herd immunity

After reading this thoughtful essay and reflection by Guardian correspondent Gaby Hinsliff about the Derbyshire village of Eyam during the outbreak of the bubonic plague in the winter of 1664 and its singular self-sacrificing commitment to hold their ground and not spread the contagion until it had extinguished, exhausted itself and how this account begged the question whether any of us has the charity of isolation and deferment any more corresponded in a sense with the more contemporary act of contrition in the village of Tyneham in south Dorset, offered up to the Ministry of Defence as a testing-range as vital to the war effort.
The last victim of the plague of Eyam, a farm hand named Abraham Morten expired on 1 November 1666, the infection having run its course and the last resident of the some two hundred displaced—what they believed then to be a temporary measure, left Tyneham after receiving evacuation orders shortly before Christmas 1943, penned a poignant note to the church door for the troops in training—which has been respected:

Please treat the church and houses with care; we have given up our homes where many of us lived for generations to help win the war to keep men free. We shall return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly.

As Eyam endured the loss of many of its residents, the military requisition of Tyneham became a permanent one and the villagers never returned to their homes, given over to target practise, though the church was spared. Like the author, even for the tremolo heroism that doesn’t demand of us to rise to the occasion, whether we’ll see not kindnesses and succour of the immediate variety but rather the willingness to overcome the inertia of our own plans and priorities in this catastrophe or the next to accept inconvenience, cancellations and dashed arrangements to quietly keep to ourselves in the name protecting others and never know the value of what we’ve done. When the time comes will we be the vicar that convinces his parishioners (whom understood being contagious even if the vector was not known) to not flee the village in a panic or sheriffs and squires (free riders think the herd is other people’s problems) who bolted at the first sign of trouble?  Conversely, would we give up hearth and home for the greater good even if those goals were in a sense indirect and abstract?

tillökningsdagen

Rather than share the turmoil experienced by other parts of Europe in terms of lost weeks when converting from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, in 1699, the government opted to gradually transition to it over a planned four decades, skipping leap days and eventually sychronising the dates.
Due to complications of the Great Northern War with Peter I of Russia, however, this business of calendar reform couldn’t be promulgated properly across Sweden and only the twenty-ninth of February of 1700 was omitted. By 1712, realizing that the provisional calendar was more trouble than it was worth and the country was not only no closer towards alignment with the Gregorian calendar and was moreover a day behind the rest of the world still using the Julian date, Charles XII decreed that Sweden would add that missing day back and at least be synchronous with Orthodox and Protestant Europe, hence the unique 30th of February of that year.

and in flew enza

Via the always interesting Nag on the Lake, we’re directed towards a hauntingly resonant gallery of images from over a century ago that speaks to current times.
These people don face masks to, per instruction of public health authorities, as a first line defence against contagion and spreading the particularly deadly strain of influenza of 1918. We had known that it was spread in an especially pernicious manner by the reintegration of millions of soldiers and displaced populations but hadn’t before questioned why it was popularly known as the Spanish Flu. Neutral Spain (epidemiological records of the time were insufficient to geographically source the outbreak) had no troops fighting in the Great War and therefore no morale to maintain, and unlike British, French, German, Canadian or US outlets, the Spanish press was free to report on the pandemic and the unsuppressed news from Spain forged the connection in the public’s mind (relatedly) since the prevalence seemed especially bad there. Much more at the links above.

♄

Via Kottke’s Quick Links we are treated to a scientific assessment and ranking on the accuracy of the Ringed Planet emoji, assuming that they are aiming for Saturn, across differing platforms and operating systems—see previously. Apple’s version is rated most visually accurate, even including details like the Keeler gap in the rings and the polar hexagon though the tilt is over exaggerated by about twice as much.

free white persons of good moral character

Removing another pesky obstacle on the path towards nativist fascism, we learn via Boing Boing, the US Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs issued a press release yesterday announcing the creation of a section focused on investigating and litigating the revocation of citizenship acquired through the naturalization process.
The first candidates for denaturalization are terrorists, war criminals, sex offenders and other fraudsters and puts the onus of proof on the government to demonstrate, on a case-by-case basis, that the defendant’s citizenship was “illegally procured” or otherwise procured “by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation” and carry no statute of limitations or presumably grandfather clause and coincided with the Supreme Court ruling in favour of Trump’s means test requirement for immigration, allowing the US to deny an immigration claim based on the likelihood of the applicant becoming a “public charge”—a burden on the state. Discounting the very real risk of creating stateless people whom migrated from places that no longer exist, the criteria for adjudication is far from objective.

