hubertusburg (12. 400)

For Easter Sunday, we returned to Wermsdorf and the Rococo palace built at the behest of elector and Polish king Augustus the Strong, the hunting lodge (see previously here and here), known as the Saxon Versailles whose expansive grounds are also reminiscent of Schwetzingen in the Neckartal. 

After the war, the palace was used as a hospital and in 2006, refurbished as specialist clinic with a psychotherapy, neurology and paediatric department and also contains the state archives and a museum hosting revolving exhibits, currently for local son and inmate Karl Hans Joachim Janke, prodigious modeller and illustrator of fantastic aerospace concepts which blur the line between engineering and art brut (see previously).  

Diagnosed with schizophrenia after being discharged from the military, Janke was afforded a meagre pension to operate a workshop crafting toy airplanes but due to wartime rationing for cardboard and other supplies had to discontinue his hobby, remanded to psychiatric care at Hubertusberg after a less than patriotic outburst for the lack of resources for even the smallest of distractions for children. At hospital, Janke never lacked for material and his designs and correspondence were rediscovered in an attic of the castle in 2000, including over three-thousand drawings for innovation aircraft, concepts for harnessing nuclear energy and the Earth’s magnetic field for propulsion.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Nutella introduced (with synchronoptica), the new flag of South Africa (1994) plus Japanese boomerang words

seven years ago: unprepared for the GDPR, assorted links to revisit, a walking tour of Tbilisi plus a suit filed over campaign interference

eight years ago: an abandoned Soviet base in East Germany, Eastern European animation, French political terms, manhole accessories plus Türkiye dedicates a museum victims of a supposed coup

nine years ago: the site of the first nuclear reactor plus a startup generator

eleven years ago: 420 friendly plus Kurt Vonnegut’s commencement speech

laguna hainersee oder living lagovida (12. 399)

Returning to the Störmthaler See campgrounds for Easter weekend with a view of the floating, phantom steeple, the Vineta created to evoke the leveled settlements during the height of mining and mechanisation, we visited some neighbouring lakes and marinas reclaimed from a heavily industralised landscape like all of the Leipziger Neuseenland, the Haubitzer, Hainer and Kahnsdorfer lakes were developed in the early to mid-1990s when a large open-cast lignite coal extraction operation was flooded and slowly converted into beach-front properties with resorts and recreational boating.  

 The bulk of the land too polluted to be rehabilitated, the fields of Witnitz II stretching for kilometre in every direction, now forms the largest photovoltaic park in Europe—the endless array not being quite so photogenic under overcast skies and at speed but impressive nonetheless. Inland, Kahnsdorf features a manorial estate owned once by the scholarly family of theologians, the Ernestis of Leipzig, the property, suffering years of neglect and near demolition during the DDR era as a relict of feudalism, celebrated for hosting the introductory meeting of Friedrich Schiller and jurist Christian Gottfried Körner of Dresden, of an established household of patrons of the arts and culture who entertained Goethe, Hiller and Mozart, on the first of July 1785.  

 Later a financial backer who saved the poet from wrack and ruin, Schiller dedicated An der Freudschaft (“On Friendship”) to Körner and the pivotal moment marking the turn around of Schiller’s fortunes was the inspiration, according to the premises, for Ode to Joy. The surrounding grounds are a park and a pasture for a local group of alpaca enthusiasts who sell wool products in the cafe of the main building.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a wine so nice they named it thrice (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

seven years ago: robots assembling IKEA furniture, the Paris riots of 1968 plus springtime in Wiesbaden

eight years ago: an appreciation of edutainment, AI and implicit bias plus a profile of a North Korea day

nine years ago: a termite tent, the Sea-Monkey kingdom plus another experimental chatbot

eleven years ago: a light installation in Oberhausen, an arctic henge in Iceland plus EU lend-lease policy for Ukraine

finite jest (12. 398)

