Tag Archives | nostalgia

The Psychedelic 90’s—Modern Myth Making and the Music Press

By on February 27, 2013 in News 34

As an obsessive music weirdo, you start to notice some odd patterns as you get older and contemplate the way that most people contextualize music in their lives. I’m not sure how much research has been done on this, but as far as I can tell, in most cases, whatever stuff someone happened to get down to during their formative developmental ages of say, 14-24, apparently permanently burns itself into their psyche and leaves an indelible mark on their opinion as to what constitutes “good shit” for the rest of their lives. This is the sort of secret psychology you’ll never read about in text books but I’m sure sketchy uptight rich dudes talk about behind closed doors 24/7. The one thing I can say about pursuing psychology in college was that I quite quickly picked up on the fact that the real people who understand how to bend the human psyche work at PR firms and press agencies, not universities.… Read the rest

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LSD Dream Emulator: The Japanese Mind-Simulation Video Game

By on January 4, 2013 in News 3

The best late-night console game of all time? Lovely Sweet Dream (LSD) Dream Emulator was released in Japan in 1998 by Playstation. There is no way to win or lose, and no defined tasks  – except to explore one’s subconscious, set to a trip-hop-jazz soundtrack:

There are many strange environments in this world, and one way to travel through them is by foot. Bumping into people, animals, or special objects usually results in a stranger dream. The number of “days” are kept track of. As the player progresses, the pattern on walls and the form of the player may transmute. Occasionally the player may come across a man in a gray trench coat, commonly referred to as the “Gray Man” or the “Shadow Man”. He walks in one direction only. Getting too close to him will make the screen flash, the man will disappear.

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The U.S. Government’s Top-Secret Town

By on April 16, 2012 in News 5

Via A Continuous Lean, an entrancing glimpse of life inside a city, created as part of the Manhattan Project, with a secret purpose. Imagine if your sunny suburban daily existence served merely as a front for the real action occurring in your town:

In 1942, the government acquired 70,000 acres in Eastern Tennessee and established Oak Ridge…developed for the sole purpose of separating uranium for the Manhattan Project. The completely planned community was designed by the architecture firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, and had a population of more than 70,000 people. Due to the sensitive nature of the work at Oak Ridge, the entire town was fenced in with armed guards. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge office recently started to digitize its archival photos and share them through Flickr.

Oak_Ridge

… Read the rest

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Santa Cruz Conceptualized As A Giant Hand

By on March 12, 2012 in News 3

The geography-as-person trope goes back a long time, and remains haunting — are cities sentient beings? As we traverse streets and subway systems, are we merely red blood cells coursing through a giant body? And when a place’s key locations and arterials seem to mimic the human form, is it just our imagination? This idea is illustrated beautifully in a 1912 map, via Big Think:

Hand-520x820

The map, designed by Polly Hill, was part of a promotional brochure extolling the beauties, joys and pleasures to be sampled in Santa Cruz and environs — centred on the Casa del Rey Hotel, and the adjacent Casino.

More than a cartographic gimmick, the hand shape is also a clever way of representing the local geography, with the two outer fingers representing the coastal corridor and the three middle ones some of the valleys radiating northward through mountainous terrain.

… Read the rest

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Guide To The Psychotronic Generator

By on February 29, 2012 in News 3

I’m fascinated by this slightly frightening, forgotten book unearthed by Toys and Techniques. Published by the “University of the Trees”, contained within are diagrams of devices including the psychotronic generator and Pi-ray Orgone Accumulator, which “purify your consciousness”, enabling you to “harness nature’s more subtle energies” and become your own magic genie.

telepathically… Read the rest

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Toys Of The Atomic Age

By on January 31, 2012 in News 12

Oak Ridge Associated Universities has a groovy collection of vintage “atomic toys” and games for children which referenced and/or promoted nuclear technology. Included are board games such as “Uranium Rush” and “Nuclear War” and, below, 1952′s Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab, which came with four pieces of real uranium:

Today, it is so highly prized by collectors that a complete set can go for more than 100 times the original price. The set came with four types of uranium ore, a beta-alpha source (Pb-210), a pure beta source (Ru-106), a gamma source (Zn-65?), a spinthariscope, a cloud chamber with its own alpha source, an electroscope, a geiger counter, and a comic book (Dagwood Splits the Atom).

GilbertAtomicOpentrimmed

… Read the rest

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Travel Back In Time With Yahoo! Maps

By on November 1, 2011 in News 4

yahoostreet Long-term decay on the internet can be a fascinating thing. Google Maps’ not-quite-as-popular sister site Yahoo! Maps hasn’t updated some of its street images since the nineties, giving you the ability to virtually explore a pre-millennial London which some people prefer to the city today, Londonist writes:

Remember the days when Arsenal still played at Highbury? Those halcyon times when Heathrow was content with four terminals, when you could catch a train to Paris from Waterloo, and when Westfield was, if you had to guess, the latest boyband off of that new Popstars show on ITV.

In Yahoo! Maps, London is stuck in a new-Millennial timewarp. The satellite view still shows the old Wembley Stadium, complete with twin towers. Demolition of the landmark was completed in 2003, but hasn’t even started here. Over at St Pancras, work on the mammoth new Eurostar terminal has barely begun, while Heathrow’s Terminal 5 is a giant building site.

… Read the rest

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Muammar Qaddafi’s 1980s Family Photo Album

By on August 30, 2011 in News 1

350-addTyler Hicks of the New York Times found family pictures at the the Qaddafi residence in Tripoli, and they’re amazing. How often do images of a Third World dictator make you irresistibly nostalgic for childhood?

The Qaddafis playing soccer. Baby photos. Colonel Qaddafi as a young lieutenant in the late 1960s. Later, as a father. And finally, a bizarre figure; something of an object of ridicule. A picture of Seif al-Islam atop a horse was a glossy, poster-sized print.

family… Read the rest

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