dustbin, doxbin

Though generally only perceived as a vaguely threatening presence by pets, it turns out that for the past few years robotic vacuums, in their quest to optimise navigating the terrain of one’s home, have also been collecting that telemetry and reporting back to the mother-ship in order for those maps to be sold on to marketers to formulate better-focused furniture advertisements (or scare families into investing in security services) and model virtual smart-houses. Or simply to judge our taste in décor. These domestic double-agents that we welcome into our lives highlights one way that technologies are no longer ours to exploit and benefit from as tools, but rather the merchants of attention undermine our relationship with computers and machines by supplanting it with some Pavlovian bond of button-mashing and push-notifications. What do you think? Albeit arguably robot vacuums are a time-saving convenience but coordination and connectedness come with a cost and perhaps the autonomous appliance market is reaching its true economical zenith—again, not as an instrument or amusement but as pusher, staking out its beat, like that craze with augmented reality games which helped plot out previously uncharted demographics.

la guerre des étoiles

While much of the epic space opera’s influences and homages have been studied and extolled in great detail, including Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and the comic Flash Gordon, there’s been little  acknowledgement for a French series of comics from the early 1970s, as Messy Nessy Chic helps us to uncover, that informed the arch of the story almost scene for scene at points. Artist Jean-Claude Mézières’ creation Valerian and Laureline is now starting to be accredited for its plot and stylistic contributions—including ice, desert and marsh planets, a Millennium Falcon-type ship, a hero encased in a resin and another held hostage by an overweight mobster who is forced to wear a metal bikini—after the characters are getting their own cinematic adaptation with Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.  Though perhaps four decades overdue, Mézières’ role in establishing the saga is beginning to garner recognition.

hatch act or marching orders

It’s striking how the adjective elite only remains palatable to the general public when speaking of soldiers, and Dear Leader trounced on yet another established norm by encouraging his military to lobby for their own self-interest.
Not only is advocating that service members call their representatives and urge them to support the commander-in-chief’s agenda probably a violation of the Hatch Act (An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities from 1939) that restricts federal employees from engaging in partisan activities, it also sets a very dangerous precedent that causes America to lurch further towards becoming a tin-pot dictatorship—a weaponised tool of incumbency and imparting a privilege to a class above those they have sworn to protect and defend. What do you think?  Dear Leader is a nihilistic moron and an opportunist who has no stake, personal interest or knowledge in his policy decisions and is only pandering to those who might satisfy his unquenchable ego.  Surely honourable men and women are deserving of respect and hopefully the profession of arms attracts individuals of like ilk and ought to held to high standards, but they are not asking to be accorded some superhuman praise reserved for the blindly loyal.  People, however, tend to rise to one’s estimations and expectations and eventually the armed forces might come to demand such esteem.

cuteness overload

From the language desk over at BBC Culture, we are introduced to a perfectly needful term that’s very transparent in the relation of sound and meaning that while in common-parlance to the Tagalog speaking Filipino population—it’s rarely heard outside of that community.
The untranslatable word for the joy elicited from being in the presence of overpowering cuteness is named gigil and is a great way to describe that compulsion experienced—sometimes in spite of one’s self—to share an adorable encounter. Gigil is the debut word of a new series that will highlight some of the lexical gaps of the English language with foreign borrowings that might help bridge them, so check back regularly at the link up top to expand ones vocabulary.

boustrophedon

TYWKIWDBI directs our attention to a rather clever feat of versification that comes in the form of David Shulman’s 1936 anagrammatic poem (boustrophedic writing is something quite different but it seemed to capture the sense of meter somehow) reflecting on the painting of Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (whose other famous painting Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way—or the short form, Westward Ho! hanging in the Capitol would probably make another good candidate for this treatment) depicting Washington Crossing the Delaware and composed a sonnet (with rhyming couplets) where every line is an anagram of the title. Here’s the opening stanza:

A hard, howling, tossing water scene.
Strong tide was washing hero clean.
How Cold! Weather stings as in anger.
O silent night shows war ace danger!

Incredibly these are complete, exhaustive anagrams—like Alec Guinness = Genuine Class or Jeremy’s Iron, and a pretty nifty idea to stay within those sorts of constraints, each line having twenty-nine letters like the name of the painting. Of course, all this was accomplished without the aid of computers—so in case you’re needing some electronic inspiring, try out your phrase here. It can be insightful too to find out what apt words might be buried in your name, as well.

foreshortening or draw me like one of your french girls

We were having too much fun with Heloisa’s quite photo-realistic renderings of the felines in her life to not share this delightful discovery by friend of the blog Nag on the Lake. Indeed, one shouldn’t judge another’s sense of perspective and place before getting a look at the artist’s models. Check out more poorly drawn cats at the links a
bove.

chanterelles oder pfifferlinge, linge, linge, linge

With Spargelzeit already just a fond memory this season, we are just entering into Pfifferlinge harvest time—called in English chanterelles (it sounds like a Doo-Wop group) and from the Greek κάνθαρος for a drinking tankard, the little yellow mushrooms looking sort of like a loving-cup—and we tried a new recipe for spaghetti with braised Pfifferlinge, onions and sundried tomatoes. It was pretty simple and not too labour intensive to make—plus very tasty, and seems fairly versatile and would work with other varieties of mushrooms, noodles and seasonings.

For four servings, one needs:

• 400g Pfifferlinge 
• 500g Spaghetti 
• 50g Sundried Tomato 
• 1 Garlic clove 
• 4 Spring Onions (Leeks) 
• 500ml Vegetable Broth 
• 1 large red onion 
• 1 bundle of fresh Parsley 
• 100ml of Crème Fraîche 
• Salt, Pepper, Nutmeg for seasoning and a bit of oil for frying 

Wash the Pfiferlinge and along with the diced onion, thinly sliced tomato and garlic, fry in a large pan on middle heat, turning often. To the side, prepare the pasta according to the instructions and the vegetable broth. After around ten minutes, when the spaghetti is nearly ready, cut the leaks into rings slice up the parsley and introduce it to the mix. Add the vegetable broth and bring to boil briefly before stirring in the crème fraîche. Season to taste and enjoy with a refreshing white wine.

ink inc

The Public Domain Review shares a find from 1860—a publication of New York’s Thaddeus Davids and Company—called The History of Ink, Including its Etymology, Chemistry, and Bibliography that seems like a thoroughly modern, deep-dive portrait of a topic, obsessively specific that one might take for granted.
The effort (almost all the content is hand-written with calligraphy), artistry and scholarship (plate after plate of historic reproductions) that went into producing the little tome excuses the fact that said publishers was also one of the leading ink (which for some inexplicable reason, Davids marketed as “chemical writing fluid”) purveyors at the time. It’s comforting, I think, how signatures are what’s binding, by convention, and that those really important documents, like diplomas and certifications aren’t entrusted to the flawless polish of the printers—or at least made to appear so—and that ink is imbued, either by reputation or in deed, as having an archival permanence that does not easily fade away.