This day marks the last in the triplet of saints’ days, commemorating early martyrs and bishops of the fourth and fifth centuries, traditionally part of weather lore throughout much of central and northern Europe known collectively as the time of the ice saints, when Spring had begun in earnest but there was yet the danger of a cold snap.
Though there’s some variance according to one’s whereabouts, the consensus seems to give the title to Boniface (Saint Mamertus in Nordic countries), Pancras and Servatius whose feast days fall on the 11th, 12th and 13th. Respectively patrons of bachelors and converts, service-sector jobs and health, rheumatism and foot problems, this cadre seem to have little to do weather prognostication, like groundhogs (Candlemas) or the Seven Sleepers (used to forecast summer weather) and their dates were all shifted a bit to the left when the Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian way of reckoning dates and we all lost ten days but there is certainly the chance for strange, destructive weather this late in the season—especially for the micro-climates that cleave to the valleys and foothills, which asserted itself just the day before yesterday by dumping a frightening large amount of hail on a village just a few kilometres away and causing storm surges in Hamburg.
Sunday 13 May 2018
eisheilige oder in like a lion, out like a lamb
catagories: ๐จ๐ฟ, ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ญ๐ท, ๐, holidays and observances
Saturday 12 May 2018
7x7
and in flew enza: an encyclopaedic investigation into the estimated six-hundred-fifty thousand US deaths—out of fifty million globally—of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, via Kottke’s Quick Links
deconstructivist tendencies: postmodern architectural wonders of the 1970s and 1980s added to the UK’s National Heritage List—according them protected status, via Things Magazine
one year times two: the musical art installations of Trond Nicholas Perry, via ibidem
sundries for the modern workspace: contemplating the function of colour in defining manufacture, learning and healing in 1930s schematics, via Nag on the Lake
let’s try to get our core business right before trying something else: Facebook exploring minting its own cryptocurrency
pneumonic spelunking: a look at Elon Musk’s boring project beneath Los Angeles
dies irae, dies illa: a trio of (possibly not ordained) Catholic priests form a hard rock band in 1974 to broaden their missionary work
catagories: ⚕️, ✝️, ๐ถ, ๐, ๐ฅธ, architecture, transportation
but our princess is in another castle
Friday 11 May 2018
zersetzung
Our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet, informs that among many other momentous occasions, on this day in 1944, director George Cukor debuted what would be the second cinematic adaptation based of playwright Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 psychological thriller, Gaslight (previously, when the term obtained its clinical sense). Featuring the acting talents of Joseph Cotton, Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and Angela Lansbury, the main theme of the film centres on a husband (Boyer) who tries to unmoor his wife’s (Bergman) sense of reality in order to distract her from his criminal enterprise.
intern’yet or press “like” to help jesus win
Earlier this week, Democratic party members of the US House of Representatives obtained and released a cache of some thirty four hundred targeted advertisements produced and distributed by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency via social media giant Facebook and Instagram. While I will admit that none of us (not just the American voters) are immune to the architecture of choice and propaganda and that ignorance and churlishness leveraged are force-multipliers, it is a sobering reminder how pathetic the counter-messaging was and how vulnerable we’ve allowed our democratic institutions to become and how through our neglect, we risk to lose them forever. Elections and inaction has consequences, and I suppose now the question is not who was to blame (everyone is) but whether we who were careless are yet redeemable and whether we might one day be able to restore civil society and get back our on-line privileges. Though we don’t always recognise it, we’ve been on restriction for quite some time.
catagories: ๐ท๐บ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ง , networking and blogging
geocentric or keeping up appearances
Via Open Culture and through the medium of rather beautiful star charts that rallied against the Copernican revolution that unseated the Earth as the centre of the Cosmos, we met the adherents of Muggletonianism.
The namesake of Lodowicke Muggleton, championed by his cousin John Reeve—tailors both—the sect started in 1651 London (Muggleton was styled as the last prophet as foretold in the Bible) as a refutation of scientific method, philosophical discourse and conversely did not believe in sermonising (a self-described, most disorganised religion) or that there was any sort of divine intervention until God choose to destroy the world, though infamously, they practised public praise and denunciation, believing that they could reduce one’s social standing with a curse. Their maps (there is a more extension gallery plus links to other resources to be found at the source up above) and cosmological hierarchy may have influenced the style of William Blake.
Thursday 10 May 2018
no filter
My Modern Met has a nice appreciation of the effortlessly whimsical portfolio of New York-based photographer Rodney Lewis Smith (1946* - 2016 †), who insisted on remaining on remaining true to the art and discipline, setting up his subjects with only natural light and relying on his trusted Leica 35 mm camera and his refined vision to tease order out of chaos. With a career spanning over four decades, Smith has influenced many portrait and fashion photographers that followed as well as leaving a vast archive of sentimental and surreal snapshots that represent a cross-section of moments—especially punctuated by the artist’s own sense of spontaneity that complements his talent for composition.
catagories: ๐ท