9x9 (12. 188)

:): :an emoticon generator to create custom expressions—unless your interface automatically turns them into emoji—via Web Curios 

amicus brief: US supreme court upholds TikTok ban—whose enforcement is punted to Trump—in violation of right to free speech but fact-checking is now censorship 

optics: Trump inaugural to be held inside the capitol rotunda, citing the weather—see Monday’s post  

my dear, clawsette, i love you very much: the 2018 SNL sketch ‘Diner Lobster’ garnered numerous accolades including an award from the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals and inspired many sequels  

artist in residence: the rotating helm of a digital creator’s demesne 

hall of fame: though a bit premature, Bob’s Big Boy’s (a favourite haunt of his) obituary for David Lynch is superlative in detail, a believer in reincarnation, Lynch “life is a short trip. We’ll all meet up again”—via Super Punch  

boosterism: EU orders X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to surrender it recommendation algorithm with a retention directive for purview on future changes  

lol’d into submission: general reaction to the recent shooting death of the pizzagate theorist suggest that there has been a paradigm shift regarding conspiracy 

the war of iron swords: Israeli security council ratifies Gaza ceasefire agreement after a dicey delay with Trump taking credit but not responsibility if the multi-part deal crumbles, like the agreement to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, which cursed his successor 

.---- ----. ----- ....- ..--- —..: a Morse Code clock—with optional sound—via ibīdem

caesaropapism (11. 958)

Entailing the complete subordination of priests to a secular power, both this form of government and a theocracy admit no separation of church and state and the two aspects of power structure are merged. Though far too many contemporary theonomies whereby divine law governs society, the Holy See, Mount Athos, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Tibet—with more confessional states with an officially endorsed creed—exist, examples of caesaropapism are hypothetical and confined, arguably, to the past with Byzantium’s emperors (and successor sultans under the Ottomans) administrating the Eastern church and appointing patriarchs (the inversion of the Roman pope crowning the emperor), the break of Henry VIII with Rome and following dissolution of the monasteries and the Act of Supremacy and Ivan IV (earning the epithet the Terrible) through his total subjugation of the Orthodox Church as an instrument of state terror against traitors, real and imagined—though not without encountering some resistance and whose independence was restored by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, though again retooled to varying degrees under the Soviet Union and inheritors. Though mostly confined to history (there are instances of mild to blatant use of the pulpit as soapbox), the careerism and ambition still hold sway in matters of the sacred.

dromomania (11. 887)

Returning to his hometown of Waseca, Minnesota from the west, having departed on his journey accompanied by his brother and a mule nearly four years earlier and setting forth eastward, on this day in 1974, having walked just over twenty-three thousand kilometres, Dave Kunst became the first independently verified individual to have circumambulated the globe. Received by Princess Grace in Monaco and by chance meeting fellow adventurer Thor Heyerdahl in a restaurant in Italy, the epic walkers solicited donations to UNICEF along the way. Denied entry into the Soviet Union, about midway through their journey, the team continued through India and Afghanistan, where the two were tragically ambushed by bandits who believed they were carrying the monies pledged to the United Nations’ emergency children’s fund, killing his brother John, but Kunst finished after months recuperation, joined by his older sibling Pete. After the loss of his mule in the Australian Outback, a schoolteacher, who Kunst became enamoured with and eventually married, towed his supplies with her car for a thousand miles at walking pace, Dave keeping up alongside. Kunst’s trip consisted of twenty million steps and went through twenty-one pairs of shoes.

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: wine and quinces (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: drawing logos from memory plus biofuels from moss

eight years ago: turning Twitter into a public utility, ghost signs plus an unpopular file format

nine years ago: the Norman Conquest and the Divine Right of Kings

ten years ago: Roman tax regimes

mmxxiii (11. 224)

As this calendar draws to a close and we look forward to 2024, we again take time to reflect on a selection of some of the things and events that took place during the past year. Thanks as always for visiting. We’ve made it through another wild year together.

