Friday, 1 June 2018

7x7

true blue: synthetic, petroleum-based dyes go into a billion pairs of jeans a year but one company is committing to natural, indigo denim, via Things Magazine

scyphozoa: Ernst Haeckel’s (previously) exquisite jelly fish

through a different lens: a collection of the photography of Stanley Kubrick

electronic engineers’ master volume ii: vintage 1985 tech company logos and resources from Marchin Wichary, who also sets them to a screen-saver—via Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals

notability, fame, notoriety: watch Time magazine create its cover for the Age of the Drones edition

hela: the immortal Henrietta Lacks (previously here and here) is honoured in the US National Portrait Gallery

bell-bottom blues: voice-over artist Ken Nordine narrates some trippy Levi’s advertisements from the 1970s 

local 226

Over fifty-thousand Las Vegas hospitality labourers with membership in the Culinary Workers’ and Bartenders’ Unions are set to stage a strike for the first time since 1984 unless their employers—the casinos and resorts—can provide guarantees that their livelihoods will be supplemented and enhanced by automation, not replaced by it.
While some might be quick to point out that the cocktail servers, cleaning staff and receptionists by going on strike are not giving their bosses a compelling argument to retain their services since robots won’t presumably demand better working conditions, it’s also worth noting that robots presumably also don’t pay taxes or have reason to go on holiday or irrationally gamble. What do you think? In a transactional economy, I suppose such redundancy is inevitable (and even enviable, if done right) but workers should leverage their power while they have it in order to better manage their transition to collaboration.

topic thread

Hat-tip once again to Kottke’s Quick Links for directing our attention to Crazy Walls, a blog obsessed with the appearance of forensics walls in film and television that attempt to connect and solve mysteries by linking maps and newspaper clippings through red yarn.
Following the principle of conservation of detail, the method called concept mapping can be used to filter out red herrings when the investigator does not know what easily overlooked detail might lead to a break-through and looking for relevance in every detail can drive one to distraction or worse. Though sometimes in earnest or sometimes meta-critical like this cameo of X-Files’ David Duchovny (previously) on Full-Frontal with Samantha Bee—bringing us back around to the matter of Puerto Rico whose underreported casualties might have been shoved out of the news cycle in part by amplifying and hijacking the host’s own monologue, most often the trope is used to lampoon conspiracy theorists.

dรฉfilรฉ

Though never one to argue for more sponsorship and advertising, we did rather enjoy learning of the gentler, resourceful beginnings of publicity caravans to promote local goods and businesses along the route of le Tour de France, which not to be cynical, was itself launched in 1903 to boost sales for a national sports publication. The first collaboration occurred in 1929 between the race’s organisers and chocolatier Menier (whose family came into possession of Chateau Chenonceau) and has escalated since but I don’t think that the floats of today were nearly as creative and eye-catching as those parades of the past. Find a quite expansive and gaudy gallery at the link up top.

daytrip: treffpunkt treffurt

We ventured a little further north along Thรผringen’s by-ways following the Werra River valley past the Wartburg and the Rennsteig and wholly eschewing the Autobahn for a casual trip connecting each intervening town’s and village’s main street and arrived at the town of Treffurt, commissioned by Charlemagne in the eighth century to protect pilgrims to the abbey of Bad Langensalz.
Meaning three-crossings (where one can ford the river), the settlement was surrounded by a bend in the Werra completely except for a narrow isthmus connecting it to the rest of the interior and lies immediately on the Hessen border. The high castle of Normannstein dominates the town, completed around the year 1000, and was the garrison for a contingent of local knights for over six centuries until falling into ruin from neglect—its strategic advantage having been expended, and rehabilitated from the late nineteenth century until the 1970s, it served as a gastronomical prestige project. The restaurant due to its proximity to the border with West Germany became a staging-ground for several escapes and was essentially closed until the German reunification.
Refreshment concessions have been the saving grace of many castles and fortresses. Intersecting with the German Route of Cross-Timbered Houses (die Deutsche FachwerkstraรŸe, previously), the Altstadt of Treffurt below had many fine examples of the style, including the well-preserved and stylistically significant old Rathaus.
On the return trip, Eisennach seemed a bit daunting with finding a parking space and it seemed there was quite a lot of visitors hiking up towards the Wartburg, so instead we went back to a spa town called Bad Salzungen, a place that had been extracting salt since the 1300s.  A stork was brooding on the rooftop near the thorn chambers (Gradientwerk) were the evaporation takes place and the minerals can be gathered and saw the nesting bird was being monitored with her own webcam, so H tuned in and we had sort of a meta-experience seeing the mother stork up close and from a distance at the same time. Travelling along the side roads, we got a better idea of the lay of the land and passed several places to stop and explore next time around.

