One of the latest episode of 99% Invisible is a fascinating and wide-ranging survey of the fantastical menagerie of legendary creatures—this bestiary captured in community and corporate mascots and games—including the Amabié, other mythical characters and yōkai.
There are more guides for reference plus a profile of the academic and philosopher Inoue Enryō (*1868 – †1919) self-appointed superstition dispeller (embarking on the above field, 妖怪学, of research) of the Meiji Restoration and the opening of Japan when it became obvious at least to him that Japanese folk beliefs were putting it at an economic and political disadvantage. I am reminded of the words of Ursula K. Le Guin: “People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons—from within.” Despite Inoue’s reputation as an agent of debunkery and responsible for ending many local customs in the name of enlightenment, it is also thanks to his extensive research that we have as much documentation and knowledge about yōkai, an ethnographer much like the Brothers Grimm and burdened with similar baggage, that we presently enjoy.
Tuesday, 30 June 2020
yōkaigaku
moskvich xrl
Via the always engaging Things Magazine, we are introduced to one commission by the design genius Raymond Loewy (see previously) that failed to take the world by storm as so many of his other innovations and interventions had in the Москвич XРЛ (the model sequence standing for Experimental Raymond Loewy—see more about numbering conventions here), designed and engineered in 1974 as a flagship, global automobile for export markets to demonstrate Soviet talent in the field. Production problems condemned the concept car, however, and only models and mock-ups were ultimately produced.
die erste internationale dada-messe
Lasting through the end of August, the first Dadaist art exhibition opened on this day in Berlin in 1920, the movement having originated four years earlier during the war with the establishment of a bar in Zürich called the Cabaret Voltaire—invoking the namesake’s view that society was a theatre of arrogance and error.
The original salon and adherents only lasted for six months but parallel associations and artists like Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp (alter-ego of Rrose Sélavy) helped forward this approach to the discipline and practise which rejected sense and meaning and was a counterpoint to Expressionism—which espoused the global conflict as judgment from God and an earned punishment. Bertolt Brecht joined the Dadaist as they held a touring art fair through major German cities, the playwright styling himself as an engineer in line with the overarching idea that works of art weren’t more ingenious or inspired than technological creations and were amenable to fusion and recombination.
out on the wiley, windy moors
Initially inspired to create her rhapsodic tone poem at age eighteen after viewing a decade old made-for-television adaptation of the author Emily Brontë’s sole novel and then compelled to refine her vision for the song and choreography after reading Wuthering Heights and learning that she, Kate Bush (see previously), and Brontë shared the same birthday (today 1818/1958), the eponymous song about the requited but unconsummated love affair between Catherine Earnshaw and the tortured Heathcliff, whom Earnshaw returns to haunt in the second part of the novel was recorded in the summer of 1977 but it release was delayed until the end of January 1978. Despite this postponement and calculated competition, however, it rose quickly in the charts (Bush was the first female performer in the UK to reach this ranking with a self-written piece) and became an instant—though sometimes divisive—cult classic. A subsequent music video has inspired fans to hold annually “The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever” events (usually held in mid-July) across the globe with crowds cos-playing as Bush the artist in a gauzy red dress and perform the dance moves from the video in unison.
minitel
Debuting in Saint-Malo on this day in 1980—ceremoniously decommissioned on the anniversary of its going on-line in 2012, the French videotext service called Médium interactif par numérisation d’information téléphonique was the most successful (see also here, here and here) prior to the introduction of the World Wide Web that eventually displaced it. Nation-wide by 1982, users could search telephone directories, chat, send and receive email, consult maps, conduct stock research, check bank accounts and make train and airline reservations—and naturally access pornography. At its apex around 1999, there were over twenty-five million users out of a population of sixty million with over nine million terminals (note the AZERTY keyboard layout) in circulation.
Monday, 29 June 2020
whistle-stop or i am the operator with my pocket calculator
Via these chiptune renditions of arrival and departing flourishes and leitmotifs used in Japanese railway stations (see also) we learn about train music (発車メロディ), composed in such a way as to prime the senses and move passengers, whether daily commuters or reunited families. Probably the first instance of such a jingle and musical cue and accompaniment dates back to the mid-nineteenth-century with Charles-Valentin Alkan’s Le chemin de fer, an étude that gave the same signals.
o-double-good
File under justice deferred—I suppose—and perhaps voter disenfranchisement made right but the South Korean branch of a cereal giant is releasing a green onion (쪽파 ) flavoured version of one of its signature brands in response to the results of an online “election” held back in 2004 in which breakfast fans held a run-off ballot between duelling candidates Chekkie and Chaka—with the former pledging to bring more chocolate to the cereal and the later added scallion.
