Though sadly not the only nor the most deadly historically antecedent for ruling speech or expression (and by extension press and assembly) not subject to protections for free speech, the most recent occurrence prompting the argument in favour of curtailing the right to protest the draft during World War I and supported by the US Espionage Act of 1917 as a “clear and present danger,” the Italian Hall disaster in Calumet, Michigan is one source of the analogy when someone falsely yelled “fire” during a crowded party on Christmas Eve on this day in 1913, causing a panicked stampede to the exits that crushed some seventy-three attendees. The ladies auxiliary of the Western Federated Miners’ Union had organised a holiday party for striking members and their families, already six months into their standoff with management, copper-bosses which would not end until April 1914. It is believed a member of a group called the Citizens’ Alliance—opposed to the union and their demands for better working conditions—crashed the party and caused the panic—according to several sources including a song wrote by Woody Guthrie about the tragedy, though there is no definitive proof. The 1919 case that the above doctrine upheld was ultimately overturned on appeal and reversed to rule that voicing opposition to the draft did not rise to the the level of sedition and was protected speech in 1969, limiting the scope to what would incite an imminent riot.
Friday 24 December 2021
Tuesday 21 December 2021
intentos separatistas
Under the leadership of Empresario (the Spanish word for entrepreneur and referring to those granted right of settlement in exchange for pledging to develop an area) Haden Edwards, a group of Texians declared the breakaway Republic of Fredonia on this day in 1826.Arriving the year before with some eight hundred colonists families (mostly plantation-owners from the American south like himself)—overstepping his commission by claiming the authority to adjudicate the validity of the land claim of those already in residence, demanding deed and title to property else land would become forfeit and the property of fellow filibusters. The Mexican government repudiated Edwards' actions and ordered him out but he refused to leave his colony. By the last day of January, the occupiers were defeated by the Mexican army, though the cumulative effect of this rebellion and others instigated like it led to the eventual secession of the territory, both sides alternatively currying favour with and laying blame on indigenous tribes and forcibly relocated peoples.
Monday 20 December 2021
6x6
you sure have a way with people—well, they’re my species: Harold and Maude at fifty, with soundtrack by Yusuf (Cat) Stevens
lake toilet-brush: the toponymic curse of IKEA product names
๐: a round-up of the Resurrections premier
build back better: US president Joe Biden’s legislative agenda derailed
die hard’s a christmas movie: Eyes Wide Shut (1999) re-evaluated
Saturday 18 December 2021
something just broke
Opening to expected and welcome controversy over the taboo subject in general and some vocal members of the theatre-going public dismissing it as inappropriate for a musical, the Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman collaboration Assassins had its debut on this day in 1990 at the Off-Broadway venue the Playwrights’ Horizons. Despite negative initial reception, the revue-style piece that explored the real and imagined lives, motivations and self-justifications of those who tried (attempted and successful) to kill US leaders, presidential victims and tertiary characters associated perpetrators, the show was reprised many times and during a 2004 revival on Broadway and the West End ultimately won five Tony Awards. The cast of characters include John Wilkes Booth, John Hinckley Jr, and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Sara Jane Moore, president Gerald Ford’s would-be assassins.
Thursday 9 December 2021
sex-postive
Perennially indebted to our faithful chronicler, we are reminded that on this day in 1994, that US Surgeon General under Bill Clinton, VADM Dr. Minnie Joycelyn Elders, was forced to resign for expressing her views frankly on what at the time was considered taboo topics of discussion including drug legalisation, distributing contraception in public schools and most controversially introducing masturbation (on World AIDS Day) to sex-education curricula. Championing control of reproductive rights and decriminalisation of drug offences during her sixteen month tenure, Elders’ ideas for visionary for a stage in American cultural that pivoted particularly in the prudish direction, though rather than being about what’s discussed in polite company was never the issue but instead the societal norms and strictures put in place to uphold and perpetuate the patriarchy and class-structure.
Wednesday 1 December 2021
7x7
dress rehearsal: for a quarter of a century, an individual attended his own funeral
dominical letters: how the artificial unit of the week came to govern our lives—see also
carceral publications: a collection of US prison newspapers
yes or no questions: celebrate the conclusion of Futility Closet’s eight plus year run with a final episode of lateral thinking puzzles
hvorugkynsnafnorรฐ: despite progress in the choices for human naming conventions, the Icelandic governing body for horses is still highly gendered
regenerative medicine: researchers develop “xenobots” capable of biological self-replication—via Waxy
amigone: aptly named mortuary services—via Super Punch
Sunday 14 November 2021
1. e4 e5
Via ibฤซdem, we are directed towards an exquisite narrative told through a game of guided-chess based on a famous round played between New Orleans native Paul Charles Morphy (*1837 - †1884, a prodigy and called the pride and sorrow of the game for having announced his retirement while still in his prime) and simultaneous exhibition, blindfolded against Karl II, Duke of Brunswick and Comte Isouard de Vauvenarguesat the Italian Opera House of Paris, a parallel playbill as it were for the night’s performance of Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma.
