6x6

surrogate: Trump issues pardon to former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pled guilty twice to making false statements to the FBI involving his Russian connections 

thermochromic: windows go from transparent to tinted while generating electricity  

l’atlas: an intriguing new approach to mapping France’s natural glory—via Things Magazine 

 ♚: reimagining the Queen’s Gambit as a MS DOS PC game 

fry guys: one intrepid connoisseur revives a long lost recipe  

stonks: only pausing to take credit for and praise the teetering high of the Dow Jones, Trump presents a very abbreviated brief

straw-poll

As NPR reports, though rather burying the lede, impeached and ousted Trump will be performing the strange and storied ritual of pardoning a turkey (see previously) for Thanksgiving—sponsored by the anti-tofurky lobby—presenting a poll to the public asking whom out of Corn and Cob ought to be granted clemency. Though not one to eat his words, even over this bizarre and addle-brained tradition, there was a similar ballot in 2018—in the wake of the mid-term elections with the contest between Peas and Carrots—in which Trump attacked Carrots the turkey for refusing to concede despite having clearly lost. Fifty-six days, twenty-two hours.

8x8

tanssinopettaja: a few dance lessons from the reigning king of disco, Åke Blomqvist

haunted bohemian shrine aunt: a truly cursed real estate listing from McMansion Hell (previously)—via Pluralistic  

ascertainment: Trump directs General Services Administration to credential President Elect Joe Biden’s transition team 

philately: United Nations honoured with a beautiful, retro series of postage stamps for its seventy-fifth anniversary 

mons rümker: China launches a unscrewed mission to the Moon to retrieve mineral samples from a young crater—all to be accomplished in the span of one lunar day (a terrestrial fortnight)  

after school special: times when television grappled with social issues in affecting ways—via the morning news  

monumenta antiquitatis: a scribe’s quill and quiver 

linus & lucy: tag your Charlie Brown dance—via Swiss Miss

8x8

vangelis: with ambient sounds and moments of dialogue interspersed, the soundtrack from Blade Runner is extended into a feature-length soundscape  

metaphorical portraits: deep and heartfelt images of table-scraps and toss-aways 

sessile by nature: a nice crafted series of time-lapse movies illustrate how houseplants move throughout the day—via Things Magzine  

adobe add-on: after the announcement that support for Flash Player will be discontinued, crippling huge swaths of the early web, the Internet Archive comes to the rescue again with a forever home to hundreds of files  

upton sinclair was an optimist: chicken processing plant executives place wagers on how many workers would get sick with COVID-19  

waiting in the wings: clear and present implications of delaying the trans—Dcccf Rex zzz. @#z@smaan anaNN—see also  

you deserve a break today: a detailed look at a bespoke Nintendo DS game created as a training tool for a fast food franchise—see also  

patch cord productions: the musical stylings of Moog maestro Mort Garson

i am not a crook

On this day in 1973 during a press conference delivered at the Contemporary Resort Hotel at Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida Richard Nixon made the declaration addressing his declining job approval ratings with the pall of the Watergate scandal eroding public trust and confidence (see also) to an Associated Press annual convention being held there. The rather impromptu one-hour live broadcast was wide-ranging and was specifically prompted in response to a question raised by one of the wire service’s reporters regarding Nixon’s taxes and self-dealing, launching into the line of questioning, “I have earned every cent—and in all my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice… People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook. I’ve earned everything I’ve got.”

6x6

for ages eighteen plus: adult content next door 

cph-ø1: Copenhagen harbour floating parkipelago gets its first module  

dapper duds: older dogs dressed as senior human citizens to encourage adoption 

holes and slices: the Swiss cheese model risk management and loss prevention  

coandă effect: a drone stays aloft by taking advantage of the fluid dynamic tendency to stay attached to a convex surface—a principle used in hovercraft, the Avrocar, NOTARs, windshield cleaners, mitral regurgitators and ventilators  

for ages six and up: small bricks present a choking hazard

peaceful transition of power

Though there’s no strategy to Trump’s fractious and recalcitrant behaviour other than keeping all options on the table for himself and not committing to any one course of action until all are exhausted—except perhaps resigning at 11:00 on Wednesday, 20 January so his viceroy can take office and pre-emptively pardon Trump from federal prosecution (I remember it being suggested that President Obama do something similar to spoil all of Trump’s tacky 45 election merch) and Joe Biden will naturally be a quick study for taking high office, there are nonetheless negative and deadly consequences for postponing the changeover for Biden and Harris. The chaos can potentially derail efforts to redress the pandemic response not (just) through wilful undermining and sabotage but as inauguration day approaches, with the team already behind the curve, there is a time crunch and decision that perhaps need to be weighted and considered more carefully become rushed under pressure and studies that should be taken into account on downstream effects are perhaps not read. It’s impossible to reframe the past on hindsight and whilst there’s not a definitive connection, we only need to look back to the last contested election of 2000 where the delay of declaring the next president could have led gaps in intelligence gathering and security that yielded the 9/11 terror attacks—the character of America changed over one missed report. With pettiness and malice added to the mix, there seems to be catastrophic potential in the deadlines and breach from the regularly scheduled process.

