morgenrot schlecht wetter droht

Kottke curates a growing selection of arresting photographs of American western skies tinged an unreal red by uncontrolled wildfires fuelled and made more intense by climate change and global warming that is a direct consequence of human activity and mismanagement. These images were captured during the day, not at dawn or dusk though the smoke blocking out the sun might suggest otherwise. Abendrot, schlecht Wetterbot.

katsintithu

Via Everlasting Blört, we enjoyed looking through this 1903 gallery of Hopi Kachina as rendered by an artist known as Kutcahanauu (White Bear) and published in a 1903 volume commissioned as part of an ethnographic study of tribal culture. The animistic spirit beings—revered and respected but not worshipped—have three distinct manifestations: the supernatural, the dance and the figurines (tihü), the likeness or personification of real world people, things and forces of nature and are understood to have relationships, unions and offspring. The figurines act as messengers between the natural and spirit worlds and have an instructive aspect for their caretakers. Much more to explore at the links above.

rennfahrerin

Passing away in her adopted home of Sweden on this day in 1990 (*1901), accomplished automobile racer Clara Eleonore “Clärenore” Stinnes, accompanied by film-maker Carl-Alex Söderström and a two-person engineering crew, became the first person (see this counter-claim) to circumnavigate the globe by car. In just over two years, Stinnes crossed the start/finish line in Berlin on 24 June 1929, having completed a journey of over forty-seven thousand kilometres—with the aid of ferries—crossing frozen Lake Baikal, the Gobi, transversing the Andres and through Central America to the US and Canada and finding herself in many spots with no navigable roads to speak of. The event, with a prize of a hundred-thousand Reichsmarks, was sponsored by Adler, Aral and Bosch, titans of the German automotive industry.  After the round-the-world journey, Stinnes and Söderström wed and spent many happy years together on their farm in southern Sweden.

maya hi

Re-sampling will always cast its nets far and wide but we had not beforehand appreciated what a tempting foraging grounds that Soviet pop proofed and proved for Western hip-hop. The juxtaposition is sometimes quite  jarring with the underground group Jedi Mind Tricks’ appropriation of People’s Artist of the USSR in 1988 of Edith Piekha’s catchy hit My Neighbour (Наш Сосед).

13 baktuns, 0 katuns, 0 tuns, 0 uinals, 0 kins

Corresponding with 11 August of 3114 BCE, if one were to retroactively apply the Gregorian timetable, this date represents (depicted left) the start of the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, cyclical though non-repeating tally of days since creation—or rather when humans first appeared as cultured creatures, the world having existed since time immemorial and epochs prior to their arrival. That prior age came to an end, amid a lot of ill-informed hysteria, on 20 December 2012—and we are well into the fourteenth b’ak’tun.

 

7x7

what would you like to eat: bats mostly squabble about what’s for dinner

it’s a duck blur: television intros recreated scene-for-scene with stock footage

east-enders: five decades of photographic portraiture from Tex Ajetunmobi that illustrate the harmony and diversity of the London neighbourhood

ebussy: a modular electric vehicle that can transform into several different types of autos

fine hypertext products: Pudding launches its “Winning the Internet” newsletter—via Waxy

du har satt din sista potatis: useful Swedish phrases for venting steam

the garifuna collective: enjoy the calls and songs of threatened birds set to electronic music

9x9

toccata und fuge in d-moll: table settings scatter and repair to Bach’s virtuoso piece

tapón del darién: the gap in the Pan American Highway that may never be bridged

hording: USA buys up all available stock of a drug treatment for COVID-19, leaving none for the rest of the world—unclear whether it is an effective intervention, via Super Punch

double-decker: panoramic people mover designed for physical distancing

dr-dr-draugur: Icelandic utility company contracts an exorcist (see previously) to clear neighbouring farmstead of ghosts

we’d call them farmers’ markets: the indispensable role of China’s “wet markets” in food logistics and how they’re unfairly stigmatised

afrofuturism: Sun Ra’s syllabus from a 1971 UC Berkley “African American Studies” course

oppression of scale: a gallery of evocative large construction projects

various artists: another look at the New Age anthology Pure Moods, via The Morning News

