dankest of the dank or early modern memetics

We appreciated this overview from Public Domain Review of the way woodcuts for woodblock print illustrations were recycled—sometimes with little alteration—and used in several different publications and contexts contemporaneously.
These common images weren’t just early stock photography collections but were reused for the malleability for any number of messages, much like the way the longevity of contemporary memes depends on their versatility, like this repeating image from the playbill for the seventh century Beggars’ Delight—also appearing in print as a broadsheet and a miniature in a bound volume, whose variations recall that meme still in circulation (I guess) of the boyfriend with the wandering eye (which too began life as a stock image) for its mutability.
Be sure to visit Public Domain Review at the link up top for more exemplars that were frequently sampled and the effects that printing was having on broader society and culture in significantly increasing the horizons of shared experience (even if vicariously) and the rapid pace of re-appropriation lead to the formation of copyright protections for creators.  

von instagramkonto des bundeskanzlerins

don’t be evil

As Big Think reports, the fallout and criticism of Google’s role in the Pentagon’s Project Maven, an artificial intelligence application that could led to more automation and autonomy in combat drones, has prompted the company to publicise their code of ethics and principles to help ensure going forward that machines are held to human account, beneficial as opposed to parasitically addictive and culturally sensitive. It’s worth reading and reflecting on—especially considering we only have one shot at getting artificial intelligence right and our creation could easily pivot from boon to bane.

seven minus one

Though it is not often that something momentous comes out of such summits, world leaders seem poised to make the G7 conference in Québec a showcase on the fraying ties amongst the United States and its traditional allies. Not expecting a warm-reception, Trump apparently is grumbling about attending the meeting at all and will depart early on Saturday and head directly to Singapore for his on again one-on-one meeting with Kim Jung Un.

7x7

cnidaria: a fascinating look at the cultivation and care of coral

and someone left the cake out in the rain: interpreting the significance of that narrow, non-precedential US Supreme Court ruling

fleet-a-pita: US Environmental Protection Agency chief tried to secure a for his wife a faith-based chicken fast-food franchise through his position

dietetic: an interesting survey of vintage diabetic soft drinks

desertum africanum: a Roman coast highway that stretches from the Nile to the Atlantic

balopticon: the racy, kitschy illustrations (1940s and 1950s vintage but NSFW) of Norman Rockwell protégé George Quaintance

on this day: the monarchs of Spain and Portugal reached concord with the Treaty of Tordesillas (previously) that partitioned the world between the two in 1494

keitora

Kei class trucks (軽トラ) were first popularised in 1949 and have been since enlisted for all sorts of heavy-duty jobs including agriculture, construction and firefighting, and now thanks to Spoon & Tamago, that this tough little vehicles have of late also become a showcase for an annual landscaping contest sponsored by the Japanese federation of contractors.

The entries are really fantastically detailed and capture the elements of traditional Japanese gardening arts, called Nihon Teien (日本庭園) and incorporate plants, water elements and distressed materials to invoke the idea of far off lands and signal resistance to the march of time and entropy.

journée des tuiles

The causes of the French Revolution are myriad and included financial hardship exacerbated by debts incurred in the proxy war that the country had just finished waging with England via the matter of the United States of America’s push for independence but one important juncture that may have precipitated protests and unrest across the kingdom occurred on this date back in 1788 in the south-eastern city of Grenoble.
Despite poor harvests, taxes were collected a-pace with additional ones levied, and the regional appellate courts (called Parlements) that had jurisdiction over tax regimes were suspended. Referred to as the Day of the Tiles for rioters resorting to showering soldiers with roof shingles, merchants closed their shops up early on Saturday morning, market day, when they saw groups of rioters gather who proceeded to seize local officials as they attempted to flee the city and took control of the cathedral. In response, the royal navy was sent into quell the protests but matters quickly escalated. The riots subsided after four days and led to the reinstatement of the court’s authority and the right to refuse payments on levies not approved by that body, but problems with France and the relation of the monarchy to the people was fraught with systemic irreconcilable complications and the revolution fomented the following year.

writers and the leviathan or duty to warn

At a time when athletes, actors, astronomers and others are told to stick to their day-jobs and not wade into the political fray, many of us expect writers and academics to uphold values and defend truth and justice in trying times. One author, recognised across the partisan spectrum, as the quintessential bellwether who warned lucidly and presciently about the rise of totalitarianism, George Orwell, however, took some exception with this onerous duty, arguing it was the responsibility of every last one of us to stay informed. Culture, in any form, is not impervious to the prevailing political climate.