point suscrit

Noticing an all-caps headline with BİDEN rendered as such with the dotted i (called the tittle in English though there’s no case for the letter j in Turkic scripts, see also) as opposed to the dotless that appears later in the word for asylum, I was intrigued about the distinction and wondered how Turkish orthography treated these letters. As with İstanbul, the dotted version usually represents the long vowel sound, close front unrounded, whereas ı most times denotes an oo sound, close back unrounded. Not all computing platforms are able to encode this difference properly—sometimes the numeral 1 is substituted for the dotless ı—resulting in consequential miscommunications.

8x8

really simple syndication: Tedium explores early electronic news and digital services (see previously here, here and here)

let’s go out to the lobby: a 1979 drive-in cinema sci-fi concession advertisement

heracleum sosnovsky: creative interventions to control the toxic, invasive import known as “Stalin’s Revenge”

a shiver of sharks: research is showing the marine predator to be social creatures despite their lone, marauding reputation

iss: a digital coffee table book documenting life aboard the International Space Station

dead pilots society: a treasury of unproduced television shows—via Miss Cellania’s Links (see also)   

efterträda: IKEA reveals its branded line of apparel with a new collection

the audience is listening: the origins of Netflix’s ta-dum sound—via Things Magazine with a special edition on start-up noises

all presidents rail against the press—it goes with the turf

Sharing the same birthday as President Obama (*1961), reporter and author Helen Amelia Thomas (†2013) was born on this day in 1920.
A veteran member of the White House Press Corps, Thomas had a career as a correspondent that covered ten US presidential administrations, beginning with coverage of President-elect John F. Kennedy in 1960. Over the decades establishing herself as an unrelenting fixture of news media and commanding respect of all world leaders, when asked once what was the difference between democracy in America and democracy in Cuba, Fidel Castro quipped that he did not have to answer to Helen Thomas—which Thomas took as a great compliment.

6x6

prog rock: internet struggles to identify this mystery recording found on an unlabelled cassette tape

theirtube: a radical and potentially unsettling step outside one’s recom- mendation bubble (see also)

r&d: reconstructing journalistic scenes in three-dimension—via Waxy

gross domestic product: the US economy falls by a third

in the key of g: cucumber vine forms a treble clef

silver apples: the rising and fall of a now obscure pioneering electronic musical duo

demon-seed

Rather more exhausted than intrigued and knowing full well that the credentials of Trump’s latest favoured Leibartz(in) lie not only in the realm of possibilities but nay in that of inevitabilities, I still wanted to see if I could gather more background on this individual who trafficks in incubi and has truck with alien DNA and believe that Washington, DC is formulating a vaccine turn people agnostic.
Delightfully the first alternate news source I was presented with was this report from BBC’s Pidgin language service (Why you fit trust BBC News—I like this inclusivity in journalism and forget these other perspectives avail themselves to us sometimes), which informs that the good doctor has further invited on herself the ire of social media who have deplatformed her seminars in the name of preventing the spread of medical disinformation. Facebook is promised divine retribution unless Dr Immanuel’s profile is restored. That vaccine however sounds very promising and hope that we can establish herd immunity.

9x9

rewritten by machine on new technology: record industry going after a neural network called Weird A.I. Yankovic that generates parody songs in the style of its namesake—via Slashdot

my beautiful laundrette: elderly couple dress up and model the apparel left in their laundromat—via Nag on the Lake

an atmosphere for simple communication and dating: once Russia cinema reopens, the Ministry of Culture is banning drama and dreary movies until at least the spring of 2021

it’s portraits all the way down: an Inception of self-portraiture—see previously 

search history: a New York Times styles reporter documents and annotates everything term she researched online for a week—via Kottke

be the first to like this post: pigeons look for other career options

the tetris effect: a film about the game’s origins is in production but it won’t be another Battleship—via Miss Cellania’s Links 

karen alert: they keep getting worse

good guy: Billie Eilish’s song Bad Guy performed in major key—see also—via Kottke

6x6

morning edition: artist paints sunrises on newspapers as a dawning juxtaposition to the headlines of the day

free parking: aerial views of grounded planes at the Frankfurter Flughafen—see previously

b&b: designs for a horizontal hive with human sleeping compartment

👁️👄👁️:the ubiquitous string of emoji signals a tautology

if it ain’t baroque: another in a growing chain of art restoration failures, via Miss Cellania’s Links

