poly s tyrene (10. 631)

Artist and beachcomber Duke Riley has turned the trash he has gathered washed up on the shore into art in various forms including a selection of oceanic plastic transformed into scrimshaw recalling its original motifs, portraying those whom profit off of our collective addiction to single-use and out-of-sight conundrums just like the ships’ captains and corporations, addressing both past and present injustices and criminal exploitation of the environment and the inured consumer.

full stop (10. 630)

Under the direction of design editor Lou Silverstein in 1961, the New York Times removed its signature diamond period from its nameplate in an overhaul that employed outside inkers and letterers to modernise the paper, which much like the general assault against punctuation (see previously here, here and here) caused at the time much consternation. The draft for the masthead redesign was finally approved with the argument that leaving out the terminal “full point” would save $600 a year on the printing-presses.

cameo appearance (10. 629)

Having previously explored the advent and the economy of the medium, we enjoyed this profile of the work of the nineteenth century travelling portrait artist William Bache, whose extensive portfolio of commissioned and sampler silhouettes not only reveal celebrities in profile but reveal the stories of hitherto anonymous sitters. Moreover at a time when fear and risk of communicable disease was rampant in the Americas and Caribbean, which was inclusive of Bache’s territory, the entrepreneur in the undeveloped industry of keepsake avatars distinguished himself from the competition with a device—since defamed for its association with eugenics for its reputed ability for scientifically-sound racial profiling—the physiognotrace which could create a faithful silhouette contact free. More at Hyperallergic at the link above.

8x8 (10. 628)

springfield, usa: a map of places in America with the same names with a locus of which locality most likely meant—via Kottke  

kościół: modern and Brutalist churches of Poland  

panspermia: researchers studying samples from the Ryugu asteroid find traces of a RNA component, supporting theories that the building blocks of biology were incubated in space 

before karen, there was nellie oleson: the propagandising of homesteading in Little House on the Prairie  

gemüths- und augen-ergötzung: the microscopic illustrations of Martin Frobenius Ledermüller  

reliable sources: Microsoft and Google’s chatbots are using each other as professional references, calling into question the ecosystem of the internet’s information 

quo vadis: a monastic brotherhood outside St Stephan’s in Vienna has set up a tattoo parlour—see also  

bracket: a more relatable March Madness

8x8 (10. 627)

everthing everywhere all at once: chaotic “Foketoken,” informed by “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” was inspiration for the screenwriter  

a most maddening canvas: Moby Dick (previously) and AI  

ipcc: UN climate committee issues dire warning, with steps to take immediately  

aperiodic monotiles: a non-repeating shape to cover a flat surface has possibly been discovered—see also  

sky critters: a 1978 book that proposes UFOs are biological organisms evolving parallel to humans virtually unnoticed  

la véitable histoire d’amélie poulain: a short film finally revealing the true story of ostensible 2001 romcom  

bardolatry: Google’s AI chatbot released to the public in the UK and US 

hotdog hands: outtakes from the Academy Award winning film—via Miss Cellania

goodwill sample displays (10. 626)

Reversing his tone from a wide-ranging and contentious press conference delivered five days before that forbid the Federal Bureau of Investigations from turning over its findings to a special congressional committee investigating the Watergate burglary and threatened to re-enter the Vietnam War and eliciting such a negative public response that a law was passed prohibiting the US from engaging in conflict in Indochina without the approval of Congress, Richard Nixon on this day in 1973 distributed fragments of lunar rocks to the fifty states of American and every country of the world collected during the final Apollo mission. Presented on wooden plaques with a miniture flag that went into the orbit around the Moon and back, each gift (see also) included a message of peace, acknowledging that the exploration of our satellite was an international effort and than humankind could surely achieve harmony on Earth.

♾️+1 (10. 625)

BBC Future has an interesting discussion of those middlingly large numbers, exponents upon exponents though smaller than a googol or googolplex, that are yet unnamed and yet will equally boggle the mind and that leave us overdrawn in the paper, ink and time department—still falling far short of infinity but with the reminder that some infinities are bigger than others.

casus belli (10. 624)

In a late night address from the Oval Office on this day in 2003, US president George W Bush, without mentioning the pretext of “weapons of mass destruction” whose rhetoric had already been established in the weeks leading up to this announcement after issuing a forty-eight hour ultimatum, committed America and allied partners to a decade of bloody and violent conflict, dearly bought with the lives of over a quarter-million Iraqi civilians, over five thousand allied combatants at a cost exceeding two-trillion dollars, causing permanent economic and credibility losses with only the military-industrial complex profiting from the violence. The preoccupation and extension of the “War on Terror” moreover significantly contributed to the loss of the fragile uni-polar world order and led to the ascendance of China as a world power and the undelivered democratic reforms of the Russian Federation due to the years of focus spared for this crusade. After the “shock and awe” and following his cabinet’s over-confidence that this adventure would be decisive and over in “five days or five weeks or five months” as defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush would appear in military fatigues (very much the image of his nemesis, Saddam Hussein) less than a scant two months later on the deck of an aircraft carrier to deliver his “Mission Accomplished” speech. The allied Iraqi army was disbanded, fuelling a counter-insurgency that made the ultimate US withdrawal a protracted one, resulting in civil war and a would-be caliphate unleashing more terror and displacement regionally and globally.