11x11 (12. 529)

somewhere beyond the barricade, is there a world you long to see: Reuters’ delivers a deadpan juxtaposition of Trump’s attendance at a showing of Les Misérables just after sending in the US marines to quell demonstrations  

💩: defecation syncope and other perils of pooping 

renascidos: a cosplay parenting craze with hyperrealistic dolls has captivated Brazil, prompting some legislation against their appearance in public  

tin roof rusted: a VH-1 Behind the Music style documentary on the importance and influence of The B-52’s 

artek: the upcoming centenary of Crimea’s famed Soviet youth camp that once hosted Samantha Smith—see also  

have you tried clearing your cache: a concept artist with a reputation for the mischievous develops a dating website based on harmonious browsing history  

pomp and circumstance: a preview of Trump’s grand military parade to be held this weekend—previously  

more cow bell: artist Margareta Sarvana performs the Schalger song Itke en lemmen tähden (Nur nicht aus Liebe weinen) on a Swedish variety show in 1973—via Pasa Bon! 

the schwatz awakens: a preview trailer of the Space Balls sequel to premier in 2027, when Mel Brooks turns 101

simple article summaries: Wikipedia suspends an experiment that would display AI generated synopses after editor and contributor opposition  

i’m michael barbaro, see you tomorrow: California governor Gavin Newson interviewed by the New York Times on Trump’s ICE raids

synchronoptica

one year ago: counting crows (with synchronoptica), a Minoan archaeological discovery, emotion-cancelling technology, Trump’s revenge agenda plus assorted links to revisit

seven years ago: internet freedom index, more movies scripted by AI, Reagan tells Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall (1987) plus a meeting of Dear Leaders

eight years ago: memory holes, courtroom sketch artists, waste-water popsicles, mobility and mobile devices plus a surrogate social network

nine years ago: Citigroup tries to copyright the word Thanks, carbon sequestration plus more on the Trump travel ban

ten years ago: Erasmus and free-will, more links to enjoy plus Jung and Freud

the stand in the schoolhouse door (12. 528)

Occurring on this day in 1963, as our faithful chronicler reminds, possibly as a staged event to allow the governor whom promised to his constituents upon his inauguration for “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” to save face, George Wallace (previously) blocked the entry of into the University of Alabama’s Tuscaloosa campus for two matriculating students, Vivian Malone and James Hood—the former the first Black graduate and the latter returning years later in a teaching position after being forced out by racists and both given a death-bed apology by the former governor. The state national guard federalised by executive order (EO 11111, see above) compelled Wallace to step aside and allow the new students to complete their registration, providing “assistance for the removal of unlawful obstructions of justice” across the state and allowed students to enrol in previously all-white schools. The Kennedy administration afforded Wallace this publicity stunt over warnings for repeated counter-demonstrations and violence like that that had occurred in Mississippi with desegregation, and while not able to ultimately quell all riots did focus attention on Wallace and his arguments for states’ rights versus civil rights.

smoke-filled room (12. 526)

Coined by journalist Raymond Clapper and the Associated Press reporting on the selection process, leaders of the US Republican party gathered in a room at the Blackstone Hotel, considered one of the finest and most exclusive luxury accommodations of Chicago, host to numerous presidents during the twentieth century, to reach a consensus on whom their nominee would be. This secretive conclave of GOP power-brokers chose a compromise candidate in junior senator from Ohio, Warren G Harding (previously here and here) after several non-conclusive rounds of voting among delegates at the convention being held at the Coliseum across town. The fact that Harding had not been a serious contender prior to this private meeting confirmed in the minds of many that the American political machine was not truly representative and inscrutable, like the concept of the star chamber, and the phrase became shorthand for the murky, hazy inner workings.

synchronoptica

one year ago: constant entertainment (with synchronoptica) plus solving Zeno’s paradoxes

seven years ago: white-washing white supremacy, assorted links worth the revisit plus a memorial to those lost to Hurricane Maria

eight years ago: segregated America 

nine years ago: an ugly colour for cigarette packaging, rethinking heath and hygiene plus the Playboy mansion sold

ten years ago: romancing Sparta plus the immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks

qualis artifex pereo (12. 523)

