bundestagswahl 2021

Germany is holding a national ballot to elect the members of the twentieth Bundestag, the federal parliament. With Angela Merkel having chose not to run after sixteen years as chancellor, this vote marks the first time in modern Germany history that the incumbent is not seeking reelection.  Seven top candidates from Germany’s forty-seven listed political parties are vying for top position and the mandate to form a coalition government and reach a power-sharing agreement with the opposition.  

6x6

moo-loo: calves are being toilet-trained to mitigate some of the greenhouse gasses the livestock produce

über die bestimmung des weibes zur höheren geistesbildung: a look at philosopher Amalia Holst, whose 1802 work is comparable to Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman  

ferryman: an interesting look at legally-mandated river-crossings in Manchester  

the colour of money: a mesmerising video to accompany the Blake Mills song  

microcosmos: outstanding photographs of the world not visible to the naked eye  

charismatic megafauna: a biotech firm is raising funds to de-extinct the woolly mammoth—see previously

þorskastríðin

With precedent disputes just after WWII and reignited after a fashion with Brexit fishing negotiations, the Cod Wars began in earnest on this day in 1958 when Iceland expanded its territorial waters to the edge of maritime claims by the UK and West Germany, with all sides sustaining losses over the next two decades as this protracted conflict continued with boats ramming into one other and the fishing nets of trawlers cut. Although in the aftermath of each skirmish, the International Court of Justice sided with Iceland’s claim, no resolution was reached until 1976 when Iceland threatened to withdraw from NATO if the matter wasn’t settled once and for all, an action that would denied the alliance’s submarines access to a strategic part of the North Sea (see also) at the height of the Cold War, brokering an agreement amenable to all parties. Following on from the truce, the United Nations codified the Law of the Sea and standardised exclusive nautical economic zones.

i have directed secretary connolly to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold or other reserve assets, except in amounts and conditions determined to be in the interest of monetary stability and in the best interest of the united states

Effectively ending the economic arrangement among Canadian, Western Europe, Australia and Japan since 1944, the Bretton Woods system (see previously), the first fully negotiated monetary order recognised across independent polities that regulated exchange rates by pinning national currencies to the price of gold under the supervision of the International Monetary Fund, American president Richard Nixon announced, unilaterally, that on this day in 1971 the dollars could no longer be freely converted to their worth in gold. Rendered a fiat currency instead of a representation of intrinsic value, only upheld by the consent of the parties engaged in trade for goods or services, many other signatories soon followed suit and untethered their money. This jarring economic policy change was the culmination of several intervention strategies undertaken by the Nixon administration to curb inflation incurred as the world reserve currency (privilège exorbitant as the US could print money at virtually no cost, but subsidised by the rest of the world, each bank note expatriated cost face value in actual goods), preceded by wage and price freezes and raising tariffs. Loosing the ability to service indebtedness over the war in Vietnam, Nixon accused other nations of gaming the system and using established conventions to devalue their currency to maintain a competitive advantage. The US dollar dropped precipitously in value shortly thereafter and led to the the stagflation that typifies the decade and general failure of wages to rise proportionally with the increasing prices of vital things like healthcare, education, rents and food.

niemand hat die absicht, eine mauer zu errichten!

Dividing the city and nation physically and ideologically until 1989, construction of the Berlin Wall began on this day in 1961, isolating and making an exclave of West Berlin. Officially referred to by authorities of East Germany as an Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart (see also — Anti-faschistischer Schutzwall) to protect the population from forces trying to confound their attempts at forming a socialist state, the Burgermeister of West Berlin, Willy Brandt called it “Schandmauer”—Wall of Shame, becoming a metonym for the Iron Curtain and political schism between East and West. As with the above quotation, Communist politician Walter Ulbricht empathetically denied the possibility two months earlier during a press conference despite no one mentioning a wall.  The border closure and following fortification was called by Berliners Stacheldrahtsonntag—that is Barbed-Wire Sunday, some eight hundred fleeing through the temporary barriers before the solid structure was built by the end of the day.

floating capital

The excellent house blog of San Francisco’s storied DNA Lounge, JWZ, asks us to consider the meaning and message of one of the least popular emojis, the so described as man in business suit levitating (🕴)—an enigma but not in the sense of Avicenna’s thought experiment of the Floating Man or Magritte’s Son of Man, but rather what sort of capitalist, privileged elation that this symbol can be used to express. Click through for a selection of literary tropes for which this shorthand for rapture, stock-photo, narcissist or sociopath—whereas the real backstory involving a webdings exclamation mark and a Ska band is equally intriguing if not more circuitous.

regimental colours

Via the lens of heraldic conventions developed over centuries of colonisation and exploitation, we are afforded a glimpse into the complex history and socio-economic relations of the traditional companies of warriors of the Akan culture—called Asafo—of Ghana and the Ivory Coast (see previously) that pledge to defend the land through resistance to assimilation and care for their community, like ward custodians. Reminiscent of latter day Afghan war rugs (an example pictured here), learn more about the flags’ history and legacy at the link up top.

