check your privilege, obi-wan

Kottke is now the host and curator of The People’s History of Tattoonie, which itself was in danger of becoming rarefied and disjointed as an anthology of sorts. Usually I find such satire a little heavy-handed for my taste as we all ought know not to impose our cachet and culture upon something long, long ago and far, far away (notwithstanding how a more advanced culture would have more mature definitions of identity than we do, and in the end we usually just look smug fancying ourselves to be the soul of consideration and accomodation) but this dialogue, line of argument is pretty brilliant and needless to say illustrative. “Your ‘Big Story’ of the military-imperial complex lets you ignore what’s right in your FACE.”

bess, you is my woman now

5x5

an error in the matrix: those iconic strings of computer code in the opening credits of the franchise are sushi recipes

clerestory: fantastic Mid Century Modern bird houses

the glasgow school: Scottish sisters and classmates whose style profoundly influenced what we call Art Nouveau, via Everlasting Blort

pseudo-random numbers: some computer encryption is based on the unpredictability underlying globules of oil and water of a wall of lava lamps

event horizon: a preview of some of the planned excursions into outer space for the upcoming year

savvy consumers

Via Kottke, we discover an open directive from Foster Kamer that should top our list of New Year’s resolutions—which might prove surprisingly easy to uphold considering what’s at stake—that encourages literate and circumspect consumption of journalism by unshackling oneself from one’s social media feeds.
We can choose to step away from the cycle of manipulation and the internet echo chamber—and perhaps the fear of missing out (FoMO)—by not incentivizing the content-brokers and help those whose horizons are already being limited and not allow the hosting or favour of a single outlet be the measure of success. Supporting independent and quality reporting and diversity of content can be made to seem like either impossible or unnecessary, given our own vanity with what we regale ourselves with—though the plurality of view-points is an illusory one, or that there’s no standing up to the giants who’ve set the hurdle to entry too high. The antidote to the notion that the internet is a one-stop shop, however, is simple and just takes a bit of attention and intention to make online ecology a better one—whose health and integrity have become even more vital to the off-line world as the boundaries are blurred: step out of that walled-garden and rely on your browser, search-engines (though be wary of what is driving these as well), use book-marks, subscribe to newsletters and create your own daily-digest and push back against the monoculture we’re enabling because we are easily besotted with convenience and a bit of flattery.

avoirdupois or system of a down

The United States of America’s unique status globally as a hold-over on adopting and integrating the metric system of weights and measures cannot be laid at the feet of any historical incident or accident other than familiarity and resistance has become sort of a fount of national pride—with even the most traditional patches of England and her colonies rejecting the Imperial system as an outmoded artefact but it was nonetheless a pleasure to indulge that pirate intrigue had a hand to play in America’s delinquency in adopting the international standard.
A hodgepodge of units inherited from metropolitan Britain and concurrent thalassocracies was vexing the young country’s trade and threatened to intimate certain allegiances and so then Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson invited one French scientist behind the development and standardization of the metric system, Joseph Dombey, to come and demonstrate the merits of his enterprise. Storms blew the visit emissary’s boat into the privateer-infested waters of the Caribbean, however, who ransomed Dombey (ransomed him to death—unfortunately) and cared nothing for his baubles—including a metallic rod that was to be America’s standard kilogram, though there’s a movement in place to divorce the value from a physical representative. It is difficult to gauge what consequence that the success of Dombey’s and Jefferson’s mission might have had, as America launched several other campaigns to align themselves with international standards (the USA is in possession of four archival kilograms for calibration purposes) but never managed to overcome the inertia of custom, which is a powerful thing to be sure.

noli me tangere

For the first time, as Hyperallergic reports, the eighteenth century Austrian grimoire Touch Me Not! is available as a full colour facsimile with translations of the German and Latin texts—which is rather a unique primer on the dark arts, focused nearly exclusively on the transgressive and with few pretensions to spare for the best intentions of the practicioner—especially one who has failed to take a sufficiently reverend approach for the esoteric arts.
Also being sufficiently girded with psychedelic substances whose potions are also laid out in the book can’t harm either. Warnings abound throughout the visceral compendium not to meddle in such matters and the Touch Me Not! is the final proscriptive in the work’s title “A most rare Summary of the entire magical Art by its most famous Masters of the Year 1057”—though this embellishment of ancient provenance is probably only meant to entice contemporary (circa 1775) even more. Still the command does also conjure what Jesus uttered to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection—there is too much invested in every iconographic tradition for it just to be a coincidence and for it not to carry some echo of significance. Similar to the weight given in medical circles to the placebo effect (meaning I will please), classically trained surgeons were often instructed that most organs in all but the most dire of emergencies beseeched “noli me tangere” and that invasive measures were seldom advisable.

mind the gap

Drawn from a variety of sources, we really enjoyed perusing this curated gallery of vintage London Underground posters and advertising campaigns in order to boost ridership.
Many of the brightest and boldest examples date from the 1920s and from the studios of graphic designer Horace Taylor but the collection (with many we’ve never encountered before) spans the whole of the twentieth century in all styles and is definitely worth checking out.  Over the ages, I think London has done an outstanding job in promoting public transportation, the hallmark of sound and convenient infrastructure being that people choose to take it rather than strive to avail themselves of other means.