Thibault Drutel is a French photographer and his “syMMetric subWay” photo series captures the architecture of a variety of underground train stations in Europe, including Germany (Hamburg, Berlin, and Munich), Belgium (Brussels), and Sweden (Stockholm).
As the name suggests, the shots are all symmetrical but also catch moving trains which add a lot of energy to the images. Check out the rest of the series on his website.
Resizabill lets you resize a $100 bill into something vertical via the browser window.
That’s how regular money goes digital! A dollar bill that resizes with your screen, warping familiar proportions. An adaptive design, digital currency, and inflation—all in one package.
I will say resizing your window horizontally (up and down) doesn’t work properly.
A free Arabic typeface called Lifta, named after the Palestinian village destroyed in the 1948 occupation:
Lifta is a bold protest typeface available in black and stencil versions […] it is a typeface that protests the erasure of Palestinian identity and the subjugation of their rights as they live under occupation. It is designed by Omaima Dajani who is from East Jerusalem and living under occupation today. The design above is dedicated to Palestinian refugees around the world […]
If you’re looking to make any protest posters in Arabic, this could be a cost-effective typeface to use.
Atlas Obscura covered a strange example of collective behaviour—thousands of people left dirty shoe prints in Vegas parking lots: Theories regarding the shoe mark tradition abound; some believe it brings good luck to casino-goers, while others attribute it to intoxicated patrons en route to their cars.
In 2017, I wrote about the Pizza Hut commercial starring Donald Trump and his ex-wife Ivana eating the new stuffed crust from the crust inwards. Today, I watched a UK advert for KFC (above) starring Ivana with a new husband (Ryan Stiles) who offered her a tower (no, not that kind of tower!)
I don’t have any other comments other than it’s wild that KFC and Pizza Hut used the couple to advertise their food.
I found this Are.na collection of plants that look like people by XX YY. Everything reminds me of her etc.
Just got an email from Pluto Books about a new book all about the weird and disturbing history of the cult of yoga: In Fascist Yoga, Stewart Home sweeps away the half-truths to tell a new origin story of the world’s first modern yogi – a Californian escapologist who added some Hindu fairy dust to gym and circus exercises.
For JSTOR Daily, H.M.A. Leow wrote about Cold War B-movies and how they often used “geographical misdirection” to trick audiences into thinking that they were filmed on location: Whether low-budget films or all-star productions, some American producers didn’t particularly care where their ostensibly Southeast Asian movies were set, as [Adam] Knee notices. But why the carelessness in their treatment of locales?
This scene came up in a Bluesky conversation last week and while looking for it on YouTube, I stumbled upon this LEGO re-enactment by Lego Movie Scenes.
I thought the Joker figure might have been from the Batman set from the 2019 DC Comics Super Heroes set but the torso doesn’t seem to match. If anyone can clarify, I’d appreciate it. Either way, enjoy!
John Hillding is the artist behind this skatepark 50 miles outside of Seattle, made to look like bacon and eggs in a frying pan, and Jenkem went to visit. According to Daily Hive, it’s part of a park that Grindline Skateparks built in 2015 and it took about four years to complete. There was an idea to have a ramp shaped like a spatula that lowered into the bacon but that was taken out before the final design.
Another fine data interactive from The Pudding looking at Asian American representation in Hollywood and how accurate it is1:
This project was prompted by the disheartening experiences we’ve had watching miscast characters in popular media, so we came into this project expecting more miscastings than not.
[…]
But we know how fragile this progress can be. In 2024, racial and gender diversity in Hollywood decreased for the first time in six years, part of a larger social regression. In a recent interview, Constance Wu said that she’s noticed that representation is becoming less important in casting. She said this could be a sign of people in Hollywood “reverting to limited imaginations of what story and characters could be.”
We’re worried about what we might be losing.
Dorothy Lu, who wrote the script and analysed the data for this interactive
Serious questions: in response to the current US administration’s fascist atrocities, what can the Democrats do to make significant changes to what’s happening right now and are they doing them?