Via Strange Company, we are treated to a studied, insider’s look into the profession of a medieval court jester, whose roles were not limited and limned by buffoonery, classified with the broadest of distinctions as “natural” and “licensed” fools—the former being kept creatures by dint of deformity, physical prodigy or mental frankness and the latter being given a wide latitude for critique and commentary. Those enjoying royal office were not only engaged at the pleasure of the monarch for their honed wits and skills but also were frequently charged with discharging household duties and other administrative tasks as well, during times of conflict, were elevated to expendable ombudsmen, though these second-class emissaries were often not received well, giving rise to the phrase, “Don’t shoot the messenger.” We further learn that it was customary for a jester to have in their quiver not only a recognised costume and signature schickt but also a trademark wooden sceptre, a marotte, carved with their trademark visage (see previously, see also). More from Just History Posts and Strange Company at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus redacted Ewoks

seven years ago: RIP Carl Kasell, Banksy’s Bethlehem hotel, crypto markets, artist Yuge Zhou plus the meaning of Japanese emoji

eight years ago: meals-ready-to-eat from militaries around the world plus more adult beverages of France mapped

nine years ago: campaigning against female circumcision plus a board game exploring race and privilege

twevle years ago: coded instructions for a deadly toxin plus Germany’s Energiewende

iec 60906-1 (12. 397)

Via Pasa Bon! we are directed to the Digital Museum of Plugs and Sockets which gives in extensive detail information regarding domestic and heavy-duty electricity standards and outlet types for countries all over the world, including exhibits on rare and superannuated for different kinds of current and low-voltage applications. There’s considerably less variation nowadays, but camping we’ve encountered a lot of these alternative groundings and have a kit of adapters and converters for contingencies, and it’s interesting to see how hybrid models incorporate USB standards for one’s personal electronics. The International Electrotechnical Commission published the above specification for plugs that look similar but are not identical in terms of pin number and spacing, wattage tolerance, etc with an eye towards a universal standard for the European Union (see Schuko design has a friendly face) and though harmonisation has continued apace since the 1990s, enforcement of the project has been put on hold.

great calamary (12. 396)

Published as literature to educate and to disabuse attendees of the 1883 International Fisheries Exhibition held on the campus of the Royal Horticultural Society in South Kensington, the event running from May to October perhaps not as storied as other Victorian world’s fairs but heretofore attracting the most visitors and exhibitors due to its rather well-apportioned aquaria on a scale never before seen and menagerie of sea birds and marine mammals gathered from all over the Empire. Distributed by the Literary Committee, also charged with documenting the proceedings of the exhibit, the pair of illustrated guides commissioned of one Henry Lee, “sometimes naturalist of the Brighton Aquarium,” were meant to unmask the mythos of the deep by glossing the monsters and fables of the sea and tempering the imagination with scientific reason and technological and exploratory advances that left little room for the leviathans and merfolk. Demonstrating how such encounters could be explained away while expressing concern over less fantastic natural treasures and how our penchant for conquest could be their undoing as well, it’s interesting timing to come across these handbooks as the first documented footage of a colossal squid, a Kraken albeit a baby one, has been captured and shared. More from Public Domain Review at the link above, with an array of fantastical sightings including the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary and barnacle geese.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: oceanic microplastic plus Britain from Above 

eight years ago: leek pasta plus the Turkish expatriate vote

nine years ago: worlds out of balance plus auditory hallucinations

eleven years ago: a night at the opera

infinite quilt (12. 395)

Via fellow internet caretaker and peripatetic, Messy Nessy Chic, having keep this tab open all day as a screen-saver and palette-cleanser, we would be remiss not to share this mediative botanical recursion that slowly zooms through a continuous and unending landscape of branches, leaves, roots and reefs which this halting gif-capture does not do justice. This Webby award winning collaboration from artists Sophia Schomberg and Nikolaus Baumgarten, the title Arkadia/Arcadia refers to the utopian ideal of pastoralism in harmony with Nature, a vision both bucolic and unspoilt by those humans who lightly manage it.

atl (12. 394)

Founded this day in 1925 with a groundbreaking ceremony on an abandoned auto racetrack leased by the city at no charge other than the commitment to develop it into an airfield and to name the property Candler Field in honour of the donor, former mayor and Coca-Cola tycoon Asa Candler (see previously, having purchased the recipe for the tonic from chemist John Pemberton for $238.98 in 1888), the modern day Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International is the busiest in the world by passenger volume, serving over a hundred million travellers annually. It is also the headquarters and main hub of Delta airlines as well as several global air freight companies. The inaugural mail flight operated by Florida Airways in mid-September of the following year, along with Pitcairn/Eastern aviation that ultimately secured exclusive rights to the route of the neighbouring state still remains as the most frequent destination for planes departing Atlanta heading to the Orlando, Tampa, Miami and Fort Lauderdale areas. Cancún is the most popular international destination, at half the passenger volume of the Florida capital.

