Star Trek: TNG Theme but the theme is coming from the Enterprise-D:
‘Web Whimsy’ encapsulates original posts meant to be humorous, or cultural artifacts I find humorous. It also includes posts that are meant to spark delight.
–>
-
-
For the moment, my favorite “I want to hop into a browser window and find a quick distraction” location is the ‘For You’ page of grain.social
-
-
Here’s a delightful and calm video of a nonindustrial farmer walking you through the process of turning flax into linen going from seed to sewing if you will.
-
They may take our cold beet soup but they can never take our freedom 🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹.
-
It’s time for ‘corn sweat’ as Michigan hits mid-summer. Let’s gooo! 🌞🌽💦🇺🇸
-
404 Media has a story out today that is a compilation of unhinged AI fliers and posters for businesses or other community events. It’s getting wild out there.
-
📷 Hello There.
-
I haven’t seen a movie in theaters yet this year, but Coyote vs. ACME might get me there.
-
📷 Building on a post from yesterday, I’m not the only person in my household enjoying the summer bloom.
📷 The midsummer bloom is in full swing
-
-
Public Domain Review’s (@publicdomainrev@mastodon.social) Sunday Read this week features depictions of Cholera and infrastructure failure. Maybe in the face of defunding public health and deregulation we should dust off some of these prints.
-
The bsky account that made early accurate predictions about what was going to happen to the reflecting pool RE paint peeling and algae blooms is back with an updated set of predictions. It’s like old-school 538, but for material science and microbiology.
-
If you love music, music history, or musical artifacts you should check out–and considering contributing too–the MI Music Experience.
-
Wondering about steampunk, but for carpentry and wood based technology. Nautical culture through the Napoleonic wars would be where you start. Maybe one could include Master and Commander or Moby Dick as early examples.
Some fun photos of the Turtle from the American revolution:
-
-
The physical manuscript is also remarkable in a variety of ways. The notation on each page is remarkably neat, rivaling some of the master composers and arrangers whose collections are held by the Music Division. Nearly every shanty also includes multiple handwritten verses, showing a variety of lyrical inspirations…
![In the three smaller lines below the shanty’s title, James Dwight Dana notates two Indigenous musical traditions as inspiration for “My Tent beside the Oregon.” The top line is attributed to the Chinook tribe, and the bottom two lines are attributed to the Chekalis [Chehalis] tribe. ML96 .D26 no. 1, Music Division, Library of Congress.](https://blogs.loc.gov/music/files/2026/05/ShipboardSongs_Image4-scaled-e1780004893193.jpg)
-
Ghost in the Shell TV shows (I’ve seen the films, haven’t spent time with the Manga) remain one of my favorite artistic expressions of a creative studio trying to articulate the sociological implications of an information economy driven society. We’re about to get a new reinterpretation.
-
-
📚 My daughter (first child, almost five and a half) has expressed to mom that she wants to start reading Chronicles of Narnia at bedtime, and both of us are basically treating this whole situation like encountering a flighty horse on a cliff side that we desperately don’t want to spook.
-
-
-
Spring Progress 📷 2026.05.28
Final photo to label spring. Summer ascendant.
Here’s the whole progression:
-
Spring Progress 📷 2026.05.19
We might be able to say summer has arrived.
-
Look’s like Ghost in the Shell is getting another reboot, but frankly I still haven’t gotten over this sequence from 2nd GiG.
-
These photos are remarkable:
TEXAS! (by Erin Newman-Mitchell)
-
Tea Anemone by Tatsuya Tanaka at Miniature Calendar:
-
The eldest shares her mom and grandmothers' interest.
-
To the extent I pay attention to Home and Garden trends I always got the impression the platonic ideal for lawn maintenance was a golf course fairway.
Meanwhile I’m out here weedmaxxing
-
Spring Progress 📸 2026.04.08 The maple awakens #SP26.3
-
Public Domain Review highlighting works that feature Notre Dame today:
Highlights from the many centuries of artworks to feature the Notre-Dame de Paris — which caught fire 5 years ago #onthisday — from its illuminated punctuation of medieval skylines to grainy detailed studies at the birth of photography: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-notre-dame-cathedral-in-art-1460-1921
-
-
Per my last post, the Castlevania 2 ‘Bloody Tears’ theme goes harder than it has a right too.
