6x6

taxon: vintage animal family cards  

property values: Trump family accounting firm drops them as a client, disavows the validity of a decade’s worth of business assessments  

able baker: a collection of US museum ships—via Things Magazine  

daily constitutional: map out one’s lunch-hour ambulations 

wobo: Heineken breweries in the early 1960s produced brick-like bottles that could double as construction material, via Messy Nessy Chic  

metamates: Facebook staff receive a new official monicker aligned with corporate branding

billet-doux

Via Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day, we are introduced to the French for literally a “sweet note” that has been adopted in the common-parlance since the seventeenth century as an alternative for a romantic missive.  Pronounced Billy-DOO, the plural form is billets-doux. 

separated by a common language

Brought to our attention by Memo of the Air, we rather enjoyed this impromptu survey of American versus British English terms conducted by longtime UK expatriate living in the US, Tom Coates. Having lived outside of the English Sprachraum for some time but listening to the BBC quite a bit, I had at least a passing notion of what all of the words denoted—it’s another level beyond calling an elevator a lift or a roast a joint—and the only ones that struck me as puzzling presented in the line-up, though no having never encountered them in the wild before, were quango—a devolved crown entity, a quasi-NGO that receives public funding and sometimes subject to criticism for not being held accountable—and pelmet, a valance made of fabric meant to conceal curtain fixtures. It was interesting to note that among the unfamiliar US words, there were more than a couple over-the-counter drugs (that you should ask your GP about), and given the current trans-Atlantic exposure, one has to wonder how many might recall furlough, Brexit, Marmite, purdah or prorogation in a few years.

yereyira

Via Bad Ethnography, we enjoyed this musical anthology of otherwise unreleased West African artists found in the cellphones (used as a multimedia device absent personal computers, cloud-computer or reliable internet access) of denizens of the Sahara. Though over a decade old there are three volumes to discover now with many of the musicians found and given proper attribution for their accompaniment that sustained many caravans through literal and figurative the desert.

format cells

Though admitted one to slightly whinge at idea of spreadsheet software being used to make sign-in rosters as its highest calling, we are rather taken with the Excel art (see also) of Oleksiy Sai that provides commentary on corporate culture and office politics, noting that the hierarchy and norms while perhaps the youngest iteration of courtly etiquettes are probably the best-defined and most condemned in their breach of protocol. More at the artist’s website and Calvert Journal at the link up top.

amen corner

Hailing from Cardiff, this rock group, which was quite more than a one-hit wonder with their hits “Bend Me, Shape Me” and popular cover of “Gin House Blues” if not a bit overshadowed by contemporary bands, had their first and only chart-topping success beginning on this day in 1969, holding the number one spot for weeks with “(If Paradise Is) Half as Nice.” The song was a translated version of a popular Italio-Pop standard “Il paradiso della vita.”

7x7

forum gallorum: step into this unassuming salon to inspect a piece of Roman London, reminiscent of discovering this shopping mall in Mainz—via Nag on the Lake  

burds: just a fun little cleanse—cartoony birds hopping about—via Waxy  

shred, white and blue: the totally normal and perfectly legal ways the White House handled official records 

neft daşları: a decaying offshore oil platform in the middle of the Caspian Sea  

the thoughtful spot: the Phrontistery (φροντιστήριον, Greek for the thinking place) catalogues a treasury of rare and obscure words—via Kottke  

gumshoe: the bygone era of the hotel detective—via Strange Company’s Weekend Link Dump  

be mine: the Lupercalia and the origins of Saint Valentine

incoming photons

Though instruments are still in the process of cooling down to their optimal operating temperature just above absolute zero and the resultant first blurry image of a star is unresolved and bounced through an array of eighteen telescopes instead of lensed as one, the research team behind the James Webb Space Telescope (previously) were understandably over the Moon to learn that the craft had successfully navigating in position and will be up and running on schedule.  Even though the mirrors are not yet aligned, the resulting multiple-exposure did utilise the full capabilities of the imaging hardware, capturing four-four gigabytes of raw data to form a two billion pixel picture.