After a failed attempt to the suppress the rebellion of the province of Gallia Lugdunensis when the governor Gauis Julius Vindex over the emperor’s tax policies, trying to enlist the aid of of the governor of Hispania Tarraonensis, Servius Sulpicius Galba backfired with the Iberian province declaring its opposition and joining the uprising, declared a public enemy by the Roman Senate and abandoned by the Praetorian Guard, Nero fled the capital—but not to seek sanctuary in one of the still loyal eastern regions of the Empire as planned after an open mutiny from his military escort, refusing to grant safe passage. Returning to the palace in the evening, Nero awoke at midnight to find his personal bodyguards had abandoned him. Having quoted Virgil’s line from the Aeneid earlier that day in response to his commanders’ disobedience—“Is it so dreadful a thing then to die?,” calling for friend or foe to put him out his suffering but none came forward and then intimated that he would hurl himself in the Tiber. Theatrics failing, Nero once again resolved to leave the city on this day in 68 AD to have a place to reflect in quiet and his confidant Phaon, an imperial freedman, offered up his private villa in the suburbs, with the emperor making his way their with a retinue loyal emancipated servants, including a Greek slave boy called Sporus, whom Nero had castrated and subsequently married the year before whilst touring the region and had taken a liking for a remarkable resemblance to his recently departed wife, Poppaea Sabina who had died either in childbirth or due to a physical assault by Nero, dressing him as befitting an empress. Once at the villa, he ordered his companions to begin digging his grave and he paced back and forth to prepare for his suicide, muttering to himself the title, “What an artist the world is losing.” Unable to steel his nerves, Nero asked his friends to set an example by killing themselves first, but upon hearing approaching horsemen, he knew he had to face the end, forcing his private secretary to do the deed. The arriving senatorial guards tried to save Nero’s life, prescient of the chaos that would follow with the civil wars and Year of the Four Emperors, but were unsuccessful. Nero’s final words were from ibīdem, “Too late! This is fidelity!”

synchronoptica

one year ago: AI refuses to answer who won the 2020 US presidential election (with synchronoptica) plus terminal text effects

seven years ago: Trump leaves the G7 early, accusing partners of unfair trade practises  

eight years ago: former FBI director’s public testimony plus UK calls snap elections to reinforce Brexit mandate

nine years ago: the last of the time-carriers of London plus new chemical elements named

ten years ago: paternoster elevators, divine handiworks plus seeing the pasternoster lifts in operation

gitlow v new york (12. 519)

Whilst ultimately narrowly upholding the conviction of Socialist politician and journalist Benjamin Gitlow for the publication of his manifesto that called for the violent overthrow of the American government under New York’s criminal anarchy law, the landmark case decided this day in 1925 by the US supreme court, headed by chief justice William Taft, significantly affirmed that amendment XIV did extend the First Amendment’s provisions (through the due process clause) protecting freedom of speech and the press from to the constituent states and their governments were bound to respect these fundamental liberties.

One of the first major cases involving the Bill of Rights, it defined the scope of the guarantees and defined the standard to which a state’s or the federal government would be held should it try to criminalise or suppress publication or distribution. While most of the justices agreed that calling for an unlawful coup exceeded the limits of free speech, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr dissented, saying that governments should only be permitted to do so under the clear and present danger test and that indefinite advocacy is not the same thing as conscription and subversive action. Gitlow’s case was the first brought to the supreme court by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Gitlow was represented by renown defence attorney Clarence Darrow and the ruling has been cited in numerous later judgements as precedent.   

 

synchronoptica 

one year ago: a visit to Ellertshäusen See (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: the G7 in Quebec plus Project Maven

eight years ago: Trump motels plus J Edgar Hoover tried to convince Disney to produce Christian cartoons

nine years ago: plebiscites, the Bilderberg in Dresden, wage distribution in filmmaking, crimes of the art plus reflecting on y2k

ten years ago: the Pope defends science,  Big Pharma, assorted links to revisit plus the Hobo Museum of Britt Iowa

gideon v wainwright (12. 505)

