die NVA, Nationale Volksarmee) under the authority of the Ministry for States Security (MfS, die Stassi) as an emergency command-and-control bunker for continuation of governance in case of attack during the Cold War, established well behind enemy lines.

Constructed in parallel a nearby rest-and-recuperation resort constructed for soldiers on leave, the nearly thirty-six hundred square metre complex was mostly above ground but designed to be sealed off from the outside environment and stocked with provisions to keep its compliment alive for four weeks before restocking was needed.

The installation was decommissioned and mothballed after 1989 and run as a private venture since 2004. The narrow corridors and vaults was like being on a submarine—especially mindful of the point of this exercise and keeping it self-sufficient, uncontaminated as it were, prepared for all contingencies including chemical, biological and nuclear strikes—and the period dioramas recalled us to the museum once housed in the Colossus of Prora.

The past is a foreign country.  The former situation room was especially poignant with original furnishings and woodchip on the wall and not much different than the legacies centres still in operation (contrary to how they’re portrayed in the movies) and imparts a since of relief that somewhere so delicate and relatable was not ultimately conscripted to be part of mutually assured destruction and hope that such redundancy might inform the geopolitics we are heir to.

there’s plenty of room at the bottom

Delivered on this day in 1959 before an assembly of the members pf the American Physical Society at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (see also), Richard Feynman’s (*1918 – †1988) lecture—subtitled “An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics” addressed the virtually limitless possibilities of miniaturisation and is heralded in retrospect as the birth of nanotechnology. A culmination of research, including though-experiments and practical demonstrations, Feynman’s intrigue was contagious as he pondered the ramifications of manipulating matter at atomic scales—creating incredibly dense circuitry, data-storage systems as well as vanishingly small mechanisms and medical interventions that were precision-controlled rather than relying on chemical processes that could be poorly grasped or might not work outside of the laboratory.
Though these motorized enzymes and ingestibles remained theoretical concepts and the bailiwick of science fiction until recently, the seminar ended with Feynman issuing a couple of challenges to his audience, the first of which were solved in very short order: the first thousand dollar payout came with the development of the first nanomotor the following year, the second—fitting the whole of the Encyclopædia Britannica on the head of a pin took a bit more time but its equivalent was finally accomplished in 1985

the constitutions of clarendon

Beginning just ahead of the eight hundred-fiftieth anniversary of his murder in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170, the British Museum is hosting a series of events and exhibitions on the life and legacy of Thomas Becket (previously).  Acting on what they interpreted as an express order from Henry II, four knights brutally killed the archbishop (see link immediately above) and this palace intrigue which went on to inspire sainthood and pilgrimage, solidified by his earlier exile for crossing the king—whose later inversion and disfavor helped curry the Protestantism and the fledgling Reformation in the bulwark of Henry VIII (see also). Read more about the special collections at the links above and at the museum’s own blog and watch this space for further updates.

fundbüro

Via Dave Log v.3 (broken link unfortunately) we’re well acquainted with the Unclaimed Baggage Processing Centre in Enterprise Alabama that sells on lost and never claimed luggage from the airlines and more recently were given a tour of Paris’ but we were heretofore unfamiliar with the logoistics behind reuniting when possible, warehousing then auctioning off lost items from Germany’s railways as told in this visual storyboard from the New York Times.
Nearly a quarter of a million items, from the mundane to the esoteric and inexplicable—steeped in more mystery when one considers how one might lose track of certain treasures much less be unable to follow up on their whereabouts, are found every year in stations, on the platforms and left in the trains. A team of a dozen curators headquartered in Wuppertal try to deaccession their collections through research and detective work and find their owners.
Once all efforts have been exhausted, items go under the hammer, auctions held weekly on Platform 1. Though it would be a bit of a railway journey in itself but I’m going to resolve to check the city and the Bahnhof for the clearance event out one Thursday afternoon soon.