This piece of retro advertising is almost perfect (-ly wrong) on so many levels. And I love the texts — “For responsible work” / “Porto Cigarettes — the base of your decision”. It only lacks one thing: booze. (via Pedro Quintas)

Soviets in space! Here’s an interesting set of USSR space propaganda posters. Politics aside, I always thought the Russian space program rocked. Just look at how the Soyuz spaceship is now the only reliable vehicle for taking cosmonauts to orbit, now that the Space Shuttle has been decomissioned. Or consider that the Soviets managed to land a probe in Hell (meaning, of course, planet Venus) and send back some pictures. (via Trivium)

New York storefronts.

A 110-year old map of undersea communication cables from. The Portuguese coast is quite busy and I wonder if this is still the case today (via Boing Boing).

On a related note, Neal Stephenson’s Mother Earth Mother Board, a surprisingly entertaining (at least for me) account of the laying of undersea fiberoptic cables in late 20th century.

Video games vs Real Life: When I was a child, I may have spent too many rainy days playing Double Dragon in my ZX Spectrum. Such my Pavlovian reaction to this picture.

Abandoned Soviet monuments that look like they’re from the Future. From a civilization that knows nothing but reinforced concrete, that is.

Wacky Soviet car advertisting. I like the lack of copy.

I can’t explain why I like this. Suddently I hope someone would actually write a Tumblr client for the Atari 2600 as they did a Twitter client for the ZX Spectrum. I actually had a 2600 when I was a kid, a few year after I had my Spectrum. It rocked my world despite the much poorer graphics and sound (if such a thing is possible), because the games loaded instantly.

My fastest machine ever. (via Topherchris)

“Neco Toüch is a game “all the rage among German children” that awards points for befriending feral cats with careful touches on the nose (eliciting purrs is a 1000pt bonus).”

Feral cats, really? I’d like to see the real version of that. Famicase Gallery: 2010’s best imaginary 8-bit games.