13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 578)

By MessyNessy

November 19, 2025

1. An ode to Shopfronts (shot in the early 80s)

Scans from the vintage book “Shopfronts”, 1981, found by Press SF.

2. Some thoughts on Personal Business that obviously resonated with me

“In You’ve Got Mail, Kathleen Kelly is positioned as virtuous but naive, a hopeless romantic stuck in the old way of doing things. But I agree with her, I think more businesses should be personal. In 1998, her proclamation could be seen as proto-nostalgia for a soon-to-be bygone time, but now that we’ve actually experienced the Joe Fox vision of the future, the line simply reads as solid business advice.

Nearly 30 years later, there seems to be both an increasing intolerance for the impersonal and insincere, and a sharper collective radar for the people and companies that fake sincerity. The companies that stand out are the ones who have a particularly high-quality way of doing things. That quality can be traced back to the people who run and work for the company having a deep personal connection to what it is they do.”

Read more words written by the founder of Are.na.

3. A member of the jury for the “Best Baguette of Paris” examines baguettes

What a job. More about this very serious and official competition here.

4. Inside the 19th-century Parisian club that became a safe haven for female artists

“All good Americans when they die go to Paris,” remarked Thomas Gold Appleton (1812-84), the notorious Boston wit and unrepentant snob—a quip American artists of the period would have amended to say, “All good American artists go to Paris”, not to die but to live! There was one problem, however, and that is the subject of art historian Jennifer Dasal’s enjoyable The Club.

Read the book review found on The Art Newspaper.

5. The Fascinating History of Tarot Card Decks: From the Renaissance to the Modern Day

6. An Abandoned Football Stadium Turned Community Garden

The ‘Zhongshan Football Stadium’ was abandoned in 2008 and rather than being left to rot, it was turned into an urban garden for locals to enjoy and grow their own food as part of Taiwan’s larger garden city programme

Found here.

7. Basra, Iraq, once the “Venice of the East”, Then & Now

Iraq’s great port city of Basra in the 1950s and now. If you’re curious to know more, I couldn’t stop watching this documentary about how Iraq was before and the destruction of the country’s cultural and intellectual society. Eye-opening.

Photos found via Reddit.

8. Eureka, Colorado. 1900s and 2019

Colorized by Sanna Dullaway.

9. This Lost Art Nouveau Fireplace

Some of the few remaining images of the spectacular interior of Casa Trinxet in Barcelona. Designed by the architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch and built in 1904 at 268 Còrsega Street, it was one of the city’s most prominent Modernista houses, but was demolished in 1966.

The ground floor featured an alabaster fireplace designed by Eusebi Arnau and murals by Joaquim Mir, nephew of the owner. Gaspar Homar and the ceramicist Sebastià Ribó also contributed to the decoration.

Found on The Art Nouveau Club.

10. A little Dream House for Sale in Paris

Found on Patrice Besse, asking €1.58m.

11. How Lemonade Helped Paris Fend Off Plague

*La Belle Limonadiere,* hand coloured etching (1816). Lemonade was ubiquitous in mid-17th century Paris. Where the limonadiers went, piles of spent lemon peels followed. As rats nibbled on the peels, they killed off plague-infected fleas, Tom Nealon argues in his new book.
*Courtesy of The British Library Board/The Overlook Press*

It’s wild to imagine a world in which the latest food trend is chocolate. But such was the case in the 17th century. The delicacy was so popular, in fact, that Oliver Cromwell waged war with Spain “over its Caribbean cacao plantations,” according to NPR. It’s one of many fascinating tales in a new book by Tom Nealon, Food Fights and Culture Wars, which also teaches us about the trippy power of ergot poisoning, a fungus that infected food and caused hallucinations, severe convulsions, and gangrene, in correlation to motivations for the crusades. Perhaps most remarkably, it teaches us that Parisians’ love of lemonade might’ve staved off the bubonic plague. Locals of all social standings loved the stuff, sipping it on street corners the way New Yorkers Juul in the subway. All the better: the acid in lemonade is a natural pest-repellent.