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| July 23, 2024 |
- Extensive Wikipedia page,
Flags of the Confederate States of America. Scroll way down for two dozen proposals,
followed by another dozen variants -- some wild red-white&blue stuff there.
A couple examples, above; Samuel White's on the left, and EG Carpenter's
hideous -- what's with the extra blue star at the lower right? And a prize for
the most boring, not shown here: that blue circle on a red field, one of the three
finalists!?
- About the
Okinawa
Confederate Flag flying over Shuri Castle in May, 1945. More, in a 2015 essay
by Greg Grandin:
How Endless War Helps Old Dixie Stay New (which I've noticed reprinted elsewhere
under the title, What Was the Confederate Flag Doing in
Cuba, Vietnam, and Iraq?)
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| July 18, 2024 |
- Mount Everest ascent,
drone video
to 29,000 feet.
- At LitHub,
100
of the Greatest Posters of Celebrities Urging You to Read. More,
but without the snark, at
American Library Association Celebrity Posters.
- JSTOR hosts the
Adler Archive of Underground Comix, covers and a
few sample pages from each. Just scratched the surface here, so far.
- Following up on my vintage San Francisco Chinatown postcard, Reel SF has
more views of that intersection, Then and Now, in
The Lady From Shanghai - On The Lam - Chop Suey and Shanghai Low.
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| July 15, 2024 |
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Just a couple long-form documentary YouTubes, for today:
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July 12, 2024
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1956 postcard found during my first solo San Francisco
adventure, in 1976, the image familiar as it was a whole page in the souvenir
booklet my father brought back from an early 1960s business trip to the Bay Area.
So influential, that book to me, with its postcard views of California redwoods,
Fishermans Wharf, Lombard Street, cable cars and the Golden Gate Bridge.
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| July 4, 2024 |
- Dinara Kasko at This Is Colossal:
Geometrically-Inspired
Pastries, Cakes, and Sweets and
Impeccably
Precise Geometries Baked into her Bold Cakes and Tarts.
- That creepy old
Detroit
train station, abandoned by Amtrak in 1988, has been resurrected.
A slideshow, at Autoweek:
Ford's Reborn Michigan Central Station;
and in Architectural Digest,
Michigan Central Station Is Restored to
Its Original Glory. To see what it was, before:
the first segment of "Naqoyqatsi."
- Fascinating Harper's long-read,
The Branson Pilgrim by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi. I've never been there, of course;
but I'm aware since my parents visited a few times.
(archive link)
- Cashew of
Pirangi, in Brazil, is the world's largest cashew tree. Covers a hectare,
a unit of measure with which I've always had trouble. It's about 2.47 acres, okay;
but how big is an acre? I asked my grandfather this as a small boy and
his definition stays with me: "About the size of a small graveyard." Perhaps
that initial ambiguity is what clouds my understanding, to this day.
Whatever - that's a big tree.
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| July 1, 2024 |
- Video:
the General
Motors Parade of Progress, with the greatest innovation
in tent-making since the days of Omar! I spotted one of the original
Futurliners parked on a side street off Ventura Blvd in the San Fernando
Valley thirty years ago, been curious ever since. Seen a few articles about
restoring the vehicles but this is the first film I've ever seen of the
Parade. More about them, another YouTube: the
History Of The Ultra-Rare 1930s 'Truck' That Sold For 4 Million.
- I would see the
Cruisin'
series of oldies samplers while flipping through the vinyl in the old days, but
never actually heard one until this week. Strictly for fans of old radio,
now, as the DJs step on most of the tracks. Once again, the Archive provides,
if you're curious -- all in the series
available here, cued to 1969, the year featuring my local, WPGC (which
has its own extensive tribute
site).
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| June 20, 2024 |
- Carry-on only, this is why, from A View from the Wing, :
American
Airlines Passenger Tracks Down Missing Luggage at Homeless Camp
with a hidden Air Tag. Oh, everything's fine, usually; but if there's bad
weather in Texas or something, like in her case, they might wind up
stacking your bags in public areas, where criminals walking by can
help themselves. Or at least this happened at the Burbank airport, what
are they calling BUR now? No longer the Bob Hope, it's the Hollywood Burbank.
