jinbaori

Via Present /&/ Correct we are treated to a lovely antique collection of Samurai clan banners and cloaks from the 1850s, the late Edo, Bakumatsu era, sourced from two woodblock printed manuscript books. The name for the traditional garment draped over the Samurai’s armour is a specially tailored kimono tabard (a surcoat designed to show off one’s heraldic pedigree) called a jinbaori (陣羽織). Find a whole gallery of arms and supporters and learn more at the link up top.

8x8

wild boars: all thirteen team members and coach trapped in an underwater cave in Thai are rescued

i’m in the business of vegetables, let’s take a selfie: covers of popular songs with auto-complete lyrics

the purge: Erdoğan’s government dismisses an additional eighteen thousand civil servants (previously) and cancels their passports

art-o-mat: cigarette vending machines repurposed to distribute tactile unique collectibles

moral panic: how Tom Hanks’ debut film Mazes and Monsters informed parents about the danger of role playing games, via Miss Cellania

rip: heartthrob Tab Hunter has passed away

department of child-labour: more on the Trump regime’s plot to destroy the US educational system

omnishambles: UK Foreign Minister resigns over soft-peddling BREXIT

living daylights

The European Commission is soliciting feedback on the option to end the requirement for harmonisation across the EU for daylight savings time, citing the potential for negative health consequences caused by the bi-annual change and prompted by Nordic members who’ve dutifully sprung forward and fell back despite the fact that no hour of sunshine at these higher climes is won or lost.
Railway and telegraph networks necessitated synchronisation and standardisation in the late eighteenth century and the concept of adjusting the clocks with the seasons was first proposed by an insect collector and astronomer (and frequent train passenger) named Charles Hudson in 1895 and was not implemented until the spring of 1916 with the German Sommerzeit as a way to conserve coal during the war. The current EU compact dates to 1980, in response to the energy crisis of the 1970s, and if repealed, the change wouldn’t be automatically nullified, just the participation of each member state. What do you think? Modern time-keeping devices can assuredly handle the changes and dispensing with the ritual will be certainly welcomed by many but time and tide admit politics and identity as well.

highlighting the remarkable

I know it’s an advertising campaign but this series, found via Swiss Miss, from German marker manufacturer Stabilo takes a highlighter to historic photographs to help call-out the overlooked contributions of women to science and governance is pretty enlightening.

There’s just a few images in this print-run but surely there’s a lot of untapped potential out there. First Lady Edith Wilson, who assumed the roles and responsibilities of the US president after her husband was debilitated with a stroke in October 1919 (prior to the Presidential Succession Act and even before universal suffrage in the US) is included, as well as the pictured Austrian- Swiss physicist Lise Meither, whose celebrated career and academic recognition is overshadowed by the failure of the Nobel Prize committee to acknowledge her essential role in the discovery of nuclear fission in the 1930s.

distracted boyfriend

English Rococo painter and portraitist Sir Joshua Reynolds is perhaps best remembered for his commission depicting celebrated theatre manager, playwright and Shakespearian company actor David Garrick. Reynolds’ Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy from 1761 and displayed at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire is an allegory of the Renaissance romancing of Hercules’ uncomfortable choice between pleasure over virtue and seems quite memetic indeed. How would you caption these characters? Do let us know.

master negotiator