118th congress (10. 392)

After a historic fifteen rounds of voting, surpassing gridlock and internecine opposition not seen since 1923 and before that the American civil war, nearly coming to blows in a Friday night standoff that coincided with the anniversary of the Capitol insurrection, ill-tempered negotiations and a tranche of regrettable concessions, Kevin McCarthy was appointed Speaker of the House and was able to officially convene government and swear in elected members. The rather menacing photograph is an incoming call from the GOP presidential candidate, DT, being brought to one of the party delegates during the final ballot, waved away unanswered as the situation was chaotic enough already.

krig, kriser och klimatdebatten (10. 372)

Annually Språktidningen magazine in collaboration with the Swedish Language Council publishes a list (previously) of a few dozen choice neologisms that help define the year informed by war, crises and climate debates. Among the new terms selected for inclusion for 2022 are jury favourite epadunk—a musical general that references the “epatractors” that rural youths are able to drive on public at age sixteen and the sound systems that they need to devise in order to hear over the loud tractor motors—matfattigdom—that is, food poverty, munkmodell, living an ascetic lifestyle for the sake of the planet, klickkemi or click-chemistry for constructing complex molecules and individualised drug treatments from modular building blocks and some more that have entered common-parlance through the news and current events, like kamikazedrönare, Putinprise, Permakris and smygflation (a portmanteau for stealth inflation).

7x7 (10. 368)

press pool: NPR station photographers swap memorable images from 2022    

opus cæmenticium: make concrete the Roman way—see also    

pre-bunking: intelligence agencies should engage in more public outreach to fight disinformation    

mallory gallery: top exhibitions of the year    

golden eye: reindeer retinas change colours with the seasons—via Nag on the Lake   

fido: dogs with human names—via Waxy     

mmxxii: year in review—news and journalists

8x8 (10. 366)

adad gate: bas-relief discoveries help limn the dazzle of ancient Nineveh 

rewind: a growing collection of Year-End Lists arranged categorical  

take the a-train: an NYC subway quiz—via tmn 

mush from the wimp: a collection of the best headlines from 2022 

double jeopardy: a personalised quiz show tradition based on family gossip  

a chromatic hallucination: the colour magenta (previously) is a mental construct  

fast-forward: 2022 summarised in seven minutes  

nazca lines: a whole cache of hidden geoglyphs found in Peru

green-eyed monster (10. 353)

A perennial favourite, the editorial staff at Bloomberg Businessweek honour their journalistic peers and and players with their Jealousy List—a tradition going back to 2015—by calling out reporting that they wish they had scooped or otherwise explored in depth. There is a whole of articles to pour over and especially liked the by-lines and attributes for new and taken for granted sources to follow. We especially enjoyed Wired’s article on “How Telegram Became the Anti-Facebook” plus also deserving of an honourable mention, the BBC’s series on the collapse of Communism in Russia, a GQ piece on lifelong projects through the lens of Francis Ford Coppola and a range of articles from Atavist magazine, a new read for us to revisit. Do peruse the whole index and let us know your most engrossing finds.

ultra vivres (10. 351)

Though it might be a big ask and imposition to encourage people to listen to this very excellent podcast from Rachel Maddow what with the holidays and the historical echo of the January Sixth Committee having just adjourned for the final time, it is decidedly worth one’s time and attention, regardless of polity, to explore how America nearly experienced a violent insurrection and backed fascism over eighty years ago and picking sides for World War II. The title of the series, well summarised in this tune by Woody Guthrie, refers not to arch-conservatives but rather a justice department official going beyond his scope of practise with a duty to warn.

