464 us 417 (13. 915)

Filed on this day in 1976 in the US district court for central and southern California in Los Angeles, Universal Studios and the Walt Disney Company sued the Sony Corporation of America to prohibit the sale of it videocassette recording system to the general public. The “Betamax” case eventually heard by the supreme court nearly eight years later, ruled—narrowly—in favour of the electronics manufacturer, deciding that making individual copies of programming for personal use does not constitute copyright infringement when created for the purposes of time shifting, viewing it sometime after the scheduled live broadcast, was fair use. The concept of pausing live television had among its first popular depictions in a 1966 episode of I Dream of Jeannie with Major Nelson requesting his genie pre-empt a football game so he could continue to watch it from that point after finishing with errands. More broadly, the majority of the justices found that similar video recording platforms could not be held liable for contributing to infringement, thus creating the home video market with a legal safe harbour, similar to the principle of Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that guarantees immunity for online platforms hosting third-party content hosted by users within in certain bounds, for the developing technology and a boon for film studios with secondary releases. The prevailing format for taping shifted away from Betamax, Sony acquired Columbia Pictures in 1989 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 modified certain interpretation of statue that informed the original case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting the fair use standard as a applied to space shifting (peer-to-peer sharing of digital media such as Napster or KaZaa) as the equivalent of the above time shifting.

 

 synchronoptica

one year ago: documenting China’s 1990s building boom (with synchronoptica), the Battle of Agincourt (1415), US moves towards regime change in Venezuela plus Trump administration closes off the US entrance of a Canadian border-straddling library

 

two years ago: cruise packages and Gen Z plus international maritime signal flags 

 

three years ago: assorted links worth the revisit 

 

four years ago: further adventures in Crete 

five years ago: the US Invasion of Granada (1971)

six years ago: a hexadecagonal country retreat, SS Crispin and Crispinian plus pandemic gods and heroes

seven years ago: a lyrical headline (1924), a video game atlas plus the world’s first erotic boutique proprietress 

eight years ago: The Master Key of Futurity, virtual restaurants and ghost kitchens plus programming a more ethical Pac Man

 

9x9 (13. 909)

screenage wasteland: adult children curating their senior parents’ algorithms to blunt engagement with AI slop, scams and ragebait—[archived]—via Web Curios  

menagerie: inmates care for animals at the world’s only penitentiary with a zoo in the Florida Keys—via Damn Interesting  

omnibus: an archive of the science and scifi anthology, published from 1978 to 1995—via Kottke  

epic elfie: a grateful pachyderm snaps a wide-angle photograph without the need for a selfie-stick—see also 

the battle of blythe road: a spell-hurling duel between Aleister Crowley and WB Yeats in 1900—via Strange Company  

eagle’s nest: arsonists torch Hitler’s Alpine retreat, the Kehlsteinhaus 

cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war: Palmer Luckey launches an initiative to produce genetically enhanced canines for the US military and law enforcement, reducing reliance on European kennels  

window from the house of d: a court and then a prison for wayward women informed the bohemian and queer character of Greenwich Village—see previously  

emomercial: targeted advertisement for an assumed demographic can become an unexpected catharsis

synchronoptica

one year ago: storyboarding with tarot (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth the revisit 

two years ago: AI learns to point and click, London’s mortality weekly plus the life of Boethius  

three years ago: Mole Day 

four year ago: arriving in Crete 

five years ago: your daily demon Sabnok plus more links to enjoy

six years ago: circuit judge Roy Cohn, a pretend Communist coup, more links, the beginning of the world plus an appreciation of the colour russet

seven years ago: even more links worth revisiting plus more on the far future night sky

eight years ago: the canals of Mars, swing sixties cover of Red Hot Chili Peppers, the first Russian rapper plus noteworthy files from the US National Records Archive

 

 

