nik of time

With a different sort of Sputnik with its attributed suffix being in the news again, we rather enjoyed this shared correction, letter to the editor that disputes the etymology that credits the pioneering Soviet satellite with enriching the English language with the terms peaceniks, beatniks and no-goodniks, whereas first usage of the formulation precedes the orbit by decades, with H. L. Mencken mentioning –nic or –nick as part of the lexiography as a suffix indicating free agency with examples including a boastful upstart in Allrightnick and a victim of tuberculosis in a consumptionick. Judging by the above and number of comments garnered, the claims and counter-claims (the truth is probably somewhere in between) are a good illustration of the phenomenon called Cunningham’s Law. The idiom‘s nick is an archery term and referring to the nock or notch of a bow that holds the bowstring.

native land

Via the morning news, we discover this interactive map of the world, which instead of the usual geopolitical boarders and boundaries rather presents us with overlays of the territories and ranges of indigenous peoples. One can toggle to see native endonyms and treaties between aboriginal populations and colonisers and settlers, encouraging one to think critically about place and displacement.

saint zita

Also known by her unofficial cult following in England as Sitha by domestics there, Zita of Lucca (†1227) whose feast is celebrated today was servant girl to a cruel household that beat and berated her incessantly despite working hard and without stint and her charity and even respect for the family she worked for.

Zita’s perseverance through faith in the face of challenges gradually turned the her family and others in the circle towards charity and piety and ultimately garnered a Cinderella-like reputation with angelic host helping her with the chores. In remembrance of Zita feeding the numerous poor people of the city with her meagre ratio of bread alone, the people of Lucca bake Zita Loaves on this day and she is venerated as the patron of maids, butlers and wait-staff and sought for intercession in recovering lost keys and like household objects.

there’s just a big cock on the cover

Though reportedly not due to a printing error but rather a noble gesture not to obscure a photographic talent nor besmirch the dignity of the subject—we learn from our faithful chronicler, the only issue of LIFE magazine without the signature corner red-and-white logo (as with sister publication TIME) was on newsstands on this day in 1937. To do so, editors reasoned, would have spoiled the framing and composition of Torkel Körling’s (*1903 – †1998, a prolific industrial and nature photographer who also invented the collapsing, portable tripod and the forerunner of the single-lens reflex camera) cover portrait of a splendid white leghorn rooster with a finely detailed cockscomb—the periodical being young still and not beyond the reproach of breeching a tradition.

7x7

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zauberwald: Robert Mertl’s forest photographer captures the aesthetic I aim for during my woodland walks  

canzone russa italianizzata: the Russian Italo-Pop musical stylings of Alla Pugacheva  

cards against humanity: the brilliantly sullen poetry of John Giorno  

yahoo the destroyer: maligning the cannibalised early internet for contributing to the Digital Dark Ages via Waxy—plus a different approach to archiving going forward  

the trouble with tribbles: marketing Flatcat as one’s next robotic feline companion  

art of the title: film lettering over the decades

maughold

Venerated on this day in the Roman Catholic Church (31 July on the Anglican calendar), the late fifth century saint also known as Mawgan or Macc Cuill is the patron saint of the Isle of Man, was an Irish princeling of sorts and leader of a band of marauding freebooters who frequently derided Patrick and Brigid and their followers as fools and simpletons. According to one local legend, wanting to expose Patrick as a charlatan, Maughold presented a living man in a shroud and presented him to saint to revive and restore to life, only to find out that their decoy had in fact died in the interim. Patrick later resurrected him, and impressed and repentant, Maughold followed the advice to leave his career of piracy and to make amends for his past behaviour by committing himself to the mercy of the elements in a wicker boat set out to sea. The boat drifted to the Isle of Man, coming to rest in the pictured coastal headland, and a Christian community already established by Patrick’s disciples and was eventually acclaimed bishop.

mappi mundi

On this day in 1507, humanist and cartographer Martin Waldseemüller—whom also went by the Latinised form of his name Hylacomylus (forest-lake miller)—together with his collaborator Matthias Ringmann, published their map featuring the new world, significantly portraying South America as a continent separate from Asia and naming portions of the New World America after explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The academy that Waldseemüller and Ringmann founded in Saint-Dié with the patronage of the Duke of Lorraine came in possession of a booklet that gave a rather heroic and sensational account of the voyages of Vespucci in the western Atlantic and the two scholars carried forward that credit in a short treatise with atlases and a world map as a primer on cosmography (Cosmographiæ Introductio) that spanned from the familiar to the antipodes that were predicted in Antiquity. Ringmann actually, persuasively championed the toponym America, arguing: “I see no reason why anyone could disaaprove of a name derived of that Amerigo, the discoverer and a man of sagacity—with suitable forms being Amerige, meaning land of Amerigo, or America, especially since both Europe and Asia have women’s names.” Europa was raped by Zeus in the form of a bull and gave birth to the Minotaur. Hesione was a Trojan princess and distressed damsel for Hercules to save from a sea monster and blamed indirectly for the Trojan War—Hercules helping himself to the fine horses that Zeus sent in compensation for the abduction of Ganymede and causing strife among the gods. Classically referred to as Libya, Africa was considered to have a feminine ethnonym as well. The original world map was believed lost until a copy was found in Schloss Wolfegg in Austria in 1901 and purchased by the US Library of Congress (pictured)—though other uncut gores to be assembled into globes survive.

guerrilla greening

Via Colossal, a Honolulu-based design consortium imagines the transformation of some of the iconic urban corridors of world cities transformed through an aggressive and transfixing shift away from the concrete jungle to something living and sympathetically breathing with us. Learn more about their work and the study that’s gone into these visualisations at the link above.