7x7

electronium: a classic electronic music sequencer from pioneer Raymond Scott is reinvented with an artificial intelligence software patch

sacred spaces: Thibaud Poirier photographs modern church interiors

the right to be forgotten: internet giant allows users to control if and for how long it retains one’s data

spoorzone: a self-sustaining bus station in Tilburg

b(7)b: a handy guide to the re-categorised information withholds of the latest version of the Mueller Report released to the public

h. p. loveshack: ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

hic sunt dracones: an interactive map of legends from English Heritage—via Maps Mania  

talky tina

Having first encountered the strange and robust marketplace in haunted dolls through the excellent podcast Oh No Ross & Carrie, I enjoyed this follow-up and expansion on the topic—via Messy Nessy Chic.
One is course paying for the menacing narrative and the tragic backstory to account for these cursed, possessed artefacts and most auctions are conducted with a strict no return policy and sold “as is.” Though we yet mourn for weird, niche eBay, allowing the sale of such items signals a departure from the company’s restriction on the trafficking in souls and the sale of metaphysical services, such as casting spells. Learn more about this strange phenomena and antecedents at the links above.

die unendliche anziehungskraft der natur

Inspired by a sketch executed in 1971 by fellow Austrian Max Peinter (*1937, a cousin of Ettore Sottsass) called “The Unending Attraction of Nature” art collector Klaus Littmann will bring the picture to life by transplanting a forest of trees in the sports stadium of the industrial city of Klagenfurt as public art installation of the same name.
Calling the government officials out for their inaction on climate change and habit loss (lifestyle choices do matter and have an impact but the real and difficult sacrifice is in legislating the polluters), Littmann fears that in the near future, such displays of Nature might in fact be within the purview of the viewing platform or gallery, like animals in zoos. They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum. Once the project concludes (9 September – 27 October 2019), the trees will be given a permanent home at a nearby location on public lands.

art of the title

Via an art round-up (with more choice curations to explore) from Super Punch, we are introduced to ad man and award-winning titleist Georg Elliott Olden (*1920 - †1975).
As the grandson of an enslaved individual from Birmingham, Alabama Olden did not conform to the Mad Men stereotypes of corporate design during the Golden Age of Television and played an influential role in shaping the fledgling medium, starting to work with CBS in 1945 at a time before other African Americans pioneers began making the slow but steady progress towards more equitable treatment, inclusion and acceptance.
Also a prolific postage stamp designer, Olden’s submission was chosen to commemorate the centenary of the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order delivered by Abraham Lincoln on New Year’s Day 1863—which Olden unveiled with President Kennedy at a White House ceremony. Find out more about Georg Olden from his American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) biography and explore a gallery of his commissions at the link above.

xxvii

To mark the ratification of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the US Constitution on this day back in 1992, we’re reprising the story of a college sophomore determined to vilify his case and made it his decades long mission to revive a tabled vote and see it through to passage and enactment, an inspiring and wonky story that illustrates the role that the resolve and passion of individuals play in government and policy.
 Intended to be incorporated into the Bill of Rights by drafter James Madison in 1789, among the first proposed but last adopted, the language states succinctly, “No law, varying the compensation or the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.” In other words, a sitting Congress can’t vote on giving itself a pay-raise and has to defer matters to the next one. Proffering the idea that the pending amendment had no statute of limitations (period of prescription) curried our ambitious pupil not favour academically and a barely passing grade, but it gave him the motivation to turn his paper into a proof-of-concept campaign, which eventually put the amendment to a nationwide vote.

botantical mysogyny

Though admittedly a simplification of a host of factors and vectors coming together to exacerbate seasonal allergies and tree sex and gender are far more complex, we learn via the always excellent Kottke people experience outsized hay-fever and respiratory responses in part in America at least (and there’s surely counterpart problems created unintentionally elsewhere) because of a misguided appeal to urban planners decades ago to line the streets with greenery exclusively of the male variety, reasoning that then we could dispense with messy blossoms, fruits and pods that female tree would produce.
Not that trees were not incorporated into cities and sidewalks prior to the 1940s—but many of the stately, oldest residents had been blighted with the outbreak of Dutch Elm disease when production demands of World War II made the usual quarantine process that kept the pests at bay infected all American elms—and the reforestration effort was thought out along more deliberative but short-sighted lines, perhaps tidier and have a certain aesthetic like our ridiculous, manicured lawns but unbalanced with row upon row of bachelor trees spewing out too much pollen and making us noticeably suffer. What do you think? Sexism in the plant kingdom is not the same as the attitude that excludes women from medical studies and clinical trials as they are deemed unfit control subjects and most treatment and dosage comes from a pointedly male perspective but has consequence nonetheless.  I wonder what the second- and third-tier effects are that we can’t even begin to appreciate.