trump l’oeil

Despite the fact that the Obama portraits were privately funded, their popular reception was enough apparently to motivate the US congress to draft legislation which Trump eagerly signed into law the Eliminating Government-funded Oil-painting Act—EGO Act in short-form, that strips funding for official portraiture. Though the title specifically references oil-paint, the language of the enacted bill seems to cover all media but fails to address the rather fraught funding sources for Trump’s own past artistic commissions.

swiss spaghetti harvest

If these pranks and hoaxes suggested by a neural network (previously) are a preview of what artificial intelligence thinks would be entertaining and appropriate for April Fools’ then I think we have legitimate reason to fear the Internet of Things. Granted, the data-set that the machine had to draw from was limited, some of the practical jokes are outright metaphysical:

Conference call two people then, when your kid asks what it is, say “Dinner.”

If you rip up a toilet paper roll, then leave them a ransom note.

Hide an alarm clock in someone’s keyboard who isn’t a very good typist.

Check out the entire list and let us know your favourites and how you might pull them off.

transumanza

The Local’s Italian edition reports that the country is seeking to add the traditional nomadic herding practise of transhumance to the UNESCO register of intangible cultural heritage—following the successful bid to have Neapolitan pizza included last December. Ultimately derived from the Latin for crossing ground, the term includes herding-customs and the season driving of flocks of livestock to greener pastures. Of course, the profession of shepherds is not exclusive to Italy but central and southern regions of the country have preserved much of the ancient networks of herding routes—referred to as tratturi, some of which are still in use.

7x7

the man in the linen suit: a look at the iconic J. Peterman catalogue and how its attire is modeled, via Coudal Partners

kingpin: in-house board games of the US Central Intelligence Agency revealed thanks to a FOIA-filing

crystalline entity: tracing down the probable origins of an usual meteorite

a show about nothing: the theme music for Seinfeld was improvised for every episode

ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny: Charles Darwin’s children drew doodles on his original manuscript for the Origin of Species, via Everlasting Blört

👏: a look into the as-seen-on-tv marketeering and technology behind the Clapper, inculcating the population to the idea of domestic automation

containment field: a web browser offers to quarantine one’s social media presence from prying third-parties, via Waxy  

legendary creatures

Miss Cellania introduces us to a Japanese yōkai, a menagerie of supernatural monsters, called Ashiarai Yashiki who manifests herself as a hoovering apparition that appears in the form of a giant dirty disembodied foot that barnstorms her way inside and will stamp about the place unless appeased by a thorough washing.  Many Japanese monster stories are so singularly odd that it is sometimes hard to distinguish the stuff of legend and folklore from modern fables.  Apparently people were content to allow the nature and motive of this unwanted guest to pass without explanation as the dealings of the gods and spirits surpassed human understanding and most likely could never be adequately related.