early adopters

We thoroughly enjoyed this review and overview of how new media and technological innovation influenced and informed Eastern Europe through the lens of the last years of the Polish People’s Republic. 

The efforts on the part of the authorities could not outpace and eventually lagged far behind ever more ingenious and widespread means of implementation that circumvented attempts of censorship or suppression (see also), eventually conceding to the inevitable. Considering the role of John Paul II in social and civic reforms, the account of young priests using new media as teaching aids and for screening—cassette cinemas—films that were banned in the theatres and helping to carve out a refuge from the state regime. The image is a still from a 1988 adaptation of Pan Kleks (Mister Inkblot) and his magical academy. More from the Calvert Journal at the link above.

ten and two

Things Magazine directs our attention to directed to a thoroughgoing and informative appreciation of the engineering and triangulation of technology, style and their limitations, constraints that have gone into the Apple Watch, including a lesson of the anatomy of classic

watchmaking (lugs, bezel, face and hands) and a historical inventory of the iconic dials that inform and inspire Apple’s gallery, including the “error-proof” California Dial trialled by Rolex, the evolving chronograph with an array of complications, diving watches and models coordinated with Greenwich Mean Time, introduced by Pan Am realising that their pilots and crew needed to reference multiple time-zones.

the goldfish scene

The 1957 East German children’s film Das singende, klingende Bäumchen based on the folktale tale “Hurleburlebutz” compiled by the Brothers Grimm was serialised for television by the BBC in the mid-sixties, the import, with audiences unprepared for the foreign and fairy tale character of the production left an indelible mark on a generation of impressionable viewers, though well-made and quite beloved elsewhere.

The plot, categorised in the 1812 collection as Kinder- und Hausmärchen 66, involves a beautiful but rather haughty princess who rebuffs the overtures of a prince, rejecting his proposal lest he brings her the mythical “singing ringing tree.” After much searching and tribulations, the prince discovers the tree but it is in the domain of an evil dwarf, who makes the prince a bargain. The prince is offered the tree on the condition that if the princess still refuses to marry him, he will be transformed into a bear and in the service of the dwarf. Because the tree only performs in the presence of true love, the princess is not impressed with this tree that neither sings nor rings.

The prince turns into a bear and is compelled to return to the dwarf’s lair, taking the tree with him. Still obsessed with this tree, the princess dispatches her father the king to find it. The king encounters the prince bear, who gives him the tree on the condition that the king comes back to him with the first thing the king sees upon his return. Naturally it’s the princess who is now also under the power of the dwarf. Releasing how insufferable she is, the dwarf casts a spell on the princess to take away her beauty. The princess and the bear gradually fall in love, the princess reforming her selfish ways and breaks both their curses—with the singing, ring tree announcing the triumph of true love.

show us the tubmans or obverse, reverse

After being sidelined with the rollout of the new design until no earlier than 2028 by the racism of the previous administration (see also), US President Biden promises to fast-track the redesign of the $20 bill to feature abolitionist and Underground Railroad engineer Harriet Tubman.

Press Secretary Jen Psaki referred further lines of questioning to the Treasury, preambling her statement with how it's important that “our money reflect the history and diversity of our country, and Harriet Tubman’s image gracing the $20 note would certainly reflect that. The current face of the most circulated bill, Andrew Jackson, whom was quite the monster for championing slavery and a litany of other things, would not be wholly with the redesign excised but rather remanded to the backside.

7x7

paradiplomacy: an intricate Tajik teahouse in Boulder, Colorado  

nivotone: brilliant restoration of a 1930s Soviet optical-analogue, electronic music synthesis—via Things  

❄️: a snowflake generator—see previously 

soon may the wellerman come: more sea shanties—see previously  

twitchable: discovering a drive for birding under lockdown  

topographic prominence: an interactive version of Switzerland’s 1845 Dufour Survey Map from Maps Mania, see also 

putin’s palace: a gallery of photographs and digital renderings from blueprints of luxury property that is allegedly the Russian president’s personal retreat

this day in colonial history

Commemorated as Australia Day, the First Fleet under the command of Admiral Arthur Philip arrived in Sydney Harbour to found the first permanent British settlement on the continent in 1788. This is also the 1841 anniversary of the formal possession of Hong Kong when Commodore Gordon Bremer arriving at a headland (since moved inland due to coastal reclamation) named Possession Point, the former park developed as a hotel and in the 1980s with the terminal for ferry service to Macau. Finally in 1855, the Point No Point was signed under considerable duress on the northern tip of the Kitsap Peninsula (so named for its appearance from a distance as a promontory but receding as one nears it) in the territory of Washington, with the original inhabitants, the Skokomish, Chimakum and S’Klallam peoples, ceding their land in exchange for a small reservation, concession along the Hood fjord.

benedictus deus

Overseen by three successive popes between the years 1545 and 1563, the nineteenth ecumenical council of Trent (Concilium Tridentinum), called in response to the popularity of the Protestant Movement, and seeking to define the difference between the two sects and establish the rules that Catholics were to follow was ratified on this day in 1564 by Pius IV—with the thrust of the decrees and definitions forbidding Catholics, under pain of ex-communication, unauthorised interpretation. Judgment and enforcement was the reserve of the pontiff alone and shortly afterward the Index liborum prohibtorum was published specifying which books were banned as heretical.

zorbing

Via the always engaging Things Magazine, we learn the band The Flaming Lips have staged two unique performances in Oklahoma with band members and audience enveloped by personal space bubbles. It’s going to take more convincing for me personally, even hermetically sealed and safety donning and doffing the ball seems like quite the ordeal, but for the experience, it seems well executed with important protocols in place.