​Tim Berners-Lee

 
Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).Berners-Lee proposed an information management system on 12 March 1989, then implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet in mid-November. Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the continued development of the Web. He co-founded (with his wife-to-be Rosemary Leith) the World Wide Web Foundation. ...”

Richard Parkes Bonington

 
A Sea Piece, probably 1824

“This breezy painting of sailing boats in the Channel is alive with sea spray, grey waves, misty clouds and glimpses of blue. It is a spontaneous response to the restless play of sea and weather that looks as if it was painted on a boat – it puts you there so directly you can smell salt and hear seagulls. Richard Parkes Bonington lived and worked between two European art traditions. Born British, he moved to France at 14 and shook up French art with his robust, spontaneous eye so like those of his contemporaries Constable and Turner. By popularising that British freshness in France he helped pave the way for impressionism. But four years after making this painting he was dead, aged 25, from tuberculosis. This little seascape is part of the small deathless legacy of a doomed Romantic.”

Hauntings in the Imagination: New Books on Bluesman Robert Johnson - Greil Marcus

 
“... The blues singer and guitarist Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, in 1911, grew up in Memphis, and was fatally poisoned by a jealous husband during a performance at a juke joint near Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1938. He recorded twenty-nine of his own songs for the Vocalion label in San Antonio in 1936 and in Dallas in 1937. In 1938, with the blues musician Johnny Shines, he traversed most of the eastern part of the country, playing from St. Louis to Chicago to Detroit to Harlem. Later that year the producer John Hammond, who had celebrated his recordings in New Masses, knew Johnson had to perform at his historic ‘Spirituals to Swing’ concert at Carnegie Hall; learning of his death, Hammond played two of his songs on a phonograph on the stage. ...”

​Forms

 
“Audio and Video content created by the musician Forms. Forms is a London, UK based producer that aims to explore the imprecise beauty of the natural world through the medium of sound. ...”

Symbolism

 
Victor Vasnetsov, The Knight at the Crossroads, 1878

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through metaphorical images and language mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realism. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal. The works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s. In the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The term ‘symbolist’ was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, who invented the term to distinguish the Symbolists from the related Decadents of literature and of art. Distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism in art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism and Impressionism....”

 
Henri Fantin-Latour, By the Table, 1872, depicting: Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Léon Valade, Ernest d'Hervilly and Camille Pelletan (seated); Pierre Elzéar, Emile Blémont, and Jean Aicard (standing)

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - Steven Levy (1984)

 
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution is a book by Steven Levy about hacker culture. ... Levy describes the people, the machines, and the events that defined the Hacker Culture and the Hacker Ethic, from the early mainframe hackers at MIT, to the self-made hardware hackers and game hackers. Immediately following is a brief overview of the issues and ideas that are brought forward by Steven Levy's book, as well as a more detailed interpretation of each chapter of the book, mentioning some of the principal characters and events. ...”
 
The Mark I and other early computers are on display at Harvard. As a student, Peter Neumann had the run of the Mark IV on weekends.

“Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" - Jimmie Cox (1923)

 
“‘Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out‘ is a blues standard written by Jimmie Cox in 1923. It is written in a Vaudeville-blues style. The lyrics sung in the popular 1929 recording by Bessie Smith are told from the point of view of somebody who was once wealthy during the Prohibition era, reflect on the fleeting nature of material wealth and the friendships that come and go with it. Smith was the preeminent female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. Since her 1929 recording, the song has been interpreted by numerous musicians in a variety of styles. ... When he was an art student in the early 1960s, Eric Clapton was attracted to London's folk-music scene and the fingerpicking acoustic guitar-style of Big Bill Broonzy. ...”

Russia’s New Form of Organized Crime Is Menacing the World

 
“The screen goes blank. A message appears in crude, Google Translate English, advising that all your files have been encrypted — rendered unusable — and can be restored only if you pay a ransom. After some back and forth, you pay out in Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency, most likely to a Russian-based gang. There’s no choice: It’s cheaper and far quicker to pay up than to rebuild a computer system from scratch. To avoid further trouble or embarrassment, many victims don’t even notify the police. A few years ago, the ransom may have been a few hundred bucks. ...”