2020: a spa odyssey: a day retreat in Caracas inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s aesthetic

satellite news channel

Launching on this day in 1982 and several months prematurely due to its inspiration’s and competition’s debut of its spin-off channel Headline News (originally called CNN2) with a similar format to their planned approach to programming, the short-lived collaboration between the American Broadcasting Company and Group Westinghouse Satellite Communications, SNC, has a logo that looks like an generic, expository news channel from a movie if not completely out of a different timeline altogether.
It packaged world and national news reports in eighteen minute blocks allotting the rest of the newscast, repeating on the half-hour with alternating segments dedicated to weather, sports, business and entertainment, to regional and local reporting. Despite the network’s willingness to pay cable companies a fee to carry SNC—contrary to business practises at the time when cable companies passed the costs per channel onto prescribers—it failed to breakthough in US television markets—eventually conceding their transponder space to HLN as their intellectual, having adopted more of their programming rotation into their broadcast day, if not business heirs, and the venture folded after eighteen months of operation. Their theme music was briefly used by the Entertainment and Sport Programming Network, ESPN.

third time’s the charm

Via Slashdot, we learn that Trump has again been censured, flagged by at least one hemisphere of social media (notwithstanding a political advertisement removed for what the campaign for his re-election as an emoji)  for amplifying propaganda that his voice could, for some, lend credence to.
After first being called out for promoting the idea that mail-in voting, ballots per post was essentially an invitation for fraud and would imperil the election as opposed to real voter disenfranchisement, then for inciting violence by unleashing police forces on peaceful protesters and channelling the spectre of racism that’s never left us with the charged phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” the latest missive from Trump—an actual racist todler—was labelled as manipulated media, showing video clip of a two babies edited to include a CNN-style chyron suggesting that the news outlet is either exaggerating the problem of systemic racism and social injustice in the US or that racist attitudes are something humans are born having. I’m not sure which message is more repulsive. Bombastically, the segment (which was apparently already in circulation prior to Trump’s re-tweeting) with the statement that “America is not the problem. Fake news is.”

l’affiche de londres

Having fled France for exile in the United Kingdom the day prior once Marshal Philippe Pétain, newly elected prime minister and future leader of Vichy France rejected proposals for a Franco-British military alliance and defence pact and instead pledged to sign an armistice with Nazi Germany, Brigadier General Charles de Gaulle (see also) delivered his address to Free France from BBC Broadcasting House on this day in 1940, despite objections by some of the governors that the message would imperil themselves as well as strengthen the allegiance between Hitler and Pétain. The Appeal of 18 June (l’Appel du 18. juin) rallied the country in support of resistance with subsequent, regular missives from de Gaulle reaching a bigger audience—the famous line “La France a perdu une bataille! Mais la France n’a pas perdu la guerre,” often misattributed to the original call to arms was crafted for a motivational flyer distributed in August.

the pentagon papers

Leaked to the press by military analysist turned activist Daniel Ellsberg who had researched and contributed to the study and recom- mendations to the US government, the Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force was published on this day in 1971, revealing crucially that successive administrations had deceived the public and the US legislature on its prosecution and expansion—mission creep—of the war in South East Asia. The exposé helped inform the growing sentiment opposing the war and intensified the movement against it. Nixon’s hatchetmen (nicknamed the White House plumbers as they were to see about a leak) went after the credibility of Ellsberg and the papers, bringing up charges of treason, which were later dropped during the Watergate investigation as an unlawful intimidation tactic.

7x7

but vaderbase? only you would be so bold: the Rebellion Republic names its military bases

cause célèbre: documenting Russia’s historic gay cultural icons and personalities

false-flag: Trump crafts propaganda from stock photos, labelling random protesters as agents of Antifa

undisclosed location: a tour of the White House bunker, from nineteen-year-old documentary photos provided by the US National Archives

vote hillary: an artist’s prophetic 2016 appeal in the spirit of Andy Warhol’s “Vote McGovern” campaign screen-print

crimes against humanity: Belgium comes to terms with its genocidal colonial past with the help of toppling statues

karens’ personal racism valet: a bevvy of resources on defunding the police and reforming law enforcement

don’t be a creep, buy a freep

Hyperallergic presents and nice retrospective and appreciation of the Los Angeles Free Press, a pioneering underground weekly, which during its initial run from the mid-1960s until 1978 was the only chronicle of social unrest, injustice and police violence as well as the environmental and anti-war movements—subjects that the mainstream press avoided—in the city and beyond. In a strong condemnation of police reaction during the Watts Rebellion of 1965, the paper editorialised, “Attempts to simply establish ‘law and order,’ to simply establish the pre-demonstration status quo, are doomed to failure.” For forcing the public to confront white supremacy and other discomforts, staff were constantly terrorised and under assault, including an office bombing in 1968. Revived with the same spirit fifteen years ago by its founder, radical socialist Art Kunkin (*1928 – †2019), its masthead (see also) reads Est’d 1964—Re-Incarnated by Necessity.

