Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Pic Of The Day


Crossing Africa and the Sahara by Truck

Colour slides are used to document a journey made across Africa and the Sahara Desert in 1959/60. It's really good.



Via MeFi

Little Free Library converted into a "Peep Show"

Cristie Kearny of Seattle has removed books from her Little Free Library to help slow the spread of COVID-19 and has turned it into a Peep Show, featuring Mary Peepins.
It's Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!



More: Boing Boing

Film Crew in Quarantine


Film Crew in Quarantine from Robertas Nevecka on Vimeo.

Self-quarantine Jeopardy

I'll take "Is Three Hours Still A Nap?" for $1000.


Wrong Hands

Restaging Famous Paintings During COVID-19


“Choose your favorite artwork; Find three things lying around your house; Recreate the artwork with those items; And share with us.”
The Getty Museum in Los Angeles launched a challenge to help people overcome the ennui of the COVID-19 quarantine and the internet has responded.



More here

Tweet Of The Day

Homemade garbage bag and recorder bagpipes as seen on my Sunday Links.

I Wanna Dance With Somebody

Houston's A.S.S. With Chris Bakos, Traci Lavois Thiebaud, and Jennifer Wood. Shot in isolation in Houston, Texas and Bangalore, India. This is lovely.

Dancing with Joey Ramone

My friend Alan posted this on Facebook a few days ago and it's been running through my head ever since. Perhaps posting it will purge the earworm.

Monday, March 30, 2020

Some Good News with John Krasinski

The news we need: John Krasinski highlights some good news from around the world.

The Girl on the Magazine Cover

What went into creating a magazine cover back in the late 1940s? The company that produced this spot was called Jam Handy and was a PR company for Chevrolet. The objectification of women is so blatant.



Via 

Tweet Of The Day

Romance in the time of COVID-19.

Via Neatorama

All The Feelings

How do you feel? Sometimes it's not easy to put the emotions you are feeling into words.




The Feeling Wheel was designed in 1982 by Dr. Gloria Wilcox to help people recognize and communicate their feelings. It consists of an inner circle with 5 sectors and two outer concentric circles. The outer rings contain names of secondary feelings related to the primary ones.


Thanks Bruce!

Cream's White Room, Baroque Lute Version

Daniel Estrem playing White Room (Cream-1968) by Jack Bruce and Pete Brown arranged for baroque lute by Daniel Estrem


Via Memo Of The Air

Quilt Fever

A sweet documentary short film by Olivia Loomis Merrion about the Academy Awards of quilting in Paducah, Kentucky.


Quilt Fever from Olivia Loomis Merrion on Vimeo.

Sunday, March 29, 2020

Tilt-shift Azerbaijan

Joerg Daiber of Little Big World presents a tilt-shift video of the deserts and hills of Azerbaijan, which sits at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.



Link

Via Memo of the Air (a treasure trove for link lovers)

Catface!

DIY feline quarantine couture. Keep COVID-19 at bay with this N95 mask.



Instructions here Go ahead, you know you want one.

Via BoingBoing

Sunday Links

1935 Auburn 851 Supercharged Speedster
The Art Deco movement influenced design and marketing in many different industries in the 1930s, and the motor industry was no exception. Click for some gorgeous examples Via Everlasting Blort

Some People - a beautiful and powerful message from Jason Kottke. Read it right now.

Gardens You Can Virtually Tour Right Now

Photographs Of Native Americans In Ceremonial Masks, 1905-1915

How to Build Your Own Airplane  This should keep me busy while I'm confined to quarters. Thanks Bruce!

Bottoms up! Actor-filmmaker Paul Feig shows how to make his perfect martini.

Hey kids! Want to drive your parents bonkers during self-quarantine? How to Make Bagpipes Out of a Garbage Bag and Recorders 

Watch SXSW shorts for free courtesy of new Mailchimp platform #SupportTheShorts 

The Atlantis of Wales? How a storm revealed a Welsh kingdom 

The N95 mask: The untold origin story Thanks Bruce!

“The Roads Not Taken”: A Robert Frost Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Poem

How to Revive Stale Bread: This easy tip for refreshing day-old bread will make a stale loaf taste freshly baked. You're welcome!