7x7 (10. 345)

munro: better known for his violent Tom & Jerry shorts, Gene Deitch (previously—not the best counter-example) an acclaimed, award-winning animator 

thirty by thirty: environmentalists and delegates reach a landmark agreement to conserve nature and protect the rights of indigenous peoples 

incite a riot: January Sixth committee recommends a range of charges to be levied against Trump  

santaland: department store Christmas monorails—via the Everlasting Blört 

scootch over: on the quarter-century anniversary of the premier of Titanic, director James Cameron wants to put to rest a roiling debate  

a slice of the cosmos: an interactive map of the observable Universe from Johns Hopkins University  

lichtspiel opus i: the Avant-Garde animation of Walter Ruttmann

6x6 (10. 389)

third estate: Twitter begins suspending the accounts of many high profile journalists  

that went places: this wordless Scotch advertisement is really moving 

i love paris when it’s deco: revisiting the landmark Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held along the Seine in 1925 

united states of pop: DJ Earworm (previously) remixes the year in music  

this christmas ad broke me: a somewhat cynical though more accurate seasonal supermarket commercial 

i expect these will sell out soon: Trump launches a collection of NFT trading cards

 

 

³h (10. 380)

Via Slashdot, we learn that ahead of an expected official announcement reports are coming from three insiders at Lawrence Livermore National labs that researchers have attained a net positive energy gain using an experimental arrangement known as inertial confinement fusion (previously)—pelting a cloud of hydrogen plasma with a laser to trigger the reaction. In what may prove to be the first successful proof-of-concept demonstration, the prospect of limitless nuclear energy without hazardous byproducts—especially during a time of power poverty and when finding non-polluting sources are urgently needed—is a tantalising one, and the attendant caveats, seem to hardly dampen the excitement of this first step.

wort des jahres (10. 374)

The Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache in Wiesbaden (previously) has announced its Word of the Year for 2022, Zeitenwende—the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, for among other things real and feared declines in German leadership and influence economically, in industry, armaments and Fußball and for the return to war in Europe, and other terms and neologisms in the running. Rounding out the top ten were: Krieg um Frieden—war for peace, Gaspreisbremse—price controls for utilities, Inflations-schmerz—inflation pains, Klimakleber—for the Last Generation protesters glueing themselves to artwork, Doppel-Wumms—a double-boon for the electro-auto tax credit in the US “Inflation Reduction Act” that skews heavily in favour of American manufacturing at the expense of other markets, neue Normalität, das 9-Euro-Ticket, Glühwein-WM—for the fact that the Qatari World Cup wasn’t held in July but rather during Weihnachtszeit, and lastly Waschlappentipps—that is, government-issued suggestions on energy conservation in the shower.

data dump (10. 373)

Although unashamedly US-centric, the just-published Year in Search retrospective from Google nonetheless yields some insights for this past year and our collective engagement with the news and trends. 

It seems that we were less interested in chasing memes and more focused on the news and an interesting feature (America only apparently) allows one to find popular search terms locally. There are several categories–plants, pets, people–of analytics to parse and contrast and the top ten searches (with apparent recency bias) worldwide were: 

• Wordle
• India vs England
• Ukraine
• Queen Elizabeth
• Ind vs SA
• World Cup
• India vs West Indies
• iPhone 14
• Jeffrey Dahmer
• Indian Premier League

The top news queries were: Ukraine, Queen Elizabeth’s passing, Election Results, Powerball Numbers and Monkeypox. More at the links above.

li’l folks (10. 338)

Born this day in 1922 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Charles Monroe “Sparky” Schultz, cartoonist and creator of the characters who would become the Peanuts comic strip (his uncle gave him the nickname after the horse Spark Plug in a daily comic called Take Barney Google F’rinstance) is regarded as a universal influence, informing and defining the modern medium as a legitimate means of psychological and sociological exploration and commentary.

7x7 (10. 305)

eyes wide shut: morbid fascination for both the collapse of Trumpism and Twitter  

massa alimentícia: former pasta factory in Portugal for sale—via Messy Nessy Chic 

slava ukraini: president Zelenskyy visits liberated city of Kherson   

backstory: a modern history of our butts  

pets.com: series of Silicon Valley layoffs  

turbulent indigo: Joni Mitchell reminisces on her career with Elton John  

hidden in plain sight: the anti-MacGuffins of Hitchcock’s Charade—via Language Hat