9x9

the incalculable loss: New York Times again dedicates its pages to giving voice to overlooked obituaries

ruputer: Seiko’s 1998 smart watch proves the adage plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (see also)

air bridges and air gaps: COVID-19 curtails international travel

invisible woman: incredible, augmented reality fashion show—via Things Magazine

privatising profits, socialising losses: the grifting companies receiving and retaining millions from economic recovery stimulus programmes in the US—via JWZ

metadata and memory hole: the internet’s repository is under assault

peaceful transition of power: the nightmare scenario if Trump refuses to leave office—via Cynical-C

chaotic good: DJ Cummerbund presents Weird Betty—nearly as good as Play that Funky Rammstein

and may those who lament their loss find better heroes: Egyptologist usefully share instructions on how to topple monumental structures

7x7

ppe: for the cost of one kit of battle rattle riot gear, one could fully outfit over fifty care staff

world leaders have floated the use of sanctions on officials close to president trump to help protect america’s ethnic minorities: applying the tone of reporting on foreign wars and civil unrest to the US

by-line: questioning the wisdom of New York Times’ editorial policy, via Super Punch

history will be kind to these painstaking recreations of these corrupt criminals responsible for the end of democracy: 2020 Battle for the White House commemorative chess set

harlem renaissance: the US Post Office issues stamps celebrating four important literary figures

history will judge the complicit: Fresh Air’s Dave Davies interviews historian and Atlantic correspondent Anne Applebaum on imperiled democracy

white collar jobs: Facebook will destroy society

by-line or fait accompleat

Via Cory Doctrow’s Pluralistic, we are introduced to the Giant Language Model Test Room created to detect machine learning forgeries, hybrid news items autogenerated and highlights the certain slant, intentional or capitalised upon or not, of predictive text by colour coding the output, the copy of an article based on its own protocols, as an obstacle to targeted content to match targeted advertising—which seriously threaten to undermine education and discourse and reveals what’s written by reporters and what’s writes by machines.

masthead and en memoriam

unmasked assailants

In a tragically recurring, typically, predictably American phenomenon (conversely these past two months marked the first time in decades that there has not been a major school shooting being that the schools are closed), involving shoppers not abiding by emergency hygiene standards enforced to keep us all safe violently attacked the store employee who gently admonished them, we are reminded of the light, careful tread of the exonerative tense that news outlets, to shield themselves from legal liabilities often are trained to repair to.
This indirect tone is not the needed foil for the passive apology of public figures—mistakes were made—does not speak to the principles of being unbiased or non-prejudicial but rather—instead of holding people, in whatever capacity to account for their bad behaviour, gives reporting the swaggering, deputised tenor of police-procedurals and victim-blaming.

tin soldiers and nixon coming

In order to quell protests began five days earlier in response to Richard Nixon’s expansive aerial bombing campaign into Cambodia, the US National Guard were deployed to the campus of Ohio State University’s Kent campus on this day in 1970 and opened fire on a group of unarmed demonstrators, killing four and severely wounding nine others.
The immediate aftermath of the massacre solidified anti-US sentiment world-wide for its invasion of Cambodia and prosecution of the Vietnam War in general, coverage precipitating massive protests and a student strike of over four million. Though the war would continue another four more years, it did so to the sharply critical accompaniment of songs inspired the event, including Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio”—possibly the greatest minstrel act telling of the revolution and also how it failed to materialise, and a host of other musicians, including the students Chrissie Hynde, who would go onto found The Pretenders, and her former bandmates (also fellow students), Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale, who went on to establish Devo. The Pulitzer Prize winning photograph was taken by photojournalism student John Paul Filo of fourteen-year-old runaway Mary Ann Vecchio screaming over the dead body of twenty year student protester Jeffrey Miller.

once upon a virus

Though much like Fox News in the United States, the state-owned Xinhua news agency has been accused of being an instrument of propaganda in the past, but this particular timeline of the Corona Virus pandemic as told, schooled in the medium of Lego with the air of a fairy tale, does not require much spin or hyperbole—especially compared with Trump’s constant, increasingly desperate and far-fetched claims that it came from a laboratory in Wuhan, fatally inadequate countermeasures on the part of the American federal government that have collapsed into riot and terrorism or his suggestion that the disease might be treated by ingesting bleach and other under the kitchen counter cleaning materials.