Sixteen years ago, Chaka, according to exit-polls, pulled into an early and decisive lead, leading the cereal company, rather nonplussed with the prospect to purge over forty-thousand votes from the results, citing security reasons. The company (see previously) had committed similar election tampering in its Japanese market too by again siding with chocolate even though wasabi was the people’s choice by a landslide. Advance taste-testers of the limited edition that will be available in supermarkets from 1 July laud this small victory for democracy and a good idea (I wish we could annul this orange drink and I know where my partisan affiliations lie) but find that the cereal lacks the distinctive savouriness, umami (감칠맛) that the real article conveys
dynamic web pages
Via Mx. van Hoorn’s Cabinet of Hypertext Curiosities (see previously) we are not only treated to a nice oddity in this vignette called OMFG Dogs! set to this splendid chiptune soundtrack, quite reminiscent of Hamster Dance, we also learn that the inspiration is Carola Häggkvist’s 1991 Eurovision Song Contest (see also) winner Fångad av en stormvind—Captured by a Love Storm, appropriate for both this horde of puppies and the Ms. Häggkvist’s energetic, besuited backup dancers.
These are linkages web artefacts well worth checking out for something out of the ordinary and waxing nostalgic for the old, weird interwebs, a disappearing legacy and something worth conserving and treasuring (as much what is given a pedastool on any given platform) rather than consigning to oblivion, supplanted by the polished, pedigreed and present.
think different
On this day in 2007, coinciding all those years ago when Steve Wozniak tested the first prototype of the Apple I computer in 1975, the iPhone made its public debut (previously) in the United States. Retronymically dubbed the iPhone 2G to differentiate from the twelve generations and accompanying operating systems that have followed, Steve Jobs (*1955 – †2011) had been experimenting on the technical and user-experience viability of introducing a fully touch interface two years prior to release under the code name Project Purple 2, as the company worked covertly in collaboration with cellular service providers to ensure that networks could handle the demand.
l-imnarja
Fêted on this day on the occasion either of their martyrdom or on the translation of the relics, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul is widely observed across Christendom though only has the status of a public holiday in Rome—for their dual patronage, certain cantons in Switzerland, Peru and Malta, where it is known as the above—the small island country celebrating the most holidays (though the abundance does not apply in every jurisdiction and grant workers a day off) of any in Europe. In Malta, February is known as Saint Paul’s Month—ix-xahar ta’ San Pawl—with the tenth commemorating the patron and protector’s shipwreck there en route to Rome to stand trial for his crimes, exercising his right to “appeal unto Caesar” rather than face the court in Jerusalem.
via appia
Looking over the presenters’ line up for an upcoming seminar, the lecture Quo Vadis Traditional Methodologies? struck me for its arch and arcane character (I am hardly one to criticise such classical affectations as, like a caricature from Brideshead Revisited, will at least think Quis? Who [wants this]?)—which translates as where are you going is a good, I suppose, a way of questioning trends. I hadn’t realised that the phrase also carries a liturgical meaning, sourced to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, wherein our apostle has fled the scene after the crucifixion and encounters the resurrected Jesus outside the gates. Putting the question to Jesus, Peter receives the reply “Romam eo iterum crucifigi”—that is, I am going to Rome to be crucified again. This meeting gave Peter the courage to turn around and face his accusers and accept punishment, with the request he take be put to death upside-down out of deference. That certainly seems like a significant, leading nuance on something trending.
Sunday, 28 June 2020
new accessions and permanent collection
Via Waxy, we are introduced to photographer Barbara Iweins through her project to help her come to terms with and couch in language and statistics accessible to us all of cataloguing the over ten thousand artefacts, items that she has acquired and held on to through nearly a dozen household moves and what their acquisition means. Even devoting fifteen hours a day to categorising and framing each object, the undertaking took nearly two-and-half years to complete. If you embarked on a similar project, how would you exhibit all your stuff—even that which is mostly hidden and tucked away unbidden?
nakhlite type
The classification of Martian meteorite (see also) that was the first of its kind to suggest the presence of water and then for a tantalisingly brief time nearly a century later as technology and analysis methods improved microbial life, named for the Egyptian village of El Nakhla El Bahariya were it fell, broken up by the heat of entry into about forty samples raining down, on this day in 1911.