ketikoti

Meaning the chain is broken in the Sranantongo English-Dutch creole language, the annual commemoration held in Suriname, the Dutch Antilles and the Netherlands is a time for celebration and remembrance as well as education and as well as a prompt for research, reparation and reconciliation began on this day in 1863 when the institution of slavery was abolished.
Though also presently referred to Emancipation (Maspasi) Day, actual freedom for most formerly enslaved individuals would be deferred for a full decade as part of a transition period which still tethered people to their plantations, curtailing their liberties as indentured servants until this obligation was discharged. Landowners were further compensated by the government for their loss monetarily, the Dutch being one of the last of the colonial powers to end enslavement—with Abraham Lincoln issuing the Emancipation Proclamation that liberated those in America’s capital city about a year earlier while across the British Empire, full emancipation came at midnight on 1 August 1838.

status non gratis

As cases of COVID-19 again surge in the US after the rush to reopen, the European Union mulls adding America to its no-fly list—along with Brazil and Russia, all countries which have not only spectacularly failed in containing the pandemic within their borders, have through their neglect and mismanagement been net exporters of virus and its deleterious effects.
According to twenty-seven-member block’s epidemiological threshold for designating a country safe zone, all three still exhibit dangerous levels of new infections which threaten to overwhelm the healthcare infrastructure should more be imported. In mid-March, the Trump administration imposed a foreshadowingly reciprocal travel ban (since lifted) covering all of Europe, excepting the UK and Ireland, though that carve-out might get Britain similarly blocked. Talks are ongoing but failure to reach consensus could result in more internal border controls and restrictions on regional travel.

aromachology

Having made forays into nearly all aspects of design, Weird Universe brings us the account of how a Brazilian cosmetics company approached IBM Artificial Intelligence Research to commission a pair of complementary, wholly machine-engineered (its collaboration was not completely unheard of but the help was solicited under human supervision for concocting, modelling new blends of existing fragrances).
Absent a robust dataset of aromas at the time, it turned to German fragrance clearing house with some two million formulæ of smell samples from household cleaners to toothpaste flavours and of course analysis of perfumes and colognes to train a program to compose unique inventions—called Philyra, the Thessalian goddess of beauty, healing, writing and perfume, credited with the invention of paper as well as the alphabet also mother to the Centaurs, owing to a visitation from Cronos in the form of a stallion. The neural network, free from human interference created some unique suggestions, resulting in at least two so far being brought to market.

hr 6819

Building on their previous discoveries the European Southern Observatory (ESO) based in Chile has found a so called quiet black hole relatively quite nearby in a star system visible to the unaided eye, located somewhat ironically in the minor constellation of the southern celestial hemisphere called Telescopium.
One of the fourteen of the eighty-eight star formations credited to the astronomer and geographer Abbé Nicolas-Louis de la Caille (*1713 – †1762) who catalogued over ten thousand stars, Telescopium like many of the newly mapped groupings was named after contemporary tools and implements: a clock, a microscope, a chisel, navigation devices, etc. A thousand light years distant, the black hole is dark companion to a binary star system (QV Telescopii), its presence betrayed by its gravitational distortion of the orbiting pair, giving researchers the clues and tools to find more cryptic black holes in the neighbourhood. Learn more at the Universe Today at the link above.

8x8

it’s-a me francis: an upcoming immersive papal simulator

what wizardry is this: augmented reality copy-and-paste

in like flynn: weaponised US Justice Department dismisses case against former National Security Adviser for lying to FBI about Russian connections

the great realisation: or, why we say hindsight is 2020

4f: new rules prohibit individuals who have recovered from corona virus infections from enlisting in the US military

logic gate: cookie-consent walls ruled to violate GDPR (previously)

nation-building: a profile of the Home Shopping Club mercenaries that tried to topple the government in Venezuela (previously)

canvasing: though unable to visit constituents in person, one representative is island-hopping on-line

lusofonia

Comprised of over two-hundred and seventy million people across the globe that share a linguistic or ethnographic connection to Portugal and its formerly extensive imperial holdings, Lusophone Culture Day is observed today in Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, East Timor, Goa, Macau, São Tomé and Príncipe and Cape Verde.
The designation is derived from the Latin term Lusitania (after the demigod Lusus, companion of Bacchus, the deity of wine and divine madness), the Roman Iberian province that roughly corresponds with modern Portuguese borders. Comunidade dos Paísesde Língua Portuguesa—the Community of Portuguese Language Countries—representing the commonwealth of diaspora selected this day during a summit in 2005.

