demon-seed

Rather more exhausted than intrigued and knowing full well that the credentials of Trump’s latest favoured Leibartz(in) lie not only in the realm of possibilities but nay in that of inevitabilities, I still wanted to see if I could gather more background on this individual who trafficks in incubi and has truck with alien DNA and believe that Washington, DC is formulating a vaccine turn people agnostic.
Delightfully the first alternate news source I was presented with was this report from BBC’s Pidgin language service (Why you fit trust BBC News—I like this inclusivity in journalism and forget these other perspectives avail themselves to us sometimes), which informs that the good doctor has further invited on herself the ire of social media who have deplatformed her seminars in the name of preventing the spread of medical disinformation. Facebook is promised divine retribution unless Dr Immanuel’s profile is restored. That vaccine however sounds very promising and hope that we can establish herd immunity.

wedding of the century

Witnessed by thirty-five hundred guests, throngs of over two million Londoners lining the streets to watch the procession and a television audience of upwards of three-quarters of a billion people, the royal matrimonial ceremony of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer with all its ornate trappings and circumstance was held on this day at St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1981. The couple separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996 after fifteen years of wedlock.

universal everything

Having had a promising encounter with the global graphic design collective previously (also here), we very much enjoyed the referral from Things Magazine to their workshop and gallery—including the latest animations in their portfolio and more experiments with motion-capture and augmented realities.

a short conchological glossary

Though not presented as a tongue-twister nor with any other context or accompaniment that might appeal to anyone outside the academic community of cockles and mussels or shell-collectors, this odd exercise in splendid enunciation—via Weird Universe—has a soothing, dulcet quality that is only to be found I think in a subject this niche. Click through to download the recording as an MP3.
It makes me think about the admonishment of not being critical of others for mispronouncing a word as they might have only ever encountered that word in print beforehand—I know my head pronunciation of things can be sometimes a mismatch, and we probably ought to bring back the pronouncing album. The opening disclaimer that there no official—only customarily correct way of saying these Latin names does not dissuade us from listening to more from R. Tucker Abbott, PhD (*1919 – †1995), preeminent malacologist, who made up the names of many of the species himself.

tritium breeding concepts

Earlier this week, after years of preparation, Emmanuel Macron inaugurated the assembly phase of the international collaborative effort to demonstrate that a nuclear fusion reaction can be achieved and sustained to generate energy at commercially viable levels.
Iter (see previously) is being constructed in Provence next to an existing facility called Cadarache that conducts research into nuclear and alternative energy and fuel sources and this largest of more than one hundred experimental fusion reactors built dating back to the 1950s to produce plasma by 2025 and if successful will furnish clean and virtually unlimited power.

7x7

what would you like to eat: bats mostly squabble about what’s for dinner

it’s a duck blur: television intros recreated scene-for-scene with stock footage

east-enders: five decades of photographic portraiture from Tex Ajetunmobi that illustrate the harmony and diversity of the London neighbourhood

ebussy: a modular electric vehicle that can transform into several different types of autos

fine hypertext products: Pudding launches its “Winning the Internet” newsletter—via Waxy

du har satt din sista potatis: useful Swedish phrases for venting steam

the garifuna collective: enjoy the calls and songs of threatened birds set to electronic music

a more perfect union

Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic directs our attention to the graphic narrative of cartoonist R. Sikoryak whose range of homages previously assayed the junky legalese of terms and conditions agreements and made something keenly engaging out of it and now takes on the US constitution (see also) to illuminate the document’s text. Sikoryak cycles through dozens of characters and styles beyond Charles Schultz’ Peanuts including Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” and Bob Montana’s Archie Comics.  Much more to explore at the links above.

artistique apparu

Having later significant influence on contemporaries like Edward Hopper, born this day in 1881 (†1946) Léon Spilliaert, graphic artist and Symbolist painter, spent his formative years sketching the Belgian countryside. The autodidact was able to ply his talents as a career and was commissioned to illustrate anthologies of short-fiction in a Brussels journal that published writers in the same genre, which channelled the gothic components from Romanticism and Impressionism to form a distinct visual and poetic movement in France, Belgium and Russia. Before moving on to executing his own works with studies in landscapes, coastal scenes and brooding dreamscapes Spilliaert especially enjoyed illustrating the works of the representative writers of the movement, Paul Verlaine and Edgar Allan Poe.