They are ejecta of volcanic rock from the plains Elysium Mons that was able to escape the planet’s gravity through a violent asteroid impact, wandering through space for ten million years before being captured by Earth, occasionally impacting over the past ten thousand years. Though likely apocryphal since there were no remains recovered and no other corroborating witnesses, astronomers still repeat the legend and it’s become a mascot in the field of meteor studies, a local farmer recounts how a fragment landed directly on his canine helper, vaporising the animal without a trace, the so-called Nakhla dog. In 1999, a sample previously unexposed to earthly elements was cleaved off and studied using a powerful scanning electron microscope revealing a matrix of pores very similar—though not conclusively so—to the traces that bacteria would leave in rocky substrate on Earth, leading many researchers to conclude that the Red Planet at least at one point harboured the niche environment that could support life.
a free masculinity simulator video game
Via ibīdem, we are directed to a playable application that captures the tension and the drama packed into a memetic phenomenon filmed on a phone—with that same POV—of two hunky young men beating each other with chairs that circulated on the internet in 2015 that speaks to Lad Culture, the strange performative normative of “no homo” and affirming stunts of manliness. These sort of toxic displays (see also) remind it’s no wonder that we are not able to overcome challenges whose only requirement is showing mild consideration for others but maybe by confronting it and dissecting it, we can perhaps disarm it. Game play allows one to play with the sequence and duration of steps and see how the variation affects the outcome. Be sure to check out developer Robert Yang’s website at the link above for the full story and extra food for thought.
goldman sans
From the New Shelton Wet/Dry, we learn that an infamous investment bank has released its own signature family of sans-serif typefaces that is free to use in whatever manner one sees fit so long as one does not use the font to criticise the company or its practises. Statements of facts I suppose are exempt.
Saturday, 27 June 2020
graveyard of empires
Though whether any of these contracts were acted upon or directly jeopardised ongoing peace-talks and plans for eventual withdrawal, there is an overwhelming cause for concern that the Trump administration not only failed to act on intelligence reports that Russian operatives were placing bounties on foreign troops deployed (including US soldiers) to Afghanistan, Trump publicly reacted in the opposite fashion and instead proposed to gift Russia a restored seat at the G-7 summit and promised to withdraw a significant amount of troops from bases in Germany. Both concessions were offered after the briefing in late March. Incidentally and unironically, many historians cite the expense of being mired in a protracted war in Afghanistan (with Americans materially aiding the same Taliban against a common enemy) as what broke the Soviet Union, leading to its downfall and dissolution.
upsampling
We’ve seen the built-in bias on display of this neural network application that turned a pixelated image of Barack Obama into an avatar that presents as pretty Caucasian, and Janelle Shane (previously) does a really good job at unpacking what’s going on here with our own tendency for pareidolia codified and amplified.
Not only is the algorithm informed by representation (and under representation) which is highly problematic and is something that the industry desperately needs to redress lest machine learning become the next commercialised embodiment of unreliability, the artificial intelligence delivers what it’s rewarded for delivering, be that a human face or a serviceable suspect that complies well enough with a blurry or grainy image. Thankfully most of the leaders in this sector, faults and all, are taking a pause in sharing their technologies with bad actors, including law enforcement agencies. The application cannot recover details that do not exist—only invent them based on what’s been judged plausible.
out of the closet and into the street
A year to the day after the Stonewall uprising—with several other antecedents including systemic workplace discrimination among civil servants and work-camps for Cuba for homosexual men, the last Saturday of the month, the Chicago Gay Liberation organised the first Pride March from Washington Square Park up Michigan Avenue.
What was to become an annual ceremony was seen as a matriculation for younger members coming to terms with their identity to come together and celebrate a chain of tradition and struggle to understand the past and what was overcome. Other parades, put together by chapters of so-called homophile societies, soon followed across the country, including on the very next day in New York City, Los Angeles and Philadelphia and quickly thereafter proliferated to many places worldwide.
