11x11 (13. 268)

epistemic cocoon: filters, bubbles, synthetic friends and the personal theatre of disinformation—via Web Curios  

no yokes: a quarter of a century in market fluctuations  

semantic drift: the etymological and entomological history of the word drone  

belated blogoversary: Kottke turns twenty-eight  

wet shelter: the house photographer of the aid mission in the crypt of St Botolph’s 

le salaire de la peur: in a demonstration project to expand research partnerships with other laboratories, CERN attempts to transport a microscopic payload of antimatter for the first time—see previously  

caged lorries: Singapore, despite pressure from businesses that rely on migrant labour, is moving towards banning the dehumanising way workers are transported to job sites  

unbirthday: salutations and reflections from veteran blogger Diamond Geezer  

áfram með smjörið: delightful Icelandic idioms—via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake  

what’s that got to do with the price of tea in china: US egg cost down forty-two percent—hope it was all worth it  

ai is african intelligence: the exploited workers who tutor and moderate chatbots fight back

blue shield (13. 265)

Coming into force in 1956 and ratified by one thirty eight member states, the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, party to every belligerent involved in the current conflagration but not always respected as with the Red Cross designating a hospitals and humanitarian activities, Iran has unfurled scores of the emblems on museums, holy and historical sites across the country as a message that this is not a strategic target. Whilst modern militaries maintain their own “no strike” lists with varying degrees of selective accuracy and there’s no way to control the legitimate use of the shield, the effort is laudable as it does add a layer of responsibility for aggressors and those seeking protection. Pictured is the Tomb of classical Persian poet Baba Tahir in Hamadan in midwestern Iran, which also hosts the burial places of philosopher and polymath Avicenna and Queen Ester as well as being the birthplace of Wojtek the bear.

thank you for your attention in this matter (13. 249)

Though I’d daresay that Americans are not facing a collapse of democratic institutions but already coping—and not so well—with the aftermath, this piece by Timothy Snyder is an important reminder of the fine line between Occam’s and Hanlon’s razors, the latter corollary an adage of Murphy’s Law never to impute malice when incompetence will suffice and how no conspiracy or ravenous opportunism is needed to exploit or manufacture a crisis. All is going according to the lack of planning as an inevitability that makes Iran an willing partner—the assault informed by perhaps the inscrutable foresight of AI which in its twisted logic mistaken for omnipresence to bomb a girls’ school instead of the neighbouring military barracks as or the Golestan palace calculated providence—in igniting the next pretext. Stochastic terror, self-terror visited on the US might not have been the original goal but with America stripped of its defences and checks on power and the endgame already announced with the greater investment in an imperial presidency by court, cabinet and congress only interested in the celebrity and self-enrichment of public office, it does seem inescapable that one sort of domestic attack or another—perhaps on the vast array of outposts that gives the administration reason to abandon its allies—cedes control of the national narrative and allows Trump to cancel elections, having first visited generational trauma on others, with a mass-mediated panic.

don’t threaten me with a good time (13. 248)

Amidst the constellation of a failing economy, hemispheric bellicosity, a partial government shutdown and a widening war in the Middle East poised to turn into a quagmire, US president Trump has made his legislative priorities clear by saying he will withhold endorsement of any bills that reach his desk until the SAVE act is passed. An acronym for Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, the proposed reform to the National Voter Registration act of 1993 would require “documentary proof of citizenship” in order to register to participate in elections. With the stated purpose of preventing voter fraud and non-citizens from voting in federal elections, which is vanishingly rare, it is a vehicle for disenfranchising a large swaths of the population who don’t have accepted identity documents on hand and/or don’t have the occasion to present them selves to an official for adjudication ahead of registration deadlines—much less to clear up discrepancies between one’s birth certificate and passport over a maiden-name. The GOP sponsored version up for debate for the mid-terms also includes the requirement that states (which control voting though there are also efforts in motion to federalise the process) share voting rolls with the Department of Homeland Security and the abolition of mail-in ballots. Under the current sixty vote threshold for senate passage, Republicans cannot pass the bill without the support of Democrats, who have made clear they will not condone voter suppression, and despite Trump’s urging the upper chamber, Republicans will not drop the filibuster for fear of blowback. Whilst the impasse does seem to suggest more gridlock and would be frankly preferable to the paucity of actually congressional legislation passed under Trump, his penchant for executive orders and a pliable supreme court have done the job of governing, there are still the technicalities of the pocket veto—usually used, when timed right, to kill a bill through inaction, but the opposite holds true as well, with an absentee congress remaining in session forces passage.

