privatsphäre

Nearly a year after sweeping privacy and data-retention legislation went into effect in the European Union, one dominant force in shaping the architecture of the on-line world is committing to open a privacy and safety engineering hub in München, to demonstrate the company’s pledge to take security, integrity and demography seriously.
It’s one thing to be exposed to the same commercials ad nauseum but quite a different matter to be denied a job interview or insurance coverage or detoured away from a given destination by dint of the same inscrutable predilections. Failure to comply with current regulations could result in fees upwards of four percent of the internet giant’s global revenue. Let’s hope that this venture helps promote German and EU expectations for privacy and foster a better corporate culture that’s not enabled and entitled to monetise our consent.

artist depiction

Paleofuture recommends a new documentary on a trio of artists who while they might have been hitherto mostly nameless have played an oversized role in helping the public to imagine and envision not only space stations and orbiting colonies (previously) but also far off worlds that don’t quite neatly resolve.
Commissioned by NASA, the retro-futurist, Mid-Century Modern style of Chesley Bonestell, Don Davis, Rick Guidice has gone a long way to influence and inform our dreams and expectations of space travel and is a good heuristic tool for talking about science communication and outreach in general. Make some time to get to know better the artists who’ve helped engineer aspirations and imaginations. See a preview and read an excerpt of an interview at the link up top.

free to use & reuse

Via the always resourceful Kottke’s Quick Links, we are directed once again to the growing archives of the Library of Congress (previously), whose curatorial staff—like any of us—appreciates a good image of the feline variety (go here to read about proto-meme-maker and cat fancier Harry Whittier Frees) and expects the readership to put these cats back out into circulation. This is also a good gateway and point of departure for exploring the stacks and discovering more of the library’s collections.

no laughing matter

Contributing to the growing list of what can’t be unseen, we are treated—rather subjected to the terrifying perspective of a potential next meal that from beneath and turned around that makes proximity to a Great White Shark an even scarier, layered prospect, owing to the unsettling pareidolic effect of finding anatomy within anatomy.

atomic blonde

Singer, actor and animal-welfare spokesperson with a decades’ long recording and screen career, Doris Day (*1922 – †2019) passed away yesterday at the ripe old age of ninety-seven. Here is Miss Day—courtesy of Nag on the Lake—belting out a number about Geiger counters and the comparing the feeling of being in love to radiation-sickness during an audition for a variety radio show called the Hour of Enchantment in the 1949 Technicolor musical My Dream is Yours. Aside from showcasing Day’s talent, the film is also remembered for extended, animated dream-sequence, with cameos of Looney Tunes characters and directed by Friz Freleng.

wampum

Via Colossal, we are introduced to the impressive portfolio of First Nations artist Ruth Cuthand through her 2009 series of beaded, quillwork mats that depict Old World diseases that trade brought to the indigenous populations of the Americas, with the media of inexpensive beads referencing their high value as a barter item and representing their transactional relationship, accepted in exchange for pelts and land. Trade itself, aside from its expected trade-offs of convenience over tradition and a less than fair prevailing-rate, became a disease vector for these viruses, decimating many tribes ahead of the colonisation by Europeans. More to explore and reflect on at the links above.