9x9 (13. 891)

lazy sunday: filmmaker Greta Gerwig’s next project is the adaptation of C S Lewis’ first book in the Naria tetralogy—more here  

glazing: a series of skits push back on the indignities of being interviewed by a sycophantic AI agent

the holy rus(e): much like evangelicalism is a hand maiden of right wing America, the Russian Orthodox Church is an instrument of the Kremlin’s hybrid influence 

the spetses players: the 1970s performance group that turned the Greek island into a stage  

ann putnam, jr: the long afterlife of a debunked theory behind the Salem Witch Trials—via Strange Company—see also  

[citation needed]: an engrossing article about Wikipedia’s gastronomical lacunas and attempts to fix them—I often look up what I am eating—via Web Curios  

the hierophant: tarot cards for teachers 

frontier training: how a “hardwired” pause on AI development could work by phasing in inference only chips  

sanatorium pod klepsydrą: ten unhinged international (mostly) horror homages as selected by the Eternal Family—including Funeral Parade of Roses

ludus litterator (13. 888)

Via Web Curios—be sure to not skip the preamble for a surreal, Kafkaque case of identity expropriation—we are directed to this engrossing essay on the vices of highly effective Victorians, which present in stark contrast to the discipline and clean-living if not practised espoused by the titians of industry of today, whose empires are arguably built every bit as much as the British one through colonialism and exploitation if not more reliant on class-struggle and inequities. Etonian and Oxbridge attitudes towards education, whilst not wholly staunchly traditional and did incorporate progressive elements, the capacity of the Classics for character development was far more privileged than a science and maths based curriculum that we would call STEM in modern parlance—on the basis that technical mastery could be acquired later with the formative years dedicated to cultivating independent thought. Although the lifestyle was unobtainable for the working poor who enabled it for the small cadre of the elite, those matriculated schedules and inculcated attitudes—with the exception of matins and vespers which required early rising—carried over to post-graduate careers with workdays generally starting not before 10:00, time to recover from the previous night’s social commitments, and an elaborate, boozy brunch with most having the flexibility to work from home for reading, research and replying to correspondence until afternoon in-person meetings, with Parliament not seated until 17:00 or later, the nocturnal existence and party scene made possible through gaslighting and electrification. Not exclusive to elected representatives, though very much encompassing the ruling class, this concession to birthright, even for all those whom it disadvantaged may have been the secret to the success of the era, the allowance for sentiment and tradition over the explicit social contract and norms that typically bind highly developed hierarchies. Contemporary parallels are abhorrent and deserving of punishment and ostracisation—like the Epstein nucleus or any who would scoff laws they themselves enacted, and whilst it is harder to hide behaviours considered inegalitarian in the age of social media, when many voluntarily brag about it—cf the expulsion and black-balling of senate candidate Madison Cawthorn for exposing orgies and “key bumps” of cocaine in the GOP and for those careless hints from careless people of lavish lifestyles (significantly at tax-payer expense and not earners nor beneficiaries but grifters for the grind) coming periodically from appointed officials. Read more from Works in Progress at the link above.

day two hundred sixteen (13. 875)

Predictably Trump and Israel denounce the Nobel Committee’s selection of a civil rights lawyer for the Peace Prize, the American president imposing more sanctions on the International Criminal Court—hoping to blunt the justices’ ability to go after US and Israeli war criminals as it is revealed that the American ambassador in Jerusalem has been actively covering up the extent of death and violence in the West Bank. Meanwhile, unconscionably, Trump announces the lifting of all sanctions on Russian diesel, authorising the sale, delivery, offloading and importation through April 2027. Arranging the deal with Putin (allied with Iran), Trump is desperate to bring prices down just before the mid-term elections and betrays Ukraine by opening up this revenue stream for Moscow to allow them to keep prosecuting the war. Europe condemns normalising trade with the pariah nation and Kyiv responds to this development with continued bombings on Russian refineries, bringing into doubt whether Russian can deliver on the tonnage of oil that Trump speaks off—having earlier blamed Zelenskyy for the supply shortage and now hoping to make his lie ring true. Flooding the market may well backfire, after convincing European allies to dip into their statutory reserves that went no where, NATO members may use this opportunity to replenish their emergency supplies, as well as China, whose largess prevented a worse energy shock. It may also cause an imbalance with jet fuel and the lower profit margins in a global market may dissuade oil producers from ramping up production. At a campaign rally in Syracuse, the American president claims that resolutions are “moving along at a rapid speed” and pledges to “win or settle” the conflicts in Iran and in Ukraine soon. A Saudi-led coalition engages in a major offensive against Houthi forces in Yemen. Iran continues to fire on tankers and the US naval blockade has rerouted ships from the Persian Gulf.

