Greetings! Mercury is in retrograde and as a result (well, maybe), we're having some network issues. At any rate, this will be a short one.

I don't know if there's an untranslatable word for tangled networks or retrograde Mercury, but if there is, Eunoia probably has it somewhere. 

Behold, a history of vending machines! 99 Percent Invisible looks at two millennia worth of the idea.