7x7

barras de mono: vintage playgrounds of México

😷: Centres for Disease Control’s facial hair grooming recommendations for mask compatibility—see previously

open access: the Smithsonian Institution releases millions of images and model instructions into the public domain—via Kottke

mad props: a behind-the-scenes look at the exquisite visual artefacts Annie Atkins creates for cinematic productions—via Nag on the Lake

jodhpurs: these weirdly delightful inflating trousers on the catwalk

minitel: more on the ascent and decline of France’s early internet—see previously

cheesweet: an unlikely Swiss cheese candy that got a mention in a John Steinbeck anthology

ein filmspiel in 6 akten

Debuting in the Weimar Republic on this day in 1920 and released just as the international restrictions on German productions were being relaxed after World War I, the silent horror film The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (Namensgeber also of our faithful chronicler), directed by Robert Wiene with co-writers Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, is considered the defining work of Expressionist cinema and has a legacy that informs all subsequent film-making.
Wanting to emulate an eighteenth century north Italian mystic who reportedly had an unwitting, sleepwalking subject commit murders on his master’s behalf, the director of a local insane asylum poses as a side-show and obtains a license—after some persistence—to hold a hypnotist, somnambulist act during a village fête and use the audience as further victims and test-subjects for his investigations into the psyche through the power of suggestibility and demagoguery.

de strijd tussen vasten en vastenavond

For this Marti Gras, we are given an object lesson on the cusp of the shifting seasons in the form of the composition called The Fight Between Carnival and Lent by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (see previously) painted in 1559. The ceremonies, one raucous and the other serene and reserved, also signalled the shift in cuisine and palette from a time of abundance to privation reinforced by social conventions and Christian iconography, and although we may not be privy to a coherent and linear narrative, there’s much allegory to be found in the details.
Tuesday’s procession is led by a fat man astride a huge beer barrel with a pork chop hood ornament whereas Ash Wednesday’s float, piloted by the Lenten Lady, is laden with mussels, waffles and pretzels, dietary staples of the Netherlands and the time until Easter—underscoring how Lutheranism did away with fasting but still permitted its annual lead-up. Learn more about the details and symbolism from My Modern Met at the link above.

on the cult of personality and its consequences

Though leaked contemporaneously by Mossad and intermediaries to the press, Nikita Khrushchev’s so called “secret speech” («О культе личности и его последствиях») that was critical of deifying the past and of Joseph Stalin’s brutal purges in the name of promoting communist ideals delivered on this day in 1956 to a closed session during the twentieth party congress of the Soviet Union, transcripts of the text were not officially released until 1989 under the auspices of Mikhail Gorbachev’s campaign of glasnost.

The denunciation marked a shocking departure from the unified and coherent propaganda of the day and while notably removing the body of Stalin from public view and interring it in the Kremlin necropolis signified an internal shift (pivotal without qualifications—though his reforms and liberalisation had well-defined limits—the speech a catalyst for uprisings in Hungary and Poland, the author also summarily suppressed them), the aftermath of this revelation accrued greater and more immediate external changes with membership dropping precipitously in the Communist Party in the US and UK over Stalin’s violence and the political, ideological schism between the USSR and China, who condemned Khrushchev as a revisionist and self-serving.

