amplifying random noise

Via Kottke, this take by Randall Munroe of the web-comic xkcd fame (previously here and here) on those viral maps of the USA circulating on the internet made us grin.

this is water

Opening with a parable similar to the one of the puddle, Big Think contributor Philip Perry revisits the 2005 commencement speech (EN/DE) by author David Foster Wallace (*1962 †2008) that may contain a bit of needed antidote for the toxic-levels of polarisation that the world is currently experiencing.
This atmosphere of hyper-nationalism and equally rabid opposition means more than stalemates and pyrrhic victories and disdain for one’s antagonists means that all institutions and experts become subjective, fraud becomes easier to overlook and bigots and bullies few validated. It is an incredibly, almost super-human task to step outside of one’s self and all the trappings of acculturation and personal pride that reinforce the belief in our infallibility, but choosing to ease out of a narrow-minded, doctrinaire attitude can cultivate a critical awareness of our own limiting biases. Sympathetic that empathy and an outward outlook is a challenge even when all other needs are secured, relations, health, and security, Wallace’s delivery acknowledges that so many things that make people feel insecure and precarious in their lives have multiplied whilst the remedies have become staid and perhaps less potent, but no matter how poor, frustrated or bleak things seem we can still afford ourselves the luxury of realising that other ways of seeing are possible and knowing that choices are important and have consequence.

luftwaffenstützpunkt

Having been repeatedly denied access to visit service members stationed at the NATO airbase in İncirlik, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that his country has been left with no choice other than withdraw troops and materiel and re-station them elsewhere.
Turkish authorities have blocked visits by government officials since last summer’s questionable coup d’etat and Germany’s refusal to extradite political asylum-seekers caught up in the swift and subsequent purge. Relations further degraded thereafter. Defence Minister von der Leyen offered that the some two-hundred fifty personnel and Tornado fighter jets now at the base in southern Turkey (where the US also has a presence of around five-thousand soldiers and airmen with their families and fifty or so nuclear warheads) could be re-deployed to an installation in Jordan but the transition would be costly and hamper joint efforts in the fight against the Cosplay Caliphate.

oxen free

Hyperallergic directs to a rather delightful little illustrated study from 1801 that researcher and engraver Joseph Strutt compiled on the games, sports and pastimes of the people of medieval England. Before the advent of modern, genteel distractions, social affairs were really physically demanding and verged towards the sadistic.
The thirty-nine colour plates inspired by Middle Ages painting, song and nursery-rhymes speculate on the rules of hoodman blind (an early version of blind man’s “bluff”—traditionally called buff as in to push or shove around in Old English but as that term fell out of common-usage and play was less violent bluff started making more sense), wrestling, something called “hot cockles” as well as ones whose play defied hazarding a guess as well as more recognisable sports, like jousting tournaments and birding. These fun and games of course were more than a way to stave-off boredom and moreover in a conservative society a way for the sexes to mingle in an albeit regimented but acceptable manner—and makes us wonder how our contemporary games might be regarded by future generations.