synchronoptica

one year ago: 90s clip art (with synchronoptica), a self-defence manual, avian sleep-singing plus the origins of brain-washing

seven years ago: the Silurian hypothesis, empires of commodification plus the textile art of Paul Steinberg

eight years ago: more Easter salutations, European long distance trekking routes plus adhering to the letter of the law

nine years ago: a list of banned bar patrons plus the new name for the Czech Republic

twelve years ago: ribbon-awareness month, saving the pollinators plus conspiratorial thinking

gleichschaltung (12. 393)

From the relatively contemporaneous neologism developing apace with electrification, the term which historians employ to describe the system that Adolf Hitler used to impose totalitarian coordination and control over all aspects of German society within the constitution bounds of the Weimar Republic—from the press, to the economy, to culture and education—and refers to the conversion of alternating to direct current, technically rectification or phasing—it is usually translated in the socio-political sense of Nazification as “synchronisation” or “bringing into line.” The Nazis adopted similar terminology, like Ausschaltung, the act of switching off, the deletion of anyone counter to this fusion of party and state. Enabled by a series of laws enacted following Hitler’s election as chancellor in the space of nineteen months that undergirded various orders and decrees: measures include the declaration martial law following the burning of the Reichstag that suspended civil liberties and the media outlet, a cover for voter intimidation and suppression of opposition parties ahead of the general election; the formally titled “Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich” suspending parliament and giving the executive the power to pass legislation without them—called the Enabling Act, Ermächtigungsgesetz; deploying chancellery-appointed governors in each constituent state to reconstitute local legislatures according to ballots cast in the above 5 Match 1933 elections; the Law for the Restoration of a Professional Civil Service which dismantled the bureaucracy. Later supplemented by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda to promote Nazi values and prejudices through clubs and associations (infiltrating existing ones and establishing compulsory membership in new ones) and oversee news and entertainment, and industry and trade unions were also aligned. Those whose loyalty was deemed unimpeachable, regardless of station or influence, were rewarded with the Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) programme with vacation resorts, hobbyists groups, vocational opportunities and motor clubs, leading to the building of the Autobahn network and the Volkswagen—which also aided in the perception that they were bolstering the German economy through make-work initiatives.

glass menagerie (12. 392)

The epidemic whipped into the height of frenzy on this day in 1954 following newspaper reporters and appeals for intervention from local authorities, the state governor and ultimately president Eisenhower, the Seattle Windshield Pitting Panic is considered to be a text-book example of mass delusion—sometimes mislabelled as mass hysteria, classed with near contemporary occurrences like Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast—propagated by rumour, mis- and disinformation and mass media when residents of the Washington capital and surrounding communities were invited to closely examine their cars’ windshields and discovered them to be scored with previously unnoticed pits, dents and dings. I recall getting out of a movie once with a lot of car-bombings and in the parking lot of the theatre was inspired to check below the steering column and was petrified to feel a bundle of wires—though quickly calmed down once I realised that I had never before poked around down there. Originally suspected to be a rash of sabotage or vandalism, but the scale and scope quickly lead to other theories arising beyond a conspiracy of hoodlums, sourcing the normal weathering to a range of agents from sand flea eggs hatching, cosmic rays, a nearby large radio transmitter operated by the navy, UFOs, a shift in the Earth’s magnetic field to fallout from nuclear testing. As damage reports preoccupied police, a committee of scientists from the state university was called together to survey cars on campus and compare to reported incidents. Concluding the wear and tear was the result of average road-use, calls to the police abruptly dropped off two days later.

