wendell wilkie or prospect park

Every four years during the US election season a Brooklyn artist decorates her lawn not signs for the pugilists of the day but rather spares a thought for those defeated in past battles. Apolitically, the artist is inviting passers-by to imagine how history and our present direction would have been different if elections had gone the other way.

the fourth estate or deplorable me

Budding entrepreneurs in one particularly enterprising digital corridor of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia could be said to be influencing political sentiment in America as much as much or more than any coordinated hacking attack by capitalising on a business-model that is very much the Frankenstein’s monster of social media, albeit not in a way that is quite so sensation nor begging of response in kind.

Having abandoned positive articles in favour of the candidate Bernie Sanders for propaganda having to do with the last contenders remaining—especially what’s been found more profitable and proliferate in undermining the competition, several score Macedonian webmasters have taken to generating content that recursively perpetuates whatever misinformation that the internet sustains and catering to the partisan who long for nothing more than conformation-bias. That social media sites are pledging to filter out the catch-penny content that they’ve encouraged and depend on is irony enough, but it seems all the more just in a way in the context of so many Albanians and their compatriots being duped by Nigerian princes and other schemes when the internet first came into being. What do you think? Our economic-models are already based to a great extent on flattery, but how does that become more or less incorrigible when planted directly in unchallenged echo-chambers?

5x5

it’s the blue meanies: Beatles’ LEGO Yellow Submarine with minifigs

net-zero: a fleet of hydrogen-fuelled passenger trains enter into service in Germany

you have died of dysentery: blistering look at voter suppression as told with an Oregon Trail style exposition

oooga chaka: music video director Jonas Åckerlund looks back at some of the catchiest and most influential Swedish songs from the past four decades

story-boarding: tiny film sets as movie posters

wear and tear

Amazingly, material scientists working in the laboratories of University of California’s San Diego campus are developing fabrics and casings (and even circuit-boards) that can repair themselves using an ink like compound infused with magnetic particles that can be directed to a rip or crack and instantly cauterise the wound at first signs of disintegration. This self-healing function is a lot like our own pliable, living skin and may make some significant inroads into our culture of over-packaging (if our stuff was more resilient, maybe handling wouldn’t be of such importance) and disposable outlook on things. What if you had socks that darned themselves? I think that would in itself be a motivation to mend and rehabilitate things not yet imbued with the ability to patch themselves up.

sweater weather

The fabulous Messy Nessy Chic invites us to peruse the pages of a gem of car-boot sale find in the big book of British knitting patterns called “Wit Knits,” published in 1986. These ugly sweater connoisseurs, including Joanne Lumley (aka, Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous), haven’t even a touch of irony in their enthusiastic modelling.  Be sure to check out the entire rogues gallery (which might even inspire a crafty project) at the link up top.