harrison bergeron (13. 245)

Expanding on a rather Kafkaesque experience from a year and a half ago with an assignment of his child shortly after the state legislature of California adopted a bill that required the companies growing large-language models offer students and education institutions AI detection tools to foster academic honesty and integrity, with the irony not lost on either on anyone excepting the school perhaps, to write an essay on the above Kurt Vonnegut short-story, a satire from 1961 in the Welcome to the Monkey House collection set in 2081 wherein the US constitution mandates equality for all by imposing handicaps on those who excel above the mean in anyway—the titular gifted child removed from his home by the government, his parents barely registering his absence due to their own blinders and low intelligence until the son attempts a televised coup and is summarily executed by the Handicapper General before moving on to regularly scheduled mediocre programming— the homework was completed on a school-issued computer pre-installed with AI checkers courtesy of Grammerly to compile with the law and flagged as being at least partially machine-authored, and Techdirt contributor Mike Masnick related how his kid took in the lesson, spending extra hours going over their prose line by line in order to dumb it down and remove what was flagging their original work as AI-generated. Or course revision of one’s rough drafts is an essential part of learning to become a good writer and some have a lazy impulse to outsource their learning, but this trend (mandated or otherwise in the syllabi) is causing classrooms all over to produce work that’s less likely to trigger the detection software, used by both students and teachers, to produce work that’s less suspect by being less polished and less in one’s own voice, squandering valuable time, like teaching to the test, spend on cross-checking for triggers rather than learning to synthesise information, literacy and writing itself. An example of the Cobra Effect, when British colonial authorities began paying a bounty for dead bodies of the deadly snake, Indian locals started breeding programmes in response to collect more of the incentives—officials grew wise to the scheme and stopped paying resulting in the release of the worthless cobras and causing more of a problem than before—Dadland Maye, a tenured humanities professor of several universities, writes more about the predicament that has become pervasive and with no good outcomes.

day seven (13. 237)

Israeli defence forces issuing evacuation orders for neighbourhoods south of the Lebanese capital of Beirut, urging hundreds of thousands to leave the suburbs purportedly under control of Hezbollah, and in turn Hezbollah tells Israeli civilians living near the border to leave. Ukraine’s offer for technical assistance in thwarting Iranian Shahed drone attacks is accepted as Gulf states express discontent and frustration with the continued assault for hosting American assets, given no time to prepare little cover. The US grants Indian refineries a waiver to temporarily purchase Russian oil, just after pressured by the administration to extend sanctions to help end the war in Ukraine. A Democratic-backed measure to halt hostilities in the US congress without the consent of legislature was blocked by Republicans, allowing Trump to continue the expanding—Azerbaijan has been drawn in after an aerial assault on its Nakhchivan exclave, though Iran denies involvement—and chaotic fighting unimpeded by convention or formal declaration. Trump also insists to be part of the decision-making process for the appointment of Iran’s new Supreme Leader. 

class action (13. 234)

A senior judge of the US Court of International Trade has ruled that following the Supreme Court’s decision that the duties imposed under the 1977 emergency powers law were illegal tariffs all “importers of record” are entitled to refunds and that the judge himself has sole legal subject matter jurisdiction over cases involving paying back the IEEPA levies. The US government collected more than one hundred thirty billion dollars in tariffs under the overruled provisions, and whilst exports that are subject to controls under the currently unfunded (due to demands for reform for ICE tactics) US Customs and Border Protection have a process for seeking remedy called “liquidation,” a limited window of time to contest accounting and appraisal, there is no mechanism for mass appeals—something which the agency must come up with.

day six (13. 233)

Following the outcry by thousands of Americans stranded in the Middle East and told to attend to their own exit-strategies, the US is chartering evacuation flights to retrieve them. Although saying the war started by the US and Israel is inconsistent with international law, Canada and Australia indicated that they may join the effort to help allies. Congressional Democrats privy to a classified situation brief emerged from the meeting grim and disheartened, convinced that America was now entangled in another forever war with no real plan with military leadership admitted that the US may no longer have sufficient stockpiles to counter all of Iran’s arsenal—the press secretary shifting blame to Biden and his support for Ukraine: “unfortunately, we had a very stupid and incompetent leader in this White House for four years who gave away many of our best weapons for nothing.” Meanwhile, the US is looking to arm Kurdish separatist militias to infiltrate Iran, adding another front to the rapidly expanding war.

