8x8

blood meridian: two animated maps (see also) chart Manifest Destiny from contrasting perspectives

lobby cards: the iconic film posters and title sequences of Saul Bass (previously here and here)

strong to the finich: because of the leafy green’s steroidal qualities, some are calling for it to be banded like other doping agents

scientific method: brilliant vintage middle school text books via Present /&/ Correct

nineteen eighty-four was not meant to be an instruction manual: workers trialled with beacons and bracelets to monitor performance and productivity

best in show: a curated selection of the winners of the National Geographic travel photography competition

lj: going into production in 2021, the Lightyear One represents the industry’s first long-range and untethered electric vehicle, via Design Boom

pomological catalogue: the 1886 US contract for watercolour depictions of all the world’s fruit

ik denk dus ik fiets

We enjoyed pursuing this curated gallery of posters and placards documenting a decades’ long campaign to transform and retain Amsterdam as a world capital for pedestrians and cyclists.
This 1976 call for a demonstration of solidarity against automobile traffic and for more public transit options, in the name of safety and to ease congestion, features one of the first appearances of the Fietst (Dutch for riding a bike and an eponymous lobby and association) mascot, a character comprised of two wheels and a big head (sort of evoking the international symbol for a vision impaired person so that others realise that they’re sharing their space with them) with the triple cross crest of the city as a body. Fietst soon after became a more fully-formed and articulate mascot as a cycling girl called Liesje. Much more to explore at the links above.

rainbow connection

On this day in 1978, the Rainbow Flag, created by artist and seamster Gilbert Baker (*1951 – †2017) was unfurled for the first time at San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Day Parade, an event that originated around 1972 as an informal “gay-in” and is now a celebration of pride echoed around the world.
Gilbert met Harvey Milk in 1974, who asked him to create a new symbol for the community—wanting to jettison the shorthand of the day, the Pink Triangle, reclaiming a badge of shame that the Nazis used for imprisoned men identified as homosexuals as a means of self-identification but dark and derivative nonetheless—prompting Gilbert to design his flag (previously). The colourful motif was possibly inspired by the PACE flags that first appeared during an Italian peace march in 1961 or the Judy Garland ballad, Over the Rainbow. While the banner certainly represents the diversity of the community and the struggle for recognition and civil rights, the original eight stripes had specific meanings: hot pink stood for sex, red for life, orange was healing, yellow was sunshine, green was Nature, turquoise stood for magic and art, indigo for serenity and violet represented spirit. Hot pink was subsequently dropped due to the lack of fabric and dye, and the six banded version was adopted in 1979, blending indigo and turquoise as royal blue—though often throughout the 1990s, a black stripe was added to represent those whom had died due to complications from AIDS.

isobar

Via the Everlasting Blört, we are invited to show our stripes (previously) to illustrate how globally and regionally the average annual temperature has been rising since the start of the Industrial Revolution, with a most disturbing uptick in the last thirty years. Reliable data for most countries span from 1901 to 2018, but a few places covered by the UK Met Office, der Deutscher Wetterdienst and a few other select meteorological monitors reach back to the mid- to late-nineteenth century.

ô canada

Officially made the national anthem by royal assent a century later on Dominion Day, the melody, composed by Calixte Paquet dit Lavallée commissioned by the lieutenant governor of Quebec, of the song was performed in public for the first time on this day in 1880 as accompaniment to a Saint-Jean-Baptiste (the Nativity of John the Baptist, his feast day often associated or conflated with the summer solstice) fête held in the provincial capital.
The original lyrics by barrister and poet Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier were in French and have remained unchanged. An English version, modified three times subsequently to make the language more inclusive, came in 1908—often performed bilingually with code-switching alternating verses to demonstrate the country’s diversity—and First Nations’ versions (ᐆ ᑲᓇᑕ) introduced beginning in the 1990s.

endeløs sommer

Having just passed the solstice in the northern hemisphere with the hours of sunlight each day gradually decreasing until we come to the December solstice and the slow retreat of the night, we found this proposal by the residents of the fishing village north of the Arctic circle, Sommarøy, west of Tromsø, straddling the Norwegian island of Store Sommarøy and Hillesøya—the become the world’s first time-free zone rather intriguing.
Though balanced out with the corollary of the long polar night spanning from November to January, the three hundred permanent residents and numerous visitors enjoy sixty nine days from mid-May to late July when the sun never sets, during which the conventions of normal time-keeping are discarded and people accord themselves according to their own schedules. Local government is in serious talks with the Stortling to discuss the legal and practical raminification of carrying through such a plan. Though the announcements have led to a boost in tourism and the fences of the pedestrian bridge that connects the islands with the mainland are decorated with wrist watches rather than love-locks, proponents insist that the move is far more than a gimmick

microbiome

Courtesy of Fancy Notions, we are treated to the Soviet animated-puppet short Mitja and the Microbes (1973) by director Mikhail Kamenetsky, a prominent maker of children’s entertainment and educational works in the 70s and 80s in the tradition of Rankin & Bass.

This particular piece depicts a rather epic battle as a result of poor hand and food hygiene practises and though not explicitly referenced in the portrayal, we believe that the germs that poor Mitja invited in are ultimately re-buffed with a contingent of bacteriophages, in keeping with Russian medical science, favoured over the Western recourse to antibiotics. Find more vintage matinee cartoons plus other interesting delectables to enjoy at the link up top.