Friday, June 29, 2018

The news of the Capital Gazette shooting is awful.

There is still beauty in the world, though, and National Geographic has announced the winners of the Travel Photographer of the Year Contest. I recommend spending some time looking at all the entries. 

From Julie: A tomb thought to be the resting place of Lady Xia, grandmother of China’s first emperor, has also yielded the bones of a now-extinct gibbon (among other animals)!

Have a safe and spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

Thursday, June 28, 2018

Well. This has been a week, hasn’t it. 

For daily updates, WTF Just Happened Today is a good source.

From 538: Entrenchment has led to some odd ideas about who makes up the US political parties.

In non-related news, check out Daniel Danger’s gorgeous artwork.

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Today is National Writing Day in the UK, so write or type away!

Mars has gone into retrograde, which apparently is not as bad as Mercury going into retrograde but can still make life difficult. (Well, at least the world is calm and stable right n….oh.)

A compiled list of movies with a hauntology theme has shown me that I have not seen many films. (There are 190 movies on this list, and I’ve seen maybe a handful. Maybe.)

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Hello! It's a stupidly busy day here today, so I will leave you with one link, which ponders whether Charlie Chaplin invented the "distracted boyfriend" meme. (Evidence points to yes!). Many examples of the meme, plus the original film, can be found at the link. See you tomorrow.

Monday, June 25, 2018

Happy Monday, everyone. Let’s do our best to get through all this and help everyone we can along the way.

A newly digitized archive is online, showing over 9.000 photos of the Middle East and Northern Africa! 

A traveler’s photographs of their tour of Egypt in the early 1900s used a newfangled gadget called a panoramic camera, resulting in fantastic images.

Marcel Breuer was part of the Bauhaus collective, and went on to design Brutalist buildings with a surprisingly sense of weightlessness.

Friday, June 22, 2018

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

If you’re in the legal community, or you know someone who is, and you’d like to help the current situation at the border, here’s a link – share far and wide. 

A Digg video shows where American accents originated. (My own American accent is a horrible mishmash of New England, Chicago, and edge-of-Appalachia, apparently. No wonder I have trouble with public speaking.)

The shadowy cryptic figures behind the Mysterious Package Company are creating something new called Post Mortem, and you can sign up for shadowy cryptic details. 

Meanwhile, in Belgium, you can escape for a weekend in a “secret cabin” off the grid, not knowing where you’re headed until the last minute. (This sounds really cool.)

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Hello. The world is, shall we say, not in a good place right now. Let’s do what we can to change that. In the meantime, here are a few minutes of escapism.

The world’s cities might have looked very different if some architects’ planned buildings had actually been built. The Atlantic details a few of these would-be structures. 

There was a time when zeppelins soared above the cities, and here’s an older entry from Gizmodo showing what that looked like. 

Artist Marcus DeSieno has created spooky “surveillance landscapes” from surveillance cameras capturing wide open spaces. They’re beautiful, and also creepy.

Monday, June 18, 2018

Hello and happy Monday… 

Art: Check out Mark Broyer’s After Hours photography. It’s lovely.

History: Americans learn about Benedict Arnold, but what exactly did he do? 

Art/Poetry; Meet Dom Sylvester Houédard, the beatnik monk or “monknik,” as he called himself.

Friday, June 15, 2018

Happy Friday, everyone.

From Julie: Continuing on our trains of the dead theme of the week, behold the Ghost Bus Tours of London, detailing the history of the Necropolis Bus Company! (I really want a Necropolis Bus Company badge and/or uniform.)

Local news: my city has several tours of our underground tunnels, including interesting facts about our (nonexistent) subway and our (quite good) beer!

Meanwhile, in Cape Breton, a gaggle of strongmen have arrived to pay homage to “Giant” MacAskill.

And finally, Dr Martens have added to their brand, with Joy Division and New Order themed boots! I love the Technique boots, although I fear I couldn’t quite get away with them at work.

Have a safe and spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Two paths today: one for sports, one for reading!

Sports:

The World Cup begins today! Google has you covered via today’s Doodle, and John Green gives a super-quick rundown of all 32 teams. (Joachim Löw is described as looking like “an aging Beatle trying to hail a cab,” which is about right.)

Reading:

Once upon a time, there was a brilliant James Joyce scholar working on the definitive version of Ulysses. Then he disappeared. What happened to him? 

Emma Garman has started a new monthly column, Feminize Your Canon, at the Paris Review, featuring overlooked and/or underappreciated women in literature. This month: Olivia Manning!

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

I have a desktop calendar at work, but I don’t do much with it. After seeing these amazing calendars created by a government worker in 1980s America, I am rethinking my attitude. It would be amazing to have a personalized history record like this!

The Elgin Marbles are still in London, and many people are unhappy about that. At least the marbles are being taken care of by conservation workers, however. (This is pretty fascinating if you’re into history and preservation.)

Earlier this year, I posted about the necropolis train in Los Angeles. Now it’s time to look at Victorian London’s contribution!

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Greetings! We're back and getting caught up on everything. Back tomorrow at full strength, most likely!

Wednesday, June 06, 2018

Quick, Americans – what job is most prevalent in your state? No worries, here’s a handy map! 

From Zazoo: Kat von D’s wedding dress was something else. (So was everything else about the wedding – check out the contortionist attendants, and the wedding cake!)

We’ll be gone the rest of the week on work-related business, so have a safe and spiffy weekend, everyone! See you next week.

Tuesday, June 05, 2018

Open Culture has a great, detailed look at the women of the Bauhaus movement. Relevant to my interests, as they say!

Also relevant: Martin Smith’s videos celebrating EPCOT as it was in the opening days. His latest, which we watched over the weekend, is all about the Communicore buildings. It's hard to overstate how much I loved Communicore.

From the same site as the previous link: Behold, news of haunted attractions!

Monday, June 04, 2018

Hello and happy Monday! We're doing some work-related travel this week, so posting will be sparse. We'll be back to normal schedule next week.

I was getting ready to write a screed about the theft of Anne of Brittany's "heart of gold" (her actual heart! In a gold reliquary!), but I found out that it has been recovered by authorities. Anne was really interesting, internal organs aside.

Friday, June 01, 2018

Happy Friday!

If you have some spare coin, the creator of Scarfolk could use a bit of it, due to some nefarious business complications.

Via Now I Know: The story of how Miami Vice came to define the 1980s, for a while at least. 

From Bunny: The Witch’s House in Beverly Hills has been restored, and there are amazing mosaics inside, plus all that lovely spookiness!

Have a safe and spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.