bed, bath and beyond

We are quite pleased with the way our interior design came together and one of the more pleasant aspect was visiting showrooms and browsing through catalogues to select faucets and fixtures.
Not looking to redecorate any time soon mind you, we enjoyed quite a bit leafing through this American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Corporation (today the rather sedate Trane Inc., having divested itself of its bathroom division) brochure from 1940 with some fantastic period pastels and palettes to choose from. Much more to explore from Present /&/ Correct at the link above.

super-spreader

Remanded to quarantine for the second and final time (she would remain in isolation for the rest of her life) on this day in 1915, Irish-born cook Mary Mallon (*1869 – †1938)—also known as Typhoid Mary, was the first individual clinically identified as an asymptomatic carrier of a disease.
Persisting working as a domestic for affluent families in New York state (and why wouldn’t she resist calls from authorities to quit her profession if she was in good health herself, albeit precedent-setting), Mallon infected at least fifty-one people with typhoid fever, an ailment caused by exposure to a particularly pernicious strain of Samonella bacteria, at least three of them fatally. Mallon was returned to confinement on North Brother Island, in the East River between the prison Rikers Island and the Bronx mainland, having earned her sobriquet during her first three-year stint and subsequently became a minor celebrity for her stubbornness, unrepentant behaviour (she was retrained as a laundress, considered a safer job, but returned to cooking because the pay was better) and with what was sometimes portrayed as victimhood in the face of public health and medical science—mingled, conflated surely with stereotype and xenophobia. The hospital closed shortly after her death and the island is today a seabird sanctuary.

⚡biscuit or shredded tweet

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we get an example of the sort of tenacious curiosity that gets to the bottom of branding—even when the manufacturer itself was uncertain—and seemed a bit cagey in fact. Tri is definitely not three, not three wholesome ingredients or thrice-baked. Invented and granted a patent in 1902 before going into production the following year by the Shredded Wheat Company of Niagara Falls—the factory powered by the mighty waterfalls’ hydroelectric generation, the snack cracker boasted that it was the only one of its kind baked by this new-fangled electricity.

schengen area

Coming into full effect on this day in 1995 nearly a decade after the treaty, letter of intent was signed on board the riverboat Princess Marie-Astrid cruising the Moselle near the dock of the Luxembourg town at the point where the borders of the grand duchy, France and Germany meet, the Schengen Agreement gradually led to the harmonisation of visa rules, freedom of movement and the abolishment  of border controls. Following the arrangement that one signatory had already established with its neighbours, the treaty developed from June 1985 independently of the European Union—despite of it—due to gridlock among the member states, eventually becoming itself enshrined in inalienable EU law with allowances for opting out and the ability to reconstitute national divides in emergency situations.

no fomo

From the Latin fomes for tinder, the term was first coined by academic and physician Girolamo Frascastoro in his 1546 treatise De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis to distinguish contamination from an infectious agent—a disease vector in modern parlance—with a fomite being any inanimate object, a surface, a door handle, a light switch, can temporarily host and transfer germs. As small as it seems, hand-washing is a force-multiplier in this battle—which by the nature of public health is communal and goes unseen, that is—never knowing what impact what we did or neglected to do had, but is nonetheless essential.

is there no balm in gilead?

Crass and disturbing it may be at a time like this to put profit over public safety and rather than protecting the weak and vulnerable, it’s acceptable for them to be culled in order to reinforce the false, cloying narrative (that’s doesn’t even come with the promise of elevation or ennoblement) that the Republican Party is transparently become a death cult should come as little surprise.
They’ve proven their unwavering allegiance already time and time again in their unwillingness to entertain or enact any legislation that might be perceived as curtailing gun rights in the States and clearly signal their tolerance of child sacrifice in order to propitiate their financial backers and mollify their base. Some of these same ghouls, without irony, shrieked back in 2009 of the Affordable Care Act (i.e., Obamacare and attacking by extension the NHS) leading to bureaucratic death panels that would decide if the elderly or those with pre-existing conditions were worthy of health care to try to cultivate panic and undercut its reception by the public and other law-makers.

8x8

paperback writer: the cinematic portfolio of Matt Stevens in old book covers, via Things magazine

live-feed: snapshots of deserted public places around the world gleaned from web cams, via Kottke

social distance: the inspiring latest torch song from Randy Rainbow, via Miss Cellania

 🤠: lone security guard of the National Cowboy Museum virtually engages his visitors

 😷: the origins of surgical masks and respirators

they laugh and love: John Carpenter announces sequels to his 1988 sci-fi thriller
 
major arcana: an automated tarot reader that seems to never have gotten off the drawing board

still buffering: the lagging evolution of the video teleconference

long-haul

Though the phrase (this had been haunting me for a while) used optimistically as way to promote good order and acquiescence on both sides during the Great War and probably was first forecast in earnest, “Over by Christmas” was a barbed and derisive response as well—soon overtaking the original sentiment. Hopes for an abbreviated skirmish were dashed by a failure to appreciate how technology and mechanisation had fundamentally altered the nature of killing as the very antithesis of our hubris and harmartia that allows us to think the same technology makes everything expedient and negotiable. This will not be over by Easter and please don’t wait for the authorities to tell us to look out for one another.