uniform resource locator

We are reminded by the always marvellous Nag on the Lake that the first bona fide website came on-line a quarter of a century ago on 6 August, 1991.
While working at the predecessor research facility to CERN, internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee was frustrated that there was no unified way to navigate the various databases that universities had established a universal access key as a way linking across different servers. These days we would characterise such disjointed pockets of information a walled-garden, and had not Berners-Lee realised that without making his hypertext transfer protocol public-domain, rivalry and acquisition would have doomed the project that augments and compliments our reality to unimaginable degrees before it was even given license to experiment and innovate. The original first website is conserved at the hyperlink here.

pendragon

We found Tintagel to be very mystical indeed and had our imagination inspired, but the newly uncovered archaeological evidence that might lend more credence to the legend was quite welcome developments as well, as Mental Floss informs.
Careful excavations conducted in mid-July on a previously unexplored hillside have found the massive foundations of palace walls and other artefacts (befitting the elite) that date to the fifth or sixth centuries, more in line with the timeline attributed to the Arthurian Romance (the medieval ruins that adorn the promontory are too new and ironically the main site overlooks the so-called “Merlin’s Cave,” an attraction that caused some to criticise the site’s caretakers as pandering to the simple-minded), are causing scholars to re-examine assumptions about the myth—perhaps like finding Troy not so long ago. The work was just completed and the researchers have a lot of evidence to sift through and assess.

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.