notices and diffusions (10. 988)

Founded on this day in 1923 after several earlier attempts that failed to gain international support in response to harmonise global police response in the face of increased travel and trade that was accompanied by attendant transnational criminal enterprises at the conclusion of a five-day congress in Vienna, Interpol under the presidency of the summit’s organiser, jurist, law enforcement official and former Austrian chancellor Johannes Schober was chartered with a mandate to investigate trafficking, political corruption and counterfeiting—into include copyright infringements and not as an supernational police force, despite popular conception, only liaising between jurisdictions. Interpol is, by its constitution, expressly forbidden to intervene in matters of politics or military, religious or racial matters and maintain neutrality—a stance that has garnered the organisation criticism over the years, leading to arrests of dissident refugees at their behest and their avoidance of pursuing war crimes.

synchronoptica

one year ago: St Elmo’s Fire (1985),  a powerful political ad (1964) plus the end of the 9€ ticket scheme

two years ago: more on the development of kitchen design, Wikipedia Commons (2004), a Muppets conspiracy theory, Dancing Queen (1976) plus more false Dmitris

three years ago: the Abbots Bromley horn dance, circumnavigating the globe by car (1929) plus a pretty keen sports mascot 

four years ago: the abbey of Landévennec,  Midcentury Modern emoji, more on the Periodic Table, The Book of Kells plus Astro Boy (1963)

five years ago: lemons and the mafia, toxic-loving plants plus getting rid of plastic ring beer binders

hot labor summer (10. 983)

Amid ongoing strike actions by the Hollywood Writers’ Guild and pushes to unionise workers for increased leverage in bargaining with big manufacturers and retailers and the growing precarity of news outlets, this round-up and review on the US observance of Labor Day (see previously here and here) presents both hopeful and fraught factors for the movement’s reception and success. While a strong jobs market and with historically low unemployment has advantaged many workers in many industries and has momentum, changing paradigms, which companies can cite with varying levels of credulity, like generative content, cloning (the last time actors in 1960 joined the writers, a six-week stoppage awarded creators residuals from re-runs and syndication) as well as shifting to less labour-intensive manufacturing techniques—electric vehicles take few machinists to build and maintain, signalling major changes in productivity and the makeup of the workforce. While many in the US give vocal support to the ideal of unions, only ten percent of workers belong to one and the US Supreme Court has issued recent decisions that erode the right of workers to strike when negotiations, stalled and forced into a stalemate by business executives sold on technological utopias that have failed in many cases to materialise. The empires of off-license lodgings, gastronomy and taxi cabs haven’t translated to savings for consumers and are either petty kingdoms or indentured servitude for providers and streaming is just as expensive, exclusive, walled-off as cable or the studio-system. This changing posture of course has global implications and could further undermine workers’ rights.

8x8 (10. 957)

☃️: brr (previously) on electricity and power generation at the South Pole 

blogoversary: Miss Cellania reflects on eighteen years of blogging  

©️: judge rules that generative art is not subject to copyright protections 

ascertainment bias: people who submit to genetic testing and studies are predisposed for it—via Kottke  

pulmonic egressive sounds: an individual who can talk backwards—via the new shelton wet/dry 

lending-library: appealing an injunction, the Internet Archive removes commercially available titles from its public database—via Waxy 

it’s-a me: the voice of Mario, Charles Martinet, retiring after a quarter of a century 

əʊ: lignuists observe the birth of a new accent forming among Antarctic communities

 synchronoptica

one year ago: the State of Idaho, assorted links to revisit plus the plague of overtourism

two years ago: Petra rediscovered (1812), the moon Iapetus, more links to enjoy plus My Little Occult Book Club

three years ago: a canine saint,  AI poetry plus happy birthday Ray Bradbury

four years ago: returning to the Bretange

five years ago: dualling Trump trial coverage, a Romano-Gaul called Ultragoth plus gravity wells and potential energy

wattstax (10. 953)