9x9 (10. 299)

enḫeduana: the fourth incarnation of the four-thousand year old Mesopotamian priestess who is the world’s first named author 

rip: founding member of the Clash and Public Image Ltd Keith Levene passes away, aged 65—via Nag on the Lake  

this is jim rockford. at the tone, leave your name and message. i’ll get back to you. [beep]: the mid-1970s detective drama intro faithfully recreated in LEGO  

spitalfields life: Peta Bridle illustrates her tour of London with her daughter 

tic-toc—let’s talk: Watch Dog and a nightmare clown teach children to read an analogue clock  

hush city: interactive mapping applications to chart out one’s urban soundscape and mark out those quiet spots  

51/49: Democrats retain control of the US Senate with a win in Nevada and the run-off election in Georgia ahead  

hawkwind: space music pioneer Nik Turner has died, aged 82  

the civilisation of llhuros: an artist exhibited, convincingly, a mock Iron Age culture with fantasy folkways and artefacts—via the New Shelton Wet / Dry

ampelkoalition

After over two months of negotiations, the dominant political parties of Germany faring best in the last general election, the so-called Traffic Light Coalition by the colours of their respective factions, have agreed to form a new government with centre-left Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats (SPD, Red) appointed as chancellor. Under this power-sharing agreement, the once deputy to Merkel will allot cabinet seats to other affiliates with Greens candidate Annalena Baerbock expected to become foreign minister and the fiscally conservative, neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP, Yellow) under the leadership Christian Lindner positioned to take control of the finance ministery.

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.

stunaep

Reprising an Austin Kleon post from last year for this anniversary of the first time Charles Schultz’ Charlie Brown and friends first appeared in print in 1950 (see previously), we have these cut-ups of Peanuts strips re-mixed to consider and mediate on—which I think only enhances the characters’ philosophic outlook in the same daily dose. Much more at the link up top including multiple anthologies of zines composed of the same material.

it’s the plumber—we’ve come to fix the sink

Under the direction of US presidential advisor John Ehrlichman coordinated a team of burglars who would go on to attempt the Watergate break in (previously) to infiltrate the offices of Washington, DC psychiatrist Lewis Fielding also on this day in 1971. Dr. Fielding was treating former US Department of Defence contractor with the RAND corporation Daniel Ellsberg, whom had leaked the “Pentagon Papers” the prior year to the press. Although they found Ellsberg’s file, the operation yielded no useful information.

what women will do next to distinguish themselves, we wonder!

Via the always diverting Messy Messy Chic’s internet meanderings, we are directed to an 1871 American newspaper article about a certain “female in Quebec, the other day, perpetrated a ghastly joke, mocking death in His own domain by lying down in a hearse and smoking a pipe” having engaged a driver and funeral carriage to parade her through the city and enjoy the view. Though hoping that the reporting was accurate and this unnamed individual continued to make a spectacle of herself, the story goes on to editorialise that had this exhibition been made in the United States “our neighbours to the north would have made it the subject of very strong animadversions.” This lovely word—which first leads to the eponymous antiprelatical tract from John Milton upon the “Remonstrants Defence Against Smectymnuus” (none of these words register)—comes from the Latin phrase animum advertere meaning to turn the mind towards but has come to mean the opposite in aversion, critical and censorious. Smectymnuus was the nom de plume of Puritan clergy—an initialism properly conjugated—for whom Milton wrote as an apologist and hoped to redeem in the eyes of detractors.

spin boldak

Although prior commitments and pledges had already set withdrawal from Afghanistan in motion and the US is made to face the parallels and comparisons to the fall of Saigon that it tried to dismiss or downplay, it was a grave failure of the imagination to be shocked at the thinnest veneer of stability and superficial democratic values that the West brought—standards imposed—and expect it to be robust or enduring and not swept away in the power vacuum filled by the resurgent Taliban government. Like regime change in American itself that vacillates between extremes that does not bode reliability or ongoing responsibility, the abrupt abandonment set off a military offensive in May that saw one regional capital after another be subsumed by Taliban forces. As belligerents approached the capital city of Kabul, president Ashraf Ghani relinquished control and fled to Tajikistan, disestablishing the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, replaced with the re-established Emirate, and the movement’s co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (released from a Pakistani jail in 2018 at the request of the US) assumed control, announcing from the busy airport where thousands are seeking to evacuate, that the “War is over!”