7x7

event horizon: unlike planets or stars, the size of black holes are not limited by physical constraints  

peg and pulley: a compelling argument to revive the cross-building washing line—via Pasa Bon!  

alien dreams: uncannily creative art from AIs—via Waxy 

bertilak de hautdesert: a highly recommended retelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—see previously 

the greater fool theory: also called survivor investing, on the origins of value, margin calls and fiat currency—see previously  

thirteen things: a truly outstanding round-up from a fellow internet caretaker, including an indoor-outdoor bath tub on rails, pineapple cheese and a chameleon tape-measure 

intercluster medium: a galaxy-sized cloud of gas out floating in splendid isolation

the velocity of money

In the unfolding of the worst case of hyperinflation (previously here, here and here) and devaluation in history, the Hungarian pengő (an onomatopoetic word for the ringing of silver struck, the clinking of coins), itself a replacement currency for the Austro-Hungarian korona, liquidated under the terms of the Peace of Saint-Germain that dissolved the joint bank of the monarchy, battered and bashed by the ensuing Great Depression and a second world war, was pegged to the reintroduced forint (in use prior to the imperial union in 1892 and named for city of Florence) at an exchange rate on this day in 1946 of one Ft for four hundred octillion pengők, shedding twenty-nine zeros and starting over, notes in the millions and billions reused and reissued marked with exponentially higher values.

A last ditch effort to rescue the collapsing economy in January brought in a parallel currency that would hold its value called the adópengő for tax and postal payments—sort of like those forever stamps that aren’t subject to rate hikes or the specie of old pennies with high copper content, starting at parity with what was then in circulation but eight months later each was worth two sextillion. The largest denominated bank note issued was the one hundred quintillion (ten to the twentieth power, one million billion and worth about two US dimes) featuring an anonymous Hungarian woman wearing scarf on her head who back in March appeared one the one hundred million pengő bill.

stamina potion

Directed towards an engrossing economics side-quest to ponder from NRP’s Planet Money, we learn how a cadre of rather ingenious individuals, to stave of the worst effect of a collapsing national currency and exponential inflation which strips money of one of its defining pillars as a store of value, to farming for computer game gold, since collecting and trading those virtual coins for primarily euro or US dollars was at a far better rate of exchange than the bolívar soberano and paid a better wage. Choosing the MMORPG (massively multiplayer on-line role-playing game) platform of Old School RuneScape because of its low bar to access, straightforward and relatively easy to play (especially for repetitive, income-generating tasks) and would run on older computers and not be too data intensive, their activity (not allowed according to house rules, selling to third-parties, but can’t really be stopped) has drawn supporters sympathetic to their real world plight and detractors complaining of encroachment and how it skews the in-game economy.

zwischenstopp: fladungen

Much like with our last entry about the anchor town of Mellrichstadt to the southeast, we realise that we hadn’t made the time lately to take in the sites of another larger town to the northwest that defines the region’s character in the eigthth century settlement called Fladungen (see previously here, here and here) that from the fourteenth century until modern times was the primary marketplace of the Franconian Rhön. As with many other smaller ducal holdings, with the 1814 Treaty of Paris, Fladungen was absorbed into the Kingdom of Bavaria. The central Altstadt is well preserved and dominated the parish church of Sankt Kilian plus an ensemble of administrative buildings. Along the former border, Fladungen was made a virtual exclave of West Germany, deprived much of its hinterland for agricultural purposes but since reunification, traditional industry has returned. 

saut de seconde

Introduced for the first time on this day in 1972 and originally delegated to the Bureau International de l’Heure (BIH, the International Time Bureau at the Paris Observatory) to schedule their addition or subtraction, leap seconds (see also) are a way to adjust Universal Coordinated Time and synchronise the invariable atomic clocks that informs most civilian timekeeping with observed solar time, the Earth’s rotation prone to go off-kilter a bit due to geological, climatic changes or meteor impacts. Though implemented as a means to ensure accuracy and uniformity in an increasing interconnected and networked world and announced six months in advance, the irregularity of leap seconds can also reveal flaws in underlying programming, the pictured time-stamp causing Linux-based systems to crash back on that date.

