i have no idea what a burner phone is

Despite taking slight issue with the headline—as one wouldn’t round down the gap in the Nixon tapes down to a quarter-of-an-hour rather than citing the full eighteen-and-a-half minutes, the reporting on the on the omissions of the presidential daily diary (PDD) and call log is revealing that an nearly eight hour block of time is missing from Trump’s activities on 6 January 2021, the date of the attack on the US Capitol, is a devastating indictment and highly incriminating, especially for those communications that have been verified to have taken place, despite not being reflected in the archives. The committee investigating the insurrection, suspecting a cover-up, are looking for witness testimony in order to fill in the gap as the violence was unfolding. This news comes at the same time as a federal judge rules that Trump—on the advice of his legal counsel—committed felonies on several counts in his scheme to overturn the election, opening up the possibility to subpoena more documents and communication between the Trump administration and legal team, overriding the protections of attorney-client privilege, another favoured shield to invoke by those with something to hide.

sozialer mord

Via Super Punch, we learn about a phrase and its applications coined by Friedrich Engels—one whom one doesn’t hear much about without the more well-known and charismatic Karl Marx—in his 1845 study The Conditions of the Working-Class in England, social murder, to describe the dominance of the aristocracy and consequences for the proletariat whose exploitation and negligence causes premature death for many in the under-class. Whilst originally directed towards Manchester and the regard that the South held for the North in Britain, the term has popular parlance from austerity measures, climate change and its first victims, to inequalities brought to the fore by the pandemic and the most vulnerable among us.  Often over looked and excused, Engels writes, “[S]ince the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.”

i too sing america

While members of the GOP in the US Senate viciously berated Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson with contrived slights and pretend outrage (these childish, cruel and acutely embarrassing spectacles and tantrums have been nearly enough to make me give up about the prospect of reform and justice in the US altogether—at least to the point of refraining from comment or noting consequence) Senator Cory Booker (Democrat representing the state of New Jersey) turned to poetry for the solace and perspective that only verse can provide on the second day of Jackson’s confirmation hearings with Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again,” citing the second to last stanza of the 1935 poem (which was incidentally also candidate’s John Kerry’s campaign slogan for his 2004 presidential run):

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

The continual parenthetical aside through the piece rings as a promise, undelivered, unrealised progressively more hollow and irredeemable, and almost as dead at the time of writing as it can seem today—nearly but not entirely.  We don’t have the luxury of giving up.

infringement

Via the always engaging Things Magazine, we are acquainted with the press portal Plagiarism Today that not only reports on cases of academic dishonesty, cheating and failure to attribute or credit but also the broader, related phenomena of patent trolls, walled-gardens, rentier economics, ransom and extortion and what resources we have to combat instances of kidnapping—as the literal Latin has come to denote. Imitation maybe the greatest form of flattery and the internet may be built on the foundation of counterfeit and copycats, the reprise and retake is something reprehensible if there’s no appeal to the source.

6x6

letters of marque and reprisal: US congress—which has displayed some rare moments of unity lately with abolishing Day Light Saving time and agreeing on a budget—looks also poised to commission piracy and the seizure of oligarchs’ assets  

unit patches: an assortment of mission badges from the US Space Force—see also here and here  

redacted: Sunshine Week and the least forthcoming US government agencies  

ambassador, the thane of cawdor / dialect so def, it’ll rip up the floor: notes on rap and language  

album amicorum: revisiting the seventh century friend book, das Große Stammbuch, of diplomat and influencer Philipp Hainhofer  

uncle vanya’s: after mass exodus of Western companies, Russia seems poised to appropriate and nationalise franchises

8x8

the fiume endeavour: Neutral Moresnet and other countries that fell off the map 

international male: thirty-three national costumes from the 2022 Mister Global pageant via Miss Cellania  

odette and odile: a diminutive chihuahua and human handler perform Swan Lake  

smpte colour bars: a BBC test pattern jumper and mural—see also  

bad actor mode: an AI normally tasked with developing new, novel medications had its parameters switched seek out toxicity and suggests tens of thousands of chemical weapons and poisons in the space of a few hours—via Slashdot 

 cameo appearance: Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams portrayed the President of United Earth on the season finale of Star Trek and brought the planet back into the Federation 

state-of-the-art: ten breakthrough technologies online now that could change our trajectory for the better—via Kottke  