8x8

ginger-reveal party: photographer Kieran Dodds has spent years capturing images from red heads all over the world  

nacelle: a handy camper turned a surplus jet engine into a deluxe caravan trailer 

thursday afternoon: the video paintings of Brian Eno—see previously 

lawn and order: perhaps Spain ought to get out of the art restoration business and other items of note from Hyperallergic’s weekly digest 

we’ll let the supreme courtyard marriot decide the outcome of the vote: apropos the entry above, more roundups and rundowns from the week from Super Punch  

julia’s name is going to be julia gulia: a team of volunteer correspondents answer missives left to Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers  

matita: a treasury of vintage Italian pencils 

macroscopic: a pairing of recent posts from the always excellent Nag on the Lake celebrate capturing images of the tiny at extremely close range

hipaa compliant

A masterful grifter whose practises might even make the Trump crime family blush at some of its techniques whose sole business is that of scalping and alienating both artists and audiences now wants the medical histories of future concert-goers to reboot its venues with a guise of safety, allowing only those certified with a clean bill of health to attend events—facing no consequences of course when these measures fail and ceding further control to their entertainment enterprise. We had hoped that the pandemic would have broken up rackets (as the Trump syndicate will fall) like this rather than make stronger them cling harder to their power.

gie

 

Via Boing Boing, here is another spot-on comic by Ruben Bolling (see previously, which also makes us contemplate this future presidential library or this duly decorous display at this Berlin wax museum) that aptly addresses the emergent situation of the “wouldn’t it be a gas if we acidebtal kissed” constitutional crisis and QVC coup of the deposed, alternative government of a subnational territory that is the Winter White House.

electoral integrity

Despite couching his authorisation with caveats, the United States Attorney General is showing partisan bias in directing federal prosecutors to investigate voting irregularities and tacitly endorses the defeated Trump’s disinformation campaign and narrative that the Democrats rigged the election. While it behoves one to recall that it was the Justice Department that conjured up a battalion of shock troops to disappear problematic protesters in what were interpreted as Democratic strongholds, this chicanery of sore losers (and continued purges) will not translate to a coup d’état in any sense with democracy and its institutions berated and bedraggled as they may be still prevailing despite the pandemic, economic collapse, plus massive and concerted efforts of disenfranchisement—still the people spoke.

a shining city on a hill

First spotted on Kottke’s Quick Links here is an excerpt from a short post-election observation from McSweeney’s contributor Andrew Singleton that is wholly spot-on. 

How can a nation capable of turning the simple act of revealing the gender of your child into a wildfire that burns down an entire state be so insistent on screwing things up? How could a country, one that birthed the timeless love story of 30 brown-haired white guys named Chad competing in an elimination contest for the chance to marry a woman, lack the emotional depth required to make the right decision for the future of all of us? How could a people that had to be explicitly told not to eat Tide Pods be so short-sighted? Or are some things simply beyond explanation? 

Do check out the piece in its entirety at the link above.  

egress and exeunt

Via Super Punch we are reminded of the obsession with optics and the lengths that some politicians—particularly UK leaders—have gone to avoid unfortunate juxtapositions with exit signs. In order to assuage the concerns of host building and venue coordinators saying this PR anti-stunt could cause a hazard in case of a fire or other emergency, some handlers have produced bespoke, fitted sign-coverings to keep on hand for the range of signage standards.

business as usual

On this day of convention breaking-firsts for US governance—historic departures that were long overdue but nonetheless whose time had arrived—first with Jeanette Rankin in 1916 becoming the first woman elected to federal public office, representing Montana in the House of Congress, then in 1989 with Douglas Wilder and David Dinkins as the first African Americans elected respectively as a state governor (Virginia) and as mayor of a major city (New York), next in 2000 with Hilary Clinton elected senator representing the state of New York—the first former First Lady to have an independent political career, Kamala Devi Harris is announced as the vice president-elect of the United States, highest office held by a female (and daughter of Jamaican and South Asian immigrants as well), deputy to former vice-president and forty-sixth president Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior, unseating the incumbent, impeached Donald John Trump.

