rebus oder panda, pizza, oselot

There is how PfRC translates into emoji, according to the service Linkmoji.  This demonstration, that comes to us via WIRED!, is a little baffling linguistically, I admit, plus a bit recursive as we are just linking back to this site.  So share with us how your website looks in webdings or however this sequence is generated.  It seems to come out differently each time and there are poo and non-poo versions available.

graphic dynamism or baby bells

Saul Bass gave Ma Bell a crisper corporate logo in 1969 that was in use until 1983 when Bass himself pitched the Death Star design to a dismantled and reorganised AT&T, as Kottke shares with some more background and promotional featurette. That blogger has also noted that lately what goes around, comes around in design and branding.

your princess is in another castle

Via that other intrepid adventuress, Nag on the Lake, we are invited on field-trip with the team of explorers of Atlas Obscura to Saint Petersburg to see the conservation efforts of a group of nostalgic and impassioned group of college students, which has produced a vintage arcade experience.
Visitors are immersed in an ensemble of loving restored and playable games and refreshments that capture the ethos of the Soviet Union during the ‘70s and ‘80s. This unique installation (which is presenting some major maintenance challenges) consists of gaming machines that were not only about fun and fantasy—commissioned in accordance with the wishes of the state, there was little time or tolerance for anthropomorphic mushrooms and damsels in distress and these games rather emphasised hand-eye coordination, strategy and team-work over competition. Although no one can say for certain as the provenance of the games is a classified matter, they were probably designed and programmed in the same facilities and by the same computer scientists that were charged with the maintenance of the Soviets’ nuclear weapons arsenal.

chivalrous or back in the saddle again

The Norman Invasion of England in the year 1066 utilised the same technological advance in order to prosecute the same sort of vast capturing of land as Mongol Horde had used to gain territory on the liminal edge of the known world almost eight hundred years prior (and with latter day iterations as well). Though somewhat taken for granted due to its patent simplicity—particularly among the horsey-set, the stirrup proved probably as significant force in shaping civilisation as the introduction of printed word in the West, enabling mounted warriors to manoeuvre the battle-field with much greater speed and stability than had visited the defeated beforehand.
The stirrup is just a loop of leather that hangs to the side of a saddle, enabling riders to mount their steeds quickly and keep their balance. As just a small detail, it took some people quite a long time to notice and appreciate this modification that imparted significant advantage to the cavalry of the foot-solders. These more agile mercenaries that took up specialised arms and steeds became the professional landed knights under the feudalist system of the Norman conquestors and their Frankish overlords and sought to broaden the pyramid-scheme wherein defenders pledged oaths of fealty to a certain tract of property and to a certain lord. In order to maintain this allegiance, the knights—which were called then chevaliers (from the French term for horse), lived by a certain, defined code of conduct, which was called chivalry. This transformation makes me think of the way one’s portion of meat was translated from the field (grimy old English barnyard words for swine in the sty) to the dinner plate (expressed in refined French words for haute-cuisine, like pork).

downspout or rear window

Though as the term to eavesdrop has evolved a great day from the notion of a busy-body positioning himself or herself at an advantageous audio-locus (the point just under the eaves of the roof where rain water drops down) by a neighbour’s house in order to overhear happenings inside, to casually listening to the conversation listening to a private conversation to outright espionage, I think that the mentality of the eavesdropper has remained fairly constant, insofar as they want the fragmentary, a little mystery to reconstruct that leaves other explanations out there even though the listen may assert his or her own conclusions. Surveillance that leaves little to the imagination—though thinking one can be implausibly wrong is interesting too—that assumes the mantle of ubiquity is not eavesdropping, and neither is it pleasant or the least bit stimulating to find oneself in a public place that’s been pressed in private service and one’s privy to an unguardedly intimate or strained discussion. I wonder though, if by introducing the element of time and prediction for future behavior and past links, one preserves the allure of the furtive, or whether reputation and risk becomes just something actuarial and algorithmic.  What do you think?

5x5

ivy league, fig leaf: elite university matriculating classes from the 1940s and 1950s were compelled to disrobe and be photographed

roy g biv: cute illustration of the varying strides of colours in the visible spectrum by Daniel Savage

streets with no game: homogeneity and monotony is turning urban design into a matter of public health

rock elettronico: 1970s Italo pop hit with gibberish words meant to sound like English

brick and mortar: life-sized Lego building blocks