8x8 (10. 594)

parasols: brief animations on Marie Paccou’s sun-shades when spun  

the misalignment museum: an art installation dedicated to the future AI apocalypse serves as a warning to the present  

the pez outlaw: one individual’s disruption of the collectors’ market  

banana for scale: a handy converter—via Pasa Bon!  

curious crumbs of history: rating Nation Trust sites by their scones 

future archeologists: Funko Pop! is disposing of hundreds of thousands chibi pop-culture icons  

eliza doolittle: a 1966 chatbot had the same warnings as out modern experiments  

grand canons: stop-motion of everyday objects by Alain Biet

points d’intonation (10. 593)

Via Present /&/ Correct we are referred to a suite of needful, progressive punctuation marks invented primarily by French writer Hervé Bazin—like the pictured appeal to authority and appeal to conviction, best known for his popular, semi-autobiographical novels about teen-angst and family dysfunction, who also essayed radical spelling reform for the French language in the mid-1960s, a campaign called Plumons l’Oiseau (“Let’s Pluck the Bird”), which proposed a nearly phonetic system, supplemented with six disambiguating glyphs additionally to express acclamation, doubt, irony and love.

the great michigan pizza funeral (10. 592)

With the governor also coming to pay his respects, a sizeable crowd with members of the press came to the small town of Ossineke to witness the ceremonial disposal of nearly thirty-thousand frozen cheese and mushroom pies on this day in 1973, buried in a five metre deep grave. In order to demonstrate personal accountability and generate a bit of publicity for his business, one of the most state-of-the-art and earliest operations of its kind in America, Mario Fabbrini, originally from Fiume, Croatia and fled Yugoslavia, proprietor of Papa Fabbrini’s Pizzas, was approached by safety inspectors from the US Food and Drug Administration and ordered to recall, out of an abundance of caution, nearly a week’s worth of manufacturing when a supplier of mushroom toppings had tested positive for botulism. A post-mortem revealed the pizzas to be free of the deadly bacteria.

the jaywalker (10. 591)

Milton Muffet, a confessed poor pedestrian—is addicted to the “most awful, habit-forming vice” that man fall prey to: jaywalking, in this 1956 UPA instructional short by Robert Cannon, Edwin P Hicks and story adaptation by T Hee. The Oscar-winning animated subject portrays Mr Muffet’s behaviour as becoming manic, verging towards obsessive and a personal challenge but these regulations which privilege motor vehicle traffic above pedestrian has limited jurisdiction and was just recently decriminalised in California though remaining an infraction most other places in America.

j6pc (10. 590)

Incredible even for the dumbest of times that we’re suffering with the former president confusingly countering his critics with seeking to “wrap lies in patriotism,” Donald Trump has recorded a charity single with a choir of male inmates serving sentences in a Washington DC prison for their participation in the 6 January Insurrection. Merely a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and a performance of The Star-Spangled Banner recorded over jailhouse phones, the song is only two minutes long and disappointingly not some highly-produced rendition of an original number—like We are the World but for aspiring authoritarians and useful idiots. Trump will soon join his choir from the other side of the bars, with any luck.

🔙🔛🔝🔜 (10. 589)

Language Log directs us to the ongoing puzzlement over a grouping of four emoji—from the original set created in 1998 for DoCoMoNTT (the only symbol predating this innovation being the ❤︎) and what cultural context prompted the inclusion of these four particular characters, surmising that they were a reference to gaming menus but with no compelling narrative for their inclusion—instead, like most other stories about these glyphs, have found novel and dynamic use outside of the laboratory—see also here and here.

ccctv (10. 588)

Via fellow internet peripatetic and caretaker Web Curios, we are directed to a YouTube channel with an expansive catalogue of older movies and cinema serials in full and free to watch, rather expertly curated and while not formulaic or all within the genre of Spaghetti Western, sword-and-sandal, teen-exploitation or Space Opera, they all complement one another and rise to cult status. Give it a look and let us know what dreadful-excellent gems you uncover.

mashers (10. 587)

The inaugural “Anti-Flirt” Week launched this day in Washington, DC in 1923, the Anti-Flirt Club with the charter of protecting young women from unwanted advances, prescribed a series of rules to rebuff men in automobiles and on street corners:

• Don’t flirt: those who flirt in haste often repent in leisure
• Don’t accept rides from flirting motorists—they don’t invite you in to save you a walk
• Don’t use your eyes for ogling—they were made for worthier purposes
• Don’t go out with men you don’t know—they may be married and you made be in for a hair-pulling match
• Don’t wink—a flutter of one eye may cause a tear in the othe
• Don’t smile at flirtatious strangers—save them for people you know
• Don’t annex all the men you can get—by flirting with many, you may lose out on the one
• Don’t fall for the slick, dandified care eater—the unpolished gold of a real man is worth more than the gloss of a lounge lizard
• Don’t let elderly men with an eye to a flirtation pat you on the shoulder and take a fatherly interest in you—those are usually the kind who want to forget they are fathers
• Don’t ignore the man you are sure of while you flirt with another—when you return to the first one you may find him gone

Though the first and only campaign, other chapters in New York and Philadelphia succeeded in earning a reprieve from the worst harassers.