january: Hundred of thousands pay their respects, attend funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, presided over by his predecessor in Vatican City. Supporters of defeated president Jair Bolsanaro stormed the capitol in Brasilia.  Caches of official records and classified files have been discovered mishandled and stored in offices used by Joe Biden after his vice-presidency. Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck passes away, aged 78.  Lisa Marie Presley, artist and singer, has died, aged 54.  Wracked with successive and endemic problems, Haiti descends into anarchy after the last of its elected officials depart the country.  Singer David Crosby has passed away, aged 81.  Jacinda Arden steps down as Prime Minister of New Zealand.  US and Germany agree to send tanks to Ukraine.  A group of five police officers in Memphis, Tennessee brutally murder Tyre Nichols with no justifiable provocation. After speaking out against the criminalisation of same-sex partnerships and denial of basic civil rights, the Pope will journey to South Sudan, joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the head of the Church of Scotland for a dialogue with local church leaders preaching a gospel of intolerance.  Lisa Loring, the original Wednesday Addams, passes away, aged 64.

february: After announcing that conflict with China was on the near horizon, the US acquires additional bases in the Philippines to encircle its rival and potential adversary.  Just days ahead of US Secretary of State’s visit to Beijing, NORAD announces the detection of a Chinese spy balloon over western America, prompting Blinkin to cancel his trip. Fashion designer and perfumier Paco Rabane passes away, aged 88.  The EU holds a summit in Kyiv on Ukraine’s bid for membership.  Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf passes away, aged 77, after contending with a long illness.  A powerful earthquake on the border of Syria and Türkiye claims over five thousand lives, the death toll soon quadrupling.  Songwriter Burt Bacharach passes away, aged 94.  Facing a series of crises and increasing pressure from the war in neighbouring Ukraine, the government of Moldova is dissolved.  Top-tier Czech footballer Jakub Jankto comes out as homosexual, the first professional player to do so.  Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon surprises her party by announcing her departure with no clear successor.  Actor Raquel Welch passes away, aged 82.  North Korea resumes missile tests in the Pacific and the US warns that China may attempt to arm Russia and delegates at the Munich Security Conference urge immediate fortification of Ukraine in order to prevent imminent defeat.  Stand-up comedian and tv detective Richard Belzer dies, aged 78.  Humanitarian and former US president Jimmy Carter enters hospice care.  Just ahead of the one year anniversary of the start of the invasion, Joe Biden makes a surprise visit to Kyiv.  Tech companies and media outlets continue tranche after tranche of staff layoffs.  US House Speaker gives previously unreleased trove of January Sixth insurrection footage to conservative pundit Tucker Carlson.  The Russian invasion of Ukraine marks its one year anniversary.

march: Evidence emerges that Ukrainian saboteurs were responsible for the underwater explosions that ruptured the NordStream I pipeline though questions remain.  In the second largest bank collapse in the history of the US and the first of its kind since the 2008 crash, the Silicone Valley Bank servicing tech-sector start-up has become insolvent and went into government receivership.  Thousands of civil servants in France go on strike in protest of legislation to raise retirement age.  After Manhattan district attorney investigation into Trump directing hush-money to Stormy Daniels, US presidential candidate announces that he expects to be arrested and calls for protests.  Mounting evidence seems to vilify suggestions that COVID originated from a lab leak in Wuhan.  Despite attempts to contain the contagion, the fall out from the crisis with California fintech institutions cause havoc with banking stocks worldwide.  UBS absorbs a beleaguered Credit Suisse.  Xi and Putin enter an apparent entente against American influence.   UN warns that time has run out on combating runaway climate change.  Deadly, hour-long tornado strikes ravage rural Mississippi and Alabama.  Intel Corp founder and thinker behind the eponymous law about the exponential improvement of technology Alan Moore passes away, aged 94.

april: Trump arraigned in the Manhattan district court over falsifying business records pursuant to hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels.  A US federal judge in Texas suspends the 2000 approval by the country’s food and drug regulatory body on the safety of an abortion pill, restricting its use.  Demanding stricter gun-laws in the wake of another school and church mass-shooting, the Tennessee state legislator expel two Black lawmakers for their stance.  Preoccupied with filibusters over trans-rights, the Nebraska state senate fails to pass a single law in this year’s legislative session.  Tory ministers begin to walk-back plans for a full-scale repeal of EU regulations following an inter-party revolt against the post-Brexit arrangement.  Phasing out of nuclear energy entirely, Germany closes its final remaining reactors.  Revival military leaders have brought Sudan to the brink of civil war as factions of the regular army face the paramilitary rapid response force in Khartoum.  More media organizations fold as ad revenue dries up and newsrooms turn to AI to generate copy, like BuzzFeed and Vice being the two latest to declare bankruptcy and curtail operations.  Comedian and creator of Dame Edna Barry Humphries has passed away, aged 89.  Civil rights activist and entertainer Harry Belafonte dies, aged 96.  Joe Biden declares his party’s candidacy for a second term for president of the United States.

