prêt-à-porter

Considering that at this juncture concerts and other venues make more money off of t-shirts than album sales and merchandising more than supplements a lot of media properties as well as the messaging and statement that individuals are eager and willing to present, we appreciated and enjoyed indulging in this history of what was originally called the “crew-neck” from its first literary citation to the advent of mass-produced screen-printing that really propelled the shirt has a vehicle for label and personal branding.
That first literary mention was in 1920 with the debut novel of F Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise with a mention of the article of clothing among his equipage for university—not that that moment in a book about traumatic emotions cushioned by alcohol and love twisted by status-seeking particularly launched or informs the career of the t-shirt as a mode of expression. Notably, one of the earliest examples of the garment—perhaps some might consider it a uniform and not brandishing a logo—in film comes nineteen years later with the release of The Wizard of Oz, where the attendants of the Wash & Brushup Company of Emerald City sport identical green t-shirts with “Oz” printed on them.

6x6

phantom pavilions: more wire frame architecture from Edoardo Tresoldi

aragog: for the bold, a paralysing cocktail that includes tarantula venom, via Nag on the Lake

anchors away: dispatching with human crews will make shipping on the high seas safer, cleaner and cheaper—and be disruptive for sailors’ careers, via Super Punch

pardon and prophecy: as you can imagine, she is an expert on politics and predicts that whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner

steering committee: a decency council to be assembled that will advise the Duma and help guide its decision-making

star wars, nothing but star wars: one cinema’s celebratory lead up to the fortieth anniversary of the franchise

i seem to be a verb

We were pleased to certify the veracity of a quotation by engineer and futurist Buckminster Fuller on the topic of policing the under-class by insisting that we all be kept occupied and not left to our own devices. Speaking volumes on the subject of universal basic income and technological redundancy, Fuller in 1970 answering to an environmental teach-in reported by New York magazine replied:

“We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

Again, instead of being fearful of robots taking our jobs, we ought to welcome it, lest it this revolution, disruption be misappropriated once again.

when i’m sixty-four

On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the release of SGT Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Boing Boing informs, the BBC is airing a documentary featuring biographies on every one of the sixty plus individuals featured on the album’s jacket cover, minus the Beatles.

postcards from the new east

Friend of the blog Messy Nessy Chic revisits the photography of Frank Herford and his collateral series of impression of the post-Soviet building-boom collected while travelling through Russia and its former cadet republics.

Imperial Pomp showcases an amazing gallery of skyscrapers that have mushroomed up all over Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere that embrace a hybrid style that’s chasing some ideal that creates some amazing juxtapositions and adding some patent colour to an otherwise rather apparently bleak and brutal urban environment.

agent orange

Breaking with the long-standing tradition that the first foreign visit of a US president is either to neighbouring Canada or Mexico, and amidst the milieu of garnering the displeasure with Turkey over the decision to arm Kurdish rebels in Syria—though despots can always find common-ground, especially when goons can be dispatched to rough up the rabble—I wonder if Dear Leader might not consider foregoing his visit to the Middle East and Italy.
Dear Leader could blame anyone he cares to or make up any excuse and I feel the world might give him a pass for sparing us all the embarrassment and diplomatic damage. The audacious hectoring of presuming to usher in peace in the region (by means of a speech on religious tolerance delivered to audience in a primarily Islamic country excluded from the proposed travel ban due to private business interests) and the rather pushy demand for an audience with the Pope was already edging away from the bounds of normalcy, but now the stakes are much higher—having demonstrated how the regime is willing to risk alienating both political and religious leaders with poor messaging that betrays a fundamental and profound ignorance of statecraft and diplomacy. The partner state’s intelligence that was ill-advisedly boasted about to Russia is likely one of entourage’s whistle-stops. The world has already seen quite enough of Dear Leader’s abominable tantrums and nothing constructive could conceivable come of this excursion.