 

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Rennsteiglied (with synchronoptica) plus wondrous woodcuts of astral phenomena

 

seven years ago: Thousand Insects of Japan plus creative anatomies

 

eight years ago: illustrator Boris Artzybasheff

 

nine years ago: more words with no English equivalent 

eleven years ago: Banksy graffiti at the GCHQ plus sea water to fuel

9x9 (12. 391)

field of vision: the evolution of eyes branching out as on a tree of life   

land-grant college: the federal-funding based model for American post-secondary education is based on a deliberate post-World War II decision to outsource expertise and experimentation rather than compartmentalise it within government consortia  

habeas corpus: relenting to the idea that some people have no rights is siding with authoritarianism and hoping you aren’t next   

under construction: transform any modern website a late 90s GeoCities masterpiece—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest   

thank you easter bunny—bwak, bwak: more on the controversial, re-constructed, retcon of the holiday mascot 

⌂: the tiny house in the middle of IBM’s eight-bit character set, adopted by PC clones with the 1981 Code Page 437—see previously—and its possible relation to Blissymbolics 

rinki-tink in oz: deportation and administrative oversight in L Frank Baum’s paracosm   

uniwersytet latający: US institutions higher education can defy Trump’s crackdown by outreach and going underground, as Polish universities did under Communism—via Kottke   

recaptcha: corvids demonstrate surprising mental acuity for identifying outlier shapes and geometric regularity—via MetaFilter

synchronoptica

one year ago: St Liduina (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: US refusing Syrian refugees, American kakistocracy plus some local prehistory

eight years ago: bunking busting bombs, the White House Easter Egg Roll plus a grim future vision of US national parks

nine years ago: animated viruses, solar sails, more chatbot failures plus a walk from Wiesbaden to Mainz

eleven years ago: Ukrainian break-away republics

 

kitchen sink realism (12. 390

The production team behind the difficult Netflix series Adolescence about incel culture has announced it will reboot the incredibly bleak Cold War mini-series Threads (see previously, see also), aired in 1984 that depicted Sheffield harrowed by a nearby nuclear strike. BBC documentary filmmaker Mick Jackson, behind the original screening will participate in crafting episodic drama which the network feels whose time has sadly returned four decades on.

not magic—it’s all done with mirrors (12. 389)

Via MetaFilter, we thoroughly enjoyed this latest music video from OK Go (previously), for a song with the generic title Love, that features rather than CGI an amazingly choreographed array of industrial robots that the singers interact with precise timing to create one four minute continuous, kaleidoscopic shot (one can see more on the making of the spectacle here though the execution is transparent and no less upstagingly mind-breaking for it). It was filmed in the Keleti (Eastern) train station of Budapest.

freelandia (12. 388)

Not to be confused with the micronation formed by the terra nullis of along the borderlands of Serbia and Croatia but apparently both inspired by the Fredonia of the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup, courtesy of Weird Universe, we are directed toward the ascend and crash of the alternate airline conceived by young venture capitalist Kenneth Moss and in operation from from 1973, folding the next year after only fifty flights due an unsustainable business model. Those few passengers, however, the experience was one of a kind and never again to be emulated by even the most exclusive luxury air-carriers. Cashing out of the stock market at the right moment, Moss found himself incredibly wealthy and sought to do something fulfilling with his life. After a brief and abortive stint as a holy man in Spain failed, Moss returned to California and brainstormed with his future business partner Darcy Flynn about a sojourn to Bali, musing it would be nice to have a whole retinue of friends and like-minded people coming along, just as one might plan a caravanning road-trip. After a year, Moss and Flynn secured landing rights at major airports from the US Federal Aviation Administration, bought a used Douglas DC-8-20, secured a well trained pilot and cabin crew, avoiding high airport surcharges by declaring it to be a travel club instead of a commercial airline and positioned itself as a no-profit with all after-cost proceeds going to worthy causes, like food banks and free clinics. Fare prices, offset by annual membership fees of fifty dollars, were about one third the price of tickets offered by major carriers. Voting on destinations by ticketed passengers, even with rather epic stories of en-route changes of course with a scheduled flight from Newark, New Jersey to Brussels adding a stop-over in Rome and a second one in Bangor, Maine for a lobster dinner, future itineraries were planned including round the world-trips ($400 per passenger) but financial difficulties had already begun as it was a problem to fill flights. This proved to be a problem despite the well-appointed interior of the jet, no class distinction, most of the banks of seats removed and replaced with oversized pillows fitted with safety harnesses, waterbeds and an arcade with home-cooked organic fare on the menu—and surely over favours to create a cross-continental party. Stewards were outfitted in black and creme berets and donned uniforms reminiscent of Flash Gordon. Unable to fill sets and with the oil crisis making cheap flights untenable, Freelandia went out of business and was sued for false advertising.

kvinnan med handväskan (12. 387)

Photographed on this day on 1985 in Växjö by journalist Hans Runesson features the subject of Danuta Danielsson protesting against a Neo-Nazi rally with her handbag, captured at a decisive moment of resistance when Communists were prepared to deliver their rebuttal to Nordic Realm Party supporters and drove out the latter, the residents driving them to hide in the train station toilet until authorities transported them away. Danielsson was of Polish Jewish heritage and her mother survived internment in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, but kept her identity anonymous until 2014 when a number of statues were proposed and commissioned illustrating her act of defiance.

