7x7

bowie.net: prescient 1999 BBC News Night interview with David Bowie regarding the emergent world wide web

urban league: a primer on why cities grew where they did

track 61: an intrepid team of urban spelunkers explore FDR’s custom train car underneath Grand Central Station, via the always marvellous Nag on the Lake

hic sunt leones: the Phantom Atlas chronicles how we filled in the gaps of our geographic knowledge with centuries of fictitious locations

time and tide: beach installation of mirrored poles captures the reflected sunrise and sunset

shyriiwook: woman goes into labour wearing a Chewbacca mask

curds and whey: a dairy factory in the western Turkish province of Afyonkarahisar boasts a circular viewing gallery around its central courtyard that offers visitors a demonstration of cheese-making

tiny don

Though I feel at times that the outcome of the US election was more due to voter apathy rather than tugging enthusiasm or manipulation plied by foreign influence—and the US has done more than its fair share of nation-building, and Russia may have chosen to attack Clinton over the embarrassing revelations of the Panama Papers that she helped bring to light, I’d never dismiss the curdling effects of subverting the work of government to outside forces.
There’s more than enough corruption and lobby-interest that state-actors are beholden to already. Possibly those who called Trump the Manchurian Candidate weren’t that far off the mark, but until or unless one can connect the money, something about the scenario doesn’t strike me as wholly strategic. As much as the US is still being propelled forward on the fumes of exceptionalism, America can’t call itself a Super Power without acknowledging the same for its once and former arch-nemesis, as both are fraught with the same post-industrial and image problems—which flatters neither side. That old antagonism didn’t just sublimate and there’s still animosity and not much room at the top, and Putin has drawn support from vast swathes of the Russian population in part because of the struggle against Western powers. If the US and NATO partner states simply conceding to Russian demands, would the people continue to suffer Putin as their leader.  Don’t the two need each other to pin the blame on?

hauntology or down in the underground

Our favourite alternate reality British town, we discover, interestingly supports a public mass-transit system—albeit many stationed are closed due to possession or accessible only on the astral-plane. The problems with Scarfolk’s metro sound much more endemic and long-term that the current spate of tube strikes but let’s hope the former’s predicament is not exorcised while the latter’s for London is something of an awful last-resort.

refoulement

Though the public was quick to blame politicians and the authorities beholden to them for systemic failures in the migration and asylum process, and it’s no comfort to the affected families—and those legitimate claimants who’ll potentially face being rebuffed—one tragic irony behind the angry lunatic who hijacked a lorry and killed the driver and mowed down twelve individuals at a Berlin Christmas Market is that his country of origin refused to take him back. Non-refoulement is the principle of international law that restricts the rendition of one adjudged a true victim of persecution to his or her place of persecution—although north Africa lands like Morocco, Libya and Tunisia had been declared “safe countries” for some time and refugees originating from that region almost without exception have their asylum-applications rejected.
In this instance (and there are untold numbers of individuals suspended in this legal limbo) Tunisia denied that the perpetrator was a citizens and therefore was under no obligation to take him back. Earlier investigation revealed the quite opposite to be the case, and the dossier that the government in Tunis had on this dangerous and unstable criminal was all the more reason not to accept his expulsion. The flood of refugees and those opportunists that are carried in the wake of humanity fleeing war either don’t have travel-documents or identification because either issuing authorities no longer exist or were encouraged by smugglers or fellow-travellers to destroy them, the logic being it would confound the receiving authorities and reduce the chances of being rejected outright since absent papers, one could claim the sympathies of the day and any nationality one wished. Whatever story offered would hold up to scrutiny at least long enough to get one’s foot in the door, so to speak. The revelation that Tunisia’s belated approval to take back the perpetrator—coming just two days too late—may have been the final bit of news to push him over the edge. Elements of the German government are demanding that foreign aid be withheld from any nation that acts in a similarly recalcitrant manner.

we always find something, eh didi, to let us think we exist

Two household robots called Vladimir and Estragon (which refer to themselves at times Mia and Also Mia) are on display, chatting away to one another, ostensibly believing themselves to be human—though I don’t suppose that distinction is necessarily important or necessarily a case of mistaken identity.
So far, they seem to be playing better with their own kind. The names are those of the two main interlocutors of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot (also the name of the language protocols), whom of course only have a finite number of lines and limited patience. Their endless and verging sometimes on recursive (until one of them shifts the subject slightly) and interrogative dialogue is also eagerly followed by a live-stream of human and other chat-bot voyeurs that may or may not be influence the flow of conversation. There seems to be something absurdly profound going on here but I can’t quite identify it. What do you think? Would you invite these devices into your home?

ex voto suscepto

Hyperallergic brings us an excellent primer in the tradition of the folk-art ex-voto devotions (short for the Latin “from the vow made”)—wherein unhappy little accidents are depicted (often graphically) and the sufferers’ recover through divine intervention.
These personal petitions and statements of gratitude that adorn shrines and other places of pilgrimage have their roots in sympathetic magic but developed into a highly stylised and ritualised practise that’s not only limited to iconography but also inscriptions and other offerings. Mexican artist Frida Kahlo amassed a sizable collection of these votive works that would also go on to influence her art and the how she persevered working whilst ill. Be sure to peruse the entire extensive gallery at the link up top and learn more about the different traditions.

now it's turkish delight on a moonlit night

A new collaboration by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s civil engineering faculty creates a privileged platform for witnessing the development of Istanbul and several junctures of its modern and urbane history as one of the world’s mega-cities. Through the lens of history and with geopolitical superposition, one can trace the evolution of the metropolis from 1850 onwards. Surely all communities are just as much representative as the heirs and drivers or change and deserve a show-case of their sprawl and re-zoning for their own re-inventing, only hopefully without too much directed or ordained.

endangered specie

Via TYWKIDBI (and indeed, we’d have no inkling otherwise), we learn that during copper and other metal shortages during World War II, the US mint experimented with various substitute materials, including pennies made of glass.
A possibly unique prototype sold at auction to one anonymous numismatist for a considerable sum—the batch made of this particular specie rejected and destroyed since it was a difficult medium to work with and there was no consistency in the quality. The following year, the mint issued steel pennies electroplated with zinc, and I’m pretty sure we have at least one of those around somewhere.