How Popular Science, in 1925, thought the world was going to be like in 1950.
click on picture or here to see it bigger(via colorexplorer, jennul, vintagefuture, robotindisguise)
Instructional calligraphic piece in naskh script by the Ottoman calligrapher Muhammad Shafiq, c. 1852 or 1853. *
(via bintbattuta)
When design kills: The criminalization of walking
“Students of urban planning and design talk about a phenomenon known as “desire lines.” In French, the language of origin for the expression, it’s “chemins du désir.” Paths of desire. Some people call them “intention lines.”
Whatever words you use, they are a phenomenon recognizable to anyone. They are the paths traced along the ground by living creatures trying to get from one point to another. The ribbons of dirt worn in the grass.
For centuries, designers and planners have used these paths to determine where they would put the paved streets of their cities, or the walking paths of their campuses and parks…
You can see desire lines worn into the surface of grass. You cannot see them on asphalt.”
- Ronald Flexner, Ink Bubble Drawings
The Elements of the House. Poem written by Raimund Abraham in New York, 1972
via @a_small_lab + dpr-barcelona
“The simplest and most radical thing that Ridley Scott did with Blade Runner was to put urban archeology in the frame. It hadn’t been obvious to mainstream American science fiction that cities are like compost heaps — just layers and layers of stuff. In cities, the past and the present and the future can all be totally adjacent. In Europe, that’s just life — it’s not science fiction, it’s not fantasy. But in American science fiction, the city in the future was always brand-new, every square inch of it.”
— William Gibson, on Blade Runner
Oh, delightful! To cut open the leaves, to inhale the fragrance of the scarcely dry paper, to examine the type to see who is the printer (which is some clue to the value that is set upon the work), to launch out into regions of thought and invention never trod till now, and to explore characters that never met a human eye before — this is a luxury worth sacrificing a dinner-party, or a few hours of a spare morning to.William Hazlitt, The Mirror of Literature
Reverse: A Lynching
Return the tree, the moon, the naked man Hanging from the indifferent branch
Return blood to his brain, breath to his heart
Reunite the neck with the bridge of his body
Untie the knot, undo the noose
Return the kicking feet to ground
Unwhisper the word jesus
Rejoin his penis with his loins
Resheathe the knife Regird the calfskin belt through trouser loops
Refasten the brass buckle
Untangle the spitting men from the mob
Unsay the word nigger
Release the firer’s finger from its trigger
Return the revolver to its quiet holster
Return the man to his home
Unwidow his wife
Unbreak the window
Unkiss the crucifix of her necklace
Unsay Hide the children in the back, his last words
Repeal the wild bell of his heart
Reseat his family at the table over supper
Relace their fingers in prayer, unbless the bread
Rescind the savagery of men
Return them from animal to human, reborn in the long run
Backward to the purring pickup
Reignite the Ford’s engine, its burning headlights
Retreat down the dirt road, tires speeding
Backward into rising dust
Backward past cornfields, past the night floating moths
Rescind the whiskey from the guts
Unswallowed, unswigged, the tongue unstung
Rehouse the flask in the field coat’s interior pocket
Unbare the teeth, unwhet the appetite
Return the howl to its wolf
Return the shovel to the barn, the rope to the horse’s stable
Resurrect the dark from its heart housed in terror
Reenter the night through its door of mercy
- Ansel Elkins
Bubble Club - The Goddess
Sometimes, you can keep going on for days, months, years feeling like you’re having a great time. It’s all very precise and planned and expected, but it’s good.
Until one day, you hear the beat of drums far away. You start listening more closely as the beats get louder. You like the beat, you thump your feet to it. The beats get louder and louder until it feels like they’re coming from within you. Whether your body motion is producing the beat, or the beat making your body move, is no longer certain. All you know is that you’re not where you were anymore. The room with the white walls and grey floor is gone. You’ve escaped. And it’s a good feeling. It’s a warm feeling. It’s better than what you’ve ever felt. It’s freedom. Even if for only six minutes of your mundane life, it’s flight.
Nothing is more delightful than to confuse and upset people. People one doesn’t like. What’s the use of giving them explanations that are merely food for curiosity? The truth is that people love nothing but themselves and their little possessions, their income, their dog. This state of affairs derives from a false conception of property. If one is poor in spirit, one possesses a sure and indomitable intelligence, a savage logic, a point of view that can not be shaken. Try to be empty and fill your brain cells with a petty happiness. Always destroy what you have in you. On random walks. Then you will be able to understand many things. You are not more intelligent than we, and we are not more intelligent than you.Tristan Tzara
Elbow / Grace Under Pressure
“We still believe in love, so fuck you…”
(Source: kateoplis)
Colonial Ruins. Lahore. July 2010.
