hodie mihi cras tibi

Via Super Punch, we quite enjoyed perusing this curated gallery of seventeenth century mourning, memorial rings from the British Museum’s collection. These funerary mementos that often contained hair or other personal artefacts of the departed and have a real, unexpected goth energy, like the titular piece of jewellery with the legend in black enamel Latin for Today me, Tomorrow You. More at the links above.

motortown revue

Arriving for the inaugural performance of a package tour that took them to a score of venues in the UK and Europe in Finsbury Park on this day in 1965, audiences were treated to the musical stylings of the Supremes, Little Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, Mary Wells, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Matha & the Vandellas and many more. The Paris sessions at Olympia Hall were recorded and released as a double album

6x6

gambrinus/ninkasi: five-thousand-year old industrial scale brewery in Egypt makes archaeologist rethink the history of beer, previously believed only to be made on a large scale with Christian monasteries  

star-fiend: one member of the pool of “human computers” realised that there were galaxies beyond our own by studying depth of field on photographic plates with a magnifying glass rather than a telescope  

pod squad: whales collaborated and learned to outsmart their human hunters in the nineteenth century—via Kottke, blogging for twenty-three years now 

dyi: join Van Neistat, The Spirited Man, for some fantasy fixing  

maslenitsa: celebrating Shrovetide ahead of Orthodox Lent  

vier-farben-satz: Colorbrewer generates ideal schemes for maps and data visualisations

have you dug his scene?

Via Things Magazine (lots more to explore in this edition as well), we learn the recently departed actor Yaphet Kotto (*1939 - †2021), known for his roles in Alien, The Running Man, Doctor Kananga in the Bond movie Live and Let Die, starring in the long-running television police procedural Homicide: Life on the Streets and for turning down the offer of the part of Jean Luc Picard in TNG, also can sing and recorded a few singles.

hypospray or mister x

Via Waxy, here’s a nice survey of jabs and vaccination campaigns as portrayed in film and television, including classics like the Star Trek TOS episode Miri, biopics of Louis Pasteur and Edward Jenner, and a multiplicity of Simpsons episodes like the December of 2000 show “The Computer Wore Menace Shoes” wherein Homer’s alter ego creates a conspiracy website (after his first, innocent attempt failed to draw interest) that unfortunately speaks across the decades. As punishment for being too clever, Homer is imprisoned on an island for people who know too much. Seriously, get your shot and protect yourself and others.

lost horizon

Not only a surpassing financial failure like the first attempt to adapt the story by James Hilton for the big screen just as Frank Capra’s 1937 try, the 1973 fantasy musical edition by Charles Jarrott and Bruce Bacharach was nearly career-ending for all involved.  Released for general audiences on this day and initially panned, excoriated by critics, it has not improved with age nor attained the status of a cult classic. The 1933 novel by the same author of Goodbye, Mister Chips was propelled in the cultural consciousness not by the adaptations but in part by dint of the media format its publishing house, Simon & Schuster, issued it in—printed as Pocket Book #1 and of course gave the language Shangri-La, which was the original name of the presidential retreat in Maryland, later designated Camp David.

myrrhbearers

Patron of funeral directors, morticians and undertakers, Joseph of Arimathea was fêted on this day according to the traditional Martyrologium Romanum but is now celebrated on 31 August along with his fellow secret disciple Nicodemus who helped prepare the body of Jesus for burial. Not much more is related about these wealthy (Joseph was appointed Nobilis Decurio, Minister of the Mines), covert followers in the Gospels who sought permission from Pontius Pilate to care for and prepare the corpse with spices that Nicodemus purchased after crucifixion and see to his entombment. The title refers to collective term given these two men and the Three Marys when they return to find the tomb empty. Further embellishment subsequently connects Joseph with the Arthurian cycle and the Matter of Britain, placing the saint among the first missionaries on the Isles (reportedly teaching the Cornish how to excavate tin) and of course guardian of the Holy Grail.

typhoon class

Though the working-outcome of the navy going into receivership with Pepsi was more improbable than the suggestion to retrofit a fleet of Soviet nuclear submarines as tanker ships to transport oil and natural gas was probably the less technical tenable, advisable alternative to generate capital after the nation’s dissolution. Back in 1995, at the suggestion of the governor of Arkhangelsk oblast, the location of the Russian submarine yards, one experiment was with underwater cargo shipping was undertaken—albeit with a non-strategic vessel and a manifest of foodstuffs—but not explored further due to cost-overruns and lack of funding. The logistics pitch, however, to fill-up directly from off-shore rigs and to travel the globe swiftly and virtually unimpeded (also without burning said fuel) was worth considering. Learn more at Weird Universe at the link above.