CULTURE
Posts in "Culture"
Have you even given up, helplessly, on a Rubik’s Cube? What was meant to be a tool that helped students learn about space and design is now a competition to see who can finish it faster with their eyes closed. Love it or hate it (because you can’t complete it), the cube has become a staple of human culture. This is Erno Rubik, the man behind the legacy.
Mr. Rogers: Google Animated Doodle
Google’s stop-motion animation arrives like a welcome online balm to celebrate the 51st anniversary of Fred Rogers’s show.
More: the making of the doodle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuFow3MQXsQ
The Spanish City That Banned Cars
In Pontevedra, the usual soundtrack of a Spanish city has been replaced by the tweeting of birds and the chatter of humans
“Read Away” Your Overdue Book Fines At Los Angeles Libraries
Leilany Medina, 11, loves books so much that she’d like to become a librarian. But even she sometimes forgets to return books on time, especially if she hasn’t quite finished. And she’s racked up some late fines.
But local libraries are providing a way out for such book lovers, and creating new lures for other children, who haven’t caught the reading bug, by doing away with late fees, automatically signing up students for library cards through their schools and allowing them to “read away” their fines and fees.
The most recent move was a vote last week by Los Angeles County supervisors to end late fees for patrons under 21 at county-run libraries, effective immediately. That did not help Leilany because officials offered no amnesty for past fines.
So on Thursday, Leilany went to the East Los Angeles Library, a county facility, to read off $4 in late fees. Students can eliminate debt at a rate of $5 an hour under a program that took effect in June.
Boston Survives “Flowerbomb”
Commuters in Everett were greeted with an unusual pop of color at a Broadway bus stop this morning. Hit with a so-called “flower bomb,” the bus shelter had been drenched with garlands of red, orange, and yellow flowers, in a scene straight out of a Beyoncé photoshoot.
The “floral takeover,” which you can find at the School Street bus stop on Broadway Tuesday and Wednesday, is the handiwork of local florist Krissy Price, who says the flowers are meant to elevate a too-often under-celebrated mode of transportation.
The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries
… according to the Guardian.
In a new Taschen book, the photographer Massimo Listri travels around the world to some of the oldest libraries, revealing unique architecture
Header image courtesy Wikimedia
Notable women: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women who should be on banknotes
In the spirit of ‘Because of Her, We Can’, we visualise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women honoured on national material.
‘In the spirit of ‘Because of Her, We Can’, we visualise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women honoured on national material.
When acclaimed artist Gordon Andrews designed Australia’s vibrant series of new decimal banknotes in 1959, he wanted to break traditions of stiff patriarchal Prime Ministers or Australiana cliches, and instead, focus on the arts, the environment and architecture. In doing so, he made sure to give prominence women and to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
However, only one Indigenous woman exists on Australia’s banknotes.”
Mr. Rogers: “Radically Subversive”
Fred Rogers’s worldview, a kind of humanism that had roots in Rogers’s Christianity but expressed itself as a commitment to everyone’s dignity, is what helped many navigate the scariest events of childhood (RFK’s assassination, the Challenger shuttle explosion). And the power of that worldview, the film suggests, doesn’t stop when childhood ends.
Launching Today: “Atlas Of Utopias” – real-world examples by Transnational Institute
Worldwide, mayors are increasingly a progressive and fearless voice advancing bold agendas on climate change, welcoming refugees and trialling new forms of democratic participation. …
Can a group of cities really offer any fundamental solutions to a crisis created by the immense power of corporate capital?
To try and answer this question, the Transnational Institute in 2017 launched Transformative Cities, asking communities to share their stories of radical transformation, in particular in the areas of water, energy and housing. With hundreds of examples, these are now arrayed in an ‘Atlas of Utopias‘. http://transformativecities.org/atlas-of-utopias/
The Atlas of Utopias is a global gallery of inspiring community-led transformation in water, energy and housing. It features 32 communities from 19 countries working on radical solutions to our world’s systemic economic, social and ecological crises. http://transformativecities.org/atlas-of-utopias/
TNI also asks you to VOTE for your favorite of many examples, for an award to be announced June 06! More to come.
(Courtesy Peer 2 Peer Foundation, Transnational Institute (TNI). Thanks to TNI for header, post images.)
Living Culture: 120-Year-Old Sourdough Starter To Be Genetically Charted
84-year-old Ione Christensen of Whitehorse, Yukon, has had her starter for 60 years. She knows that it traveled with her grandfather in 1897.
CBC’s mention of Christensen’s starter caught the attention of Belgian baker Karl de Smedt, who works for the Puratos World Heritage Sourdough Library in St. Vith, Belgium.
Christensen is pleased by the attention her starter is receiving. “It’s a family pet, if you will.” Indeed, sourdough starters do require steady attention to be kept alive. Until fairly recently, they were crucial if anyone wanted fresh bread, which is why de Smedt described people in the past as “slaves to their sourdough,” needing to feed it every few hours. Modern yeast extraction has eliminated that need, but has paid the price in flavor.
Meanwhile, Christensen laughs at the fact that her starter’s fame might eclipse her own accomplishments. She was the first female mayor of Whitehorse in 1975, Commissioner of Yukon after that, a Canadian senator, and a recipient of the Order of Canada in 1994.
Profile photo by Artur Rutkowski via Unsplash
Academics Unpack Cuba’s Weekly Internet
A detailed look at Cuba’s ‘offline internet:” the weekly assembly, organisation, and distribution of ‘El Paquete Semenal‘.
Most Cubans have terrible access to the Internet — estimates suggest only 5-25% of the populace can regularly get online. The government made it a bit easier in recent years with paid wifi hotspots, but they require dough, and they’re super slow. So Cubans have instead, in the last decade, evolved a complex, massive sneakernet.
(Courtesy Boing Boing)
Previously on The Bubble:
DIY Inventions from Cuba: Necessity Is A Mother
and
Your Weekly Internet
Photo by Alexander Kunze on Unsplash