male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest (10. 613)

As Florida governor and presidential hopeful DeSantis continues his pandering crusade against queer, trans and non-conforming individuals by revoking a Miami flagship hotel’s liquor license for hosting a holiday drag show, citing a prohibition of “lascivious exhibition” in front of audiences aged younger than sixteen in the interest of safeguarding the innocence of children, the state of Tennessee is enacting a new law to criminalise public cabaret performances. Much like Mike Pence’s personal-cum-policy conviction not to dine with another woman without the presence of Mother, legislators responsible for this grossly mischaracterise drag shows as something overly-sexualised and obscene to politicise it but there are plenty of voices that refuse to be silenced or to be again marginalised and ostracised. More at the links above.

fifty-fifth statue at large (10. 605)

After over a decade of isolationism and avoidance of foreign entanglement and narrowly passed in the houses of Congress chiefly split along party lines—with Republicans mostly disfavouring the proposal or approving conditionally—the Lend-Lease act was signed into law by US president Franklin D Roosevelt to provide military and materiel aid to first Britain and China on this day in 1941, later extended to other Allied nations France and the Soviet Union. Effectively ending the United States’ pretence of neutrality and non-intervention spurred by the Great Depression and the outlays of participation in the Great War, the act allowed for the “sale, transfer of title, exchange, lease, lend of otherwise dispose of, to any such government—whose defence the president deems vital to the defence of the United States—any defensive article.” Fifty destroyers were transfer to the Royal Navies of the UK and Canada in exchange for the right to establish bases in the Caribbean, Newfoundland and England. Many of these ships were transferred on to the USSR in 1944, the terms of the agreement being that the goods could be used until exhausted, returned and repatriated or destroyed. All countries reciprocated with Reverse Lend-Lease by supplying the US with components or raw materials. Over one billion dollars was allocated (close to $800 billion by present reckoning) with the Soviet Union discharging its debt in 1971 and the UK repaying its loans in 2006.

royal assent (10. 604)

On the advice of her ministers, fearing that proposed armed force would be rebellious and side with the Jacobite Uprising supported by the French militarily, Queen Anne vetoed “An Act for Settling the Militia of that Part of Great Britain called Scotland” on this day in 1708 after its passage by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. 

The objective was to re-establish an armed force not provided for during the Restoration and the Acts of Union from the previous years, and was rejected by the monarch at the last moment upon the news that an invasion fleet was en route to Scotland. The ‘Enterprise d’Écosse’ as a branch skirmish of the War of the Spanish Succession to place James Stuart on the throne failed to materialise. With the exception of forbearance in the overseas colonies, this withholding of royal assent was the last time Britain’s king or queen stopped passage of a bill of Parliament.

j6pc (10. 590)

Incredible even for the dumbest of times that we’re suffering with the former president confusingly countering his critics with seeking to “wrap lies in patriotism,” Donald Trump has recorded a charity single with a choir of male inmates serving sentences in a Washington DC prison for their participation in the 6 January Insurrection. Merely a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and a performance of The Star-Spangled Banner recorded over jailhouse phones, the song is only two minutes long and disappointingly not some highly-produced rendition of an original number—like We are the World but for aspiring authoritarians and useful idiots. Trump will soon join his choir from the other side of the bars, with any luck.

mashers (10. 587)

The inaugural “Anti-Flirt” Week launched this day in Washington, DC in 1923, the Anti-Flirt Club with the charter of protecting young women from unwanted advances, prescribed a series of rules to rebuff men in automobiles and on street corners:

• Don’t flirt: those who flirt in haste often repent in leisure
• Don’t accept rides from flirting motorists—they don’t invite you in to save you a walk
• Don’t use your eyes for ogling—they were made for worthier purposes
• Don’t go out with men you don’t know—they may be married and you made be in for a hair-pulling match
• Don’t wink—a flutter of one eye may cause a tear in the othe
• Don’t smile at flirtatious strangers—save them for people you know
• Don’t annex all the men you can get—by flirting with many, you may lose out on the one
• Don’t fall for the slick, dandified care eater—the unpolished gold of a real man is worth more than the gloss of a lounge lizard
• Don’t let elderly men with an eye to a flirtation pat you on the shoulder and take a fatherly interest in you—those are usually the kind who want to forget they are fathers
• Don’t ignore the man you are sure of while you flirt with another—when you return to the first one you may find him gone

Though the first and only campaign, other chapters in New York and Philadelphia succeeded in earning a reprieve from the worst harassers.

take time—it’s brief (10. 583)

Already on newsstands for approximately ten days and post-dated as with other weeklies so as not to appear to be stale, the first US news digest from publishers Briton Hadden and Henry R Luce born the imprint as issued on this day in 1923. The cover illustration was of Congressman Joseph Gurney Cannon of Illinois, a former dominant Speaker of the House, on his announcement of his plan to retire from politics after a half-century. Originally to be called Facts, they changed the title of the magazine to TIME with the above slogan, wanting to emphasise its brevity and could be consulted in under an hour.

gonzalez v google (10. 563)

