the great michigan pizza funeral (10. 592)

With the governor also coming to pay his respects, a sizeable crowd with members of the press came to the small town of Ossineke to witness the ceremonial disposal of nearly thirty-thousand frozen cheese and mushroom pies on this day in 1973, buried in a five metre deep grave. In order to demonstrate personal accountability and generate a bit of publicity for his business, one of the most state-of-the-art and earliest operations of its kind in America, Mario Fabbrini, originally from Fiume, Croatia and fled Yugoslavia, proprietor of Papa Fabbrini’s Pizzas, was approached by safety inspectors from the US Food and Drug Administration and ordered to recall, out of an abundance of caution, nearly a week’s worth of manufacturing when a supplier of mushroom toppings had tested positive for botulism. A post-mortem revealed the pizzas to be free of the deadly bacteria.

the jaywalker (10. 591)

Milton Muffet, a confessed poor pedestrian—is addicted to the “most awful, habit-forming vice” that man fall prey to: jaywalking, in this 1956 UPA instructional short by Robert Cannon, Edwin P Hicks and story adaptation by T Hee. The Oscar-winning animated subject portrays Mr Muffet’s behaviour as becoming manic, verging towards obsessive and a personal challenge but these regulations which privilege motor vehicle traffic above pedestrian has limited jurisdiction and was just recently decriminalised in California though remaining an infraction most other places in America.

j6pc (10. 590)

Incredible even for the dumbest of times that we’re suffering with the former president confusingly countering his critics with seeking to “wrap lies in patriotism,” Donald Trump has recorded a charity single with a choir of male inmates serving sentences in a Washington DC prison for their participation in the 6 January Insurrection. Merely a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and a performance of The Star-Spangled Banner recorded over jailhouse phones, the song is only two minutes long and disappointingly not some highly-produced rendition of an original number—like We are the World but for aspiring authoritarians and useful idiots. Trump will soon join his choir from the other side of the bars, with any luck.

🔙🔛🔝🔜 (10. 589)

Language Log directs us to the ongoing puzzlement over a grouping of four emoji—from the original set created in 1998 for DoCoMoNTT (the only symbol predating this innovation being the ❤︎) and what cultural context prompted the inclusion of these four particular characters, surmising that they were a reference to gaming menus but with no compelling narrative for their inclusion—instead, like most other stories about these glyphs, have found novel and dynamic use outside of the laboratory—see also here and here.

ccctv (10. 588)

Via fellow internet peripatetic and caretaker Web Curios, we are directed to a YouTube channel with an expansive catalogue of older movies and cinema serials in full and free to watch, rather expertly curated and while not formulaic or all within the genre of Spaghetti Western, sword-and-sandal, teen-exploitation or Space Opera, they all complement one another and rise to cult status. Give it a look and let us know what dreadful-excellent gems you uncover.

mashers (10. 587)

The inaugural “Anti-Flirt” Week launched this day in Washington, DC in 1923, the Anti-Flirt Club with the charter of protecting young women from unwanted advances, prescribed a series of rules to rebuff men in automobiles and on street corners:

• Don’t flirt: those who flirt in haste often repent in leisure
• Don’t accept rides from flirting motorists—they don’t invite you in to save you a walk
• Don’t use your eyes for ogling—they were made for worthier purposes
• Don’t go out with men you don’t know—they may be married and you made be in for a hair-pulling match
• Don’t wink—a flutter of one eye may cause a tear in the othe
• Don’t smile at flirtatious strangers—save them for people you know
• Don’t annex all the men you can get—by flirting with many, you may lose out on the one
• Don’t fall for the slick, dandified care eater—the unpolished gold of a real man is worth more than the gloss of a lounge lizard
• Don’t let elderly men with an eye to a flirtation pat you on the shoulder and take a fatherly interest in you—those are usually the kind who want to forget they are fathers
• Don’t ignore the man you are sure of while you flirt with another—when you return to the first one you may find him gone

Though the first and only campaign, other chapters in New York and Philadelphia succeeded in earning a reprieve from the worst harassers.

junior senior (10. 586)

Released on this day in 2002 on their debut studio album D-D-Don’t Don’t Stop the Beat, the titular Danish duo’s biggest hit was a world success, climbing to number four on the UK singles charts in 2003. The digital-first collaboration by Jesper “Jr” Mortensen and Jeppe “Sr” Laursen gained special prominence with numerous pop culture references including featuring on the soundtrack to the make-over television show ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ and the video game Dance Dance Revolution as well as incidental music for several other contemporary films including the mixed live-action, animated Looney Tunes: Back in Action. The pixelated, low-resolution accompanying video was made using Deluxe Paint.

8x8 (10. 585)

subway tycoon: design one’s own fantasy mass-transit system  

the myth of sisyphus: how the curse really plays out—via Super Punch  

time slider: a stupendous digital clock

antechamber: authorities announce the discovery of a hidden passage in the Pyramid of Cheops found with muon tomography 

facetune: a 1976 patent-application for a dressing mirror with dials to adjust one’s figure 

llm: prior to the emergence of ChatGPT and its kind, researchers developed the Octopus Test as a heuristic to explore the limitations of AI communication  

handmade holograms: DIY 3D etchings labyrinth: introducing the fifteen-hour city—see also