pardon my french

Due to the candid and colourful language of Chaucer, we learn via The History of English that Middle English unguarded vulgarities was referred to as reverting to the Anglo-Saxon.
Despite how sensibilities change, some words remain too taboo for common parlance and polite company and there’s certainly much history in its waxing and waning. A particular intensifier that’s in certain contexts lightly veiled as fcuk was given its first imprimatur far better disguised though the cognoscenti could decipher the meaning: the mixed English and Latin poem of the sixteen-hundreds titled Fleas, flies and friars lobbies an indictment against the monks as non sunt in cœli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk—by advancing to the next letter, i and j as u, w and v not yet distinguished to impugn their religious community, masking the women of Ely and their trysts that make the religious figures hypocrites. We’re also reminded throughout how bawdy and lewd The Canterbury Tales is to inspire such an expression as the above reversion and how history will probably either judge us for our prudishness, cruelty or crudity of the graffiti will leave behind.

tерменво́кс

Via Boing Boing, we are introduced to the repertoire of the electronic virtuosi of theremin (previously) performer Konstanin Kovalsky (*1890 – †1976) accompanied by Vyacheslav Mescherin’s (*1923 – †1995) orchestra.  For a span of over thirty years from the late 1950s through 1990 music from this ensemble, their compositions were heard daily as the incidental music and soundscaping of radio and television programming. Most was mood-music/easy-listening (Lawrence Welk sort of stuff) but special commissions also included an electronic version of The Internationale to be beamed into outer space with the launch of Sputnik. Find more of their collaborations here and at the link above.

liften

In order to curb congestion along the capital’s crowded corridors, Brussels’ municipal authorities are encouraging the return of hitchhiking, albeit with the help of a digital intermediary, to match up drivers with spare seats—most ridership as in most of the developed world is a one occupant per vehicle).
At first it struck me as a gimmicky partnership, but the point of putting the scheme behind a mobile application is not to try to rival other ride-hailing and rider-sharing services but to instil a sense of trust, insofar as the person that one’s who is accepting the ride may be a stranger but is not unknown to the network, registration and vetting required and a digital fingerprint is left in case something untoward were to happen. There’s no payment involved for using the service, leaving any exchange up to the driver and passenger, if any, and the chief motivation is to reduce traffic. The app could also, I suppose, become a gauge of reputation for problem riders or problem drivers. What do you think? Would you sign on? Old, traditional solutions are often not the most sexy or exciting but still the most reliable.

im westen nichts neues

Whilst there has been no official response from Berlin regarding the transcribed exchange between Trump and Zelenskiy, the Foreign Ministry was forthcoming with details on aid expenditures it has provided to Ukraine bilaterally and through EU funding streams since the country was invaded and annexed by Russia in 2014.
The newly elected president (whom to his great credit) was not willing to entertain quid pro quo on Trump’s terms—though was unable to resist the delivering a few lines of flattery by mentioning his stay in Trump Tower), walked-back his criticism (it being questionable whether he wasn’t going along with Trump in the first place) and expressed gratitude to all European leaders for what aid and assistance his country has received, though reserving the right to frame the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which bypasses Ukraine, as a threat to energy security—rather than the desperate, cloying, late-stage petro-capitalism it is.

gb 12982-2004

Adopted this day in 1949 and first flown by the People's Liberation Army over Tiananmen Square three days later, the national flag of China charged with five golden stars representing unity among the social classes had its construction details presented the following during the first plenary session of the People's Political Consultative Conference.
The design by economist Zeng Liansong (*1971 - †1999) was selected by Zhou Enlai (though choosing to edit out the hammer and sickle in the large star in the canton, the upper-most hoist quarter of flags) out of some three thousand entrants. The published instructions, then distributed across the country, are filed under a mandatory standard Guobiao (国标, GB), similar to (and conforming with in most cases) ISO or DIN.