The Moment the Myth of Alien Abduction Was Born It began with a trip to Niagara Falls…

Coronavirus: Jamie Oliver teaches us how to make pasta with only one item 

Collectors Weekly brings us a lovely collection of Vintage Costume Brooches  on E-Bay.

London's Dreadful Visitation: A Year of Weekly Death Statistics during the Great Plague (1665) 

Why the World Overlooked Canadian Whisky My tipple of choice was Bourbon until 2016 when I decided to hold my nose and go Canadian. 3-1/2 years later I've grown fond of the stuff.

New York City Quarantine Colouring Activity Page 

Surgical masks are scarce and should be reserved for health professionals. Cynthia Korzekwa reminds us that this virus is likely to stick around for awhile and shares some videos on how to make your own masks.

At Home With My Mother: Anthropologist and writer Delwar Hussain's account of recent weeks of self-isolating, alone with his mother in the family house in Spitalfields. A nice story.

Cooking from the pantry: 15-Minute Stovetop Mac and Cheese uses canned milk. I haven't tried it yet but they describe it as "ultra gooey" so it must be good! (I had to Google "American Cheese". In Canada we call it "processed cheese ".)

So pretty! The candy pastel perfection of old Russian houses. Via

Virtually Tour the Winchester Mystery House Constructed in 1884, the San Jose mansion is said to be haunted by the ghosts of people killed with Winchester rifles, which were the creation of its original owner’s widow Sarah Winchester. Free while it's closed due to the COVID-19 virus. Via Facebook.

Catscapes

Malaysian illustrator Lim Heng Swee turns landscapes into catscapes







See more on his Instagram account.

Via Why Evolution Is True

Music for Sunday Morning

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Pic Of The Day


(This image is being used widely but I have not been able to find an attribution.)

Done With Those Days

"And oh yes my brothers
We are gonna lean on each other
If we're gonna turn this situation 'round"
Devotchka from This Night Falls Forever



Via Boing Boing

View Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Room Online

Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrored Room--The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away is now available to view online through The Broad Museum's Instagram feed.



View this post on Instagram

Experience an immersive environment of light and sound in the spirit of Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrored Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away. Take an opportunity to delve into the spiritual aspects of Kusama's exploration of eternity—paired with aural selections chosen curated by The Broad, including drone, electronic, ambient, and pop music. Featuring deep cuts by celebrated musicians and sound artists from Los Angeles and beyond, the Infinite Drone series presents a new, contemplative way of experiencing The Broad’s most popular artwork. Today’s musical artist is: 𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗮 𝗦𝗸𝗲𝗲𝗻 The Oval Window (2018) Los Angeles-based artist and composer Geneva Skeen (@geneeves) is influenced by écriture féminine, alchemical metaphors, and a range of musical traditions ranging from holy mysticism to industrial. She works with recordings, digital presets, voice, and mixed instrumentation. Her performances, publications, and installations focus on the contrast between facing the finite resources of our physical landscapes and their infinite digital representations. She is a recipient of the Touch Mentorship program and a member of VOLUME, a curatorial collective focused on sound-based practices. “The Oval Window” is a stereo drone work composed strictly using recordings of voice and piano processed through digital and analog technologies. The sloping harmonics and peripheral speech affects highlighted in the composition were scraped from the original raw recordings, then reshaped in relation to each other’s line, pitch, and duration. ___ Written & performed by Geneva Skeen Published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music Ltd www.genevaskeen.com
A post shared by The Broad (@thebroadmuseum) on




Via Boing Boing

All The Songs Named In Bob Dylan's 'Murder Most Foul'

Yesterday I posted Bob Dylan's new song  "Murder Most Foul". In it he makes references to dozens of songs from the 60s. NPR has made  a playlist that roughly follows this lesson in music history.



Read more: NPR

The Foster Portfolio

 Based on a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Foster Portfolio is the story of a rookie investment counselor who discovers that his penniless client is hiding a huge inheritance in order to conceal a double life.


The Foster Portfolio from Danielle Katvan on Vimeo.

