bijlmemeer

Available as both a podcast and in transcript form, Miss Cellania directs our attention to two episodes of 99% Invisible (Part 1, Part 2) dedicated to the utopian architectural congress held in Athens in 1933, attended by Modernists luminaries Ernő Goldfinger, Le Corbusier and many other icons that led to the collaborative feat of in civil engineering outside of Amsterdam that would become the summit’s blue-print and model for urban-planning going forward.
Dubbed Bijlmer for short, the community was to be comprised of concrete towers arranged on a honeycomb grid—as too allow all units their share of sunshine to the exclusion of none—had big balconies and a big common area in each building’s ground floor for artistic endeavours.  Tubal walkways connected the ensemble of buildings as well as elevated, double-carriage streets for pedestrians and automobiles with large green spaces in between.  As with many social housing projects that are attended by both the air of prestige for the architects involved and the force of best-intentions, the neighbourhood underwent a period of decay and blight, which culminated dramatically with the tragic crash of an Israeli flagged aircraft crashing into two apartment blocs--giving the community the chance to reorganise as it rebuilt and recovered. 

droide astromeccanico

From the Italian word for a jaunty saunter, Gita the cargo droid from the company Piaggio (famous for their Vespas—that is, wasps in italiano and Popemobiles) meant to accompany humans on errands and help bare burdens that are two heavy or awkward to convey otherwise.
Designed with the goal that it should be able to carry a case of wine—and leave it’s human’s hands free for other things, Gita is self-navigating and can avoid obstacles and balance a load of up to twenty kilogrammes and seems to be a disruptor somewhere in a happy medium between (segue to) Segways and unaccompanied delivery robots and drones, which have both earned derision. Visit the links above for a demonstration and to learn more.

now do classical gas

Our gratitude to Kottke for not only disabusing us of the notion that Eric Clapton was the originator of the instrumental composition “Classical Gas”—first released in February of 1968—but introducing us as well to its interesting origins with guitarist and comedy-writer Mason Douglas Williams. Conceived as representative as the fuel of a classically trained guitar repertoire, the title was shortened from “Classical Gasoline” by an amanuensis, Williams came up with the song while working as the head writer of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and performed it as intro- and outro-music on several occasions.

Having already garnered the attention of audiences and critics, Williams wanted to showcase the work in its entirety and recognised that it could be the perfect alternate accompaniment to the experimental, kinestasis montage work of UCLA student filmmaker Dan McLaughlin, a survey of art history in three minutes (with a bit of tweaking with the timing of the transitions as it was originally set to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The short cemented the reputation and cultural moments of both arrangements. Be sure to visit Kottke at the link above to learn more and to discover more fine hypertext products.

big blue

International Business Machines Corporation, as Slashdot reports, has announced it will be deploying its Artificial Intelligence Watson along with German astronaut Alexander Gerst in June for a six month long mission to the International Space Station to act as a personal assistant and companion to its human counterparts—and definitely not refuse to open the pod bay doors.
In order to make the Crew Interactive Mobile Companion (CIMON) more relatable and not a disembodied voice, the neural network and personality will be contained within a housing described as a hoovering volley ball with a digital face, not unlike Tom Hanks’ Castaway co-star Wilson—and is being developed by Airbus on behalf of the German Aerospace Centre (das Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt).

7x7

luddites: standing up for dumb (but not dumbed-down) devices, via Naked Capitalism

it’s what’s for dinner: US Cattlemen’s Association declares war on fake, plant-based meat, via Super Punch

rydberg polarons: at extremely low temperatures atoms can be crowded inside other atoms

good ju-ju: an assortment of modern cyber lucky charms

mileștii mici: tour the world’s largest wine-cellar located in Moldova, via Messy Nessy Chic

aurabesh: the alien script of the Star Wars Universe

les shadoks: the cult French cartoon from Jacques Rouxel and René Borg with a fantastic musique concrète theme song

monte carlo method

Notwithstanding the adage that only God can generate truly random numbers—that is outcomes not contingent on some inscrutable or traceable series of prior actions—or the pronouncement that God does not play dice, in 1955 (and reprinted to the playful derision of critics in 2001) the RAND Corporation published its big book of random numbers, one of the last in the genre, under the title A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates. Made obsolete by the ability of computers to generate serviceably pseudo-random numbers (much like logarithmic tables), such endeavours, made with a roulette wheel and a computer, were important and foundational brokers in cryptography and security ciphers.

what’s the frequency kenneth?

Tom Stafford of Mind Hacks has a quite good explanation of what’s known as the spatial frequency effect, a heuristic tool for gauging visual perception.
The gradient of stimuli is measured against the contrast between light and dark and the angle, the point of view. As an illusion or illustration that creates itself, the phenomenon might be best imparted as the trick that superimposes a couple of iconic images of Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe whose hybrid, composite picture shifts from one to another depending on the viewer’s distance.  Lean forward, lean back to experience it to the fullest.  I wonder how this interaction between the seer and the seen might be manifested in other ways.

gaspillage alimentaire

US National Public Radio’s European correspondent Eleanor Beardsley reports on some refreshingly positive follow-up on the 2016 legislation that outlaws systemic food waste in France—leveraging hefty fines against grocery stores that throw away edible food.
Without taking into account the negative impacts of agriculture to include indignity to animals, habitat loss, pesticide and intensive water-use, humans throw away about a third of what’s raised or grown, with developed nations disposing of the majority of their food at the final stage when the most time and effort has been invested in it. Not only are struggling families benefited from higher quality and quantity donations to food-banks and other charities, supply-chain-management is also improved with the elimination of the stipulation that suppliers deliver amounts at fixed thresholds and obligating merchants to buy more than they can sell in a timely factor, reducing emissions due not only to surplus transportation but also for food-waste kept from land-fills (as food bio-degrades, it produces methane) and not artificially subsidies over-production. On a purely administrative note, this post is PfRC’s five-thousandth (cinq millième).