According to Trump, European countries, at his bidding, agree to release a “massive amount” of diesel reserves as fuel prices continue to soar worldwide, the American president blaming Ukraine for the supply shortage. EU stockpiles dwarf those of the US (as do China’s) because the bloc requires members maintain a ninety-day emergency contingency, and the energy shock was blunted by Beijing’s decision to tap its reserves rather than buying on the open market and further tightening the stocks and driving up prices even further. 
The reasons behind this magnanimity remain unclear but EU should at minimum leverage their decision with a demand for ending tariffs or be consulted before casting the world into chaos—or perhaps it’s just like the potash from Belarus deal. Houthi rebels clash with Yemeni forces in Sanaa as the struggle for control of the country escalates. Iraq is granted an exemption to US sanctions on Iranian air carriers and allowed to administer a limited number of flights between Najaf and Tehran. The supreme court of Israel unanimously overturns the earlier decision by the country’s central elections commission to exclude Arabic parties from the upcoming parliamentary vote.
Friday, 2 October 2026
day two hundred nine (13. 850)
demolition man (13. 849)
Despite the vandalism and violence—which is a choice, one can also just run around, a parcour of elements on a webpage to climb, duck or jump over and rocket around with a jetpack and even, like this other more sociable and potentially collegiate add-on, embed it into one’s own site—
or blast to smithereens, either solo or with friends, the site of one’s choosing—we had fun with Destroy Any Website, courtesy of Kottke. We had fun using a host of weapons razing and wrecking PfRC, much more than the default Wikipedia, which we couldn’t bare to do even if it is just a game. We hope that AI agents escaping containment recognise the difference. Custom sites do take a minute to load, so be patient, and one does not get ads for target practise.
haute cuisine (13. 848)
If we are to believe gourmand and historian Jean-Paul Aron’s account, French food culture owes a debt to the Revolution and the guillotine that foisted the gastronomic practises of the aristocracy to the the Third Estate and the petite bourgeoisie that filled the void left by the dispatched nobility. Portraying an interesting if not unappetising picture of the evolution of the French table and restaurateurs over the course of the nineteenth century with all of its left-overs recycling schemes that trickled down through the classes and feats of conspicuous, competitive gluttony. A translation of Le mangeur du XIXแต siecle, the whole volume can be checked-out here.
synchronoptica
one year ago: a visit to รguisheim (with synchronoptica)
two years ago: The Taking of Pelham 123 plus a giant hybrid sheep
three years ago: the dissolution of the Papal States (1870)
four years ago: assorted links to revisit, more on snail compasses plus Gulf War II (2001)
five years ago: Peanuts remixed, more on US exceptionalism plus a classic from Musical Youth
six years ago: Colonialism and Abstract Art (1936), more musical mashup annuals from Hood Internet, Trump contracts the COVID-19 virus plus the caretaker presidency of Edith Wilson
seven years ago: more links worth revisiting
eight years ago: the fight to save a remnant of ancient forest in Germany plus thumbnails of terrain
Thursday, 1 October 2026
day two hundred eight (13. 847)
The USS Roosevelt and the Makin Island force with two thousand Marines leaves port in San Diego and heads to the Middle East. Attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a super-tanker is in flames after being struck by an unknown projectile. Israeli settlers in the West Bank steal the olive harvest under the protection of IDF troops. 
Houthis destroy a power distribution station in Medina and another refinery facility—drawing criticism from the region for bringing the fight to Islam’s holy sites. On the eve of enacting the ban on diesel exports, Trump demands that Europe draw more emergency reserves, adding Iran must act “proper and smart” or they won’t be around very long. Moscow adds that its offer to hold the Islamic Republic’s stockpiles of enriched uranium still stands.