Arrested on this day in 1961 in Panama City Florida on suspicion of a committing a burglary at pool hall based on the testimony of a single witness who claimed to have seen the unemployed drifter at the scene of the crime that morning, Clarence Earl Gideon falsely charged with petty larceny and breaking and entering appeared in court alone for his trial, unable to afford a defence lawyer, and had to represent himself, the laws of the state only requiring counsel to be proved in cases of capital offences. Gideon correctly countered the judge citing the US constitution’s VI. and XIV. amendments but could not persuade him otherwise and was forced to stand up himself to the authorities bringing the charges and was ultimately remanded to five years in prison for a crime he did not commit. During his incarceration, Gideon researched the law in the jail’s library and on prison stationary (a handwritten petition for a writ of certiorari) requested review by the state supreme court, which rejected it and was subsequently appealed to the nation’s high court, bringing suit against the then incumbent secretary of the Florida depart of corrections, Louie L Wainwright, for violation of his constitutional rights. The Supreme Court issued its landmark decision two years later, assigning Gideon prominent Washington, DC attorney and future associate justice Abe Fortas of the firm Arnold, Fortas & Porter to argue his case pro bono, ruling that selective application of this entitlement, weighted factors like the complexity of the charges, illiteracy or low intelligence of the defendant were irrelevant (Gideon himself certainly lawyered up despite leaving school after eighth grade) and counsel for those who could not afford it was guaranteed in all proceedings to navigate the rules of evidence and admissibility. The decision informed the US public defender system for the indigent for help ensure fair trials and over two thousand incarcerated inmates in Florida were released in 1963, mistrials declared and found that their right to due process had been violated. Gideon himself opted to have his name exonerated with a speedy retrial, acquitted by a jury in less than an hour. Part of a series of court decisions that confirmed the rights of defendants at trial, the ruling was extended to police interrogation with Miranda v Arizona, this anniversary seems especially resonant now with unheard of retributive attacks on law firms and individual lawyers, which is placing a chilling effect on pro bono work and legal aid for those up against those virtually unchallenged and untouchable.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus candidate Bill Clinton on a late night talk show (1992)

seven years ago: a visit to Kloster Veßra, ultimate Monopoly, Andy Warhol shot (1968) plus the revival of an ancient Sumerian religion

eight years ago: a four-dimensional toy box, a cove of abandoned ships, political gaslighting plus Trump rallies against Pride month

nine years ago: tensions between Germany and Türkiye 

ten years ago: more links to enjoy

tariff of abominations (12. 471)

Designed to fail for its language that would hurt both industrialists and farmers, the US congress—against its own interests—passed on this day in 1828 a protective levy from thirty-eight to forty-fiver percent on many imported goods and raw materials, escalating cession and civil war. Due to the blockade of British exports to continental Europe during the Napoleonic Wars, America was flooded with cheap goods, particularly cloth, which northern manufacturing centres could not compete with, hurting domestic business and instigating the punitive duties. While England did not respond with reciprocal tariffs on cotton exports, a feared repercussion of the legislation—the cotton was needed for the fabric export market above—trade tensions were never allowed to develop in this way by dint of provisions injected into the bill that congressional representatives felt would sabotage its chance of passing with import duties imposed on New England manufacturers for raw materials. The manoeuvre backfired, however, with the northern states willing to pay this internal tariff in order to bolster domestic manufacturing and prevent factory closures and Vice President John C Calhoun (previously) urging nullification of the schedule with South Carolina, nearly forcing a government crisis with a constituent state ignoring, declaring null and void, a federal law it considered unconstitutional. Ultimately the South Carolina legislature took none of the recommended courses of action with the tariffs renegotiated in 1833 in compromise.

cosmic ray coincidence counter (12. 468)