​Departing the ferry across the monolith of Lower Manhattan

 
“Born in Michigan in 1865, William Samuel Horton was a prolific Impressionist painter of many landscapes and water scenes, especially in Europe and his adopted country of France, where he died in 1936. Students League and National Academy of Design, left for Europe, and returned to New York for an unknown period of time in 1924, according to Cincinnati Art Galleries, Inc. ...”

​Discover the Stettheimer Dollhouse: The 12-Room Dollhouse Featuring Miniature, Original Modernist Art by Marcel Duchamp

 
“The Stettheimer Dollhouse has been wowing young New Yorkers since it entered the Museum of the City of New York’s collection in 1944. The luxuriously appointed, two-story, twelve-room house features tiny crystal chandeliers, trompe l’oeil panels, an itty bitty mah-jongg set, and a delicious-looking dessert assortment that would have driven Beatrix Potter’s Two Bad Mice wild. Its most astonishing feature, however, tends to go over its youngest fans’ heads — an art gallery filled with original modernist paintings, drawings, and sculptures by the likes of Marcel Duchamp, George Bellows, Gaston Lachaise, and Marguerite Zorach. ...”

​Hollywood blacklist

 
“The Hollywood blacklist was the colloquial term for what was in actuality a broader entertainment industry blacklist put in effect in the mid-20th century in the United States during the early years of the Cold War. The blacklist involved the practice of denying employment to entertainment industry professionals believed to be or to have been Communists or sympathizers. Not just actors, but screenwriters, directors, musicians, and other American entertainment professionals were barred from work by the studios. This was usually done on the basis of their membership in, alleged membership in, or even just sympathy with the Communist Party USA, or on the basis of their refusal to assist Congressional investigations into the party's activities. ...”
 
A "Hollywood 10" newspaper from the 2015 biopic Trumbo. The film follows Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) and the blacklist of other Hollywood artists amid the Red Scare in 1947.

​The American Pre-Raphaelites: Radical Realists

 
“In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Ruskin (1819–1900), the most influential art critic of the Victorian era, the National Gallery of Art will present more than 90 paintings, watercolors, and drawings created by American artists who were profoundly influenced by Ruskin’s call for a revolutionary change in the practice of art. ‘The American Pre-Raphaelites: Radical Realists’ includes a number of recently discovered works never before exhibited publicly. Ruskin’s rejection of traditional academic art and his plea for works that reflected a deep reverence for both the spiritual and scientific qualities of the natural world found a sympathetic audience in America among a group of like-minded artists, architects, scientists, critics, and collectors. ...”

2014 March: John Ruskin, 2021 February: Modern Painters (1843–1860)

Henry Farrer, “On Whitehead, Coast of Maine,” 1875, watercolor on paper

Various Artists: The Story of Jamaican Music: Tougher Than Tough

 
“A superlative introduction to the world of Jamaican music, Tougher Than Tough is a treasure trove of information, filled with unforgettable music. Across four discs and 95 songs, this set spans the entire history of the island's vibrant music scene, hitting all the major stylistic bases along the way, and rounding up many of Jamaica's greatest artists. It's evident that a great amount of thoughtful time and effort went into this package and, although collectors will howl at the many omissions and some of the selections, this set wasn't intended for them, but for a general audience interested in beginning to explore the music more deeply. ...”

Strat-O-Matic Baseball

 
Strat-O-Matic is a game company based in Glen Head, New York, that develops and publishes sports simulation games. ... Strat-O-Matic's statistical research and game development methods are implemented with the intent of replicating athletes' abilities as accurately as possible, giving the gamer the feel of making managerial decisions. ... In a Strat-O-Matic game, each athlete is represented by a player card, on which are printed various ratings and result tables for dice rolls. ...”

Dazzling Doubles for Compromised Skies

 
This map locates double stars in the northern and eastern sky. Click to enlarge.

“The sky is broken. For weeks now, Western and Canadian wildfires have released a pall of smoke that blankets both countries. July 8th was the last smoke-free night at my observing site in northeastern Minnesota. Daytime skies are generally pale blue, with nights starved of stars. Often, the limiting magnitude is 2 or 3. For many, smoke from wildfires has transformed summer nights, blotting out stars and familiar deep-sky sights. But through it all, double stars keep on shining. Because of constant smoke I've had to change up my observing from comets and deep-sky to brighter fare. Among the astronomical objects least affected by wildfires and haze are double stars. ...”