geopolitics: charting the advance of democracy

helter skelter

Recorded and released on this day in 1970 in extremely poor taste by Manson himself and members of the Family in support of the cult leader’s legal defence fund by the infamous record producer Phil Kaufman (notorious for stealing the body of singer Gram Parsons and—ostensibly in accordance with Parsons’ wishes, burned his moral remains in Joshua Tree nature reserve), the cover was designed to parody the LIFE magazine cover of December 1969 with an expose of the series of murders cult members perpetrated. Though thankfully not a commercial success, several tracks were covered or sampled by several groups including The Beach Boys, Guns ‘N Roses and The Lemonheads. A second album was produced a quarter of a century later in the 1997 Family Jams. One theory proposed by the prosecution offered that along with the Book of Revelations, Manson believed he was attuned to messages revealed in the tracks and lyrics of the Beatles’ White Album. Subsequent re-releases of the recordings have raised funds to benefit crime victims.

8x8

squirrel monkey: imagining Wordle vintage 1985—see also  

мистецтво: Ukrainian art community despairs as invasion advances

rumble: the overlooked musical virtuosity of Link Wray  

snake island: Ukrainian soldiers stand their ground and face off a battleship defending a military outpost on Zmiinyi, the rocky islet where Achilles was entombed 

regression to the mean: a spate of controversial laws passed in the US to curtail discussions in classroom that would make straight, white cis people uncomfortable (previously)

existential crisis: dread creeps into the everyday and makes it difficult to focus on what’s vital and the ultimately inconsequential  

архітектурної: Ukrainian designers and architects fight back against Russian incursion  

acrophobia: sociable early internet word game that solicited wrong answers only plus several contemporaries

clearly define “militia” just in case that becomes relevant in a century or two

We thoroughly enjoyed the marginal notes and correction marks for James Madison’s Article II of the United States constitution—which establishes the executive, presidential, branch of the federal government and defines the Treaty Clause, Appointments Clause and the Emoluments Clause, and the process of Impeachment as graded by a high school teacher by McSweeney’s contributor Alice Lahoda. Lose the electors and please define your terms to prevent any confusion down the line. D-

bib

Founded on this day in 1973 under the executive agencies of the West German Federal Ministry of the Interior (with this boss door which we can all appreciate) in Wiesbaden, the Institute for Population Research (Bundesinstitut für Bevölkerrungsforschung) was originally charged with investigating perceived declining fertility rates in the country but has since taken on more enlightened and enlightening studies, working closely with Destatis (see previously here and here), in demographics including longevity, migration and economic mobility.

7x7

heiti and songti: the typefaces that helped China transition to the digital age 

no soup for you: the Fay-Cutler malapropism (see previously) of the week 

memphis milano: iconic design studio of Ettore Sottsass (previously) acquired by Italian furniture company  

earn it act: controversial bill restricting encryption—presented as an anti-trafficking and child safety initiative (see also) passes committee in the US Senate  

quantitative easing: lampooning practises that exacerbate inflation and speculation, an artist in Kuala Lumpur opens Memebank  

all hail hypnotoad: Futurama (previously) returns for an eighth season—with most of the original talent  

dingbats: a typographic homage to pre-emoji Webdings—see also for one carry-over

metadata

As Slashdot reports, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta, is threatening to pull core services out of Europe altogether if EU privacy laws—including GDPR which has been enforceable for years now—prevent the company from sharing European user data with domestic operations. Good riddance to bad rubbish—I hope that that’s a promise that the anti-social media platform can deliver on.  We hope regulators do not relent and make concessions to the platform.

8x8

eye-in-the-sky: a collection of superlative drone photography 

gravitational lensing: tentatively, astronomers find evidence of the first rogue, marauding black hole over a backdrop of nebular clouds 

wheel of fortune: Wordle but with common quotations and idioms—via Memo of the Air

para||el: a short film about divergent realities by Ménilmonde  

building & loan: more on the economics of gift-cards—see also  

staying toasty: bread hats and loafers, see also  

three little words: what3words (see previously) solves some problems for vehicle guidance and navigation, causes others—via Duck Soup  

to open every kind of lock: burglars’ spells and incantations 

scotus: a former law clerk writes the Wikipedia articles on Biden’s prospective nominees to the US Supreme Court in order to insert doubt and skepticism, via Super Punch  

bird’s eye view: a parrot in New Zealand pilfers a family’s Go-Pro and films some nice scenery

the troubles

On this day in 1972 in the Bogside neighbourhood of Londonderry, British paratroopers massacred a

group of unarmed civilians staging a protest march, rallying against internment without trial—codenamed Operation Demetrius, mass arrest and detention of those suspected to be members or supporters of the Irish Republican Army, torturing some of the internees. Fourteen of the twenty-six marchers were killed on what’s been called Bloody Sunday—the military’s action ultimately ruled after multiply investigations and re-litigation in 2010 as “unjustified” and “unjustifiable” though no prosecutions proceedings have been yet successfully launched.

