day one-hundred twenty-six (13. 596)

After granting Iran a week off out of respect for the funeral of the late Supreme Leader, Trump renews his threats to “finish the job” militarily if Tehran does not agree to a deal under US terms. A fleet of Japanese flagged tankers leave the Persian gulf after being stranded for months, whilst ships come under fire cleaving close to the Omani coast. Netanyahu claims Christian villages in southern Lebanon have asked to be annexed by Israel to protect them from Hezbollah. Zelenskyy reportedly will not be allowed to speak during the NATO summit. During a play-off, the American president intervenes to pressure FIFA officials to reconsider a penalty imposed against one of the star players of team USA and reverse the referee’s red card—forever earning the game an asterisk (see also) in the history books.

9x9 (13. 585)

hospitalithings: a quiet, meticulous observation of common objects found in lodgings—via Nag on the Lake  

aka vlogging: Hank Green interviews Ze Frank (previously) about the YouTube format he pioneered, advising discomfort to put ideas out into the world—via Waxy  

yes, yes, very good—thank you for self-identifying as a short-sighted rube and saving us the trouble: the US constitution us for simple folk still burdened by the belief that words have meaning  

llog: Victor Henry Mair, sinologist and frequent Language Log contributor has passed away, aged 83  

new posting: an interactive map charting the careers of civil servants managing the bureaucracy of the British Empire—via Map Mania  

alignment chart: a cross-over of Chekhov’s Gun, Schrödinger’s Cat, Occam’s Razor and Murphy’s Law

in an instant: the last Polaroid factory in the world is in the Dutch town of Enschede 

bilberry buns: a Polish pastry gets its own holiday  

ozzy’s ozzy is a unique case: observations from a celebrity impersonator cruise—via Kottke 

day one-hundred twenty (13. 571)

Maritime traffic through the Hormuz has declined sharply, Tehran saying no further talks are scheduled despite Trump’s claim for a technical working group meeting in Doha on the logistics of safely operating the strait, the truce still holdings as both the US and Iranian military actions are paused. Inflation in Iran flirts with a sixty percent increase as the price of food staples have nearly doubled since the start of the conflict, supposedly some six billion dollars of Iranian deposits will be unfrozen. Tension continue to rise with Oman over the disposition of the waterway with Muscat competing to open more routes and opposing tolls. IDF incursions into southern Syria draw condemnation from Middle East nations.

day one-hundred nineteen (13. 569)

The US and Iran agree to halt tit-for-tat attacks once again (American central command refers to it as “kinetic activity”) and resume negotiations, both sides standing down and allowing free transit—in coordination with Tehran for safety’s sake. The IDF destroys a tunnel in southern Beirut it claims was used by Hezbollah for munitions storage just hours after a truce was called in Washington between Israel and Lebanon. Eliminated from the next heat, Iran’s national football team heads home. Russia fuel supply troubles have knock-on effects for Central Asia, exposing their dependence on Moscow. Strikes at the Pakistani-Afghan border intensify.

day one-hundred eighteen (13. 566)

For the second night in a row, US forces have struck multiple targets in Iran for Tehran’s “aggression” against commercial shipping as the fragile ceasefire continues to fray—following on with a threat to wipe out the Islamic Republic. The Revolutionary Guard say that further violations of the truce will bring diplomatic talks to a halt as religious hardliners split on settlement negotiations. Bahrain is attacked by drones in response. Hezbollah rejects the ceasefire arrangement brokered by Washington between Israel and Lebanon. The draft resolution of Trump’s Board of Peace seeks sweeping immunity to block members and contractors from potential prosecution for work in “rebuilding” Gaza and allowing them to appropriate public property free of charge and with no oversight. Rocked by a wave of attacks that have resulted in fuel shortages, Moscow is building on new air defence complex on the grounds of Putin’s daughter’s intellectual development foundation just outside the capital.

day one-hundred seventeen (13. 561)

US strikes Iranian military facilities after an apparent drone attack on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz caused the UN to abandon evacuation efforts—Tehran and Washington establish a direct line of communication, a red phone to prevent incidents that could potentially escalate into military conflict. Trump characterised the victories of democratic socialists supported by New York mayor Zohran Mamdani as a win for “ruthless communism” after sabotaging a rare bipartisan bill aimed at addressing the housing crisis at the last second by refusing to attend a signing ceremony after the stage had been set—calling the proposal very “Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren-centric” and affordability was a low priority compared with his voter-suppression legislation he is insisting congress pass, potentially further alienating himself and the GOP from the issues faced by the American public. Lebanon, Israel and the US agree on a trilateral framework to stop the violence at the border as talks continue. Saudi Arabia restarts refinery operations after a four-month pause.