 

synchroptica

one year ago: a self-righting ship cabin (with synchronoptica), a return visit to a local castle plus the cats of the Mexican presidential palace

seven years ago: homonyms, assorted links to revisit plus day names in north west Africa

eight years ago: cultural ambassadors, the overview effect, the Summer of Love, doodling with AI plus a real life medical tricorder 

 

nine years ago: fashematics plus a visit to a local museum

 

eleven years ago: internet gods plus a collection of map pins

 

 

tabella defixionis (12. 386)

Popular and widely employed during Greco-Roman times well into the Christian era, curse tablets (κατάδεσμος—a binding spell) were often discretely or surreptitiously buried with the dead to settle a grudge with surviving competitors over business and romantic affairs and even among rival sports teams as a way to petition the chthonic gods or place spirits to compel malediction for the after life. Like the cache of twenty-two curses recently discovered in an ancient cemetery near Orleans, the most common media was thin lead scrolls as due to their malleability could be easily inscribed and were also an element associated with the underworld deities. What makes this particular discover unique is that one grave contained a curse written in Gaulish, the vulgar language of the region in common parlance (though really preserved in written form) for centuries after the Roman conquest. Because of the paucity of documentation for Gallo-Roman translating is a challenge but there is a another class of curse tablets called Voces mysticae (vox magica) which do not seem to be rendered in any known language and are a secret invocation that only demons can decipher—with scholars teasing out palindromes (previously here and here) and boustrophedon. Much more at The History Blog at the link above.

turnabout is fair play (12. 385)

Though neither “kissing ass” to placate his malignant narcissism nor advancing retaliatory tariffs, a move by China that has only escalated the trade war, without a matching concession from the US (America has not doubled duty on exports from Europe and halved its schedule announced on Liberation Day but the blanket ten percent over and above any established scheme is still there as are last month’s tariffs on steel and aluminium and auto exports), the Europe Union (accused of being specifically established to cheat America) is underestimating its power and has an unprecedented chance to establish itself as a true counterweight and alternative to US hegemony.  Trump did back down over the bond market, although not before engaging in some insider trading, and those rates were based on deficits in terms of good exchanged only (we all have a trade imbalance with our preferred supermarket), not services like banking and tech that are the chief US exports, and Europe had the capability to hasten the retreat from the safe haven of American debt if it uncoupled itself from fintech and franchises with a variety of tools already in its quiver: taxing social media, building up its own alternatives and curtailing non-domestic credit payments, which while bank debit cards have been nearly universally accepted for some time, it was not until the last decade that Visa became widely honoured. The consumer plays a big part too, as Canada has shown, with boycotts being more potent than a symbolic tit-for-tat—and that sentiment is a prevailing factor in Europe’s strength: they play by the rules, at times to their detriment, and when there is already a widening credibility gap for the US, and still believe in science and incontrovertible facts (global warming, the climate catastrophe, that race and gender are social constructs, the dignity of the worker, social safety nets and the common weal), not only making the euro a more attractive reserve currency by pivoting away from US-based services but also by further denying the aspiring petrostate another market to encroach upon by holding the lead in clean energy. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was in part a proxy war to supply Europe with natural gas from two competing bidders and the EU is well-positioned to free itself from both.

synchronoptica

one year ago: photographing the pyramids (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: a curious optical illusion 

eight years ago: more airport security theatre, Middle East diplomacy from the Trump administration plus more gun-violence in America

nine years ago: renderings of emoji across different platforms, the paper airplanes of Peter Max plus making Iceland a safe haven for freedom of expression

eleven years ago: the Saar protectorate plus the photography of Alfred Eisenstadt

use case (12. 384)