Our gratitude to Weird Universe for the introduction to the singular esoteric by the name of Harvey Spencer Lewis, revivalist Rosicrucian, through his numerous inventions, including the enigmatic title detector, the sympathetic vibration harp and the Luxatone—a chromatic organ that converted audio inputs into colours on a triangular display as a heuristic tool for demonstrating mystical connections amongst the perceptions. More interestingly was Lewis’ trajectory that led up to the re-establishment of the ancient and obscure order: an advertising agent by profession, Lewis founded the New York chapter of the Institute for Psychical Research in 1904 and after a trip to Toulouse, claiming to have been initiated in the old rite, organised the Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross (AMORC) in 1915, a schismatic branch of the the Ordo Templi Orientis recognising Lewis own break from Aleister Crowley’s society—see previously—AMORC having no truck with sex magik. Mainly adhering the ritual and philosophy of the seventeenth century movement, Lewis also incorporated elements of European neo-Templar and Teutonic orders, secret ranks claiming to be a continuation of the knighthood dissolved by Pope Clement IV in the fourteenth century. Non-canonical and not major tenets of the Rosicrucians, Lewis went on to author (with significant plagiarism from earlier works—see also) several volumes that would popularise the mythos of Mount Shasta (known in the Shasta language as Waka-nunee-Tuki-Wuko and in Karuk Úyaahkoo) as hiding the settlement of advanced refugees from the lost continent of Lemuria, ascendent masters in communion with alien intelligences, as well as a derivative on the swoon theory that Jesus did not die on the Cross and merely fell unconscious and later revived by his followers, surviving the Crucifixion and travelling to Gaul, India or Japan. Dismissed as pseudohistorical and a fringe hypothesis by most scholars and theologians, the conjecture was originally proffered as Jesus being drugged by the apostle Luke, a physician, when asking to quench His thirst and made to appear to give up the ghost, to convince the community to accept a spiritual messiah rather than a political one—supported by biblical accounts of his relatively short period of torture, six hours compared to the three-to-nine days of agony endured by most healthy adults (Pontius Pilate was surprised by this news) and the hasty removal of His body, with no eye-witnesses into the custody of the Roman executioners and the empty tomb.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a visit to Neustadt an der Aisch (with synchronoptica) 

seven years ago: beaming music samples into space plus Anthropda Iconis

eight years ago: assorted links to revisit

nine years ago: a visit to Penzance, Saint Michael’s Mount plus the photography of Ole Marius Joergensen

ten years ago: abandoned social networks plus the Lost City of Z

after the sun goes down (12. 464)

Having spent much of my life overseas after a rather cloistered college experience, I discover quite often that there are large segments of pop culture that passed me by though I suspect in a lot of cases not missing much. And while I usually don’t harbour a strong urge to dive deeper or entertain a re-watch, I do get a strong measure of satisfaction from reading glosses and specialised wikia and I find it comforting that such research and documentation has gone into even lesser cultural artefacts. One such television show I had no idea existed was this syndicated spinoff, which only lasted two seasons, concluding its short run on this day in 1997, I think just as it was finding its legs. The original premise of the series revolved around a mid-life crisis and subsequent disillusionment of the resident police officer whose beat was to patrol the Los Angeles waterfront, who decides to leave the force and form a detective agency, a la Moonlighting. The former cop is joined by his friends from Baywatch, including David Hasselhoff (previously), and most cases of the first series involve characters going under cover in order to infiltrate gangs and trafficking rings, including posing as a female impersonator to apprehend individuals harassing members of a drag troupe and being hired by a wealthy cosmetics executive to investigate his son’s falling in with a band of roller-skating bandits. After disappointing ratings, producers retooled the show to introduce a paranormal element (a la, The X-Files) with a monster-of-the-week format involving sea-serpents, murderous mermaids, spell books, possessions, re-animated Vikings, voodoo curses and time travel—the penultimate episode, which a temporal vortex transports the stars to the year 2017.

*    *    *    *    *

synchronoptica 

one year ago: a visit to the Aisch valley (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: the original concept for Mario Brothers, a diagrammatic metro map plus the Wobblies’ song book (1909)

eight years ago: a brief history of the internet, Trump goes to the Middle East for his first foreign trip, photographing the post-Soviet building boom, Sgt Pepper at fifty plus Buckminster Fuller on Universal Basic Income

nine years ago: a visit to Stonehenge, caravanning through England plus a version of Islam sanctioned by the Chinese government

ten years ago: a visit to Schmalkalden plus assorted links to enjoy

last call (12. 459)