synchronoptica

one year ago:  Nobel Peace Prize goes to Venezuelan opposition candidate (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth the revisit

two years ago: a visit to Himmelpfort and Fürstenberg

three years ago: an episode in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war 

four years ago: AI movie posters plus conjuring Swedish nonsense words

five years ago:  more links to enjoy plus Upstairs, Downstairs (1971)

six years ago: revolutionary China, happy birthday to the Candy Bomber, the moon Triton, the role of sharks in vaccines plus coin-op convenience

seven years ago: Dunbar Number, guerilla advertising plus more on noise pollution

eight years ago: more on Osaka’s Expo’70 plus a shopping cart that gauges one’s mood

 

soroptimist international (13. 854)

Founded on this day in 1921 in Oakland, California, (SI, from the Latin soror, sister, and optima, the best) by Violet Richaradson, Eloise Cushing and Stuart Morrow, the first chapter of the movement has grown into a global volunteer organisation with nearly seventy thousand members advocating and championing women’s causes, providing educational grants, domestic violence shelters and healthcare. Richardson (pictured below—the shotgun was for dispatching with rattlesnakes for the hiking association she also started), as first president of the club, was an early pioneer of physical education for adolescents and established the Berkley Women’s Gymnasium for adult females whilst pursuing her master’s degree in general education. A chapter in London was founded in parallel and Madame Suzanne Blanche Gros Noël of Paris, the first female cosmetic surgeon who performed countless reconstructive operations for veterans disfigured in World War I and invented the face-lift, was instrumental in starting clubs in France and ten other European capitals, expansion of the movement interrupted by the outbreak of World War II when members shifted their efforts towards helping those fleeing the Nazis. Since the early 2000s, SI has garnered status as an NGO with consultative capacity with the United Nations and maintains official relations with the World Health Organisation. Other members of note include classics scholar Mary Creighton Bailey of Canterbury whom went on to join the British High Commission for Germany with the remit of de-nazifying school curriculum, teacher, conductor and composer Juliette Nadia Boulanger whose students included Aaron Copland, Quincy Jones and Philip Glass, Australian Mary Campbell Dawbarn, pioneering nutritionist and biochemist whose research on B-complex vitamins fundamentally shaped our understand of biochemistry and militant Scottish suffragette Flora Drummond.

day two hundred nine (13. 850)

According to Trump, European countries, at his bidding, agree to release a “massive amount” of diesel reserves as fuel prices continue to soar worldwide, the American president blaming Ukraine for the supply shortage. EU stockpiles dwarf those of the US (as do China’s) because the bloc requires members maintain a ninety-day emergency contingency, and the energy shock was blunted by Beijing’s decision to tap its reserves rather than buying on the open market and further tightening the stocks and driving up prices even further. The reasons behind this magnanimity remain unclear but EU should at minimum leverage their decision with a demand for ending tariffs or be consulted before casting the world into chaos—or perhaps it’s just like the potash from Belarus deal.  Houthi rebels clash with Yemeni forces in Sanaa as the struggle for control of the country escalates. Iraq is granted an exemption to US sanctions on Iranian air carriers and allowed to administer a limited number of flights between Najaf and Tehran. The supreme court of Israel unanimously overturns the earlier decision by the country’s central elections commission to exclude Arabic parties from the upcoming parliamentary vote.

convenient numbers (13. 845)

Though seemingly never harmonising further in terms of paper-size, machined components, etc, the US alcohol industry did switch to the international standard of preferred metric units on this day in 1976, adopting six bottle styles to replace the thirty-eight existing ones for more efficient manufacture, storage and shipping.  