may: Gordon Lightfoot, folk legend, dies, aged 84.  The WHO declares the global COVID-19 health emergency over.  Charles III and Camilla are enthroned during a lavish ceremony in London.  A jury finds Donald Trump guilty on the charge of sexual abuse and battery, labelling him a predator and pest.  Elon Musk appoints a former television advertising executive as head of Twitter as he announces plans to transform the ailing social network into a multi-purpose app similar to China’s WeChat.  Harry and Meghan are recklessly pursued by paparazzi in New York—with strong echoes of the death of his mum’s fatal encounter.  China begins to call in loans to some of the world’s most impoverished countries after making them dependent on cheap credit.  Tina Turner passed away peacefully, aged 83, in her home outside of Zurich—Simply the Best.  Florida governor Ron DeSantis announces his presidential candidacy on Twitter.

june: The death toll of a catastrophic train crash in India approaches three hundred with countless more injured.  After months of drama and tension, the US raises its debt ceiling to avoid default.  A dam breach, blamed on Russia, causes massive flooding along the Dnipro river and forces tens of thousands to
evacuate.  Astrud Gilberto, the Queen of Bossa Nova, and original singer of the infinitely covered ‘Girl from Ipanema,’ has passed away, aged 83.  Wildfires rage in Canada, smoke enveloping the Eastern Seaboard.  The awaited Ukraine counteroffensive begins.  Four children who survived an airplane crash in the jungles are Columbia are found alive having survived the forty day ordeal.  Donald Trump is indicted on federal charges for retention of classified documents imperilling US national security. Boris Johnson quits Parliament ahead of an official rebuke from the House of Commons over Partygate. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber and CIA UK Ultra test subject, is dead, aged 81.  Media tycoon and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi passes away, aged 86.  NATO holds large scale military exercises in Germany.  The whistleblower and leaker behind the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, passes away, aged 92.  A submersible taking a compliment of five tourist to the wreck of the Titanic is lost.  Mercenary Wagner Group turns critical of the invasion of Ukraine and stages a mutiny after announced take-over by the Russian defence ministry, occupying Rostov-on-Don and proposing a march on Moscow, reaching half-way to the capital before a truce is negotiated by the Belarusian president.  France riots over the death of a teenager after being shot by a police officer.  US Supreme Court overturns affirmative action in college admissions, student loan forgiveness and LGBTQI+ anti-discrimination laws, though at least on the last case, it looks as if evidence was fabricated.  

july: Joseph Pedott, marketing virtuoso, passed away, aged 91.  Israel conducts a major military raid into a Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin.  Despite warnings from humanitarians and a ban in place for their use by over a hundred countries, the US is sending surplus cluster-bombs from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts to Ukraine.  Catastrophic flooding devastates Vermont and other parts of New England.  Hollywood’s Screen Actors Guild joins the writers’ strike.  Jane Birkin, singer, activist and French icon, dies aged 76.  Crooner Tony Bennett passes away, aged 96.  After months of media hype and anticipation, the Barbieheimer phenomenon comes to cinemas.  Singer Sinéad O’Connor has died, aged 56—nothing compares 2 u.  Hunter Biden appears before court on charges of tax evasion and illegal gun-ownership, days after boudoir photos of him enter the congressional record, possibly in violation of laws against revenge porn. The Nigeria government falls to a military coup d’etat with the president taken into custody.  Paul Reubens, the actor who portrayed Pee-Wee Herman, passed away aged 70, after a private bout with cancer.  Voyager 2 after two weeks of radio silence has re-established contact with Earth.