US president Calvin Coolidge rebuffing the proposal of the prominent prohibitionist to enforce the Volstead Act with the navy, believing the purpose of the armed forces was national defence and not police duty, on this day in 1925, attorney and longtime leader of the Anti-Saloon League, Wayne Bidwell Wheeler experienced his first push-back from the government after being a major advocate securing the passage of the eighteenth amendment to the US constitution, outlawing the manufacture, distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages. Wheeler’s initial refusal to allow for exemptions for beer below a certain threshold of proof had made him seen as unreasonable and uncompromising, making the already untenable problem of ensuring compliance worse and compelled authorities, resources stretched thin, to turn to increasingly violent and draconian measures to curb consumption including poisoning alcohol (see above). His method of activism, familiar though not a term in common parlance today, came to be known as Wheelerism—focusing on a single issue, relying heavily on mass media to persuade politicians that pet programmes held wide-spread public support, aligning with the ends of the Anti-Saloon League and other tee-totalling organisations and employed tactics like threatening to withdraw endorsements and financing opposition candidates. Wheeler’s influence waned afterwards and did not live to see the repeal of Prohibition, dying of kidney disease in Battle Creek, Michigan.

the war is over (12. 448)

Just following the announcement of the cessation of fighting after the Fall of Saigon by US president Gerald Ford, one hundred thousand spectators gathered in New York’s Central Park for a final rally with congress member Bella Abzug and concert organised by Paul Ochs (previously) with a lineup featuring Pete Seeger, Odetta, Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and others. After a duet with Baez of the ballad “There but for Fortune”, the concert closed his Ochs’ famous protest anthem, overshadowed by but not to be confused with John Lennon’s song with a similar same name, which was inspired in part by poet Allen Ginsberg’s 1966 declaration that the Vietnam war was over and that it could be ended by simply saying so (“if you want it” like the above) and stripping it of legitimacy—Och’s final public performance, though Lady Gaga sang it for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

Angry artists painting angry signs
Use their vision just to blind the blind
Poisoned players of a grisly game
One is guilty and the other gets the point to blame—pardon me if I refrain

With the choral response: I declare the war is over
It’s over, it’s over

Suffering mental health problems exacerbated by heavy drinking that ultimately led to his suicide in April of the following year, friends and family say that Ochs died many deaths, lastly taking on the persona of one John Butler Train, telling people that this impersonator had murdered him and had replaced him—and in 1968, politically with the violence of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, in 1972, professionally, after being strangled in Tanzania and deciding he could no longer sing, on 11 September 1973, spiritually, when the government of Chile was overthrown by US involvement and finally mentally with this psychotic break. Ochs’ legacy continues with numerous tributes and cultural references as well as a strong influence on subsequent artists.

*    *    *    *    *

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronoptica) plus the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (1927)

seven years ago: Muggertonian star charts, Russian electioneering plus Gaslight (1944)

eight years ago: wood libraries, Trump deflects from ties to Putin, bringing back the Microlino plus mathematical music

ten years ago: the brotagonist of this story, a visit to Hanau plus a visit to the Leipzig Zoo

eleven years ago: rebooting Star Wars plus Kierkegaard’s Either/Or

ubi et orbi (12. 440)

Admittedly the headline briefly turned me Anglican, and like many who could not countenance the idea of an American pope—especially after the brashness and endorsement of Trump and Vance and the near-schismatic behaviour of the American conservative Church—with its ugly superpower status and general cultural hegemony—reading a bit into the newly elected Pope Leo XIV, walked back my aversion and apprehension somewhat.  Aside from his chosen namesake, as lately created a cardinal by his successor and appointed to the important clerical office of the prefect for the Dicastery of Bishops, charged with selecting new senior advisors after serving as the head of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America and before that general of the Augustinians, Robert Francis Prevost from the South Side of Chicago, son of immigrants of French, Italian and Spanish heritage, spent many of his formative years in Peru, earning robust credentials in seminary as well as an educator. After elevation to cardinal-deacon, the lowest rank whose appointment derives from administrators of the Papal Household and assigned governance of one of the districts of Rome, Prevost was made protector of the chapel Santa Monica delgli Agostiniani just outside of the Holy See, designed by architect Giuseppe Momo, most celebrated for his Scala Momo which visitors descend to the Vatican Museum, as a dormitory for the order and those attached to the mother church. His first messages of peace, love and understanding were reassuring and one has to hope his fellow nationals can’t make too much hay out of this incidental kinship or smuggle in nationalism and authoritarianism under the guise of being a good Christian.

völkischer beobachter (12. 424)