Keith Houston of Shady Characters, who has just published a new book on the evolution of the face with tears of joy emoji (previously), reports on their repurposing as featured in a new streaming series (which we’ve started) that explores incel and misogynistic online culture through in-group coding. Such coopting is nothing new (see previously here and here) but the collective autobiographical vocabulary is noteworthy if not dispiriting, like using 💯 for the prevalent idea that twenty percent of men attract eighty percent of women and thus the latter are blameworthy for their lack of success. Kidney beans are somehow also a part of the mansophere.  In related news, Houston also highlights how all office chatter is the same and peppered with emoji—no matter the context or gravity—through the lens of the “Houthi PC small group”—which was not so small even before the accidental inclusion of a journalist into the war room—with reactions like 👊🇺🇸🔥 and 🙏 celebrating airstrikes and potentially compromising national security.

basket case (12. 383)

Though resigned to a therapeutic activity, the art of basket-weaving is something unlike other textile crafts that defies mechanisation and automation and is being championed clubs and consortia all over embracing these ancient ways with both materially traditional and novel substrates, rallying around the 🧺 emoji to express affiliation, included in 2018 rollout. There was some discussion a few years ago about adding a truck emoji as a concession to conservative Americans, a symbolic move that probably would have garnered more mileage and not seen as a bow to tribalism—see also here and here—the pickup created in 2020 in response being seen as too twee and the expectation was for some monster all-terrain SUV. Originating with the asylum system of the nineteenth century with institutionalised individuals mildly dehumanised with such activities that were regarded as childlike and busy-work, basket weaving was somewhat rehabilitated following World War I as occupational therapy for returning soldiers suffering from shell-shock (what we would now recognise as post-traumatic stress disorder), the title epithet probably comes from not the activity but rather the wicker wheelchairs provided to recovering and disabled service members—like the etymology of gone to hell in a hand basket stems from being carted off on a litter. Find out more about those retaking the craft and carrying it forward from It’s Nice That at the link above.

digital preservation jumpers (12. 382)

Courtesy of Web Curios (many more delights at the weekly roundup), we are directed towards this wonderful collection of knitwear with pixelated patterns inspired by legacy media formats that celebrates the intersectionality of punchcards and prints, albeit at scale rather than projects that one could undertake oneself. There’s also a sweater featuring the jumping dinosaur that Google displays when off-line. Detailed designs from archivist and creator Leontien Talboom of Cambridge library at the link above—even the floppy disks have the detail of the notch punched that made read-only ones writable and utilise both sides—replaced in the 3½" version with a shutter to prevent over-writing.

synchronoptica

one year ago: resurfacing buried rivers (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: a visit to the University of Heidelberg  

eight years ago: a cantilevered, overhanging pool, Lake Nemi, assorted links to revisit plus a Star Trek podcast

nine years ago: breaking the fourth wall, Jevon’s Paradox plus the Daily Mail to acquire Yahoo!

eleven years ago: a pioneering teutholog

9x9 (12. 381)

domestic box office: in response to escalating tariffs, China is curtailing the number of American films screened in the country  

redeployment: decision to reposition US troops stationed in Poland causing concern  

dixonary: improprieties in pronunciation among New Englanders 

 𐦉: the Latin alphabet expressed as hieroglyphics  

now is a great time to buy—$djt: social media posts and a spike in options activity may indicate insider trading within the administration  

א₀: physicist Dominic Walliman charts out the fields of mathematics and how the academic informs application 

from the gigantic bones displayed at roncesvalles: an adjective that should be brought part back into use 

a man, a plan: US defence secretary floats idea of reopening mothball military bases from the 1989 invasion of Panama 

trading floor: the history of the ticker-tape machine

people were getting yippy (12. 380)

