Saturday 4 September 2021
i never had one myself, enough to remember. i was torn from the thigh of zeus.
Friday 3 September 2021
it’s the plumber—we’ve come to fix the sink
Under the direction of US presidential advisor John Ehrlichman coordinated a team of burglars who would go on to attempt the Watergate break in (previously) to infiltrate the offices of Washington, DC psychiatrist Lewis Fielding also on this day in 1971. Dr. Fielding was treating former US Department of Defence contractor with the RAND corporation Daniel Ellsberg, whom had leaked the “Pentagon Papers” the prior year to the press. Although they found Ellsberg’s file, the operation yielded no useful information.
Wednesday 1 September 2021
รพorskastrรญรฐin
With precedent disputes just after WWII and reignited after a fashion with Brexit fishing negotiations, the Cod Wars began in earnest on this day in 1958 when Iceland expanded its territorial waters to the edge of maritime claims by the UK and West Germany, with all sides sustaining losses over the next two decades as this protracted conflict continued with boats ramming into one other and the fishing nets of trawlers cut. Although in the aftermath of each skirmish, the International Court of Justice sided with Iceland’s claim, no resolution was reached until 1976 when Iceland threatened to withdraw from NATO if the matter wasn’t settled once and for all, an action that would denied the alliance’s submarines access to a strategic part of the North Sea (see also) at the height of the Cold War, brokering an agreement amenable to all parties. Following on from the truce, the United Nations codified the Law of the Sea and standardised exclusive nautical economic zones.
Sunday 29 August 2021
come doused in mud, soaked in bleach as i want you to be—as a trend, as a friend
Ahead of the album’s official release later in the third week of September, a Boston radio station (call sign WFNX from 1983 to 2012 and one of the first commercial broadcasters to play alternative rock) hosted by DJ Kurt St. Thomas premiered Nirvana’s Nevermind, playing the entire recording on this day in 1991. Launching four singles and an unexpected success, both in critical reception and sales, the album is credited with bringing the various genres of the Seattle grunge movement into mainstream media, awarded several honours and reissues. Despite having recreated the cover art with underwater photoshoots for the album’s tenth, seventeenth and twenty-fifth anniversaries, the then infant model has filed a lawsuit against the band for lifelong damages for exploiting his image.
Wednesday 18 August 2021
harper valley ptsa
Whilst the governor of Texas, who has contracted COVID-19 himself, has countermanded any sort mask mandate for public schools and institutions of higher education within the state, executive authority has met its match in the school board, whose trustees have elected to make amendments to dress codes and make masks a requirement “for all employees and students to mitigate flu, cold, pandemic and any other communicable diseases.” The board, at the advice of health experts, will reconvene monthly to determine if prevailing conditions still warrant the use of personal protective gear.
Tuesday 17 August 2021
the life of ฯ
Whereas astrophysics suggest that extending out the significant digits to thirty-nine decimal places would be at the level of precision to measure the circumference of the known Universe to within the breadth of a hydrogen atom, we quite enjoyed the overkill and ambition, as reported by the Guardian, of a team of Swiss mathematicians that have calculated out the transcendental, irrational number, also known as Archimedes’ Constant and whose use of the Greek letter to symbolise it first attributed to Welsh professor William Jones in 1706, to sixty-two trillion places for the accomplishment in itself plus the bonus facts and anecdotes. Not only is it fiendishly useful to understand and is embedded in all sort of applications, there’s quite a bit of lore attached to pi. There’s its elegance in comprehending a bit of the Cosmos, cameo appearances and an infamously misguided attempt in 1897 by the Indiana state legislature to round it up to 3.2 and be done with it.
