sm;)e

Navigating the countercultural and often contradictory notation and expression of graphic designer Harvey Ball’s (*1921 – 🙂2001) enduring and pervasive icon, with precedents and antecedents—never trademarked and it earning Ball a commission of forty-five dollars—the smiley has enjoyed a duplicitous career as no other symbol and is certainly a subject ripe for exploration as it was enlisted, never exclusively, for the commercial and corporate as well as for the subversive and sublime. Via Colossal, this history with relevant touchstones and points of departure are the subject of an upcoming coffee table volume from DJ DB Burkeman and Rich Browd. Much more to discover at the links above.

coin-op

This curated reflection and speculation from Things Magazine on how an ex-urban (de-centralised), post-pandemic economic model may mainstream the niche and marginal mechanical vending machine is well worth considering from all angles as this may become our new anchor for commerce and culture going forward. Celebrated and cherished as indispensable in some places,  we all might be adopting the posture of the Japanese towards these retail outposts and conveniences in the future.  Reading the articles also made me remember the classic Mold-A-Rama and how advances in three-dimensional printing could really be conscripted to help rehabilitate the economy and build it back better.

squalene

Rotten and selfish to the core—not to mention our ocean alpha-predators being a personal target of America’s impeached, superspreader idiot-in-chief who was not even willing to join a global coalition to develop a vaccine pooling resources and trying to go forward with production as responsibly as possible—humans will be, if left to their own devices, reliant on a compound harvested from the livers of sharks. It was not bad enough it was formerly an ingredient used in cosmetics, the filler ingredient used to cut inoculations so a little of it goes a longer way it triggering an immune response, there are alternative solvents available—such as olive oil. The irreplaceable species already under threat from human activity could be driven to extinction if we were to cull hundreds of thousands more to jockey for cure, throwing the rest of the oceans’ ecosystem towards turmoil.

♆

Discovered by brewer by trade and amateur astronomer by passion William Lassell just weeks after the confirmation of the new planet Neptune at the advice of his friend polymath John Herschel to search for moons, the largest and what was considered until 1949 to be the lone satellite came to be named after Triton. 

The son of sea god Poseidon and Amphitrite—was half man and half fish his name was broadly used as term for merfolk generally in classical scholarship.  Triton’s relatively substantial size, as big as the Earth’s moon, and uniquely retrograde orbit suggest Triton was a dwarf planet, like Pluto, captured by the gas giant. Composed primarily of water ice and frozen nitrogen with a rocky core, it is one of the few known satellites to be geologically active and has cryovolcanic activity and ice geysers that give the moon uniform but ridged terrain described as akin to the surface of a cantaloupe.

rosinenbomber

Born this day in 1920 in Salt Lake City, Utah, Gail Seymour “Hal” Halvorsen, fighter and freight pilot for the United States Airforce during the Berlin Airlift (Berliner Luftbrücke—otherwise known as Operation Vittles) is best known for his goodwill missions as the Candy Bomber, pooling the rations of his flight crew and dropping them from the air, landing gently thanks to tiny improvised parachutes, as they passed over the divided city during the Soviet blockade of West Berlin. With each run, more and more children gathered at the drop-zone and word soon reached Halvorsen’s superiors that supported and expanded operation Little Vittles. Since his retirement in 1974, Halvorsen has continued his humanitarian work, fostering a spirit of charity and home to warzones around the world.  Hearty birthday wishes and congratulations on this new milestone—Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!

wuchang clan

Under the pictured banner that would go on to become that of the People’s Revolutionary Army circa 1913 to 1928, the eponymous uprising that began on this day in 1911 in the Hubei capital city marked the beginning of the revolution that deposed the Qing dynasty. Originally designed by revolutionaries in exile in Japan, the “iron-blood flag” had eighteen stars, representing each of the imperial provinces at the time.

These actions and decisions ushered in the establishment of the Republic of China, the resentment and dissatisfaction of the people with ruling dynasty focused and galvanised by the government’s announced intentions to nationalise local railway development projects and cede, sell control to foreign investment banks, in part to generate capital to pay indemnities and reparations incurred from the Boxer Rebellion of 1901 to oust Christian missionaries and the earlier Opium Wars. Seizing advantage of the popular sentiment, the revolutionary forces stormed the viceroy’s residence, the regional plenipotentate of the emperor with oversight of military and civil affairs, who quickly fled the province and the united protesters established a provisional military government for Hubei and Hunan, quickly taking more ground and encouraging vast swaths of territory in central and southern China to secede and join their cause over the next two months.

6x6

like a version: a brilliant cover of the 1998 Massive Attack hit Teardrop 

the goldilocks paradox: a preliminary survey of superhabitable exoplanets understood to be far more stable and conduscive to life as we know it  

smudge, sharpen, blur: an exhibit that encourages visitors to adjust levels for masterpieces 

 travis touchdown: paparazzi in Croatia snapped a few pictures of Nicolas Cage in costume filming his upcoming The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent  

all mimsy were yᵉ borogoves: an animated reading of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky—illustrating how the reader makes meaning for nonsense words  

sign o’ the times: a review of the Super Deluxe release of Prince’s (previously) 1987 masterpiece

opéra populaire

It is theatre season, and on this day in 1986, the Andrew Lloyd Webber, Richard Stilgoe, Charles Hart stage musical adaptation of the 1910 novel by Gaston Leroux (primarily a writer of detective fiction of equal stature and influence to Arthur Conon Doyle) that relates the narrative of disfigured musical genius haunting the maze of passageways beneath the opera house of Paris and becomes obsessed with a beautiful soprano had its opening night at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London. One of the longest-running productions of all time, it has been performed by troupes all over the world.