Sunday 7 November 2021
prairie fire organizing committee
Making a forceful statement against armed US overtures in Lebanon and Grenada, a bomb-blast tore through the virtually empty senate-side of the Capitol building on this day in 1983. The day’s session had adjourned nearly two hours prior to the explosion and an anonymous caller representing the “Armed Resistance Unit” of the Resistance Conspiracy—the American-based branch of the broader organisation called the Nineteenth of May Communist Order (also known as M19 and a splinter-group of the above committed to fighting imperialism, racism and sexism)—called the switchboard and issued a warning minutes before detonation. No one was present to be injured—though the suspected targets included Senator Robert C. Byrd, an ardent proponent for both incursions, with a portrait of statesman and Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster (*1782 - †1852) hung near the chamber’s cloakroom damaged nearly beyond repair as the evening’s only casualty. Five years later, the accused parties were brought before a federal judicial trial for the Capitol bombing plus two related terror attacks on Washington area military installations.
Wednesday 3 November 2021
6x6
fought and sold: the evolution of military recruitment advertising campaigns
modern classics: in the vein of abstract vintage paperback cover art, eighty-four works of literature as postage stamps
sleight of hand: objects from the Ricky Jay collection—more here, via Things Magazine
20/20/20: revisiting a retrospective of the work of Afrofuturist Bodys Isek Kingelez
every time they hear der bingle croon: episode two of Radiolab’s Mixtape miniseries explains why early entertainment was live and not Memorex
america’s moveable fighting man: new G.I. Joe action figures available for pre-order
Tuesday 2 November 2021
america’s present need is not heroics but healing—not nostrums but normalcy
Born this day in 1865 US president Warren G. Harding (†1923, elected on his birthday in 1920), who fairly popular whilst in office—largely due to his long suffering wife Florence who worked overtime to keep his scandals out of the public eye that emerged after his sudden death, did not have a pedestrian middle name in Gamaliel—not George as one might expect, though not wholly unique for mid-nineteenth century America. Nicknamed Winnie as a child, the Greek form of the Hebrew name means “God is my recompense,” indicating rather tragically that this son had an earlier sibling that was lost as an infant and was the given name of several rabbinical authorities. Problematic libertarian journalist and cultural critic H. L. Mencken (previously) mocked Warren’s oration and delivery as Gamalielese, described as meandering, irritating, “it is balder and dash”—though more charitably, others characterised its indeterminacy as the rhetoric to allow listeners to limn it with their own aspirations.
Sunday 31 October 2021
7x7: happy halloween edition
robert the doll: Key West’s most cursed object—see also—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links (lots more to see here)
zombie jamboree: Harry Belafonte’s actual ghoulish calypso number—notwithstanding the associations with the Banana Boat Song
la calavera catrina: a sugar skull puppet presents a primer on Dรญa de los Muertos
westsonality: enjoy Paul Lynde’s 1976 Halloween Special with a cavalcade of guest stars
respect the sabbath: periodic movements in the US to hold no Halloween on Sundays
main title theme: the score for John Carpenter’s classic horror film Halloween
lovecraft country: welcome to my metaverse—see previously
Monday 25 October 2021
urgent fury
Along with a coalition of six Caribbean partner states, the United States embarked on this day in 1983 on its first and only military victory since partaking in World War II with its predawn invasion of Grenada, the island nation recently decolonized and independent from the United Kingdom. Characterised by outsiders as a Marxist-Leninist vanguard organization, the New Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education and Liberation, the New JEWEL movement, chartered prior to attaining its self-governing status, had seized power in a peaceful coup from the first ministry installed after the UK’s departure.
Internal struggles among party leadership escalated to an armed confrontation that resulted in the killing of the movement's leader, Maurice Bishop, and a group of his supporters once the shooting began under still disputed and unresolved circumstances, and in turn elevated into an international crisis with the United States lobbying for immediate intervention. Though transparently a pretext for the invasion and occupation, Ronald Reagan, wanting to forestall a repeat of the Iran Hostage Crisis, attributed his actions to “concerns over the six hundred US medical students on the island,” (the country offering medical school at affordable rates and presenting an attractive alternative to US tutition) and remained steadfast in his decision despite nearly universal condemnation and censure in the UN. Under the leadership of Major General Norman Schwartzkopf, Cuban presence was expelled to prevent further communist influence and a government friendly to capitalists' interest was propped up, though the prevailing narrative is still a contentious one and not authored by the Grenadians.
