gold bug or strong room

I didn’t know this when H and I were visiting Columbus, Georgia and enjoyed an iced-coffee in this historic bank building (nor did we think to snap a picture at the time of the vault that one can sit in), but it was supposedly from the very vaults here that a teller refused to relinquish the cache of semi-legendary Confederate gold, having been evacuated from New Orleans as the Union armies advanced for safe-keeping, to General P. G. T. Beauregard when ordered to take it from its temporary depository. According to Bearegard’s own memoirs, it was taken then by force but no one knew what happened to that treasure afterwards.  Gold bugs, incidentally, not only refer to those with a compelling desire for prospecting but also to those who humbug the government’s stewardship of the treasury and doubt that there is any gold in Fort Knox. 

five-by-five

mincing words: neon gyrating sailor greets Russian submarines entering Swedish waters

not a stay-cation: service links talent abroad with short-term jigs called jobbaticals

please press zero for more options: surly AI being developed for automated customer-service applications

why are we listening to grandma singing: Mulder and Scully cover Neil Young

wingman: fantastic documentary on the life and times of Biggs Darklighter, X-Wing pilot

mobsters and magic lanterns

Years before Thomas Edison was able to secure the credit of popular memory, an inventor from Metz working in a studio in Leeds by the name of Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince created cinematography in 1888 with the filming of two short outdoor sequences, developed on strips of photographic paper and then projected.
Struggling to win a patent for his suite of devices and techniques, La Prince resolved to undertake a promotional tour in the United States, where competition over proprietary rights was particularly stiff and Le Prince feared losing out on any royalties to the likes of Edison’s Kinetoscope empire—which is tragically exactly what happened though what help or hindrances fate had is pretty mysterious. After a visit home (the pioneering inventor was helped by the wealthy family of a college buddy whose sister he ended up marrying), La Prince made arrangements to begin a series of public demonstrations of his moving pictures in America but vanished without a trace after boarding the express-train from Dijon to Paris, the first leg of his journey. Neither Le Prince nor his luggage was ever seen again, and while there is nothing to suggest foul-play outright, many theorise that the forgotten founder was a casualty of the patent-wars in the early days of photography and film-making. Indeed, Thomas Edison, after Le Prince’s tour never materialised, rather callously claimed that all the missing Le Prince’s ideas were Edison’s own. Le Prince’s widow and son fought desperately to defend his discoveries but their hopes were dashed. La Prince’s son was found dead himself just two years later while duck-hunting on Fire Island in New York. Their name was later vilified by history as more and more come to acknowledge La Prince’s contributions.

chiaroscuro or all light is mute amid the gloom

Corporate Europe Observatory releases a quite in-depth investigation on some of the peripheral consequences of the on-going TTIP negotiations, which I dare say is compounded with the perception and reality of dragnet snooping by America that included business espionage, in the codification of trade-secrecy.
The proposed trans-Atlantic jurisdiction would afford confidential practises the same degree of protection as another juicy legal-fiction, intellectual-property, and obscure dealing even more with the onerous cloak of mystery, impenetrable for the mere consuming public, reporters, and politicians without a lobby. Arguments keep reverting (circling for excuses) to the supposed language of TTIP, which is also played close and not disseminated except as glosses, as justification for creating a unified front against this self-affirming threat. The scope of this special-interest apparatus is truly alarming with some three thousand letter-box offices are encamped in Brussels, roosting at the European Union’s corridors of power to ensure that their message is duly pardoned, sanctioned and muted.