abschaffung von preußen

Though effectively absorbed into the unitary government of Nazi party with the Preußenschlag of Chancellor Franz von Papen that took over the free state under an emergency decree in April 1932, the corridor that linked Germany to Russia along the Baltic, the Prussian State, was formally abolished on this day in 1947 under Law № 46 of the Allied Control Council.
Assessing the region and former Hohenzollern kingdom—ultimately the conquests of the Orden der Brüder vom Deutschen Haus der Heiligen Maria in Jerusalem, that is, the Teutonic Knights, an organized para-military wing of German crusaders—as representative of expansionism and militarism and with the aim of promoting democratic self-determination and peace for a devolved Germany, the Prussian administration and agencies were dissolved and territories not already forfeit were apportioned to respective Länder, Brandenburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, the Kaliningrad Oblast, Klaipėda and the Polish Western Territories. Signatories of the Four Powers were General Marie-Pierre François Kœnig, Marshal Vasily Sokolovsky, General Lucius D. Clay and General Brian Hubert Robertson.

i’m awfully fond of you

Voice by Jim Henson as an ode to the Muppet character Ernie’s bathtub toy, Rubber Duckie’s first performance aired on this day in 1970 on an episode of Sesame Street. An unexpected hit, it inspired homages, cover-versions and was even nominated for a Grammy.
The latex toy itself—which the number greatly popularised—was conceived by Georgian-American sculptor Peter Ganine (*1900 – †1974) whom otherwise worked with ceramics and produced rather avant-garde chess pieces, including those used on set in Star Trek’s tri-dimensional version of the game—there’s a franchise cross-over. Musical contributors Jeff Moss and Joe Raposo also collaborated to produce the Sesame Street and the Electric Company theme songs as well as [It’s not Easy] “Being Green” and “C is for Cookie.”

circus maximus

Two podcasters of note, John Hodgman and Elliot Kalan, are hosting an absolutely delightful mini-series revisiting the 1976 prestige television adaptation of the Robert Graves work of historical fiction I, Claudius.
Though harshly panned by critics on its first airing, it enjoyed cult-status and a dedicated viewership both in the UK and in America where it was syndicated by the Public Broadcasting System in 1978 and features an extraordinary cast of actors including Sir Derek Jacobi, Dame Siân Phillips (the Bene Gesserit reverend mother of Dune and voice actor for all the Disney princesses for their UK releases) as Livia, John Hurt, Sir Patrick Stewart, John Rhys-Davies, Brian Blessed, Patsy Byrne (Nursie in Blackadder) and Patricia Quinn, the Lady Stephens (Magenta from The Rocky Horror Picture Show)—just to name a few. Watch along as they recap each chapter with special guests, beginning with the pilot A Touch of Murder/Family Affairs—an extended episode counted as one.

the battle of los angeles

Though swiftly discounted as a false alarm in the wake of real raids, the response of civil defence authorities on this day in 1942, less than three months after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by Imperial Japan and a day after a mostly failed bombardment of a oil refinery in Santa Barbara, highlighted the course of panic and pandemonium that took hold of a besieged public.
Subsequent investigations concluded a stray weather balloon drew the crossfire and mounting peer pressure caused all the anti-aircraft barrages in the area to direct all their ammunition towards the skies as a means to at least partially alleviate some of the stress and fear that they were experiencing. Prior to the event, air-raid sirens blared constantly and blackouts and radio silence were enforced by zealous mobs. A contingent of soldiers were stationed on the Disney studios lot to protect surrounding Hollywood from attack and turned sentiment towards suspicion that eventually manifested with the detention of thousands of Japanese-Americans.

urban oases

Via Present /&/ Correct, we really enjoyed the calming and inviting symmetries from on high from photographer Hoi Kin Fung with this aerial study of the now sadly endangered fountains and common areas of public housing estates in Hong Kong. The Housing Authorities’ policy dates back to a devastating fire in 1954 that consumed thousands of makeshift buildings leaving many homeless and prompting the government to intervene. Many of the apartment towers were constructed at that time with prefabricated designs referred to as Old Slab/New Slab, Cruciform and Ziggurat.

