Morning Linkage (Jan 22)

Transportation

What is it about bikes with squared off bits and pieces? Looking like some­thing made out of expen­sive can­dy box­es, the Mars.

Top Speed is either in on the joke or plen­ty dumb. This steam motor­cy­cle with a Piaggo look­ing front end is rad. (Note the Worth100 watermark.)

Bio-diesel motor­cy­cle with inter­est­ing stream­lin­er styling. Click on Metalback.

Who wants a jet pack? Not me. I want a Puffin, NASA’s sin­gle per­son flight pod. I like the expla­na­tion of the name as well.

Failing that I’ll look back in time and take this. Amphibious side­car?

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Science

Oceans of liq­uid dia­monds, with sol­id dia­mond ice bergs? Best pos­si­ble sci­ence fic­tion world award win­ner for sure. Except that it could be very real.

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Culture and Society

I know that a num­ber of you saw the Burlesque Nutcracker this year, or watched “A Wink and A Smile”, the doc­u­men­tary about the Seattle bur­lesque scene. (Streamable on Netflix)  The New York scene is high­light­ed in this Coilhouse arti­cle that touch­es on the past, present and future of bur­lesque. NSFW

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Art, Image, Design

Not exact­ly a zom­bie proof shel­ter but it does deal with mon­sters wear­ing sheets. A demo of the Daily Shelter. 5 year olds aren’t the only ones who will want one.

Many of us are book fiends. Susan B. for­ward­ed me a link to this book about books. Or more pre­cise­ly a book about how peo­ple store their books. The idea of hang­ing about in a bosun’s chair while brows­ing my library is very appealing.

From Coronet mag­a­zine, Sept 1949. Beautiful black and white por­traits of Americans. The cap­tions are cringe wor­thy and the pho­tog­ra­phers uncred­it­ed but the images are pre­cious. Nothing is perfect.

Gustaf Tenggren worked first for Disney but left to pur­sue his own path. His illus­tra­tions of fairy tales helped set the tone for pic­ture books of the 30’s and 40’s. There are tons of exam­ples here, as well as a thought­ful com­men­tary on his devel­op­ing his own style after leav­ing Disney.

TGIF dar­lings.