During oral arguments, the US Supreme Court entertained a 2015 case contending that internet giant and parent company of Youtube effectively acted as a recruitment platform for Islamic State violence by hosting and algorithmically promoting harmful content and ought to be held liable for what users post on their sites—as publishers would for seditious or dangerous material. Heretofore, host companies have been shielded from legal responsibility from third-party screeds and recommen-dations that can potential deputise and radicalise through their affirmation and reinforcement (admittedly a search engine’s raison d’être) under a provision of the law called Section 230, a carve-out of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that states those operators are not the authors of what people choose to share and propagate, and without a measure of immunity, it is feared that US companies would be exposed lawsuits and severely disincentivised from offering anything that one might find objectionable by any standard. Though the court and the twenty-six word that the argument hinges on may not provide a sufficient framework to define defamation and danger, justices—again, the internet is not America and such regulations should be taken in context—are trying to parse the difference between inclusion and amplification.

7x7 (10. 559)

wolf-whistle: the lexical corpus of canines and US supreme court justices  

deportment: how to act around books  

meres, lochs and llyns: regional variations in names for alleys and narrow walkways in the UK  

linkboy: living in a Dark Sky area, we enjoyed reading about the first town’s to be certified embracing that honour—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links—which is also the source of the expression ‘cannot hold a candle to’ 

official state crap: legislature of New Mexico introduces a bill to create a state aroma, the first of its kind 

cher and charo: a duet of “America” from West Side Story—see previously  

nachträglichkeit: Jude Stewart on sticking with German and the pursuit on bilingualism

8x8 (10. 551)

§230: US Supreme Court reconsidering foundational regulations and their application to algorithmic recommendations  

pole position: researchers propose adding a fourth white light to traffic signals for self-driving vehicles—via Kottke  

the master of the countess of warwick:unveiling the artist responsible for this Tudor-era aesthetic 

ƛcdm: massive blackholes might be the source of the mysterious dark energy that causes the Cosmos to expand 

side hustle: professional comedians are increasingly turning to babysitting to supplement incomes, find source material—via TYWKIWDBI  

leviathan: in search of the giants of the deep 

future tense: the wow list of architectural wonders—including the City—for 2023, via digg 

samuel alito’s mom’s satanic abortion clinic: facility, named in honour of the woman who birthed the justice whose opinion overturned Roe v Wade, is the first based on religious principles

7x7 (10. 543)

epicentre: Türkiye-Syrian earthquake opens a huge fissure over three hundred kilometres long—donate to help with recovery efforts here

down with gravity: legislation in Montana would restrict scientific instruction to “scientific fact”  

monocle: a compact Augmented Reality device that does not wholly remove one from the here and now  

ditchley park: secret bi-partisan talks on the failure of Brexit taking place 

radar anomaly: fighter jets down another unidentified flying object over Canada’s Yukon Province   

child-labour: Iowa state legislature abolishes most working-age restrictions, allowing fourteen-year-olds to do dangerous jobs at exploitative wages  

search and rescue: as the death toll climbs to thirty thousand with little hope of finding more survivors, a happy montage of a few saved from the rubble—more options for donations here

verdens første bøssebryllup (10. 534)

Though not accorded legal sanction by the Kingdom of Denmark for more than sixteen years later, the Danish Evangelical-Lutheran Church became the first Christian communion in modern times to recognise gay marriage on this day in 1973 when radical priest—semi-retired for advocating social anarchy and protesting against NATO upbuilding but not defrocked—Harald Søbye, at the suggestion of a tabloid journalist who was one of the grooms, presided over the world’s first gay marriage. The reporter had met a florist at a discotheque in Vesterbro and asked Søbye to do the honours. From then to 1989 when civil unions were legally recognised, Søbye performed over two hundred blessings or full matrimonial ceremonies. The Church of Denmark in 2012 decided not just to bless and accept same-sex marriages (see also) but to moreover administer the vows and host the celebrations as well.

negative test (10. 529)

Approached by Facebook executives with a request to run an experiment tweaking power demands of certain applications to make using them drain one’s phone batteries, a data scientist refused to do so on ethical grounds citing that by dint of the sheer volume of users—in excess of one billion individuals—some were bound to be negatively impacted by a dead phone, lost, stranded or otherwise able to purchase items or verify their identity or alternatively to be gaslit by ones own gadgets, was fired and revealed the existence of this rather sinister experiment (see also) in a lawsuit suing for wrongful dismissal. Details beyond the allegations are sparse since the plaintiff’s employment contract included a clause for binding arbitration, effectively surrendering his right of recourse to legal remedy and submit to the decision of a judge paid a retainer by the social media enterprise.

zündwarenmonopolgesetz (10. 504)