august: Donald Trump is indicted for his role in fanning the flames that culminated in the January Sixth raid on the Capitol and attempts to over turn the 2020 election.  Wildfires devastate the Hawaiian island of Maui and the town of Yellowknife is evacuated as forests are engulfed in Canada.  A rare hurricane, the first in eighty years, passes over Baja California, causing flooding and heavy rains, a year’s worth in a single day.  Ex-Wagner chief and senior leadership perish in an airplane crash.  Indian lands a probe at the lunar south pole.  Trump is arrested, booked and released on bail after in Fulton County Georgia.  Long-time US game show host Bob Barker dies, aged 99 (playing by Price-is-Right rules until the end).  An unprecedented hurricane strikes Florida’s Big Bend region between the panhandle and peninsula.  “Margaritaville” singer Jimmy Buffett passes away, aged 76.

september: Drought and wildfires are followed by flooding in Greece. An earthquake strikes the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco, killing hundreds and destroying parts of Marrakesh.  Rupert Murdoch steps down from News Corp.  Fighting erupts in Nagorno-Karabakh, the breakaway region of Azerbaijan. After more than five months, the Hollywood Writers’ Guild reaches a deal with the studio and ends its strike.  In solidarity with striking autoworkers, US president Joe Biden joins the picket line, the first for a sitting holder of the high office.  As counter-programming to the second Republican debate, Trump also makes an appearance with union workers.

october: Hamas and other terror groups launch a surprise attack on Israel, causing Tel Aviv to declare war against Gaza with thousands killed on both sides.  Earthquakes in Afghanistan leaves over a thousand dead.  An eastern Pacific tropical cyclone devastates Acapulco with hundreds killed and many more displaced. 

november: Three-hundred thousand marched for peace in Palestine through London during Armistice Day celebrations after earlier rallies drawing in huge numbers to urge Israel enact a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.  Pope Francis dismisses an ultra conservative bishop in Texas who criticised the pontiff's more progressive stance on non-gender-conforming members of the Church. OpenAI’s board of directors have ousted founder and CEO Sam Altman, the chief representative of the chatbot revolution and proponent for regulatory framework, for his lack of candour and transparency.  Microsoft immediately hired Altman and fellow defectors.  Humanitarian and former US First Lady Rosalynn Carter passes away.  Rightwing populist Geert Wilders wins a controlling share of the Netherlands’ parliament. A temporary cease-fire is called in Gaza to allow the release of hostages and more humanitarian aid to enter the beleaguered city.  Henry Kissinger dead at one-hundred.

december: Fabulist and fraudster George Santos expelled from the US congress.  Israel renews attacks on Palestine after a temporary truce. Legendary television producer Norman Lear passes away at 101. Israeli forces extend attacks in southern Gaza, where many fled to avoid the violence.  Ousted US Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy tenders his retirement from Congress, leaving the Republicans a controlling majority of only two seats.  The EU enacts the world’s first comprehensive AI regulatory framework.  A volcanic eruption occurs on the Icelandic Reykjanes peninsula with Sundhnúkagígar dumping lava and prompting evacuations.  Trump confidant and former New York City mayor Rudi Guliani declares bankrupcy after being ordered to pay nearly one hundred-fifty million dollars in restitution for libelling Georgia election workers.  Houthi pirates attacking cargo ships in the Red Sea cause transportation to round the Cape of Good Hope.  A mass shooting in Prague leaves fifteen individuals dead.  Missing Russian opposition figure Alexei Nalvalny emerges, detained in a penal colony above the Arctic Circle.  A heavy barrage of missiles hit Kyiv as US financial and materiel backing driess up.Veteran German parliamentarian Wolfgang Schäuble passes away, aged 81.  Jacques Delors, statesman who helped shaped the European Union dead at 98.  Entertainer Tommy Smothers dies at 86.  Israeli bombardment of Gaza continues, with the death toll of civilians surpassing twenty-thousand.

treaty of rawalpindi

Marking the anniversary of the Anglo-Afghan peace of 1919 that ended the protectorate status under the British Empire, ratified on this day, Afghanistan Independence Day is commemorated as its national holiday.

