ring and spring

Courtesy of Kottke’s assorted links, we are treated to the keen and discerning eye of Milton Glaser, graphic designer who gave us I ❤ NY and the DC Comics shield, who reviews the Olympics logos throughout the ages.
It’s a little remarkable, independent of any other context, to think about what’s captured over this relatively short career in terms of typography and abstraction. One of my favourites has always been the Olympiad held in Mexico City (eighty out of a hundred) and venues around that time, from a stylistic perspective, but there is a lot to jar one’s memory here. I’d like to see the submissions of the failed bidders as well to see what criteria won the day.

plush and pile or the worshipful company of upholders

BBC Autos magazine examines that often observed but seldom questioned universal truth of the otherwise invisible upholstery that constitutes the patterns and fabric that adorn the seats of buses, trains, trams and planes through the lens of a textile epicure from Germany (which has particularly hideous and garish designs for their fleet of public buses) who ventured forth on a series of railway journeys camouflaged in clothes tailored from the same stylish fabrics that covered her carriage: why so ugly?
What asking the question prompted was pretty fascinating. Though fashion is prone to date itself, bus seats rarely show their age and worn out upholstery, sturdy and made out of a wool called moquette, is seldom the cause for refurbishment as they can last for decades, despite constant use, abuse and rough cleaning. The patterns are designed to disrupt the gaze of the passenger, as well, drawing attention away from neglected stains. Further, because of the enormous amount of fabric generated at a go, it’s likely a passenger will encounter multiple times, anywhere in the world. It’s a bit like the laser backdrop for picture day in grade school, and realising it was not unique to one’s class. Even for newly outfitted means of mass-transport, there’s the matter of upholding tradition, that being the antique term of course for the guild of upholsters. 

5x5

mama don’t take my photochrome away: hand-selected photographic wonders from the archives of the US Library of Congress

photobomb: family vacationing in Quebec struggle how to politely tell shirtless prime minister to leave them alone

pokébooth: the Icelandic branch of the Pirate Party is planning to use augmented reality to lure young people to voting stations

soma: the intersection of drugs and story-telling, from experiment to creative burden to the confession genre

le singerie: depicting monkeys aping human mannerisms was a way of deflating artists’ egos

night gallery

As a sneak-preview of an upcoming exhibition in Santa Monica, California, Dangerous Minds has curated a small selection of the bizarre and unsettling art of Clive Barker.
Better known for his work in horror film, Barker is also a prolific writer—having authored and adapted the Hellraiser franchise himself, and painter. Be sure to check out the link to see more grotesques and learn more about the creative force behind them—if you dare.

cardinal, ordinal

Atlas Obscura has an interesting article on the rather surprising difficulty the world has faced in adopting a universal “phonetic” code for communicating numbers.
Unlike the NATO alphabet employed for spelling out words and instructions in a way that minimises confusion across the distant crackle of radio communications or across different languages, there’s never been an internationally-recognised way for ensuring clarity in numbers. The entire essay is well worth reading, and among the more clever proposed but failed ideas was from the ITU in Geneva at a 1967 congress: using a redoubling of English numerals and their Italian equivalents—nadazero, unaone, bissotwo, terrathree, kartefour, pantafice, soxisix, setteseven, oktoeight, and novenine. I rather liked that, reminding me of the yan-tan-tethera of sheep-counting.

moisture farmers ou puit aerien

Around 1900, a Russian engineer by the name of Friedrich Zibold made the conjecture that ancient structures found on Greek outposts on the Crimean Peninsula were a sort of air-well, designed to harvest enough moisture from the atmosphere to sustain a small settlement. Despite initial successes with models based on the Greek buildings, Zibold was unable to sustain the condensation and collection of water for very long.  Later archaeological studies determined that the mysterious structures were actually burial mounds (this being around the time when interests were captivated by the idea of the Ark of the Covenant as a battery and the death ray of Archimedes), but that did not dissuade others from trying to build their own air-wells after Zibold’s calculations.
One such hive-like well (puit aerien) was erected in Trans-en-Provence in the 1930s (reportedly, a UFO scorched the fields of this community in 1981) in the département of the Var by Belgian inventor Achille Knapen. The site was abandoned when it also failed to collect water in the expected volumes, but this early experiment helped engineers build better and functional condensing units that help supplement the rains in places all around the world today.

codex silenda

Engineer and writer Brady Whitney, Colossal reports, has crafted a beautifully ornate binding that withholds readers from progressing to next page of the story within those covers until the reader can solve the mechanical logic puzzles and unlock what happens next. The story within is about an apprentice in the workshops of Leonardo da Vinci who is confronted with a similar conundrum and has to prise out its secret. This book reminds me of the great immersive fun I had in reading JJ Abrams’ and Doug Dorst’s S or the Ship of Theseus a couple of years ago.

why don’t you pass the time with a game of solitaire?

Politics is a dirty business and all politicians, regardless of ilk, are tainted, and perhaps it is really a last ditch effort to question the mental fitness of the presumptive or label his strategy as that of an unwitting or flattered Manchurian Candidate. Volumes have already been written about the contender with no end of antagonism for the last supposed reserve of hope for America’s credibility—and probably penned under the same muckraking standards, but to us it smacks a far greater intrigue when one looks at the advisors that Trump is retaining.
Paul Manafort, national chairman of his campaign, previously served as advisor and grey eminence for presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush I as well as championing Filipino and Congolese dictators Ferdinand Marcos and Mobutu Sese Seko. Most recently, Manafort’s services had been engaged by former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who arguably by rejecting closer ties with the European Union, facilitated the annexation of the Crimean peninsula, despite testifying the opposite intentions. I wonder if a fractured US, gerrymandered down party lines, might be the realisation of the vision to making that country great again. Despite other publicised misgivings and solicitations for the intelligence apparatchik to expose whatever state secrets his opponent may or may not have put in jeopardy, Trump announced that he is rather OK with that kind of assault on territorial integrity. What if the US wanted to reclaim Cuba, the Philippines and Panama?  Then again, perhaps that is his mission-statement that appeals to his supporters—the idea of sovereignty based on oversight or old treaties is something defunct and that all’s fair in love and war.