Coinciding with the suicide of Adolf Hitler, the Red Army’s capture of Berlin and the US forces taking of Munich, the official newspaper of the Nazi Party from Christmas 1920, originally a weekly then a daily publication with a hiatus of around two years between Hitler’s arrest for the abortive Bürgerbräu-Putsch until a relaunch in February of 1925 along with the movement’s reestablishment, the last edition of the Folkist Observer was published, though not distributed days before the capitulation of the Reich, on this date in 1945. The original authors of an anti-semitic newsletter advocating for territorial expansion saw their subscription base first acquired by the Thule Society, an occultist group formed after World War I and sponsor and financial backer of what would become the NSDAP political organisation who also informed the Nazis ideology and iconography with the swastika as their chosen symbol of Teutonic fraternity before the readership was sold by the indebted outlet to the party, early members finding a receptive audience. Widely circulated, the paper covered general news and heavily edited propaganda to buoy Nazi progress in in battles and economically—along with other publications, Stalin is said to have considered having it republished under the same title to appeal to former subscribers in East Germany, though ultimately dissuaded. Although the adroit mouthpiece for twenty-four years (Fox News first reached broad viewership during the contentious 2000 presidential election), it was not able to stop the presses for its last issue.

synchronoptica

one year ago: symbiosis (with synchronoptica) 

seven years ago: the Koreas realign their time-zones, commemorating US Marine Corps lore plus medieval European microstates

eight years ago: the right tries to appropriate Star Trek, cruise ships with amusement parks plus self-repairing concrete

nine years ago: dialectical shifts for the names of shopping bags 

ten years ago: Haitian artists recreate taro iconography, fun with family photos, assorted links to revisit plus Miss Piggy honoured as a feminist icon

droodles (12. 421)

From the portmanteau of doodle plus riddle, Futility Closet directs our attention to the long history of minimal visual puzzles—first introduced in a therapeutic capacity as an exercise in creative thought—then
syndicated and serialised as above by humorist Roger Price, whom co-developed the concept of Mad Libs and was a regular game-show panellist, in the early to mid-1950s with newspaper feature with simple abstract drawings that did not make sense or register without the caption, relatedly. The craze, leading to its own game show, was fuelled by public calls for submissions, including recognition and honoraria, creating one’s own in the same spirit of drollness. One of the more iconic droodles, “ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch,” was the title and cover art of a 1982 Frank and Moon Unit Zappa album—see also—which is owning to the interjection “gag me with a spoon” from the song “Valley Girl”—which may well have been fabricated. Try making up your own.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus I am the Eggplant

seven years ago: politicians and robot rapport, Hair (1968) plus artist Julije Knifer

eight years ago: a last minute stop gap measure to fund the US government, post-Soviet public spaces, tensions for the Turkish diaspora plus advanced speech synthesis

nine years ago: White House movie screenings 

ten years ago: Used to be a Pizza Hut, more links to enjoy, examining urban blight plus a Balkan micronation

[citation needed] (12. 416)

Taking longer than expected after Musk cast aspersions against what he styled as “Wokepedia”—though remember with these unimaginative and incurious MAGA toddlers every accusation is a confession—the Wikimedia Foundation is joining good company for a very bad precedent with the Trump administration’s Department of Justice issuing a boilerplate letter to the free encyclopaedia, threatening to strip it of its non-profit status for facilitating the spread of propaganda. Following the memory-holing of entire programmes and purging US government websites of any established science, from vaccine efficacy, the climate catastrophe to the spectrum of sex and gender identity—as well as any affirmative action—and pressuring any corporations contracting with the government to do the same, department lawyers levy that Wikipedia permits and promotes the manipulation of historical events and the biographies of American political leaders, subverting Trump’s agenda and undermining the interests of US taxpayers, who subsidise the international consortium in the same way that tariffs equal economic prosperity. As with other respected scientific institutions, like the New England Journal of Medicine and universities that have seen federal funding withheld, Wikipedia has been audited for proof that they have sufficient counter measures in place to suppress partisan disinformation edited by foreign nationals and measures to include competition viewpoints, such demands being another tactic to silence dissent and control the dissemination of knowledge that does not align with administration’s narrative and agenda.

millennial saint (12. 415)

