“Imagine a city where graffiti wasn’t illegal, a city where everybody could draw whatever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall — it’s wet.”
—Banksy
—from Wall and Piece
funambulist /foo-NAM-byoo-list/. noun. A tightrope walker. From French funambule (tightrope walker); from Latin funambulus; from funis (rope) + ambulare (walk).
“But after a week there had been an office crisis. The cabaret editor died on the job, in an incident involving a French funambulist and seven live eels (one of which was in flames).” (Will Self)
“It was a funambulesque exhibition sans parasol. To race with deft, sure steps, to grease his way through rather than ponder on equilibrium—that seemed the safest measure.” (Henry Miller)
“But then, perhaps one needs to be conceited, or at least to have no doubts about oneself, if one is to prosper in funambulism or any other métier that requires absorption of the mental self in the physical self, an absorption that is indistinguishable—as you point out in the interview—from concentrated thought.” (J. M. Coetzee)
“Electrical wiring that had lost its moorings hung like a clothesline for the laundry. Pants and shirts floated like truncated sentries while they slept. On windy nights the garments danced on the wire, friendly funambulating ghosts.” (Rohinton Mistry)
Welcome news for word nerds: the new Fiat Lex (“a podcast about dictionaries by people who write them”), featuring Kory Stamper (author of the immensely entertaining Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries) and Steve Kleinedler, whose book I haven’t read yet. See also: The great American word mapper, which lets you map usage in the US based on a harvest of billions of tweets.
Doesn’t the legal system’s insistence in the face of any amount of evidence prove the problem? → One Test Could Exonerate Him. Why Won’t California Do It?
“Of the roughly 230 men who flew mail for the Post Office Department between 1918 and 1927, 32 lost their lives in plane crashes. Six died during the first week of operation alone.” → Delivering the Mail Was Once One of the Riskiest Jobs in America. See also: A Chicago Man Filled Out a Single Postal Change of Address Form and Redirected UPS Corporate Mail to His Apartment. And, just for funsies (via Reader B.), Postal Service Unveils New Line Of Stamps Honoring Americans Who Still Use Postal Service.
We need more voices like Wil’s. → My name is Wil Wheaton. I live with chronic Depression, and I am not ashamed.
Chess boxing (yep, it’s a thing) as a path upward for poor Indian girls? You bet. → How an Obscure Sport is Transforming the Lives of Indian Girls. Via Mr. TH.INK, a newsletter everyone in the Katexic Clamor should subscribe to.
Laughter climax (and conception): the structure of stand-up comedy. See also: Researchers uncovered 2 pages of ‘dirty jokes’ in Anne Frank’s diary.
The secret languages of flight attendants, plants, ships, handheld fans and babies.
This bot-written Modern Love column is one of the best and funniest pieces of its kind I’ve ever read. → My Marriage Was Just Dinner
Think you can explain a hard idea using only the ten hundred most used words? Prove it!
Today in 1992, the City Council of Chicago votes to ban the sale of spray paint claiming that “mindless ‘taggers’” were turning them into “weapons of terror.” The ban wouldn’t be enforced until 1994, when Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens turned down an emergency request by spray paint manufacturers and sellers to postpone the ban. While the city’s handgun ban was struck down in 2013, spray paint cans remain unavailable for sale in the city’s limits.
In ► Coda, “a lost soul stumbles drunken through the city. In a park, Death finds him and shows him many things.”
Using thousands of nails and a single thread, Kumi Yamashita creates amazing, intricate portraits.
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