May 20, 2024
The Polish School of Posters refers to a highly influential artistic movement that emerged in Poland after World War II, primarily from the 1950s through the 1980s, characterized by its unique graphic design style, particularly in the realm of poster art.
Despite the restrictions of the communist regime, Polish poster artists enjoyed a surprising degree of creative liberty compared to other art forms. They often used surreal, abstract, and metaphorical illustrations to convey complex ideas and emotions, and many posters served as subtle critiques of the political and social realities of the time. Posters featured vivid colors, strong contrasts, and simplified forms to create eye-catching, impactful designs. Distinctive, expressive lettering was hand-drawn and integrated into the overall composition.
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April 19, 2024
The Mexican filter is a yellow-colored or sepia filter that is sometimes employed in films and television productions to visually represent scenes set in Mexico, as well as other Latin American and South Asian countries. It has been criticized for tending to wash out the faces of people with darker skin, and for stereotyping the countries it depicts. Notable examples of Mexican filter use include: ‘Traffic’ (2000), ‘Breaking Bad’ (2008), ‘Extraction’ (2020), ‘Saw X’ (2023).
The use of yellow color filters for Mexico began around 2000, when technical advancements in film-making allowed the easier use of color filters. Traditionally used to convey a sense of heat and aridity, the use of yellow color filters for Mexico eventually became a trope. It has been disputed that temperature is a good justification for using the Mexican filter given that hot cities in the United States are rarely if ever depicted with yellow filters.
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April 4, 2024
The Hum is a name often given to widespread reports of a persistent and invasive low-frequency humming, rumbling, or droning noise audible to many but not all people. Hums have been reported all over the world. They are sometimes named according to the locality where the problem has been particularly publicized, such as the ‘Taos Hum’ in New Mexico and the ‘Windsor Hum’ in Ontario.
The Hum does not appear to be a single phenomenon. Different causes have been attributed, including local mechanical sources, often from industrial plants, as well as manifestations of tinnitus or other biological auditory effects.
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March 19, 2024
In literary and historical analysis, presentism is a term for the introduction of present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Some modern historians seek to avoid presentism in their work because they consider it a form of cultural bias, and believe it creates a distorted understanding of their subject matter. The practice of presentism is regarded by some as a common fallacy when writing about the past.
The debate surrounding presentism in historical analysis is ongoing, with some arguing that completely divorcing moral judgments from historical inquiry may lead to a relativistic approach that fails to acknowledge the universal nature of certain moral principles. Balancing historical context with ethical considerations remains a challenge for historians and philosophers alike.
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February 29, 2024
The Liz Truss Lettuce was a 2022 media stunt featuring a livestream of an iceberg lettuce to satirize the brief tenure of British Prime Minister Liz Truss, symbolically competing with her to see which would “last” longer. The lettuce was declared “victorious” when Truss resigned after just 45 days.
The prank started on October 14th when British tabloid newspaper the ‘Daily Star’ began a livestream of an iceberg lettuce next to a framed photograph of Truss, who was appointed prime minister the previous month. This act followed an opinion piece in ‘The Economist’ that compared the expected brevity of her premiership to the shelf life of a head of lettuce. With the October 2022 United Kingdom government crisis occurring weeks into her tenure, many political commentators opined that Truss’s resignation was imminent. She announced her resignation on October 20th, before the lettuce had wilted.
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February 28, 2024
The mango cult was the worship of mangoes in China after Mao gave a box of mangoes, given to him by the Pakistani Foreign Minister, to workers at Tsinghua University in 1968. Instead of being eaten, the mangoes were preserved in formaldehyde, or sealed in wax for veneration.
One dentist from Fulin, Dr. Han Guangdi, saw the mango and said it was nothing special and looked just like sweet potato. He was put on trial for malicious slander, found guilty, paraded publicly throughout the town, and then executed with one shot to the head. Mangoes are now common in China, and are seen as a common consumer good.
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February 13, 2024
In urban planning, Brusselization is ‘the indiscriminate and careless introduction of modern high-rise buildings into gentrified neighborhoods’ and has become a byword for ‘haphazard urban development and redevelopment.’
The notion applies to anywhere whose development follows the pattern of the uncontrolled development of Brussels in the 1960s and 1970s, that resulted from a lack of zoning regulations and the city authorities’ laissez-faire approach to city planning.
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December 13, 2023
Muda [moo-duh] is a Japanese word meaning ‘futility,’ ‘uselessness,’ or ‘wastefulness,’ and is a key concept in lean process thinking such as in the Toyota Production System (TPS), denoting one of three types of deviation from optimal allocation of resources. The other types are known by the Japanese terms ‘mura’ (‘unevenness’) and ‘muri’ (‘overload’). Waste in this context refers to the wasting of time or resources rather than wasteful by-products.
From an end-customer’s point of view, value-added work is any activity that produces goods or provides a service for which a customer is willing to pay; muda is any constraint or impediment that causes waste to occur.
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August 6, 2023
The Jewish-American patronage of Chinese restaurants became prominent in the 20th century, especially among Jewish New Yorkers. It has received attention as a paradoxical form of assimilation by embracing an unfamiliar cuisine that eased the consumption of non-kosher foods.
Factors include the relative absence of dairy products compared to European cuisines, concern over German and Italian antisemitic regimes in the 1930s and the proximity of Jewish and Chinese immigrants to each other in New York City.
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May 19, 2023
Balconing is the name given in Spain to the act of jumping into a swimming pool from a balcony or falling from height while climbing from one balcony to another, performed by foreign tourists during holidays. The term was formed through a combination of the Spanish-language word balcón (‘balcony’) and the English-language suffix ‘-ing,’ in reference to the origin of most practitioners.
In 2010 and 2011, a spate of injuries and deaths attributed by the Spanish press to ‘balconing’ occurred among tourists in the Balearic Islands (including Mallorca and Ibiza). Videos of people jumping into pools from balconies were posted on video sharing websites such as YouTube, which were alleged to have played a role in the spread of the phenomenon. A similar phenomenon has been described in college-related events in the United States.
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May 16, 2023
Kudzu [kuhd·zoo] (also called Japanese arrowroot or Chinese arrowroot) is a group of climbing, coiling, and trailing deciduous perennial vines native to much of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and some Pacific islands, but invasive in many parts of the world, primarily North America.
The vine densely climbs over other plants and trees and grows so rapidly that it smothers and kills them by blocking most of the sunlight and taking root space. The plants are in the genus Pueraria, in the pea family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae. Kudzu is edible, but often sprayed with herbicides.
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May 11, 2023
Plate smashing is a Greek custom involving the intentional smashing of plates or glasses during celebratory occasions. While it occurs more rarely today, it continues to be seen on certain occasions, such as weddings, although plaster plates are more likely to be used. The custom probably derives from an ancient practice of ritually ‘killing’ plates on mourning occasions, as a means of dealing with loss.
Breaking plates may also be related to the ancient practice of conspicuous consumption, a display of one’s wealth, as plates or glasses are thrown into a fireplace following a banquet instead of being washed and reused. 1969, the autocratic military dictatorship of Georgios Papadopoulos, banned plate smashing. Another modern variation on the custom is for diners at small Greek restaurants or tavernas to buy trays of flowers that they can throw at singers and each other.
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