day one-hundred sixteen (13. 557)

Lebanese-Israeli ceasefire negotiations in Washington are extended. FIFA allows Pride flags for Iran-Egypt match in Seattle despite objections from national football federations. Trump claims that unfrozen Iranian funds will be used to buy US crop staples, saying the country is experiencing a famine and the deal will be mutually beneficial. Tehran denies any arrangement to purchase US agricultural products.  The UN Maritime agency pauses evacuation efforts after a vessel came under attack in the Gulf of Oman. Oil prices—though the affect does not immediately translate to the petrol pump—have fallen to pre-war levels.

day one-hundred fifteen (13. 554)

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard rejects the proposed route by its Omani partners through the Strait of Hormuz, saying that safe passage can only be guaranteed for the lanes issued by Tehran and any deviation would pose a risk to traffic. The Department of War requests an addition eighty-eight billion dollars in funding related to the Iran conflict and the Ebola outbreak in Africa. Meeting with NATO secretary-general Rutte, Trump boasts that Iran has conceded to everything that he has asked for and revived old grievances with allies, ahead of the annual summit to be hosted in Ankara, which the US president plans to attend. IDF insists it will remain in Lebanon, potentially undermining the peace process.

day one-hundred fourteen (13. 549)

US senate narrowly votes to halt conflict in Iran without congressional authorisation, though Trump is expected to veto the war powers resolution. The US president announces that IAEA nuclear inspectors will go to Iran at “an appropriate time”—Tehran countering the claims on commitments made earlier by Trump and Vance, whilst secretary of state Rubio maintains that Hormuz must remain toll-free as UN takes action to evacuate sailors stranded in the Strait. Russia puts the annexed territory of Crimea under lockdown as a swarm of drones approaches. Belarus strives to remain neutral after Kiev issues an ultimatum and warms of consequences.

day one-hundred twelve (13. 541)

Despite yesterday’s indefinite postponement and Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz over deadly strikes in Lebanon (American forces in the region dispute this claim saying ship traffic continues to flow), diplomatic delegations scrambled to reach Lucerne to begin formal talks. Trump publically admits that the US is is four-weeks away from an even more debilitating oil shock. The US team consisting of the same ineffectual members, Vance, Witkoff and Kushner, dispatched in a succession of negotiations that quickly spiralled into war is in attendance. Israel announced it refuses to withdraw from its security zone south of Beirut, neither side directly represented in the talks. Discussions are expected to carry on for days with side sessions addressing maritime security, but the main focus is on the sticking points of deescalation and Iran’s nuclear programme—the proposal presently being to not allow inspectors and to dilute the existing stockpile to well below weapon-grade. Fuel sales are suspended in Crimea after a wave of attacks by Ukraine on the illegally annexed territory.

addendum (13. 535)

Underwriter Lloyd’s of London intelligencer branch that tracks maritime shipping data reports that Tehran’s and Muscat’s newly created Persian Gulf Strait Authority are mandating that vessels transiting the Hormuz take out special coverage through government approved providers. This insurance requirement is regarded as a prelude to tolls, which is probably the least worst thing to come out of the stultifyingly bad grand deal of Trump’s— a nominal fee factored into the cost of doing business that would be passed along to the consumer but a tax we think anyone would happily pay in exchange that Trump and his minions don’t embark on more empire-building adventures with the tolerance, forethought and follow-through worse than a package tourist. Despite the ceasefire announced yesterday between Hezbollah and the IDF, strikes continue with dozens more dead in southern Beirut, pressuring Iran to take action and respond to what hardliners are calling a blatant violation of the MOU with Washington unable to reign in Israel, whose minister of national security declared that “all of Lebanon must burn.” Direct negotiations stalled with the US, Pakistani interior minister Mohsin Naqvi returns to Tehran for meetings with high level officials.

day one-hundred ten (13. 531)

After increasingly deadly clashes in the wake of the US-Iranian truce that threatened to sabotage the peace settlement before talks (postponed with the US vice president delaying his departure to Switzerland, despite proclaiming that the sixty-day period for negotiations had started) could even begin, Hezbollah and the IDF declare a ceasefire. The term made increasingly Orwellian in practise, we will see if it plays out like the ceasefire arrangement in Gaza, the opposite of an armistice that’s seen a thousand Palestinian deaths and the population squeezed into a smaller and smaller area as Israel occupation expands. Ukrainian forces launch a retaliatory drone attack on Moscow, the largest yet during the four year conflict, aim to bring the realities of war to the home-front for the Russian people. Trump, messy drama queen that he is, scripts his own Italian soap-opera, claiming that Giorgia Meloni begged him for a picture together on the sidelines of the G7 summit. The prime minister called out his made up story and cancelled a trip to America scheduled for her foreign minister. Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz surges, from a trickle to approaching a quarter of pre-war crossings. The MOU stipulates that Iran will keep the waterway open to all for a thirty-day period in order to clear the backlog of ships stranded, but leaves open the possibility to impose tolls or restrict certain vessels flying under the flag of enemies in the future. Quite a few other significant concessions to Tehran are emerging, amplified by Trump’s attempts to defend his grand deal—claiming without him Israel wouldn’t exist and he saved the world economy from sliding into a depression. The Supreme Leader says the settlement was reached out of desperation and panic in Washington.