I think these are important questions because as a supposed opposition, you should oppose beyond rhetoric. Words are immaterial when people are being disappeared, brutalised, and murdered.
And this isn’t a gotcha moment or an open call to dunk on them. If we get lost in talk as action, the latter doesn’t happen. There needs to be a political plan and following through on that plan because as elected officials, you’re there to do things to improve and maintain your constituency as part of the wider nation. Couching action in language and intellectualism means we’ll never make it out of systematic oppression.
And maybe that’s the goal (I personally think it is but I’m also a cynic without working political knowledge). But my concern is with mistreated people—mostly from marginalised groups—and what they need, not with upholding institutional values, traditions, codes, and conventions. Politics are for and about the citizens, not the few sitting in offices and meetings.
So, what’s it gonna be?
(Made by Nuno Tavares)
So apparently the font used in the ubiquitous “you wouldn’t steal a car” meme was actually pirated and everyone laughed at the irony but there’s a much bigger history of font piracy that goes beyond that which Linus Boman examined.
Copyright is obviously a thing but there’s something of a grey area when it comes to how to copy/resell fonts without direct permission from the creator.
Font related: a visual and oddly political history of the Wingdings font and Departure Mono: a free monospaced pixel font inspired by old command-line
I know the Swiss city of Basel via two connections: Roger Federer and FC Basel. But during a Champions League match, I remember the commentator pronouncing the team name different to how it was spelt. Rather than saying “baa-zul”, he said “baal”. Was it a classic case of British overpronounciation of European names? Apparently not, according to this BBC guide:
The German spelling is Basel, pronounced BAA-zuhl (-aa as in “father”, -uh as “a” in “ago”, stressed syllable in upper case).
Given that it is in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, one might expect the English pronunciation to be based on the German but, in fact, the English form is Basle and for the pronunciation we give the established anglicisation baal (-aa as in “father”).
This pronunciation is possibly based on the French spelling Bâle, which is also pronounced baal.
So which pronunciation should we use? Our usual recommendation for place names is to recommend the established anglicisation, if one exists.
And to think this was triggered by the same thing that pricked my ears up: a commentator’s pronunciation during a Champions League game between Manchester United and FC Basel.
A linguistic tidbit from my friend Kyri on Bluesky: Today I found out that the Greek word for corduroy (κοτλέ / kotlé) is borrowed from the French word côtelé (ribbed). But in Sweden, it simply known as ‘Manchester’.
Did you know that London doesn’t have a flag? Other global capitals have one but not London1 and Juan Castro-Varón, a proud Londoner, flag enthusiast and member of the Flag Institute
, decided to make one.
Juan discusses his inspiration on the flag’s website and it makes sense. Some might not like the modernist aesthetic or the colour choices (just because people are sick of red/white/blue flag supremacy in the West) but it’s representative of the city and maybe that’s all you need.
I also like the idea that the stripes can be recoloured to create flag variants, to represent London’s global community and its multicultural heritage, and to celebrate every Londoner who calls the city their home.
I think that’s an important touch given the multiculturalism of London that often becomes a footnote when talking about London—or a focal point for negative rhetoric.
What do you think? Let Juan know or leave a comment here.
On Death by John Keats (1814)I.
Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
And yet we think the greatest pain’s to die.II.
How strange it is that man on earth should roam,
And lead a life of woe, but not forsake
His rugged path; nor dare he view alone
His future doom which is but to awake.
George Wendt passed away yesterday. He was best known for his role as Norm Peterson in Cheers. Jason Kottke posted a supercut of every time he entered the bar. It’s 18 minutes long and the call-and-response between Norm, the people in the bar, and whoever got him a beer was really funny.
(If you’ve never watched Cheers, perhaps you’ll recognise him as Macauley Culkin’s dad in the video for Michael Jackson’s Black or White.)
Cheers related: Classic Frasier