tambo āto

For nearly the past quarter of a century the villagers of Inakadate in Aomori prefecture have strategically, meticulously planted dozens of varieties of heirloom and modern rice to create a colourful canvas out of their surrounding paddies. The scale and complexity of the works of art has grown every year—including Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji in 2007—have helped revitalise local tourism and is truly a community effort. Be sure to visit the link up top for more landscaped murals and a video presentation on rice paddy art, or tambo āto as it is called in Japanese.

vansploitation

Prolific custom-vehicle creator George Barris (previously) also designed and built the Love Machine that was the central figure (Vandora) of the film Super Van and spawned a sub-genre of romance on the road. As with some of Barris’ other creations, the chassis of the Love Machine went through several incarnations that avoided acknowledging its spotted past including an appearance as a shuttle bus on Back to the Future II and on the television series seaQuest DSV.

darmok and jalad at tenagra

Sourced without a doubt from The Greatest Generation, io9 (named for a theoretical input-output device that allows users to peer into the future at the price of their sanity) presents a collection of some of the strangest plotlines from Star Trek: TNG for the series’ thirtieth anniversary, which debuted on this day in 1987.

public-notice

Chillingly, the US Department of Homeland Security has posted it proposed policies for monitoring the social media accounts of all migrants and their associates to the Federal Register (the official journal of the government) and is soliciting comments from the public. And while there will always hopefully be institutions to challenge the expanding reach of Big Brother (which has been in development for decades and something we’ve all been complacent about and complicit with) and the bureau probably won’t be granted everything its asking for, it is disturbing that any semblance of privacy (and Americans ought not be privileged over the rest of the world by dint of their citizenship since soon they won’t be) is becoming a rarer and rarer luxury only for the powerful and the duly deputised.

6x6

brick and mortar: the trajectory of on-line retailer Amazon very closely mirrors that of Sears and Roebuck  
corporate sponsorship: former London mayor tried to secure funds for the Thames Garden Bridge by allowing Apple to plop a store in the middle of the river

choo-choo: an incredibly charming hand-drawn train journey animation, via Waxy

songun: striking and iconographic ephemera from North Korea

tree of life: a look at how many species and varieties that each plant and animal emoji represents, via Kottke

ama: highlights from an interview with Monty Python alumnus John Cleese

sologamy

A thoughtful, reflexive essay on the trend of self-marriage, after indulging us with a personal peek at the private-public declarations of matrimony (held in a karaoke bar in the former no-man’s land between East and West Berlin), poses the question whether the rite is an emancipation from having to prove one’s worth by merit of relationship status or an oppressive, pathetic totem of self-absorption and a photo-opportunity.
While marriage and companionship has had a lot heaped on it in the past few decades—radically transformed from a utilitarian and practical arrangement that was essentially a commercial transaction to one with heady, superlative expectations of romance, protection, friendship, counsellor and a dozen other roles that might have been cast across a wider social network, it still seems robust and resilient enough to bear that burden. For those whom marriage might not impart an element of social mobility, however, self-marriage might not just be the trite amour-propre of narcissism that it seems to be and rather the staging that culminates in a ceremony (executed or not) is certainly a rebuke for spinster and crone (or whore) and all the other nasty terms that society directs at single women—who are the majority of participants. What do you think? Commandeering social conventions are a way of highlighting the constraints and limitations of our society but rather than betraying ourselves as needy and infantile, and I believe the author’s exercise was neither endorsement or condemnation but rather an expose and exploration worth contemplating on the nature of sanction and the sacrosanct but we’re probably each other’s own best allies for keeping us in good health, accountable and sane, morally and ethically.