cloud atlas

For the first time in three decades the World Meteorological Organisation, Kottke informs, has added several new formal classifications for cloud formations—called species, and their supplementary features. The gallery of images is quite striking and worth perusing. First published in 1896, these compendia were important training tools for predicting the weather and developing a standard nomenclature to communicate forecasts without always having the pictorial key at hand, much like the complex and exacting language of vexillology.

happy little clouds

Via Nag on the Lake, we learn about a dedicated curator has compiled an unofficial site which features all four hundred and three landscape lessons taught by Bob Ross in thirty-one seasons on PBS’s Joy of Painting.
Formerly a master sergeant in the US Air Force, Ross often found himself in screaming-matches and situations that called on him being anything other than meditative and reflective. One day, however, he caught an episode of the Magic of Painting that inspired him to champion the same cause and vowed never to raise his voice in anger again. Named after the two inch background brush that was the go-to brush in the artist’s quiver, the site is not only a fine nice tribute to those awed by the creative process and his calming demeanour but also a resource for those aspiring to learn to paint.

reactions

As part of an on-going project that began in 2014 and has evolved parallel to the facial recognition software the artist is exploring, Jillian Mayer has exactingly plotted all the algorithmically significant points on her face to illustrate how she not only can find herself tagged in online images, identified by closed-circuit televisions and objectified as a model herself but moreover how her (our) expressions betray her feelings insofar as they are measurable.
If machines can read our moods and interests so well (or poorly, but it is another thing to convince a much vaunted establishment that its assessments are not on target), the performance-piece asks, why would we expect to asked how we felt? Taking the time seems superfluous and cursory. As large scale credentialing becomes institutionalised and targeted, are we still in control of our physical avatars or solely at the mercy of the interpreter and auger?

jot and tittle oder breath and branded

Futility Closet has a nice send up for one of the longest German compound words found in non-science contexts: das Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, referring to a decree issued by the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 1999 (repealed to far less celebrity in 2013) governing the labelling of beef products.
I say referring because that was how it was characterised in the press and subsequently by language academies as the long-form title of the law has each of the elements broken up into more manageable units. As intimidating as the pronunciation and elocution looks, there’s even a masterful performance of an Austrian choir at the link up top to show it’s not impossible to pull off.

stoop and kneel

Amusing Planet introduces us to the remaining basement-level kiosks of Sophia, Bulgaria, whose retail space represents some of the first entrepreneurial efforts after the fall of Communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Known as klek (коляно, knee) shops, these colourful storefronts operate like convenience stores and corner shops elsewhere but an early lack of commercial space pushed them to down to the sidewalk level. Learn more and view quite an extensive gallery of klek shops at the link up top.

someplace-else or boomerang toomerang soomerang

Once believed lost to history, someone or some cosmic force uploaded episodes of the so called “conflict series” of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood that aired in November 1983 as Cold War tensions were at their height and nuclear war looked like an eminent consequence.
The Public Broadcasting System asked Mister Rogers to present an allegory that young children might better understand the factors driving escalation—without scaring the wits out of them and countering a commercial broadcast of the ominously titled The Day After (I vaguely remember watching all these shows), by having King Friday XIII and Queen Sara Saturday and Prince Tuesday grow increasingly paranoid.  The royal family worried that the Neighborhood of Make-Believe was under threat by another kingdom (Some- place-Else, I think, where Donkey Hodie lives and his majesty the prince attended boarding school) who seemed to be undergoing a major shift in industrial activity and thus raids the treasury to build up the Neighborhood’s defences (formerly, they were a rocking chair-based economy)—eventually bankrupting Lady Elaine Fairchilde, Daniel Striped Tiger, Henrietta Pussycat and the rest in addition to paralysing them with fear. Eventually the king realises the error of his ways and discovers that the rival kingdom was putting forth so much effort investing in infrastructure—building bridges rather than bombs.

6x6

montage: a supercut of the loveliest black and white shots in film history, via Nag on the Lake

jovian van gogh: new high resolution images of Jupiter are mesmerizing

tinman: little girl greets a discarded water-heater that she imagines to be a robot

quick to the finish: scientists are learning how to grow heart tissue from spinach leaves

inked: abstract, cubist style tattoos from Londoner Mike Boyd

the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions: outings and league participation for CIA employees had complex cover-stories and were ranked by the level of suspicion that they might attract

grußwort, ghaH ’ej Duvan mu’

Though Verboten during its first years of airing due to German regulation prohibiting television directed at audiences under the age of six years, Die Sendung mit der Maus (the Show with the Mouse) brought about a change to the law and has been educating young people and receiving critical acclaim as the nation’s classroom since the early 1970s.
The creators recognised how well children responded to commercials and advertising mascots and decided to try to harness that commodity of attentiveness and put it to good use, featuring short instructional programming illustrating how things work, interspersed with cartoons. Each episode has a standard magazine format and from the onset had a message of inclusion, introducing each segment once in German and then in a foreign language—first in Turkish, Italian and Spanish to acknowledge the children of foreign guest-workers. That tradition continues with the language changing weekly and has expanded significantly to reflect refugee families and most recently Klingon.