principal organ

Germany’s vice-chancellor suggested to France that the country should turn its permanent seat on the United Nations’ Security Council into one for the European Union as a whole.
The five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the UK and the US—all World War II allies, were appointed to prevent the outbreak of future conflicts and share power with ten other member states that serve on a rotating basis, but the five have the crucial power to veto and block resolutions of the supranational governing body. What do you think about that? It is unclear whether Paris would be willing to abdicate in favour of the EU, and critics of the UN hierarchy call this unconditional power undemocratic and leads to gridlock and inaction. The United States, infamously not a part of the League of Nations (the UN’s predecessor) and the conspicuous absence was considered a big factor in the failings of the organisation, refused to join the UN in 1945 unless it was guaranteed a veto.

unchartered

Inspired by a transcontinental bicycle trip, we discover via Kottke, covering the US and Canada in a big loop, artist Peter Gorman has created a series of what he describes as barely maps, remixing memories of intersections, boundaries, city layouts, empty spaces and other inventions and interventions of civil engineering. While these minimalist maps may have relinquished some of their value as a guide, they certainly still convey the iconic quirks of the familiar—like the patterns one conjures out of stellar constellations, as Gorman depicts state metropolises relative to each other in the stars. More to explore at the links above.

common-parlance

As Slashdot reports, misinformation was chosen as Dictionary.com’s word of the year, as a nuanced term hybridised by the times and distinct from disinformation by dint of the intent to mislead.
More reprehensible than the propaganda of latter variety, to be misinformed can mean one is an unwitting participant in forwarding an unscrupulous agenda and demands that we examine more thoroughly and responsibly what and how we share. Honourable mentions include backlash, self-made and representation for growing trends of inclusiveness in media and entertainment and is aligned with Oxford’s choice of toxic. Past emblematic words picked by this organisation were complicit and xenophobia.

trump dump

Writing for Vanity Fair, Bess Levin serves up a predictably unpalatable digest of Carnival Barker in Chief’s antics that you might have missed—including his intensifying anger over a domestic automotive manufacturer reality-based (that is moored to economic factors as opposed to being reality television-based) announcing that it will discontinue more operations in North America, reneging on a campaign promise it was not his to make or keep. We believe he is under the impression that if the campaign can be stretched out in perpetuity, supporters won’t expect delivery.  Trump’s boasts of bullying the car company into submission (Trump’s tariff wars and the lack of government support for green technologies are making the brand less competitive and driving this work force reduction) are bound to backfire magnificently.