Beatified and with the confirmation of a second miracle attributed to his intercession, the canonisation of blessed Carlo Acutis, a teenager and avid gamer (though imposing limits on himself to an hourly weekly as an ascetic) and burgeoning influence (whose bandwidth is increased in the repose of the saints, noted for his devotion to the Eucharist, hitting when the time is ripe for inculcating into trad- and pious ways which appeal to many), was originally scheduled to be canonised on this day but the death of Pope Francis means the matter is left to his predecessor. I wonder who played the devil’s advocate for this hearing. Sadly succumbing aged fifteen to leukaemia, Acutis had created several websites for local parishes for outreach and volunteer engagement and another prize-winning project that documented all miracles, guardian angels and Marian apparitions, demonstrating from a young age a keen interest in hagiography, particularly the life of St Francis of Assisi, where he was eventually entombed in the Sanctuary of the Spoliation of Santa Maria Maggiore, his funeral and memorial mass attended lapsed Catholics, especially young people that had abandoned the Church. It is not yet determined what Acutis’ patronage will be exactly but one can make educated guesses. His relics and body on display exhibit the incorruptibility of the holy—some of which is owing to an expert embalming job. 

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica), the Hobby Computer Club of Leiden plus Lego Lost at Sea

seven years ago: the Japanese domestic automarket, nightingale floors, North and South Korea accords, a unique bicycle design, America’s balloon lobby plus typographer Herb Lubalin

eight years ago: der Kuss, AI safeguards, an AI outfitter, the skies of The Scream plus a pop-up recycling facility

nine years ago: longer-lasting batteries plus taxidermied mermaids

ten years ago: the Jonbar Hinge

why, why, why, why (12. 407)

Via our faithful chronicler we learn that on this day in 1961 (along with many other events of pith and circumstance) the single by Charles Weedon Westover (better known by his stage name Del Shannon, which he adopted reluctantly later in his career after his favourite car, the Cadillac Coupe de Ville, and a regular from the his first venue) began a four week run at the top of the Billboard charts. Like Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, honing his instrumental skills whilst stationed in West Germany during the post war period, Del Shannon found a part time gig after returning stateside and was a rhythm guitarist for the Moonlight Ramblers at the Hi-Lo Club in Battle Creek, Michigan and found himself band-leader after the organiser was fired for consistent drunkenness, regrouping at the Big Little Show Band with the addition of keyboard artist and electronic music pioneer Maxfield “Max” Doyle Crook, the song’s signature bridge performed on a Musictron, an early synthesiser that predated the Moog and Univox of his own invention. Covered by Elvis, Bonnie Raitt, the Small Faces, it was an instrumental version released the following year by Lawrence Welk and his Orchestra that made the lament about an unamicable break-up an international hit.

*     *     *     *     *

synchronoptica

one year ago: a treasury of weird words (with synchronoptica), AI running out of data to scrape plus the ISO’s Online Browsing Platform

seven years ago: filmmaker Miloš Forman, a different meaning for heart-shaped plus Trump on the rampage

eight years ago: cherry blossom season, speech-recognition to screen asylum-seekers, the photographic-eye of Melania Trump plus political dynasties

nine years ago: finally getting iPhones, our tented house in the papers, lèse-majesté plus a stay at Elsinor

eleven years ago: a visit to Alzey

gleichschaltung (12. 393)

From the relatively contemporaneous neologism developing apace with electrification, the term which historians employ to describe the system that Adolf Hitler used to impose totalitarian coordination and control over all aspects of German society within the constitution bounds of the Weimar Republic—from the press, to the economy, to culture and education—and refers to the conversion of alternating to direct current, technically rectification or phasing—it is usually translated in the socio-political sense of Nazification as “synchronisation” or “bringing into line.” The Nazis adopted similar terminology, like Ausschaltung, the act of switching off, the deletion of anyone counter to this fusion of party and state. Enabled by a series of laws enacted following Hitler’s election as chancellor in the space of nineteen months that undergirded various orders and decrees: measures include the declaration martial law following the burning of the Reichstag that suspended civil liberties and the media outlet, a cover for voter intimidation and suppression of opposition parties ahead of the general election; the formally titled “Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich” suspending parliament and giving the executive the power to pass legislation without them—called the Enabling Act, Ermächtigungsgesetz; deploying chancellery-appointed governors in each constituent state to reconstitute local legislatures according to ballots cast in the above 5 Match 1933 elections; the Law for the Restoration of a Professional Civil Service which dismantled the bureaucracy. Later supplemented by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda to promote Nazi values and prejudices through clubs and associations (infiltrating existing ones and establishing compulsory membership in new ones) and oversee news and entertainment, and industry and trade unions were also aligned. Those whose loyalty was deemed unimpeachable, regardless of station or influence, were rewarded with the Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) programme with vacation resorts, hobbyists groups, vocational opportunities and motor clubs, leading to the building of the Autobahn network and the Volkswagen—which also aided in the perception that they were bolstering the German economy through make-work initiatives.