Though the markets reacted with a rally that restored some of the trillions in wealth evaporated in the chaos of the past few days, nothing is fixed by this pause for bespoke tariffs—the universal tax of ten percent is being levied on exports from essentially every country on Earth and for Chinese goods, at the time of writing, facing a 125% duty. This is America’s Brexit moment: the multi-front trade war may have been polarised between Washington and Beijing but this negotiation period of three months is highly unlikely to net any real progress—especially through the lens of the UK’s departure from the EU and the drawn out complexity of leaving and reintegrating with continental partners as a bloc that is still fraught with challenges and damaged trade relations. China’s refusal to withdraw its retaliatory measures and to go toe-to-toe with Trump will only escalate matters. And while stocks may have pivoted in response to this less worse news, the credibility is squandered not only by this abrupt turn-about, that the US flinched, but moreover there’s no guarantee that negotiators could keep their end of a bargain and it unclear what if any concessions would be offered in return for relocating manufacturing or loosening regulations on environmental and safety standards. For a brief time it seemed that Trump would not be cowed by the markets—and from his telling, it was always part of genius plan—it seems that he was not wholly untethered to economic forces and nearly as one can surmise, the threat to the bond exchange (investors, foreign and domestic, generally retreating to buying and holding US debt as a safe haven in times of broader turmoil) with the usual flock not materialising this time was sufficient to spook his advisors and convince him to change course. With little investor appetite for government securities, the US would need to offer higher interest to finance their debts, whose rates determine all others and could very quickly make borrowing for anyone very difficult and lead to a panic. China and Trump are both willing to gamble with the economic future, though the former is positioned to gain in the long-term by standing fast in this trial if it is able to shift its focus from exports toward consumption whereas for the latter, the market is very much saturated. Unfortunately countries uncoupled from doing business together are generally disengaged from working together on tackling bigger problems, like foreign policy and the environment, as well.

life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all (12. 379)

First published by Charles Scribner’s Sons on this day in 1925, the Jazz Age novel by writer F Scott Fitzgerald, although well-received initially by critics, many felt it fell short of his earlier works, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and the Damned and was commercially a disappointment, and the fact it is one of the most widely-read texts by American high school students and that there was occasion to mark the anniversary would have elicited surprise for the author, whom also considered considered his literary career to be a failure. Reevaluation over the ensuing decades count it among the masterpieces of the early twentieth century, attracting scholarly attention over his questions of social class, environmental conservation, gender, race and disillusionment with the American Dream, aspirations and refinements that speak across the years. The story about careless people is in part based on lived experience with Fitzgerald’s infatuation with a socialite out of his league, raucous parties and a sensationalised true crime story involving a love-triangle in New Jersey. Completing the manuscript whilst staying in the French Riviera, Fitzgerald shopped around for publishers, reworking the draft several times and with working-titles Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires, On the Road to West Egg, Under the Red, White and Blue and The Gold-Hatted Gatsby before reluctantly settling on the alliterative one in deference to Alai-Fournier’s singular tragic character Le Grand Meaulnes (often rendered for English readers as The Wanderer). The dust jacket artwork for the first edition is Spanish painter Francisco Cugat’s Celestial Eyes, an abstract representation of a flapper suspended above a fun-fair evoking New York’s Coney Island, the commission being presented to Fitzgerald before the novel was finished and becoming a motif in the story, prompting him to finalise the book before it went to another author’s work, maintaining an unusual correspondence between artist and author, whose original painting was rediscovered in the bin of the publishing house’s archives decades later like so many unsold volumes of The Great Gatsby’s first run.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Dune: The Musical (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: spirit animals and animal spirits, double-storey letters, floating dorms in Denmark plus assorted links to enjoy

eight years ago: sacrificial soda plus disinformation mills

nine years ago: a Canadian foothold in the Caribbean plus money laundering and the Panama Papers

ten years ago: more links to revisit plus an appreciation of Designing Women

jump cut (12. 378)

A rather aesthetically balanced jumble, we enjoyed this music video for the Montreal band Corridor’s new single. Incorporating collage, cut-up techniques and vintage archival footage, it is a statement on the frenetic nature of contemporary life and the constant vying for attention (see also). The effect is really quite disorienting but rollicking at the same time. See the full video and more from the collaborators at Colossal at the link up top.

all-hands (12. 377)

Not in attendance myself so I can’t exactly vouch for the veracity, but according to someone present at a virtual US Department of the Interior virtual townhall, the dire wolf has become a political animal. Though I had seen this deextinction pilot circulating regarding the sabre-toothed creature, I was skeptical regarding the claims that the offspring were anything more than a hybrid, like as one commenter put it, breeding a featherless chicken and calling it a dinosaur, and there’s been quite some hype and promise to bring back other megafauna from the Pleistocene for some time. Apparently the lauded accomplishment, taken at face-value, was offered as a reason why the Endangered Species Act and the bureau tasked with enforcing it was obsolete, the department secretary giving a wide-ranging talk on AI, law-enforcement and Jurassic Park. This logic and misplace optimism echoes another cabinet member says that laidoff (read: illegally terminated) government employees could take jobs at all the factories Trump’s tariffs will bring.