catagories: ⚖️, ๐จ๐ญ, ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ท๓ ฌ๓ ณ๓ ฟ, ๐งฎ
7x7
lowering the bar: a trial lawyer’s endorsement in a whiskey ad illustrates by-gone regulatory period in the US
blotter art: an LSD museum in San Francisco
spraycation: Banksy works appear at UK seaside towns Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft
middle-age spread: comprehensive study finds metabolism stable throughout life and crashes after sixty—via the New Shelton Wet / Dry
bureau of land management: a celebration of the striking landscape photography of Bob Wick
o’zbekiston line: a tour of Tashkent’s underground galleries—see also
kriegswaffenkontrollgesetz: gentleman outside of Kiel fined for unregistered Panzer
Wednesday 11 August 2021
555-2368
Friday 6 August 2021
regimental colours
Via the lens of heraldic conventions developed over centuries of colonisation and exploitation, we are afforded a glimpse into the complex history and socio-economic relations of the traditional companies of warriors of the Akan culture—called Asafo—of Ghana and the Ivory Coast (see previously) that pledge to defend the land through resistance to assimilation and care for their community, like ward custodians. Reminiscent of latter day Afghan war rugs (an example pictured here), learn more about the flags’ history and legacy at the link up top.
Saturday 31 July 2021
7x7
70% cรดte d’ivoire, 66% cyprus, 65% republic of ireland: doodle world flags and let a computer guess—via Web Curios
peaky finders: a selection of interactive mapping application still functional and chugging along a decade later
cult of the sun: a look at the Athon, a 1980 Lamborghini concept carss experiment: an unsuccessful ferry, powered by eight horses on a treadmill
astronomia: a lovely antique deck of playing cards with celestial charts and information on the planets and stars
flsa: US congressional representation introducing legislation for a four-day work week—see previously here and here
google doodle: a selection of the best commemorative banners—via Things Magazine
Wednesday 21 July 2021
bohus fรคstning
the state of tennessee v. john thomas scopes
Ending on this day in 1925 with a guilty verdict for the defendant for being found in violation of state statute, the Butler Act, making it unlawful to teach or promulgate the concept of human evolution in a public school, the show trial, test case had been deliberately staged as a publicity stunt for the plaintiff town with Scopes himself unsure whether his syllabus had ever actually risen to that threshold. The media event was engineered to pit progressive Modernism against biblical literalist and Fundamentalism that held that the word of God was primary to mundane research and exegesis with celebrity lawyers and was broadcast on the radio nationwide. The ensuing manufactured crisis and attendant entrenchment on both sides of the inchoate conflict and helped codify an anti-evolution movement that had heretofore been active in only a few jurisdictions but was now regarded as a countrywide moral panic despite the initial characterisation of Inherit the Wind as a win for science and reason over fable and superstition and only serves to illustrate how one ought to adhere to the status quo and create an ostensibly fake flashpoint for a false dichotomy.
Thursday 15 July 2021
the stone ship of nรคssja
Friday 9 July 2021
old rough and ready
Zachary Taylor having finally expired after an excruciating bout of indigestion from an ill-advised repast of milk and cherries on the during an especially hot Independence Day celebration, his vice president Millard Fillmore, once a contender for the distinction of being the worst ever to hold high office, Whig and backed by the nativist Know Nothing Party, but still a solid runner-up, assumed the presidency on this day in 1850.
Immediately dismissing the cabinet of predecessor, whom largely ignored Fillmore and held little ideology in common, to lobby congress for the passage of the package of bills known as the Compromise of 1850, which was seen as a concession to slave-states and enforced the law that would return fugitive enslaved people to those who claimed ownership of them anywhere within American borders. This appeasement postponed the outbreak of civil war and established the expectation of even-handed enfranchisement that continues to characterise American politics. Moreover, Fillmore was the architect for foisting trade on Japan and forcing them to open relations with the outside world and the overthrow and eventual annexation of Hawaii.Sunday 4 July 2021
besetztes nachkriegsรถsterreich
Much like post-war Germany, Austria was—after a column of Soviet forces crossed into the Burgenland in April of that year and established a provisional government with support of Joseph Stalin though absent any consultation from the Western powers—from this day in 1945 when it was decided at the London Conference that it shall be jointly occupied (rather than being split into constituent nations) by Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the US through 1955—see previously here and here, see also. By 9 July, the Allies had negotiated the details and decided on the borders of their zones and sectors, Vienna being shared amongst all with its historic centre being governed by a different power each month on a rotational basis.