The name a play on the Woodstock festival, the benefit concert to commemorate the seventh anniversary 1965 Watts Riots and help the community and organised by Stax Records with all the label’s biggest stars took place in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on this day in 1972, selected for coinciding with the thirtieth birthday of major talent Isaac Hayes. Spanning the musical genres of soul, funk, blues and jazz and included sets by Kim Weston, The Staple Singers, Eddie Floyd, Rufus Thomas, Ernie Hines, Hayes and The Bar-Kays. Invocation and various speeches were given by civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. Tickets priced at a suggested donation of one dollar so everyone could attend, the festival was filmed by David Lloyd Wolper (the producer by the television mini-series Roots, North and South, and the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1984 LA Olympics) and released the following year to high acclaim.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: a visit to a potash mine

two years ago: Davy Jones & The Lower Third (1965), more miniatures from Tatsuya Tanaka plus links worth revisiting

three years ago: more words of Shakespearian coinage, quality control officers, the August Coup in Russia (1991) plus the ravens of the Tower of London miss the tourists

four years ago: a classic from Miles Davis (1959), a disembodied hand dominates the skyline in Wellington plus the plague of e-scooters

five years ago: dawn in the woods, the logos of Paul Rand, an on-screen marriage ceremony that may have been legally binding, winning-streaks plus Soviets crush reform attempts in Czechoslovakia (1968)

rico (10. 944)

Ex-president Trump and a cadre of his closest confidantes were indicted by the state of Georgia on forty-one counts of racketeering and conspiracy charges to subvert his loss during the 2020 campaign, the eighteen other defendants including Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, justice department official Jeffrey Clark, election lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro as well as a slate of rogue “fake electors” that certified Trump as the winning candidate. The charges stem from a solicitation to break an oath of by Trump’s infamous directive to the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” him the needed votes, pressuring other election officials and breaching electronic ballot machines to undermine confidence in the democratic process. This represents Trump’s fourth indictment and because it was initiated on the state and not the federal level and potential re-appointment to high office and the opportunity for self-pardon would not make these charges go away.

7x7 (10. 934)

latent stage—this is where boys and doing boy stuff, girls are doing girl stuff and most children typically purchase their second firearm: the state of Florida’s revised psychology advanced placement curriculum

songs in the key of z: a documentary about outsider musician Peter Grudzien who recorded one of the first gay country albums  

savey meal-bot: a frugal-minded grocery store app gives out a recipe for deadly chlorine gas  

the judgment of cambyses: documenting the thirty-eight luxury vacations that other billionaires have treated US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to—via Kottke—see previously  

lāhainā: wildfires engulf the historic royal capital of Hawaii with dozens killed on the island of Maui 

the green m&m: Steven Miller of America First Legal complains that Kellogg’s is sexualising its products, violating federal statues by promoting diversity in its workforce—see previously 

handmaid’s tale: professors and teachers’ union challenge laws that forbid the teaching of reproductive rights

the smoking gun (10. 927)

Released to the prosecution on this day responding to a subpoena decided by SCOTUS a few weeks prior that ruled executive privilege did not confer immunity from cooperating with the courts, one recording among the cache of tapes documented the preliminary stages of the Watergate coverup, with Nixon and H R Haldeman, Chief of Staff, overheard in a meeting in the Oval Office discussing how to thwart the ongoing investigation by the FBI of the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters. Acknowledging both the risk involved if the plan came to light and giving the approach his approval, this revelation ran counter to the narrative presented that Nixon was not involved in the scandal nor had interfered with the FBI’s work—assigning the jurisdiction to the CIA. Political and public support evaporated immediately and the ten Republican senators on the impeachment jury who had initially voted to acquit the president changed their position, prompting Nixon’s almost immediate resignation in lieu of conviction and removal.

