tarnhelm, sorting hat

Entomologists working in south west India have found a new species of tiny spider whose camouflage—designed to disguise it as a dried leaf, to make it invisible like Siegfried’s helmet—and have dubbed it Eriovixia gryffindori after one of the academy’s founders Godric Griffindor.
In the Harry Potter series, Griffindor was renown for his preternatural knack for placing students in the fraternity or sorority house that would best help them thrive, and passed the gift along to his enchanted Sorting Hat to carry on with placement at Hogwart’s after he was gone. The discoverers have been so far silent on what magical properties this little spider might possess.

afturkalla

As the Reykjavík Grapevine informs, former Icelandic interior minister Ögmundur Jónasson granted a lengthy interview to EU think-tank Katoikos, with a warrant to speak for those sometimes feeling exiled in their own or adopted homes, in which he addresses his thought on the rise in nationalism, the financial crisis that ravaged the tiny island nation and—perhaps most sensationally, his standing up and eventual dismissal of the FBI.

There had been some discussion and rumours circulating around the 2011 incident, but Jónasson had not yet spoke about it candidly beforehand. After having been approached (and received in a cold manner, though the message did not seem to go through) in the early summer about touring the servers that were reputed to be hosting some of the data of the WikiLeaks platform. Despite the initial rebuffing reception, three months later, a whole planeload of agents came, with designs on framing the WikiLeaks founder. This act of defiance is certainly significant despite the fact that I wonder if Julian Assange has gone a little stir-crazy and am reminded nowadays of Harvey Dent’s line to Batman: “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Jónasson made it understood in no uncertain terms that the FBI had no jurisdiction here and should leave immediately, the minister far more willing to side with the whistle-blowers over the domestic intelligence agency. At this point in our story, Assange had already surrendered to UK authorities, having leaked his major caches of communiques throughout 2010 but had not yet secured asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London

do the bat-tusi

Sometime ago, I recall noting how all the gadgets and booby-traps from the classic Batman television series were all really conveniently and explicitly labelled. As pleased as I was to discover that the collection is still growing, going back to look at the original post from Dangerous Minds (at the first link), I was now finding myself more perplexed with the nature of such ‘captions.’
Was this running gag something for the benefit of the audience and expedience in the narrative only or was it some sort of meta reference? I could just as well imagine the Boy Wonder telling the Caped Crusader something blindingly obvious—eagerness made all the more supercilious by the labelling. I still suppose it is preferred over something machine-readable only like a bar-code or something with no expository value. Good old Alfred was probably behind of it, but one could also imagine that many a diabolical plot was foiled thanks to basic literacy. What do you think? The items from ACME mail-order catalogue that was always Wile E Coyote’s go-to resource also left no doubt what they were to do as well.

6x6

bed-in: an epically funky cover of John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance by Louis Armstrong with a chorus of back-up singers, via Marginal Revolution

for any occasion: the US Space Agency, NASA, has just created its own GIPHY board

on the shoulders of giants: the vice-president elect is also a good judge of anatomy

evaporating people: hundreds of thousands of Japanese looking to start all over disappear from respectable society to reinvent themselves on invisible black-market, via Super Punch

udderly serious: oregano and seaweed might significantly reduce environmentally damaging bovine flatulence

the purge: after installing a notorious climate change denier as a warden of the environment, the president-elect’s transition team is circulating an intrusive survey to identify those not marching in lock-step