Though launched as a website back in March of that year and defunct since September 2003, the pioneering venture from Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger published its first reference article on this day in 2000—on atonal music.
Compiled by volunteers like its successor Wikipedia, Nupedia was intended as free content but plans were in place to run advertisements and generate revenue on the platform. It was not until November 2000 that the second full length article (on the Western canon of classical music) was ready but not for lack of submissions and rather an overly lengthy peer-review and vetting process.
Saturday, 25 July 2020
web-based encyclopedia
Friday, 24 July 2020
el topo
Meaning The Mole in Spanish, with direction, scoring and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky in the titular role, the genre-defining acid Western is a cult classic—one of the first midnight screenings—enjoys many prominent devotees ranging from Yoko Ono to Kanye West and everyone in between. Bizarre as the film about a gunslinger’s quest for enlightenment who bests his philosophical betters through luck and treachery rather than skill is aiming to leave an indelible imprint on the audience from a creator that eschews psychedelics as superfluous, it is considered to be Jodorowsky’s most accessible and enduringly popular. Learn more from BBC Culture at the link above
christina mirabilis
Fรชted on this anniversary of her death in Sint-Truiden in 1224 (c. *1150), Christina the Astonishing (H. Christina de Wonderbare) was regarded as a saint in her own time, first for her reported resurrection, dramatically revived and levitating to the church rafters in front of the whole congregation gathered for her funeral after succumbing to a massive seizure and dying.
Later she recounted that she had visited Heaven, Hell and Purgatory and offered the choice to remain in Paradise or be restored to Earth for the sole purpose of delivering souls from the flames of the liminal place. Christina had floated up from the pews to the ceiling because she could no longer tolerate the stench of the sinful parishioners and embarked on a course of extreme penance and privation, conniving new tortures and punishments for herself—including extended wintertime swims in the frozen Meuse and to be carried downstream in the current and crushed by the millstone of a granary on the river. Despite all this behaviour, Christina never suffered injury from her misadventures, venerated in the Limburg region as the patroness of millers, those suffering from mental illness and mental health workers. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ recorded a piece about Christina the Astonishing in their 1992 dream song anthology which recounts her vita and hagiography.
a woman’s place is in the house
Born this day in New York in 1920, “Battling” Bella Savitsky Abzug (†1998), lawyer and social activist campaigned and won a seat in Congress representing her constituency in the Catskills and New York’s capital district with the above slogan—specifying that the house was the House of Representatives. Drawing the ire of Nixon administration and earning her a place on the master list of political opponents, Abzug was a strong proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment and rallied against the ongoing war in Vietnam.
Thursday, 23 July 2020
9x9
rewritten by machine on new technology: record industry going after a neural network called Weird A.I. Yankovic that generates parody songs in the style of its namesake—via Slashdot
my beautiful laundrette: elderly couple dress up and model the apparel left in their laundromat—via Nag on the Lake
an atmosphere for simple communication and dating: once Russia cinema reopens, the Ministry of Culture is banning drama and dreary movies until at least the spring of 2021
it’s portraits all the way down: an Inception of self-portraiture—see previously
search history: a New York Times styles reporter documents and annotates everything term she researched online for a week—via Kottke
be the first to like this post: pigeons look for other career options
the tetris effect: a film about the game’s origins is in production but it won’t be another Battleship—via Miss Cellania’s Links
karen alert: they keep getting worse
good guy: Billie Eilish’s song Bad Guy performed in major key—see also—via Kottke
Wednesday, 22 July 2020
imago dei
Crucially and rather sensibly as the world collectively raged against symbols of racism, colonialism and enslavement, one activist suggested that the biggest sacred cow to tip and topple would be the relentlessly perpetuated image of the Jesus as a white European.
Whilst we’ve encountered countless depictions of artistic license dressed in anachronism, the trope of Jesus as white and thus set apart from his peers takes a more deliberative tact and culminates with a ubiquitous cameo by Warner Elias Sallman (*1892 – †1968), whom as recently as 1994 was regaled with predictions that he was likely to be chosen as the best-known artist of the century. His devotional piece, The Head of Christ, has been reproduced more than half a billion times and is for many the way, consciously or not, the way to visualise Jesus. Despite being mass-produced and from pulp traditions, The Head of Christ is associated with miraculous healing and appearances.
Tuesday, 21 July 2020
frumskrik
Whilst the great wide open spaces of Iceland are even less peopled with visitors from abroad than usual and recognising the therapeutic, cathartic effect that a good scream (especially since public displays of terror are being discouraged) into the void can have, one of the country’s tourists’ boards have installed loud-speakers and live webcams in various pristine, remote spots around the island that will release one’s frustrations into the wilderness. One can also sample the anguished wails submitted by others at the website plus find links to more resources and coping methods—aside from primal scream therapy—for those in distress and those simply needing to de-stress.