The fifth (⅕ of an American gallon, which whilst based on the British “wine gallon” confusion arose after the War of Independence when the US did not adopt the larger Imperial Gallon and containers reputed to hold ¼ of a gallon, approximately a litre were deemed short-quarts) was replaced by the seven hundred fifty millilitre bottle, the standard capacity for wine bottles worldwide and informally referred to as a metric fifth (only a one percent less volume), a handle (a half gallon) became one and three-fourths a litre. Saloons were allowed to continue to serve shots and “reputed pints,” and this move towards metrication, the US bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in coordination with the Distilled Spirits council of the United States—the only real push towards standardisation that ever occurred, allowed for a four year transition period in bottle production, adding to the chaos.

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: the US federal government shuts down plus a trip to Haut-Kœnigsbourg and Kaysersberg (with syncronoptica)

two years ago: digital divinity, ghost-writing, ambient music from a surveillance system plus up-selling

three years ago: more sketching prompts for Inktober, advice columnist Claire Rayner plus the Congress of Vienna (1814)

four years ago:  The New People (1969), discovering a devilish beach house, presenting the public face of generative text-to-image technology plus disco Star Wars

 

five years ago: Botober sketch prompts, assorted links to revisit, irregular verbs, CAT scans (1971), synthetic dyes plus Night of the Living Dead (1968)

 

six years ago: more links to enjoy plus an in depth look at Albrecht Dürer’s self-portrait

 

seven years ago: Denmark recognises same-sex marriages (1989) plus Swedish sea-fortresses recommissioned

eight years ago: passive cooling, Bohemian Rhapsody in the style of Gershwin, Trump lampooned in Beirut plus documenting London’s poor

 

copyfight (13. 838)

Under the aegis of IP—intellectual property—the three prongs that activists rally against in terms of ownership over subscription and right-to-repair movements and portability of profiles of copyright, trademarks and patents with their attendant clauses and legal contours are radically different from one another—stemming from US policy with global export and consequence. Enshrined in the American constitution, copyright is only joined with the right to bear arms as the foundational provisos that the framers thought justified an explanation other than “self-evident,” with the latter being a for the sake of maintaining a well regulated Militia and the former being to promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts and thus incentivise creative works, situationally and not in perpetuity no matter licensors might take issue. Trademarks, in contrast, were established as a form of consumer protection—enabling a company to sue competitors on behalf of customers for engaging in infringement on their brand, counterfeiting and deceptive marketing, but with the disarming disclaimers and eventual expiration of copyrights, forwarded so long as the company and product are in existence. Patents, in turn, are a sort of hybrid embracing the best and the worst parts of the bargain between society and the inventor, the limited period of exclusivity in exchange for making it public but with the same spirit of litigiousness to enforce patent rights. Those who best know the precise distinctions leverage this ambiguity against customers and competitors whom don’t understand these limits to advance their extractive models, playing champions of the public domain and open-source against one another. More from Cory Doctrow’s Pluralistic at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a return to Riquewihr (with synchronoptica) plus Trump hocks medical biobeds

two years ago: ranking the gods, Chilean Antarctica plus more brief papacies 

three years ago: the Sycamore Gap Tree is no more 

four years ago: assorted links to revisit plus St Leoba

five years ago:  your daily demon: Halphas plus more links to enjoy

six years ago: Pope John Paul I plus Trump’s taxes

seven years ago: hitchhiking returns to Brussels 

eight years ago: William the Conqueror crosses the Channel (1066) plus the #MeToo movement

 

day one hundred ninety-eight (13. 818)

