the lost squandron

Among many other momentous events that occurred on this day, as our faithful chronicler Doctor Caligari reports, five US Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers took off for a three-hour training exercise from an air base in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1945 (designated as Flight 19) with a compliment of fourteen airmen and the crew of thirteen of a Martin patrol bomber Mariner dispatched to search for the missing squadron after radio contact was suddenly lost and all disappeared without a trace.
This incident and geographically related ones led an Associated Press correspondent Edward Van Winkle Jones to speculate in the Miami Herald five years afterwards how in the modern, push-button era such mysteries and disappearances could abide—setting off a chain of embellishments that led to the concepts of the deadly Bermuda Triangle and the Limbo of the Lost, with supernatural and extraterrestrial overtones. In an article appearing in the occult, pulp fiction verging to softcore magazine Argosy (meaning a large class of merchant ship from the thalassocracies of Venice or Ragusa) in 1964, Vincent Gaddis defined the esoteric vertices as San Juan, Puerto Rico, Miami and the island of Bermuda. The triangle corresponds with one of the most heavily plied shipping lanes in the world and the frequency of vanishings can be attributed to the amount of air and sea traffic converging from all points.

geosophy

We tip our hat to highly discerning Things magazine for introducing us to the cartographic empire of educator and spatial narrator Daniel Huffman, the insightful talent behind some of the more visually stunning maps in circulation. For instance, you might have encountered lately these precision, exacting typewritten charts, unique business card ideas, commercial commissions and award winning maps for alternate histories. The title refers to the study of the world as people imagine and conceive it and the relation of dogma to environment. Much more to explore at the links above.

i’m afraid i can’t do that dave

Though matters have yet to escalate to HAL 9000 levels, Quartz reports that the first interaction between the International Space Station’s robot crew member (previously) and its human astronauts came off a little socially awkward with first impressions ranging from frosty to slightly menacing. I’m confident that relations will improve and civility will prevail but one does have to take a bit of exception to the fact that man and machine got off to this sort of start on day one of the mission.

pelagic zone

Not having grown up with the characters, it’s a little outside of my particular shibboleth but I think we can all nonetheless appreciate the artistry and world-building that went into one of the longest running animated series in history and can definitely share in the sentiment of this tribute from Dangerous Minds on the recent passing of Stephen Hillenburg.
Before becoming a cartoon artist, Hillenburg taught marine biology and set a cast of characters in The Intertidal Zone as an educational comic to better reach his students. These classroom mascots would eventually move to Bikini Bottoms but Hillenburg honed his drawing talents on other projects in the interim. Watch Hillenburg’s first short at the link above.

operation faithful patriot

Everlasting Blört introduces us to the extensive portfolio of Barcelonan artist Riki Blanco via his unappologetic (accomodations for inexcusable behaviour should always be called out) portrayal of Trump’s unending campaign stunt, which even the Pentagon can’t abide by calling a mission for its political overtones that not only represents a patently xenophobic Navidad whose goal of disinvitation during the holiday season means that many soldiers deployed to the southern frontier are spending it away from their families and friends, ordered to lob tear gas canisters at massing migrants—for some, fulfilling an errand sought after.

radishes or lettis tow bunches a peny

Inspired by gentle author’s own piece on the cries and criers of London, Spitalfields Life hosts an article from one of the trustees of the city’s Garden Society focusing on itinerant florists and green-grocers. It’s really fascinating what sort of detail about trade and the economy that one can glean from a few sparse particulars that one took a moment to notice and document (the pictured from the scrapbook of Samuel Pepys), especially how the nature of empire and imports redefine luxury goods—bringing them from expensive, exclusive shops to street markets.

a pylori

The neuroscience world was intrigued but restrained when it was suggested last month that errant and overlooked interlopers in post-mortem grey matter could suggest that like our constellation of gut flora and fauna, that our brains and perhaps entire nervous system might indeed need to maintain a symbiosis with beneficial bacteria for optimal cognition, just like a sanitised stomach is bad for good digestion. Nautilus Magazine interviews veteran researcher Rosalinda Roberts, whose searched for organic signs of schizophrenia for over three decades—discounting the possible signs of the microbiome until just now as their presence runs very much counter to conventional wisdom—and explores the implications the finding, if confirmed, has for mental and physical well-being as well as for the science of the mind and the nature of consciousness.

deuces

In 1975, in order to honour a Rosetta Stone level breakthrough in ethno-linguistics by epigrapher Yuiry Valentinovich Knorozov (*1922 - †1999), the state-run printworks of the USSR issued a special edition of playing cards decorated with Mayan priestesses and chieftains and hieroglyphs.
Knorozov, who as part of the vanguard advancing into Berlin at the closing stages of World War II happened to rescue a rare manuscript from a burning university library—the Dresden Codex—one of the then-known three extant codices of Mayan script and named for its permanent home (having been spirited away with other treasures from the fire-bombed city)—a discovery that would go on to inform and inspire his career as an ethnographer specialising in Mesoamerican studies, realised in 1952 that the symbols were representational and phonetic and could consult modern, spoken Maya as a guide. Learn more and see more of the deck at Atlas Obscura at the link up top.