Saturday 21 March 2015
motor-city or monobrow
five-by-five
first-flight: Slovakian Aeromobile will begin selling flying cars in 2017
look it up: bitchy resting face is a legitimate diagnosis, embodied by this cat
bikini-bottoms: fun map plots the location of cartoons characters around the world
hi-brow: museum-goers fawn over the artistry of a mass-produced print
spoil the broth: CNN lampoons the over-crowded incubator of political candidates
catagories: ๐, ๐บ, language, networking and blogging, transportation
there ain’t no harm in that
The Reeperbahn, a strip in the Hanseatic City of Hamburg is sort of like that Island of the Donkey Boys where Pinocchio goes to carouse and behave badly but it looks rather cleansed and tamed on cold, bright mornings.
The neighbourhood is named for the rope-weavers, surely an important component of the shipping-business who traditionally lived in this quarter. I didn’t notice until afterwards, sorting through pictures, that the motto of the polished and modern Keese hotel and casino, visible through the middling tree is honi soit qui mal y pense, old French for shame on him who thinks ill of it and the motto of the venerable and chivalrous Order of the Garter. It’s a badge that bears repeating in heraldic contexts all over and was quite delighted to find it hidden there too.
sock-puppet or radio free europe
catagories: ๐ท๐บ, ๐, ๐️, foreign policy
Friday 20 March 2015
cottage industry
The Financial Times reports on a collaborative robotic-human experiment in the workplace. Unlike the industrial manufacturing application that one usually imagines when thinking about automation, these so-called co-bots are small and portable and can be mounted on a desktop to work alongside its human mentor, and assail tasks that benefit from nimbler and faster performance than human dexterity and can deliver.
Smaller factories and crafters would be able to produce items more efficiently by collapsing the concept of the assembly line upon itself, with an affordable alternative to contracting out production with adaptable, modular machines that can even be easily taught new moves by example and not reprogramming. I suppose though counterfeiters and sweat-shops would be equally able to churn out crap of more consistent quality faster and without a bothersome, exploited staff. What do you think? Could you share your space with a co-bot, looking eagerly over your shoulder so as to imitate and improve upon your techniques and work-ethic?
five-by-five
pรญratar: Iceland’s dominant Pirate Party may extend shelter and citizenship to the Fugitive
kinematografii: a collection of vintage Czechoslovakian film posters
3 quarks for muster mark: some of the invented words of author James Joyce
birds’ eye: an eagle presents Dubai as he descends to his trainer below
be mine: camera embedded in a ring box captures marriage proposals from a face-forward perspective