daytrip: schneekopf

Wanting to see a bit more snow, H and I travelled back through Oberhof and beyond to the summit of the second highest (only falling short of the neighbouring Beerberg by a few dozen metres) mountain in Thüringen, the Schneekopf, whose summit—owing to a strong wind storm in 1946 that uprooted all trees has been an open space since and presently hosts a communications and weather station and observation tower with a panoramic view and a climbing wall on its exterior that pushes the elevation just above that of its neighbours and just barely places the site into the class of a thousand metres above sea-level (Normales Null).

The peak and the range it is a part of are extinct volcanoes active in the Permian Epoch and are composed porphyry. We had a nice stroll through the forest and enjoyed watching the snow and ice whipped up by the wind glint in the noon sun.

6x6

multiplicands: an interesting demonstration of an ancient method of numerical decomposition that intuits algorithms base-two number systems

still life with daishi: the exquisite three decades of detailed food diaries of a soba chef

bee space: a look at how apiculture informs architecture

enhance: artificial intelligence applied to an 1896 film upscales the Lumière Brothers’ l’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Cioatat significantly

mergers and acquisitions: a clip of two Chinese young men lip-syncing the Back Street Boys’ I Want It That Way in 2006 convinced Google it the YouTube platform could be a promising investment

from sack to shift: Yves Saint Laurent’s iconic Mondrian-inspired dress (previously), including one for Lady Penelope

isla fantasma

Reminiscent of the curious case of Hy-Braʃil positioned in the Atlantic west of Ireland and perhaps perpetuated as a trap-street, a sort of water mark, we enjoyed learning about the phantom islet called Bermeja that appeared on sea charts from the sixteenth century up to the mid-nineteenth century off the coast of the Yucatán peninsula before abruptly disappearing from the map.
The origins and the fate of this would-be strategic land-mass, since its existence would accord México drilling rights to a massive undersea oil reserve, are disputed and range from a simple surveying error repeated in subsequent editions, the island sinking due to climate change or an earthquake—or more sinisterly, as one theory proffers, Bermeja was destroyed by US intelligence services to expand America’s economic zone and fishing-rights. More to explore from Boing Boing at the link above.

travelogue

Spoon & Tamago refers to a retrospective of the pioneering photojournalist Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore (*1856 - †1928), avid traveler and first female board member of the National Geographic Society. Not only did she bring her readership reports and images of the Far East—both the exotic and the everyday from a century ago, the conservationist and author also brought cherry trees (see also here and here) from Japan to Washington, DC. Much more to explore at the link up top.

federalist style

The American Institute of Architects are expressing grave displeasure and concern over a draft plan has surfaced to mandate all government buildings adhere to the principles of “classical architecture,” (certainly the the stuff of the L’Enfant Plan but also the plantation house and anything modern such as this would never be built) decrying this sort command, top down planning that would severely curtail creative licenses and the input of the host community. Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again revises a 1962 guide commissioned by John Kennedy (see also) and composed by New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a recognised and respected scholar and critic, that encouraged experimentation and for buildings to be reflective of contemporary movements.

appalling abuse of public trust

In a gesture that means nothing and everything, junior Senator from Utah, former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican nominee for president of the United States, Mitt Romney (also known by his Twitter handle Pierre Delecto) was the sole member of the Grand Old Party to demonstrate any conviction of character and find Trump guilty of the accusations that the House of Representatives levied against him. Romney, moreover, is the first Senator in history to convict a member of his own party—the votes for removing a seated president in the case of Andrew Johnson and William Clinton following party lines. We’ll see what sort of wrath and inspiration that this act will bring.

pieces of eight

Almost a year to the day ahead of the decimalization of the United Kingdom and Ireland’s currency of pounds, shillings and pence—money retaining its former value and only the breakdown of sub-units reconfigured, the Overseas Territory officially adopted the Bermudian dollar, now pegged to the US dollar but significantly for the time a departure, a prefiguring of the Commonwealth’s broader trend away from accounting for twenty shillings to the pound, each shilling made up of twelve pence.
Eventually each new pence, “p,” was worth two and four-tenths times an old pence, “d.” Meanwhile, China had been employing an intuitive decimal-based currency for the past two millennia, Imperial Russia had made its ruble so since 1704, the US Coinage Act of 1792 favoured a base-ten system (despite their infamous recalcitrance when it comes to Imperial Weights & Measures) as did the French in 1795. The United Kingdom resisted through the ensuing centuries but did concede by minting the florin in 1849—a two shilling coin and thus one-tenth of a pound, which they did propose calling a dime but instead went with the former after due to its similarity in size and value to a Dutch coin already in circulation at the time. The florin is still used in neighbouring Aruba. The success of Bermuda’s transition and ease of currency exchange helped instill confidence that the same could be replicated for the whole of the Commonwealth.

ectlectrc pencil

Colossal curates a collection of outsider art (see previously here, here and here) created by a patient of State Lunatic Asylum, Number 3 of Nevada, Missouri, a series of over two hundred crayon and coloured pencil illustrations from James Edward Deeds, Jr named as a misspelled version of electric or eclectic.
Committed in 1936 to the care-home and working farm for the rest of his life, Deeds was diagnosed with schizophrenia and described as “boisterous and delusion,” and his sketches prise open a glimpse into how mental health was once handled—with two thousand capacity hospital closing in 1950.