terminalia or forty-eight hours later

Having inherited some of the peculiarities of our civil calendar from the Ancient Romans, tomorrow, 24 February rather than 29 February marks the intercalary day of a leap year, this day proclaimed by Numa Pompililus, legendary king of Rome following Romulus, as New Year’s Eve and the occasion to demarcate borders and survey boundaries to ensure that one’s neighbours were not encroaching on one’s property.
Every two or three years, depending on astrological observation with an approximately week long month called Mercedonius, work month or mensis intercalaris, or according to political will as it was also a time to harrow out one government (24 February—Regifugium) for the next and the addition of holidays was one method to extend one’s time in office. Holding these days to be outside of ordinary time, rather instead made 24 February ante diem sextum kalendas martii—that is, not one’s honour bound term limit but, counting backwards as was the fashion from 1 March (kalends), the sixth day before the first of March. As if it weren’t already convoluted enough, when the calendar needed to be synchronised with the seasons, the Romans didn’t invoke an extra day but rather extended the 24th to a single day forty-eight hours in length, giving us the term ‘bisextile year’ (the-sixth-day-before-the-beginning-of-the-new-month-times-two) a term synonymous with a leap year, the doubled-up day eventually (despite the Romans’ opposition to odd numbers—see above) being split into two.

patogenesi

Though miniscule as compared with the tens of millions under quarantine-conditions in large swathes of China during the height of the outbreak, several municipalities in northern Italy, heavily touristed Veneto and Lombardia, some fifty thousand residents, have been ordered under lockdown as a precautionary measure following the confirmation of two deaths from COVID-19, the severe acute respiratory syndrome caused by the novel coronavirus now named 2019-nCoV. Initially expected to last five days, most businesses and schools are closed and public gatherings, including for sports events and upcoming carnival celebrations, are cancelled.

not condé nasty

Slowing reading through Catch & Kill, an exposé that devotes a large portion of its background to detailing how non-disclosure agreements perpetuate secrecy and toxic leadership, we appreciated learning that the publisher of such veteran periodicals and websites as the New Yorker, Vogue and GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired! and Ars Technica will cease its policy of issuing NDAs relating to harassment and discriminatory practises and furthermore release several individuals from existing restraining orders. Such a protection clause for bad behaviour shouldn’t be enshrined in the business model of any industry and especially not in a public facing one

6x6

à la russe: a guide to Russian Paris

turntabling: musical pairings of diverse songs that sound the same

grow apple trees and honey bees and snow white turtle doves: soft drink giant ravages communities already water-insecure to produce more of its product and raise the next generation of loyal customers—see also

#beardedbuttigieg: many people are advocating for US presidential candidate Mayor Pete to grow facial hair and helpfully previewing his new look

two-up two-down: a home in Osaka with sixteen levels   

the beauty of real food is that it gets ugly: to promote its cutting of artificial preservative, one fast food giant features a mouldy hamburger, as compared to this exhibit

shortlisted: a gallery of some of the images to advance to the next round of judging in the Sony World Photography Awards

daytrip: milseburg

Bright through very windy, H and I took a trip to another of the nearby peaks of the Rhön highlands (Mittlegebirge, mountain ranges that tend to not rise above the treeline and are forested the entire way up) and hiked up the Milseburg with views of the Wasserkuppe and the valleys beyond. This trapezoidal massif and extinct volcano is most significant for the remains of its ancient Celtic settlement—oppodium, which was one of the first well researched and preserved sites of its kind in central Germany and led to the establishment of societies to maintain places of cultural heritage and accord them protected status, beginning nearly a century and a half ago.
Though now covered in moss, the basalt stones still in parts comprise the base of defensive walls (see also) and foundations of domiciles and the abrupt abandonment of the fortress, first in 1200 and then again in 400 BC, suggests that the site set the scene for a clash of cultures between the Celts and the Germanic tribes of the area. At the top of the mountain is a chapel dedicated to Saint Gangolf, a Burgundian knight and wealthy landowner under King Pippin the Short, whom was killed 11 May in 760 for his express wish to renounce his worldly possessions by his wife’s lover.
Prior to his martyrdom, however, Gangolf had several heroic exploits including, reportedly, no less than vanquishing the giant Mils, who in league with the devil was preventing people from taking the sacrament of baptism by a monopoly of water sources—and generally causing crops to fail by withholding irrigation access. They shall not pass—Gangolf fought valiantly but had no refreshment to regain his strength for the next attack, and a local farmer, himself desperate, refused the knight any relief unless he paid an exorbitant price, which for all his wealth Gangolf could not muster. Resigned to defeat, he removed his helmet and on the spot where he laid it down, a new spring broke forth, still flowing to this day, and gave the knight the resolve he needed to finish off the giant and furnish the locals with a new source of clean water.
The devil entombed the defeated Mils and hence the Milsburg. No recent excavations have been undertaken but the mountain is protected from an archaeological standpoint as well as a being a nature preserve that welcomes visitors and remains a popular destination. Being stormy, it wasn’t the best conditions to be exposed on a summit but it is one that we’ll be able to explore again soon.

