francophone

The French tend to be perceived as lingual purists and practise a healthy disdain for outside influences that threaten to dilute their language and heritage into some sort of pidgin, especially when there are already perfectly good native words, without the need for borrowing from other sources.
The guardians of the lingua franca, however, are entertaining submissions for candidates to be incorporated into the lexicon. The Local's French edition features some of these entries, which are unquestionably authentic in character and could already pass for common-parlance: some of the best include equivader—a French approximation of the concept of procrastination (for which there is no exactly equivalent), combining the words for chatting and avoidance to describe those easy distractions, se mémériser (from the term mémé for grandmother) means to dress like a granny, and oubliophobie to describe that sinking feeling of loss or dread that we have forgotten something when that experience comes too often as to seem like a malady.

zapadnik

Artist and social-commentator Nastya Nudnik from Kyiv presents an very circumspect gallery in her collection entitled “Emoji Nation,” which illustrates our relationship with technology, modus of communication and basically our peripheral-lifestyle by laying such transparencies (memes) over classical, devotional works of art. It's odd and interesting to see what an evocative penchant such juxtapositions can ring and how a group of singular conventions can creep into all culture at such a galloping pace.

stützpunkt

Germany has called a special commission in order to hopefully seriously investigate the surveillance activities of the USA and the UK, and perhaps most importantly, German complicity in the process. One rallies for outrage with a tremolo-heroism but perhaps most realised that this was always the case and the wages of the modern world, whether willingly or otherwise, despite however one might feel about his or her situational-awareness as compared to the lolling public.
If faith was neither granted nor stinted or even comes as a surprise is a question for the individual, mostly dependent upon convenience and voluntary disclosure. An artificial mystique (though a code easily broken yet infinitely adaptable) of allegory and spindled metaphor has developed to augment and improve insider-messaging, which can be accessed by outsiders still. Concurrently, however, comes the revelation that the revelation that German was also the base for a sort of extraordinary rendition (the speed of light does not out-strip national jurisdictions). A satellite installation of Ramstein not only monitored the continent of Africa but also the whole world around. Though such studiousness is typical, I do not think such behaviour is as ultimately productive as protocols, or consignment, suggests.

wallflower or standoffishness

Diplomacy is of course a slow and delicate process and nothing one-sided—not shouting a litany of unfocused demands with measures incommensurate, though stand-ins for communication (or rather punctuation that are commands rather than dialogue) are often fired-off in that fashion.
Most do not have have the patience to suffer negotiation and are quick to disdain the how process as show and an odious, bureaucratic necessity and as the stuff of foregone conclusions due to an unlevel playing-field. Most of the outcry has only produced an effort to bring the remaining part of Ukraine into the folds of NATO and a sloppy batch of sanctions that are prone to backfire, whether in ones backyard or on ones stoop, and the perception that Ukraine only exists as a sort of football to be exchanged between opposing sides. Realpolitik has been endowed with an unstoppable inertia back to Cold War thinking, without considering the question of governance—self-determination being accorded as something inviolable, despite performances given endless plaudits, regular standing-ovations, for results that did not necessarily need encouragement nor merit an encore. Could any one else administer the whole of Ukraine or parts of it any differently? Is the Western limning of the spheres of influence an assumption too far? It is impossible to say, I feel, without meaningful dialogue.

legacy-software

After a thirteen year life-cycle—which sadly seems like an unnatural longevity, something possessed, nowadays when new refrigerators and other durable appliances either and especially computers do not or are not allowed to grow so long in the tooth due to consumer proclivities and notions of life-cycle replacement schedules, the operating system Windows XP is essentially receiving its do not resuscitate orders.
Next week, Microsoft will end customer-support and quit issuing security patches for Windows XP, leaving it increasingly vulnerable to attack and logical integrity on the decline. It simply worked and was accessible, which owes a lot to its stamina—particularly in the technological environment, and I would much rather be using XP, rather than its princeling descendants with their apps and non-intuitive visual platforms. Its success and ubiquity means that some sixty percent of computers in Germany still run on XP—however it is not the hand-me-down CPU tower of ones grandparents that causes concern, rather it is the networks of cash-registers and automated teller machines, plus an undisclosed number of utility relays and other fail-safes. Foreknowledge aside, I am sure that the vacuum will not only be filled by predators but also by white-hat hackers, willing to uphold this vintage.

international pixel-stained technopeasant day

April is not only for fools' errands by there is a host of other lesser known holidays throughout the month--including the above-mentioned observance (23, which seems unfortunately moribund) meant to promote the gratuitous sharing of science-fiction and quality literature in general to the public by professions and quite a foil to the observance of World Intellectual Property Day falling on the 26th.  The remainder of the month is filled-out with a spectrum of apposition and nuance, including two days dedicated to engendering autism awareness (2 or the nearest Sunday) and one Earth Day (22) and one Mother Earth Day (also 22), space-flight (12), vigils for Easter, an ancient Roman celebration of manly virility (falling on the first), days of remembrance, and a feast for Our Lady of Good Council (26) and a day devoted to combating parental alienation (25). What sort of uncelebrated things would you conceptualise with a devoted day and with what surety could you say it's not already out there in the æther?