affront national oder petry le pen

Riding a wave of populism, the city of Koblenz is host to a counter-summit of the right-wing hardliner parties from across Europe.
The conference, which is mostly a publicity stunt since by their definition, they seek no grander supra-national coalition, rather than a strategic meeting to spin straw into political capital, was announced under the hashtag #wewillmakeourcountriesgreatagain and aims to redress (or pander to) concerns over lost sovereignty and anxieties regarding security and immigration. Many mainstream media outlets are being disinvited for allegations of bias and labels that sow disdain and dismissal, yet this event is also seen as a staging platform for the news, opinion and commentary network that helped propel Trump to victory expansion to Germany.

at honex, we constantly strive to improve every aspect of bee existence

Coverage of the inauguration ceremony in Washington, DC, whether mediated or immediate, presented a strange compulsion—maybe the aching yearning of the thin crowds that lined segments of the route from the Capitol to the White House who wanted this spectacle to be presidential and dignified—to frame it in such a way, in the tradition of apologists, that the breach and breaking is somehow normal and acceptable. This stunt was none of those things and disturbing to the core on all counts.  It wasn’t enough to eviscerate the Affordable Health Care Act as the first order of business, but to do so without a clear path forward despite having been salivating over this moment for six years makes it even worse.

It was not enough that the ideological tenor of the White House underwent radical changes instantly, white-washing talk of global-warming and climate change (however long or short this reign of terror runs and no matter what other geopolitical blunders are made, the failure to save the environment will be its enduring legacy), emphasising respect for authority over community cohesion and getting rid of its little gay corner, endowments for the arts, public broadcasting, and all mention of civil rights, those messages were replaced with Dear Leader touting his own merchandise. Of course, things are not looking good for education and the sciences either, which are long-term economic-indicators as much as they are there to inspire and uplift.  Repeated mentions of the peaceful transition of power does not make it so and certainly does not dispel the darkness. There are one-thousand four hundred sixty-one days left in this term, and while that segment of his inaugural speech was sadly not plagiarised (though other examples abound) perhaps like that inexplicable editing of that movie about those cartoon bees where they sped up the film every time some character said “bee,” we can accelerate through this with every “great” and “bigly.”

6x6

heart-shaped box: as part of its forgotten formats series, Ars Technica explores the history of the 8-track cartridge and its links to the Lear jet and Kurt Cobain

mall-walkers: sculpt one’s figure among the sculptures with a workout at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, via the always aesthetic Nag on the Lake

good fences make good neighbours: social media entrepreneur, eschewing privacy, sues hundreds to keep his Hawaiian estate pristine, via Boing Boing

road to nowhere: celebrating architectural fossils preserved despite apparent lack of historical value

assuage party: conservatives members of a Danish archipelago volunteer to host rumoured but inevitable US-Russo summit

yavin base: 1977 theatre audience reacting to Star Wars’ trench run

superior orders

I wonder how promptly the Chain of Command portrait wall will be updated to reflect Dear Leader and his minions, surely a sore and unenviable task. I bet like there will be incentivised snitching in place to catch those government bureaus out of compliance—like Domino’s Pizza ran when they updated their logo and encouraged the public to report on franchises still using the old shingle with vouchers for a free pizza. I wonder what the prize might be for ratting-out your co-workers for dragging their feet.

the bicameral xor

One house of the legislature of the US state of Georgia passed a bill in February 1953 to make “andor” the legal successor to the awkward conjunction and/or—the new term signifying all the meanings and nuance championed by the former including “either, or, both, and or or, and and or.” The proposal however was struck down by the upper house and “andor” perished ignobly on the senate floor. Xor is the so-called “exclusive or” in logical operations that only holds true when conditions differ: the law passed one chamber but failed in the other. I wonder if there has been any linguistic lobby for the novel ways that intervening bit of punctuation, the slash, has taken on.

zener cards

Among the massive cache of documents recently declassified by the US Central Intelligence Agency one can find glosses of the research programme into remote viewing and the identification and recruitment efforts of psychic warriors. One such mental pugilist was Uri Geller—who was a bit taken aback one hearing the news that the project called Stargate was now in the public domain, considering that studies were still on-going, but he could corroborate at least some of his special assignments, like standing outside the Soviet Embassy building in Mexico City and trying to erase floppy disks telepathically or arresting the heartbeat of a hapless pig in preparation for larger prey, in addition to him being asked to produce clairvoyant sketches.

the day the earth stood still

It’s quite a coincidence that it’s almost exactly to the day five years ago, the internet went off-line in solidarity and protest to the US Congress censorship bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that would have place grave strictures on the open internet and free-exchange. By resisting, the people eventually won and Congress relented but the victory came at a high costs and we have to remain ever vigilant—hopefully, we are not so inured to creeping change that we haven’t quietly surrendered those freedoms in the intervening years. Liberties are always at peril and we ought to be vocal and owe it to ourselves to be our best and truest selves, but perhaps this is not the occasion for a black-out, as after the shut-down, we might not be allowed to come back on-line.