earshot

The always interesting Strange Company directs our attention to contemporary survey of the restaurants and public houses of Westminster that are still outfitted with the now sadly disappearing division bells (see previously) meant to recall members to Parliament to cast his or her vote.  These mechanical alarms, largely replaced by other forms of signals, are relics—usually maintained as marks of honour—from the rebuilding of the palace in 1834 after its devastating conflagration (see more), when kitchens and other provisioning sufficient for the entire chambers were not part of the rebuilding, and representatives were allowed to wander out during legislative sessions. Learn more at Spitalfield’s Life at the link above and even arrange getting a map of the establishments left with such a feature of democracy-in-action to recreate this gastronomic tour oneself.

ма́кс xэ́друм

Kazakhstan’s news network Atameken Business has a new pixelated, virtual presenter for its flagship show the Daily Format. Called i-Sanj after his namesake and model Kazakh actor Sanj Madi, he is able to report and banter with other anchors as convincingly as any other talking head.
Maybe such artifices should be branded with a scarlet letter, a V or an H like the hologram Rimmer on Red Dwarf as they become more common and create this duopoly between the pundits, investigative reporters and interviewers that cycle out and retire and the ageless anchors who don’t tire or challenge the producers or censors, since i-Sanj’s inaugural, live segment—see footage on the Calvert Journal at the link above—is indistinguishable from any other newsroom interaction.

synaxarion

An ecclesiastical ambassador to the Byzantine Church of Constantinople whom only served a term of less than two unremarkable years after his predecessor’s impressive reign and missionary outreach work, the only appreciably certain contribution of Pope Sabinian was introducing bell ringing to peal in the canonical hours—though attributed to him by a French scholar some seven hundred years later. An equally reliable though much more fantastic account follows shortly after his enthronement with death not far ahead in the future. A famine was visited on Rome and Sabinian was either unwilling or unable to distribute grain for free to the hungry and it was going in the market for exorbitant prices, buoyed by runaway inflation and the nascent threat of Frankish invasion. For his apparent avarice according to the Golden Legend—especially in comparison to the munificence of Gregory the Great, the Pope before him (though that generosity may have just pushed off the problem to his hapless successor—the sainted pope himself returned in spectral form (like a Force Ghost) and smote Sabinian dead in the Lateran Palace (after three visitations to try to convince him to share) on this day in the year 606. Due to his universal unpopularity, Sabinian was not venerated in death

course of medication

Via Slashdot, we learn that a novel organic chemical compound has been isolated by an artificial intelligence trained on the corpus of literature of pathology and drug-resistance that potentially has powerful implications for continuing to combat infectious disease and make amends for the systematic abuse of antibiotics (over-prescribing, battery livestock, wastewater, etc.) that threatens to revert medical science to that of the Middle Ages.
The compound, named halcine after HAL 9000 by one member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers, seems to put back in our quiver the means to deal with the most pernicious strains of multi-resistant compounds that make environments that ought to be sterile incubators for germs that have become immune to traditional medicine through over-use and over-exposure. Furthermore, given the expense that new drugs trials entail—making their development a pricy trade-off despite the benefit of lives saved, being able to find leads to follow from computer models may usher the best contenders to the laboratory first.

