no one i think is in my tree

On this day in 1985, on what would have been the artist’s forty-fifth birthday, his widow Yoko Ono, who contributed significantly to the landscaping and upkeep through the years, and New York City mayor Ed Koch dedicated the one hectare memorial within Central Park to the memory of murdered former Beatle John Lennon.

7x7

the boy on the bike: a trip down Golden Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset with a beloved bread advert directed by Ridley Scott with music by Dvořák  

dedication—devotion, turning all the night time into the day: more on the hypothesis (see previously) that the Dire Straits song can improve any movie ending 

the hauntening: various AIs try their hand at spookifying, exorcising Victorian mansions—previously

outbreak: a timelapse of COVID-19 cases in the United States over the past eighteen months 

just the punctation: what text without words reveals to authors about their style—via Waxy  

abecedarium: a 1968 Alphabet (previously) of the Dada movement hosted by Hans Richter (caution, some rapid, flashing images) 

rašínovo embankment: revitalised Prague riverfront features vaulted arches for cafes and gallery spaces

boustrophedon

Designed to remedy brain fatigue, Scott H. Perky (son of Henry Perky of shredded wheat fame) created and patented a bi-directional typeface that would eliminate effort required for a mental carriage-return and allow readers to carry on slaloming through a block of text. Though not without historical precedence “as in the manner of the ox that turns while ploughing” and antecedents, the younger Perky’s idea failed to gain traction at the time.

effective calculability

With its roots in the Latinisation of the Persian mathematician Muhammad bin Musa Al-Khwārizmī as algorimus, we were quite pleased to learn about the education, contributions and legacy of the scholar of Baghdad’s House of Wisdom in the ninth century, in Greater Iran—presently Uzbekistan—whose the namesake for the unambiguous computational instructions that machines can act upon through tributes by several local artists hosted by a Tashkent gallery. Entitled Dixit Algorizmi after the opening line of his comprehensive manuscript, Thus Spake Al-Khwārizmī, there is much more to explore at the links above.

your daily demon: raum

Governing from today through 12 October, this fortieth spirit and infernal earl presents at first as another familiar with corvid-like characteristics. True to the German sense of his name, räumen—to empty, evacuate—he pilfers the houses of the rich and powerful with prejudice for dignities as well as engendering love and reconciliation. Others trace his origins to the identification with the Egyptian deity Khnum, the ram-headed god who crafts the bodies of people out of Nile clay before they’re born. Also known as Raim or Raym, he controls thirty legion and is opposed by the guardian angel Yaytzael.

stalkie talkie

Via Things Magazine, we are presented with this quite dystopian and invasive catalogue of playthings with the hallmark of being highly addictive by design following the form of manipulation. Age-inappropriate, there’s data-hungry aggregate Pocket Troll, Fishing for Likes and a grab-bag of Mystery Friends to be foisted on all and sundry, aged nine to ninety-nine.

pair bonding

Endearingly, Kottke brings us the story of the requited courtship and romance of zookeeper Chris Crowe and his non-corvid bird wife, Walnut—a spry twenty-three year-old white-named crane, the former earning the latter’s affections despite being a rather lacking (by avian standards) mate and life partner.

cyrus charter

Though in possession of the British Museum, the ancient clay cylinder bearing the declaration of king Cyrus the Great, outlining his genealogy and conquest of Babylonia as favourite of the god Marduk and documentation of the end of exile of the Jewish people and allowing them to resettle within the empire was loaned to Tehran on this day in 1971 for a period of sixteen days for the gala celebration of the two-thousand-five-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Persia—see previously, beginning mid-month ten days later. The artefact recovered in 1829 (in Mesopotamia, in modern day Iraq) is considered by many historians as the pioneering attempt to administer and multicultural state with universal human rights and was made the official symbol of Iran in absentia.