toki pona

Invented in 2001 with its full lexicon published on this day in 2014, the eponymous constructed ‘language of the good’ has a sparse, flexible vocabulary of around one hundred and twenty root words set forth by linguist Sonja Lang whose minimalistic qualities championed by a small but strong community of enthusiastic ascribers employs a few words to express big and broad ideas and promote positive thinking—the project developed as a form of self-therapy out of a dark place—in line with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity that posts that one’s grammar defines one’s world-view and outlook.
Basic ideas can be used to communicate increasingly complex and nuanced meanings but only through an additive process that’s just as easily parred back down to its elemental concepts. Despite being rejected as imprecise by authorities, Toki Pona was among the languages subject to an investigative study on the ability of machines to understand natural language (even naturally occurring examples are parochial and political with prescriptive grammar) in context, significantly outperforming English and others. Because of the limited lingual inventory and morphemes, aside from the Latin script, two logographic writing systems were developed by Toki Pona students: sitelen pona and sitelen sitelen, the latter glyphs pictured along with the banner of constructed languages, designed by Christian Thalmann for the CONLANG family—Lang’s experiment not intended as an auxiliary form of communication but having in a way attained that status.

plutodemocracy

Rather poignantly and provocatively first appearing in print in 1895 before being used by Winston Churchill and Hannah Arendt to discuss the preludes of war decades later, the term, while plain and immediate, still does carry quite a bit of effacing nuance and nudge.  A hypercapitalistic plutocracy that operates under the air of legitimacy that cursory though ultimately meaningless democratic ceremonies afford. A cynical but probably accurate bifurcating of the population, there’s a show of participatory governance for the working class with all real power vested in the moneyed classes.

segoe print state of mind

Friend of the blog Nag on the Lake directs our attention to a neat project that explores font families by the localities that inspired them.
Created by foundries to build up their portfolios and offer a greater range of styles—most debuting well before the trend of cities hiring a designer to give them a united, corporate image, the United Fonts of America allows one to triangulate in a sense geographic coordinates and style with hometown pride and mediate on what the association signify. Whose namesake is Tahoma exactly? Plus there’s all the other aspects of toponymy to consider besides. This map is focused on the US and it’s a good heuristic tool to get one thinking further afield.
Is there a typeface for where you live or do business, the product of a marketer or otherwise? Inspired I found that there was in fact a digital script commissioned by Linotype, designed by Rosemarie Kloos-Rau and released in 1992 named for a place we’re associated with. Within the framework of the industry standard DIN (see previously) 16518 governing handwriting and calligraphy, it is commonly used for brochures, greeting cards and call-out boxes in articles.

stockheimer warte

While researching something else, I chanced upon the identity of the now familiar landmark of my daily excursions (see previously), once part of a network of watch and signal towers though this one has since been obscured by the treeline that allowed authorities and magistrates to communicate with great alacrity even the late Middle Ages, atop a peak with its next link in the transmission line-of-sight being the Lichtenburg (see also). Inaccessible and well-preserved, I half suspected the fifteenth century, five-metre high watchtower to be some sort of folly or artificial ruin meant to lend atmosphere, with only the romantic suggestion of a staircase and like some place for a kept-maiden, but learned it not only was pressed into service but also has some local lore associated with it.
Once upon a time, a woman from the village went up to the summit to gather some blueberries and left her child to nap nearby on the moss-covered flagstones of the tower while she worked. The woman heard a shriek and ran to the base of the tower only to find her precious baby replaced by a monstrous imposter (eine Balg, a changeling). Seeing no choice but to carry on as if it were her own offspring, the woman took it back to the village, where despite wanting for nothing, it grew up (as she feared) crooked and simple but an otherwise upstanding citizen. A second tale relates that of a cobbler’s apprentice who fled his master distraught one evening and climbed into the tower, preferring exposure or starvation to the continued punishment and abuse by his master. The night grew darker and more foreboding, the wind picking up and the whole forest below seeming to surge around the tower, the sound of fleeing animals under the howl of the storm. There was a break in the wind and the tumult of noise was replaced by the raucous and lively sounds of a hunting party on horseback, the procession singing merrily songs of their adventures—which gave the boy comfort and resolve to enjoin society, even if it was a lowly shoemakers apprentice. As the hunting party receded and faded into the distance, the storm resumed, though less threatening than before and the boy drifted off to sleep. The next day, he was found by some lumberjacks who returned him to his workshop where he remained, becoming an expert cobbler himself.

6x6

colours of the world: Crayola crayons launch a special pigment pack to capture the diverse skin tones of people around the world—since fortunately the vast majority is not this

farringdon folly: the real life landmarks that informed and inspired (see also) JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth

a typographical sirloin: visual mondegreens (see previously here and here) resulting from the keming—er, kerning of certain letter combinations

service à la française: the history and possible future of buffet-style dining (relatedly)

ultraflex: a futuristic Icelandic boogie band at the intersection of disco and Soviet-era calisthenics

where the rubber meets the road: tyre add-on device collects worn and shredded detritus before it goes into the environment

masthead and en memoriam

the elevator’s broke so he slides down a rope

Among other events of pith and moment that shares this anniversary, our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet, records that on this day in 1974, David Bowie released his eighth studio album, Diamond Dogs, presaged by the single Rebel, Rebel, introducing his next glam persona after retiring Ziggy Stardust and donning the character of Halloween Jack (a real cool cat) who lives in post-apocalyptic, dystopian (Big Brother seguing into the final track, Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family) Hunger City.

core values

Eventually reaching a depth of over twelve kilometres in 1989 when further drilling was suspended due to higher than expected temperatures, Soviet scientists commenced operations on the Kola Superdeep Borehole (Кольская сверхглубокая скважина) on the far northwestern peninsula on the Barents Sea on this day in 1970. Despite the impressive depth just barely surpassed by petroleum prospectors, the borehole only penetrated a third of the Earth’s crust—the thickness of the continental shelf ranging between thirty and seventy kilometers. Research continued until 1995 when the borewell was sealed and yielded surprising findings through this keyhole spelunking into the underground including the presence of water and fossil plankton some four miles down.