 
Stars are classified into spectral types according to temperature and the elements and molecules that dominate their spectra.

​Grupo de Orfeu

“The Geração de Orpheu (Orpheus's Generation) or Grupo de Orfeu were a Portuguese literary movement, largely responsible for the introduction of Modernism to the arts and letters of Portugal through their tri-monthly publication, Orpheu (magazine) [pt] (1915). Following the lead of other European vanguard movements of the early twentieth century, and inspired by the Futurist Vladimir Maiakovsky's urgings, the poets Fernando Pessoa, Mário de Sá-Carneiro and Almada Negreiros, and the painters Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso and Guilherme de Santa-Rita formed a journal of art and literature based in Lisbon's Baixa district, with the principal aim of agitating, subverting and scandalizing the Portuguese bourgeoisie and social conventions. ...”
Portugal Futurista, the art journal that published Campos' "Ultimatum" in 1917.

‘A hit man sent them.’ Police at the Capitol recount the horrors of Jan. 6 as the inquiry begins.

 
“One officer described how rioters attempted to gouge out his eye and called him a traitor as they sought to invade the Capitol. Another told of being smashed in a doorway and nearly crushed amid a ‘medieval’ battle with a pro-Trump mob as he heard guttural screams of pain from fellow officers. A third said he was beaten unconscious and stunned repeatedly with a Taser as he pleaded with his assailants, ‘I have kids.’ A fourth relayed how he was called a racist slur over and over again by intruders wearing ‘Make America Great Again’ garb. ... One by one, in excruciating detail, Sergeant Gonell and three other officers who faced off with the hordes that broke into the Capitol told Congress of the brutal violence, racism and hostility they suffered as a throng of angry rioters, acting in the name of President Donald J. Trump, beat, crushed and shocked them. ...”

Sylvia Plath’s Tarot Cards

 
“... Sylvia Plath’s Tarot cards, a 24th birthday present from her husband, poet Ted Hughes, just went for £151,200 in an auction at Sotheby’s. ... The auction house’s description indicates that a few of the cards were discolored —  evidence of use, as supported by Plath’s numerous references to Tarot in her journals. Recall Tarot’s appearance in 'Daddy,' her most widely known poem, and her identification with the Hanging Man card, in a poem of the same name. This century has seen her collection Ariel restored to its author’s intended order.  The original order is said to correspond quite closely to Tarot, with the first twenty-two poems symbolizing the cards of the Major Arcana. ...”

Manhattan Egos · Sonny Simmons (1969)

 
“This collection consists of recordings by avant-garde jazz musician Huey ‘Sonny’ Simmons. The first session from 1969 finds Simmons on alto saxophone and English horn paired with trumpeter and future wife Barbara Donald. Their playing style is influenced by the early free-jazz music of saxophonist John Coltrane and trumpeter Donald Ayler. On ‘Seven Dances of Salome,’ Simmons plays English horn, giving the music a Middle Eastern flavor. The second session from 1970 pairs Simmons with jazz violinist Michael White on four numbers. Simmons’ career went into decline in the 1970s, but rebounded in the 1990s. ...”

​The 1916 stunt that made Nathan’s Famous a Coney Island hot dog icon

 
Nathan’s expanded its menu by 1939 

“No summer visit to Coney Island is complete without a stop at Nathan’s Famous, the iconic boardwalk restaurant that offers everything from burgers to frog legs (really) but made its name back in 1916 selling delicious, cheap hot dogs. Yet the five cent frankfurters Polish immigrant Nathan Handwerker began hawking from a stand on the then-unfinished boardwalk wouldn’t have caught on—if not for a clever stunt he came up with to convince the crowds on Surf Avenue to give his hot dogs a try. ...”

​I will walk 500 miles … on an art trail along the Suffolk and Essex coasts

 
“... I’m at Kessingland Ness, a small spit of shingle on the Suffolk coast south of Lowestoft and I’m starting a long-distance walk, a real marathon. The plan is to walk the Suffolk and Essex coasts from Lowestoft to Tilbury, accompanying an arts project called Beach of Dreams that hopes to bring people together around walking, and start some discussion about what’s happening to our coasts. ... I’ve been talking and writing about long-distance walking for a long time, but not actually done much of it. Like many people during the pandemic, I wanted to get out on something significant, but given that challenges such as the Appalachian Trail or GR10 are off the agenda, I was thinking of the British coast, maybe that of Wales or south-west England. Then Ali Pretty, founder and artistic director of arts group Kinetika, suggested I accompany their walk and write a daily account. ...”

