codex

On this day in 1789, the US Congress approved twelve articles of amendments to the Constitution addressing guarantees of personal liberties and rights. Articles three through twelve became the Bill of Rights, ratified by member states. The second article was eventually ratified in 1992 as the Twenty-Seventh Amendment.
The Congressional Apportionment Amendment (originally titled Article the First) is still pending and proffers a mathematical formula for setting the number of representatives in the lower house by population, one per every thirty thousand citizens. Congress had generally followed this convention by statue up until 1911 when the number of districts (though not their boundaries) were set at 435, with six additional non-voting members, American Samoa at-large, the District of Columbia at-large, Guam at-large, Puerto Rico at-large, the US Virgin Islands at-large, and the Northern Mariana Islands at-large, who mostly caucus with the Democratic party. A seat for the Cherokee Nation has also been established but has never been filled. The Philippines and Cuba also sent resident commissioners to Congress—also with no voting rights but well before the present scheme was established in the early 1970s, the exclusion based on the fact that these colonies accorded no citizenship rights and therefore retained the right secede from the Union, unlike the incorporated lands

reisebüro

Though one could always question the decision of the UK government to refuse a bailout to the world’s oldest tour company, Thomas Cook collapsing after one hundred and seventy-eight years of operation and a victim of progress plus its own mismanagement—especially when repatriation costs are already approaching half of the requested funds to keep the company solvent, Germany has chosen to intervene in the case of its domestic affiliates with the state stepping in to offer a bridge loan to keep the company—headquartered in Oberursel (previously)—whilst it restructures.

publick occurrences both forreign and domestick

Intended to be a monthly publication or “if any Glut of Occurences happen, offener,” the first multipage newspaper in the Americas (broadsides, single page notices had been printed in Cambridge in the colony of Massachusetts since the previous year), released its inaugural and final edition on this day in 1690 in Boston. Though the paper had consisted of four pages, there was only enough content to fill three (see also). There was no second edition due to the paper being closed by the colonial government four days after the first issue for failing to obtain the proper license for publication—“without the least Privity and Countenace of Authority.”

opening titles

Courtesy of the Awesomer, we are treated to the musical stylings of the duo Bei Bei Zheng with piano accompaniment from Vera Yaqi Mackay performing a singular cover of Dick Dale and the Del Tones’ surf rock anthem Misirlou (previously). Bei Bei replaces the guitar with the traditional Chinese instrument called the zheng (箏), an ancient pentatonic zither dated from the Qin dynasty with twenty-one strings to the tune, itself inspired by an Ottoman folksong referring to an Egyptian girl in Turkish that was often used for belly dancing. The up and down harmonic progression is known as hijaz kar.

unlawful, void and to no effect

Having after three days of deliberation, coming to the legal consensus that prorogation was “justiciable” and subject to the court’s purview as a reserved (residual) power and not strictly a political matter—in which case, the court would have thrown out the case—the Supreme Court president Lady Hale returned the unanimous decision, aligning with other senior courts, that the suspension of Parliament was an abuse of executive power and therefore illegal, with implication that Johnson misled the Queen in seeking her permission. As court of last resort with no further possibility of appeal, its badge incorporates the Greek letter Omega (Ω) to signify this final authority. Suspended since the tenth of September, Parliament will reconvene beginning at noon tomorrow.

head and shoulders

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we find ourselves confronted, buffeted by the præternatural canniness of this royalty-free stock photo library of faces (see previously here and here)—one hundred thousand of them but surely these legions are limitless—all generated by machine to use as one sees fit.  Summoning these beings into existence of a sort, undoubtedly we owe some responsibility for these models and this endless gallery, real from synthetic indistinguishable must evoke a sense of empathy. If people really did have the conviction that a camera could steal one’s soul, there are more superstitions to overcome, but maybe there comes a point when the liminal acquire agency and identity. Conveniently, one can download this whole population from the Phantom Zone as a compressed file. What do you think? H teases me because I was set against getting a robotic lawnmower, anticipating that it might not have chosen that life of toil. I was being serious, wondering what careless capricious impulses might be driving us.

the conversation i had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place

After given a pass (albeit temporary) on the question of Russian collusion, a signals officer elevated a matter of grave concern through his chain-of-command and the channels provided to redress such worries.
Not a leak but a whistleblower complaint, though there was a bottleneck met with push-back from Trump appointees refusing to present the worries to Congress—the filing strongly suggests that during multiple telephone calls with the newly elected Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Trump pressed authorities there to launch an investigation into his apparent contender Joe Biden through his son’s chairmanship on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, accusing both, without evidence, of corruption.  Amid calls for the full transcripts to be released, Trump admitted that they took place—even suggesting that the US is withholding a quarter of a billion dollars in military aid to the country (during joint exercises) if they fail to produce some dirty laundry on the Bidens. Aside from intensified calls for the impeachment (a minor update) of Trump over this treacherous and anti-democratic behaviour, White House advisors also fear that giving up this one transcript would set a precedent to publish all such private discussions, checking presidential candor, including dialogue between Trump and Putin or Trump and the Saudi royals.