Category Archives: nostalgia

Tune out the past, and just say yes

Coming to an office near you: ‘One recent study by academics at Oxford University suggests that 47% of today’s jobs could be automated in the next two decades.’ / wish we’d thought of this: Craigslist Mirrors (via, and also picked … Continue reading

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Experimental jetsetting with no stars

Experimental Travel is the art of travelling in new ways, including such sub-genres as Aerotourism (‘in which a tourist visits the local airport and explores it without going anywhere’) and Erotourism (‘in which a couple travels separately to the same … Continue reading

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Blinking in the light

Twenty years seems to be a trigger point for all sorts of nostalgia, a drag net through the past that scrapes at the lingering memories of pop culture and then hauls them, kicking and screaming, into the light of the … Continue reading

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Warming the soul

We haven’t really had enough time to digest the existence of the Southampton Nostalgia Scale, via this post on the Benefits of Nostalgia, linking to a recent NYT piece that explores what nostalgia is good for. From the article: ‘Nostalgia … Continue reading

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Round and round

Another made-for-web piece of analogue fetishism, Kai Schaefer’s series ‘World Records‘, which brings together classic vinyl and classic turntables / as nostalgic vessels go, this is perhaps less involved and drawn out than creating an entire imaginary soundtrack that purports … Continue reading

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Cabinets, cases, collecting and display

And so we find ourselves on the edge of the year, without all that much inclination to look back (that’s a job that others can do with so much more depth and expertise). Things magazine feels increasingly marginal, hovering on … Continue reading

Posted in collections and archives, nostalgia, things magazine | 12 Comments

High and mighty

Part of our ongoing and occasional series exploring Cold War oddities and instantly outdated pieces of military equipment: the McDonnell XF-85 Goblin, a ‘parasite fighter‘ designed to work in conjunction with the Convair Peacemaker / prints by Jantze Tullet / … Continue reading

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Mostly harmless

A few days of randomness ahead. Who needs a kick-starter? Griff Industries builds ships for Oolite / ‘Car dealer forced to hide Jimmy Savile’s Range Rover after hate campaign over abuse claims‘. The sale was greeted with characteristic nudges and … Continue reading

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From Russia with love

Rodcorp is embarking on a re-reading of the Ian Fleming James Bond books: Bond 1: Not Stirred, with ultra-pithy plot summaries (‘Doctor No (1958) is the one with guano, claw hands, Honey Rider and Jamaica.’) and an acute eye for … Continue reading

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A passion for pixels

The aesthetic of games gone by is now thoroughly blended into the mainstream. Dan Gray recently linked to a proposed Kickstarter-funded history of Sensible Software 1986–1999 by Read-Only Memory. As the galleries in Pure Machine Code suggest, there’s a rich … Continue reading

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We can remember it for you, wholesale

The Dutch Mountain House features an admirable reuse of an old Jaguar. This certainly isn’t recycling, or even upcycling. Perhaps downcycling? / related, Fantastic Journal on the visual symbolism of the Volvo 240 in mainstream Hollywood movies / exploring applications … Continue reading

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Strangely nautical

Trying very hard to escape from nostalgia, but its gravitational pull is colossal. Renault 4 Ever was a design competition hosted by designboom, looking at how the values inherent in a classic piece of functional design, the original Renault 4, … Continue reading

Posted in architecture, nostalgia | 2 Comments

Tracking the decline

We are living in a trackable world. As well as the fascinating Flightrader24 site there’s also Marinetraffic.com, which parcels up the world into chunks of maritime movement. There may be more, but our favourite piece of realtime cartography is this … Continue reading

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Woods and patination

We’ve commented before on the relative paucity of pre-aged consumer electronics, in comparison to industries like guitar manufacturer, where patina is treated as a highly prized extension of craftsmanship (a post expanded upon at a456). As well as ‘artist-endorsed’ models … Continue reading

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Finding the path

Which games meddle with life? and When Video Games Get Stuck In Your Head (both via MeFi). The bleed between real and virtual has been fictionalised and exploited for decades, ever since the days of Max Headroom and the fumbling, … Continue reading

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Melting into air

Whatever happened to silicon film? The dream is that someone designs and manufactures a device that can be slotted into the back of a traditional 35mm film camera in order to use the optics and body to take digital photographs. … Continue reading

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The ongoing allure of the old

Our God is Speed picks up on our recent post on internet-induced nostalgia and the pervasive “fetish of the failed, forgotten and the marginal”, and how it might be informed by “a deeper sociological narrative, springing from a sense of … Continue reading

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A lustre of charm

Amazing Retreats, a specialist in renting out castles for corporate retreats, is about to open Spitbank Fort, one of the Solent Forts scattered across the water between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. The fort is being extensively redeveloped: ‘The … Continue reading

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I heard it from the valleys

Jason Orton’s latest photographs from the Olympic Park site, as things shift from the grubby earthworks of raw regeneration through to the banality of utopia-in-waiting. One person who won’t be at all impressed by Orton’s photographs is Iain Sinclair, who … Continue reading

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The Imaginary Wilderness

We have returned from a fortnight of travelling that took in one of the most easterly points of Europe (related) and one of the most westerly. Our apologies for the lack of updates and slow order dispatch (things 19/20 available … Continue reading

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