7x7 (10. 926)

strange new worlds: Star Trek’s upcoming musical episode  

peaceful transition of power: US Department of Justice requested to issue protective orders following Trump’s threats to go after prosecutors during a fund-raising event in Alabama 

nuclear noir: a selection of psychological thrillers at the cusp of the Cold War and the malleability of McGuffins  

carbon black: Massachusetts Institute of Technology develops supercapacitors that store energy in cement

family-friendly: the Kids On-Line Safety Act is posed to severely curtail speech on the internet and anonymous browsing—see also—via Waxy  

and until this battle station is fully operational, we are vulnerable—the rebel alliance is too well equipped: the US Space Force headquarters to remain in Colorado Springs  

english, do you speak it: a foretaste of Pulp Fiction—the musical

outcome-determinative fraud (10. 920)

Characterised by the campaign to re-elect Trump and ostensibly much of the cult-like Republican party as election interference and may well boost his chances, the former president has been indicted—his third and second on the federal level, for his role in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election on four counts of criminal behaviour that came to a violent denouement with the January Sixth storming of the Capitol. Enumerated as defrauding the government, conspiring to obstruct official proceeding, the case of the prosecution alleges Trump spread false rumours about voter fraud, called false slates of electors and encouraged the attempt to halt the certification of the ballot through encouraging above insurrection, determined to remain in power, knowing that his narrative and claims were baseless—eroding confidence in election officials and a rather sacrosanct process that equates to disenfranchisement against counsel who tried to disabuse him of this narrative tactic. Six accomplices were cited anonymously and not yet charged, suggesting that they could be induced to cooperate with the investigation that could mean a jail sentence long enough to keep Trump behind bars for the rest of his life—though he can still run for president despite conviction, like his antithesis Eugene V Debs of the Socialist party, and should he be re-elected, appoint a new attorney general and justice department to overturn the charges.

7x7 (10. 919)

istj: while gladly gone the way of Harry Potter House in many circles, Chinese placement agencies are obsessing with Myers-Briggs personality types  

hapsburg ai: generative chat programmes trained on derivative synthetic output becomes recursive and untenable—via Kottke  

pittura infamante: the Florentine legal tradition of the rogues’ gallery—via Miss Cellania 

 𝕏: flashing sign with new logo dismantled in San Francisco’s Twitter headquarters after neighbours complain 

‡:a font family inspired by an Ancient Roman typeface continues a centuries’ long dialogue of the printed word  

watermark: to distinguish generative writing from human, we could possible assign it its own Unicode alphabets—via Language Log  

the belt and road initiative: Italy is vocal with its regrets over signing on to China’s foreign policy push and infrastructure development programme

vinnie ream (10. 911)

On this day, aged 18, in 1866 Lavina Ellen Ream Hoxie became the youngest and first female sculptor to receive a commission by the US government for her most famous and celebrated work, the statue of Abraham Lincoln (see also here and here) in the Capitol rotunda. Ream also sculpted the bronze of Cherokee inventor Sequoyah (the town of Vinita, Oklahoma in Statuary Hall and the monument of David Farragut in Washington DC’s Farragut Square. Although her selection by the House of Congress to render a life-sized marble of the president had already generated some controversy over her experience and false accusations by some factions that she was a “lobbyist”—the term at the time referring to a public woman of ill-repute and Ream took the slander and attacks in stride, it was mild compared to the scapegoating and unrelenting attacks to come. Whilst working on Lincoln in a basement studio of the Capitol, the impeachment proceedings of Andrew Johnson were taking place in the chambers above. Failing to secure a conviction that would have removed Johnson from office, by a single vote, radical elements of the Republican Party sought out someone to blame other than their own members and deflect from the bribery that was actually the motivating factor. It was discovered that the Kansas senator, Edmund G Ross, who cast the decisive vote to acquit was staying in a DC boarding house owned by Ream’s father during the trial, and it was suggested that Ream, notably absent from the family lodging operation and busy with her work, had somehow influenced Ross’ vote in order to vouchsafe her commission and preserve the legacy of Lincoln through saving his predecessor. The House passed a resolution to turn the studio space into a guardroom and nearly ejected Ream and her unfinished statue from the Capitol. The press and the art community aired their outrage at this petty retaliation and Congress eventually reversed the decision. Ream went on to open studios in New York and Washington after studying in Europe and producing busts of continental celebrities including Franz Liszt and Gustave Doré, her career essentially ending after her marriage at twenty-four as it was considered unseemly for a married woman to earn an income.