Friday, March 27, 2020

AI Weirdness Takes On The Great British Bakeoff

Janelle Shane of AI Weirdness decided we could all use a bit of comfort these days and what could be more comforting than the Great British Bakeoff? She trained a neural net to create baked goods and human faces using  55,000 screenshots from the show. Unfortunately the results they generated were not comforting. In fact they were kind of terrifying. The baked goods were terrible. (Would you like voidcake, floating dough, or terror blueberry?) The human faces are indescribable.







Learn more about this project (and others) at AI Weirdness

Empty Streets Of Rotterdam

Yesterday I posted a video of Amsterdam during quarantine. Today I am posting a similarly eerie video of Rotterdam.



Via TMN

Bob Dylan Releases Epic New Song,

Bob Dylan surprised fans late Thursday night with the release of the epic "Murder Most Foul," a long, delicate song about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.



More:  NPR

Quarantine Jukebox

Here's something to keep you from going stir crazy while you're housebound.



 2strokebuzz has provided a pdf file so you can make your own as well as a Jukebox playlist on Spotify:




Via

Thursday, March 26, 2020

Tweet Of The Day

This one made me tear up.

DIY Miniature Leica Camera Fits on a Fingernail

Miniature model maker Hoo’s mini world built an itty bitty version of a Leica M10 camera, complete with a removable lens.



Via The Awesomer

Meanwhile in Amsterdam

An eerie social distance walk through the almost empty streets of Amsterdam during the Covid-19 outbreak. Click on the caption to watch on Vimeo.

Meanwhile in Amsterdam from Jean Counet on Vimeo.

Watch Cyprus Avenue

Cyprus Avenue is a black comedy about a man struggling with the past and terrified of the future. It was awarded Best New Play at the Irish Times Theatre Awards and the James Tait Black Prize for Drama in 2017. For his portrayal of Eric, Stephen Rea won Best Actor at the Irish Times Theatre Awards 2017. Here is the trailer:



The Royal Court Theatre is making it available to watch on March 27 from 12noon for free on their website, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages for one month.

Watch Cyprus Avenue 

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Tweet Of The Day

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

An Astronaut's Guide to Self Isolation

Canadian astronaut has spent more time in isolation than the average person. He has a few tips on dealing with Covid-19 self-isolation.

Orville Peck “Queen of the Rodeo”

This video by Canadian country music artist, Orville Peck, is "for all the LGBTQ+ and two-spirit community members working and performing in rodeos, ranches, and roadhouses across North America.”


Orville Peck "Queen of the Rodeo" from Austin Peters on Vimeo.

Tweet Of The Day

Maps Show the Oldest Running Businesses of (Almost) Every Country

Business Financing UK created maps that show the oldest company of different countries around the world, some that have been in operation for nearly 1,500 years.

Click here for larger image

Link
Via 

李子柒 Liziqi

LiZiqi is a popular food and country-life blogger who lives in the mountains of rural China. She makes impossibly beautiful videos and I have been following her YouTube channel for a couple of years. It occurred to me that you might enjoy a bit of serenity right now. In her most recent video she demonstrates the art of hand dyeing:



Previously: Riding a Horse to Find Magnolia Blossoms (I think this one is my favourite)

Monday, March 23, 2020

This Is Why We Must Wash Our Hands

"The virus that causes COVID-19 remains for several hours to days on surfaces and in aerosols, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found.

The study suggests that people may acquire the coronavirus through the air and after touching contaminated objects. Scientists discovered the virus is detectable for up to three hours in aerosols, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel."
Read more: ScienceDaily

The Great Toilet-Paper Panic of 1973

As people fight for toilet paper in the aisles of Costco, I'm experiencing deja vu. “You can laugh now,” said Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in 1973, “but there is an acute shortage of toilet paper.” There wasn’t— but it didn’t matter.



Via Everlasting Blort

Patience

Some music from Norah Jones to soothe us through these troubled times.

Tweet Of The Day


The World's Smallest Bird

The bee hummingbird is only found in Cuba. They lay their eggs in nests the size of a quarter. If I'd known about these little birds I would have made an effort to look for them when I've visited Cuba.



