vereinte dienstleistungswerkschaft (10. 623)

Established on this day in 2001 as a merger of the congresses of five individual trade unions—with a membership of around two million workers, including postal, banking, insurance, health, education, public service, media and transportation sector employees, Verdi represents the professional interests of its members and successfully lobbies—through political clout, collective bargaining and strike actions—for better compensation and improved working conditions.

foia follies (10. 621)

As illustrated in all its surreal qualities by this request filed by a Bloomberg reporter for the artwork created by detainees at Guantánamo Bay (see also) and other US government black sites finally fulfilled (with annotated redactions) last Spring, Muckrock again showcases the worst cases of resistance to transparency and flagrant violations—non-compliance—of Free of Information Act requirements. Beyond the mishandling of classified documents—whose fault lies partially with injudicious over-classification—there are several award categories, ranging from the pushback of the Federal Bureau of Investigations refusing to release its dossiers on that subversive band the Monkees to its last surviving member, the record number of GLOMAR responses of the National Security Agency, to the Burn After Reading Award for wanton destruction of public records.

because it’s there (10. 619)

Entering the lexicon as the standard response for a risky or impossible undertaking, mountain climber George Mallory gave his reply to an interviewer from the New York Times when asked about his participation in the first two unsuccessful expeditions to the summit of Mount Everest (ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ, Chomolunga—सगरमाथा, Sagarmāthā) on this day in 1923—adding his intention to try again the following year. During this climb, Mallory and his partner, Andrew Irvine, disappeared somewhere on the northeastern face near the summit, with their fate unknown until the discovery of their bodies in 1999—there being conjecture that they made it to the top and were on their way down. Edmund Hillary, whom along with Tenzing Norgay (བསྟན་འཛིན་ནོར་རྒྱས), are credited with reaching the peak first, welcomed the news, of a party achieving this goal three decades ahead of them, calling Mallory the pioneer and original enthusiast.

9x9 (10. 614)

telegeography: the current map of submarine cables connecting the world  

blogoversary: a belated birthday greeting to Fancy Notions 

rightish: Microsoft touts AI’s factual errors as “usefully wrong”  

goldenes buch: German communities’ official, historic guest logs are a chronicle of the times and Zeitzeugnisse  

media matters: if journalists cannot call out propaganda—what’s even the the point of coverage—via Kottke  

gǒutóu māo níng—literally dog’s head, cat’s meow: cute Chinese animal transcriptions for English salutations  

seoul ring: the world’s largest spokeless ferris wheel being built in South Korea  

linkrot: more thoughts on three broken links and internet conservation  

mappa mundi: the thirteenth century chart of the mundane and exalted—see previously

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.

8x8 (10. 585)

subway tycoon: design one’s own fantasy mass-transit system  

the myth of sisyphus: how the curse really plays out—via Super Punch  

time slider: a stupendous digital clock

antechamber: authorities announce the discovery of a hidden passage in the Pyramid of Cheops found with muon tomography 

facetune: a 1976 patent-application for a dressing mirror with dials to adjust one’s figure 

llm: prior to the emergence of ChatGPT and its kind, researchers developed the Octopus Test as a heuristic to explore the limitations of AI communication  

handmade holograms: DIY 3D etchings labyrinth: introducing the fifteen-hour city—see also

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.

antechamber (10. 550)

The entrance discovered the previous November with little countenance of what lie beneath, on this day in 1923 with twenty invited witnesses, including the expedition sponsor George Herbert, the archaeological team of Howard Carter broke the seal to the inner chamber of the Tomb of Tutankhamun—being the first to see the treasures and golden sarcophagus of the pharaoh in over three millennia. Ten days later to spare his excavators from toil in the heat of the harsh summer and resume work in Autumn, Carter arranged to have the doorway blocked by tonnes of sand and rubble. This reburial corresponded with reporting from The New York Times that some two hundred and fifty American tourist, including a congressional delegation had boarded the ocean liner S S Adriatic, bound for Luxor to visit the tomb.