 synchronoptica

one year ago:  Eilean Donan plus Castle Linlithgow

two years ago: your daily demon: Buné, assorted links to revisit, a silly super villain plus a Czech space opera

three years ago: artist Léon Spilliaert, cartooning the US constitution, assorted links worth the revisit plus moving forward with fusion technology

four years ago: more links to check out, a food writer and former pirate plus growing one’s own victory garden

 

7x7 (10. 905)

home taping is killing record industry profits: the 1981 moral panic over mixtapes  

lisa lionheart: labour force participation through the many careers of Barbie  

swipe left: patrons of 1920s Berlin nightclubs could flirt via pneumatic tubes—via Messy Nessy Chic  

the rivers and harbours act: Texas Department of Justice sues governor for refusing to remove a stretch of buoys that violates federal and international law—see previously  

sickbay: the Pirate Surgeon’s Journals—via Strange Company  

comeuppance: it’s time for the annual census on the River Thames—see previously 

a lot of skill, hand-eye coordination—it’s cheap and legal: video arcade addiction was seen as a threat to prevailing social values in 1982

 synchronoptica

one year ago: Ullapool and environs plus Wester Ross

two years ago: a colour advertisement on black-and-white TV (1967), Einstein on the Beach (1976), Thomas à Kempis plus a mosaic along the Thames

three years ago: Trump’s mental fitness, proto-Wikipedia (2000), more on the US Space Force, St Cucuphas, Nixon in China vis-à-vis today’s relations plus more on stock characters and archetypes

four years ago: RIP Rutger Hauer plus a doctored presidential seal

five years ago: a neo-classic Delphic festival (1927), a student project that may have unwittingly identified targets of value in the Gulf War, anti-social media, Mid-Century Modern minimalism plus the hunt for subsurface water on Mars

dragnet (10. 904)

Via Slashdot, we learn that artificial intelligence is aiding and abetting US police departments is conducting en masse warrantless monitoring of individuals, equipped with a suite of tools that analyse driving patterns of cars in traffic, normally anonymised by the herd and the sheer volume of surveillance footage the pick up snapshots of single vehicles, to identify (with an questionable degree of accuracy sure inflated to the precincts who buy the software) suspicious patterns—the signature route of a drug dealer, in the case cited, and prising out a guilty plea thanks to this dossier. Beholden only to the caprice of its operators and without judicial oversight or safeguards, every cop becomes an overly zealous Inspector Javert with the Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology, which is also used to predict and tag customer experience at drive-thrus and shared as a potential bounty across state lines with jurisdictions that have banned abortions.

which almost always means an arrest and indictment (10. 892)

Donald Trump announced in a post (and fund-raising appeal) on his platform Truth Social that special counsel Jack Smith informed him that he was the subject of the investigation, uncorroborated, though if true according to the former US president’s characterisation it would represent the third charge rising to the threshold of criminal offences and perhaps the most consequential after falsifying business records to cover up hush money and mishandling classified documents with the suggestion he is the ‘target’ of the January 6th grand jury investigation. Though not confirmed by the prosecution—having repeatedly cited Trump for public comment regarding ongoing matters, a range of recommended filings emerged this past December including conspiracy in support of false statements, aiding and abetting an insurrection, obstruction of official business and attempts to defraud United States—the latter two specifically in attempts to overturn election results with frivolous, costly and disproven demands for recounts which have exhausted party coffers in several polities.

