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| May 31, 2025 |
-
Curious about
Heraldry
(the floral border in the garden
of history) I've been playing around with
There's an AI for
that.com which, given a few prompts (like tire, space
helmet, honeybee, and marijuana leaves) generates coats of
arms like the above. It doesn't seem to know what a
fouled
anchor is, and my requests for sea-shell and
'possum inclusion were ignored; but impressively,
it knew I like the neon.
- This was paradise: Messy Nessy takes us back to
Taylor
Camp (1969-1977), where Elizabeth Taylor's brother
allowed Vietnam vets and refugees from Berkeley to
build a nudist hippie bohemia, on his Kaua'i land.
- Atlas Obscura (2017):
People in 1920s Berlin Nightclubs Flirted via Pneumatic Tubes.
I've read about this Resi (the Residenz-Casino) -- those
elevated, be-jeweled spheres in the last photo were all wired together,
opening up with synchronized electro-mechanisms and colored
lighting. Never seen any video but
Resi,
an interactive nightclub has more, including a
colorful advertisement. A lamp
on the table gave an indication of the availability of each
guest: if the light was red, that meant "Go ahead", while
blue meant "Don't disturb".
|
| May 30, 2025 |
- Michael Cox,
Bridget
Time Travelling. My parents' cat Bridget went
missing, so my dad painted her [into] a variety of historical ventures. Soon,
these numbered in the dozens. I read in I Dream of Joni
how, lacking a photo, she painted a portrait of her cat Nietzsche which
she posted around the neighborhood, when he went missing.
- Bricks.
This Is Colossal found a
Rippling
Townhouse Façade by Alex Chinneck which reminds me of something
SITE Inc might have produced in the 1970s. More:
English Bond and its Kin -- Calder Loth of the ICAA on historic brickwork.
- Update
on "The Day The Clown Cried" -- one of
cinema's most sought-after lost films has been discovered;
kept secretly in the collection of a Swedish actor for 45 years.
"It must be seen!"
|
| May 25, 2025 |
Photo I found somewhere of the ruin of the
Anhalter
Bahnhof in Berlin. I discovered this façade in
1978, walking around an empty quarter near the Wall; it's
all that's left of the once-busy train station.
(My
own snapshot.) Badly damaged in the war, never
much used afterwards... but before, according to Philip Kerr
in Prague Fatale, Heinrich Himmler narrowly escaped
an assassination attempt there when a terrorist's bomb was
detonated in the left luggage.
- At This Is Colossal, Vibrant
Woodblock Prints Traverse a Bygone Japan in
Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road, a new show
at the British Museum. Doesn't his ukiyo-e
look great on computer screens?
- Posted another new discovery to Metafilter:
Vintik-Shpintik,
at the Public Domain Review. A 1925 children's book,
and factory animation from the Leningrad School (with Edmund
Meisel music added later, in Germany). Guaranteed, the
strangest cartoon you've seen in a while.
- Hip Tip: to dispense with the new AI-generated summaries
of your Google search results append "-ai" to your input
string (that is, if you still Google -- I only for its
advanced
search. Plus its Maps, News and Translator.)
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| May 22, 2025 |
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|
I had the good fortune to experience 'City Glow' in
the
Ecstasy show at the LA MOCA in early 2006 -- this
is a detail therefrom, or maybe just a preliminary; the real thing
loops on a verry wide line of five screens. It's been around, like at
the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and even in subway
stations. Characterized as an animated
mural and 3D soundscape, here's two 'City Glow'
cel-phone video segments:
beginning, and
later.
Her organic, living skyscrapers also endure a tsunami in the
newer 'Takaamanohara, The Plain of High Heaven' from 2015. Both were
until recently on display at the Coloradoa Springs Fine Arts Center,
and The
Art of Chiho Aoshima documents a fan's visit to that show;
The
Rebirth of the World is an eight-minute documentary
about her, with clips; and
Gallery
Kai Kai Kiki in Tokyo has more.
|
| May 21, 2025 |
- Random Wikipedia entries
- Macías
Nguema
- president of Equatorial Guinea (1968-1979). This guy was horrible.
Overthrown in a coup d'état by his nephew,
subsequently tried and executed
- crushing
- Medieval execution method. Used only once in the New World, officially;
during the Salem Witch trials. (Some have the notion women were burned at the
stake then, but no, that only in Europe)
- Max
Q
- the astronaut band, in Houston.
