bearer instrument

In what sounds to me like the clever plan Bart Simpson once concocted to get Krusty the Clown’s autograph by sending him a cheque to cash (which if I remember right, inadvertently alerted the tax authorities to the entertainer’s off-shore bank accounts), as Weird Universe reports, a magazine sent measly, trifling cheques in 1990 to several billionaires to see who was miserly enough to expend the extra effort to cash them. Out of the two takers, one is currently campaigning for presidency of the United States.

champion charlie brown

On this day in 1950, Charles Schulz’ Peanuts four-panel comic strip (setting the format for others to follow) debuted in around a dozen major newspapers and slowly, over the years, the cast of children was introduced to boldly face a very sociologically and philosophically adult framework—with no grown-up supervision. What are some of your favourite memories from the franchise—arguably the longest story in the telling from a single narrator?

press, depress, mash, hit, punch

With a sense of nostalgia that really is resonant, Messy Nessy Chic curates a vintage gallery that pays tribute to the disappearing push-button—those real, physical knobs and switches that arrayed dashboards, control panels and cockpits as well as gadgets and household items that felt so satisfying to push, and highly tempting to do so despite what catastrophic results might ensue. It’s certainly worth scrolling through all the images, especially the concept cars of future-past, and worth it as well sticking around and exploring more of her website.

continuing-resolution

And here we go again, conscientious bureaucrats, with some reflections on the fiscal new year that’s really a frightening collusion of window-dressing scenarios but I think that the American public is as estranged or disengaged as it is divided to have much tolerance for speculation.
Amazingly and for the eighth consecutive year—though it seemed few were watching with baited breath (I believe that the Heisenberg principle applies to the news and governments and the mere act of looking at it changes outcomes)—the US government avoided a shut-down due to a deficiency of funding just thirty-six hours before FY 2017 began. With a day and a half to spare, that’s hardly exciting. And with the elections just a month away, no party wanted to be seen as forcing the other’s hand—despite that this manœuvre only gains the operations the purchase until Christmas recess and then it’s a lame-duck presidency and congress and whatever the results, half the country will be gravely disappointed and in denial. I am sure that we’ll be dusting off those tried-and-true toolkits that we’ve honed to keep the bureaucracy grinding along.

hiermit hermit

Previously, thanks to Futility Closet’s excellent podcast, we learned of the curious eighteenth century custom among the landed gentry and hopeless romantics of England of employing individuals as professional hermits to lend their estates certain airs, but I never before made the connection that the caretaker of a hermitage is also a hermit, until informed that a divorced, former police officer will be taking up solitary residence at the bottom of Verena Gorge. According to tradition, the venerated saint that the Swiss valley is named after passed through the area, having traveled from Egypt. A contemplative theologian in retirement, the new hermit won’t be able to abandon his manners and social graces altogether, however, as quite a few hikers come through, and in fact the last incumbent resigned her commission over the amount of tourists.

6x6

utopia planitia: Elon Musk’s seven year plan for colonising Mars

working-title: David Lynch was once considered as director for Return of the Jedi, originally called Revenge of the Jedi

sepia: amazing true colour slides of America in the 1930s and 1940s

dangerous minds: trading cards of thoughtful and revolutionary intellectuals

forced perspective: one dedicated individual’s mission to document vanishing ghost train ride attractions

pen pineapple apple pen: a bizarre but catchy musical performance by singer-songwriter Pico Taro

photobomb

Via the always entertaining Everlasting Blört comes a gallery of early contenders for the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, a competition celebrating the amazing diversity and overwhelming silliness of the animal kingdom. Begun just last year and hailed with much fanfare, the competition also benefits the Born Free Foundation, which works to keep wildlife in the wilds. The 1 October deadline for entrants is fast approaching for those shutter-bugs out there.

freedom of disinformation act

The inquiring and persistent Matt Novak, writing for Gizmodo’s Paleofuture, brings us the Cold War curiosity called the United States Information Agency, superseded by the State Department’s Broadcasting Board of Governors, whose media and divisions were charged with the mission advocating US policies and values abroad—in other words, propaganda or counter-propaganda.
Perhaps the most memorable public-relations campaigns that the organisation ran is the still extant Voice of America radio service (although a 1976 act mandated that the content be fair and balanced and news-casters had to get a little more creative with their message amid human-interest allegories) and a series of spaghetti-Westerns produced covertly and at astronomical expense called Project Pedro meant to make the neutral, rather laissez-faire government of Mexico to take a stance against Communist ideologies infiltrating Latin America, but by way of introductions for the doctrinaire and indoctrinating USIA, there was also a fictitious by-line (nom de plume, nom de guerre), a prolific polyglot economist Guy Sims Fitch, that was a catchment for pro-American monetary policy and distributed to news outlets all over the globe, usually as cheerful op-ed pieces in praise of the wages of capitalism (maybe such shill articles today might be in praise of TTIP and the like)—except in domestic papers, that is. Novak’s FOIA filing to retrieve some information on those writers and editors that wrote under this pseudonym was foiled owing to a technicality that the successor intelligence agencies cite for secret identities, since there’s no way for government to confirm or deny the consent of anonymous, unidentified authors to having their private writing given public attribution.