ausstellung für unbekannte architekten

On this day in 1919, Walter Gropius founded in Weimar the Bauhaus school—a merger of the art academies of the city and grand duchy—as the successor institution to Arts and Crafts studio founded earlier by Belgian Art Nouveau architect Henry Clemens van de Velde, dismissed earlier during the war on account of his nationality, whose new style represented a negotiated compromise between the fine and the applied arts.  A show during the same month called An Exhibition of Unknown Architects, Gropius outlined the goal of the movement (see also here, here, here, and here) to create a new trade association for which there were not the same bars to membership as the guilds of the past, crafting the neologism as the heir of the Bauhütte, the stone masons who managed construction of cathedrals in Gothic times. A huge profusion of art and design came out of this movement and explore a carefully curated archive of resources at Open Culture at the link.

serif and shoulder

The always excellent Everlasting Blört refers us to a handy interactive guide that teaches the terminology of the elements of typography, what each of the strokes and embellishments of a letter-press are called. Explore more of the anatomy of a font at the links above.

the revolution will not be televised

Just as America pushes for the removal of the incumbent administration in Venezuela (previously), this day in 2002 coincidentally marks the beginning of a violent and ultimately unsuccessful coup d’état that ousted re-elected president Hugo Chávez for a period just under two days before he was restored to power by mobilising popular support.
Though then President George W Bush vehemently denied US involvement in the matter, neo-conservative diplomat Elliott Abrams, infamous for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal and architecture of the Iraq War, was then implicated of plotting to overthrow the Chávez government in exchange for one more privatise state oil assets. Elliot was appointed by Donald Trump as special envoy to the country in January. The title refers to a 2003 documentary made about what transpired during the forty-seven hours.

express lane

Culturally, I think I will never stop shopping like a European, fortunate to live within easy walking distance to a corner grocery store and dash off to the shop nearly daily.
I couldn’t conceive of needing a buggy or purchasing more than I could comfortably carry outside of getting ready for a camping vacation or a long holiday weekend—and so I was rather delighted to learn that the Swedish language has a term for the etiquette expected when one is in the queue to check out.  One is to avoid making a varuberg—literally a product heap, not only in being courteous to the person ringing up your items and the person next in line by arranging them neatly for efficiency and ease of handling but also by not buying too much at a time—or at least letting others go ahead. I can’t think of an exact equivalent but in Germany shoppers also place the same sort of standards at the cash-register.

willkommen, bienvenue, welcome

Though Brexit has been deferred to a date no later than Halloween, it’s never too early to greet the partners that the UK is bidding adieu to, and this series of twenty-seven retro-style prints from Manchester-based graphic designers Dave Sedgwick and Stanley Chow called “Hello Europe” is a good primer and ice-breaker. Learn more and explore a whole gallery of the euro-centric posters at My Modern Met at the link above.

war & cheese

Addressing a moribund dispute over European transparently subsidising its airline industry with a quiver, a toolbox of tariffs and bars to trade meant for lower-stakes disagreements, our Roquefort is once again making headlines as the Trump regime is threatening to impose some eleven billion dollars in punitive import duties on EU products, including wine and cheese.
Of course, those who live in glass houses should not throw stones and the US, though delivery methods may be more evasive, supports its domestic airline industry as robustly if not to a greater extent with military contracts and other preferential treatment and the EU is preparing for retaliatory measures. It’s a tragically uncouth coincidence that trying to solve this fifteen year old standoff comes in the wake of airplane crashes that shake confidence in the competence of a US manufacturer. Though very antagonistic toward the World Trade Organisation in terms of begrudging its member dues and feet-dragging on the appointment of arbiters, America sees no hypocrisy in leaning on the body to enforce rules when it suits them.

event horizon

In a crowning achievement after two years of observations, ploughing through an incredible trove of data, using a globe-spanning network of telescopes, the team of astronomers behind the Event Horizon project (previously) have successfully imaged a composite picture of the radiant halo, the accretion disc of captured matter, around a black hole.
Data processing and transport—too much to transmit, the hard drives were collected and delivered via sneakernet, including from Antarctica, was the biggest time-consumer for this pioneering feat, which also dispels the doubts that Albert Einstein harboured for his own theoretical stellar career-path and tests Relativity bent to the extremes. The mass of six and a half billion suns has been ingested by the supermassive phenomenon at the centre of distant galaxy Messier 87, captured objects flung at nearly the speed of light before disappearing, never to escape. This silhouette of the infinite was actually the understudy, the project initially hoping to capture a snapshot of Sagittarius A* at the centre of the Milky Way, far closer but many magnitudes less massive and too faint to resolve.

♏

Via Kottke, we learn that premium members of an on-line retail giant are pitched a monthly horoscope that pairs one’s sign to recommended products and promotions.
This peculiar merger of astrology with cloying capitalism is moving into its fourth month so there seems to be a serious commitment to the service, penned by an editor who holds a master’s degree in existential phenomenological therapeutic psychology whose by-lines also include a magazine for teenagers and Pokémon, presumably the augmented reality experience. What do you think about that? Is it just in good fun or is it earnest, and is it even possible to be cynical about something that’s not real? Though possibly a late-comer to the booming revival in interest for pseudoscience and guidance no matter what form it comes in, the ploy is symptomatic of a much larger and lucrative trend that Americans are particularly eager to embrace and export.