synchronoptica

one year ago: covering the coup (with synchronopticæ), the Homebrew Computer Club plus communications officer Johnny Cash

thirteen years ago: spying on ourselves 

fourteen years ago: smoking ban in Bavaria plus outgrowing democracy

fifteen years ago: insider jokes 

sixteen years ago: Germany votes 

seventeen years ago: an optimistic economic outlook plus double-vision

 

 

8x8 (13. 217)

guesse and the automaton: a long lost film by George Méliès (previously) featuring a magician battling a robot in slapstick fashion discovered in the stacks of the US Library of Congress  

pizzagate: Hilary Clinton deposed behind closed doors for seven hours of repetitive and off-topic questioning by House Oversight Committee  

spazieren in berlin: walking the streets of the metropolis with committed flânuer (see previously here and here) Franz Hessel in the 1920s 

lubbock lights: an unexplained sighting from 1951  

the cruelty is the point: the state of Kansas invalidates the drivers’ licenses of all transgender individuals—via Miss Cellania  

once posted: a growing curation of vintage post cards—via Web Curios  

let fly the claudes of war: a round up of AI ethics and pressure from the Pentagon  

mergers and acquisitions: Netflix drops its bid for Warner Bros Discovery with Paramount Sundance poised to take over the studio—see previously

sotu (13. 208)

Speaking for nearly two hours and maintaining a triumphant tone despite economic and geopolitical realities and protests within the chamber from Democrats and their eventual walk-out en mass, Trump’s record-setting for the longest state of the union address claimed that he had successfully rebuilt the country that his predecessor, Joe Biden, had managed to destroy in four short years—“a turnaround for the ages”—with a series of surprise cameos supposedly representing the American spirit. “Our country is winning again—in fact, we’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it.” The refreshingly succinct rebuttal, the official response delivered by the opposition in a tradition going back to 1966, was delivered from a television studio offsite by newly elected Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger, simply asking, “Is the president working for you?” The only disappointment counter to his narrative that was mentioned was the recent decision of the supreme court that ruled that most of Trump’s tariff regime was illegal with the war in Ukraine only garnered a passing acknowledgment without recognition of the four-year anniversary and no reference was made of the Minnesota ICE protests and deaths, nor the Epstein files nor Greenland, nor Cuba though there was much sabre-rattling over Iran and having “received” Venezuelan oil, further glutting global oversupply. Read more fact-checking (also here) of what was said from NPR at the link up top.

trade wars are good and easy to win (13.202)

Quite a bit of turmoil has visited not only world stock markets in the fallout of the US supreme court decision ruling many of the duties imposed by Trump to be void and illegal but also on the numerous trade deals that have been negotiated. In many cases, concessions have been made by foreign governments to unpopular with citizens and compromising environmental standards and safety regulation, allowing cheap American goods to flood their markets in order to maintain access and stay in Trump’s good graces with industry paying much tribute and making long term reshoring plans and now many leaders and businesses seem poised to tear up these negotiation. Some caution however remains, especially for domestic corporations with government contracts who could be punished in other ways for reneging on their end of the inimical bargains or for even asking about refunds (having to sue, the US government could argue that businesses have no standing and did not suffer because of them because they passed off expenses to the consumer, effectively admitting it was a tax all along) and whilst individual nations are better situated to ignore future threats, Trump has not relented on his tariffs but doubled-down across the board, imposing a ten percent flat rate on all imports before raising it the maximum fifteen percent the next day, demonstrating, perhaps speciously as their legality is also in question (for those countries like the UK and Vietnam that fought hard for ten percent, it is a real insult not to have those terms honoured, particularly in comparison to China who offered no concessions and only had to endure punishing rates for a few chaotic months), that he has other tools at his disposal. Members of the GOP, aware of the court’s reserved skepticism for the authority of the president to levy tariffs at a whim for months, had hoped eying the mid-term elections falling at the time these new blanket duties are set to expire might have offered them some political cover in close races deflecting from voters’ overall dissatisfaction with the economy—tariffs failing to deliver on promises with the trade deficit even higher than before and the return of manufacturing a pipe dream—and having an excuse to point to in SCOTUS, offering that Trump had an economic experiment going and wasn’t given enough time to realise the results—but now with Trump’s becoming more entrenched, that narrative, flawed and false as it was, evaporates.

holding court (13. 196)