glass menagerie (12. 392)

The epidemic whipped into the height of frenzy on this day in 1954 following newspaper reporters and appeals for intervention from local authorities, the state governor and ultimately president Eisenhower, the Seattle Windshield Pitting Panic is considered to be a text-book example of mass delusion—sometimes mislabelled as mass hysteria, classed with near contemporary occurrences like Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast—propagated by rumour, mis- and disinformation and mass media when residents of the Washington capital and surrounding communities were invited to closely examine their cars’ windshields and discovered them to be scored with previously unnoticed pits, dents and dings. I recall getting out of a movie once with a lot of car-bombings and in the parking lot of the theatre was inspired to check below the steering column and was petrified to feel a bundle of wires—though quickly calmed down once I realised that I had never before poked around down there. Originally suspected to be a rash of sabotage or vandalism, but the scale and scope quickly lead to other theories arising beyond a conspiracy of hoodlums, sourcing the normal weathering to a range of agents from sand flea eggs hatching, cosmic rays, a nearby large radio transmitter operated by the navy, UFOs, a shift in the Earth’s magnetic field to fallout from nuclear testing. As damage reports preoccupied police, a committee of scientists from the state university was called together to survey cars on campus and compare to reported incidents. Concluding the wear and tear was the result of average road-use, calls to the police abruptly dropped off two days later.

 

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Rennsteiglied (with synchronoptica) plus wondrous woodcuts of astral phenomena

 

seven years ago: Thousand Insects of Japan plus creative anatomies

 

eight years ago: illustrator Boris Artzybasheff

 

nine years ago: more words with no English equivalent 

eleven years ago: Banksy graffiti at the GCHQ plus sea water to fuel

life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all (12. 379)

First published by Charles Scribner’s Sons on this day in 1925, the Jazz Age novel by writer F Scott Fitzgerald, although well-received initially by critics, many felt it fell short of his earlier works, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and the Damned and was commercially a disappointment, and the fact it is one of the most widely-read texts by American high school students and that there was occasion to mark the anniversary would have elicited surprise for the author, whom also considered considered his literary career to be a failure. Reevaluation over the ensuing decades count it among the masterpieces of the early twentieth century, attracting scholarly attention over his questions of social class, environmental conservation, gender, race and disillusionment with the American Dream, aspirations and refinements that speak across the years. The story about careless people is in part based on lived experience with Fitzgerald’s infatuation with a socialite out of his league, raucous parties and a sensationalised true crime story involving a love-triangle in New Jersey. Completing the manuscript whilst staying in the French Riviera, Fitzgerald shopped around for publishers, reworking the draft several times and with working-titles Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires, On the Road to West Egg, Under the Red, White and Blue and The Gold-Hatted Gatsby before reluctantly settling on the alliterative one in deference to Alai-Fournier’s singular tragic character Le Grand Meaulnes (often rendered for English readers as The Wanderer). The dust jacket artwork for the first edition is Spanish painter Francisco Cugat’s Celestial Eyes, an abstract representation of a flapper suspended above a fun-fair evoking New York’s Coney Island, the commission being presented to Fitzgerald before the novel was finished and becoming a motif in the story, prompting him to finalise the book before it went to another author’s work, maintaining an unusual correspondence between artist and author, whose original painting was rediscovered in the bin of the publishing house’s archives decades later like so many unsold volumes of The Great Gatsby’s first run.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Dune: The Musical (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: spirit animals and animal spirits, double-storey letters, floating dorms in Denmark plus assorted links to enjoy

eight years ago: sacrificial soda plus disinformation mills

nine years ago: a Canadian foothold in the Caribbean plus money laundering and the Panama Papers

ten years ago: more links to revisit plus an appreciation of Designing Women