golden gate bridge bolt

With a touch of The Music Man / Marge vs the Monorail energy behind his pitch that rightly nonetheless recognised that the newly built suspension bridge was perfectly designed to host a thrill ride—which also piqued the interest of a few city planners, ahead of the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition engineer Joseph Bazzeghin proposed impressing visiting crowds with a roller coaster traveling up and down the bundled cables as a centrepiece of the fair. Despite some enthusiasm, the ride was never built—mainly due to safety concerns and distracting drivers and the likely impossibility to construct such a roller coaster but I am sure it could be done on a dare. The artificial Treasure Island was instead built in the bay as a showcase venue and originally planned to be a municipal airport afterwards but was turned into a naval station and marina. More to explore from Weird Universe at the link above.

7x7

triangulate your influences: maps of the USA and UK with cities and towns represented by their most prominent or notorious natives—via Things Magazine  

don’t go jason waterfalls: a medley of misquotations, a lot of which are new to us too—see also

unbranded: gorgeous images of Tokyo digitally denuded of cables and signage by Rumi Ando—via Present /&/ Correct  

map app: create custom vintage style maps of anywhere at any historical period—via Web Curios 

 *: a historical style symbol (previously)—via Stan Carey  

princeself: an affirming survey and guide to neo-pronouns—via ibīdem  

muchmusic: a fun, nationally sourced soundtrack for the Canadian census

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In yet another brilliantly delivered, disabusing lesson from Helen Zaltzman we learned that despite the popular, vernacular etymologies and assigned backronyms the universal maritime distress signal S̄ŌS̄, the prosign or procedural signal formally written with the overscore to distinguish it from letters though its other advantages include being an ambigram and legible from all angles, is an abbreviation for nothing and eventually—taking the Titanic disaster to bring the UK on board—customary way to dispatch an unequivocally (see also) urgent message of imminent peril. The need for an international standard first suggested by Captain Quintino Bonomo at the Berlin Preliminary Conference on Wireless Telegraphy in 1903, radio developed in the late 1890s with the proposed signal being SSS DDD, a bit more of a mouthful to dit and dot to request aid from ships at sea but no authoritative convention was set forth with many but not all seafaring nations (and not consistently either) using CQD at the recommendation of the Marconi International Marine Communication Company, which is derived from an abbreviation—CQ from sécu, the French shortened form of security, and D for Distress (Détresse—not Come Quick, Drowning), the first part having been already adopted as “general call,” all hands on deck. Germany first adopted S.O.S. in 1905, the nine syllable sequence being a unique call-sign, out of fear that CQD would be received as a general notification

bootleg series, volume 4, the “royal albert hall concerts”

Debuting for audiences during a free concert given at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall as part of his World Tour on this day in 1966 standards like “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Mister Tambourine Man,” the sublime, defining performance circulating as bootleg copies (misidentified in popular memories as the title venue) for over three decades before being remastered and released as a double, live album in 1998. While audiences responded warmly to the first half of the concert of Bob Dylan (previously) performing on stage alone a wholly acoustic set, the second part accompanied by his band the Hawks with electric guitars drew hecklers—though criticism has softened since and the whole experience is counted as a classic.

deutsche film aktiengesellschaft

Whereas occupying powers in the West were wary of a rapid revival of the substantial and developed German film industry and feared the spread of propaganda, Soviet Allied forces in East Germany encouraged its reestablishment as a medium of re-education and de-Nazification after twelve years of fascist rule and ceremonially founded the DEFA on this day in 1946 as the first post war movie production studio in the partitioned nation. The premier film Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Among Us) opened nine days prior to the celebratory ceremony. Dissolved in 1992 after reunification, the catalogue of nearly one thousand feature films, eight hundred animations, six thousand documentaries and news reels—plus dubbed foreign films numbering four-thousand, was acquired by Vivindi-Universal but much of the content is available for free at the PROGRESS distribution site which was established four years DEFA to handles its releases and conserve its extensive archives.

nice accessories but zero points of articulation

Via friend of the blog the Everlasting Blört, we are directed to an ancient Mayan artefact, a ceramic figurine with removable helmet that could arguably be a millennium and a half year old example of an action figure—or at least serve a comparable purpose from the vantage point of far-future archaeologists shifting through our fetishes and talismans. Whether a toy or collectors’ item, the miniature is included in a group of twenty-three others accompanying a city ruler on his trip to the hereafter, discovered during a 2006 excavation in Guatemala but resurfacing to circulate on the internet again.

9x9

segmentation and targeting: A/B testing “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”—see also 

light house customer: we appreciated the chance to revisit a new and improved version Lights at Sea—via Nag on the Lake—both times  

nice.walk.ruined: award-winning global addressing scheme what3words (previously) subject to some juvenile humour with locations mapped in smutty language, both real and bespoke  

isotopia: a high-brow 1950 ballet and pantomime presented to the steering committee of the Atomic Energy Association to extol nuclear power from Weird Universe  

apartment d3: seven printed homes around the world  

l’art de payer ses dettes et de satisfaire ses créanciers san débourser un sou: credit culture in nineteenth century France 

alpha version: drag and drop personal, old school websites from mmm—via Kicks Condor 

sovietwave radio: broadcasting a selection of the sub-genre’s best space age and syntho-pop—via Dark Roasted Blend 

the writers’ block: a suite in Chelsea Carlyle mansion home to Henry James, T. S. Eliot and Ian Fleming on the market

neologizers

Via the always engaging Language Hat, we were referred to a tough but fun and informative quiz from Oxford University Press on word coinage—a few subsequent questions we knew (more spoilers—our readers will do so well on this, like for gerrymandering and O.M.G.)—but were rather taken aback a bit right off the bad for learning the rather recent and facetious etymology of scientist, suggested by a Cambridge professor for the inaugural meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1833. Noting the parallel construction for artist, atheist, sophist and sciolist (the latter two foils ‘skilled’ at making the weaker argument the stronger and pretending to be knowledgeable and informed), the suggestion was not intended to be taken seriously. Much more at the links above and let us know how you scored.