o-double-good

File under justice deferred—I suppose—and perhaps voter disenfranchisement made right but the South Korean branch of a cereal giant is releasing a green onion (쪽파 ) flavoured version of one of its signature brands in response to the results of an online “election” held back in 2004 in which breakfast fans held a run-off ballot between duelling candidates Chekkie and Chaka—with the former pledging to bring more chocolate to the cereal and the later added scallion.
Sixteen years ago, Chaka, according to exit-polls, pulled into an early and decisive lead, leading the cereal company, rather nonplussed with the prospect to purge over forty-thousand votes from the results, citing security reasons. The company (see previously) had committed similar election tampering in its Japanese market too by again siding with chocolate even though wasabi was the people’s choice by a landslide. Advance taste-testers of the limited edition that will be available in supermarkets from 1 July laud this small victory for democracy and a good idea (I wish we could annul this orange drink and I know where my partisan affiliations lie) but find that the cereal lacks the distinctive savouriness, umami (감칠맛) that the real article conveys

dynamic web pages

Via Mx. van Hoorn’s Cabinet of Hypertext Curiosities (see previously) we are not only treated to a nice oddity in this vignette called OMFG Dogs! set to this splendid chiptune soundtrack, quite reminiscent of Hamster Dance, we also learn that the inspiration is Carola Häggkvist’s 1991 Eurovision Song Contest (see also) winner Fångad av en stormvind—Captured by a Love Storm, appropriate for both this horde of puppies and the Ms. Häggkvist’s energetic, besuited backup dancers.
These are linkages web artefacts well worth checking out for something out of the ordinary and waxing nostalgic for the old, weird interwebs, a disappearing legacy and something worth conserving and treasuring (as much what is given a pedastool on any given platform) rather than consigning to oblivion, supplanted by the polished, pedigreed and present.

think different

On this day in 2007, coinciding all those years ago when Steve Wozniak tested the first prototype of the Apple I computer in 1975, the iPhone made its public debut (previously) in the United States. Retronymically dubbed the iPhone 2G to differentiate from the twelve generations and accompanying operating systems that have followed, Steve Jobs (*1955 – †2011) had been experimenting on the technical and user-experience viability of introducing a fully touch interface two years prior to release under the code name Project Purple 2, as the company worked covertly in collaboration with cellular service providers to ensure that networks could handle the demand.

l-imnarja

Fêted on this day on the occasion either of their martyrdom or on the translation of the relics, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul is widely observed across Christendom though only has the status of a public holiday in Rome—for their dual patronage, certain cantons in Switzerland, Peru and Malta, where it is known as the above—the small island country celebrating the most holidays (though the abundance does not apply in every jurisdiction and grant workers a day off) of any in Europe. In Malta, February is known as Saint Paul’s Month—ix-xahar ta’ San Pawl—with the tenth commemorating the patron and protector’s shipwreck there en route to Rome to stand trial for his crimes, exercising his right to “appeal unto Caesar” rather than face the court in Jerusalem.

via appia

Looking over the presenters’ line up for an upcoming seminar, the lecture Quo Vadis Traditional Methodologies? struck me for its arch and arcane character (I am hardly one to criticise such classical affectations as, like a caricature from Brideshead Revisited, will at least think Quis? Who [wants this]?)—which translates as where are you going is a good, I suppose, a way of questioning trends. I hadn’t realised that the phrase also carries a liturgical meaning, sourced to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, wherein our apostle has fled the scene after the crucifixion and encounters the resurrected Jesus outside the gates. Putting the question to Jesus, Peter receives the reply “Romam eo iterum crucifigi”—that is, I am going to Rome to be crucified again. This meeting gave Peter the courage to turn around and face his accusers and accept punishment, with the request he take be put to death upside-down out of deference. That certainly seems like a significant, leading nuance on something trending.

new accessions and permanent collection

Via Waxy, we are introduced to photographer Barbara Iweins through her project to help her come to terms with and couch in language and statistics accessible to us all of cataloguing the over ten thousand artefacts, items that she has acquired and held on to through nearly a dozen household moves and what their acquisition means. Even devoting fifteen hours a day to categorising and framing each object, the undertaking took nearly two-and-half years to complete. If you embarked on a similar project, how would you exhibit all your stuff—even that which is mostly hidden and tucked away unbidden?

nakhlite type

The classification of Martian meteorite (see also) that was the first of its kind to suggest the presence of water and then for a tantalisingly brief time nearly a century later as technology and analysis methods improved microbial life, named for the Egyptian village of El Nakhla El Bahariya were it fell, broken up by the heat of entry into about forty samples raining down, on this day in 1911.
They are ejecta of volcanic rock from the plains Elysium Mons that was able to escape the planet’s gravity through a violent asteroid impact, wandering through space for ten million years before being captured by Earth, occasionally impacting over the past ten thousand years.  Though likely apocryphal since there were no remains recovered and no other corroborating witnesses, astronomers still repeat the legend and it’s become a mascot in the field of meteor studies, a local farmer recounts how a fragment landed directly on his canine helper, vaporising the animal without a trace, the so-called Nakhla dog.  In 1999, a sample previously unexposed to earthly elements was cleaved off and studied using a powerful scanning electron microscope revealing a matrix of pores very similar—though not conclusively so—to the traces that bacteria would leave in rocky substrate on Earth, leading many researchers to conclude that the Red Planet at least at one point harboured the niche environment that could support life.

a free masculinity simulator video game

Via ibīdem, we are directed to a playable application that captures the tension and the drama packed into a memetic phenomenon filmed on a phone—with that same POV—of two hunky young men beating each other with chairs that circulated on the internet in 2015 that speaks to Lad Culture, the strange performative normative of “no homo” and affirming stunts of manliness. These sort of toxic displays (see also) remind it’s no wonder that we are not able to overcome challenges whose only requirement is showing mild consideration for others but maybe by confronting it and dissecting it, we can perhaps disarm it. Game play allows one to play with the sequence and duration of steps and see how the variation affects the outcome. Be sure to check out developer Robert Yang’s website at the link above for the full story and extra food for thought.