Penn Station, Newark, 1935
via Édouard Yvess
The Hand of God (Paolo Sorrentino, 2021)
Notes
A running collection of things I’ve found interesting, well-made, or worth spreading—mostly from art, design, tech, photography, and film, with the occasional thought or two of my own.
Japan is littered with vending machines, always beaming, always ready to (mostly) quench your thirst, or appetite for pretty much anything you can think of. And not just in the cities – I once came across one, very conveniently, halfway up the hill at the Fushimi Inari-Taisha.
The photo above is by Eiji Ohashi, who has been photographing the lonely-looking machines – here's
part one, part two, part three and part four.
Navajo riders in the Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, 1904, by Edward Curtis.
The Green Knight (David Lowery, 2021)
The Dubai Frame.
Photo by Bachir Moukarzel.
Sunday afternoon at the country store, Gordonton, North Carolina, 1939. Photograph by Dorothea Lange of the "Migrant Mother" fame.
Image courtesy of Library of Congress. Here's a colorised version.
Narrow Margin (Peter Hyams, 1990)
Kubrick reportedly drew inspiration for Barry Lyndon's soft, warm, painting-like candlelight scenes from realist painters Adolph Menzel, author of the above "Frederick the Great Playing the Flute at Sanssouci" or "The Flute Concert", painted in 1852, and Petrus van Schendel, who's work is very, very candlelit.
"Man Still Watering Lawn" by Ed Templeton, 2021
(See also: "Man Waters Lawn, Suburbia")
via Dazed
Salome, a beautiful, voluptuous typeface from Atipo.
New York, Franco Fontana, 1986
via domus
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974)
Her (Spike Jonze, 2013)
See this odd-looking thing on top of the frontmost pillars in this 1858 photograph of the ruins of Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens? Paul Cooper does some detective work in this Twitter thread to find out what it is.
Illustrator Klaus Klemmerz for Raymond Chandler's "The Long Goodbye".
via This Isn't Happyness
The year of garbage internet trends.
It is fascinating to trace the origins of these glitches of nothingness: inconsequential tweets that turned into inconsequential TikToks that turned into inconsequential news articles that somehow, suddenly seemed more consequential than anything else that day.
Nodding in agreement here. I've always watched these things mostly from the sidelines and lately, even the fads barely justify being called fads We seem to have collectively become so foggy and jaded and just so very done with this, whatever this is, that these sorts of cheap thrills have become the thing du jour because it’s the most effort we’re able to make. We just can't even anymore.
old man shaking his head in disappointment at the cloud.jpg
via Pixel Envy
Going fast in the '70s, Mündi st. Tallinn, unknown photographer.
via Retro Tallinn
L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)
An art installation by Antti Laitinen.
via reddit
A History of MTV idents
From It's Nice That comes A brief history of MTV IDs and the impact they’ve had on the creative world, a collection of the short animations of the iconic MTV logo shown in between shows. A trip down memory lane, especially for those of us who can remember the M in MTV being for Music.
The Panic in Neelde Park (Jerry Schatzberg, 1971)
Noted, November 2021
Collected bits and pieces I've noticed this month.
The text K is reciting for his baseline check in Blade Runner 2049 (“interlinked, within cells interlinked”), is from a 999 line poem/novel “Pale Fire” by Vladimir Nabokov.
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Tom Whitwell published the 2021 issue of his annual 52 things learned this year list.
via Kottke
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In “Why a toaster from 1949 is still smarter than any sold today”, Sean Hollister of The Verge profiles a toaster with some super clever and actually smart design choices. This reminded me of “How Not To Make Coffee” by Albert Burneko, on how the pursuit of making everyday things “smarter” and “technologically superior”, often ends up making everything worse. Much worse.
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Related to the above, “The worst gadgets we’ve ever touched”, also from The Verge.
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From The New Yorker, on the difficulty and very long timelines of getting to nuclear fusion: “Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?”.
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Related, on the dirty dirty business mining cobalt for batteries in The Democratic Republic of Congo: “A Power Struggle Over Cobalt Rattles the Clean Energy Revolution”.
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Also related, on the consequences of years and years of nickel mining and neglect in Norilsk: “In the Russian Arctic, One of the Most Polluted Places on Earth”.
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On a happier note, quote from a GQ interview with Jason Sudekis of (lately) Ted Lasso fame:
“There’s a great Michael J. Fox quote,” Sudeikis told me later, trying to explain the particular brand of wary optimism that he carries around with him, and that he ended up making a show about: “ ‘Don’t assume the worst thing’s going to happen, because, on the off chance it does, you’ll have lived through it twice.’ So…why not do the inverse?”
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Jeremy Keith on the widespread tracking of users on the web that many regard as acceptable simply because it’s widespread:
“I’ve been reading the excellent Design For Safety by Eva PenzeyMoog . There was a line that really stood out to me:
The idea that it’s alright to do whatever unethical thing is currently the industry norm is widespread in tech, and dangerous.“
via CSS Tricks
Who Saw Her Die? (Aldo Lado, 1972)