Category Archives: esoterica

Pale Bulbous Eyes

Posted on March 11, 2018 by things magazine

Why it’s Impossible to Accurately Measure a Coastline (via Nag on the Lake) / photographs of the Martian North Pole / For 10 Years, I Read the Comments: ‘Farewell to my stressful, dispiriting, but occasionally awesome life as an internet … Continue reading →

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Watching the skies with jaded eyes

Posted on December 20, 2017 by things magazine

Kottke made the point a couple of days ago that the USAF’s recent casual announcement about its now-defunct UFO division – and the release of a couple of blurry but presumably far more authentic films than have ever been seen … Continue reading →

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Off world

Posted on December 11, 2017 by things magazine

Compare and contrast: the globes of Emmy Ingeborg Brun, ‘a Danish Mars enthusiast who made a small number of globes… Her inscriptions suggest that she viewed Mars as a potential model for Christian socialist cosmopolitanism on Earth’ vs Google Mars. … Continue reading →

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Random round-up from here and there

Posted on August 31, 2017 by things magazine

Wave Girl, a culture blog / an interview with Slowdive’s Neil Halstead / inspirational item of the week: The Great Blueness. At I Am Acrylic / Cars on Film, a tumblr, not to be confused with the Internet Movie Cars … Continue reading →

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Weekly things

Posted on June 14, 2017 by things magazine

Rock cartography: this is Spinal map / U T O P I A, a project by photographer Christopher Ashlin / the furniture of George Jakob Hunzinger / art by Belinda Jayne Ayres / Little Ones, a rather moving short documentary … Continue reading →

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Things old and new

Posted on February 26, 2017 by things magazine

Histories of places and things. The story of the Trump Princess, the 128m yacht that was never built / an introduction to synthesis / photographs by John Maher / Blue Crow Media introduce their Brutalist Map of Paris, a city … Continue reading →

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Aural Excitements

Posted on January 9, 2017 by things magazine

Some fifteen years ago, we collaborated on a marvellous project with the Sonic Catering Band, bundling a little 3″ CD, Apotheosis with issue 15 of things (sadly now sold out, although we still have a few CDs). We worked with … Continue reading →

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Other half living

Posted on October 26, 2016 by things magazine

This year’s Neiman Marcus Fantasy Gift Catalogue is here, so the Christmas panic is over. Thirty-six classic children’s first editions, a steal at $100,000. The Rose-gold private plane also caught our eye, although the Cobalt Valkyrie is mean enough without … Continue reading →

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Strange days

Posted on August 2, 2016 by things magazine

British Artists in Europe, an online gallery / Can mythbusters like Snopes.com keep up in a post-truth era? We’re getting a little tired of newspaper headlines with question marks, to be honest / the cycle of nostaglia gets a little … Continue reading →

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Sitting in a tin can

Posted on July 25, 2016 by things magazine

Atomic: Living In Dread And Promise is a documentary about the nuclear age. You can watch it here, for now, but capture some of the menace and dread with Mogwai’s soundtrack / 67 Years of Lego Sets, an analysis / … Continue reading →

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Getting high, or not

Posted on January 21, 2016 by things magazine

How Zano Raised Millions on Kickstarter and Left Most Backers with Nothing [link now fixed, apologies] / preview the acts at the Lewes Psych Festival: Zofff; Novella; Soft Walls; Wax Machine; The Cult of Dom Keller; Virginia Wing / more … Continue reading →

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‘My heart sunk, I felt absolutely sick’

Posted on November 24, 2015 by things magazine

The Dennis Sharp Archive / the Infocom Cabinet, design documents and minutae from the creation of Infocom’s famous series of text adventures / a MeFi post dredging up this fantastic episode of From A to B, tales of Modern Motoring, … Continue reading →

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A cavalcade of destinations

Posted on October 27, 2015 by things magazine

Very slowly and quietly and sadly, the haddock turned over and went belly-up in the water. One of the longest-running things on the internet and once the start of our daily browsing / Why do so many Russians turn to … Continue reading →

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Strange incredible truths

Posted on July 14, 2015 by things magazine

UFOs are still a thing, apparently. Related, a treasure trove of UFO Books. We confidently predict the X-Files Revival will fill the friendly skills with alien incursions once more.

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The Curta calculator

Posted on June 25, 2015 by things magazine

The Curta is a cult mechanical calculator, a complex arrangement of gears and cogs that can be used to perform a wide array of calculations by a combination of rotating and arranging an array of dials and sliders. There are … Continue reading →

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Waiting for the Gods

Posted on April 14, 2015 by things magazine

Waiting for the Gods is an ‘experimental docufiction’ created by Natalie Welsh and Alessandro Bertelle, and produced by Fabrica. Following on from our recent post touching on Erich von Däniken’s Jungfrau Park, Welsh and Jeffries’ film takes a tour of … Continue reading →

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The truth is out there

Posted on March 25, 2015 by things magazine

In the dawn of Time they came from space to become… We have a new collection: UFO books. Lovingly assembled, now long dispersed, here is a small snapshot of the 70s and 80s publishing phenomenon, fuelled by television shows like … Continue reading →

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Everybody here wanted something more

Posted on February 26, 2015 by things magazine

A proper Barbapapa House (via Wowhaus). The French did this bubble architecture more efficiently and copiously than almost anyone else – Pierre Cardin’s classic ‘Bubble House‘ being a case in point / there is an Irish ferry based on Ulysses … Continue reading →

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Roll of the dice

Posted on January 26, 2015 by things magazine

Another bunch of very different things / the illustration of John Vernon Lord, example above / a walk around England’s Lost Theme Parks / The Old Kent Road, as re-made in the 60s and looking shiny, new and optimistic / … Continue reading →

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The Thing, block edition

Posted on August 25, 2014 by things magazine

In its infinite wisdom, Lego has now provided budding stop-motion cinematographers the tools to recreate John Carpenter’s The Thing in its entirety. The sets in question are the new ‘Arctic’range: Snowmobile, Ice Crawler, Helicrane, Outpost, the all-important Base Camp and … Continue reading →

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