With dissent from justices Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh, the US supreme court ruled that Trump has overstepped his executive authority in imposing tariffs on foreign imports under the 1977 emergency statue, IEEPA, which never specifically mentions the power to mediate through levies. The some thirty-billion dollars in monthly revenue, borne overwhelmingly by American consumers by exporters and businesses shifting the levy in increased prices, will be refunded—the mechanics of the remedy a chief point of contention leading up to the ruling (as most exporters’ damages were made whole by the above means) though not taking into account the illusory economic benefits of reshoring that haven’t materialised—concluding that the onus will be messy but manageable. The president could keep his trade schedule in place if congress had been involved and can still leverage tariffs up to fifteen percent for a limited one hundred fifty day period unilaterally under a provision of the 1974 Trade Act, if endorsed by the department of commerce—significantly more onerous for the administration that has preferred rule by diktat. Moreover, the six-three ruling significantly blunts Trump’s ability to use threats of punitive tariffs as a diplomatic tool to get what he wants. The declaration that the key pillar of economic plan was illegal came, also citing the major questions doctrine which reaffirms the prerogative and responsibility of the legislative branch the exercise of tariffing outside of wartime—arguing that congress only delegated its authorisation under explicit and limited terms and conditions, as Trump was hosting a breakfast for state governors, Democrats disinvited, which he reportedly called a disgrace of justice.

the power of the people is stronger than the people in power (13. 192)

As we are informed by MetaFilter, for Ash Wednesday, Irish band U2 released a surprise extended play collection of six tracks called Days of Ash—their first recording since 2017 originally planned for later this year but decided that they couldn’t wait as the songs were growing more and more impatient and urgent by the day. The below lead is dedicated to Renée Good and the resistance of Minneapolis and others deal with the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, also paying tribute to Iranian teenager Sarina Esmailzadeh killed during protests and Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen. Postcards from the present moment, the album reaffirms the group’s political boldness and combines biblical allegory with partisan messaging. “The Tears of Things” and “Yours Eternally” was especially powerful.

8x8 (13.191)

sandboxels: a fun construction simulation with hundreds elements and building materials from Neil Agarwal—see previously, see also  

tax-payer funded settlement: Trump is suing the US government for billions  

innermost ward: a 3D reconstruction of the thousand year history of the Tower of London—via MetaFilter   

pantone 222: test one’s memory for colour—via Miss Cellania  

shallow fakes: historic image manipulation—see also  

canary wharf: a visit to the impounding station of the West India docks 

forbidden paradise: as Trump renews threats on the Chagos deal, a look at the mysterious atoll—see previously, via Damn Interesting  

a sense of getting closer: a music video by Max Cooper and Conner Griffin about spectacle that isn’t inspired

certiorari (13. 169)

Though we have strong affection for the work of courtroom sketch artist and respect the traditions of the institution at large, we found this latest venture from research professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law—founder of the Oyez Project, an unofficial (see also) multimedia archive of the US supreme court and the authoritative resource of audio records of each sessions proceedings—of publicising bench announcements, summaries, dissent and daily business of the courtroom as they happen, transcripts of the docket reenacted with AI avatars. Steadfastly refusing to otherwise make the docket exchanges available to scholars and reporters, though oral arguments are routinely broadcast as a holdover from the pandemic that the justices agreed to continue, the court may not be wholly appreciative of this presentation format—no cameras in court and the production team purposefully uses video that’s signature AI-painterly not too realistic for ethical reasons. The existence of the recordings that go back to the mid-1950s was secret until uncovered through Oyez in 1993 (sued by the court over the disclosure, though they relented and dropped the case) and generally inaccessible to the public until brought online and weren’t released before the next session after cases were heard and decisions rendered. The title refers to the appeal for judicial review.  Much more from NPR at the link above.

ghgs (13. 168)

The culmination of a decade and a half concerted effort by lawyers and lobbyists realised through the Trump presidency, the US Environmental Protection Agency will repeal the 2009 EPA Endangerment Finding, meaning that the organisation can no longer regulate green house gases as pollutants and harmful to human health or the climate. The foundation of much of America’s laws pertaining to emissions, this move is regarded as the most aggressive action yet against initiatives to contain or curb global warming, though the country, historically the largest contributor to the anthropic climate change has been on a trajectory of relinquishing responsibility and the mantle of concern or progress steadily for some time, the rescission was based on the testimony of motivated skeptics. And whilst some jurisdictions and environmental advocacy groups (including some in the industrial sector having pivoted to greener models) are fighting back, it is feared that US outsized influence for a planetary problem that is not contained by borders will reverse what progress has been made (part of the commissioned pseudo-scientific study that brought about this repeal was premised on government overreach and hyperbolic forecasts—which, yes, the worst as not occurred as predicted back in 2007, as with the averted y2k disaster, because of global cooperation and action) and engender despair and resignation as the Earth continues to stew and bake. One legal remedy is for the US congress to authorise the EPA the specific mandate to regulate green house gases, rather than the implication under the Clean Air Act, but that won’t happen under this administration, hoping that the delay and legal battles will be long enough to forestall reversal and made binding by the supreme court.

