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Radio Rex (1922), Elmwood Button Co., Stratford, Conn. "Radio Rex was the first commercial toy to respond to voice commands. Produced in 1922 by the Elmwood Button Co., Radio Rex predates computers by more than 20 years. Rex is a brown bulldog made of celluloid and metal that responds to its name by leaping out of its house. The dog is controlled by a spring that is held in check by an electromagnet. The electromagnet is sensitive to sound patterns containing acoustic energy around 500 Hz, such as the vowel in "Rex." The acoustic trigger interrupts the current to the electromagnet allowing the spring to propel Rex out of its house." – Toys That Have a Voice, by Judith Markowitz, SpeechTechMag.

"The little toy called "Radio Rex" is familiar to everybody. The toy dog that comes out of his little kennel when you speak to him does not really work by radio, but he does exemplify a prophecy of radio. Anyone who feels like it can build into his house, tomorrow, a radio device, for example, that will open a door if you speak to it. Set this device for the words "open sesame" and you can emulate the master of the forty thieves." – Will Radio Do Our Housework?, Popular Radio, April 1924 (p.358).

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the cognitive dissonance from people who want the products of modern medicine but get weird about animal research. like im sorry but this is necessary for the survival of the society we currently live in. and the scientists who work on these things are not evil cackling psychopaths. anyone you talk to in animal research has incredibly complex feelings about their work and incredibly complex relationships to the animals in their care. there are regulations and oversight and penalties in place to make the work as humane as possible and scientists are overwhelmingly the ones enforcing and advocating for better care.

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“Though nearly every generation believes it’s living through the end times, there has never been a great civilizational collapse from which we didn’t return. Instead, there has been only the long road of transformation, each generation handing off its unfinished projects to the next.”

Annalee Newitz, Four Lost Cities: A secret history of the urban age

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"Feed birds during the winter" - vintage matchbox label (USSR, 1980s)

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when there’s an old photograph, AND the guy in it is really old, it’s like, wow, that guy is super old

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Balconies at Park View House in Camden, London

Park View House was formerly known as Cecil Rhodes House until 2021 when it was officially renamed Park View House. Before that, in the 1980s, there had been an attempt to rename it Robert Mugabe House. The lesson here is that it is probably safer for a local authority not to name a building after a person.

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the fact that walls get dusty is ridiculous. you're vertical. act like it.

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Workshop interior, by Joseph Garibaldi (1863–1941)

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Edward Hopper, Approaching a City, 1946. Oil on canvas.

Travel is a recurring theme in Edward Hopper’s art. Actively seeking commonplace subjects, he often gave more significance to the journey than to the destination. “To me,” Hopper wrote, “the most important thing is the sense of going on.” Such is the arrested, lonely feeling of Approaching a City. Characteristically, Hopper did not reveal what lay ahead, and in referring to the work, the painter said he wanted to evoke the “interest, curiosity, (and) fear” that one experiences when entering or leaving a city.

Ultimately, Approaching a City conveys a paradox of contemporary life. The unseen traveler of the image is caught in a curious limbo and isolation between city and country. The railroad made faraway places accessible to ordinary people, but it also made those places less distinctive. Hopper, by asserting the anonymity of the place and not revealing the train’s destination, suggests a future that is at once both predictable and unknown.

Photo: Whitney Museum of American Art Text: Philips Collection

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I found this picture very striking, and was then saddened to read that the artist had such a short life.

Caption from an exhibition curated by Anoushka Alexander-Rose currently displayed at the German Historical Institute London

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“So here’s the position we’re in: space settlement isn’t going to eliminate scarcity or make us wise or save the environment. Even if it could, the technological and scientific barriers to doing it safely in the near term are enormous and underappreciated. Even if we had the technology, the legal structures right now would likely produce a conflict as parties scramble for turf. If we’re really unlucky, international competition might force pointless geopolitical escalation among nuclear powers. And even if all that stuff were handled, there would still be good reasons to curtail our ambitions for the long term. And with all that said, very powerful people, aided by recent national laws and multilateral agreements, are pushing to make these things happen as soon as possible.

We don’t think this has to mean that space settlements should never happen. What we do think is that space settlements probably are, and ought to be, a project of centuries, not decades.”

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through?

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Box camera selfie, 1942. From the Budapest Municipal Photography Company archive.

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Whatever young people are doing, it’s always dangerous and wrong!

Every parent's fears laid bare... Motion Picture Magazine, April 1911.