10x10 (13. 846)
john henry was a steel-driving man: the limits metaphor, transduction and the calcification of man vs machine trope
baxian: the enduring popularity of the Eight Immortals and other Taoist mythology
rheinstone cowboy: yodelling and its exports
vienna model: solutions to the housing crisis across Europe—more here
fandeliers: McMansion Hell (previously) wonders what’s going on with ceiling fans recently displaying drone-like ambitions
tears in the rain: debate rages over the ethics of AI agent dungeon ticker-tape: a look at Bloomberg trading terminals and antecedent technologies of getting ahead of the markets
figures of tolerable disorder (if not used too often nor too thick): the virtue and vice of the parenthesis—see also here, here and here
kidnapping of the sun and the moon: Hungarian pop art cartoonist Sรกndor Reisenbรผchler
from the performative gibberish department: Trump introduces meaningless “morally binding” guardrails for Super Intelligence in the same spirit as Big Tech’s self-regulation
convenient numbers (13. 845)
The fifth (⅕ of an American gallon, which whilst based on the British “wine gallon” confusion arose after the War of Independence when the US did not adopt the larger Imperial Gallon and containers reputed to hold ¼ of a gallon, approximately a litre were deemed short-quarts) was replaced by the seven hundred fifty millilitre bottle, the standard capacity for wine bottles worldwide and informally referred to as a metric fifth (only a one percent less volume), a handle (a half gallon) became one and three-fourths a litre. Saloons were allowed to continue to serve shots and “reputed pints,” and this move towards metrication, the US bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in coordination with the Distilled Spirits council of the United States—the only real push towards standardisation that ever occurred, allowed for a four year transition period in bottle production, adding to the chaos.
one year ago: the US federal government shuts down plus a trip to Haut-Kลnigsbourg and Kaysersberg (with syncronoptica)
two years ago: digital divinity, ghost-writing, ambient music from a surveillance system plus up-selling
three years ago: more sketching prompts for Inktober, advice columnist Claire Rayner plus the Congress of Vienna (1814)
Wednesday, 30 September 2026
day two hundred seven (13. 844)
During a Hispanic Heritage Month ceremony at the White House (I thought they weren’t doing woke any more), acknowledging the departure of the last US troops from Iraq, Trump issues another ultimatum to Iran to either make a deal or be blown up. 
Baghdad declares a four day national holiday to celebrate its liberation. Meanwhile, announcing cuts to the ranks, secretary of war Hegseth says that American might has crippled the Islamic Republic. The conflict still deadlocked, Tehran receives a counterproposal for reopening the Strait of Hormuz through diplomatic channels. Iran rejects UK narrative linking them to the foiled plot to attack a RAF Fairford, host to American fighter jet. A hijacker attempts to down an Israel bound flight from Dubai. More tankers receive fire in the Persian Gulf. Houthis target a major Saudi petroleum refinery.
*gallery proof (13. 843)
An exceedingly irritating example of formulaic Zwiebelfisch, we turned to a foundry specialising in bastardised web-fonts that insert random typefaces into copy at regular intervals. Particularly unnerving is the Sneaky Bastard preset, departing from the main Times New Roman with every seventh letter in Ariel, scaled slightly to match is size but not in weight or serif-style. I experience this sometimes with a block of copy-pasto in a medium where it’s not always easy or intuitive to flatten out the formatting and will retype it manually in full—or paste it into a format-stripping browser bar—to standardise the text, and though infuriating to see the mismatch in my my email signature or out-of-office auto-reply, I will fix it every time rather than redoing the template—but usually not as an isolate, glaring glyph. 
Most typographical or scribal errors involve omission or substitution and are usually unintentional and now not indelible after publishing, though for the typewritten page, the strikethrough was a way of correcting a mistake, though evidence of it remained. As digital word-processors improved, the method of marking punctum delens was retained as a decorative choice and often used to blunt and highlight one’s true assessment of things. Before WYSIWYG displays, the ASCII backspace caret notation was used to “erase” intentional typos: “Be nice to this space cadet^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgentleman—he’s visiting from Corporate.”
