day one-hundred eight (13. 525)

As the G7 summit concludes, Trump lashed out at a media reports of the publication of a leaked copy of the MOU furnished by CNN—telling world leaders that Obama bribed his way to secure the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the 2015 plan these governments supported and were not pleased with the unilateral and ultimately violent withdrawal from) in order to deflect from the fourteen-point memo’s commitment for restitution and relief from sanctions, squandering whatever political capital and goodwill he had accrued by retreating from the war he started, spending unaccounted billions and causing the death of thousands to not achieve the objectives cited for the conflict—chiefly preventing Iran from building atomic weapons, which it was not doing in the first place but definitely sees the need for now. Rather than apologising or offering thanks to allies and mediators for their patience and suffering, Trump only strangely A much worse and more brittle settlement than the JCPOA, the White House had pledged to release the details prior to Friday’s signing ceremony at the Bürgenstock Resort above Lake Lucerne—the Qatari-owned property chosen for its remoteness—but we are unlikely now to get much of a preview, if privy to the terms at all, I thought though the leak prompted a read-out. Threatening to return to bombing if Tehran backslides, Trump admonished them to “behave,” repeating a line from early failed negotiations headed by the US vice president, “if it works out, I’m going to take the credit—if not, I am blaming JD,” Trump suggests he might he stick around to sign himself with Iranian counterpart Peyeshkian. Meanwhile, Hezbollah and the IDF continue to clash in Beirut (Netanyahu says he has not seen the document and has not asked); the IAEA approaches Kazakstan to potentially store Iran’s supply of enriched uranium as negotiations continue, though Iran now pledges to destroy its stockpiles through dilution—this truce only extends the ceasefire for sixty days—and the first tankers leave Iranian ports, the US blockade suspended.

splashdown (12. 604)

On this day in 1975 with the re-entry of the American spacecraft, with the Soviet capsule landing a few days earlier in the steppe of Kazakhstan after the successful joint mission, the Apollo programme came to an end. The international docking manoeuvre and orbital handshake between the two rivals was seem as a moment of détente for the polarised world during the Cold War, leading to later collaborations like the International Space Station. A technical triumph and symbolic of the cooling tensions between the super-powers, in keeping with the spirit of the Space-Race, the link-up with Soyuz-19 went unnumbered by NASA to avoid confusion with the failed Moon landing of Apollo-XVIII, and the mission’s only tense moment was during re-entry with propellants accidentally vented into the astronauts’ chambers. The US engaged in no further orbital ventures until 1981 and there were no more splashdown landings until August of 2020 with the Space-X Crew Dragon demonstration.

8x8 (11. 123)

ałk’idą́ą́’ yádahodiiz’ą́ą́dą́ą́’ yá’áhoníkáándi: an update on Stars Wars dubbed in to the Diné bizaad language of the Navajo people—see previously 

hallucinate: the new meaning of the psychological verb picked for Cambridge dictionaries’ Word of the Year 

chipophone: Vivaldi performed on Commodore instruments—see previously 

wikiwho: guess the person from their Wikipedia biography—via Web Curios  

prisencolinensinainciusol: revisiting the Italo Pop song with nonsense lyrics that was meant to sound like English singing—see previously 

veistospuutarha: the sculpture garden of of Veijo Rönkkönen  

here we observe the sophisticated homo sapiens: an unauthorised David Attenborough voice-clone to narrate one’s daily activities—see also  

life day: a fresh look on the Star Wars Holiday Special on its forty-fifth anniversary 

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Hand of Irulegi plus a Soviet moonwalker (1970)

two years ago: another MST3K classic plus assorted links to revisit

three years ago: more links to enjoy, a rebuttal from Nixon (1973) plus St Hugh of Lincoln

four years ago: the Velvet Revolution plus world flags reimagined in the style of Kazakhstan’s 

five years ago: a Japanese view on American history, the mind of a scammer, more links to enjoy plus the Star Wars Holiday Special

pridnestrain

Coinciding with the intensified fighting of the Transnistrian conflict that marked the beginning of the Moldo-Russian war between Russian supported separatists and pro-union Moldovan military and police forces, that country along with San Marino and fellow former Soviet republics Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan join the United Nations on this day in 1992 during the forty-sixth session of the General Assembly.

durgan script

The always engrossing Language Log of the University of Pennsylvania acquaints us with a endangered and diffuse language—spread across Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Mongolia—in the Sinitic (Chinese) family but written with Cyrillic and uniquely not Sinographic characters (see also). The continuum of Gansu, Mandarin and Dungan (Kansu) is mutually intelligible to a large extent. Tones are marked with the glyphs front yer and back yer (Ь / Ъ) from the Old Church Slavonic (see above and here too) and the current orthography is a compromise dating back to the 1920s when the Soviet Union banned Arabic and Persian-based writing systems, looked on disfavourably from the beginning as merchants along the Silk Road could conduct trade deals in a language that was secret to their neighbours.

off we go!