7x7

en nat på bloksbjerg: the incredible art work of Dutch illustrator Kay Nielsen—see previously, whom contributed to Fantasia but Disney let go

band camp: an overlooked and not unlistenable resource: Can This Even Be Called Music?—via Kicks Condor

theire soe admirable herbe: English colonist discover what the natives have been smoking in seventeenth century India

winter stations: interactive installations of Toronto’s beach to encourage outdoor play in the cold months

cabin-crew: the JFK retro TWA terminal hotel (previously) turns the body of a vintage jet into a bar and museum space

salon d’automne: a neural network trained on cubist art produces an infinite stream of paintings, via Waxy 

a parade of earthly delights: scenes from recent annual aquatic celebrations of Jheronimus Bosch (previously) held on the waters of ‘s-Herogenbosch—the next event begins in mid-June

boğaziçi köprüsü

Construction finished some three and a half years later and coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the modern Republic of Turkey, work began on spanning the strait separating Europe from Asia, Anatolia from Thrace on this day in 1970. The suspension bridge was the first to cross the Bosporus in some twenty-five hundred years when Persian emperor Darius and later his son Xerxes separately commissioned pontoon bridges to connect the continents.

hiobsbotschaft

Though many of the doors of diplomacy were already closed to him for his raving support for Trump's foreign policy priorities and business ties seen as some as meddling in internal affairs and was very much isolated in Berlin, to be rid of the US outspoken ambassador in any sense is a bit of a relief-wondering whom might be lurking in the wings to replace him.
Grenell (previously) now becomes the Acting Director of National Intelligence, with oversight of America's seventeen spy agencies, replacing another term-limited appointee to the post, Trump having shown his preference for this management flexibility when it comes to filling vacancies in his cabinet since temporary appointments do not require the confirmation of the Senate. Despite Trump's disdain for his intelligence apparatus, some members of the congressional committees on operational security contend that his lack of intelligence background and organisational leadership is quite alarming (qualifying solely by dint of his loyalty) and signals further erosion in public confidence for these institutions-especially since, reportedly somehow, Grenell will manage both jobs.

quid pro quo-so little time, so much to know

Though the White House vehemently denies the claim and only knows the messager as an ex-congressman from California, a member of Julian Assange’s defence team, during a preliminary hearing at the Magisterial Court of Westminster, intimates that his client was visited by Trump cheerleader and noted Russian apologist Dana Rohrabacher while still given sanctuary at the Ecuadorian Mission to the UK back in 2017 at Trump’s biding to offer ‘a pardon or some other way out’ if Mister Assange goes along with the administration’s counter-narrative and state that Russia had no involvement in breaking into the Democratic National Committee's services during the presidential campaign and releasing compromising emails.
Although the tranche of messages were published on the same WikiLeaks platform, the charges that the US government is levying against Assange predate the DNC hack and exposed systemic war crimes perpetrated evinced by diplomatic cables and communiques, and his attorneys are challenging his extradition to America to face charges and a potential prison term of one hundred and seventy-five years. Assange maintains that he will never reveal a source, neither confirming nor denying Russian participation, and that he would never address the public through a third-party emissary.

‘lil proportional globes import/export map

Musing for Medium, geographer Tim Wallace takes us, courtesy of tmn, on a disorientating windshield tour of superannuated mapping and chart styles. Many of these data visualisations, in the same vein as persuasive, political maps, are sobering reminders that we did not invent obfuscation but are rather heirs to a long tradition of it and many of these representations are rightly consigned as forgotten but also serve to make one appreciate excellence in interpreting and communicating trends, facts and figures. Check out the whole collection including the “air mass potato,” “oversized presidential lollipop” and “swoopy arrow planet” maps at the link up top.

crtl-c

Via Slashdot, we are referred to the obituary of the recently departed computer scientist Larry Gordon Tesler (*1945), whom while possibly not a household name like other pioneers helped make invaluable contributions for human-machine interaction and defines how we interface with computers today.
While working at the Xerox’ Palo Alto Research Centre (also the birthplace of the mouse), Tesler developed the first object-based programming language, the first word processor with a graphical, WYSIWYG display and perhaps most famously and introduced the concept of copy-and-paste functionality. After leaving Xerox, Tesler went on to work for Apple—one of the architects behind the Lisa and the Newton—consulted for Yahoo!, Amazon and the genetics company 23andMe

priority seating

Via Super Punch, we are directed towards a growing feed that curates public transportation upholstery from mass transit systems around the world (see previously here, here and here). We were especially taken with this textile pattern detail from the extensive, well-serviced transport network of tramlines in the city of Kraków. Much more to explore at the links above.