20 seconds
of their "Wooly Bully"
- the Mongolian Spot
- my
students told me about this but I've never seen one. They say Native American
babies get it also, confirming the theory that Asian humanity crossed the
Bering Strait land bridge
- YInMn Blue
- also known as Oregon Blue or Mas Blue, an
inorganic blue pigment that was discovered at Oregon State in 2009.
The pigment is noteworthy for its vibrant, near-perfect blue color.
Also,
- the Blue
Division or Blue Legion in the Waffen SS
- volunteers from Franco's
Spain who fought in the seige of Leningrad
- Otto
Sanhuber, the Bat Man; and Dolly
Oesterreich, the Queen
of Los Angeles. While married to another, wealthy man she made the
Bat Man live up in the attic -- for years. And not just once!
- I'd be remiss for devoting a whole page to Nags Head without
mentioning the
recent
discoveries concluding that rather than being wiped
out, the
Lost Colony was assimilated.
|
| May 19, 2025 |
Exactly fifty years ago, random acts of violence in the final
Human
Kindness Day forced our departure before Stevie even took
the stage; but a few days later the four friends took possession
of a cottage in Nags Head at Jockey's Ridge, and I got a job
flipping burgers at the Hardee's spinoff there called
the
Little Mint ("Home of the Big Fellow") --
the
Nags Head Casino was right next door. To and from
these places I'd walk, along the beach. Our migration
from Maryland, the first time living away from home for
some of us, was at least partially due to my insistance
all winter long that this was what we were going to do,
to not just repeat but extend our Cape Hatteras fun from
the summer previous (when we camped in Buxton for extended
periods). A remarkable batch of photos from then&there
has surfaced. My pics all suck, negatives long
gone -- the best, perhaps this study of
three guys on the pier, fishing.
The second entry in
OBX Days
Gone By discusses the Nags Header, an old hotel torn down
1978; but fails to note how you could walk into a sandy-floored
bar, its ground level open just off the beach, evenings,
called the Tap Room. Everybody else liked hanging around
in there drinking beer, and Joel Sternfeld's
Nags
Head, North Carolina June-August 1975 has at least five
photos of the place, among a collection of 79. Pretty sure
#4 is the Little Mint; #45's view of the big dune is
definitely from its parking lot, and #65 could be San-Mar #1
(we were in #4). Although one of us lives on the Outer Banks
to this day I was the first to abandon the dream and move on,
Canadian and Californian destinations beckoning, and never
again would I live in North Carolina.
- One last taste of Wally Wood, from 1951 - Davy Crockett's
Almanack has a complete story he did with Joe Orlando,
The Martian Slavers from Captain Science #4
(not EC; this originally published by Youthful Magazines).
|
| May 13, 2025 |
- WHYY: MOVE
at 40 -- when Philadelphia became the first
city to drop a bomb on itself: the satchel charge.
- Revisiting Still Xiled, the earliest online journal I ever
followed, the GW law student who eventually passed the bar
and became an attorny somewhere in Tidewater Virginia.
Original's all gone, of course, but most of his entries
are available via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
Is
it real, or is it... was his September '97 reaction to
the death of the princess.
- Speaking of the earliest wwweb two still-current organizations
with the most old-school sites are Craigslist and
Berkshire Hathaway.
- A
Human-Scaled Journey. Sylvia Odhner makes comics about
finding her way in a society built for
cars.
- Speaking of, the Rambler
Ranch is a private museum in Elizabeth, Colorado; a huge
collection of Nash, AMC and other vehicles, near Denver.
- The
Hobo Handbook at The Paris Review. Jeremiah David on this
train-hopping samizdat, Camping on
Low or No Dollars, or the Crew Change Guide.
- You might recognize Melbourne's CityLink Sound Tube (actually, a
noise barrier in Flemington) from a Windows lock-screen photo.
It's been lit up
by Electrolight. Driving
through the Rainbow Tunnel.
- In Popular Science,
a century ago,
suspended monorails were serious mass-transit contenders. I've
been on a couple (provoked by
"F°451").