Was (Not Was) - What Up Dog? (1988)

 
“I’ve got to be the only twentysomething I know that’s this excited over Pick of the Litter 1980-2010, the new compilation by pop-funk band Was (Not Was). Quirky aficionados may know them for left-field, late-’80s hits like ‘Walk the Dinosaur’ and ‘Spy in the House of Love.’ Others may know them as the band that put producers Don Was and David Was on the map (they would, either separately or together, work on such albums as Cosmic Thing by The B-52’s, Nick of Time by Bonnie Raitt and Bob Dylan’s odd Under the Red Sky). But no matter how you know them, there’s little to deny their place as one of the funniest, funkiest bands that time almost forgot.The core of Was (Not Was) – David on keyboards, Don on bass and the dual soul vocals of Harry Bowens and Sweet Pea Atkinson – was as smooth, funky and soulful as they come. ...”
 

Colonialism In And Of Board Games

 

“It wasn’t until much later in my life that I started to see these biases and flawed representations pop up in games — having studied anthropology definitely pushed me in that direction and having the chance to discuss games at conventions and on social media really allowed me to start thinking more critically about themes like colonialism. Digging into this a little more, it’s fascinating to consider the way we engage with games and their representation of our world and our history. We can learn as we play — about values, about history, about ourselves. The intersection of these things is particularly relevant when considering games with thematic overtones of colonialism. What are the values we’re experiencing with games that represent this? Whose history are we encountering? ...”

The Holy Grail - Jack Spicer (1962)

The Holy Grail was originally published 50 years ago by White Rabbit Press. It is composed of seven sections, each containing seven poems. Changing narrators, shifting time periods, the author’s use of jokes and lapsus linguae and folk songs, all conspire to create what Spicer called ‘an uncomfortable music.’ His friend Robin Blaser said it was more like a ‘cubist painting where you can’t get through the fucking frame.’ Sit down with the book and listen to the recording of Spicer himself reading it aloud on PennSound. Now, do that over and over until you feel a timeworm in your chest. ...”

Watching my name go by - Graffiti Documentary (1976)

 
“In 1974 Norman Mailer wrote an essay for Esquire called ‘The Faith of Graffiti‘—a gripping and sympathetic investigation on the defacement of public and private property as an urban art movement of complex and fascinating depth. Mailer’s work eventually produced two collaborative pictorial books—The Faith of Graffiti and Watching My Name Go By. The beauty of tagging and graffiti art is almost taken for granted today, especially since artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat legitimized the genre to the art world in both its unlawful execution and its distinctive aesthetic, but Mailer was doing something new by recording the phenomenon as an organic outpouring of artistic expression, and this short 1976 documentary—also named ‘Watching My Name Go By’—is equally open-minded in its portrayal of graffiti artists and their critics. ...”

​The True Value of Gold

 
“Daniel Alves has seen it all, done it all. He has won league titles in three countries, picked up nine cups, conquered Europe with his club and South America with his country. He has 41 major honors to his name, officially making him the most decorated player in history. But still, when André Jardine asked him to take on one last job, his eyes lit up. Jardine, the manager of Brazil’s Olympic men’s soccer team, had framed his pitch smartly. ....”

​The Mournfulness of Cities

Edward Hopper, Hotel Window (1955)

“I am puzzled by the mournfulness of cities. I suppose I mean American cities mostly—dense and vertical and relatively sudden. All piled up in fullest possible distinction from surroundings, from our flat and grassy origins, the migratory blur from which the self, itself, would seem to have emerged into the emptiness, the kindergarten-landscape gap between the earth and sky. I’m puzzled, especially, by what seems to me the ease of it, the automatic, fundamental, even corny quality of mournfulness in cities, so built into us, so preadapted for somehow, that even camped out there on the savannah, long before we dreamed of cities, I imagine we should probably have had a premonition, dreamed the sound of lonely saxophones on fire escapes. What’s mourned is hard to say. Not that the mourner needs to know. It seems so basic. One refers to certain Edward Hopper paintings—people gazing out of windows right at sunset or late at night. They’ve no idea. ...”