once upon a virus

Though much like Fox News in the United States, the state-owned Xinhua news agency has been accused of being an instrument of propaganda in the past, but this particular timeline of the Corona Virus pandemic as told, schooled in the medium of Lego with the air of a fairy tale, does not require much spin or hyperbole—especially compared with Trump’s constant, increasingly desperate and far-fetched claims that it came from a laboratory in Wuhan, fatally inadequate countermeasures on the part of the American federal government that have collapsed into riot and terrorism or his suggestion that the disease might be treated by ingesting bleach and other under the kitchen counter cleaning materials.

pilot whale

Conceptualised and referenced in passing but never appearing in the series due to budget constraints—the same sort of limitations that inspired the transporter room in order to forgo filming landing and launch scenes, we are reminded how the Enterprise of Star Trek: The Next Generation had a deck dedicated to Cetacean Ops that hosted a collaboration between humanoid and marine mammal crew to help with the ship’s guidance and navigation research.  I guess that drawing too much attention to this place would mean that one had to show it.
According to canonical technical manuals, it was staffed by a dozen bottle-nosed dolphins under the supervision of two orcas, and like having Vulcan minders on Star Fleet vessels, the custom comes from Star Trek IV when whales were able to intervene to save the Earth. Much more to be found, including some in-show mentions,  at the discussion thread linked above.

future shock

First in print on this day in 1970, the ethnographical treatise by futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler is summarised in the personal experience of too much change over too little time, arguing that society is undergoing an overwhelming and estranging structural change that engenders “shattering stress and disorientation.” Aside from introducing the concept of “information overload,” the book further limns the features of the Information Era to include a throw-away culture, decreasing ownership in favour of sharing and renting, redundancy and frequent career change and digital nomadism. In 1972, after its best-seller success, a documentary was produced, narrated by Orson Welles.

i want to wake up in the city that never sleeps

Reminiscent of this application that let one dial up ambient sounds of the workplace, the staff of the New York Public Library (previously) have collaborated with a local creative agency to curate and make available the typical metropolitan soundscape in hopes of restoring some of that familiar cacophony whilst the city is on stand-by. More recordings to fill the unnerving silence at Hyperallergic at the link above.

selfie2waifu

Via Boing Boing—though we’d recommend maybe not experimenting with it on one’s phone as it seems to deploy harmless though slightly irritating adware making it easy to fumble over an errant click—we find this fun little application that utilises unsupervised generative adversarial networks (previously) to transform one’s mugshots into manga renderings that make nice and unexpectedly abstract avatars. In the glossary of anime fandom, a waifu (wife)/husbando is one’s fictional counterpart so was a little unsure of the choice in naming and I’d categorise myself IRL with the trait of アホゲ—that is ahoge or idiot hair, describing unruly hair going in all directions, but it is just something amusing to experiment with. Give it a try and show off your results.

florida man

This horrendous flag was once proposed for the official banner of the then territory of Florida hoisted in 1845—recreated according to a contemporary written account—with the appointment of its first governor, William Dunn Moseley, the citizens of Tallahassee flying it at the capitol during his inauguration ceremony. Whilst no one seemed to take objection to the busy and bizarre colour combination (here is the current municipal flag of Tampa), Whigs in the senate roundly rejected the adoption as the motto “Let us Alone” was pointedly a Democratic Party slogan.

i do the rock

Via Art of Darkness, we learn that Tim Curry had a charting hit single in 1979 from his album Fearless, the follow up to his debut recording Read My Lips, which mostly featured covers from his musical influences, including a reggae version of the Beatles’ “I Will.” This song was often double-billed with the music video for another number called “Paradise Garage” and played before screenings of Rocky Horror.

винни-пух и день забот

Born this day in 1917, accomplished Soviet animator Fyodor Khitruk (†2012, see previously) had many outstanding and critically-acclaimed titles to his credit but perhaps the trilogy to leave the biggest impression outside his homeland, since the narrative and visual vernacular runs counter to dominant one, is his adaptation of (1969 – 1972) of A. A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Woods characters. Here is the final instalment, Winnie the Pooh and a Day of Bothers, running twice as long as its previous two parts. Khitruk’s overall style was a marked detour from the sentimental realism of Disney, which nearly contemporaneously produced its own version of Pooh and his friends, with the latter being truer to the original stories.