day one-hundred eight (13. 522)

As politicians and the press debate the merits and durability of Trump’s grand deal with Tehran (the administration hinting it will publish the terms of the MOU ahead of the formal signing ceremony), a Russian frigate, known to escort its shadow fleet of oil tankers through the Channel, fired warning shots at a pleasure yacht off the Island of Wight. The G7 vows for new sanctions against Russia amid optimism for peace in Ukraine. Elon Musk threatens to sue German public broadcaster ZDF for its reporting on how he is stoking anti-immigrant sentiment in Belfast. Scepticism mounts—everyone is angry and dissatisfied for different but overlapping reasons—over the peace plan with Iran insisting that any accord is contingent on IDF withdrawal from Lebanon—the rift between Washington and Tel Aviv apparently widening as Trump criticises Netanyahu and says that Syria would do a better job in extracting Hezbollah without killing everyone else in the process. Destruction in Beirut persists but many displaced Lebanese are trying to return home.

day one-hundred seven (13. 519)

Far from settled or over with the MOU digitally signed, unless America is accepting their defeat in this adventure, the chronology continues. With no force behind it, the grand deal is akin to an empty table of contents, waiting to be limned by a negotiation process that will prove thornier than the talks—or lack of dialogue—that brought us to this juncture. The terms, not fully disclosed to the public, provides a cessation of strikes in Lebanon but provides no timeline for IDFs withdrawal from southern Beirut. The Israeli government, with Netanyahu also using the opportunity to announce his reelection campaign, has said it will not leave its security zones established in Lebanon, Syria or Gaza, and the country’s defence ministry denounced the draft agreement as not only bad for Israel but for bad for the entire world, accusing US special envoys Kushner and Witkoff of driving a wedge between Washington and Tel Aviv. In addition to sanction relief, apparently with no strings attached though Trump says otherwise—saying a lot things—with its own funds unfrozen, the US tax payers will be remitting some three-hundred billion dollars in reparations under the aegis of an Iranian freedom fund, without reform or the promised regime change nor appropriating oil revenues to repair gulf nation energy infrastructure damaged in the war, with monitoring of its nuclear programme and the matter of its stockpile of enriched uranium deferred for negotiations yet to come. The Strait of Hormuz will supposedly be open to all traffic without restriction as well as Iranian ports—tensions between India and the US flaring over the refusal to apologise for attacking an Indian tanker accused of violating the US naval blockade—on Friday following the formal signing ceremony, with all parties uphold their commitments. Blasts were heard in the area of Qeshm island and the strait.

day one-hundred six (13. 516)

After several tense hours when an IDF strike of the suburbs of Beirut looked to sabotage the entire negotiations—one Trump said shouldn’t have happened, “Let’s not blow it—Iran and the US reached a tentative peace settlement and approved the memorandum of understanding, to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the American blockade of Iranian ports. Some twelve billion dollars of frozen Iranian assets will be released, with Europeans insisting that sanction relief must be conditioned on de-nuclearisation. The MOU is scheduled to be signed in Geneva on Friday and at this juncture, de-mining operations will start to clear the waterway to ensure safe passage—and whilst world leaders hailed the return to status quo ante bellum as positive, market reactions were less enthusiastic than expected, with energy prices not expected to come down soon and more time needed to restore lines of distribution and refining. It remains unclear whether Tehran will be able to impose tolls on transiting vessels. The issue of enriched uranium has been tabled for now and Israel was not party to the talks and has not yet responded to the outcome. Questions also remain with respect to Lebanon and the Israeli occupation at the southern border. Although calling it a grand deal, the United States is in a significantly weaker strategic position than when they started the war, failing to achieve objectives laid out for beginning the joint conflict in the first place and not substantively different than what was agreed to under the Obama administration in 2015 and uncertainty remains how enduring this peace might be.

day one hundred-three (13. 504)

The Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA, the government agency established by Tehran to oversee maritime traffic established at the beginning of May along with Oman) has announced that the Hormuz is closed until further notice over US attacks. The American navy disables the third tanker this week approaching Iranian or Omani ports in violation of its own blockade. Pakistani intermediaries insist that peace negotiations are ongoing, but Iran announces that US hostilities have rendered the ceasefire meaningless as Iran continues to lob missiles and drones at American allied gulf states. Never respecting the enemy’s veto and showing his cards, Trump is losing the control of the narrative, threatening more strikes (now to take Kharg Island and assume control of petroleum production “much like we have with Venezuela”) whilst saying a deal is imminent, that Israel does what he says, lurching towards mutual exclusively outcomes, in thinking Tehran can be pressured into acquiescing to Washington’s terms and retains significant leverage.

ajaccio nach toulon (13. 485)

 

Departing Corsica—this time on the MS Mega Regina, the cruiseferry sold after the Helsinki-Stockholm route was curtailed during the pandemic in 2021 and put to sea in the Mediterranean where demand was more sustainable—we had to pace ourselves with the drive, unsure about how easy it would be to park a caravan on the streets of Ajaccio before the pier was opened for boarding, and stationed ourselves at various points along the way. We shared the dock with the Royal Clipper, a five-masted tall-ship. The steel-hulled sailboat, the largest in the world, was originally built by Polish communist authorities at the shipyards of Gdańsk as a floating vacation home for miners and their families and regularly crosses the Atlantic with passengers. The return trip was a bit rougher with more waves and wind but we survived, arriving back at Toulon.

day eighty-nine (13. 469)

As peace talks continue to circle in a critical phase (both parties deny a draft framework for ending the blockades), the brittle ceasefire between Iran and the US seems ready to break at any moment with the second defensive strike launched against the Revolutionary Guards strategic installation in Bandar Abbas, capable of defending the Strait of Hormuz. In retaliation, Iran launched drones at American bases in Kuwait. Trump issues a volley of threats against Oman for its arrangement with Tehran to regulate and toll traffic through the Persian gulf. Furthermore, Trump is planning to impose sanctions on those shipping companies that do pay the transit fees and is targeting Iran air carriers to try to exert more economic pressure (in parallel, Trump is attempting to do the same for airports in Democratically leaning hubs domestically) on the country that has so far been resilient in the face of direct and indirect attacks. IDF bombing campaigns kill dozens in southern Beirut as evacuation orders expand.  Israel also asserts control over seventy percent of the Gaza Strip.

porto, orta, ponti (13. 461)

After a bit of chaos and stress disembarking the ferry—but all around a pleasant, well-executed experience and would highly recommend with the caveat that one needs time and space for discombobulating oneself. There’s the hurry-up-and-wait aspect we’ve experienced with other ferry lines in the past and being locked in queue after check-in, but it was especially difficult this time around to see either port city—and we would not get any better about planning on the return voyage. After a mad scramble to grab our go-bags and get ourselves and the dog back in the car and disembark, we navigated quickly through the capital of Ajaccio (Aiacciu in Corsican, a regional continuum of Tuscan dialects but with distinctive lingual features frozen from medieval times developed under Pisan and Genovese occupations but now almost wholly taken over by French) which according to some is the eponym of its founder, the semi-legendary hero Ajax of the Iliad—or more likely derived from a forgotten term meaning a sheep enclosure. The former lore is likely an invention by the city’s most famous son, Napoleon Bonaparte, as a legitimising myth for the child of a provincial lawyer and former independence advocate to become emperor of France. We traveled along a portion of the winding coastal route, the D81, proclaimed the most beautiful in France—with the UNESCO sites of the gulf of Porto and the cliffs of Piana, called les calanche (il calanques) as geologically unique fjord-like features caused by glacial erosion and resulting in bizarre and fantastic formations, inscribed in the registry as a group in 1983.

synchronoptica

one year ago: an exploration of Kowloon Walled City (with synchronopticæ), a treasury of obscure words plus US Food and Drug Administration restricts access to vaccines

fifteen years ago: promoting electro mobility 

sixteen years ago: unsolicited budgetary advice for the eurozone 

days eighty-four and five (13. 460)

Insisting that he does not make bad deals, Trump has issued a non-update on the progress of peace negotiations with Iran, again calling out disparaging and doubtful reports to the contrary as unpatriotic and subversive.  Premature news hailed the settlement as a settled matter with an attendant and designed market rally, yet little has emerged from Pakistan’s intermediary shuttle diplomacy other than Trump trying to distinguish his concept of a deal as superior to what Tehran and Obama achieved. With the US still intransigent about unfreezing Iranian assets, reparations in exchange for a supposed longer moratorium on nuclear research and development—only amounting to a further sixty day extension to the ceasefire, something which no one wants.