Lawmakers is Iran draft legislation to pull the country out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty whilst issuing stark warnings to the US following Trump’s prognosis of options available for ending the conflict are either total obliteration, economic rot or reaching a deal that suggest a fresh wave of military strikes. Tehran promises to retaliate “without limitations,” the Revolutionary Guard saying that the USA lacks the courage and resolve to defeat the Islamic Republic and the world will be “astounded” by Iran’s new weapons. Just as the White House East Wing renovations and the ballroom were a cover for an apocalypse grade bunker, the American president reveals that he plans for his triumphal arch in the capital to host a den of snipers and drones—ostensibly for defensive purposes but likely to quell riots. Trump sanctions the entire staff AfD secures a bald majority in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern but has no options of forming a state government. IDF carry out strikes in Lebanon’s Tyre district and enter Syria. European jet fuel imports fall by half with serious shortages expected.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica), American Idiot plus a banger from Earth, Wind & Fire

two years ago: Weird Al parodies Bob Dylan with palindromes plus more gerrymandering 

three year ago: grieving the loss of dark skies 

four years ago:  Ba-Dee-Ya, Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible, more on the US Space Force plus a collection of manhole covers

five years ago: an advertisement for Ivermectin 

six years ago:  the Order of the Smile, The Hobbit (1937), the legacy of colonial goods stores, alternative chess plus wide-scale money laundering

seven years ago: The Far Side returns plus more Earth, Wind and Fire

eight years ago: assorted links to revisit, a sexy Handmaiden costume for Halloween plus Dial-a-Song

 

day one hundred ninety-two (13. 795)

Trump claims that Ukraine and Moscow have agreed to refrain from striking each other’s energy infrastructure—Zelenskyy contradicts this truce. The American president, harking back to phrases used months earlier asserts that Tehran wants to make a deal quickly and badly, adding he will determine whether or not the USA will choose to engage, “the concept of which we are open to.” Iran denies it had any role in the destruction of a key Saudi pipeline, connecting the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf overland through Riyadh and conveying five percent of the world’s oil supply. Trump’s supreme court rules against restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections. Canada becomes an affiliate member of the European Union in terms of trade with talks of greater integration on the table.

public law 94-412 (13.792)

Signed into law on this day in 1976 by US president Gerald Ford, the National Emergencies Act was a legal mechanism to declare an end to all previous national emergencies and to formalise and contain the crisis powers of the executive. Terminations included the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 (regarding the hoarding of gold) declared by FDR during the Great Depression, a 1950 mobilisation by Truman during the Korean War and more recently from Nixon during a postal workers strike and inflation fears. Whilst empowering the president to activate special powers during certain exigencies for a period of not to exceed two years, congress reserving the right to evaluate and through a joint-resolution end a national emergency declared by the president after six months. Of the four dozen national emergencies declared since 1976, most have been the recent restrictions on trade with foreign entities under IEEPA, the oldest still on the books, renewed biannually is from Jimmy Carter, freezing Iranian government property and assets from November 1979.

synchronoptica

one year ago: an aquaponics installation (with synchronoptica) plus Industrial Light and Magic for civic engagement

two years ago: eighty bangers from the 80s plus a novel wildfire detection device 

three years ago: catastrophic flooding in Lebanon plus US House Speaker McCarthy ousted

four years ago: The Waltons (1972), spreading seeds plus an AI illustrated Bible

five years ago: assorted links to revisit plus rice harvest art

six years ago: one of the first laws enshrining freedom of the press (1770), explaining the year 2020 to someone from the past plus music to move by

seven years ago: seeing the tarnish of the golden era plus RIP Eddie Money

eight years ago: Trump downplays deaths in Hurricane Maria, a new Russian cathedral, Jimmy Carter Says Yes, more on calendar reforms plus Trump’s campaign manager in court

 

white house arcade (13. 786)

