avgustovskiy putch

Opposed to the decentralisation and reform efforts of the Soviet president and General Secretary of the Communist Party, Communist hardliner elements in the government attempted a coup d'état beginning on this day at noon in 1991 to remove Mikhail Gorbachev (see previously) with the Moscow military district commander declaring martial law in effect and signaling an imminent siege on the parliamentary compound (Белый дом—that is, the White House). Allies of the Gorbachev government barricaded the building and rebuffed the attack, codenamed Operation Grom—that is, thunder. Whilst these events unfolded—a power vacuum that lasted sixty hours, Estonia declared its independence with the other Baltic states following soon after.

umarèl

Via the always engrossing Futility Closet—which has, in addition to its regular podcast, returned to blogging with a fervour after a hiatus, we learn a Bolognese term that refers to retired gentlemen who pass time at roadworks and other construction sites supervising and disbursing advise to the crew.
The word meaning “little man,” it has picked up use around Italy since a 2005 book employed the term and not just in the one region and often with the female equivalent żdåura, an umarell’s wife. While the subject of gentle derision, developers and municipalities often are willing to pay a small stipend in exchange for their scrutiny and quality-control.

postillon

The other day we learned that William Shakespeare gave us the word droplet and we now shown the observation from BBC correspondent Hugh Schofield that the more precise, apropos term to describe the mechanism of viral transmission in French employs the borrowed and lent word for a teamster that guides a horse-drawn coach.
Though not much in common-parlance in English since the adoption of the horseless carriage except in the phrase “posting to the trot”—that is adjusting one’s gait and pace to the rhythm of one’s mount or other means of conveyance and the ludicrous, said-no-one-ever phrase from the Portuguese primer English as she is Spoke, “Pardon me, but your postilion has been struck by lightning.” What might be put less delicately in English as spittle or salivary output is framed rather metaphorically as a forerunner who heralds one’s presence to one’s interlocutor. Porter un masque pour vous protéger et protéger les autres

liner notes

Via Everlasting Blört we are directed to this fabulous gallery curated by Reagan Ray (previously) of album cover art designed by the imminent Milton Glaser (see also).
We especially like the appreciative prologue about the intricacies and interlacing of his work and how a custom, one-off typeface might be later expanded into a font. With over two hundred and fifty jackets to his credit and a career spanning six decades, it is a challenge to select favourite but most are represented in the collection above. In addition to the iconic covers Glaser created for Bob Dylan, Harry Chapin and Albert King, we really like the psychedelic look for the cover band The Baroque Inevitable plus this commission for Al Caiola’s Magic Guitars “Music for Space Squirrels,” which you can listen along to below.

korabl-sputnik 2

On this day in 1960, a veritable arch (Корабль-Спутник 2, meaning ship-satellite) was launched into orbit in what was the second attempt to launch a Vostok capsule and safely return it carrying a living manifest of animals and plants—the first try on 28 July having tragically failed with an engine fire, the original canine crew named Chaika (Seagull, see also) and Lisichka (Foxie)—with the spacecraft accommodating a selection of plants, two rats, forty mice and two dogs, Belka and Strelka (previously). All survived the test flight, circling the globe four times. The following year, Strelka had a litter of puppies, one of which was presented to First Lady Jaqueline Kennedy by the Soviet government as a sign of goodwill. Though initially suspicious that the puppy was bugged, Pushinka was given a home at the White House.

you’re not supposed to hear me—that’s a soliloquy

Delightfully LitHub delivers forty adaptations of Hamlet, ranging from anthropomorphic Christian produce, a Monsterpiece Theatre production to Maximilian Schell’s 1961 eponymous presentation spoofed by MST3K in 1999 or Derek Jacobi in the title role on Frasier and Ethan Hawke in Hamlet 2000, ranked for your consideration.  We especially liked the unique performance of Fleabag priest Andrew Scott, clocking in at number eight.  Which tropes and interpretations do you think have particularly aged well?

dataviz

Via Waxy, we discover the portfolio of Gladys at Stoxart who turns variations in market prices into quite brilliant landscape works of art. Tracking economic activity generally is subject in itself whose volatility may not be exactly commiserate with realistic topography but one can commission a specific stock’s performance over the time frame of one’s choice.

conlang

From the cabinet of hypertext curiosities of Mx van Hoorn, we are not only introduced to the linguist David J Peterson, whom after JRR Tolkien and lexicographers behind Klingon is probably the most celebrated contemporary figure in constructed languages (see previously) with Dothraki from Game of Thrones, we make his acquaintance in the greatest of fashions—namely, through his handmade landing spot for his various projects. Pictured is a bit of orthography for the invented script of the imagined Njaama culture and the entire enterprise has a lot to explore and is a prompt for reflecting on the organic and inspired development of communication and how that might be resonant and rendered.