On this day in 1961, a Vostok I spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome under the call sign Кедр (Siberian Cedar, see also) piloted by Yuri Gagarin (Гагарин, Юрий *1934 - †1968), the first human to journey into outer space (previously), holding a short dialogue with flight operations during take-off. Mission control over the radio announced: “Preliminary stage… intermediate… main… Lift-Off! We wish you a good flight. Everything’s all right.” To which Gagarin replied, “Поехали! Goodbye, until soon, dear friends.” The enthusiastic interjection becoming a popular expression for Soviet progress and the start of the Space Age. Once the final stage of the rocket finished firing, the craft and cosmonaut orbited the Earth for one hundred-eight minutes, ejecting from the vessel during re-entry over Kazakhstan and descending to the ground safely harnessed to a parachute.

6x6

affiche: early Art Deco posters of René Magritte  

dogs of war: a public service announcement issuing guidance on how to disable Boston Dynamics weaponised Spot units  

whitewash: thankfully, President Biden is able to overturn “beautiful” architecture executive order that would mandate neo-classicism in federal buildings 

clothes peg: the clothesline animals of Helga Stentzel 

second life: exploring and conserving the abandoned spaces of the internet  

mask media: brilliant Soviet Kazakh health promotion campaigns from the 1970s—see also

ма́кс xэ́друм

Kazakhstan’s news network Atameken Business has a new pixelated, virtual presenter for its flagship show the Daily Format. Called i-Sanj after his namesake and model Kazakh actor Sanj Madi, he is able to report and banter with other anchors as convincingly as any other talking head.
Maybe such artifices should be branded with a scarlet letter, a V or an H like the hologram Rimmer on Red Dwarf as they become more common and create this duopoly between the pundits, investigative reporters and interviewers that cycle out and retire and the ageless anchors who don’t tire or challenge the producers or censors, since i-Sanj’s inaugural, live segment—see footage on the Calvert Journal at the link above—is indistinguishable from any other newsroom interaction.

courtesy ensign

Recently trending on a well-visited webring focusing on the vexillological arts, we are delighted to discover a number or national and sub-national banners reflagged in the style of that of Kazakhstan, the template designed by Shaken Onlassynovich Niyazbekov (*1938 – †2014) in deference to the flag of the Soviet Socialist Republic. Charged with the emblem of the Sun or some other guiding principle, a bird of prey soars beneath with the hoist decorated with a complex ornament. Variants pictured include the United States of America, Canadian, Prussia, Brazil and South Korea.

alma-ata

Via Calvert Journal, we are introduced to the determined documentation and conservation efforts of Dennis Keen to capture and preserve the Soviet murals, bas-relief and mosaic that adorned Almaty, the capital city of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, Russian appellation above.  After the creation of an independent Kazakhstan, the capital was moved to Astana. Though importantly host to the Baikonur Cosmodrome which tied the far-flung republic to Mother Russia, there was yet the sentiment that “the mountains are high and the Emperor is far away” that needed these public displays as a reminder and to show that art was not the domain of the elite. Visit the links above to explore an outstanding gallery of civic monuments and architectural interventions that inform and reflect the city’s character.

doctor zaius, doctor zaius

A Kazakhstani scientist with the alliterative name of Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov was a pioneer in the early 1900s in the field of artificial insemination.
Praised and later eulogised by sociologist Ivan Pavlov, Ivanov’s chief accomp- lishments were in the field of animal husbandry and of interest to horse-breeders, but reportedly his research also dabbled in controversy, hoping to create ape-human hybrids, called humanzees—for no particular reason. Early trials failed and the premature death of simian donors and the aftermath of the Soviet revolution put a stop to his further experiments. Contemporaries even composed an opéra-bouffe called Orango to lampoon and chastise Ivanov’s ambitions, but it was not staged until 2011 to somewhat less knowledgable audiences. Let’s be sure to thank the Frinkiac for the ease in finding this appropriate illustration.

flea-market finds or johnny apple-seed

People at flea-markets are universally keen on selling souvenirs—which is something I could never understand, unless maybe they inherited a collection of memories that they had no relationship with nor access to or bought them themselves at other sales and later decided that their accumulations ought to be culled. The cogent fact is, however, I suppose that people bringing plastic bins of old records, catalogues of old photos, travel mementos for display never have a guarantee that they be made to part with any of it and are probably caught off guard when someone does offer to buy some keepsake or another.

I have found a lot of cool stuff, sentimental to someone or otherwise, and though there are things I would not part with, having become some of the household artefacts, I’d be willing to entertain offers—especially in a situation where an uncaring relative cast off some keepsake and came into my collection. H was not very impressed by I enjoyed these couple of items found at a flea market just across the former border separating East from West Germany—die neue Bundesländer, so called literally because the government of the GDR was not a federal authority and the traditional state structure (restored with the reunion) did not exist, but rather districts (Bezirke) but also used figuratively, I suppose, as parts and places still held with a certain otherness.
I found this pretty neat little brass plate with the enameled flag of the DDR flying in solidarity with the Soviet banner, the USSR, the UdSSR or the CCCP, and this hinged plastic box, which contained a bunch of unsent post-cards from the Soviet Union’s far eastern autonomous republic of Kazakhstan with several undated scenes from Almaty (Алматы or Alma-Ata as the former capital was known back then, a construction of two Turkic terms for apple and father, owning to all the different apple cultivars found in the area and probably the origin of the first orchards). There are a lot of places yet to learn about and to see and to re-visit, and I am grateful that I found a bit of another destination for inspiration.