slava ukraini: president Zelenskyy visits liberated city of Kherson
backstory: a modern history of our butts
pets.com: series of Silicon Valley layoffs
turbulent indigo: Joni Mitchell reminisces on her career with Elton John
hidden in plain sight: the anti-MacGuffins of Hitchcock’s Charade—via Language Hat
Having speculated on this oddly ridged yet unwritten rule on adjectival order in English which is not always intuitive for non-native speakers, we were quite taken with this obvious exception to the rule juxtaposing “big dumb hat” and “dumb little dog” posed to the Help Desk at Language Log. It’s a nuanced and complex answer to why “little dumb dog” sounds so out of place having to do mostly with stress and syllable count and constraints of subjectivity, a speaker’s tendency to want to distance more biased terms from what’s being described.
I was wracking my brain and hitting an internal googlewhack over the audio-visual jukebox short films 
(finally found what I vaguely recalled blogging about before—an overview of the technology and content that spanned the history from the pre-WWII Soundies and Panorams to their revival in the late 1950s by a French company) that less mainstream performers used to promote their latest singles and see that it also inspired a search by friend of the blog par excellence Nag on the Lake, who preening through a lot of unfortunate link-rot, discovered and shares a great repository of scopitones. Check out the links above for more of these precursors to music videos and streaming whose particular style (Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots are Made for Walking” is a less obscure epitome) prompted essayist Susan Sontag to nominate them for inclusion as part of the “canon of Camp.” Let us know your favourites.
Founded in March of the same year (first weekly pictured) and delightfully referred to as the titular class of publications, the circular, the New Musical Express (NME) first started its singles chart on this day’s edition in 1952, the first British newspaper to do so, following the model of the US magazine Billboard. Listing the top twelve, the first number one hit was Al Martino’s “Here in My Heart,” which held the top spot for nine consecutive weeks—a record not broken until Bryan Adam’s ballad for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991. Associated with gonzo journalism particularly during the mid-1970s and its coverage of the rise of the punk genre, the label went on to report on film, television, gaming and pop culture before folding its print enterprise in 2018 and becoming an online magazine.
We quite enjoyed perusing this growing gallery of bad book covers (see previously) from our friends at Pulp Librarian. This omnibus post has too many choice works to pick favourites but we did quite like this anthology from author Ray Bradbury, referencing the Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass collection—whose title was not added just over a decade later, as which each poem, though in this case being that the term was not yet common currency. Originally in turn entitled “My Beautiful One is Here,” the eponymous story accounting a family selecting a robotic grandmother as a surrogate nanny to a brood of recently motherless children and their revelation that they won’t again be abandoned. Much more to explore at the links above.
Already on heightened alert after a series of attacks following the Charlie Hebdo office and Jewish grocery market shootings at the beginning of the year and vigilant ahead of the UN Climate Change, COP21, 
Conference scheduled to be held in the city next month, the coordinated radical Islamist terrorist operation, les Attentats du 13-Novembre, transpiring this night in 2015 were six separate bombings and indiscriminate shootings across Paris and its suburbs undertaken by three groups. Three suicide bombers struck a stadium hosting an international football match. Another group took hostages and opened fire into the audience of a large concert venue with simultaneously more gunmen attacking crowded cafรฉs and restaurants on the boulevards of the city. In all, 130 people were killed, most victims from the music venue, and the violence rattled Europe and sparked a backlash against refugees and migration in general as France was put under an รฉtat d’urgence, state of emergency, though locally there was a spirit of resilience and defiance with curb side dining reopening under the title slogan.
enแธซeduana: the fourth incarnation of the four-thousand year old Mesopotamian priestess who is the world’s first named author
rip: founding member of the Clash and Public Image Ltd Keith Levene passes away, aged 65—via Nag on the Lake
this is jim rockford. at the tone, leave your name and message. i’ll get back to you. [beep]: the mid-1970s detective drama intro faithfully recreated in LEGO
spitalfields life: Peta Bridle illustrates her tour of London with her daughter tic-toc—let’s talk: Watch Dog and a nightmare clown teach children to read an analogue clock
hush city: interactive mapping applications to chart out one’s urban soundscape and mark out those quiet spots
51/49: Democrats retain control of the US Senate with a win in Nevada and the run-off election in Georgia ahead
hawkwind: space music pioneer Nik Turner has died, aged 82
the civilisation of llhuros: an artist exhibited, convincingly, a mock Iron Age culture with fantasy folkways and artefacts—via the New Shelton Wet / Dry
The BBC2 sitcom based on the comedy duo French and Saunders singular sketch “Modern Mother and Daughter” (originally Adriana and Saffron) had its broadcast premiere on this day in 1992 with the pilot episode “Fashion.” The premise of the series (previously) follows the misadventures of two co-dependent career women of the London life-style and trend-setting scene who direct considerable time and financial resources to recapture their idealised self-images as swinging Mods, influential and indulgent and garnered an immediate and enduring cult following.