The already doltishly defaced White House web site, we can only hope the content is one day jettisoned into the Sun—and perhaps the whole presidential palace raised to the ground and begin anew, inshallah, though increasingly it looks like America may never recover from this grift and mean hatefulness—has, we learn through the litigious threats of the Tetris Company against the Trump administration for copyright infringement, wanting no association with the “Build the Wall” knock-off and successfully managed to get the game taken down, a bit of the Streisand Effect but drawing attention to the particularly pathetic and embarrassing, added a suite of video game clones, slapdash AI-generated, propagandised versions that are guaranteed to be unplayable with poorly designed mechanics that just pander to the xenophobia of the MAGA base.  Though the now gone Tetris mini-game (replaced with a place-holder) was probably the most offensive one—and dumb as the point of play is to remove blocks and not construct a barrier to repeal a zombie invasion at the border and the wall stacks up quickly, likely not in court to be ruled a violation of intellectual property due to its rules of play—there’s cheap points too for a Flappy Birds imitation of a bald eagle navigating a bill through Washington, a Snake-like game called Rio Run with border patrol agents blocking immigrants (OK, this is as bad as the Tetris takedown), a Roller Coaster Tycoon counterfeit with the goal of funding one’s children’s Trump Savings Accounts, gamified but without any educational content to help parents make informed investment decisions and lastly appealing to the MAHA wing, a Burger Chef knockoff to sort school lunches and Make America Healthy Again.

day one hundred eighty-nine (13. 784)

Russian army returns to bases in Syria, contradicting claims that facilities at the port of Tartus would be transferred to Damascus. Houthis seize Red Sea coast as the Saudi East-West oil pipeline shuts down following an Iranian drone attack, pushing oil to a four-month high. A quarter of a century after the attacks that shook the world, Americans reflect on 9/11, including retrospective reevaluations of mistakes that were made in the immediate aftermath. The Clintons, the Bushes, the Obamas and the Bidens attended a remembrance ceremony in Lower Manhattan, flanked by current and former New York City mayors, while Trump—told he would not be allowed to make a political speech, was in attendance at a ceremony at the Pentagon, sleeping through most of it, only to wake up in time to make his push for the justification of his war of choice with the Israelis in Iran, backed up by Hegseth, who frames both today’s fight and the fight from twenty-five years ago as a continuum, “The struggle against evil continued and it continues now. It will continue until Judgment Day. Our only answer here on Earth is eternal vigilance.” Forever wars carry a dark legacy—with the US president having recently weaponised the Department of Homeland Security, created directly to prevent future attacks, to embark on a weeks’ long campaign to purge voters from rolls as part of a broader plan for intimidation and disenfranchisement ahead of the upcoming elections, which might be suspended anyway over some manufactured crisis, and the blood and treasure of a generation squandered, unaccountable trillions wasted in pursuit of a few terrorist, toppling regimes, fighting the resultant insurgencies to make the world a more dangerous place, the nation ceding its industrial, technological, diplomatic and economic edge in the process, particularly now with allies alienated by unending hostilities, which would have been better spent on education, outreach and universal healthcare, reversing climate change at a crucial juncture—opportunities lost to pandering to insecurity and illusionary exceptionalism.

aal11 (13. 782)

Shortly after taking office in January of this year, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s staff found a tranche of documents, sixty-four boxes, never released that suggest that residents of Lower Manhattan were misled about the safety and air quality in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks and for years following. The mayor directed his staff to upload these documents and make them available on a portal that anyone can search, coming online earlier this week. One can see environmental surveys for any given neighbourhood and learn more about the actual risk, exposure with resources about filing a claim for compensation. In a rush to get businesses in New York running again and to not “let the terrorist win”—reminiscent of the resistance to social-distancing schemes, shuttered shops and restricted gatherings and the push by some for a return to normality that was premature and had far-reaching consequences—public officials at the city, state and federal levels assured that the air was safe to breathe and the water safe to drink for those living next to ‘the Pile’—rescue workers avoiding the term ground zero favoured by the media, the rubble of the Twin Towers, burning concrete, lead, asbestos as well as hazards from the some two thousand automobiles buried in the underground parking. Three times the number of individuals, not only first responders, who died that day a quarter of century ago have now died as a result of illnesses caused by living with the toxic debris. The terror attacks were declared an act of war to limit the city’s legal liability. The resource, courtesy of Web Curios, also includes a wealth of information documenting the social impact, search and recovery efforts and perhaps most importantly how institutions respond to something so unimaginably of world-changing magnitude and violence.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a 1970 documentary on Kenneth Anger (with synchronoptica) plus artist Ivan Aivazovsky