There's a report about riding the German
Schwebebahn in this site's Misc section.
|
| May 11, 2025 |
The Red Square 80th anniversary Victory Parade was a couple days ago,
and check the color of these caps! (Also, the Belarussians'
near-purple uniforms.) A
two-hour+
video is available, without narration; or a
one-hour,
with -- don't miss the last five minutes with
drone's view of Yars ICBMs and then more with the fly-by
and fly-around view during the fighter jets' approach...followed
by SINGING! concluding the festivities. As provided
with
the Chinese for their 50th, here's my notes on the longer
version (most of whose beginning is Putin greeting the foreign
leaders on the red carpet. I recognized Lukashenko and Ji but
wish there'd been captions.)
- 37 minutes
- After a minute of silence, ceremonial goose-stepping
- 42-50m
- Putin doesn't review the troops personally,
the civilian in the open car is Minister of Defence Andrey Belousov
- an hour in
- Gun salutes and the USSR/Russian Anthem, after Putin's
"Ura" prompting (their battle cry - AKA "Hura")
- 1:03
- the real marching begins
- 1:07
- the Belarussian officers, and then at 1:09 the Turkmenistani, so green!
- 1:30
- the Russian Cossack Society in their blue and red capes
"are honorably defending Russian Interests in the Special Military Operation"
(just before the Kremlin Cadets, bringing up the rear of the Red Square marching)
- 1:32
- Tanks and more hardware
- 1:42
- drone fly-around views
- 1:45
- Performance of
Victory Day, the
end of the parade. "Glory to the Veterans of the Great Patriotic War. Ura!"
- 1:47
- Putin goes down the receiving line, takes seven minutes. Amidst
all the military regalia I observed exactly one woman officer.
- 2:12
- After the leaders deposit red flowers at the Tomb of the
Unknown, the Russian Forces march away.
Appreciate how the narration calls their drones UAVs (and Loitering
Munitions) but they're never going to impress me with unmanned aircraft
mounted on trucks. Those UAVs should be flying along at a three-meter
altitude, their fearsome buzzing heralding their arrival, keeping
pace with the other marching units in precision formation. We know from
aerial pseudo-fireworks that this could be done, but no doubt the possibility
of a mishap with & even involving all those leaders nearby prevents
that (for now).
More: from PBS, click the pic to get to their coverage; or
alternatively, according to the state RT news service,
From
battlefield to Red Square: Russia's parade weaponry explained.
Finally Natasha, a young Russian now in Serbia, discusses
what Victory
Day's like on the inside. Among other enlightenments she claims
they employ special technology to move the clouds away so it's
sunny. Reporting from the much smaller celebration in Belgrade, don't
miss for her description of the Immortal Legion.
|
| May 7, 2025 |
From Matt Novak,
the Monument to Electricity that Never Was. Hugo Gernsback
has proposed that we build a Gigantic Monument to "Electricity." On some
plateau we could erect an Electrical Generator, 1000ft high. Molded of the
finest concrete, such a monument would last for thousands of years. It
would probably not be affected by the weather and the climate, and
it is doubted whether it could be easily destroyed by any
Savage Race that might come after us.
|
| May 6, 2025 |
|
In the UK they have Labour, and Conservatives (or Tories, traditionally; a name which I find useful for labeling all of our opponents, as this struggle between the cool and the crazy goes back at least as far as the Spanish Civil War, where they were labeled Loyalists; in contrast to the Republicans, who in that instance were the good guys). With
their elections in the news, let's look into the ANZAC political parties. Confusingly, the more
mainstream Australian conservatives label themselves the "Liberal Party" (kinda like North Korea and
East Germany having 'Democratic' in their official names). They're allied in a Coalition with the
minor & more extreme National Party (the latter conveniently referring to themselves as "Nats").
Over in New Zealand their National Party is still in power, where their left-leaning party is Labour,
as is the Aussies' (except,
they
drop the 'u' in their Labor). The Kiwis have more extreme right-wing parties, the ACT, NZ First
and NZ Loyal; which are all in a coalition with their Nats. The Canadians more sensibly label their
left-leaning party the Liberals. I remember headlines about their right-wing Reform party but that's history, didn't make it into the 21st century, instead replaced by their (again, sensibly named) Conservative Party.
|
| May 1, 2025 |
- At This Is Colossal,
the
Ancient Japanese Art of Kumiko wood setting.
