petard hoist much?

Howling for years how America had become the laughing-stock of the world, Donald Trump got his comeuppance in the first few lines of his ignorant and arrogant speech to the UN general assembly (previously) when his boasts of having accomplished more than any administration in history drew derisive laughter from the audience of heads of state and the diplomatic corps.
Though pretending to shrug off the response, it seemed to come as a shock to him—outside his usual insulated, self-affirming bubble of supporters who hang on his every lie at his campaign rallies—we suspect that Trump will remain determined to wipe the smiles from their faces and further isolate the US from the international community. “We reject the ideology of globalism,” Trump said, “and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism,” adding that the US will withhold aid from countries that challenge America’s agenda and fail to show respect—having only kind words for NATO partner Poland, who last week curried favour by suggesting that the proposed US permanent military installation in the country could be called Fort Trump.

how about a nice game of chess?

Undisclosed until well after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and at a time of severely deteriorated relations seeded with deep distrust and suspicion that a first-strike on the part of the United States was eminent, on this day in 1983 duty officer Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (*1939 - †2017) correctly assessed that reports from the early warning satellite network were a false alarm and thus averted an accidental counter-attack.
Despite heightened tensions and hair-trigger attitudes, Petrov appreciated the gravity of his decision and questioned the reliability of the new system and judged that the five missile signatures detected not to be of the calibre of an offensive, which likely would have been comprised of hundreds of warheads launched simultaneously, in accordance with the policy of mutually assured destruction. Subsequent investigations showed that the system was detecting glints of sunlight reflected on high-altitude clouds.

panda, cyborg, jesus

Though the libretto to the leitmotif “Duel of the Fates” (the recurring theme from the Star Wars prequels) is reportedly a fragment of an ancient, fourteenth century Welsh poem Cad Goddeu (Battle of the Trees) about the legendary enchanter, Gwydion fab Dôn, who animates the trees of the forest to do his bidding translated and then performed in Sanskrit (unlikely), our thanks to Miss Cellania for revealing to us the true lyrics.  Follow the bouncing ball.

rubric

Like when learning there was an algorithm, a certain method to solve for Sudoku, I lost interest in it without really having given a try—dismissing it as an unworthy challenge, I think I was guilty of adopting the same attitude towards Ernő Rubik’s ingeniously engineered, elegant puzzle and could appreciate the correspondent’s initial outlook attending an educational outreach workshop ran under the auspices of the toy.
The brute numbers gave me my dénouement: there are forty three quintillion possible positions, which at a rate of trying each every second (as a computer would do) would take over a trillion years to arrive at the single solution out of those seemingly infinite possibilities. Unsure whether it could even be solved, Rubik played with his prototype for a whole month before arriving at a solution. Some of us are virtuosi while many of us just plod along but with persistence and a willingness to step outside of one’s self we can all be the cube.