Japanese Bathroom Ghosts.

Illustrations of the 12 different types of Kappa, a water spirit who is sometimes known to haunt outhouses, from the 19th century.

And why not? Lavatories are notoriously spooky, and across cultures. Japanese lav spooks are quite detailed, and there are plenty of urban legends to go around, too.

Kappas may be repelled by farts, but they were known to appear in outhouses all the same. Yoshitoshi/Public Domain.

Never forget the power of a good fart! Atlas Obscura has the full rundown on lavatory spooks, with more to read, videos to watch, and many more images!

Cats on a Tram.

Screenshot from Short Trip (courtesy Alexander Perrin).

Short Trip is an interactive illustration in which you drive a tram for cats as it rumbles up and down the hand-drawn mountains. It’s a peaceful and lovingly designed experience that only lasts a few minutes, yet the attention to detail, from the sound to the sketched trees and turning windmills, is transporting.

Why cats? Australian artist Alexander Perrin was inspired both by his mother’s passion for cats, and his own feline companion in sketching the characters that populate Short Trip.

[…]

Short Trip is planned to be the first by Perrin in a collection of interactive illustrations. This inaugural edition is available to play for free (donations are welcome) on both his site and Itch.io. With all the stress in the world, it is a respite of calm, with birds chirping in the background as the cats leisurely prowl their scenic environment. As Perrin stated, “I suppose cats feel right to support the tramway as they never seem to have a necessary destination, they just move to wherever seems pleasant at the time.”

You can read and see more at Hyperallergic.

Ricardo Edwards.

© Ricardo Edwards.

© Ricardo Edwards.

© Ricardo Edwards.

Jamaica-based visual artist Ricardo Edwards says his detailed portraits are each infused with “little fragments” of his personality. If that’s the case, any meeting with him would sure to be a mind-blowing experience of beautiful renditions of Afrofuturist imaginings, as is the through-line of his work. Pulling from cultural histories, the artist’s paintings are rife with symbolism: there is a bloody police officer wading through water with a horned skull covering his face, and in another photo a person with tribal tattoos bursting through a similar skull.

“My main inspiration comes from my culture and the exploration of my own obscure thoughts,” Edwards explains to Artists of Jamaica. “Motive? to express myself and hopefully inspire. If my work inspires or motivates at least one person in this reality before I die my purpose would’ve been served.”

You can see more at Afropunk and Artists of Jamaica. Stunning work, all.

Tacoma.

Tacoma is a science fiction drama of survival experienced as a video game. Playing as a contractor named Amy who is recovering the artificial intelligence (AI) from a space station in 2088, you encounter the specters of its vanished crew through fuzzy recordings of their colorful silhouettes. Some of these voyeuristic scenes, retrieved from a fragmented augmented reality technology on the station, are from months ago, others are just hours, and each adds to a heightened sense of dread about their fate.

The recently released game was created by Fullbright, the studio behind the popular 2013 Gone Home. Where Gone Home had players navigating an empty house in the Pacific Northwest, piecing together the narrative of its absent family, Tacoma is set in a more isolated home. You can dig through the crew members’ belongings in their air-locked rooms and messy gym lockers, read their private messages, and eavesdrop on their interactions with the AI, called ODIN. There are key codes to find and doors to unlock that can add to your understanding of how the six-member crew dealt with the station’s sudden lack of oxygen.

You can read and see more at Hyperallergic.

Social Foretelling.

IV. – Development of Wireless Telegraphy. Scene in Hyde Park. [These two figures are not communicating with one another. The lady is receiving an amatory message, and the gentleman some racing results.]

This is from Punch magazine, in 1906. They didn’t quite get to cellphones, but they weren’t completely off the mark, either. The Punch Almanack, in 1879, also speculated on the possibility of a telephonoscope:

(Every evening, before going to bed, Pater and Materfamilias set up an electric camera obscura over their bedroom mantel-piece, and gladden their eyes with the sight of their Children at the Antipodes, and converse gaily with them through the wire.)
Paterfamilias (in Willow Place): “Beatrice, come closer, I want to whisper.”
Beatrice (from Ceylon): “Yes, Papa dear.”
Paterfamilias: Who is that charming young lady playing on Charlie’s side!
Beatrix: “She’s just come over from England, Papa. I’ll introduce you as soon as the game’s over!”

A version of Skype was foretold, too, by a number of people. You can see more here.