- Latest jargon: the kids are saying "six-seven" --
why?
- According to the Smithsonian, in our nation's
early years, those who lived in isolated areas of the Appalachian Mountains were
called mountaineers. The controversial history of the word "hillbilly".
- Sheets of blotter acid at the aptly-named Flashbak. Its
Institute
of Illegal Images is the most comprehensive
collection of decorated LSD blotter paper in the world. By
my reckoning at the time, in the 1970s I engaged in psychedelic
journeys some 40 times, but that was mostly via tiny, flat tablets although
blotter wasn't that unusual and I do remember once having some printed
with a simple Mr Natural.
...have to share one of Rafaela Santos' mesmerizing hand-painted stones.
|
| April 25, 2025 |
From EC Crime SuspenStories #12, "The Execution"
- Knowable Magazine,
Evolution
of the nervous system. Without the anus, heads
and brains would not have evolved.
- What's your destination when you just want to watch
some random internet video? Here's a new one,
astronaut.io,
which serves up 8-second samples from recently-uploaded
YouTubes that have little or zero views. Doesn't
seem to be entirely random; too bad you can't go back.
- One more from Vintage Everyday,
Carl Wuttke,
a German landscape and architectural painter
renowned for his vivid depictions of both European and exotic locales.
|
| April 22, 2025 |
|
| April 19, 2025 |
|
| April 15, 2025 |
|
- Well-done South China Morning Post article on
Bamboo
Scaffolding in Hong Kong. I took today's photo there last
year, a street-level view of one of these scaffolds (with advertising
for piano lessons). Click for biggery.
- "Andy's Atomic Adventures" was in the
Classics Illustrated
Adventures
In Science special from 1957, reviewed here by Dreams Of Space.
|
| April 8, 2025 |
Today's pic, noodling around with
Gimp (the free
Photoshop), starting point a 60s parking lot pic, scanned
out of the "Wheels" volume of the
Time-Life Science Library.
|
| March 27, 2025 |
 |
- Having just read a book about how
Henry Flagler
made the 'Railroad Over the Ocean' to Key West happen,
here's three stunning views of the Overseas Highway, both old and new;
1 -
2 -
3
and a three-minute drone-view of
what
remains of the first highway, where they built it on top of the original
Bahai Honda railroad bridge.
- At Curbside Classics,
clipping illegal mufflers and lights in 1952, Where I learn
of fart can exhaust
systems and cats-eye headlight covers. The thoughtless;
the selfish, and the attention-starved tampered with their vehicles in
unsafe, antisocial ways seventy-one years ago, as they still do now.
- We saw one of these AI videos back in October but I guess that was
specific to the TV show. Rosie's much nicer in this one, and it has
Astro, too -- 1950's Super Panavision 70,
The Jetsons.
See also their take on
Game
Of Thrones (a show I've only heard about, but never seen).
|
| March 23, 2025 |
- Wikipedia:
Colors
of the Day, in Thailand; traditional
Thai birthday colors. Saturday is Purple Day; Friday is Light Blue.
- Regulars is a short film by Emma
Kopkowski. 24 hours in the life of
Jake's
Diner, in Greensboro.
- I've enjoyed perusing the
Radio.garden
previously. Now, with a click of your mouse in the
TV.garden, tune
into stations all over the world. Fascinating -- my
new favorite internet time-sink.
|
| March 20, 2025 |
I'm gonna get one of these for my car only it'll say RASH
|
| March 16, 2025 |
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|
| March 12, 2025 |
early '50s Buicks had the best grills
|
| March 8, 2025 |
- Look
and Feel Canadian Instantly!
- Wikipedia: the
Sinatra Doctrine was a Soviet
foreign policy under Mikhail Gorbachev allowing member
states of the Warsaw Pact to determine their own domestic affairs.
- And in the Washington Post,
Fashion designers used to be custodians for beauty. What happened? These are ugly times,
according to Rachel Tashjian, but that
makes a show like Prada at Milan Fashion Week, with its
deliberate awkwardness, so powerful. More critically, though, these
are æsthetically agnostic times...Everything looks like a
mess -- hair, graphic design, visual art, red-carpet looks.
In fashion, too many designers are doing things just to be weird,
or 'avant garde'.
(gift link)
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