Having finally conceded to Swedish industrialist and con-artist Ivar Kreuger’s overtures (see link below for more on the Match King) for a financial lifeline to the struggling Weimar Republic (obligated to pay reparations for World War I with most other legitimate means of borrowing or issuing bonds severely limited), the Reichtag on this day in 1930 passed the Flammables Monopoly Law (see previously), awarding exclusive manufacturing rights to Kreuger and his subsidiaries. Quotas at fixed prices were extended to factories that bought into the scheme and were sold to the public at a set price, generating revenue to repay the bond instalments with interest, an arrangement which otherwise would have continued in perpetuity but debts were settled finally in 1983 by West Germany, the East having no truck with this deal.

beta-testing (10.496)

In an attempt to pre-empt some of the legal and ethical concerns in a field fraught with promise, disappointment and unchecked acceleration that our present concessions to copyright and IP are not fit for, stock picture clearing house Shutterstock has partnered with a suit of text-to-art artificial intelligences to offer clients with existing licensing packages access to a limited dataset used to train the generative AI, promising to compensate artists, photographers, models (contributors) whose work was skimmed, studied. Shutterstock also includes the unenforceable catch-all caveat that generated images must not be used to infringe or misappropriate intellectual property or otherwise generate false, deceptive or misleading imagery—which we can’t whether or not divides the onus and responsibility between publisher and patron.

410 u.s. 113 (10. 487)

On this day in 1973, overturning bans by individual state jurisdictions during the first three months of pregnancy on a woman’s right to reproductive autonomy, the US Supreme Court under the leadership of Warren Burger, in a seven to two vote, rendered its verdict on Roe v Wade, with the prevailing argument that such restrictions deprive women of liberties absent recourse to due process. For nearly a half century afterwards, there legal challenges and modifications that arose with the divide between anti-abortion and pro-choice factions until the court of Chief Justice John Roberts overruled settled law by hearing the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation.

9x9 (10. 479)

under the gavel: a distressed Twitter is auctioning off office furnishings from its San Francisco headquarters 

best mates: a meta-study of attracting and retaining intimate partners  

demidecimate: Microsoft announces layoff five percent of its workforce 

from permacrisis to polycrisis: selection of global buzzwords for 2023  

style guide: an eccentric alternate spelling circulated in a newspaper for three decades—without explanation or apology 

wellipets: frog-faced galoshes make a haute couture return 

©: Getty Images is filing suite against an AI art tool for scraping its content—via the new shelton wet/dry

fechtbücher: early Renaissance depicts of duels between men and women 

silicon valley: a tech bust might be a net positive for the city

civics lesson (10. 407)

Citing the precedence of public nuisance laws which stopped a vaping manufacturer from marketing to young people, a school district in Seattle, Washington is filing a non-frivolous lawsuit against social media outlets, alleging that TikTok, Facebook, Instagram et al are exploiting vulnerable psychologies and creating addicts for their own profit and precipitating a widespread hardship for students and the education system that services them. The attendant mental health crisis—a challenge for the best equipped and dedicated counselling professionals—is a distinct disservice, siphoning precious resources and time from curriculum for intervention and threat-response stemming from distressing and intimidating posts, compiling a growing list of intentioned maladies. What do you think? The school board hopes that this injunction is a first step for students everywhere.

6x6 (10. 403)

picket lines: Sunak’s cabinet to implement anti-strike laws to enforce basic services during stoppages  

⭕️ 💯: draw a perfect circle   

camera obscura: the fantastic, “historical” photography apparatuses of Mathieu Stern

all maps at once: interesting and interactive cartographical overlays with the open-source viewing standard  

murphy desk: the flow wall workspace designed by Robert van Embricqs 

this is the sound of a gavel: a litany of concessions in exchange for the House Speakership

praça dos três poderes (10. 400)

Despite concession by the defeated far-right former high office holder Jair Bolsonaro and the lapse of more than a week since the election, there are yet grim echoes in the storming of the presidential palace, congress and the supreme court in Brasília of the Washington January Sixth insurrection just over two years ago by thousands of his backers, spurred to action in part by relentless rumour-mongering of voter-fraud, against president Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva. Security forces rebuffed the invasion and called for the extradition of Bolsonaro—who has been granted refuge in Florida.

fourteen points (10. 398)

Delivered in an address to Congress, outlining his administrations aims for the war and negotiated settlement, US president Woodrow Wilson on this day in 1918 enumerated his principles for peace, having rather reluctantly joining the Triple Entente against the Central Powers the spring prior due to Germany’s disruption of transatlantic shipping and trade (II) with France and Britain and the interception of a secret diplomatic communication proposing an alliance between México and Germany. Adopting progressive, domestic practises as foreign policy goals—though regarded by allies as a touch naive and idealistic—Wilson derided secret treaties (I) and championed free trade (III), public agreements, democratic hallmarks and above all self-determination, decolonisation (V) and recognition of national ambitions as a preventative measure of realising those aspirations through violence. Other bullet points covered arms reduction (IV), sovereignty for constituent Soviet republics (VI), restoration of Belgium, Balkan and French territories (VII, XI, VIII), redrawing Italian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman borders along lines of nationality (IX,X, XII), an independent Poland (XIII) and supranational organisation to enforce political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike (XIV), a covenant that would eventually lead to the establishment of the League of Nations and its successors.