synchronoptica 

two years ago: your daily demon: Naberus, Castle Läckö plus a gallery of pets through the looking-glass

three years ago: Trump and paramilitary organisations, “Obloquy to most men is more painful than death,” plus more on corporate sing-a-longs

four years ago: les Horrible Cernettes, the first image on the world-wide-web, West Germany’s film rating scale (1949) plus the unrelenting assaults on rights and decency from Trump

five years ago: “they are an aggressive people” plus the sophisti-pop genre

operation sober popeye (10. 872)

Also known under the codenames Motorpool and Intermediary-Compatriot and repudiated as an unacceptable tactic in warfare after leaks in the Pentagon Papers and unwelcome press coverage with a US Senate resolution passed on this day in 1973, the military cloud-seeding program carried out from 1967 to 1972 attempted chemical modification of the weather with the aim of extending monsoon seasons and disrupting the North Vietnamese supply-chain along the Ho Chi Minh Trail by soften road surfaces and causing landslides. Operations in secret extended over Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Despite its highly classified nature, the 54th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, the unit chiefly responsible for the tests, publicly and prominently used the slogan “make mud, not war.” The American people deciding that such measures had no place on the battlefield, weather disruption falls presently under the auspices of the Environmental Modification Convention.  

synchronoptica 

one year ago: the Hollywood Bowl (1922), Avogadro’s Number (1811) plus Fischer v Spassky (1972)

two years ago: Fleetwood Mac by Fleetwood Mac (1975) plus a megalithic stone ship in Sweden

three years ago: a visit to the Ehrenburg on the Ehrbach

four years ago: a delayed release of “Space Oddity” (1969), the uncontrolled deorbit of Skylab (1979) plus France approves a digital services tax scheme

five years ago: a collection of samurai clan banners, a disclaimer on social media that comes too late, America’s garbage politicians sit for a family photos plus Trump attends a NATO summit

content moderation (10. 868)

With the recent onslaught of US supreme course cases leaving us a little overwhelmed, it was difficult to unpack this coda in the form of an injunction imposed by a district judge in Louisiana (another Trump appointee) against federal agencies from communicating with social media. Under appeal, the temporary ruling bars the government from working with Facebook and others to redress posts hosted that propagate false claims that could undermine public confidence in matters of health and election integrity and could seriously curtail the ability to fact-check and steer the narrative away from conspiracy theories and unfounded claims in the upcoming presidential election. Pitting fighting disinformation for public safety against “free speech” and the grievance of some conservative elements have for social media’s bias against them, the suit claims that the government overstepped its bounds by rallying to deplatform posts that questioned the risk or origin of COVID (emboldened by the concession it might have come from a Chinese laboratory), the efficacy of protective measures or whether the Biden administration is legitimate, competent departments including the press secretary, Justice, the FBI and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention are barred from reaching out directly to platforms or engaging with third-parties who research the effects of media on public perception. Though unclear how accustomed government agencies were with accessing social media in the past (and the ruling does at least promise to reveal the scope and regularity of contact), it does seem clear that a blanket restriction will limit the government’s ability to shape the narrative and combat disinformation and will bear heavily on the 2024 presidential race.

tynwald day (10. 860)

Originally held as Midsummer Court from 979 until 1753 when the Isle of Man switched to the Gregorian calendar a year after Britain adopted the New Style but the passage of the calendar reform stipulated that the legislative session “shall be holden and kept according to the same natural Day upon or according to which the same should have been so kept or holden in case this Act had never been made”—thus preserving the Julian date and honours one of the world’s oldest parliaments and members of the House of Keys (Yn Kiare as Feed, Manx for the Four-and-Twenty, referring to its membership, and mishearing by English overlords) and Legislative Council, in traditional garb, convene to swear in officers and enact bills granted royal assent. Moving from the usual seat of government in Douglas, the representatives, lieutenant governor (often accompanied by guests of honour, the Lord of Man him or herself, or by Nordic nobility in deference to the population’s Viking origins, the clergy and the judiciary—called the Deemsters, all wear a sprig of mugwort and parade along a path to the hill strewn with rushes—a custom meant to appease the Celtic demigod Manannan (Mannán mac Lir, “Son of the Sea” and name-giver of the island). Following the laws being read into the record with the Captioning ceremony, the public has the opportunity to air grievances, petitioning the parliament directly.

