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| May 3, 2026 |
random Harvey Pekar encountered while searching for "Sid's Detroit Job Interview"
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| April 19, 2026 |
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| April 14, 2026 (updated) |
Cluser Transmissions, 1925
- Back in the late 1970s I used to love browsing the glossy European art
magazines, at the library. This Vintage Everywhere image dump scratches that same
itch: Niklaus
Stoecklin, (1896–1982), a seminal figure in 20th-century
Swiss art, widely regarded as a master of New Objectivity and a pioneer of
modern poster design. More of his paintings at Hauser & Wirth.
- Atlas Obscura:
former
Soviet sanatoriums.
- Float the moment. Fly Zeppelin.
Sightseeing over the
Bodensee, from Friedrichshafen, just like Count
Zeppelin, a hundred years ago.
More
info at airships.net.
- A
realistic weekend of a single woman living in China. To be
clear, that's someone in Shenzhen, the most highly developed, a
first-tier city. Granny Dancing at ~7:30.
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| April 7, 2026 |
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| April 5, 2026 |
- Happy Easter!
Repost from two years back,
Pysanky
designs at Present and Correct.
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| March 29, 2026 |
I Like The City
- Today's pic from a 1956 children's music book which passed
through my collection briefly, while I was living in Hermosa Beach.
At that time I didn't realize it had a 'Country' counterpart.
Discovered again, like so many things,
in
the Internet Archive.
- Yuki and Mei make atmospheric videos of Japan, for example
Discovering
retro neighborhoods in Tokyo; and
Kyoto
in Heavy Snow.
- Exploring two old artists, new to me:
Ivan
Shishkin (1832-1898), for his forest paintings; and
John
Rogers Cox (1915-1990). While on business in the early 90s I once
watched Sister Wendy talk about his 'Gray And Gold' on my hotel room TV.
- In Wired,
How
American Camouflage Conquered the World. You'd never catch me
wearing the stuff but the technologies are interesting.
(archive link)
Camouflage
at Wikipedia: Clothing with a camouflage
design is illegal for civilians in some countries, including
Barbados, Jamaica and Saint Lucia. Hard for some to believe,
but it's like flying your national flag: in some countries, illegal,
unless you're with the government.
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| March 18, 2026 |
-
Austin Bell
photographs Hong Kong basketball courts (of which there's quite a
few) with aerial drones, and assembles the results into
matrices -- detail, above.
- I saw
the
Antietam Arm in 1966, back then it was known as the Withered
Arm, and it looked like a stick.
- Loved the yellow-bordered National Geographic,
and its green, continental competitor, which attempted an
American edition in the late 1970s: GEO,
sub-titled A New View Of Our World.
The Internet Archive has one you can page through,
the
December 1997 French issue.
- 5D, Hot vs Cold Data, and
Why
We Are Going Back to Optical Storage -- with glass.
- Another new psychological acronym:
HPP --
High Places Phenomenon -- what I call Edge Fear.
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| March 15, 2026 |
-
Iran's
only Van Gogh: ‘At Eternity’s Gate' (a lithograph which was
owned by Nelson Rockefeller, at one point). The subsequent painting
was discussed and displayed in these pages,
Christmas,
2024.
- More Persia: the
low-tech brilliance of Iranian design.
- I had never heard of
the
Irish goodbye, sometimes called a French exit or
'Going Houdini' -- leaving a gathering without saying farewell.
In France, they call it filer à l'anglaise
(to leave the English way) and in Germany, it’s a Polnischer Abgang,
or a Polish exit. I've been guilty of, but only rarely.
- More jargon: a new definition for PDA: Pathological Demand
Avoidance, another way to say "stubborn" -- how certain
kids lose their shit when asked or ordered to do something.
- Finally, the latest find in the Internet Archive:
George
of the Jungle: The Complete Series. I requested and watched
an episode
here
in 1991, when our media landscape was very different.
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| March 14, 2026 |
- Amusing Planet looks into kinjiki,
Japan's
Forbidden Colors. Over the centuries, the strict
courtly regulations surrounding color gradually weakened [but] the symbolic
association between certain colors and authority, especially sumac, ochre
and gardenia, persists to this day.
- Animated Irish short, Oscar nominee:
Retirement Plan.
- BBC: France's
ghost car scandal, a million illegal vehicles on their roads
-- and how about the ghost cars of NYC?
CBS
update from six months back.
- Found this module at the thrift store for a few dollars, with no
external manufacturer logo or serial numbers. By its buttons I
could tell it's a clock of some kind; internet sleuthing
eventually led to the
Ten
Best Fake Hatch Alarm Clocks of 2025. Mine seems to be a Zelaclock, and
it's fun, like a combination light organ, Moonbeam alarm clock and white noise
generator. (Always takes me awhile to remember buttons on small digital clocks
have two modes: press and release, and press and hold.)
- Love the See
also of Wikipedia's 'chav' entry, for its British
subcultures like Hooliganism,
Bootboy,
and Football casuals, among others.
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| March 10, 2026 |
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| March 8, 2026 |
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