This thoughtful essay from economist Susan Crawford on the inherently paradoxical nature of good governance—how the most vital and integral public services are the most vulnerable to being dismantled by oligarchs by dint of their invisibility—initially reminded us of a parallel phenomena that we encountered a few weeks ago that spoke to how we perceive laisse-faire attitudes and confidence in market-corrections: a search void.
On this day in 1980, Vigdรญs Finnbogadรณttir became the first democratically directly elected female president (forseti—the presiding one and derived from the รsir god Fosite, the personification of justice and reconciliation), assuming the high office in Iceland. Though she initially won by only a slight majority of voters, she went on to serve three more terms, running in two of the elections unopposed, making her also the longest serving—to date—female head of state, with an administration of exactly sixteen years. In 1996, Vigdรญs chose not to be considered for re-election but has remained active since as a goodwill ambassador, lobbying on behalf of minority languages and world peace.
The experimental social media chatbot Tay that quickly suffered a racist meltdown after less than a day’s exposure to the Internet wilds has a younger sibling called Zo, whose programming dictates she follows the protocols of their aggregate idea of a typical teenage American girl.
Our gratitude to Dangerous Minds for introducing us to the graphic design studio called Bands FC that creates sort of crests for music groups in the style of football clubs—and vice versรข—applying a system of vexillography and design rules that are rather clever though not entirely comprehensible to me at least, though they helpfully show their work.
It was hard to choose favourites among the musical homages, but there are many more examples are to be found at the links above plus the opportunity to support their operation by purchasing player/performer trading cards or a stylish team jersey with the group’s own logo.
Via Gizmodo, we learn that NASA’s TESS probe (previously) has begun survey observations that will examine the motion and luminosity of two hundred thousand nearby stars for tell-tale signatures that they are hosting planetary systems.
The advanced, precision satellite will image an area of sky for twenty seven days before moving on to the next patch, ultimately beaming back telemetry that covers about eighty-five percent of the heavens. The goal of the mission is to provide the successor to Hubble, the upcoming flagship James Webb Space Telescope, with a selection of targets to watch. TESS is scheduled to send its first transmission back to Earth in August and report back every thirteen and a half days thereafter—at the point in its orbit it approaches the closest to home. Considering the wonders already discovered relatively unaided, it’s stultifying to try to imagine what may be revealed to us next.
