From music people accept pure emotion...

Tom Peters, he of many words on Excellence and other topics, has written a concise 1-pager with all his top topics: The Everything Paper.

OK, Tolkien freaks. New York's Morgan Library Museum hosts Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth through 10 May.

Careful: you can get lost in these graphics of how U.S. households spend their money. For example, households in the top quintile spend about as much for food at home as eating out ($6,500) versus $2,500 and $1,500 for households in the lowest quintile.

Speaking of demographics, what large U.S. cities have the highest share of families with children? Fort Worth is #2 with 36.3%

Agnes Martin, Untitled 2. source. Be certain to watch the video.

As the yellow first down line is to football, the ghost plane is to the Red Bull Air Race. Find out how it's done.

A second-hand tale of working on the XB-70, the Cold War, Mach 3 bomber that fascinates me.

Did you know there were different kinds of superconductivity? Neither did scientists until last year. Ytterbium-Bismuth-Platinum superconducts with electrons at a higher spin.

Congrats to Town Talk Foods for making Fort Worth Magazine's Best of Fort Worth 2019 list for grocery shopping.

Robert Fripp is revered as a god in a music genre he can't stand. Read more about the King Crimson leader in this Rolling Stone article.

If I had pursued archaeology instead of engineering back in high school when my career aspirations were still forming I might've been one of these researchers who are digging up pee (using urine salts to measure population density).

Richard Diebenkorn, Cityscape I, 1963. Here's an example of an artist moving between representation and abstraction. Is this representation with abstract elements moving in?

Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park 43, 1971. A beautiful example of Diebenkorn's most famous abstract motif, is there representation in here? 

So as not to leave you with something too classy, here's a compilation of toilet flushing sounds.

...but from art they demand explanation. ~Agnes Martin

Like love, music's a mystery...

And we begin with the tunes.

• Check out Generative.fm, a site full of generative, ambient music.
• Asaf Sirkis' album Full Moon is available for free, but why not pay a buck or two?
• ILUITEQ's Soundtracks for Winter Departures is tempting.
• I think I already shared this one but there's no harm in repeating that GAUDI's Psychedelic Future Dub Vol 4. is available to stream on Mixcloud.
• Descending by Motzer & Reuter.

Everything Disney Owns

From the Long Now Foundation comes this article on slow music, Transmissions from the Ambient Frontier. Slow art is a thing (do people really only spend on average 27 seconds looking at a work of art?) and slow music is too, although I find ambient or drone challenges some people immensely. This is a long article but worth a slow read. 

If you're going to be in the neighborhood of the Berkeley Art Museum before July 21st, go see the exhibition Hans Hofmann: The Nature of Abstraction. 

Does anyone really care that Mickey Mouse is 90 years old? Cartoon Research shares how he used to be a much bigger deal.

Are you a "small giant," a company that has chosen to be great instead of big.

The Wadsworth Museum is hosting Sean Scully: Landline through 19 May.

Here's a serious and almost academic study of swearing on TV.

The one guy who flew both the F-22 (Lockheed Martin) and YF-23 (Northrop Grumman) says that L-M won because they did a better job of marketing. Regardless, the YF-23 is a beautifully cool aircraft.

Javier Riera, light projection onto trees. source. 

Pixar's Inside Out only featured five emotions (Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust) but despite not being able to find a connection I suspect they're based on Robert Plutchik's eight primary emotions (adding Trust, Surprise, and Anticipation) illustrated graphically as a wheel below. Like my fascination with the periodic table, there's something pleasing about this graphical depiction of a "soft" subject.

Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions. source. See more above.

The first web browser was called - no, not Mosaic - WorldWideWeb. Now to celebrate it's 30th anniversary, an in-browser implementation of WorldWideWeb has been developed. Go surf the web like it's 1989.

Somewhere under a rainbow. source. It's been a while since I did some aviation pr0n.

This article says that in future versions of Microsoft Office, you'll be able to convert a photo of a data table into an Excel spreadsheet.

Ellsworth Kelly is coming to a postage stamp near you soon.

The average American - or so this article says - uses 3 rolls of toilet paper per week. This seems high to me.

...when solved, it evaporates. ~Ned Rorem

It isn't positions which lend distinction,

Tunes for you:

• GAUDI's Psychedelic Future Dub Vol 4.
• Full Moon by the Asaf Sirkis Trio (a name-your-price download)
• ILUITEQ's Soundtracks for Winter Departures
• Descending by Tim Motzer & Markus Reuter

I wish I had learned 88 truths about life. If I had, I might share them like this guy did. #26 Credit card debt devours souls. A bit histrionic, but true otherwise.

Included in these seven tips on writing from William Faulkner is "events in a story should flow naturally according to the character's inner necessity." This jives with something similar another author (whom I've forgotten) said: each character should want something.

Piet Mondrian, The Gray Tree, 1912. There are a few paintings that I've fallen in love with on first sight. One is Monet's Impression Sunrise. Another is this.

On this list of hot leadership topics for 2019 (I'm only two months behind), we find how culture can drive high-performance and innovation.

This article introduces the term SaaB (software as a barrier) in the context of listing 10 things the best software companies do. An interesting statistic about Google is cited: 70% of development time is spent on "building out" their core products, 20% on innovation, and the remaining 10% on what might be coming in 10 years.

Mark Rothko, Untitled (Red and Burgundy Over Blue), 1969. This can be yours at an upcoming Sotheby's auction.

Watch this animated, time-lapse bar chart of the world's most populous cities starting in the year 1500 when the big dog was Beijing.

A collection of vintage press kits from Apollo.

The first periodic table. It's 150 years old.

See the infinite CVS receipt.

Watch Idle, Torrent. Just do it.

The flying butt.

C'mon, play the pink trombone. (No, you perv, not that.)

You've probably seen the clip from The Office where they're watching the DVD logo bounce around the screen. Now you can watch Too Many DVDs.

...but men who enhance positions. ~Agesilaus