georgium sidus

Writing for Æon magazine, historian of astronomy Stephen Case guides us on a fascinating and convoluted process on how the naming conventions of the planets came to be through the lens of the discovery of what we now know as Uranus by William Herschel in March of 1781–the first new planet since antiquity and in (relatively) quick succession what we now call Neptune by Urbain Le Verrier. Whereas Uranus had been marauding through the night sky unrecognised for the planet it is and mistook for a star of the firmament and initially reported as a comet and left to the discoverer’s son to champion, Neptune existence was mathematically derived and then verified through observation, the only standing precedent for naming rights came from the Galilean moons of Jupiter named the Stars of the Medici after Galileo’s patrons.
To the extent that one bothered to differentiate the satellites at all, co-discoverer Simon Marius, astronomer royal of the Margraviate of Ansbach, suggested that they be named after their planetary analogues: the Mercury of Jupiter and so on—before ultimately being named for paramours of Zeus. The elder Herschel had named his discovery after George III, somewhat of a consolation for loosing the American colonies, a decision his son and intellectual heir regretted but was adamantly against the counter suggestion by Le Verrier that they name the planets after themselves. The younger Herschel found a way out of this impasse by returning to the subject of naming satellites—specifically for those orbiting Saturn, a couple of which he had discovered himself. Mythologically awkward to name the moons after family members of the Titan who deposed his father—Ouranos, Uranus incidentally—and devoured his children, Herschel proposed naming the moons after peer giants and giantesses. The matter was settled and extended to keeping the planets named after Greco-Roman gods—rallied by choosing to call a newly isolated element uranium after the ancient sky deity. By dint of the sheer number of Cronian satellites, giants from other pantheons are admitted as well. Though arguably installing an Anglo-American hegemony among the stars, the International Astronomical Union while not neutral does promote inclusion in its work. Though eschewing the honour himself, the Hawaiian term (whose own legends are enjoying more representation) for Uranus is Hele’ekala, a loan word for Herschel.

brothers and sisters, welcome to the temple of the gnostic sonics

BLDGBlog has a nice memory and appreciation of recently and very much prematurely departed DJ, reporter, zine publisher, remix artist and record producer Andrew Weatherall (*1963). The pioneering Weatherall whose eclectic tastes and experimentation helped forward the rave and acid house scene bore at least two famous tattoos on opposite forearms: Fail We May but Sail We Must. Sample some of his sets below and more at the link above.

level-up

Pasa Bon! refers us to a tragically underreported 1997 interactive installation from Berlin-based artist Hans Hemmert of the art collective Inges Idee that outfitted guests with platform shoes, chosen from the rack to elevate all to the height of two meters before socialising. As distant as this experiment seems and how much of human interaction is not necessarily conducted in person, it seems very resonant to get a new perspective and place others on equal-footing.

it’s entirely possible that you might have trouble remembering a time before christian sonic the hedgehog fanart

Via tmn, the above headline, excerpt certainly grabbed our attention, not knowing what sort of rabbit hole we might be prizing open—and we’re relieved to find how for all its power and reach domestically, Corporate Christian America, has a heretofore unbridgeable handicap when it comes to popular culture, though the Good News Gospel and prosperity theology has enjoyed a long-term ally in that liminal space between casual engagement, aficionados and fandom of video game franchises. As strange as it seems, given religion’s aggressive way of inserting itself into the conversation, there’s an unexpected place to gain a purchase that strikes as sincere (despite cynical origins during in the consoles’ competition for supremacy—see also), inevitable and self-perpetuating in the way that gamification is both habit-forming and highly specific yet forgiving at the same time.