two years ago: search engine optimisation, transcribing presidential debates plus tales of Chemical Romance 

three years ago: the Hoover Dam comes online (1936), an actual flying car from 1973, bird photograph of the year plus a manliness calibrator

four years ago: an important battle in the Scottish War of Independence (1297)

five years ago: 80s automotive dashboards, avian photograph of the year, the Dead Internet conspiracy theory plus Mid-Century Modern home-entertainment consoles

six years ago: a memorable, perfectly timed photograph, Disintegration Loops, fiery skies plus assorted links to revisit

 

twa 355 (13. 780)

Hijacked on this day in 1976, the domestic flight from LaGuardia to O’Hare in Chicago was taken by a group of five Fighters for Free Croatia to further the independence movement of the constituent state from Yugoslavia. Halfway into the flight, the hijackers stormed the cockpit and directed the plane to Montreal’s Mirabel airport, allowed to refuel after telling authorities that a bomb had been planted in a locker at New York’s Grand Central Station and issued instructions on how to locate and disarm it. Further the group group demanded an appeal for the movement be printed in major American newspapers. The plane was flown to Gander, Newfoundland where an air traffic controller negotiated for the release of thirty-five passengers. Refused permission to land by the UK government in London, the aircraft touched down in Keflavík before traveling to Paris where the hijackers surrendered after talks with US ambassador Kenneth Rush. America writer and activist Julienne Bušić, married to the operation’s mastermind Zvonko Bušić, was hugged by the pilot for her help in keeping the passengers calm during the whole ordeal. Although a New York police officer was killed attempting to dismantle rather than detonate the explosive device planted at the train terminal, the devices on board the airplane were discovered to be fakes. The group of five were sentenced to long terms in prison, minimum of thirty years, for conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy and for the death of the police officer (Julienne Bušić served her time in a correctional facility in Dublin, California along with cellmate Squeaky Fromme, whom was reassigned after several incidents of violence perpetrated by Fromme), though eventually all were remanded to parole in an independent Croatia.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica), a posturepedic bed, AI can’t do clocks plus Russian threatens Finland’s sovereignty 

two years ago: more links to enjoy

three years ago: even more assorted links  

four years ago: Hey Jude (1968), links to enjoy, more telling the bees plus more even more links to revisit

five years ago: St Aubert, the ecological importance of oyster-beds, comparable to coral reefs plus even more links worth revisiting

six years ago: the largest basilica in the world, artist Marianne von Werefkin, a devastating earthquake in Constantinople (1509), the original and the reprised Fresh Prince, burning skies plus Hongkonger neologisms

 

 

day one hundred eighty-three (13. 769)

With economic indicators like the better than expected jobs numbers and crippling inflation pointing to a need to increase interest rates, Trump (sporting a new coif apparently) threatens his newly minted chair of the Federal Reserve that if he does not comply and reduce rates, the American president will embargo countries that have a trade surplus with the US and suspend all economic activity—as an alternative to the reciprocal tariffs declared unlawful. The US fires upon at least six tankers headed towards Iranian ports—confirming by the numbers its new tit-for-tat policy of striking an Iranian affiliated ship for every commercial vessel or US asset targeted by Tehran, the Revolutionary Guard attacking a US naval warship enforcing the blockade. Netanyahu orders the IDF to bomb Qatar, labeling it a hostile state. Special envoys Kushner and Witkoff, despite their terrible track records, hold a late night meeting with Putin to discuss ending the war with Ukraine—in time for the midterms. AfD is poised to take over state government of Saxon-Anhalt as more suspected acts of sabotage against Germany‘s power grid are narrowly thwarted by authorities—Russian agents are thought to be behind the attacks. The US justice department pauses cooperation with the government of Canada.

