point-of-sale

On this day in 1974 after nearly a decade in development and first conceived as a method for tracking railcars and shipping containers, the first bar coded, marked with a universal product code (redundantly, UPC code) instead of a price tag item (see previously) was sold at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
Cashier Sharon Buchanan scanned (we are dismissive of such acts now as routine but Ms. Buchanan was very much from that moment on an engineer wielding the beam of a powerful helium-neon laser that bounced off a rotating mirror and onto the glass-plated register surface so a central computer could match the label against the shop’s programmed inventory—no mean feat that) a value pack of Juicy Fruit chewing gum for customer Clyde Dawson (not his only purchase during that visit—just the first one rang up).  Deconstructed, the encoding tables do look a bit like the I Ching, and afterwards the artefact, the (presumably a stand-in unless the purchaser indulged the museum this memento) was acquired by the Smithsonian. I wonder if this first barcode is some sort of talisman, a charm imbued with power over all the scanning to follow.

6x6

morning edition: artist paints sunrises on newspapers as a dawning juxtaposition to the headlines of the day

free parking: aerial views of grounded planes at the Frankfurter Flughafen—see previously

b&b: designs for a horizontal hive with human sleeping compartment

👁️👄👁️:the ubiquitous string of emoji signals a tautology

if it ain’t baroque: another in a growing chain of art restoration failures, via Miss Cellania’s Links

2020: a spa odyssey: a day retreat in Caracas inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s aesthetic

beweinung christi

Having determined that the artwork through an extensive investigation was looted from an institution in Wrocław (Breslau) by the Nazis during World War II, the national museum in Stockholm will repatriate The Lamentation of Christ, executed circa 1538 by the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder (see previously) whose portfolio—especially in later works like this, reflect the development of theology and religious sensibilities in symbolism and iconography of the Reformation and those countervailing forces. The mourners have a strange tronie-like quality (probably depicting patrons connected to the commission) disconcertingly emotive but Jesus does have some ashy knees.

schmetterlinge

Coincidentally thanks to a post from a fellow blogger, I was able to indirectly identify the butterflies that I encountered in the meadow yesterday gathered around a thistle bloom through his meeting of a Tawny Emperor. These are their European cousins called Apatura metis—that is Freyer’s Purple Emperor (Donau-Schillerfalter), taxonomically classified by entomologist Christian Friedrich Freyer of Ansbach in 1829, and so called as the open wings of the males display blue and purple, if viewed from the right angle but normally appear to have more subdued harvest colours.

commerce is our goal here at tyrrel—more human than human is our motto

On this day, as our faithful chronicler reports, among many other events of great pith and moment, and sharing the box office with John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing, Ridley Scott’s film opened in 1982.
Starring Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer with music by Vangelis, the initially polarising and underperforming film defined the genre of neo-noir and is loosely based on the Philip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?—the name for the bounty-hunters coming from a William S. Burrough’s story about a dystopian future (set in 2009) reliant on an underground network of healthcare.

the awokening

Via Super Punch, we learn that the tiniest American state with the formerly rather outsized and outdated long-form name with the current and hopefully enduring public appetite for social justice and reform finally propelling a decades’ long debate to drop the onerous and hurtful postscript with the announcement from the governor that Rhode Island and Providence Plantations would no longer be using the latter part in official documents, correspondence or on state symbols.
The point of contention that opponents to the change cited in the past—that plantation was a contemporary term for colony when founded was finally mooted, recognising that the word has horrific connotations in the long and tragic history and the fact that after the American Revolution, Rhode Island choose to be incorporated into the Union with the word already having taken on that meaning despite the original context. Since no one really knows what Rhode Island refers to either—possibly a passing similarity to Rhodos (although the territory is a peninsula and part of the mainland) or due to ruddy fall foliage, they should go for a wholly new and fabulous identity. Legislation to change the state’s name officially will be taken up by the its House of Representatives for a vote in July.

gentilic

A demonym—or the above Latin form—is the word that gives the name that residents of a particular country, city or town use to describe themselves and their affiliation.
Denizens (gentile) of the north-eastern French town on the Moselle Épinal are known as Spinaliens. That’s pretty awesome and French naming-conventions are reliably uniting—the glottonyme Allemands being for example Berlinois, Bonnois or Hanovriem (see also endonyms and exonyms). Less straightforward but delightful formations occur in the British isles—including Glaswegian, Man of Kent, Loiner (from Leeds), Liverpudlian, Mancunian, Novocastrian or Paludian (from Slough).

highways and horizons

For its forward-looking pavilion (see also) known as Futurama for New York’s 1939 World’s Fair, General Motors commissioned theatrical and industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes, whom realising that means and aspirations of the middle-class were becoming commiserate with what the automotive industry could supply—this particular intersection commemorated with the interstate network of roadways and a unique flagship model in the Pontiac Ghost Car with a Plexiglas chassis, laying bear—at a glance—the hidden, in-built value—as stated in a press release. Afterward it was acquired by the Smithsonian and on display until the public found it tedious and antiquated rather than visionary, and which point it was deaccessioned and passed around various dealers as a promotional vehicle.