there is no emoticon for what i’m feeling

Courtesy of Boing Boing, we are having far too much fun with this custom emoji-builder that allows one to mix elements from different glyphs into something new and with a degree of specificity that might be otherwise lacking.
We’re especially enthralled with the randomised feature that generates expressive chimera that rather defy a straightforward definition. What occasions would the pictured suit?  Give it a try and show us what you come up with.

straßendorf

By virtue of geography, our village is a linear settlement, running along a ribbon of road that transverses the valley and bordered by the pastures and the baronial wood—which itself has been preserved in deference to much later political developments and the partition of Germany.
There is a clear centre (not always the case) around the ensemble of buildings that form the chapel, castle and keep—in keeping with the original sense of village, the support-structure for a villa. Another common layout is referred to as an Angerdorf—from the Old High German word for a grassy commons (Am Anger is a common street name even if the place has been built over), usually containing a stream or pond.

requiescat in pace: douglas rain

NPR reports that accomplished Shakespearian actor Douglas Rain passed away, aged ninety in Ontario, with an illustrious career with many hundreds of credits to his name, both on stage and on television, working alongside countless veteran actors—but perhaps the role that Rain will be remembered and appreciated in the widest sense for is that of voicing the Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer that controlled the systems of the Discovery One spacecraft on its voyage to Jupiter in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Arthur C Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (previously here, here, here and here). Rain’s calm and measured tones became something menacing and unforgettable, to have lost agency and the ability to countermand a machine. In 2010, HAL is rebooted and Rain reprises his role, this time alongside his twin, SAL 9000, voiced by Candice Bergen.

frauenwahlrecht

Following the November Revolution that ignited with the abdication of the Hapsburg and German emperors and subsequent truce, this day marks the centenary of universal suffrage in Austria and Germany with both women and men aged at least twenty (down from twenty-five from prior to Great War) being able to vote and stand for public office in any and all elections.
For the people of Germany, this pronouncement was legally ratified on 30 November 1918 and was to shortly thereafter be tested in the field and at the polls with federal elections called for the Weimar Republic in January 1919. Austria held Constituent Assembly (Konstituierende Nationalversammung) elections in mid-February. Though activists all over had been working towards the enfranchisement of women for years and the struggle for equal representation continues, political will acquiesced in part because so many millions had perished in the fighting and constituencies were more and more reliant on the votes of women to confer confidence and mandate.

the shape of water

This meditative, pioneering 1929 “cinepoem” that explores water on film in a its states and excitations by photographer and filmmaker Ralph Steiner strikes me as a forerunner to those strangely alluring, repetitive autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos that galvanise some viewers with a tactile frisson. “H₂O” is one of the earliest art shorts to come out of America and is accompanied in the version at the linked article to a score by William Pearson commissioned by Æon magazine (the original below is silent), and early works such as this have inspired whole genres of filmmaking. Learn more and find much more to explore at the link above.

add a caption, if you like

Via the Daily Dot, we discover that a Twitter bot accrues the work’s granularity by apprising and apportioning with posts sections of Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights (previously), as the title bestowed on a late fifteenth-century oil painted succession of oak panels and is proving itself to be an accomplished meme-maker by inviting followers to examine the details to be found within this fantastic and vast allegory.  Whilst art historians might still be puzzling over the artist’s message and symbolism, the internet has no such qualms about opening itself up to interpretation.
While there may not be any synthesis yet and we find our criticisms and sensibilities confronted and with informed by no corroborating explanation, we still manage to eke meaning of these small parcels of characters. I wonder if that was the artists intent.  Let us know what these weird vignettes signify to you.

6x6

that’s like comparing apples and mass shootings: idioms updated for American contemporary culture

store brand: Christmas advertisement aimed to educate the public on habitat-loss due to palm-oil plantations banned for being “too political”

across the stars: John Williams’ fresh arrangement for the Star Wars prequels—which if nothing else continued the tradition of arch and on point scores

perhaps not forty-two after all: the answer to the ultimate question of life, the Universe and everything is instead one hundred and thirty-seven, the fine-structure constant that haunted Richard Feynmann and Wolfgang Pauli—via Strange Company

sacred and profane architecture: this is the church you go to when God is in the volcano forging a ring of power, a Twitter thread via Art of Darkness

bauhaus 100: the next instalment profiling Herbert Bayer who helped create a universal typographic identity for the movement

waffenstillstand

Previous ceasefire agreements already had pulled out belligerents Bulgaria, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires from the fighting but the Armistice of 11 November 1918 (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month) formally ended the Great War with Imperial Germany’s defeat and withdrawal jenseits the Rhein, holding the peace until the Treaty of Versailles could be negotiated.
 

 

Terms of what was technically not a surrender to the Allied powers were largely determined by Supreme Allied Commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch and parties to the truce were transported incognito across war-torn northern France to the marshal’s private carriage on a secluded railway siding in the Forest of Compiègne and representatives came to an agreement and signed pre-dawn—with the armistice effective noon German time, eleven o’clock in Paris (France was on Greenwich Mean Time until World War II when it came under German occupation and decided not to switch back afterwards).
 

From the field, there was a sense of relief and hope but little jubilation as fifty-two months of fierce fighting and over seventeen million lives lost had left many hollow and exhausted. This post has featured a few images from our visit to the memorial site in the summer of 2008. I remember that being the year that the last surviving veterans passed away and the war slipped from living memory.  The act of contrition and cooperation was later characterised as betrayal and facilitated the rise of more terrors but for now there is peace and that is holy.