Via bookofjoe

The Tattoo Dragon

Chinese tattoo artist, Liu Wenlong, has developed a unique tattooing style that fuses his deep appreciation of traditional Chinese culture with modern tattoo design.


The Tattoo Dragon from Neocha on Vimeo.

More here

Via Everlasting Blort

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Sunday Links

Sticks in a cylindrical experiment at the Goodyear Polymer Center
at the University of Akron in Ohio, where Hunter King investigates the
engineering of birds’ nests. Credit:Andrew Spear for The New York Times

Their nests have been described as "disordered stick bombs" but are birds actually the best engineers?

Eyam plague: The village of the damned An entire village made the remarkable decision to quarantine itself in an heroic attempt to halt the spread of the Great Plague. This is the story of the villagers who refused to run.

This is amazing: Coalition of 5 Cheetahs Crossing Crocodile-Infested River

Do you feel like you need some comic relief? Here's a reading list for you. Two less contemporary books that made me laugh out loud years ago are Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis and A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

'It's a journey into slowness'. Swiss author and automotive historian Bernhard Brägger takes Lizzie, his Ford Model T on a trip through Europe in winter. Aeon Videos

Playlists for the pandemic

This is terrifying. If you don't want to be freaked out, don't read it. How the Coronavirus Could Take Over Your Body

Japanese Chef Has Filled Notebooks with Delectable Illustrations of All of His Meals for 32 Years Nice to look at.

Take a walk around Pompeii Via Everlasting Blort

Lovely! ARCHI/MAPS  Via 

Cargo Socks, they'll look nice with your cargo shorts.

How to Unmarry Your Wife After moving from a state that recognizes same-sex marriage to one that doesn’t, a couple’s marriage becomes a partnership, and they are suddenly forced into new roles.

10 Perfect Films to Watch While Stuck at Home 

This week's house envy is a dreamy Arts and Crafts island cottage  in Maine 

The Strange Sarcophagi of the Chachapoya 

40 unique places to stay in the UK that won't bankrupt you. We stayed at one of these properties (Eden Locke in Edinburgh) a couple of years ago and liked it very much.

TikTok in the time of quarantine As China enters its eighth week in quarantine, citizens across the country are seeking new ways to amuse themselves.

Does self-isolation have you feeling confined? Here are some travel books to help keep cabin fever at bay.

If you have a pessimistic bent you might be thinking about writing your own eulogy  Via Rusty

Corgi Butts

East Ended: Gentrification and graffiti in London’s east end

I hope you never have to do this but, if you have to, here it is: How to Trim Your Own Bangs

Music For Sunday Morning

Saturday, March 21, 2020

My Corona

Tweet Of The Day

Creating While Quarantined.

As people around the world continue to self-isolate during the coronavirus pandemic, many are looking for tips on how to avoid cabin fever. How about giving the Japanese art of tangerine peel carving a try?







More: if it's hip, it's here

See more videos on Yoshihiro Okada’s YouTube channel

Taste Testing A 50 Year Old Ham Dinner

Brave YouTuber Steve1989MREInfo tested a Vietnam War era C Ration fried ham dinner and lived to tell the tale.



Via FB pal Hal

Friday, March 20, 2020

Cats and Dominos

Extremely elaborate feeding method.

 

Via 3 Quarks Daily

Happy Friday!

Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Playing the Orchestra






The Next Thing We Should Do Is Wash Our Hands

Everybody Dragucise!

 Exercising to Rob Zombie's Dragula is the perfect activity if you're self-isolating because you wouldn't want anyone to see you doing it, would you?



Via perfect for roquefort cheese

Tweet Of The Day

Cats

Cats is a 1991 BBC documentary series by biologist, naturalist and TV presenter Roger Tabor. It explores the history of the domestic cat.



Via Boing Boing

Krazy Kat Gets the Spanish Flu

In George Herriman’s comic strip from 1918 Ignatz the mouse and Krazy Kat come down with the Spanish flu, which apparently can be contracted by dreaming of bull fights.

Image: Michael Tisserand, author of Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White
(Click for larger image)


More here