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

corecore (10. 501)

Just as a digital culture correspondent hailed the movement as an “anti-trend,” the Dadaists that it is being compared to proclaimed that “Dada is the anti-Dada,” but the facetious take on the burdened suffix to denote a range of highly specific aesthetics and welling, small-batch fads do both attach meaning to the meaningless. Attendant with all the staples of being chronically engaged in online platforms, the best examples of the super-cut meme are touchstones of both estranging anxiety (keenly self-aware that the same platforms are a major and perpetuating contributor) and over-familiar nostalgia. Sample more at Hyperallergic at the link above.

statistical breviary (10. 499)

Currently on exhibit at the National Arts Club in New York City, we are finding ourselves preoccupied with the presentation of Greg Colson and his studies in pie charts that reflect our collective and dissected anxieties and fear, surveyed as they are suggesting that each wedge might be susceptible to reduction or expansion in a way that’s wiser than the format seems at first glance. More at Hyperalleric at the link above.

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.

living in love and faith (10. 480)

Concluding an extended period of consultation following the 2013 legal recognition of same-sex marriages in England and Wales, a council of Anglican bishops have announced their intent that the Church of England’s stance on sexuality should not be subject to change. The matter to be debated at a General Synod in February, the Church—which was established expressly to question authority on the sanctity of matrimony when the Pope refused to grant Henry XIII an annulment—is stopping short of performing itself gay marriages though significantly drops a 1991 rule that clergy members in same-sex relationships must remain celibate, issued a blanket apology for its behaviour towards the LGBTQ+ community and retains blessing for civil marriages of gay couples. Though not yet amenable to the ceremony, it does represent progress.

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

7x7 (10. 476)

inflection point: one young person’s crusade to salvage writing, journalism before ChatGPT changes it forever 

beasts of burden: the giant donkeys of Ancient Rome—see also  

birth-rate: China registers its first population decline in six decades 

ren faire: author Eleanor Janega’s Once and Future Sex  

level 100 schlamm zauberer: police attempt to clear remaining protester demonstrating against the demolition of the hamlet Lützerath for surface mining of coal—see previously  

☠️: a safety warning from the Electric Company (1973)  

midway in the midjourney of our lives: what AI does well and why AI is not intelligent

9x9 (10. 424)

j.t. iv: the compilation “Cosmic Lightning” of a tragically forgotten outsider rock artist  

tees valley: a dialect map of England from the University of Leeds  

bundesministerin der verteidigung: German defence secretary steps down  

courtlife: Queen Victoria’s illustrated journals—see also—via Messy Nessy Chic  

mlk: Stevie Wonder’s campaign to make Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday a national holiday  

wef: global leaders gather in Davos 

buona sera: actor, photojournalist and sex symbol Gina Lollobrigida passes away, aged 95 

scare-fox: accidentally Art Brût predator-deterrent  

atomic rooster: a classic from the spin-off band of Crazy World of Arthur Brown

7x7 (10. 410)

salt of the earth: a tour of Ukraine’s Soledar salt mines—presently under siege 

black mass: Boston is hosting the Satanic Temple’s SatanCon—see previously

verpertilio-homo: what the Great Moon Hoax of 1835 reveals about contemporary misinformation  

lhs 475β: JWST discovers its first exoplanet—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links  

discretionary time off: salaried Microsoft employees given unlimited vacation leave  

jot and tittle: an unorthodox scholar ferrets out biblical forgeries  

russie d’aujourd’hui: a look back at Soviet boosterism and propaganda publications

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.

dei gratia, emperor of the united states and protector of mexico (10. 394)

Via JWZ, we are directed towards a recently uncovered cache of proclamations, carried in the newspapers no less, from Norton I (previously) on the 1868 smallpox epidemic that had arrived in San Francisco, commanding authorities of all cities on the Pacific ensure, under severe penality that 1) every person be vaccinated and that 2) teamsters driving persons to hospital shall not get drunk and leave their charges on the streets to spread contagion, and moreover 3) physicians shall change their clothing after attending patients and lastly that churches 4) expose and punish all persons who administer poisonous food and drinks during religious or political discussions. Much more at the links above.