viennese sandbox: the third man

For a long weekend, PfRC took a trip to Vienna (Wien) and we are just full of impressions of the beautiful and storied city to sort out and can’t wait to return again soon. The next few instalments will share just a few episodes of a protracted but very inundating and rewarding visit. On a fine forenoon, we went to the the expansive amusement park, known as the Wurstelprater on the banks of the Danube—the divertissements for the public enjoyment going all the way back to 1766 when Austro-Hungarian Emperor Joseph II declared the former royal hunting grounds now a preserve of family entertainment.

In 1897, to celebrate the diamond jubilee of the ascent of Emperor Franz Joseph I to the throne, the construction of the world’s largest and most venerable Ferris wheel (Riesenrad ) was commissioned, and we took a turn on of the fancy carriages, thankfully sheltered from the gale. The Riesenrad is one the Viennese landmarks featured in the 1949 noir thriller, The Third Man, where a pulp-fiction writer finds himself caught up in international intrigue in an Allied-occupied capital—the city having been split into sectors, like Berlin after World War II, but not partitioned (due to the gentlemen’s agreement that NATO eastern most reach was to be West Germany).
A package ticket afforded us amazing, encompassing views of the Vienna from above—later travelling to the signals tower on one of the silt islands of the picturesque river. The Donauturm had a more commanding vantage but not nearly as fun as being gently rotated, though the high-speed elevator and the enticement of bungee-jumping platform were exciting. In the carnival grounds, we discovered another oddity of sovereignty just in the shadow of the Riesenrad in the form of the spherical Kugelmugel house. This micronation was transported later to its present address on Anti-Fascism Square after authorities refused to allow the architect and founder’s, Edwin Lipburger, design to remain on his own grounds.
Proclaiming independence in 1984, Kugelmugel claims thousands of non-resident citizens and issues its own stamps and passports—these franking privileges having gotten the founder in trouble but now tolerated by the Austrian government, but not going so far as to give them legitimacy. Though behind barbed-wire, I think that this is the first, extant micronation that we’ve had the pleasure to visit, and we have to wonder about its definition.

tintin and milou

During the height of the hunt for suspected accomplices to the latest wave of terror attacks, officials in capital of Brussels implored nervous residents and citizen-journalist not to sound-off about the ongoing investigation, lest they inadvertently tip off those they sought after. It’s a little amazing to think that commentary and the its meta-narrative can unfold in real time and there’s no single abiding and authoritative version, but some jump to make that claim. The people of Belgium obliged and there were no calls of a media blackout during the lock-down nor suspicions that the government was trying to conceal something and they obliged in kind by inundating the channels with feline missives—of the memetic variety to convey support for discretion. Many took the extended opportunity to remain calm and not cowering indoors but rather to defiantly dress up and remix their pets.

5x5

analemma: a team of American meteorologists is delivering a nation-wide sunset quality forecast

♘: A chess set whose pieces cue the way they are the be moved

pillbox: profile of one courageous icon of a dark and tragic day, Jackie O’s pink Chanel suit fifty-two years on

easter eggs: trying googling “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”

profile pic: animated portraiture by Romain Laurent that highlights isolated movements

unter den linden

A century ago tomorrow, Albert Einstein first presented his equations that dealt with two macroscopic fundamental forces of Nature—gravity and electromagnetism—to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin in an attempt to generalise his previous fete—no mean achievement, in asserting E=mc²—that binds together mass and energy and applies a universal speed limit.
Already paring back non-objective that tended to compartmentalise and create illusions based on the beholder, Einstein sought to incorporate the theory of gravitation and yield something more satisfying than the classical idea that gravity was like an elastic band that was infinite and instantaneous, but rather masses sinking and rising due to their warping of spacetime. Experiment and observation confirm the framework again and again, but just as normalcy appears to abandon us at the scale of very tiny things, Einstein’s physics also seem to buckle under highly energetic conditions. When things are small enough or hot enough to invoke the other fundamental forces, the Strong (holds atomic nuclei together) and the Weak (responsible for radioactive decay), General Relativity suffers the same fate as Sir Isaac Newton’s mechanics. Science and knowledge of the Cosmos is always going to be something provisional, and I wonder if it’s not just the bias of our size and frame-of-reference to think everything ought to applicable at every level. Is that a reasonable expectation or the exactly the opposite?  Einstein himself is quoted (though perhaps one ought to be cautious of citations next to photographs on the internet, the intent remains) as saying, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one.” Eulogizing the loss of a life-long friend, Einstein really reflected, “this distinction between the past, present and future, is only an illusion, however tenacious.” What do you think?