maga maoism (12. 376)

Though government officials, members of the armed services and civil servants are not yet subject to an explicit loyalty oath, pledging fealty to Trump, we learn—via Boing Boing—that there’s been an unsubtle change in dress-code on the Hill and in the Cabinet in the form a garish oversized golden lapel pin, replacing the usual flags and other charges, of a bust of the president. As China is adopting America’s own tactics when it comes too punishing tariffs that disrupt the global economic order (after relenting for most other nations, which is a positive sign but the vacillation runs counter to any of the stated aims of attracting foreign factories when such longterm commitments betray a capacious time horizon with the real objective seemingly to create a fire-sale on commodities by crashing the market), the US has reached back to the days of Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution for a show of allegiance and blind faith as regressive policies, urging unwarranted patience for a big gamble that is certain to fail spectacularly. The latest escalation was in part prompted by JD Vance referring to the Chinese workforce as peasants, which is not only insulting but a deflection of the US’s own feudalism and indenturedness, beholden to Trump’s ruinous ego and incompetence.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the opposite of Schadenfreude (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: Trump and the Saudis plus the toads are spawning

eight years ago: Russia and LiveJournal

nine years ago: swanky office attire plus Jedi stew

ten years ago: a trip to the US, from whale oil to petroleum plus a monopoly on sainthood

a-story, b-story (12. 375)

During a recent episode of The Simpsons (S: 36, E: 783), Homer pressures Bart to pursue a career as a celebrity disc-jockey, but the ensuing noise and chaos of the abortive effort lead to an irreconcilable rift with their neighbours the Flanders, Bart incorporating a sample of Ned’s complaint into the mix. The gang from The Hood Internet were behind the DJ’ing and also the end credits mashing up memorable Simpsons musical numbers including Do the Bartman, Dr Zaius, Mr Plow and the Monorail Song.

minotaure (12. 374)

The French Surrealist-oriented magazine in print from 1933 to 1939 was originally intended to be a general review of the plastic arts: poetry, architecture, theatre, ethnography, mythology and psychoanalytic studies but the publisher’s association with André Breton and others in the movement, ensuring a steady supply of contributions, shifted the focus. Illustrators and writers included Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Dalí, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy and Frida Kahlo (see above—the pictured cover is by Diego Rivera for the Mexican supplement) and the publication’s high quality and high standards attracted the patronage of several sustaining sponsors. The title character was very much en vogue at the time with Picasso already having established several studies on the theme with the metaphor of the labyrinth representing the mind and the marauding Minotaur analogous to the irrational impulses with vanquishing Theseus a symbol for the greater self-knowledge of the Surrealist and psychoanalysis movement.

synchronoptica

one year ago: invasive species (with synchronoptica), a rare 1995 hybrid eclipse plus making US election day a holiday

seven years ago: Swedish house gymnastics, tokusatsu gifs plus giving a banana a passport

eight years ago: a cradle that mimics a car ride plus the first pizza delivery

nine years ago: Julia Child’s home in Provence, an ode to a departed feline friend plus quotes paired with fine art

ten years ago: a Nazi summer camp, assorted links to revisit plus the first petroleum company

orange monday (12. 373)

Dismissing the idea floated a ninety-day pause on imposing blanket tariffs worldwide to allow targeted exporters time for negotiation as “fake news” and digging into his posture of havoc and disruption, threatening China with an additional fifty percent duty on top of those already levied in response to reciprocal imports coming in from the US, investor uncertainty is pushing world stock markets into bear territory—the term derived from traders who engaged in short-selling assets with a commodity to back it up, the “bear-skin jobbers” selling pelts (the stock) before the bear was caught and marks a period of fear and pessimism. Faced with a rate exceeding one hundred percent, China vowed further retaliation and ready for a war of attrition. The above talk of a period of temporary stoppage from a bogus tweet picked up by several outlets out of hope and desperation caused multi-trillion dollar swings before the reprieve proved false. Though Europe and the UK seem to be better placed to weather the shock, repercussions won’t necessarily be contained by the US economy with inflation, job-cuts and slowed growth all around. The spillover effects of a wider, protracted conflict of protectionism will have lasting implications and may signal a change in international trade and economic integration.