Meanwhile #034
The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
This is an old edition of Meanwhile from an inferior, more simian newsletter platform that has unhelpfully severed all the hyperlinks. It’s included here in the archive simply for sake of completion.
Eagle versus drone
Scotland Yard is interested in training eagles to take down drones. This is kind of cool, and kind of indicative of the wild frontier madness going on just above our heads. Couriering, film-making, burgling, spying, warmongering, drug-dealing – is there anything drones can't be used for?
Shorts
Grenoble is currently home to eight short story vending machines. You can select one, three or five minute reads, printed on the spot. A most splendid idea – more of this sort of thing please.
Pathé on design
How were things like Vogue, Ordnance Survey maps and neon signs made fifty-odd years ago? We Made This have gathered together some of the best design videos from the British Pathé archive, so that they might push delightful answers to these questions into your eyes.
Inside Bang & Olufsen
“The company has a meticulous approach to prototyping. Designers often mock up designs in wood, cardboard, foam, cloth and even Lego blocks during development. … They test audio fidelity in the Cube, an electroacoustic measuring facility built in 1980. The “Torture Chamber” brutally tests the durability of products by subjecting them to extreme temperatures and vibrations. Designers and engineers even use beakers of sour sweat and alkaline sweat to see how devices react to the oils on human hands.”
How many Lego Stormtroopers exist?
Short answer: one billion.
The bigger Picturehouse
A look at how Picturehouse Cinemas is getting the most out of rescued and redeveloped architecture, and making going to the pictures an enjoyable experience again. Many moons ago, I worked in York's City Screen, itself built into the shell of an old printing press. Fantastic building, arguably the heart of culture in the city (and so much more than the usual “sweet shop with a video-screen attached”, as Mark Kermode puts it).
Book covers of note
You already know about the Casual Optimist's excellent monthly round-up of the best new book covers, don't you? Of course you do. Good good.
Why are you visiting the MoMA website today?
A fascinating insight into how art, research and education work on the web, who it's for and how they find it.
The complete works of Lovecraft in text and audio
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
How to survive a global disaster
“Ideally you’d want to be somewhere in Kent.”
That is all.