March 6, 2025 photo from so long ago, source unknown. My title: Lunch March 5, 2025 AT&T Longlines is a windowless skyscraper at 33 Thomas Street in NYC. Embroiled in mystery for years, a man who worked there describes what it's like inside. Doesn't really say much but my guess is it's probably a lot like the Blue Cube was -‌- dim, shabby; hallways with really beat-up carpeting lined with locked doors. Preply ranks the US cities with the rudest residents, in 2024. #1 is Miami. The curious story of the Dave Clark Five -- for a while, they were the Beatles' equal; now, the Tottenham Sound is forgotten. As usual, the Internet Archive provides -‌- their peculiar 1965 John Boorman film is available in there, as well as ripped versions of their greatest hits (but not their more obscure favorites of mine, When and To Me). Courtesy NHK, dozens of 5-minute neko-videos -‌- A Cat's-Eye View of Japan. March 4, 2025 Letterform Archive: Chopstick Sleeves as Emissaries of Japanese Typography and Culture. At restaurants, people are always curious about the little hashioki boat (canoe, really) which I fold, out of mine -‌- here's how it's done (although that video omits my final step of folding the 'sail' down flat). The Washington Post has more, How to use all those takeout chopsticks in your miscellany drawer. (gift link) March 1, 2025 Vimeo: A Century of The New Yorker. Wikipedia on the Flying Toilet -‌- plastic bags of excreta, hurled as far off as possible. February 28, 2025 I think this image has some AI provenance but it's been kicking around my desktop so long I've forgotten the source. Mental Floss posted Fifteen hardboiled facts about "Cool Hand Luke". Secret Gardens in Mexico City, or the D.F, as they call it. February 23, 2025 It's one of the ending-future scenes aboard the station in Doroga k zvezdam ("Road To The Stars"), the 1957 Soviet film which is mostly about Tsiolkovsky devising the space-rocket. The Takeout lists some Once Popular Ice Cream Flavors you hardly ever see anymore. Teaberry!? And I for another never understood the appeal of Chocolate Chip - the chips are too small. Present & Correct is just the best. Here is their array of lovely blue images of Athens Doorways from a book thereof. Also don't miss their Japanese Lottery tickets from the 1950s. In his latest, Alec bemoans how Algorithms are breaking how we think, coining Algorithmic Complacency to describe those who're unmotivated to explore the wwweb. On the contrary, they're content with just the doom-scrolling, a replacement for channel surfing & watching TV... in fact this dichotomy in madia absorption behavior was identified early on in the Internet Era, was termed Lean Forward vs Lean Back, the latter requiring less engagement. February 21, 2025 Bored Panda features artist Theo Rooden, who crafts hypnotic, geometric textiles that appear 3D, on his amazing loom. Longreads has a dispatch from the real Twin Peaks, where fans of the director flocked after his death. TripSided: Five island countries worth traveling to, just for the barbecue. They are Samoa, Taiwan, Fiji, the Philippines, and Japan. Good barbecue isn't limited to the United States and some if it is worth making the trip for. February 20, 2025 - political youTubes A couple video explanations, of how we got here: Steve, How Republicans captured the low IQ voter; and Ryan White, Why is there no alt-left pipeline? February 19, 2025 Detail from a 15th century Laval, from a tumblr called Discarding Images; I think of it as Medieval Saints' Side-Eye. February 17, 2025 BBC report on Pathfinder, a new white airship now at Moffett Field, with fascinating photos inside Hangar Two. The adjacent Ames Research Center must be in turmoil, I can't imagine. For 15 years, I was there daily, part of a huge project working on improvements to and modernization of the Air Traffic Control system's software, including replacement of the ancient HOST mainframes which consolodated radar data; now, it seems a team from SpaceX is being brought in to overhaul the FAA's Air Traffic Control system. Dunning-Kruger, anyone? A couple questions but first, a couple unrelated links into the Wikipedia: April 14 is Black Day in South Korea, when singles wear black and eat jajangmyeon noodles; and Sweden had a nuclear weapons program between 1945 and 1972 -‌- they developed a reactor but stopped short of building a bomb. Vice, on 'Gooners': Is porn destroying us? Dwell, on Culdesac Tempe, Arizona: America's 'First Car-Free Neighborhood' Is Going Pretty Good, Actually? February 16, 2025 - status Struggling with implementing an RSS feed for this (hence the sporadic post titles), as well as with the Windows 11 upgrade, but updates here will resume, presently. February 8, 2025 - Orbs NASA’s Metallic Orbs: The Surprising Briefing Everyone Missed, in 2023. What happened to the red pistachio, why were they and where did they go? In response to the Iranian hoastages of 1979, now they're grown mostly in California. Super Panavision 70: The Matrix February 6, 2025 February 4, 2025 I mentioned this in October '22 but in Hawai'i I also learned there's another macron, it's the line over some vowels, in some languages. So, two kinds of cookie, two kinds of macron. At least. There's someone for everyone - Studio Portraits of Couples in the 1970s at Vintage Everyday. Many of these photos are like Diane Arbus, but in color. Killer Covers of mystery and crime novels. The Charlton Comics Reading Library was a blog last updated 2020, apparently. Like Marvel I'd see these comics around, in the mid-1960s, but never for sale in the stores I knew, which only seemed to have DC titles, and Classics Illustrated. February 3, 2025 Back from a week in Hawai'i, all on Oahu. Re-visited the battleship Arizona memorial, dwelling again upon notions of the physical resemblence I realized twenty years ago in the Hiroshima Museum, meta-psychically reënforced this time with the discovery of a Sadoka corner within the "Attack" museum of the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center complex. You've probably encountered the Art of Bruce Pennington on various paperback book-covers. And Kurt Roschl? No, but we should have. Sears' Surfman, a boys-wear page from the 