Friday, 26 June 2020
march march
point-of-sale
On this day in 1974 after nearly a decade in development and first conceived as a method for tracking railcars and shipping containers, the first bar coded, marked with a universal product code (redundantly, UPC code) instead of a price tag item (see previously) was sold at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
Cashier Sharon Buchanan scanned (we are dismissive of such acts now as routine but Ms. Buchanan was very much from that moment on an engineer wielding the beam of a powerful helium-neon laser that bounced off a rotating mirror and onto the glass-plated register surface so a central computer could match the label against the shop’s programmed inventory—no mean feat that) a value pack of Juicy Fruit chewing gum for customer Clyde Dawson (not his only purchase during that visit—just the first one rang up). Deconstructed, the encoding tables do look a bit like the I Ching, and afterwards the artefact, the (presumably a stand-in unless the purchaser indulged the museum this memento) was acquired by the Smithsonian. I wonder if this first barcode is some sort of talisman, a charm imbued with power over all the scanning to follow.
6x6
morning edition: artist paints sunrises on newspapers as a dawning juxtaposition to the headlines of the day
free parking: aerial views of grounded planes at the Frankfurter Flughafen—see previously
b&b: designs for a horizontal hive with human sleeping compartment
👁️👄👁️:the ubiquitous string of emoji signals a tautology
if it ain’t baroque: another in a growing chain of art restoration failures, via Miss Cellania’s Links
2020: a spa odyssey: a day retreat in Caracas inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s aesthetic
Thursday, 25 June 2020
beweinung christi
Having determined that the artwork through an extensive investigation was looted from an institution in Wrocław (Breslau) by the Nazis during World War II, the national museum in Stockholm will repatriate The Lamentation of Christ, executed circa 1538 by the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder (see previously) whose portfolio—especially in later works like this, reflect the development of theology and religious sensibilities in symbolism and iconography of the Reformation and those countervailing forces. The mourners have a strange tronie-like quality (probably depicting patrons connected to the commission) disconcertingly emotive but Jesus does have some ashy knees.
schmetterlinge
Coincidentally thanks to a post from a fellow blogger, I was able to indirectly identify the butterflies that I encountered in the meadow yesterday gathered around a thistle bloom through his meeting of a Tawny Emperor. These are their European cousins called Apatura metis—that is Freyer’s Purple Emperor (Donau-Schillerfalter), taxonomically classified by entomologist Christian Friedrich Freyer of Ansbach in 1829, and so called as the open wings of the males display blue and purple, if viewed from the right angle but normally appear to have more subdued harvest colours.
commerce is our goal here at tyrrel—more human than human is our motto
On this day, as our faithful chronicler reports, among many other events of great pith and moment, and sharing the box office with John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing, Ridley Scott’s film opened in 1982.
Starring Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer with music by Vangelis, the initially polarising and underperforming film defined the genre of neo-noir and is loosely based on the Philip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?—the name for the bounty-hunters coming from a William S. Burrough’s story about a dystopian future (set in 2009) reliant on an underground network of healthcare.
the awokening
Via Super Punch, we learn that the tiniest American state with the formerly rather outsized and outdated long-form name with the current and hopefully enduring public appetite for social justice and reform finally propelling a decades’ long debate to drop the onerous and hurtful postscript with the announcement from the governor that Rhode Island and Providence Plantations would no longer be using the latter part in official documents, correspondence or on state symbols.
The point of contention that opponents to the change cited in the past—that plantation was a contemporary term for colony when founded was finally mooted, recognising that the word has horrific connotations in the long and tragic history and the fact that after the American Revolution, Rhode Island choose to be incorporated into the Union with the word already having taken on that meaning despite the original context. Since no one really knows what Rhode Island refers to either—possibly a passing similarity to Rhodos (although the territory is a peninsula and part of the mainland) or due to ruddy fall foliage, they should go for a wholly new and fabulous identity. Legislation to change the state’s name officially will be taken up by the its House of Representatives for a vote in July.
gentilic
A demonym—or the above Latin form—is the word that gives the name that residents of a particular country, city or town use to describe themselves and their affiliation.
Denizens (gentile) of the north-eastern French town on the Moselle Épinal are known as Spinaliens. That’s pretty awesome and French naming-conventions are reliably uniting—the glottonyme Allemands being for example Berlinois, Bonnois or Hanovriem (see also endonyms and exonyms). Less straightforward but delightful formations occur in the British isles—including Glaswegian, Man of Kent, Loiner (from Leeds), Liverpudlian, Mancunian, Novocastrian or Paludian (from Slough).