Thursday, 31 May 2018

little birdhouse in your soul

Nag on the Lake acquaints us with Frankfurter clock-maker Guido Zimmermann who showcases his talents in a series of custom traditional cuckoo chimes housed in Brutalist, Plattenbau architecture—as a commentary on social housing gentrified and priced out of the range of its intended resident. His cuckcoo blocks also reference the original conceit of the clocks, not stowed away as a souvenir, were symbolic in themselves as a middle-class (spieรŸbรผrgerlich) signal of success. View a video of the whole range of his designs at the links above.

Wednesday, 30 May 2018

ostheim vor der rhรถn

Taking advantage of the fine weather, H and I spent the afternoon enjoying the atmosphere of nearby Ostheim vor der Rhรถn (previously, here and here), first scrambling up and down the alleyways of the town’s landmark fortified church (Kirchenburg, previously here and here).
The complex’s maze of multiple warehouses and root-cellars for provisions plus a munitions dump and a powder tower made it a bastion for the people of the area to retreat to in times of strife and hopefully outlast a siege.
Historically, Ostheim was not aligned with the Catholic church that was the predominant influence in Bavaria and in fact existed as an exclave of the Protestant dukes of Henneberg, formally from 1920 to 1947 an outcropping of the state of Thรผringen not geographically connected.
For simplicity’s sake, as was done for the Palatine territories on the Hessen side of the Rhein, Ostheim and the surrounding villages were made part of Bavaria as the American zone of occupation.
In order to maintain this island of independence throughout turbulent times is testament to the fortress’ imperviousness. Afterwards we took a stroll along the promenade of the river Streu, punctuated with footbridges and water-wheels that were once upon a time engines to drive various sorts of mills.
Finally, we ascended into the foothills of the Rhรถn to the Lichtenburg, the picturesque ruins of a high castle, a defensive garrison for a contingent of knights, from the eleventh century before returning home.



Tuesday, 29 May 2018

public law 68-175

Via the lens of expert British colourist Royston Leonard and the curatorial skills of Messy Nessy Chic, we’re able to be privileged witnesses to a rather dark episode in the fraught history of European settlers with indigenous peoples and those they’ve occupied and colonised. Though not perhaps not the worst slight in the scheme of things, Leonard’s print (more at the links above) show a delegation of Native Americans invited to the White House to petition President Calvin Coolidge in the early 1920s for the passage of a congressional act that would bestow US citizenship to the majority, up to three hundred thousand, who were systematically disenfranchised and denied participation in civic affairs and the democratic process.

Though the Fourteen Amendment to the US constitution gave (grudgingly) citizenship to all people born within US territory, regardless if they were descended from enslaved ancestors—with no state making or enforcing laws which shall abridge the privileges or immunities appertaining thereto. Native Americans were not covered by the amendment, however, many argued because, Article One, which deals with the apportionment of representatives in the federal legislature that each state gets, says that “Indians—not taxed” were not counted as constituents because they didn’t pay property tax on sovereign tribal lands (compare to the Three-Fifths compromise that counted only three out of every five enslaved individuals for setting a state’s population) and because they kept their tribal affiliations and did not integrate well with non-Native American society. Before the act’s passage in 1924, sponsored by New York Congressman Homer P Snyder, Native Americans could apply to become naturalised citizens, like any immigrant, and often vouchsafed the process through marriage or military service—and it was in part due to the role that the enlistment of many Native Americans had for World War I that the act was passed.