mise-en-scéne

Via the ever brilliant Everlasting Blört, we find discover, delighted, that the Cantor Galleries of Fine Art in Los Angeles have proposed a range of ornamental (non-functional, at least for now) emojis as short-hand, storyboarding for art history students and all aficionados to speak of their favourite iconic artists and their signature style.
I recall having a tee-shirt a long time ago that I absolutely wore the tail off of that featured yellow smiley-faces as interpreted through the lens of various artists—including Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock and Piet Mondriaan that conveyed the same idea, in tee-shirt form.

wrack and ruin

Having recently been privileged to visit just a few of the magnificent châteaux of the Loire Valley along with throngs of other tourists, this gallery curated by the fabulous Messy Nessy Chic of scandalously neglected mansions from around Europe, surreptitiously snapped by (sub)urban explorer “Soul” really struck a chord with us.
One wonders how such stately homes, that have seen better days, were ever forgot and allowed to fall into such a state of disrepair and how they might be rehabilitated in the future. Given the uncertainty of their fate and to protect the pristine state of these ruins, not many details are disclosed and their locations remain anonymous.

come josephine in my flying machine

Thanks to Super Punch, we discover that not only is one prominent ærospace company and defence-contractor is revisiting the notion of dirigibles, hybrid airships for one’s logistics and supply chain needs but has also developed an autonomous robot spider to patrol the skin, the hull of the blimp for leaks and repair them. Be sure to check out the links for a demonstration and more information. What do you think about this? I wonder what the all these sky-lanes will seem to us in the near future—it’s not like the horizon was wasted on sunsets and rosy-fingered Dawn, but the middle-distance will take on a very different look soon, I suspect, unless we’re made to wear some sort of non-intrusive blinders that air-brush all those Hoplites that ought to remain discrete and not spoil the view.

pushing on a string

Money of course has as much socio-cultural currency as it does utility as means of exchange or a store of wealth. And because it’s romanced beyond the scope of economics, I believe that that’s why it’s more or less acceptable for monetary policy and engagement left to the rarefied atmosphere of central banks, unelected and generally not accountable to anyone, and governments probably prefer it that way. Such hallowed things ought to be left to the vaulted chambers and excluded from public scrutiny. The economists populating these monasteries are usually very good handling impossibly large numbers and working out the mechanics of supply and demand but often fail to appreciate the human factor and irrational attachment.  As less than one percent of cash is hard currency, central banks see no reason why the rest of it shouldn’t be as well and are baffled by the response of members of the public for something tangible to hold on to amongst all this make-believe.
A wholly virtual monetary system, however, would become one without a fixed value, a rate-of-exchange when it came to automatic teller withdrawals—since there’d be nothing to take out, and the value of “cash” in one’s wallet would be unhinged and fluctuate like any other commodity on the market, with greater or lesser purchasing power from second to second. That does not sound comforting but I suppose it ought to. The other big idea of central bankers currently gaining traction is the idea of dissuading saving and encouraging lending and outlays by offering negative interests rates on depositors’ accounts—which theoretically could yield scenarios were one is paid to take out a mortgage, but only if all the people that believe in the almighty dollar behave perfectly sensibly would the economy be actually stimulated. There’s quite a lot of historical evidence to the contrary, in fact, and governments taking a more active role and perhaps deploy helicopter money—that is, to direct central banks to make payment to citizens, a term coined by Milton Friedman as it’s akin to the excitement experienced if someone was tossing money out of a helicopter to a crowd, despite the deflationary-pressures that might emerge—or consider funding a universal basic income, which might become not a choice but rather a necessity as robots take more and more jobs—and it’s not only the truck drivers and warehouse stevedores at risk but the lawyers and accountants too. The phrase, “pushing on a string,” is attributed, perhaps apocryphally, to economist John Maynard Keynes, and is meant to illustrate that markets can’t be nudged in both directions but rather tugged.

and i endorse this message

Sometimes simplicity can speak volumes, and from an economy of design perspective, there is quite some immediacy to it that is almost stronger for the juxtaposition. Found here.

5x5

bars and bathhouses: in 1983, a gay version of the Monopoly board game was produced

weinkönigin: Trier crowns a Syrian refugee as its Wine Queen

simcity: a new game invites players to redesign NYC’s subway system and test the outcomes of different scenarios

tiki room: the intrepid explorers of Atlas Obscura examine how romancing fake Polynesian culture taught Americans how to relax and be more social

lossless: the Olympics committee has forbidden the creation or sharing animated GIFs of any of its events, via Boing Boing

free-return trajectory

An internet giant and associates intend to land an unmanned spacecraft on the Moon before the end of 2017, we learn via Kottke, after overcoming the administrative embargos established under the terms governing the parties of the Outer Space Treaty, which provides that no government can claim ownership of any celestial body, nor can weaponise space and is responsible for commercial spacecraft launched under their jurisdiction—no matter how close or loose that association is, what with multinational entities beholden to no state.  The treaty was installed shortly after the US government seeded the upper atmosphere with tens of thousands of microscopic needles at the height of the Cold War as a contingency for maintaining global communications in case the Soviets cut the undersea cables spanning the Atlantic.
Incidentally, the first private, commercial mission to the Moon was a fly-by and fourteen day Earth orbit executed by a German ærospace company in October of 2014 (EN/DE), memorialising its founder who had recently departed, but entailed no actual touch-down or permanent presence and this upcoming enterprise will be a first. In addition to being liable for the craft that take-off under their auspices, space-faring nations also retain ownership of the artifacts that they leave behind, space-junk, equipment, rovers and flags but can stake no claim—despite America’s push to have Tranquility Base protected as a national historic monument. I wonder how the Outer Space Treaty applies to wholly private activities—like asteroid mining, whose mere spectre should have already stopped the gold speculators, or space tourism. While we have to have confidence that governments with the urge to explore and not exploit, will only vet businesses of a like character, on the other hand, one has to wonder about burdening entrepreneurs with an insufficient regulatory framework and disincentives when private innovations may be a far greater boon to all of humanity than anything government can produce. What do you think? Not only do I not want to see tatty resorts crowding up the lunar surface, who’s to say that one could brand hollowed-out planetoids (or at least overlay them with advertising in a virtual augmented reality) or net a comet and remove it from the skies forever?  I think the potential amazing advances will carry the day and prevail, however, in the end.

flux capacitor or abey and abet

I really enjoyed reading this ode to an exclusive, insider image of the liver-spotted hands of Thomas Alva Edison, cantankerous tinker and vicious crank, described as the clickbait of 1919, making the rounds of the popular engineering magazines of the day.
It is especially ironic, howsoever this scoop was obtained, since Edison railed against all things he deemed as “catchpenny,” including the inventions of his competitors: the battery being a “mechanism for swindling the public” and through some means not elaborated, eroding the work-ethic of the common-man and inducing “a latent capacity for lying.” I wonder what Edison made of this idolatry, even when driven by the pulpy journalism that regale our margins. Edison probably posed for that photograph to spite his competition.