ponceau 4r

As possibly one of the biggest hoaxes to come out of France since arguably the Priory of Sion (and notable for being a contemporary phenomenon with the bloodline conspiracy), the missive known as the Villejuif leaflet (anonymous but sourced to the oncological institute in the Paris suburbs) spread from 1976 onward with impressive virality contained a list of twenty or so—several different versions were in circulation for over a decade—of food additives, preservatives, and colouring agents alleged to be carcinogenic.
The original author of the pamphlet that was shared more than seven million times via chain-letters (chaîne de lettres, and more by word of mouth) across Europe was never identified and seemed to be spring-boarding his or her concerns off of the newly introduced codes called E Numbers that standardised food chemical labelling for the continent—as if the coding scheme was a veiled way to peddle poison like the notion that barcodes were the mark of the Devil, the classification system reserving E100-199 for dyes, E300-399 antioxidants, E900-E999 for sweeteners and so on. Obviously, processed food ought to be avoided when possible, and naturally the definition of fit for consumption is a fluid one, though I think that these specific panics are sometimes red-herrings, like so many red M&Ms, and regulatory bodies within the EU have rejected some of the substances deemed safe in the US—even if that use in America is strictly limited to colouring the skin of oranges to make them look riper or as cosmetics for other things that generally aren’t in the human food-chain, but that list also included a lot of naturally occurring compounds that are synthesised in industrial kitchens, like sodium sulphite, potassium nitrate, and citric acid. It was that last item that especially caused a panic, which is a pervasive food-additive, and propagated as the most toxic.  Perhaps the list (which we still encounter today as super foods and super villain foods, confronting us especially in the whitespaces of the internet) began innocently enough when a concerned but confused citoyen heard that citric acid was an essential catalyst for the Krebs cycle, mistaking the German word for cancer for the act of metabolising.  Incidentally, E124 or Ponceau 4R is a chemical pigment meaning poppy-red and one of the few not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration

filmography

The fabulous Madam Jujujive’s Everlasting Blört features this excellent gallery of celebrity animations created by artist and illustrator Prasad Bhat that distils the evolving careers of some of the most recognisable actors costumed as some of their most iconic character roles, like the many incarnations of Matt Damon. The host website, Design Boom, is also an aggregator of other creative digital animators, including some presented on PfRC previously.

the valley of heart’s delight

Rebecca Onion presents a fascinating look at the history of California through the lens of trade-mark applications, which the state introduced before their was any federal framework for branding and intellectual-property, in order to regulate the boom in commerce that came with the Gold Rush. Not only are the heraldic devices of private enterprise (drawn from some of the highlights that the brilliant BibliOdyssey, now mostly active on Twitter, curated) indicative of the wildlife that has been lost—grizzly bears and condors and the aboriginal populations expelled, but there are also subtle and not so subtle codes for supporting white labour over Chinese entrepreneurs for produce, tonics, cigars and other staples.
The post’s title refers to the original name of the San Francisco Bay area before the orchards and vineyards were displaced in the 1970s with the coming of Silicon Valley, whose inventive spirit probably owes a debt of gratitude to this trove of patent applications and the machinery behind it. One can browse the extensive digital archives here.

liiketoimintaryhmät

Going postal has a quite different meaning for the letter-carriers in Finland, where for the traditionally low-volume summer months—and fearing their jobs might be in danger of redundancy with fewer people bothering with mail-service—Posti, for a modest fee, will offer to mow the lawns of customers on their beat.
Utilizing existing knowledge and a neighbourly familiarity hard to reproduce, the Finnish government has more pilot projects for the postal-service in community outreach, including detailing mail men and women to check on the elderly and to conduct security patrols. I think that this is fantastic, and an example for other struggling postal networks—which generally only partner with their commercial-competitors, and starkly opposed to the endangered rural outposts in America that can no longer even provide basic financial services where there’s a need and a banking vacuum because of the influence of predatory lending agencies.

punti morti dei telefoni cellulari

As the internet infrastructure of Italy turns thirty, some wonder if it is robust and wide-spread as it should be, but the coverage gaps don’t seem to bother the some four hundred, mostly elderly residents of the small commune of Civitacampomarano in the Molise region, who’ve made due with more traditional outlets and have been outfitted by artist Biancoshock (previously featured) to illustrative the virtues of the non-virtual. All the installations are pretty clever but I especially liked the old village gossip and storyteller standing before her shingle labeled Wikipedia.

anti-marder

Earlier this week the triumphant powering-up of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider after a lengthy but deserved sabbatical was cut short when, reported, a small weasel-like animal (a marten oder Marder ou fouine) sabotaged the whole operation. These creatures are infamous for sneaking under the hoods of cars and gnawing on wires, but this poor luddite apparently not in favour of Man unlocking the secrets of the Universe did not survive, zapped out of existence and is now an anti-Marder.

on top of spaghetti

Via the ever-intrepid Atlas Obscura, we find out that American stockpiles of cheese and other dairy-products are at the highest level in three decades, thanks to a coalition of factors that have glutted the market with European imports to the detriment of domestic products.
I don’t feel that this is an imbalance something like the dreaded TTIP would solve to either party’s satisfaction, as you cannot punish an exporter for making (and we’re partial) a superior product, from cows whose welfare is better looked after. Perhaps the US Dairy Council just needs to get more aggressive in their campaigning and make Wisconsin Colby the new bacon, a flavour touted almost as a condiment for all those years, or craft-beers or the backlash against the anti-gluten leagues.

redrum

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we discover a wondrous homage to all things appertaining to Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece of modern horror The Shining from the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. The driven snows from Hoth, we know already were recycled from the neighbouring film set, but who knew that much of Blade Runner’s aerial footage was also courtesy of the Torrence family as well?