le pont de trinquetaille

Seeing that on this day in 1987, a Van Gogh (previously here and here) of a bridge scene in Arles fetched a then record twenty million dollars at auction made me reflect on a recent podcast episode about the individual responsible for the artist’s posthumous and compelling fame promoted out of necessity and circumstance, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger (*1862 - †1925), widow of theretofore Van Gogh’s greatest champion, his brother Theo, and sister-in-law who had acquired a great deal of the then worthless works and against the advice of friends and family brought them back to their native Holland from Paris after losing her husband. In order to provide for herself and her child, Van Gogh-Bonger collected and edited an epistolary exchange and between the brothers and family biography, helping to establish her brother-in-law’s fame and reputation, as well as arranging exhibitions, helping to define not only Vincent as a celebrity but the attendant marketplace of the art world as well.

8x8

here fishy, fishy, fishy: a tale of a talking fishing lure and sixty counts of mail fraud  

goldenrod: behind-the-scenes footage of droids C3PO and R2-D2 trying on their costumes  

plastic tracker: monitor the likely course of one’s discarded waste to the seas—see also—via Maps Mania 

discothek: a commercial photographer captured the golden age of nightclubs with all their eccentricities and exuberance  

juneteenth: America gets a new federal holiday to commemorate the end of chattel enslavement in the United States  

downfall: dégringolade n. a rapidly deterioration of circumstance or position, from the French to take a sudden tumble 

foreign exchange: a beautiful animated short of grains of sand and fiat currency explores the tenuous, specious agreements that underpin capitalism and the global economy  

the most compact, neatest, cheapest, and durable reel on the market: advertising niche that distresses and antiques modern sundries

g7 action figures - limited edition

 

fulfilment-by-amazon

Examining the anti-trust lawsuit filed against the e-commerce giant and the inextricably integrated logistics that makes marketplace and membership one in the same, it’s noteworthy how anti-competitive incentives are introduced by shoehorning French regulations into the conversation—the country has not only been the first one to boldly reform its tax regime to make digital overlords pay more of their fair share (see previously here and here) and very early on a prohibition against social media privelging and the invitation to follow on Facebook but rather “search the internet” for French businesses—with the ban on free-shipping to protect physical retail stores as well as other online boutiques. Amazon—with its captive patrons—has built the most robust and inescapable walled-garden, though it is arguable that anyone sets out with such intentions.

noordzee

The always intriguing and enlightening Maps Mania refers us to a suite of tools and tracers to help us visualise the huge among of marine traffic that passes in and out of the North Sea bordered by the Low Countries and Scandinavia, the waters off Belgium far exceeding the throughput of either of the shipping industry’s great corridors and potential bottlenecks, the Panama and Suez canals. Especially interesting is the data-driven scrollytelling from the financial daily De Tidj (pictured) which shows the activity and congestion of navigable routes along with the dredgers that keep the trade routes open to traffic.

zones of immaterial pictorial sensibility

Via Super Punch and vis-à-vis the enthrallment and repulsion that the markets are experiencing for tokens—fungible or otherwise—we really enjoyed learning about these performative pieces from Nouveau réalisme artist and judo master Yves Klein (*1928 - †1962) called Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle, who wanted his patrons to experience the void, offering vacant spaces in exchange for gold. The buyer received a certificate of ownership. Eight such invisible works were sold, some with elaborate rituals including throwing the gold in the Seine and burning the bill-of-sale.

rpow

Nearly a year and a half after the minting of the first blocks of the chain and demonstration that block chain was viable in code as a reusable proof-of-work system (a cryptographic transfer wherein one party shows to another that an established amount of computational effort has been expended with no other disclosure between the two sides), the first known cryptocurrency commercial transaction (see also) occurred between a programmer and a pizza chain, the later exchanging ten thousand bitcoin for two pies on this day in 2010. At the time of publication, this figure is valued at over three-hundred thirteen million euro.

generational brokering

Via Kottke, we are referred to this data visualisation of the past century of American generations represented as stacked, staggered bar chart which while reinforcing the reality that all ages come into being and pass and no one’s scheme for immortality has yet worked out and we’re not the first to think ourselves on the cusp of change or bemoaned our own cohort, or those past and future cadres and the factors that limn them. Questions of intergenerational equity aside and the real and perceived firewall that tips the scale in favour of lingering demographics—important as those questions maybe—these stair-step histograms also reveal, with a certain kind of elegant immediacy (see also) is the progress made in terms of life expectancy and quality of life. More at the links above.