your daily demon: raum

Governing from today through 12 October, this fortieth spirit and infernal earl presents at first as another familiar with corvid-like characteristics. True to the German sense of his name, räumen—to empty, evacuate—he pilfers the houses of the rich and powerful with prejudice for dignities as well as engendering love and reconciliation. Others trace his origins to the identification with the Egyptian deity Khnum, the ram-headed god who crafts the bodies of people out of Nile clay before they’re born. Also known as Raim or Raym, he controls thirty legion and is opposed by the guardian angel Yaytzael.

stalkie talkie

Via Things Magazine, we are presented with this quite dystopian and invasive catalogue of playthings with the hallmark of being highly addictive by design following the form of manipulation. Age-inappropriate, there’s data-hungry aggregate Pocket Troll, Fishing for Likes and a grab-bag of Mystery Friends to be foisted on all and sundry, aged nine to ninety-nine.

pair bonding

Endearingly, Kottke brings us the story of the requited courtship and romance of zookeeper Chris Crowe and his non-corvid bird wife, Walnut—a spry twenty-three year-old white-named crane, the former earning the latter’s affections despite being a rather lacking (by avian standards) mate and life partner.

cyrus charter

Though in possession of the British Museum, the ancient clay cylinder bearing the declaration of king Cyrus the Great, outlining his genealogy and conquest of Babylonia as favourite of the god Marduk and documentation of the end of exile of the Jewish people and allowing them to resettle within the empire was loaned to Tehran on this day in 1971 for a period of sixteen days for the gala celebration of the two-thousand-five-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Persia—see previously, beginning mid-month ten days later. The artefact recovered in 1829 (in Mesopotamia, in modern day Iraq) is considered by many historians as the pioneering attempt to administer and multicultural state with universal human rights and was made the official symbol of Iran in absentia.

shock theatre

With the debut of the syndicated package of made-for-television monster movies after a few minor roles in a Western series—one being an undertaker—on this day in 1957 in the Philadelphia market, John Zacherle (*1918 - †2016) began a decades’ long career as a horror host, editing a pair of anthologies of ghost stories plus penning a few monster novelty songs. Often filling in for his colleague and fellow Philadelphian broadcaster Dick Clark when touring, Zacherle was the substitute MC for American Bandstand. As a promotional stunt to mark his move to New York, Zacherle staged a presidential campaign in 1960, running as a “cool ghoul” but failing to meet the threshold to get on the ballot in any state. Continuing the same format as Shock Theatre, the interstitial breaks became more and more elaborate with a cast of monstrous characters and branched out into a few motion picture parts as well as hosting a cartoon variety hour and adolescent dance show in New Jersey called Disc-O-Teen. Through the seventies and eighties, Zacherle was a Prog Rock disk-jockey and in an array of b-movies. His success and notoriety helped his niece Bonnie Zacherle develop and successfully pitch her 1982 toy line, My Little Pony—the horror.

a creature unknown to science

peoplemover

As a space-saving and universally-accessible alternative over stairs, underpasses and elevators to ford an obstacle, usually train-tracks, the system invented by engineer Emil Schmid first transports passengers up vertically, sideways and then down again in one fluid motion. A couple of these engineering marvels (see also) remain in operation at Bahnhöfen in Altbach, near Stuttgart, and in the Rummelsburg district in Berlin. More at Miss Cellania at the link above.

strömungswiderstandskoeffizient

Designed with a similar streamlined aesthetic as the tear-drop trailer, the Stout Scarab and Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion car, we enjoyed making the acquaintance of the prototype Schlörwagen presented at the Berlin Auto Show in 1939, developed at the aerodynamic testing institute in Göttingen (hence the nickname the Göttinger Ei) to produce a body profile with a low drag coefficient. Though less than well received by the public at the time, the test vehicle trialled faster speeds at significantly great fuel-economy. The namesake engineer, Karl Schlör von Westhofen-Dirmstein—from a Frankonian noble family, saw his project derailed by the war and impressed into working on submarine propulsion systems and later imprisoned for assisting Jewish families—afterwards entered into politics, returning home and helping Kitzingen and Würzburg secure fuel rations and promote their responsible use, studying and championing biogas and wind turbines. More from friend of the blog Nag on the Lake at the link above, including a demonstration of the car in a wind-tunnel.