7x7

reaction faces: a cavalcade of overly dramatic cats—via Miss Cellania’s Links

split infinitives: learning wild to verb

what the dormouse said: a virtual creation of Disneyland’s1958 “Alice in Wonderland” attraction

clandestine laboratory enforcement team: an assortment of rare US Drug Enforcement Agency mission patches

apparel appeal: a series of interventions to make fashion greener

outhouse: inclusive public facilities in Tokyo reference ancient, ambiguous spaces

supermarket sweep: an investigation into one of the more memorable duo’s of the game show—via Super Punch

scientific method: a feline physics experiment

clientes com distúrbios e atrasos na fala

The latest instalment of This American Life had a particular resonant first act that really lingered and prodded in ways that I was not quite expecting.  Composer and musician Jerome Ellis became a joyful rule-breaker for a captivated audience and gave with his performance piece a real object lesson on the reasonable accommodation of time and pacing that most of us don’t spare a thought for lest we’re able to indulge our impatience and cast aspersions on others for being too slow.
Introduced by way of a Brazilian law that provides a half-price relief for mobile subscribers who are diagnosed with a speech impediment—a severe stutter like Ellis has, the state government tried to make allowances for the normalised and preferred fluency that none of us has by degrees. While I don’t exactly stammer and don’t pretend to come from the same place experientially, I felt I could relate by getting annoyed when one supplies (or tries to) the elusive word too quickly or finishes my sentences for me—and I know it’s just meant as a kindness whether in English or in my non-native German when I struggle, which is usually—and then not knowing if it’s worth the effort to finish one’s thought and growing by degrees a bit more taciturn. Our temporal expectations can be impositions just like any other but also an opportunity for exchange.

mamie smith and her jazz hounds

Released on this day in 1920 by the label Okeh Records, Smith’s (*1883 – †1946) “Crazy Blues” marks the first commercially successful hit of the blues genre and was the first blues title by a female African-American performer. The B-Side featured “It’s Right Here for You (If You Don’t Get it – ‘Taint No Fault o’ Mine)” and the single’s popularity played a major role in creating a performance space, market and audience for African-American artists to follow.

simhall

Using surplus modern construction materials in combination with antique glass, handmaid locally in the1950s, and ceramic ornamental elements, the design duo Folkform—we discover via Dezeen—created a beautiful mural for the public bath of the community of Spånga (Dolph Lundgren’s hometown) outside of Stockholm whose ordered mosaic is informed by the village plan as seen from above. Upcycling such elements in a public and shared milieu is hoped to inspire others to apply the practise to their own designs.

endliches und ewiges sein

Along with Bridget of Sweden, Benedict of Nursia, Sts Cyril and Methodius and Catherine of Siena, Edith Stein—taking the religious name of Teresia Benedicta a Cruce—who is venerated as a martyr for her murder in Auschwitz, along with her younger sister and nine hundred eighty-five others in the same deportation, on this day in 1942 (*1891) is considered one of the six co-patrons of Europe and is the only one from the modern era.
Philosopher, teacher, women’s rights advocate, Stein was of Jewish heritage but was not practicing and was later an avowed atheist until turning to the writings of church reformer Teresa of Ávila (see above) to help her process the human toll the Great War had and was member of the community and on staff at religious schools in Speyer and Köln and tempered her theological beliefs with scholarship and introspection, authoring several metaphysical treatises, including On the Problem of Empathy, Finite and Eternal Being and The Science of the Cross. Stein’s protestations to the pope may have encouraged the Vatican’s censure of the Third Reich but the timidity of the papacy paled Stein’s deserved criticism. Stein is called on for intercession by the converted, called or coersed and is the patroness of orphans and the displaced.

7x7

r.o.u.s. (rodent of unusual size): a LEGO Princess Bride playset

fifteen men on the dead man’s chest: beach sand skeletal impression kit

colouring london: an ongoing project amassing architectural statistical data from Maps Mania

antimandering: redistricting software that illustrates the trade-offs of proportional representation, via Waxy

splinternet: discouraging trend championed now by the US towards compartmentalising the once global web—via Slashdot

duly appointed rounds: another one of Trump’s antithetical department heads bent on dismantling the institution he is in charge of (see previously)

mind the gap: subway and metro announcements from around the world

major arcana

We rather enjoyed this preview of an anthology of plus centuries of divinical card decks (see previously for more on the subject) surveyed in the upcoming coffee table, conversation piece book Tarot from Taschen.
Over five hundred cards are featured from Antiquity, to the Middle Ages to Post-Modern times whose iconic symbolism is enchanting on so many levels and we particularly liked these contemporary interpretations from Olivia M Healy whose Fool, classically depicted as someone standing on the edge of a precipice and usually is understood to signify a point of departure, is evocative of spiritedness associated with Carnival. The Pre-Raphaelite vision of Treviso-based graphic artist Elissabetta Trevisan’s Justice, meaning probity and prevailing of the virtuous, was also quite arresting. Learn more at Colossal at the link up top.

naming conventions or format cells

Via Kottke’s Quick Links (now archived) we learn that rather than trying to carve out exceptions in the programming of the world’s most prevalent spreadsheet software that is a little notorious in trying to anticipate one’s intentions and be helpful or trust that the next person to collaborate on a research project remembers to disable automatic formatting, geneticists are modifying gene names and initialisms so that Microsoft Excel doesn’t misconstrue (see also here and here) them as dates.
Personally my biggest frustration is inheriting a Frankenstein of a document that has conflicting source margins and artefacts of older surprises built into it unsuspecting of its future consequences and accom- modations but it’s rather astounding and frightening to read that fully twenty percent of known errors in published papers can be attributed to errant aliases like SEPT-1, gene that encodes the protein septin needed for cell division and may play a part in Alzheimer’s disease, or MARCH1 (Membrane-Associated Ring-CH Type Finger 1). Scientists and universities are working on reforming the nomenclature retroactively and going forward (though I imagine it is hard to future proof such things) to reduce the chance of misinterpretation by a computer try-hard, like Mister DNA from Jurassic Park.