the next time someone asks what this country is like i’ll just send them this

-  Velký noční hlídač / Watchman

- author of the videomaping Milan Cais 

-photography ©ČTK,  ©David Peltán, MAFRA.

how do we get them to stop doing that

how do we get them to build something in between and project a mouth to complete the 👁️👄👁️

In the Mood for Love (2000)

UPS has reached an agreement with the Teamsters union to equip its iconic brown delivery trucks with air conditioning for the first time for new units.

The agreement, announced by UPS on Tuesday, comes as the delivery giant and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters negotiate the terms of a new contract for more than 330,000 U.S. employees. (source)

Unions work, unionize.

They only just now got air conditioners?!?!?!

Yeah it’s a huge win. Those trucks are death traps on a good day. A bunch of drivers died and more got severely ill last year from heat stroke. The temperature in the back of those vans is usually 10 degrees hotter than outside. It’s terrible, and I’m so proud of my union for how harshly they’re negotiating right now. We’ve got a bunch of smaller consessions already but this one was big.

This round of negotiations is difficult. The UPS Overlords are trying very hard to keep their billions of dollars in three pockets instead of spreading the wealth we (the workers) earned for them during the pandemic’s influx of home delivery. They’re trying to give us as little as possible and spinning the news articles to make it look like they’re super generous. Meanwhile almost everyone in my warehouse is on food stamps cuz we aren’t paid shit.

The UPS Teamsters Union are currently voting on whether or not to go on strike in August, so prepare for that. Stock up on essential supplies, just in case. We’ll let everyone know how to support us when the time comes.

This job is my first time being part of a union and I never wanna go back to not having one. It’s amazing to have so much fighting power.

🎶 Solidarity Forever!! 🎶

We gotta take care of each other. It’s the only way to make the world better.

Bureau, 1750-70s, Russia.

Everyone gets “The 90s” look wrong so let’s fix it

If you weren’t here for part one, lemme sum it up real fast:

Okay, all up to speed? We’re being served 80s throwback stuff with the serial numbers scratched off, re-labeled as yo totally 90s. What we’ve got now isn’t completely wrong, but I’m telling you, there’s so much gold left unmined.

As we saw in part one with Memphis Milano, these things get messy. Trends don’t start and end neatly every ten years. The first wave of 90s throwback attempts focused on the early part of the decade, and nobody since really pushed to represent the other seven years. Well, if you really wanna do something, I guess you gotta do it yourself.

I have suggestions. Get your flannel ready, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

Analog Grunge

SURRRRRRRGE or uh, Grunge, is probably the look that defines the decade best. The big kickoff point here is Nirvana - after a shiny pop-dominated music scene in the 80s, Nevermind was like a breath of fresh smog.

Your design has to look like it survived a nuclear blast, then was run over by your parents’ Buick a couple of times.

If there’s a Comic Sans for the 90s, it’s “distressed typewriter font.” Seriously, it’s mandatory. When I pulled images for this post I could not escape typewriter fonts. I don’t think you couldn’t call yourself a respectable designer without it. Just look at how much mileage old-timey typewriters and label makers got:

Hell, it’s the giant X in The X Files!

I think another component to Grunge is sort of an anti-digital, pro-analog message. My pet theory is home computers went from being a semi-common novelty in 1990 to an essential gotta-have-it purchase in every American home by ‘99. Desktop publishing apps made it almost too easy to make pixel-perfect, clean, uniform designs. Digital photography and scanners meant you could now publish full color photographs with ease.

But digital perfection is the enemy of Grunge. Analog means authenticity.

So you had a whole gaggle of designers running in the other direction. Sure you could use a computer, but your work absolutely had to look like it didn’t come from one. As much as possible, incorporate hand-drawn artwork, scribbles, dust and splotches. Write text with chicken scratch if you have to. As much as you could make your multimillion dollar ad campaign look like it came from the margins of some high schoolers’ math homework, the better.

Factory Pomo

Not everyone was running away from digital, though. Many designers were embracing computer apps - and I think that’s where Factory Pomo first came into being. Coined by designer Froyo Tam (that’s their logo up above!) Factory Pomo is one of those things that once you see an example, you can’t stop seeing it.

Want your logo to look futuristic and modern? Stick it in a circle and put some triangles around. Invert half the colors, then another half.

Max Krieger has a great writeup on the probable inflection point: Tomorrowland. As the story goes, Tomorrowland at Disney - the part of the park meant to look like it’s from the future - would very quickly look very outdated each time they tried to update it. Instead, in 1994 they decided to own being outdated. They came up with a ridiculously fun “timeless” futuristic look, mixing industrial design with Jules Verne. Factory Pomo’s signature was all over the blueprints.

The look quickly escaped the theme park and was especially prevalent in the booming mid 90s home computer market. It’s the Packard Bell cyborg, it’s the logo in Video Toaster. If you caught that The X Files logo earlier is both Factory Pomo with the tall type and X in a ring AND Grunge with the typewriter X in the background, you win 5 bonus Pogs. 

And it’s a stretch, but one could draw a line between Factory Pomo’s inverted black and whites and the Ska movement’s two-tone checkerboards. Maybe. Possibly. I’d have to call Tony Hawk to double check. 

Back to Froyo Tam for a second, but that bit about them coining the term? That was in 2017. “Factory Pomo” didn’t have a name for like… 25 years. How’s that possible, you may wonder? Weren’t designers following a defined style? Well, yes and no. I think people were designing stuff to look a certain way, but it’s less a game of “this is what the aesthetic looks like” and more like a game of telephone.

If you do an architecture tour in a major city, you’ll learn that every building and skyscraper is classified to a specific architectural movement. Every building that is but ones built in the last 20-30 years. Newer buildings have to wait a few decades for official classification. Historians need time and perspective to figure out what emerging trends in architecture are going on, whose work influenced who, that sort of thing.

Designing a logo for Slim Jims or Cherry Coke takes considerably less time than constructing a skyscraper, but I think the same principle holds true. It’s really difficult to tell what’s a trend and what’s a fad when you’re living in the moment. I couldn’t tell you what’s the defining aesthetic for the 2020s right now. It’ll be obvious in 2053, but right now, no clue.

Enough time has passed between the nineties and today that we can pick this stuff apart easily. Maybe if you’re lucky, you can be the first to classify these design movements, too.

Working on a part three! I’ll look into a few other trends and address the big question– Is the Y2K aesthetic actually a 90s thing? More to come.

*A ton of these examples above are from the CARI Institute, which you should totally check out, they’ve been cataloging this stuff for years.

- Morrigan Aensland, Tatsunoko vs Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars [Wii] (Capcom)

Its hard to go it alone but it’s what I must do

St Wendreda is a 14th-century church famous for its “angel roof”, featuring 120 carved figures of martyrs, apostles, saints, and angels. The ornaments were created either at the end of the 15th century or in the first quarter of the 16th century.

March, Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire

Thinking about 13 Latvias again

I genuinely belive this is the funniest fucking thing we will ever get from reddit

Original thread

Sourced report

Reminder that BetterHelp doesn't give a fuck about their patients and is actually a fucking terrible way to get therapy.

Please find other alternatives for BH because they're ATROCIOUS.

Close faced helmet, 1550-55, Western Europe.