biblioclasm

Coinciding with International Holocaust Remembrance Day—marking the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, news comes out that a school board in Tennessee voted to ban the acclaimed, Pulitzer prize-winning 1986 graphic novel, Maus, by Art Spiegelman. Aimed to teach children about genocide through allegory, the panel of parents and teachers found some of the language potentially objectionable as well as the depictions of partial cartoon nudity though the subtext is clear and rightfully decried and debates rage across the US in classroom and during school board meetings over Critical Race Theory, its subversion and weaponisation, and how its re-enforced that the discomfort of white bigots counts more than the lived experience of pain and oppression.

i am in sympathy with the people on both sides

In a prepared testimony to the US Congress delivered on this day in 1941, celebrity and noted anti-Semite Charles A Lindbergh leveraged his fame from a 1927 transatlantic crossing to present the case to the House Foreign Affairs Committee that there was no possibility for an American air invasion to have any meaningful impact on the war in Europe and it would be better for the world to let the war draw to its natural conclusion as a pyrrhic victory.  Laying the blame for fighting as much with Britain as Nazi Germany, the aviator argued, speaking to popular sentiment, that negotiated peace and a non-aggression pact was the best path for America to pursue. The media frenzy from a decade before of the kidnap and subsequent death of the Lindbergh’s infant son and driven him and his wife to Europe to escape the press and became fascinated with German engineering prowess and as an personality of international stature was courted and lavished with accolades by fighting ace and Nazi Air Minister Hermann Göring. By the time the Lindberghs returned in 1939, many recognised his openly pro-Nazi sympathies. The appearance before Congress occurred five months before Germany invaded the Soviet Union and came on the heels of Churchill’s grim assessment that sixty-thousand individuals, nearly half civilians, in the first year and a half of hostilities.

an unfinished revolution

We had scant idea that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had not only contributed hundreds of articles as foreign correspondents for the New York Daily Tribune in the lead up to the US Civil War advocating strongly against slavery and the apartheid of the American South—and North, Marx moreover kept up a correspondence with Abraham Lincoln—one does not readily summon this overlap and epistolary relatisonship, influencing and informing to an extent his interlocutor’s views on labour, suffrage and the estrangement of chattel and capital. Much more from Open Culture at the link above.

so, jetzt reicht’s aber, fräulein

Though since 1951 in East Germany, women could use the designation “Frau,” missus without applying for permission from the state, this is—proof of marriage, acknowledging that the classification of entire female sex in terms of its declared relationship to a man and while the fact that martial status was a private matter for males but a salutation of public interest for woman was highly problematic and inegalitarian, it was not until this day in 1972 in West Germany that the term Fräulein (the predicate a relatively new one, introduced in 1869 whereas in previous eras it was a binary Herr or Mann/Frau) was stricken from official use by the Ministry of the Interior under the Hans-Dietrich Genscher and ought to be avoided (along with comparable honourifics in other languages, like Miss and Mademoiselle) as a sexist and demeaning distinction.

6x6

teed-off: the worse examples of gerrymandered voting precincts in the US portrayed as formidable mini-golf hazards—via Print Magazine  

blursday afternoon is never ending: time reforms for 2022 

toponymy: Wordle (previously) place-names editions—see also 

la pista automobilistica: Nag on the Lake gives us the chance to revisit the incredible Fiat factory in Turin with rooftop test-track  

crying is for plain women—pretty women go shopping: season one Golden Girls are younger than the cast of the Sex in the City reboot and other essential reading  

undercounted: email traffic reveals how Trump interfered with US census to ensure polities with large immigrant populations didn’t gain clout

unwort des jahres

Critical of unreflective and dehumanising, casual use in the press, the independent jury have selected Pushback as their “un-word” of the last year for Germany—previously. The often illegal practise of forcing migrants back from the borders of destination or transit countries was illustrated by the tragic stand-off at the EU frontier in Poland on the boundary with Belarus, weaponising asylum seekers from Iran, Iraq and Syria by granting them (at great personal costs—see previously) visas to Minsk and then pushing them out for West to care in reprisal for sanctions levied.