- A fascinating long-read at Collector's Weekly:
Don't Call 'em Bums: the Unsung History of America's Hard-Working Hoboes. Rich with
jargon: 'bo lingo'. Britt, Iowa welcomes them still.
- Oddity Central on Tekesi
County – China’s Unique Bagua-Shaped City.
- Another from the Wonders of Street View: the
Mystery Hole of Ansted, West VA.
- Messy Nessy posted
Twisted
Treasures: The Quirky World of Telephone Cord Bag Collecting.
The purses emerged in the US during WWII,
when material rationing meant designers had to get thrifty with
their creations. I've heard of crafters in the developing
world making items out of telephone wire, but that's the spaghetti
you see when a technician opens a switchbox. Searching Etsy for
telephone
wire crafts brings up a lot of this, mostly bowls, some with
striking designs; but these older handbags are adorned with the
twisted cables used to connect the telephone to the wall and/or its
handset.
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| June 14, 2024 |
- Solent
Forts for sale, going to auction in a few
days. What kind of? Wikipedia: The Solent is
a strait between the Isle of Wight and mainland Great Britain; the
major historic ports of Southampton and Portsmouth lie inland of its shores. These are refurbished
Palmerston
Forts, originally built during Victorian times around the
coasts of the UK and Ireland. More like artificial islands, and not
to be confused with the
Maunsell
Forts built in the Thames and Mersey estuaries during the War,
which were more like deep-sea oil rigs. The latter were home to unauthorized radio stations in the 1960s, as Thomas Dolby
sang about and as
seen in "The Not-So-Jolly Roger", one of the best and final episodes
of Patrick McGoohan's 'Danger Man' (available in that show's
3rd season
in the Internet Archive). The Principality of
Sealand is also on a Maunsell Fort.
- MotorTrend: What
the Duck Is Jeep Ducking?
- Two from Hagerty, the classic car insurance company which
publishes a glossy magazine.
Why
Goodyear's bright idea for illuminated tires didn't shine for
long. The one car that has them is the
Golden
Sahara.
- More collectibles: Eater provides A Brief History of Restaurant Matches. Phillumeny: the hobby of collecting matchboxes & matchbooks.
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| June 8, 2024 |
Just one of the multitudes in ZIGSAM -- the Austrian Cigarette Collection, a major time-suck.
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| June 6, 2024 |
Early example of a Photoshop exercise: van Gogh Nights
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| June 5, 2024 |
- The Independent reports:
Eurovision
2024, "Life is forever changed" says Bambie Thug after chaotic
contest. But what is Eurovision? The Wrap provides
a Guide for Confused Americans, a
glimpse into what it's like to be in a culture
that doesn't have jazz and blues as the foundation of its pop
music. Answers some questions, but I have more.
What If The Beatles Had Entered
the Eurovision Song Contest? Or, why not the Stones? According
to Wikipedia,
- . Groups weren't permitted before 1970
- So no Beatles
- . In 1999, the rules were changed again, making the orchestra
optional
- Because the focus is really on the singers
- . Currently all instrumental music for competing entries must now
be pre-recorded, and no live instrumentation is allowed during performances.
Okay, so what's the range of this
thing? The Standard:
Which countries don't compete
in Eurovision? Israel's participation continues to be debated.
There's good maps at the contest's extensive
Wikipedia page. Incidently, the winner this year was Nemo, from Switzerland;
who, upon receipt, smashed the award on the stage, a political statement.
- Deutsche Welle on
European
reunification -- when the first
stone was knocked out of the Wall. More at Wikipedia about the
Pan-European Picnic between Austria and Hungary on August 19, 1989.
- ISO vs ANSI at Coding and Keyboards:
Why is Writing Code with a non-English keyboard difficult?
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