high maniera

Though my first impressions of this image was that it was an exorcism or spellbinding in progress, I appreciated being invited to consider another perspective, redirected to its inclusion under the category of Accidental Renaissance—see previously here and here. I do hope that very, very soon that this picture falls out of context and we’ll have to go to great pains to try and explain what’s going on here. Have you captured an unintended masterpiece of grace and proportion?

≒

I really liked these clever reminders to maintain a respectful and healthy distance from the design studio Nosigner as part of the public service campaign Pandaid using jarringly memorable and relatable metrics, like one to two Beatles, depending on one’s stride—from an iconic scene which incidentally public works have taken advantage of people staying in-doors to give the Abbey Road zebra-crossing (previously) a fresh coat of paint. Although the specialised symbol makes perfect sense if one thinks about the other characters and ideograms that the equal sign could be mistaken for, we also particularly liked learning that this variant shown for approximation (≈) is utilised in Japan, the Koreas and Taiwan.

autostadt

Via Things Magazine we discover that adjacent to the flagship Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg there are two museums, ZeitHaus, one dedicated to the brand’s greatest automotive hits with pavilions full of Lamborghini, Škoda, Bentleys as well as their own cars—with the other wing surely worth the visit as well, is filled with prototypes, test models and show cars that never went into production for the driving public. Exhibits include the 1990 Vario, a concept, a transitional buggy test-marketed prior to the introducing of the new Beetle. See more unrealised roadsters at the link above.

sıcak caz

After being directed to Open Culture’s nice primer on Japanese jazz sessions—that I could play as ambient music all day—from Nag on the Lake, I was excited to see an expanded, cosmopolitan coffee break set pieces from the same DJ Zag Erlat playing vinyl grooves from Africa, Brazil, Bollywood, Russia and Anatolian rock from his native Turkey. Most of the selections date from the 1970s and make me want to go crate-digging at the first opportunity. Sample all the genres of Erlat’s Analog Journal at the links above.

when somebody’s the president of the united states, the authority is total—and that’s the way it’s gotta be… it’s total and the governors know that

Whilst Trump—who previously begged off any responsibility for the way that corona-crisis has unfolded and dismissed it as a hoax and refused to impose a nationwide shut down, leaving the states and municipalities to sort that out themselves and squabble over life-saving equipment as medical infrastructure becomes overwhelmed—now proclaims dictatorial powers, despite Amendment X to the Bill of Rights regarding delegated rights and devolution to the people and the GOP traditionally staunch proponents for that principle, and will order the states on reopening economic activity and relaxing restrictions on movement and congregation. Governors and mayors, despite this assertion, are coordinating efforts and pledge that health outcomes and scientific modelling will determine future courses of action and not the politics of incumbency.

himmelsspektakel

During the pre-dawn hours of this morning in 1561, there was a mass sighting of an unexplained celestial phenomenon involving what was perceived to be the aerial battle of hundreds of unidentified flying objects in the skies above Nürnberg.
Though widely dismissed as hysteria reinforced by the contemporaneous publication, documentation of the event in the city’s broadsheet for circulation by printer Hans Wolff Glaßer and explained away as the convergence of otherwise mundane atmospheric phenomena, aspects of the reported skirmish by witnesses of darting bright spheres, tubes globes, crescents and cylinders followed by the appearance of a large black triangular object that occulted the rising sun before crashing in the countryside is pretty tantalising and is a textbook close-encounter of the second kind. A similar sighting occurred five years later in the skies over Basel on three occasions in late July and early August.

a financially unstable mess but at the liquor store they call me ma’am

Matt “the Mincing Mockingbird” Adrian paints an expressive range of avian friends with a certain deftness juxtaposed with humorous titles and captions that contrasts the beauty of Nature with the humdrum complaints of human existence. Visit the artist’s website and have look through his expansive portfolio and see if you can tag yourself.

śmigus-dyngus

The second day of Bright Week—the Octave of Easter, is a public holiday in Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia as an extension of Eastertide and events sometimes traditionally include egg races and other activities to use up, put away the festoonery—a pretty practical idea, which in parts of central Europe, including parts of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary and Ukraine they had down to a science, once at least though the practise seems to be less and less common.
Called in Polish above and Oblévačka in Czech, “Wet Monday” (or simply Dyngus Day by diaspora) was chance for adolescents to throw water on each other and flirtatiously beat each other with willow branches that made up traditional egg trees and decorative boughs. With suspected roots in pagan fertility ceremonies and the welcoming of spring countered by Christian missionaries trying impose their religion on the natives, linguists conjecture that śmigus refers to baptism—an involuntary or unwanted one at that, going all the way back to the conversion of Mieszko I, the Duke of the Poles in 966 (coincidentally also on this day)—and Dingnis—from the old German for ransom—refers to the tribute that one can pay in leftover eggs to avoid getting doused or whipped.