patience is a virtue

 

coal in your stocking

Though apparently tabled or scrapped, there was bizarrely, negotiated and budgeted out to the tune of a quarter-billion dollars, a stimulus plan concocted by the undersecretary of the US department of Health and Human Services to save Christmas by inoculating mall Santas (and their entourage of elves and consort Clauses) with untrialled, experimental vaccines, enabling kids to have the experience of sitting on Kris Kringle’s lap and having their photograph taken. Jesus wept. Not only are Santa’s helpers risking their health by taking a preventative therapy that may not be effective and possibly detrimental to their health, they also risk becoming full-on disease vectors, bio-weapons after chatting with scores of asymptomatic carriers per day in the run-up to the holiday season, which is far from universally celebrated. I think Santa would rather be a model citizen and encourage social-distancing, practise good hygiene and avoid unnecessary risks, including forgoing milk and cookies from strangers. This addle-brained proposal is likely to be cancelled but one wonders how close it was to being pushed forward and what other horrors that the Trump administration might try to sell as a Christmas miracle.

and scene

Though over a month behind us, considering how America, mercilessly, has no concept of purdah before an election that’s a scant nine days away, we still rather enjoyed Bad Lip Reading’s (previously) take on the first presidential debate, described as a food-fight, that reframes the contest as a game show with a very beleaguered moderator, sort of like poor Alex Trebek hosting an insufferable match of celebrity JEOPARDY! on a Saturday Night Live parody—albeit an extended version with really high stakes.

7x7

whose side is justice department hunk trant finglepoz on, anyway: a treasury of Hallmark Channel movies counting down to the American election  

moving pictures: TIME magazine showcases one hundred of the most influential photographs  

malochio: an appreciation of the iconic, inspired CBS eye-logo  

giant steps: exploring the overlapping sensory experience of synaesthesia (previously) to the musical stylings of John Coltrane  

nazcat lines: archaeologists uncover a feline geoglyph in the Peruvian desert  

stranger danger: Patch the Pony transformed into a Halloween soundtrack 

fiscal cliffication: continued delays and deferment on financial aid will make it harder for the US economy to recover

hocus potus

Just as the Twitterati has formed broad cliques reflective of larger social orders, WitchTok—the portmanteau of TikTok for practitioners of hexes and witchcraft—is a real and popular phenomenon reportedly and is being credited by some with infecting Trump with COVID-19.

While we don’t think that’s how magic works, we’ll certainly let them cast their spell and encourage more, seeing that that coven that claimed to curse Trump the night of the inauguration might need to check their work. Oh yes, and please vote—unless you want more of over-reliance on homeopathy essential oils and accusing ones neighbour of suffering a witch to live out of deep desperation as ones healthcare and jobs disappear.

outbreak

With the exception of commanding officer of the Marine Corps, every other member of the US military branches that comprise the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Space Force included) who have the task of advising the president and the secretary of defence having been in close contact with one of the latest meeting’s attendees who tested positive for the coronavirus strain that causes COVID-19 and are in quarantine. Separate from the nomination ceremony for his handmaiden to the US Supreme Court of Justice, it appears that Trump himself is the disease vector.

Aside from anonymous domestics and ancillary staff who put their health and the heath of their families at risk daily in this toxic work environment, the running tally of those at the White House who have succumb to the infection sprints ahead of those rapid succession resignations and dismissals that qualified the administration and measured in Scaramuccis until by process of elimination, he had really scraped the bottom of the barrel for the very worst. Aside from Flotsam and Jetsam, here’s a list of staffers from his inner-circle who’ve been infected and are seemingly wearing it like a badge of pride, a sign of how much access they have to Trump: 

Stephen Miller, Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway and Bill Stepien—speech writer who maintained COVID-19 was a hoax as his grandmother was dying of it, close adviser who was one of the first to show symptoms, former counselor and campaign manager 

Jalen Drummond, Chad Gilmartin and Kayleigh McEnanny—deputy press secretary, press office staffer and deputy press secretary 

Admiral Charles Ray—vice commandant of the US Coast Guard who sent the Joint Chiefs of Staff into isolation 

John Jenkins—University of Notre Dame president who attended the nomination ceremony of the school’s aluma 

Ronna McDaniel—chair of the Republican National Committee 

Senators Thom Tillis, Mike Lee and Ron Johnson—members of the judiciary committee and head of Homeland Security 

Chris Christie—former New Jersey governor and campaign adviser 

Nicholas Luna and an unnamed valet—bag man for Trump and one of his drivers