Friday 2 July 2021
poena cullei
Via Strange Company’s Weekend Link Dump, we learn all about a Roman punishment meant to fit the crime codified by the lex Pompeia, emperor and the aristocracy of course being the worst offenders, that the punishment of the sack was meted out to those found guilty of the murder of a close relative who is one’s elder, a parricide, but not a fratricide, mariticide or uxoricide, involving stuffing the guilty party into a bag sewn shut with a rambunctious menagerie, usually consisting of a dog (for whom the Romans felt little fidelity), snake, monkey and a chicken and tossed into a river. Eventually expanded to include the intent, attempt, Seneca noted that by the time of the reign of the Claudian dynasty one saw “more sacks than crosses,” crucifixion of course being a preferred method of execution. More on capital crime and punishment and our fortunate distancing from it at the links above.
your daily demon: morax
Governing from today through 7 July, this twenty-first spirit and infernal earl presents alternately like a bull-headed Minotaur or a mighty bull-like chimera with the face of a man. Giving wise counsel in astronomy and astrology, impairing the virtues of herbs and precious stones, Morax commands thirty legions and is opposed by the guardian angel Nelakael, and according to some sources is a syncretism with the Ancient Egyptian goddess of Truth and Justice Ma’at, as well as the patroness of writing and rhetoric.
catagories: ⚖️, ๐, ๐, myth and monsters
Monday 28 June 2021
icty
Established by the United Nations Security Council in 1993 with special jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity incurred in the territories of the former Yugoslav Republic since its dissolution in 1991, on this day in 2001, Serbian president Slobodan Miloลกeviฤ was extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague to stand trial for genocide. The date coincides with Miloลกeviฤ’s 1989 presiding over the sixth-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, commemorating the rather pyric victory of the Serbian army against Ottoman invaders and enflaming an already tense situation between different ethnic groups that shared the constituent republics. The date also coincides with assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a conspiracy of the Black Hand secret society, the Bosniak and Serb group hoping to foment unrest and outrage and secede from the Austro-Hungarian empire with the provinces reconstituted as an independent Yugoslavia.
Sunday 20 June 2021
the rose mary stretch
While later reviewing tape recording of a conversation held on this day in 1972 between White House chief-of-staff H.R. Haldeman and Richard Nixon three days after the Watergate break-in occurred, presidential secretary Ms. Woods admitted to a terrible clerical error during replay when she took a telephone call and held the combination of buttons and pedals that caused a portion of the tape to be re-recorded. Obliging Ms. Woods later demonstrated the pose that would have allowed for this accident to happen to a doubtful press, making her story all the more incredulous once it was revealed that the gap in the transcript was not the five-minute duration of the call but rather eighteen and a half minutes long. Three days after those lost conversations were held, the “smoking gun” reel documented—between the same two interlocutors—the plans to cover-up the bungled burglary and to curtail investigations by directing the Central Intelligence Agency to falsely assert to the FBI and local police that it was a matter of National Security. Once this tape became public, all remaining political support for Nixon, including fifteen Republican senators favouring acquittal, evaporated—though Nixon resigned in lieu of impeachment.
hauptstadtbeschluss
Casting their vote on this day in 1991, the Bundestag of reunified Germany made the decision to move the seat of government and departmental headquarters from Bonn to Berlin. As stipulated by the second article of the treaty between East and West—which also established 3 October as der Tag der Deutschen Einheit—Berlin was already declared the capital in 1990. The transition took place over the ensuing decades with field offices of several ministries retained in the western conurbation, near Brussels and Germany’s most densely populated region.