hypertext and handbills

Via Kicks Condor (site no longer suspended) whom also inspected a heartening thread that’s been making the rounds that offered some proof that the much-winnowed but weird web (not just the recursive daisy-chains of social media redirects) is not just in the bailiwick of nostalgia but still around to be enjoyed and engaged—our attention is directed to another veteran internet caretaker in Cardhouse, which has a very long and uninterrupted history of curating the resonant and interesting. It’s certainly hard sometimes to resist the ease and instant reaction that comes with newer and fewer platforms (and know that I have succumbed to that siren-song as well) but knowing there is a fellowship of others out there makes us resilient and have the desire to keep going for ourselves and to give others the same momentum and security in knowing one has an outlet for sharing and a soapbox to stand on.
Having a platform of ones own, individuals shouldn’t seek the points-system and rely on the approval of others designed to maximise narrow participation. Much more of the classic web to explore at the links above.

tetsuwan atomu

On this day in 1963, among many other events of note as our faithful chronicler informs, Astro Boy, the first animated cartoon series imported from Japanese markets, was first broadcast nationwide in the US.
Known domestically as Mighty Atom (鉄腕アトム) and airing in those markets from 1952 to 1968 with several subsequent revivals and syndications, the manga by Osamu Tezuka (*1928 – †1989) follows the adventures of an android, burdened with human emotions as a surrogate child, but is passed off by his creator to a robot circus when he strikes the father as inauthentic and unnatural, being ageless. A sympathetic professor saves him from the circus and tries to impart something of the abiding nature of humanity in him. Watch the first episode at Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet at the link up top.

insular majuscule

Though the Book of Kells is familiar enough to contemporary audiences so that its iconography and calligraphic style can be recognised and extrapolated, the ninth century national treasure on display at the Trinity College in Dublin since 1661, the character of the script, ornamentation and carpet pages filled with solid geometric patterns would not have been fixed in the imagination of the public had not it been for the efforts of one dedicated entomologist with a talent for painting to produce a volume of lithographic prints of the collected incunabula contemporary with the famous gospel.
John Obadiah Westwood (*1805 – †1893) published faithful reproductions of those illuminated manuscript but his keen and discerning eye trained to study the minute anatomy of fleas, mantises and moths was able to transmit those fine details to the casual observer above and beyond other picture book purveyors that tried to capitalise on the latest fashionable topic of study were able to do. The effectiveness of presentation of his 1868 contributed in no small part to bring about a sustained revival in Celtic culture and customs and had a profound influence on craft, arts and design in movements to come. Find a whole curated and sourced gallery of the historical pages copied as with a monk in a scriptorium working from something on loan that comprise Westwood’s survey of Anglo-Saxon and Irish at Public Domain Review at the link above.

unobtainium

Via Kottke, for this one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary year of the Periodic Table (previously here and here) we are directed to this comprehensive and engaging interactive article from Bloomberg magazine of the chemical elements, covering aspects from their discovery to how their availability informs geology, speculation and geopolitics. Much more to explore at the links above.

🕰️

Dezeen reports that Death by Modernism has introduced a special emoji character set with a suite of Midcentury Modern emojis inspired by the creations of the Eames, Eero Saarinnen and more. Everything really is a skeuomorph.
There’s unfortunately only a few glyphs in the stylistic and architectural vernacular but we are certain that this is a good what to improve one’s messaging vocabulary and gives ones punctuation a distinctive and signature quality.

l’abbaye de landévennec

We’ve briefly touched on the abbey at Landévennec previously through its founder’s association with the myth of the City of Ys but both Saint Guénolé (Winwaloe, Gwenole, *460 - †532) and congregation of monks are worth addressing further on there own.
Son of Dumonian prince Fragan of Albany—Guénolé already had quite the saintly pedigree with reverend twin brothers and another canonised sibling besides and his mother Gwen Teirbron (Blanche in French or Alba Trimammis in Latin) who was revered as a Breton holy woman in her own right and with the colourful epithet meaning three-breasted, she was prayed to for fertility, venerated perhaps as a euhemerism of a more ancient mother goddess.

What was to become a Benedictine community from the eighth century until destroyed by Viking raids and then rebuilt in stone in the early 900s and then ultimately suppressed and its property sold off after the French Revolution (more here) was possessed of a great scriptorium and scrolls and early tomes.  
These archives included a rare medieval copy of the Notitia Digitatum—the late Roman Empire’s list of offices that addresses the administrative organisation of the court and provinces here presenting the shields from a register of military commands, the iconography and the ornament that bears a resemblance to the yin-and-yang symbol—the Taijitu—having evolved independently and from different traditions centuries before Taoist use, that were preserved.
Along with a wealth of other artefacts that were reunited after centuries of separation by the order in 1950 with the ancient site reconsecrated in a sense and opened as a museum with the brothers taking up residence in a new abbey just outside of the village.

brauðklefinn

Sensitive to the huge problem of food waste, an enterprising bakery in Iceland has installed a superannuated telephone booth on its premises in which to deposit the leftovers from the end of the day and offer them for sale to late-comers on a trust system at a deeply discounted price. Local patrons are delighted with the idea of being able to get fresh breads afterhours and help reduce what would otherwise end up in landfills. I hope more small businesses might take a cue from this bakery and invest in the honour and integrity of shoppers and right-sizing production.