1966 catalog. I and my brothers wore some of these clothes...the blue&white, my first Aloha shirt. And the prices! ' February 1, 2025 Baguette Girl 1957 photo lifted from one of Messy Nessy's recent '13 Things Found on the Internet' - also of note, her Lost Art of Hollywood's Kaleidoscopic Fever Dreams. January 21, 2025 - Chongqing! The City with the Largest Population in the World: Welcome to Chongqing! Listicle at The Travel: America's Best-looking Amtrak stations. The Sword and the Sandwich reviews the Monte Cristo... goes on&on about the novel but doesn't ever mention Disneyland). Concerning Ace Doubles. Many have passed through my hands, but none in my collection at this time. Time Is On My Side, October 25, 1964. January 19, 2025 RIP David Lynch: his place in the Burbank Bob's Big Boy Hall of Fame; at Bored Panda, Ten quotes that will alter how you see the world, and Indie Wire lists Nine Things you didn't know about "Mulholland Drive". January 15, 2025 We've seen this magazine cover previously in these pages but that was a crude, low-res color-shifted scan (from a long time ago). Just came across this version, much nicer. January 13, 2025 A well-remembered book from 1988 was 283 Useful Ideas from Japan by WET magazine's Leonard Koren. A mens' clothing source, Mr Porter, has some more: 33 Ways To Improve Your Life, Japanese Style. #17 Bathe at Night A selection from Physics for Cats, Tom Gauld's sold-out second collection of science-based cartoons for the New Scientist. January 10, 2025 An awesome chart from the Home Baking Association shows variations in Chocolate Chip cookie results when you change an ingredient, Cookie Science, Cookies 101. Check which team your favorite retail chains donate to at GoodsUniteUs.com January 6, 2025 Looking Forward is a short, contemplative video by Steven Ascher. Does how you feel about the future change how your life turns out? December 31, 2024 2025 = 452 Happy New Year!           December 29, 2024 In The Saturday Evening Post, What we ate 100 years ago. The Windham Hill videos are in the Internet Archive! Autumn Portrait Western Light Water's Path Winter and China... I used to check these out from the video store, when I first moved to LA. At one point I transcribed all of them onto a single VHS tape labeled "Soothing Image." Slate: America invented the perfect grape, then banished it into obscurity. When we first moved to the new house in 1960 these grapes were growing along the back fence but at some point early on, they either died or were torn out. Before, we'd stand around back there eating them just as this article describes...that flavor, it's true, not the same as the red or green grapes at the store these days; but some purple candy - exactly. December 25, 2024 Van Gogh and Christmas calls this painting from 1890 'At Eternity's Gate' but I've also seen it labeled simply 'A Man Mourning' and I first knew it as 'On the Threshold of Eternity'. Van Gogh considered the image above to be a Christmas painting. Happy Holidays! December 24, 2024 BBC: Chocolate maker Cadbury has been dropped from the list of royal warrants. Begone, pseudo-chocolate! Emily Wallace: In North Carolina, a cheese ball is the star around which all holiday gatherings orbit. Sounds like a good name for a band, to me: the Positive Anymore occurs in some varieties of North American English, especially in Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley, Baltimore and its suburbs, as well as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri; its usage extends to Nevada, Utah and other western US states but I've never heard this."I eat meat anymore" = "I didn't eat meat before, and (but) I do now", a meaning similar to 'nowadays' or 'from now on'. NPR's extensive listing, In Memoriam 2024: The Musicians We Lost. December 21, 2024 - Solstice In Curbed, The Slow Death of Neon says Radio City's is threatened with LED renovation, even though those tubes were all replaced in 1999. (archive link for the article; and more neon links at the bottom of my Hong Kong Neon page) Rolling Stone: Beebo Russell, the Sea-Tac SkyKing, who took a Dash-8 for a joyride in 2018. December 16, 2024 Maxwell Mustardo's Fluorescing Ceramics at This Is Colossal, so beautiful. Here's a European artist named Ememem who repairs cracked outdoor surfaces with intricate tile, hard to understand how it's done. December 13, 2024 Sally Schwartz in Slate says there's Six Stages of liquidating your parents' stuff: Sentimentality, calculation, avoidance, disappointment, totem, and Dumpster. According to WTAJ in Altoona PA, Mars, Inc refers to each colorful bit of candy-coated chocolate as a lentil. Those "m"s were first printed in black, between 1950-1954. That and many more fun M&M facts at their Wikipedia page. Beige Mom. I could never be a beige anything. December 9, 2024 According to Reader's Digest you can see blue Stop signs in Hawai'i, but doesn't really explain the phenomenon. The Cut: Things Your Wedding Guests Secretly Despise. Maybe not so secretly. A too-long gap between the ceremony and the reception. Open-mic toasts. The garter belt, the cake smashing -‌- gross. (archive link since The Cut is actually New York magazine) Earthscrapers -‌- proposal for a residential step-well in the D.F. A few levels, sure; but who'd go way down there? Ridiculous. The Shape Of Things is a short story by Ray Bradbury, from 1948. Surprisingly, out of copyright, doesn't appear to have been included in any of his collections (but was in this Damon Knight anthology.) First line: He did not want to be the father of a small blue pyramid. December 8, 2024 Absorbing this zany, new (to me) comic artist, Fletcher Hanks: the Most Twisted Comic Book Artist of All Time. Sample above, a whole collection of Stardust (who flies through space by means of his Tubular Spacial) and Fantomah available in the Internet Archive; his published work only between 1939-41 although he lived on until 1976, when his frozen body was found one morning on a NYC park bench. Trying to understand the kids' new usage of 'flex' but I'm not quite there yet. Something about bragging; but also seems to be whatever you want it to mean.
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