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, ๐️, the Caribbean
Tuesday 12 October 2021
movimento unionista italiano
Formed in the aftermath of World War II on Columbus Day 1944 by a sociologist called Corrado Gini—who developed the Gini coefficient as a metric for income inequality, an academic and activist called Santi Paladino best remembered for his theory that Michelangelo was the real author of the works of Shakespeare and a statistician named Ugo Damiani, the goal of their political party was to persuade the United States of America to annex Italy. More over the founding members believed that it was incumbent on the US to take in all free and democratic nations and become a world government, enshrining the values of liberty and ensuring perpetual peace and employment. During the general elections held two years later, the Italian Unionist Movement only garnered one seat out of over five-hundred and fifty representatives in the Chamber of Deputies, Italy’s lower house of parliament. The party opted to dissolve itself ahead of the next national vote in 1948.
Friday 1 October 2021
7x7
cultured: beautiful Petri dish art (see also) from Dasha Plesen
tax centinels: protesting college students conspired to create “penny famines” across the US in the late 1930srediffusion: the Thames Television archives—via Things magazine
fat bear bracket: follow the celebration of survival and success with Katmai’s nature preserve ursine residents—via Hyperalleric’s Required Reading
the thing on the fourble board: a 1948 episode of the radio programme Quiet, Please! is considered to be one of the scariest broadcasts ever
bisection: the spiralling figural sculpture of Isabel Miramontes
frustule: the rich diversity of diatoms illustrated in an 1890 volume
Tuesday 28 September 2021
7x7
pyroclastic flow: paintings of the 1776 eruption of Mount Vesuvius (previously)—via Everlasting Blรถrt
don jumpedo in the character of harlequin jumping down his own throat: an apology for the man in the bottle
twist and bend: superlative balloon art recreating iconic classics
eisenbahnbetriebsfeld: a model railway in Darmstadt used to train train traffic-controllers
store-brand: Kmarto table wine
licorice pizza: a trailer for a 1970s coming-of-age film set in California’s San Fernando Valley—via Waxy
social justice: artist Kerry James Marshall designs new stained glass windows for Washington’s National Cathedral to replace Confederate ones
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐จ, ๐ฌ, ๐, Middle Ages
Sunday 26 September 2021
biosphere 2
Under construction since 1987, the environmental research facility in Oracle in the US state of Arizona host to the largest closed vivarium—that is sealed ecosystem—ever built, more than a hectare in size and meant to demonstrate the viability of artificial and self-sustaining life-support systems in outer space, began its first forty-eight month mission on this day in 1991, with a crew of eight impounded under the dome. With the crew enduring oxygen deprivation and near starvation over the two year trial and not all biomes that were to represent the different regions of Spaceship Earth thriving plus pests, lessons were learned and changes implemented, although by the time the second mission was to commence, there was vicious fighting amongst the project managers and accusations of bad science and bad methodology, including the engagement of Steve Bannon who put the programme into receivership incorporated under the name Space Biosphere Ventures. All this took place outside of the framework of competitive reality television and the era of business sectarianism. Since 2007, Biosphere 2 has been owned and operated by the University of Arizona, conducting experiments in atmospheric research, soil geochemistry and climate change and holding special week-long space-camps for students.
Friday 24 September 2021
¡!
Tuesday 21 September 2021
Monday 20 September 2021
gwot
With the current climate twenty years on and comparable numbers of lives lost and lives impacted on a daily basis due to the pandemic and our trenchant, asocial behaviour and a resurgent Taliban controlling Afghanistan, it feels a bit hollow marking the anniversaries of the events that unfolded domestically and internationally in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 Attacks. The Bush doctrine, however—first characterised to the press as a “war of terrorism” on 16 September and then presented formally as a global “war on terror” in an address to a joint-session of the US Congress on this day in 2001, labeling “our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them” has an outsized legacy that impacts nearly every aspect of our lives. Despite consternation and criticism with this approach, the policy went forward with consequences around the world. Though his predecessor, US President Barak Obama, avoided the term and declared the conflict over on 23 May 2013, stating the that the US military forces and intelligence agencies could not and would prosecute a war against a tactic, instead styling the commitment as world police as Overseas Contingency Operations and substantively continuing, even expanding America’s role.