Somehow was able to get classic video game soundtracks into the 5-year-olds music rotation (its a delicate inception, but worth the respite from the usual playlists) and every time Dire Dire Docks comes on I think of the Northernlion commentary.
-
Somehow was able to get classic video game soundtracks into the 5-year-olds music rotation (its a delicate inception, but worth the respite from the usual playlists) and every time Dire Dire Docks comes on I think of the Northernlion commentary.
-
The toddler is experiencing some sort of sleep regression.
-
Ongoing Artemis 2 mission updates on this blog.
-
The Artemis launch has me thinking about Mass Effect space exploration so here’s the links to each game’s galaxy map music:
-
Perhaps you’ve been warned to watch for “woke” Michigan companies but have you been informed about:
-
When you’ve been forced (for better or worse) to live through “interesting times:”
-
🎵 Feist’s Let It Die is an undefeated album.
-
Come here quick!! Falling Frontier just dropped another gameplay trailer!
-
When your franchise has to reach up to touch rock bottom you accept any crack of light that manifests.
-
-
-
Dust-to-Digital now has a 24/7 streaming radio station.
-
Apropos for today, an excerpt from ‘The Darkling Thrush’ which I was introduced too through yesterday’s Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols:
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
-
-
Yo! You can watch pretty much the entire Reading Rainbow archive through the Internet Archive.
-
-
Chicago Transit Authority’s slow TV ‘Ride the Rails’ videos remind me why I love the Brown Line
My family has maintained a relationship to Chicago’s Brown Line.
For the years that we lived in central Illinois my parents would periodically take my sister and I to the city for a day or weekend excursion. Ostensibly we were there to visit my grandmother in Bridgeport (a Red Line stop) or my cousins in the suburbs, but we would also find an excuse to take the bikes down to the lakefront for a ride from the Adler Planetarium to the Lincoln Park zoo, or a jaunt up and down lake shore drive. We’d also ride the El. We’d take the Brown Line to Sedgwick and eat at the Old Jerusalem Restaurant.
When I lived in Wheaton I’d keep up the pattern and find excuses to take the Brown Line to Old Town or Lincoln Park. My future spouse lived not far from the Diversey stop for a time.
The CTA maintains a playlist of ‘Ride the Rails’ videos. The production values have improved incrementally over time. I find it comforting to pull one up and ride along for a couple stops. The familiar “doors closing” cadence and the click-clack of the tracks acts a bit like a breathe prayer. The Brown Line remains my favorite.
-
Could we make CosmodromePunk a thing?
The artistic director of this film would go on to lead artistic direction for the first Ghost in the Shell film. I wouldn’t call it’s aesthetic vision cyberpunk though. I’d propose something else, like cassettepunk, or maybe CosmodromePunk. I think a lot of the videos this YT channel makes could fall into that aesthetic.
-
Parents leave all sorts of small indelible marks on their children that last a lifetime, and from my mom I’ve held onto an affection for Bruce Hornsby & The Range.
-
This morning I saw a senior citizen with a cane, on the curb, in an inflatable animal costume, with signage promoting the No Kings rally happening downtown later today. Punching all the squares on my U.S.-in-2025 bingo card.
-
This site is so delightful. https://miniature-calendar.com/251014
-
-
Taking a Python Intro course this summer and turns out if you need to code late into the evening Olde Pine is a great companion:
–
–
-
I took Amazon immolating $700 million dollars to distill a pure moment that evokes Tolkein at his best–as I remember him when read to me in my childhood–so good job I guess?
It really is best viewed on a big screen with a good sound system:
–
-
There’s very specific vibes video that features 80s and 90s anime that exudes what I’d call a #vhspunk aesthetic–before the iPhone with its black mirror imposed a glass sheen on tech products. The video style is typified by Hanahaki Blank’s youtube channel. Its the perfect delta of the beauty of hand drawn animation, late 20th century nostaligia, and technophilia.
–
-
Pssst, you can buy BSKY CEO’s SXSW “A World Without Caesars” t-shirt here.
Hat tip to @manton for the link.