biden v nebraska (10. 846)

In a succession of more punching down, the US Supreme Court has struck down the Biden administration’s signature student loan forgiveness programme meaning millions of indebted borrowers burdened. Along the political leanings of the justices, they ruled that federal law does not authorise the Department of Education the right to reduce or discharge loans taken out to cover tuition fees that have become exorbitant, impacting the personal economies of some one in eight citizens, some forty million Americans. The suit, the plaintiff being one of the largest student debt servicers, alleged that erasing the financial obligations would impair its ability to offer future aid to college students and was a “direct injury to the host state itself.” The dissenting argument pointed out that the states (mostly Republican dominated ones that wanted to kneecap this perceived concession to young voters for transparently political reasons) did not have a right to sue and the court was overreaching its mandate by hearing it at all. Repayments are expected to resume in October.  In the same session, the court also struck down a law preventing businesses from discriminating against LGBTQI+ individuals.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: the standoff at Snake Island, International Asteroid Day, document 5 (1972) plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: more links worth the revisit, leap seconds introduced (1972) plus the history of stereotype

three years ago: French video-text service (1980),  happy birthday Kate Bush and Emily Brontë, the first dada exhibition (1920), a car by Raymond Loewy plus more Japanese yōkai

four years ago: burning draft cards plus a Thunderbirds hotel in Slough

five years ago: Marybel the Doll that Gets Well plus mothballed commemorative statues of the US presidents

students for fair admissions inc v president and fellows of harvard college (10. 845)

In a split down ideological lines, the US Supreme Court effectively banned the use of affirmative action in college entry assessments, tossing out over four decades of precedent that were put in place not to redress historic wrongs but in order to foster a more diverse learning environment and better serve all students. Reasoning that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to be colour-blind or race-neutral and using background-conscious considerations as a factor violated this principle, the ruling reiterated the suggestion that the time for preference and quota had concluded and stand on merit alone. Not only does the decision deny historical advantages curried among those that have suppressed and extorted members outside that class and will have immediate effect on college and university composition, creating an echo chamber for the elite to justify their status quo and punching-down, it further sends the message, like with the shrill complaints of critical race theory weaponised as its antithesis and the 1619 Project and de-funding the police, that racism in America is somehow solved and people need to move on. While this counter-factual proposal, now enshrined in law, might placate the conscience of some who believe that preserving the comfort of white people is paramount, the signal to higher learning will erode the pluralism and diversity hard-won over the last fifty years of struggle for civil rights and a more equitable society, telegraphing to businesses and the public at large that equal opportunity is something superannuated.

robot roll call (10. 843)

Via Super Punch comes confirmation from a Disney imagineer that the theory that the rather poor likeness of Donald Trump added in 2017 to Disney World’s Hall of Presidents attraction—a non-thrill ride from 1971 with all the US commanders-in-chief past and present brought together in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall to extol, uncannily the virtues of American governance and democracy—was in fact a hastily repurposed Hilary Clinton audio-animatronic, assuming like many that she would be the victor. As with all new incumbents, the exhibit shut down for six months in preparation for the presidency of Joe Biden to design and choreograph and Trump reappeared with a more refined, sculpted look which is distinctly less like Trump’s face stretched over Clinton’s cranium but as the park has a tendency to recycle suggests that she might be waiting in ambush as an extra in the Haunted Mansion or Country Bears’ Jamboree.