joseph the worker

Venerated as the patron and protector of labourers and the institution of the Church and intercessor for a happy death as he died surrounded by friends and family, Jesus and Mary included, Joseph is celebrated four times during the year: 19 March—the Feast of Saint Joseph (Josefstag, not to be confused with the Feast of the Ascension, which is also celebrated as Fathers’ Day in some countries) for his role as husband and guardian, the third Wednesday after Easter—the Solemnity of Saint Joseph for his role as spouse and patronage of the Catholic Church, this Memorial as role as a Worker (since 1955 as a reflection of and solidarity with the broader movement for social justice and labour reform that had been observed on the first of May since 1890)—a carpenter, and the first Sunday after Christmas for coming to terms with his situation. His extended patronage includes the pontificate of Pope Francis, Sicily, Austria, Belgium, the Americas, the Philippines and Vietnam as well as being the champion of explorers, pilgrims, immigrants, real estate agents and engineers.

the admiralty regrets to inform

Whilst on a mission to circumnavigate the globe passing from the South Atlantic to the South Pacific in December 1683, surveyor William Ambrosia Cowle, whom significantly charted the Galápagos, aboard the gunship Bachelor’s Delight, spied an island north of the Falklands, which he named Pepys Island, in honour of the diarist and also Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty. Although describing the avian residents, geographical features and quality of its harbour and anchorage in great detail, Pepys Island never again materialised, for centuries evading rediscovery, and was ultimately declared a phantom island.

ontdekkingsreiziger van oceanië

Setting off to find the hypothetical continent of Terra Australis—conjured to exist for the sake of balancing out the globe—Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen (*1659 – †1729) from Middleburg in Zeeland first sighted Easter Island (Paaseiland, Rapa Nui, so called because it was Easter Sunday) and landed there—contacting the aboriginal Polynesian on this day in 1722.
Roggeveen’s fleet of three tall ships, the Arend, the Thienhoven and the Afrikaansche Galey with a complement of two-hundred twenty-three crewmen departed in August 1721on their voyage sponsored by the Dutch West Indian Company, a rival and in fierce competition with the Dutch East India Company (VOC, Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie which claimed a government-backed monopoly on all discoveries in the New World) and hoped to open up a westerly trade route to the Spice Islands. First they travelled through the Straits of Magellan, past the Falklands (Islas Malvinas) which he renamed Belgia Austalis, and along the Chilean coast before heading to the high seas and uncharted waters. After Easter Island, Roggeveen also visited Bora Bora, Samoa and the Society Islands before bringing his fleet to port at the colonial capital on the Malay peninsula, Batavia—the trading hub corresponding with modern day Jakarta. Roggeveen’s further adventures were severely curtailed by a protracted legal battle over his flaunting of the exploration rights of the VOC above and levied against him charges akin to piracy, a suit from which Roggeveen eventually prevailed and was vindicated and able to claim his commission.

socio-economics

Amid all the other tragedy and chaos happening around the world, it’s not unsurprising that the headline was buried that yesterday the US government not only curtailed the service commitments of its over seven thousand volunteers abroad in some of the most desperately poor places around the world—along with academics studying overseas as Fulbright scholars—and is repatriating them with little to none transit or logistical support, the Peace Corps (founded 1 March 1961 by the Kennedy administration to help the developing world and fight against Ugly American and neo-imperialism stereotypes) is making those displaced and uprooted (and potentially contagious) helpers redundant, dismissed without benefits and ineligible in most cases as their relationship with the agency does not rise to the level of employee and employer to apply for assistance and compensation. Not only are they being force to leave their adopted homes at a time of peril when the host communities that they serve needs them, they find themselves forcibly returned (those choosing to stay would face a field termination and have their official passport stripped from them) ahead of schedule to a country in dire crisis without a job or purpose when the prospects of securing either seems untenable.

