solidarity or putting words into your mouth

Amid the backdrops of a book launch and the notable scope of the tax-avoidance affair of one of the major charm-offense. Cooperation tends to rule the days of crisis, but quickly becomes unraveled once a fix, however temporary, and parties repair to former, incompatible ways. Stimmt. But does this frank posture really suggest its sinister antithesis? Surrendering sovereignty and enslavement through predatory-lending are glosses neither said nor implied but that seems to be the take-away. What do you think? Are politics beholden to the past and the suspicion of double-speak exclusively or is there cause to default to what’s honest and bona-fided?
soccer league presidents (not to mention the entire thrust of re-election), Germany’s chancellor is presenting a rather stilted and baiting

taxi-dancing or stank

Maybe this is not such a novel idea elsewhere, but Germany hosted its first Pheromone Party over this weekend.

It’s curious how the husbandry and hopefulness of match-making, inured for quite some time to the facility of the internet, is returning to the scientific promise that number-crunching seemed to offer. The arena, I’m sure, is still governed by similar computations, like the nurseries of role-playing and the community, the up-keep of adventure-games, but the approach is taking on certain airs. Optimistic participants (mostly young males) slept in the same tee-shirts over several nights, then froze it in an especially designed freezer bags for later presentation. A few, featured potential pairs were pleased when their assessment of their mates’ scent correlated with their looks and personalities. I wonder what credence a certain smell that becomes familiar over time lends to longevity when put before the horse.

cultivar or arctic blast

The latest tipping of the apple-cart is coming in the form, with already untold reach, of a genetic masterwork in the form of an apple that does not brown when bitten into or sliced up, and incorporating the hardiest traits of all natural apple varieties, can fall quite far from the tree, suited to grow in any climate from the orchards of New England to California to the Russian Far-East.

Fast-food chains, school cafeteria and workplace canteens, not to mention grocery store aisles without much in the way of mandatory disclosure or labeling-requirements, have eagerly adopted these shiny, perfect fruits with an extended shelf-life, constituted in such a way as to avoid independent testing and vetting for safety. The apple’s base genetic material is not altered, its DNA, but rather messenger RNA, the component cleaved from DNA that communicates to the powerhouses of cells what proteins to produce and when, has been modified to turn off the browning function, which I suppose is like clotting to fruit. It sounds rather dangerous to switch something like that off. Arctic is the registered name for the engineered produce, I suppose because it stays white. I wonder what they’ll call the run-away “the royal disease.”

graffiato

Sadly, the artwork adorning the formerly longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall, at a location known as the East-Side Gallery is being dismantled and relocated to make room for luxury apartments along the Spree, despite massive protests and celebrity support. Seeing an exhibit posted to Atlas Obscura about the mysterious Minoan artefact, discovered in 1908, known as the Phaistos Disc, I saw some resemblance to this graffiti in Berlin. I wonder if the disc was the inspiration. Although its provenance is debated, some archeologists think that the disc of raised hieroglyphs may be an ancient press for making moveable type. Some statements are not, I think, meant to be moved.