Wednesday, 24 June 2020
highways and horizons
For its forward-looking pavilion (see also) known as Futurama for New York’s 1939 World’s Fair, General Motors commissioned theatrical and industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes, whom realising that means and aspirations of the middle-class were becoming commiserate with what the automotive industry could supply—this particular intersection commemorated with the interstate network of roadways and a unique flagship model in the Pontiac Ghost Car with a Plexiglas chassis, laying bear—at a glance—the hidden, in-built value—as stated in a press release. Afterward it was acquired by the Smithsonian and on display until the public found it tedious and antiquated rather than visionary, and which point it was deaccessioned and passed around various dealers as a promotional vehicle.
status non gratis
As cases of COVID-19 again surge in the US after the rush to reopen, the European Union mulls adding America to its no-fly list—along with Brazil and Russia, all countries which have not only spectacularly failed in containing the pandemic within their borders, have through their neglect and mismanagement been net exporters of virus and its deleterious effects.
According to twenty-seven-member block’s epidemiological threshold for designating a country safe zone, all three still exhibit dangerous levels of new infections which threaten to overwhelm the healthcare infrastructure should more be imported. In mid-March, the Trump administration imposed a foreshadowingly reciprocal travel ban (since lifted) covering all of Europe, excepting the UK and Ireland, though that carve-out might get Britain similarly blocked. Talks are ongoing but failure to reach consensus could result in more internal border controls and restrictions on regional travel.
the battle of bamber bridge
On this evening in 1943, there was a mutiny among the ranks of segregated US service members stationed in the eponymous Lancashire village, provoked by racist attitudes and the lingering tension of reports of the distant Detroit riots (see also) sparked in part by mobilising the military and ramping up the manufacture of materiel. The village hosted a sustainment regiment of trucking and logistics engineering, a unit of the quartermaster corps, that was compromised exclusively of Black soldiers in one part of the village and another military police detachment in another, whom were white.
Accounts of hospitality and accommodation vary slightly but according to most sources, the villagers were welcoming and supportive of their quartermaster unit—and in any case, treated immensely better abroad than at home—and when American commanders insisted that a separate bar be established, all three publicans, landlords posted “Black Troops Only” signs. Tensions rose at Ye Old Hob Inn during a confrontation between an MP patrol and a private accused of being improperly dressed during leisure hours and at the pub without a pass. The brawl turned violent when the armed MPs turned their machine guns on the others, whom were forced to raid their unit’s armoury in self-defence. Locals defended the GIs at the pub, siding with them as being attacked unprovoked. Once the melee had ended by the next afternoon, one was dead and seven were injured, with court martial proceedings taken up immediately. Though the mutiny was censored from the press and not disclosed until decades later, institutional reforms were almost immediate, with commands restructured and racist officers removed from leadership positions, and while still segregated generally for years longer, morale for Black soldiers stationed in Europe markedly improved and MP patrols were integrated and required to have a diverse makeup.
pienone
As a prelude to the opera house’s 2020/2021season, earlier this week the quartet on stage of Barcelona’s El Gran Teatre del Liceu played to a full house (pienone, casa llena), ever seat filled symbolically with over two thousand house plants as the kingdom ravaged by the coronavirus enacts its measured plans for reopening. Non-vegetal fans were able to tune in remotely via live-stream and the plants donated by local florists and garden centres will be presented as gifts to front-line workers. This is lovely.
The players’s selection of song was a fitting elegy, a threnody called Crisantemi that renowned composer Puccini created for his friend Amadeo (*1845 – †1890) upon his sudden and premature death. Duke of Aosta, Amadeo was elected as king of Spain during that land’s interregnum, but frustrated by politics and intrigues two years into his reign, He declared the people of Spain to be ungovernable, abdicated and returned to Italy for a quieter life. Spain was a republic for a brief period afterwards. His son via his second marriage, Umberto, Count of Salemi, died during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.
Tuesday, 23 June 2020
an itch to scratch
An ancient and obscure word from the Greek κνῆστις for spinal column (and colourfully for a cheese-grater), the word saw a revival around a decade ago when rediscovered by a linguist who read the Oxford English Dictionary (see previously) cover-to-cover and echoed by many contemporary authors as a nominee for the favourite words, acnestis refers to the part of an animal’s hide that it cannot reach itself to relieve an itch—and by extension a blindspot or an Achilles’ Heel.