el tratado herrán-hay

Negotiated earlier in January of the same year between US Secretary of State John M Hay and Colombian chargé d’affaires Tomás Herrán y Mosquera, the eponymous treaty was ratified by the US Senate on this day in 1903.
Had the terms also been acceptable to the Colombian government—historians felt that Herrán’s deal undervalued the potential economic boon for the country and that they had a commanding bargaining position since he had acted without legislative or business oversight, the US would have been allotted a hundred-year renewable lease of a strip of land crossing the isthmus of Panama with permission to excavate a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The Colombians rejected the ten million dollar down payment plus a quarter million in annual rents, payable in gold bullion, especially considering that the US had already intimated their willingness to invest quadruple that amount in the project, which had been started back in 1881 by the French engineers that had built the Suez Canal to the Red Sea but later abandoned as unworkable. The US refused to renegotiate the treaty and instead provoked civil unrest in the region and lent military support for eventual Panamanian independence, acquiring the rights to proceed with construction under similar terms what was originally agreed upon. The American crews experienced the same hardships and toil as the French had encountered and the canal’s building—finished more than a decade later—was the origin of the phrase “another day, another dollar” for the low wage that workers were paid for this gruelling labour.

march madness

As the World Health Organisation (WHO) declares the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, meaning there is little to no pre-existing immunity in the human population to this novel contagion, Trump—noted soi-disant germaphobe whom was ignorant of the fact that his own grandfather was a victim of the 1918 Influenza or that the flu could be fatal in general, declares a thirty day travel ban on foreign nationals coming to the US from twenty six European countries—the Schengen Area excluding the UK and Ireland and US citizens being repatriated, with the intimation that free movement exported the disease and that passports are personal protective gear—more and more public events are cancelled, including US National Basketball Association (NBA) games and political rallies ahead of the US presidential election. Given that there are already over a thousand confirmed cases in the United States and that military movements of America’s global army have demonstrated their efficacy as a reservoirs and spreaders, Trump’s efforts at quelling the outbreak is too little, too late and is pandering to base fears and insecurity as a means to assuage them rather than fight the infection and instead contributes to its comorbidities.

el gaucho goofy

As problematic and painful as past, back catalogue portrayals depicting racist and stereotyped can be and deserving of being called out, discussed and carrying warning labels, it is unsettling how versions offered as unadulterated can yet be revisionistic and casting a positive pall on iconic characters, Paleofuture’s take down of Disney’s cleaning up a scene of one of their old guard personalities smoking in its 1942 live-action and animated featurette Saludos Amigos mentions a foot-note behind the cartoon’s existence in the first place that bears investigation as well.
The US State Department commissioned Walt Disney and others to peddle the soft diplomacy of Mickey Mouse and company to counteract ties that Central and South America was forming with Nazi Germany—a job that Disney and much of Hollywood readily accepted since European markets were closed off to them due to the war. The propaganda film by most estimates was well received by audiences in both Latin America and domestically, instilling a sense of continental cohesion and giving US cinema-goers a taste of some the refinement of the culture and scenery that they’d been previously ignorant of—and was enough of a commercial success to inspire a sequel The Three Caballeros two years later. Curiously the version of the film currently on offer contains a warning about tobacco-use being depicted—despite the smoke rings being edited out—and we can only surmise that refers exclusively to parrot José Carioca chomping on a cigar. Addicted to the habit and eventually succumbing to lung cancer, like Disney, himself, the voice actor Vance DeBar “Pinto” Colvig Sr (*1892 – †1967) whom played Goofy was a vocal anti-smoking campaigner whose efforts were instrumental in getting Surgeon General warnings on packs of cigarettes in the US. Past behavior, judged through the lens of the present, is less than model in a lot of ways but it cannot be discussed and condemned if it’s not visible and addressing the off-colour and antiquated can be productive in establishing an enduring change in attitudes.