British forces had occupied Kabul since 1842 with Wazir Akbar Khan routing the army of Major-General Elphinstone on the road to Jalalabad, eventually precipitating a second Anglo-Afghan war that resulted in a negotiated settlement that created Mandatory Afghanistan with Britain responsible for defence and foreign relations, in exchange for protection from Russia and Persia, maintaining this state of affairs as a buffer for the Raj, stipulating that for external matters Afghanistan would “have no windows looking on the outside world, except towards India.” Despite protestations from the Ottoman Empire, Afghanistan remained neutral during World War I, and having suffered heavy losses, a process of demobilisation began as the global conflict was coming to an end, fighting broke out at the frontier, ultimately resulting in a truce that established the border at the Durand Line, presently the land border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and an agreement not to foment revolt in the Indian colonies. A marble triumphal arch, the Taq-e Zafar, was erected in the the city of Paghman to mark the treaty that restored the country’s independence.

spin boldak

Although prior commitments and pledges had already set withdrawal from Afghanistan in motion and the US is made to face the parallels and comparisons to the fall of Saigon that it tried to dismiss or downplay, it was a grave failure of the imagination to be shocked at the thinnest veneer of stability and superficial democratic values that the West brought—standards imposed—and expect it to be robust or enduring and not swept away in the power vacuum filled by the resurgent Taliban government. Like regime change in American itself that vacillates between extremes that does not bode reliability or ongoing responsibility, the abrupt abandonment set off a military offensive in May that saw one regional capital after another be subsumed by Taliban forces. As belligerents approached the capital city of Kabul, president Ashraf Ghani relinquished control and fled to Tajikistan, disestablishing the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, replaced with the re-established Emirate, and the movement’s co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (released from a Pakistani jail in 2018 at the request of the US) assumed control, announcing from the busy airport where thousands are seeking to evacuate, that the “War is over!”

operation cyclone or charlie wilson’s war

Though exponentially expanded under the Reagan administration, US president Jimmy Carter secretly authorised for the first time on this date in 1979 measures that would aid and underwrite the resistance efforts of the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the occupying Soviet troops and the USSR’s client state, the secular and liberalised Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
The decade-long undertaking is the largest and most expensive known operation of the Central Intelligence Agency (the UK’s MI6 ran a parallel one), budgeted at seven hundred thousand dollars during its first year and upwards of six-hundred million by 1987—to incite insurgency and eventually bankrupting the Soviet Union and precipitating a violent civil war in Afghanistan. Carter reluctantly agreed to lend initially non-lethal support to the Mujahideen in part under pressure from nuclear neighbour Pakistan—believing the US should try to make amends with regional partners especially after its involvement in the unrest in Iran—though arguably, the secondary US motivation was to draw the Soviets into a quagmire, like the one the US had only recently extricated itself from with Vietnam. Ultimately financing jihadists and undoing the social and economic reforms that the country had aspired to effect and then abandoning it as a failed narco-state once it had served its purpose, resulted in consequential, inevitable blowback.

graveyard of empires

Though whether any of these contracts were acted upon or directly jeopardised ongoing peace-talks and plans for eventual withdrawal, there is an overwhelming cause for concern that the Trump administration not only failed to act on intelligence reports that Russian operatives were placing bounties on foreign troops deployed (including US soldiers) to Afghanistan, Trump publicly reacted in the opposite fashion and instead proposed to gift Russia a restored seat at the G-7 summit and promised to withdraw a significant amount of troops from bases in Germany. Both concessions were offered after the briefing in late March. Incidentally and unironically, many historians cite the expense of being mired in a protracted war in Afghanistan (with Americans materially aiding the same Taliban against a common enemy) as what broke the Soviet Union, leading to its downfall and dissolution.

marrakesh express

There is a strange and tense notice being placed on the official announcement that Afghanistan stands ready to accept back all those newly-arrived deported from Germany, helping to alleviate a system already overburdened by deferring to refugees from more eminently dangerous war-zones.
The press seems to be deriding the declaration as if it were mock- charitableness and a mock-decision, citing past examples of the Afghan government extorting monies from Britain and Scandinavian countries in the form of a fund for reintegration—otherwise refusing to allow back its citizens whose asylum claims were denied, as if they had been radicalised by their abroad. Afghanistan, however, has offered no resistance and only caution that migrants should not be compelled into a second exile and careful measures should be instituted to those ends—with the additional burden of proof of country of origin, who’s posing as a Syrian hoping to garner more favourable treatment—and the whole discussion significantly began over a week hence when the Chancellor made a side trip during her visit to China and both governments implored Afghans not to undertake the journey, as their manpower and political will were needed back at home in order for the country to thrive. Obviously draining the ablest (since it takes some motivation and means to coordinate passage) is ultimately a disservice to one’s homeland. What do you think? Does this accord signal a shift in Germany’s welcome-policy, a refinement of responsibility or both?