In a fashion similar to its more recent rediscovery and celebration, the word first appeared in print in the late eighteenth century in a compilation by a medical lexicographer: Acneſtis — that part of the ſpine of the back, which reaches from the metaphrenon (an obsolete term for the dorsal side of the body), which is betwixt the ſhoulder blades, to the loins...this part ſeems to have been originally called ſo in quadrupeds only, beſause they cannot reach to ſcratch it.
enough said
First documented in the mid-seventeenth century and not apparent make it into the next in any appreciable publication and usually as a corollary to satisfaction, satisdiction signals the state of having spoken ones peace—that idiom itself deriving from Julia‘s aside in Two Gentlemen of Verona: “But better, indeed, when you hold your peace.” We had never considered how its compliment meant sufficient making or doing in the terms of gratification or fulfillment and can also indicate repayment and vindication.
6x6
ningaloo canyons: incredible footage from the previously unplumbed depths of the sea off western Australia
sea bass on a bed of contact lenses: hilarious mistranslation of French haute cuisine (see previously)
working lads institute: an antique gallery of portraits of those rehabilitating at the White Chapel Mission of London
cooper black: a look at the history behind the ubiquitous typeface, via Messy Nessy Chic, whose other finds are well worth checking out too
now is the time: raising the first new totem pole on Haida Gwaii (see also) in generations
geocities to neocities: the illustrious cabinet of hypertext curiosities of Mx van Hoorn, via Kicks Condor
corrugated community: the vernacular architecture of Tīrau, New Zealand
Monday, 22 June 2020
blóðhundageng
Though there are numerous studies showing that our canine friends and others endowed with a super sense of smell can in fact be trained to sniff out diseases prior to the emergence of other signs or symptoms, we don’t know what to yet make of the extraordinary claim from the businesswoman and former First Lady (forsetafrúin) of Iceland, Dorrit Moussaieff (married to past president, the long-serving Ólafur Ragnar Grímmson), that her dog can detect COVID-19 and hopes to repatriate her pet to help at home. Ms Moussaieff was herself incapacitated with what turned out to be a fortunately mild case of the viral infection earlier in the year and believes that this ordeal helped hone Samson’s skills. Samson (not pictured but surely all good dogs) incidentally is not a stranger to the press, himself being a clone of Moussaieff’s beloved pet Sámur.
daddy issues
Via Language Log, we learn that Chinese netizens have cultivated a term to call out chauvinism and paternalistic behaviour, invoked in a similar spirit to accusing someone, albeit in a less gendered way despite the name, of mansplaining—with diē wèi (爹味, literally dad flavour).
While in the West some might find such withering words to carry power and pride for moving beyond (and sometimes rightfully so, though none of us should be so quick to label others less liberated or enlightened lest we remain ignorant of our own ample shortcomings) their parochial tendencies, the feminist advocate tracking this trend believes it to be more of an internet catharsis and a way of commiserating online (whose power also shouldn’t necessarily be dismissed) over unwelcome and unsolicited impositions and is not likely to affect society at large. Speaking of the above equivalence, mansplaining was inspired by a universal phenomenon described by author and essayist Rebecca Solnit who was approached by a man at a social event who’d heard she was a writer, to which she began talking about her latest publication on the topic of Eadweard Muybridge, whereupon the man cut off his interlocutor proclaiming that he had heard of about a comprehensive edition of the life of Muybridge that had come out recently—failing to entertain the likely fact that he was addressing the book’s author. Describing the experience without having the precise term, the internet soon provided one, falsely credited with its coinage, Solnit insofar as she can speak for mansplaining regrets that it is a harsher condemnation on men and their perceived mindset than she meant it to be.
vignettes canadien
Helpful in the extreme but at a more sensible pace as not to turn her journey into Marathon and not live to be a nonagenarian, on this day in 1813, Laura Secord (*1775 – †1868) undertook a mission of walking some thirty-two kilometres (twenty miles) from her home on the Niagara escarpment to warn British and Mohawk troops at their outpost at Beaver Dams of news of a planned sneak attack by the American forces. Thanks to this intelligence, the British and First Nations allied forces were able to repel the invasion in this pivot battle of the War of 1812 and hold the territory.
