nur bei grün gehen

Boing Boing reports that ahead of the Fifth of May two hundredth anniversary of the birth of native son Karl Marx, the city of Trier has installed special commemorative Ampelmännchen. City officials also plan to unveil a bronze sculpture donated by the government of China on Marx’ birthday.

boardwalk empire

Messy Nessy Chic USA correspondent Luke Spencer explores the mothballed resorts and casinos of Atlantic City, New Jersey—a city (previously) with an economy briefly revived by world-class shyster Donald J Trump, whose spelunking serves as a vital illustration of how an opportunistic, rentier business model enriches no one but the syndicate itself.

national treasure

Things Magazine directs our attention to a special exhibit that showcases the UK National Gallery’s recollection of the evacuation of its collections during World War II to an abandoned slate quarry in Snowdonia for safe-keeping. Paintings, sculpture and other artefacts were stored in the cavernous shafts of the Manod mines near the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog in North Wales from 1941 to 1945, fulfilling Winston Churchill’s pledge that “not one picture will leave this island.”

zero-player game

Conceived in 1970, the Game of Life is a demonstration of iterative arrays from British polymath and professor John Horton Conway. Categorised as a zero-player game, human involvement or volition only takes place at the initial state, seeding the game’s grid universe, which determines how the board evolves over subsequent generations. Each grid square or cell can be either populated or unpopulated—on or off—and interacts with the eight other cells that frame it according to four basic protocols: an isolated cell perishing from underpopulation, a cell with the right amount of neighbours thrives, a cell with too many neighbours dies from overcrowding, and an unpopulated cell with a precise amount of neighbours becomes populated—as if by reproduction.
Cellular automata such as these have practical applications in encryption and security, owing the unpredictable nature of the outcome though the world and conditions can be fully known, but also produces interesting, stable algorithmic organisms that oscillate and creep across the board. Of course these creatures only evolve by analogy, sort of like how artificial intelligence is an approximation of cognition through pattern-recognition and exploitation, but is a useful tool for visualising how computational routines work and a way to comprehend how machines learn and behave in novel and unexpected ways.

eye-dropper

The Arts & Culture department of Google has an interesting, intuitive and playful experimental application to play around with called Art Palette. The colour scheme of billions of paintings and other artefacts have been analysed and users can either browse serendipitously or submit images for comparison to find complimentary compositions.

taiyō no tō

Spoon & Tamago report that after months of repairs and renovations to redress years of neglect and to bring the structure up to earthquake code, the Tower of the Sun (太陽の塔) created by abstract artist Tarō Okamoto as the symbol of Expo ’70—the first world’s fair held in Asia, has been reopened to the public after a lengthy hiatus. The tower is located just outside of Tokyo on the grounds of a purpose-built park, and the interior houses a monumental art and educational display called “The Tree of Life” (which is particularly psychedelic and mind-expanding as well) and educates visitors on evolution and ecology. Be sure to visit the link up top to find out more and arrange a visit.

noreply

Our gratitude to Kottke who rummaged up this heartening article from the archives of the Atlantic regarding a municipal project in Melbourne that had some unexpectedly touching outcomes.
The superintendent of the city’s parks and gardens assigned individual, monitored email addresses to every tree on public and private land so that residents could report potential problems—like an errant branch threatening to snap a power line.  Instead, however, Melbourne was rather overwhelmed with affectionate and appreciative correspondence from humans to their arboreal neighbours. Most of the messages were one way, but city officials took the time to answer some of the senders’ inquiries, especially when there was a teachable moment—such as explaining the concept of gender in trees. I wonder if this initiative continues, and it is also positive to note that the interconnected Internet of Things is not just potentially paternalistic and judgmental but can also elicit notice, empathy and protective instincts and elevate things above their utility.

yōshoku

Via Hyperallergic’s required reading, we discover that though overshadowed by other culinary influences presently that Portugal has played an outsized role in world gastronomy. Dishes that we consider a tradition staple of Japanese dining—fried vegetables or tempura (天ぷら)—was introduced by Portuguese traders who had a presence in Japan for about a century until being banished in 1639 for proselytizing, the ruling shogunate believing that Christianity was a threat to a stable society.
The recipe adapted from peixnhos da horta (little fish of the garden) for battered and fried green beans came to be known as tempura is etymologically tied to Christianity, being a Lenten substitute for a filling meal for those too poor to afford actual fish as a break from fasting, coming from the Latin tempora which indicated the time for abstaining. Improvising Portuguese canteen operators also whipped up a spicy, wine marinated pork dish called carne de vinha d’alhos, which in the former colonial outpost of Goa in India informed the reimport vindaloo. Be sure and visit BBC Travel at the link up top for recipes and to learn more.