read into the record (13.164)

A tactic that could be employed to disclose all the names of all individuals named in connection to the Epstein files to the public without actually reading aloud the contents of the cache of over three million documents, US Democratic congressional representative Ro Khanna delivered a floor speech in the lower chamber, met with some resistance by Republican committee members who tried to silence him the name of six men discovered on reviewing unredacted files during a two-hour review at the Department of Justice. Khanna, together with Republican cosponsor of the bill that mandated the release of the files, made a cursory inspection of the DOJ version of the documents on Monday, naming these “likely incriminated” people, whose identities had been shielded contrary to the injunction only to protect victims ostensibly only to save them—a lingerie magnate, a UAE sultan and an Italian politician included—from the embarrassment of being implicated, and speculated how many more over-judicious, discretionary redactions might be found had they had more time to investigate. Given the opposition in even sharing this discovery, which does not equate to guilt but rather is an indictment on how the release has been conducted, suggesting many more untoward obfuscations, it was expected that the GOP member who together crafted this legislation, Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie, would have made the announcement so as to defuse some of the expected partisanship coming from a member of the opposition.

simply paris (13. 157)

Among the latest tranche of documents released by the US Department of Justice, there was an email with the above subject line picturing an unidentified couple at various tourist attractions of the French capital in July of 2009. Not only is the woman’s face obscured with redaction but so is for whatever reason the visage, arguable amongst the most-well known in the world, of Leonardo Da Vinci’s portrait of Mona Lisa—possibly betraying the use of AI or poor taste and certainly reaffirming the rather sloppy job that’s characterised this mandate, which the department has claimed to have satisfied its legal obligations but has failed to uphold its own expressed pledge and excuse for the months of delay of protecting the identity of the victims of Epstein and associates’ sex-trafficking and rape, including so far the names, images and personal information of around a hundred survivors of the the expansive scandal.

ada violation (13. 139)

Not impacting the US general public and only a cadre of government workers left on the payroll, the partial government shutdown which began on midnight Friday is being characterised by many agencies as a “soft-lapse” and absent guidance or flagrantly ignoring the Anti-Deficiency Act, enacted by congress to prevent incurring obligations and or making commitments in excess of appropriated funds codified by congress during the reconstruction era following the US civil war to attempt to counter coercive over-budgeting encouraged by the executive branch to deplete fiscal expenditures prior to being replenished, this disdain—on Groundhog Day—of the regular ritual of furlough, exceptions and exemptions is yet (regardless if it lasted a weekend or weeks or tardy over time-zones) another sign that the Trump administration is shrugging of norms and statute. Guidance has not trickled down the hierarchy for many and are instructed to conduct business as usual until further notice, considering that many were written up for such transgressions during the last one, incurring more debt without backing and causing conflict in the casual chaos.

lapse in appropriations (13. 130)

After the record breaking furlough of forty-three days perpetuated in hope of extending healthcare subsidies only recently ended ahead of the holiday travel season, the US government has entered another partial shutdown with large swaths of the departments of war, exterior and health and human services unfunded, the budget supplement of Homeland Security bundled into these bills and following the second execution of a Minnesota resident by ICE agents—monies withheld by a coalition of Democrat and Republican senators in order to reign in their raids. Whilst lawmakers in the upper chamber were able to sequester funds from the DHS for a temporary two-week stopgap period to keep the operations running during for negotiations for reforms for the agency’s draconian tactics, they failed to meet the midnight deadline to return the proposed package back to the house of representatives for deliberation and to vote on its passage. It is unclear if congress—on recess until Monday—will endorse budget in this form, considering that the power of purse that’s been taken away from the legislature could also restrain the administration from implementing its gunboat diplomacy on Cuba, Mexico, Iran, etc, apply pressure for the full release of the Epstein files, still stalled in the justice department as it said it met its statutory obligation as well as trying to force real reforms in immigration enforcement instead of the window-dressing and scapegoating thus far implemented which does not seem to indicate a true shift in posture or policy and promises more of the same, particularly considering the arrest of observers and journalists covering raids and protests.