n95

Though for the present it’s conceptual and more of a dystopian joke rather than something that one can order just yet with the veneer of restraint and corporate responsibility and not diverting from the stocks of emergency protective gear that medical professional need, perhaps when this epidemic passes, one can equip oneself for the next with facial masks that allow one to unlock their devices (and remain recognisable to surveillance protocols—and perhaps alternately hide from them) without removing that prophylactic. The masks are custom-printed using non-toxic dyes that do not alter the mask’s efficacy nor respiration—as the manufacturer claims. Biomarkers are a bad idea for authentication purposes in general and surgical masks are not designed for keeping the healthy free from contagion but rather to help the ill from spreading it further.

self-checkout

Though not much is disclosed by way of the methodology behind how these hacked barcode scanners reinterpret the different patterns as techno beats, the duo Electronicos Fantasticos certainly have found a unique medium of expression and look like they’re having a blast making music. Frontman DJ Ei Wada (aka Crab Feet) also has a long career of transforming old household appliances and superannuated technology into musical instruments and together, in collaboration with Nicos Orchest Lab, they have been musical directors of fashion shows and other multimedia experiences. See more performances at Design Boom at the link up top.

burgruine henneberg

Taking advantage of the nice weather, H and I ventured to the nearby village of Henneberg, named for the castle ruins above and in turn the ancestral seat of the eponymous royal house (see previously here and here).

The late eleventh century compound was within the next generations built up to its height by Count Poppo (see also here) with palace, belfry (Bergfried), residential suite with cabinet (Kemenate), defensive walls and cisterns and was abandoned as official residence in the late eighteenth century, the last of the male line having died off without heirs roughly a century beforehand.
One bit of rather gruesome legend associated with Henneberg involves the Countess Margarete and her three-hundred and sixty-five children—a Dutch noble woman, daughter of Florens IV of Holland and Zealand and Mathilde of Brabant whom entered into a political union in 1249 with Count Hermann (Poppo’s son), in hopes of securing his elevation to Holy Roman emperor of the Germans, a ploy which despite the landed connections ultimately failed. Margarete died in childbirth—which was not an uncommon occurrence—but reportedly was cursed to bear as many children as there are days in the year after insulting the mother of twins with words of incredulity and accusing her of adultery out of envy of her own childless condition. Returned to her parents in Loosduinen, a district of the Hague—not anywhere near here (though the caretakers of the ruin and club of local medieval enthusiasts and reenactors call themselves that)—Margarete gave birth to this impossible brood, varying described as mice or crabs, before all dying.
Neglected and falling into disrepair by the 1830s, the ducal court of Saxe-Meiningen wanted to raise the foundations and build a pleasure palace but those plans were overcome by other events. From the end of World War II to 1989, the castle was part of the inter-German border’s restricted zone (Sperrgebiet) until 1989 due to its commanding view of the surrounding region and into West Germany.

topless meeting

Filed for University of Pennsylvania venerable archive of lingual observations, Language Log, we are introduced to an exemplary achievement in borrowing with the above Japanese term—トップレス‐ミーティング, toppuresu mītingu. A contraction of laptop-less, it refers to a holding a conference free from electronic distractions, mobile phones included—which reportedly can be especially onerous for a business culture where meetings are recurrent and lengthy and perhaps meant as a chance to catch a bit of shut-eye. See more examples at the link up top.

downspout

Researchers from the City University of Hong Kong are developing a new technique to harness the power of falling rainwater and convert it into electricity for passive applications and battery recharging.
One water drop alone under this novel way of converting and redistributing its kinetic energy can generate enough of a spark to light up a matrix of one LED bulbs. While the rain may not be appropriate for energy-intensive scenarios, the project leader believes that the field effect transistor method could be overlaid with other energy harvesters to multiply their efficacy—on rooftop solar panels, for instance, to ensure a steadier power-supply even when the conditions aren’t so sunny, or even one’s own umbrella whose cane would become a power-wand. Learn more at the link above.

mouthy hamster

Our programmer friend, author and AI-minder Janelle Shane (see previously) took a different approach to the holiday medium that arguably machine-learning could most easily access and influence—the sadly unavailable chalky candy-heart—explicitly not attempting to have her neural network try to caption them but instead only seeding the task with a list of the original (and impressively varied) three-hundred and sixty-six messages to one’s sweetheart and no other context. Here are just some of the results but be sure to visit the links above to see more and learn about the methodologies behind machine learning.