the new model army (13. 764)

Though always eager to disclaim its remit as a spoken history of a global language, the latest episode of The History of English presents a rather excellent overview of the English Civil War through the lens of linguistic developments and documentation from the decade of the 1640s, including the early discourse on orthography The English Primrose—1644, subtitled, the easiest and speediest-way, both for the true spelling and reading of English, as also the true-writing thereof ...Planted (with no smal pains) by Richard Hodges, a school-master, which includes the first instances of phonetic notation and expanded punctuation and Joshua Poole’s The English Accidence on inflection and a new way of expressing the future tense. Further we learn through the chronology that the term Tory, a traditionalist and supporter of political conservatism in the contemporary sense was a product of this tumultuous era, Irish guerrillas thwarting parliamentary republicans as royalist were labelled as tóraidhe from the Irish term for pursuer or outlaw. King Charles I pandered to these partisan even though Ireland, struggling for independence and aligned with the Catholic church, was seen as a traditional enemy of the monarchy and the association somehow survived the ensuing centuries. As a counterpoint, the term Whig has a similar rebellious and notably non-English etymology emerging from the same period of crisis as a shortening for the nickname Whiggamore for a Scottish presbyterian, a more liberal faction that opposed absolute monarchy, a robust parliament and religious toleration, and meant one who drives a horse briskly and by extension an outlaw or fanatic. The imposition of Anglican strictures on the Church of Scotland being on the chief causes of Charles’ downfall, the king ultimately surrendered to a group of Scottish sympathisers, hoping for clemency and the chance to return to power, inconceivable that the monarch could face trial and be held accountable for his actions. Though the latter was dissolved as a political party in the 1860s and does not carry the modern resonance that the Tories have, the two, despite their derogatory connotations, were the main caucuses of the House of Commons for two centuries.

the power and the glory (13. 727)

Courtesy of Strange Company, we learn about writer Graham Greene’s self-exile to Mexico (see previously here, here and here) and how the author’s visit to a country he held in contempt for research on religious persecution (see above), supposedly, was prompted in part by a libel suit leveraged against him by the legal team of child actor Shirley Temple Black after Greene intimated that her on-screen persona was crafted for the titilation of men of a certain age or certain ecclesiastical occupations, conveniently safe from prosecution outside of the court’s jurisdiction. The objective of gathering materials for a novel, expanded into a travelogue and two books that turn out to be historical fictions, transformed into a multi-year odyssey through Tabasco and Chiapas.

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: Trump’s campaign of retribution goes after former national security advisor John Bolton (with synchronoptica) plus the splintering of the internet

two years ago: GPS epochs plus a potential violation of the Logan Act

 

three years ago: assorted links worth the revisit

four years ago: the state song of Idaho, more links to enjoy plus social media driven overtourism

five years ago: Petra discovered (1812), a Saturnine satellite, even more links plus educational books for precocious witches and warlocks

six years ago: the canine Saint Guinefort,  i lik the bred plus Ray Bradbury (*1920)

day one hundred sixty (13. 707)

The EU issues another condemnation of continued political executions in Iran whilst Lebanon outlaws the death penalty. Houthi rebels maintain their hold on the junctions to the Red Sea. A grounded Russian tanker is leaking oil off of the coast of Oman—threatening environmental damage greater than the Exxon Valdez. Even if markets are still failing to acknowledge realities, the the International Energy Agency assesses that the world is burning through petroleum reserves.