bytedance

Though arguably characterising the popular short video montage application as some Trojan Horse infiltrating Americans’ households and siphoning their data to China is a hackneyed red herring with it hitting closer to home with many taking to the platform to insult and ridicule Donald Trump, it is instead worth noting the change in tenor on allowing TikTok to continue to operate within the US from an outright and immediate ban to suiting a quick and slapdash takeover. User data is still collected, presumably pursuant of the same sort of demographic profiling but will graciously be stored on domestic servers and not exported. Though TikTok is Chinese-owned, the app is not available in China. Pressuring the parent company to divest itself of a big part of its business under duress is the stuff of mafia bosses—especially so when Trump thinks that the US government deserves a cut of the sales for having negotiated such a favourable deal.

all presidents rail against the press—it goes with the turf

Sharing the same birthday as President Obama (*1961), reporter and author Helen Amelia Thomas (†2013) was born on this day in 1920.
A veteran member of the White House Press Corps, Thomas had a career as a correspondent that covered ten US presidential administrations, beginning with coverage of President-elect John F. Kennedy in 1960. Over the decades establishing herself as an unrelenting fixture of news media and commanding respect of all world leaders, when asked once what was the difference between democracy in America and democracy in Cuba, Fidel Castro quipped that he did not have to answer to Helen Thomas—which Thomas took as a great compliment.

sant sezni

Having immigrated from his namesake village in Cornwall to the Breton coast and there founded a monastery, according to local lore, Sithney, who is venerated on this day († c. 529), was appointed by God to be the patron of young women seeking husbands. The saint however pled that he would never be at peace and would rather be the patron of mad dogs. Invoked against rabies and for the recovery of the afflicted, water from wells in both Sithney and Guic-Sezni are considered to have restorative properties for our canine friends.

escape artist

Miniature modeller Tatsuya Tanaka (see previously) has been faithfully producing new dioramas of everyday objects repurposed into creative tableaux daily since 2011 and has recently taken to transforming face masks—symbols of the pandemic—into the outdoor summer scenes that we are foregoing for the time being for the sake of each other. Much more to explore at the artist’s website and at the links above.

fotografia di strada

From the always excellent Everlasting Blört, we are given a preview of what looks to be the incredible portfolio of Udinese hobbyist photographer Alberto di Lenardo, discovered posthumously by his granddaughter. Critics privy to the full cache of over eight thousand candid snapshots are comparing him to Vivian Maier—another prolific and accomplished street photographer from Chicago also found and appreciated after her death.