Sunday, 21 June 2020
अन्ताराष्ट्रीययोगदिवस
Celebrated annually since 2015 after its nomination and adoption by the United Nations General Assembly the year prior, this day has been set aside for reflection on the ancient practise and its practitioners of healthful and mindful, spiritual aspects of yoga. It is an occasion to perfect one’s exercise and perform essential asanas—poses—and the meditative quality of the session. See if you can improve your form and awake body and mind.
aromachology
Having made forays into nearly all aspects of design, Weird Universe brings us the account of how a Brazilian cosmetics company approached IBM Artificial Intelligence Research to commission a pair of complementary, wholly machine-engineered (its collaboration was not completely unheard of but the help was solicited under human supervision for concocting, modelling new blends of existing fragrances).
Absent a robust dataset of aromas at the time, it turned to German fragrance clearing house with some two million formulæ of smell samples from household cleaners to toothpaste flavours and of course analysis of perfumes and colognes to train a program to compose unique inventions—called Philyra, the Thessalian goddess of beauty, healing, writing and perfume, credited with the invention of paper as well as the alphabet also mother to the Centaurs, owing to a visitation from Cronos in the form of a stallion. The neural network, free from human interference created some unique suggestions, resulting in at least two so far being brought to market.
hommages posthumes
Born circa 1700 in Maderia and sold into a life of enslavement Marie-Josèphe dite Angélique (so named by her last owner) was tried and made a coerced confession under torture of setting fire to her master and mistress’ home, engulfing much of the old town of Montréal, and was executed by hanging on this day in 1734.
When the devastating fire had spread back in April, rumours circulated accusing Angélique of arson but there were no witnesses (other than a five-year old that took the stand by surprise, coming forward quite late in the proceedings) or corroborating evidence and prosecutors struggled to impose the sentence but the punishment was eventually meted out.
While until recent times, the court’s verdict was not re-examined, assuming that Angélique did in fact start the fire to exact revenge on her owners, closer inspection suggests it may have been accidentally and that Angélique was a convenient scapegoat—other historians do indeed find her culpable but in the larger context of the struggle for freedom and equal rights. There is of course no such thing as being a little bit owned and not one’s own person but conditions in New France were far different in other areas, there being a degree of civil protections for enslaved persons and rather a hierarchy of “unfreedoms” that restricted movement and liberty. In 2012, a public square facing the Montréal City Hall was designated Place Marie-Josèphe-Angélique in her honour and numerous adaptations of her life have been produced.
tituli
Friend of the Blog par excellence, Nag on the Lake, refers us to nice little application that allows one to remix the characters and style of the Bayeux Tapestry (see also) for retelling a modern saga with this clever historic construction kit. See more on the original embroidery and the tale it conveys at the source link above and share with us your stitched together yarns.
oligopoly
With the rather spectacular collapse in negotiations and the US unilaterally threatening to suspend talks moderated by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development, the EU and the UK—despite, perhaps because of being put in the disadvantaging position of working out a trade deal with America in anticipation of the day when it is outside the European single market, are vowing to enact a regime of digital service taxes levied on the internet titans of industry and aggregation (see previously), infamously remanding little to the polities that enrich them.
satellite news channel
Launching on this day in 1982 and several months prematurely due to its inspiration’s and competition’s debut of its spin-off channel Headline News (originally called CNN2) with a similar format to their planned approach to programming, the short-lived collaboration between the American Broadcasting Company and Group Westinghouse Satellite Communications, SNC, has a logo that looks like an generic, expository news channel from a movie if not completely out of a different timeline altogether.
It packaged world and national news reports in eighteen minute blocks allotting the rest of the newscast, repeating on the half-hour with alternating segments dedicated to weather, sports, business and entertainment, to regional and local reporting. Despite the network’s willingness to pay cable companies a fee to carry SNC—contrary to business practises at the time when cable companies passed the costs per channel onto prescribers—it failed to breakthough in US television markets—eventually conceding their transponder space to HLN as their intellectual, having adopted more of their programming rotation into their broadcast day, if not business heirs, and the venture folded after eighteen months of operation. Their theme music was briefly used by the Entertainment and Sport Programming Network, ESPN.
Saturday, 20 June 2020
you’re gonna need a bigger boat
cher and cher-a-like
Unsure how this had escaped our awareness for so long but no matter has these twelve minutes have proven to be immensely fulfilling, we discover that Cher in a 1978 Emmy-nominated television broadcast in early April on the ABC network special performed a medley version of West Side Story where she played every part. In later acts, Cher shared the stage for this tribute with guests including Dolly Parton, Rod Stewart, the San Francisco punk band The Tubes and a walk-on appearance by Georgia Holt, the actress’ mother, with the penultimate number being a musical battle for the soul of Cher with the up-and-coming The Tubes trying to influence her career choices down a dark path.
kps 9566
Though only in use domestically, the DPRK (North) Standard Korean Graphic Character Set for Information Interchange, is ISO compliant and renderable across all platforms and is an efficient approach to translating the large repertoire of Hangul into a format for programming and transmittable all around the world.
While not all glyphs in the standard have Unicode equivalents (like the symbol of the Workers’ Party of Korea, the Hammer and Sickle and Brush, or personal cartouches for the country’s senior leadership) the standard is responsible for several indispensable emojis, like HOT BEVERAGE (☕) originally proposed as a map marker for a tea house, the black and white flags—again as map markers indicating battlefields, the ☔ and the ⚡, used as a lightning bolt or electricity but first used to warn of the dangers of high-voltage lines in the vicinity.
Friday, 19 June 2020
royal fanfare or call-and-response
Via Strange Company’s Weekly Link Dump, we learn that Queen Bees direct the hive through a series of tooting, honking and quacking that researchers were able to record, amplify and interpret. Like a flourish of trumpets, the toots herald her presence as she moves around the colony. The quacking comes from matured queens not yet released into society by the workers so as to prevent a power struggle and will continue to toot until the current monarch either abdicates or absconds in a swarm, splitting the hive.
third time’s the charm
Via Slashdot, we learn that Trump has again been censured, flagged by at least one hemisphere of social media (notwithstanding a political advertisement removed for what the campaign for his re-election as an emoji) for amplifying propaganda that his voice could, for some, lend credence to.
After first being called out for promoting the idea that mail-in voting, ballots per post was essentially an invitation for fraud and would imperil the election as opposed to real voter disenfranchisement, then for inciting violence by unleashing police forces on peaceful protesters and channelling the spectre of racism that’s never left us with the charged phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” the latest missive from Trump—an actual racist todler—was labelled as manipulated media, showing video clip of a two babies edited to include a CNN-style chyron suggesting that the news outlet is either exaggerating the problem of systemic racism and social injustice in the US or that racist attitudes are something humans are born having. I’m not sure which message is more repulsive. Bombastically, the segment (which was apparently already in circulation prior to Trump’s re-tweeting) with the statement that “America is not the problem. Fake news is.”
razzle dazzle
Via JWZ, we’re directed to a doorway whose fresh paint job is inspired by the 1918 dazzle camouflage scheme (see also) of the HMS Argus—which looks absolutely brilliant and it makes me want to do the same, though it might throw one off balance when trying to enter. Many more examples of this aesthetic at the source up top.
privilegium clericale
Vis-à-vis our last article touching on religious invocation and the law, we are directed to an engrossing dissection of the legal question whence cometh the benefit of clergy, dating back to the jurisprudence of the Middle Ages when those outlaws affiliated (apparently the degree of tenuousness was a question) with the Church were outside of the secular jurisdiction of the king and were eligible to stand trial in ecclesiastical courts and could expect a more lenient sentence.
This carve-out (a similar, parallel system applied to universities) proved particularly vexing for Henry II and his former friend and trusted advisor Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who put up resistance to the notion that those whom the king characterised as “criminous clerks” should be made to stand trial in civil court. Backlash from Becket’s assassination caused Henry to reverse his stance and extending this benefit to anyone professing Holy Orders, no matter how minor—a precedent lasting until reforms of the late 1820s through in the meantime some capital crimes were deemed “unclergyable” offenses, leading to the misapprehension of the phrase as meaning without absolution administered by a priest. In order to establish some threshold, the courts established a litmus test, requiring defendants to appear before the court tonsured or in some sort of recognised ecclesiastical dress—later to be replaced by a literacy test by reading from a Latin Bible. As the Benefit of the Clergy further devolved into the realm of a legal fiction, the loophole broadened to include claiming affiliation through recitation of a Bible verse—the favoured one for memorisation being Psalm 51—Miserere mei, Deus, secundum misericordiam tuam, figuratively and literally saving one’s neck since condemned to hanging was the most common judgment in secular trials. Though spared from harsher sentences, the ability of the justice system to mete out punishment—even of a more commiserate nature, was severely eroded and new coping methods to maintain order beginning in the sixteenth century included banishment to North America and Australia.
