7x7

economies of ale: after a decade of steep declines, UK pub numbers are seeing a slight uptick charted

parkverbotszone: plans for the future IKEA am Westbahnhof in Vienna is being designed for a post-auto world

women hold up half the sky: Liang Jun, the tractor driving figure, iconically featured on the one yuan bill, has passed away, aged ninety

best in show: winners and honourable-mentions of the Ocean Art Photography competition

the id, the super-ego, and the psyche: the strange, singular encounter between Salvador Dalí and Sigmund Freud

triangle man, triangle man: celebrating thirty years of They Might Be Giants’ (a reference to Don Quixote’s tilting at windmills) seminal album Flood

there and back again: a remembrance of Christopher Tolkien (*1925 – †2020), executor of his father’s literary estate and map-maker of Middle Earth

fox-cull

In order to distance the media empire and its paracosms from the toxic propagandizing subsidiary masquerading as a news outlet, Disney’s studio mergers (themselves the product of a string of prior consolidations beginning in 1933) will be known henceforth as Twentieth Century and Searchlight Pictures.

railbanked or atchison, topeka and santa fe

At its height, the rail network of the United States was somewhere approaching half a million kilometres, with now over half that infrastructure abandoned, superannuated. Maps Mania takes us on a whistle-stop tour on the extensive out-of-service (that is—railbanked, see also) routes. There are a lot of resources to explore here in addition to the interactive maps that give the history of the lines, accompanying blog with lots of images and other depots for departing on virtual journeys.

garage mahal

Via the inestimable Things Magazine, we are treated to a delightful post-holiday holdover in the carefully juried collection of the finest submissions of confectionary architecture (see also) competing for top honours in the annual McGingerbread Hell Awards. McMansions in miniature (previously) are timid and amateurish transgressions of all the aspects of good design, mass-produced with a clashing of styles, ornament and elements meant to signal wealth and refinement. .

anti-saloon league

With legislation drafted by the above interest group and taking much of the public by surprise by its severity and abrupt enforcement, the Volstead Act (named for the bill’s manager and sponsor in the Congress, chairman of the Judiciary Committee) came into effect just after the stroke of midnight on this day in 1920, meant to carry out the intent of the eighteenth amendment to the US constitution, establishing the prohibition (but not definition, see also here and here) of intoxicating liquors in the country.
Ultimately nullified by the passage of the twenty-first amendment thirteen years later, the production and distribution of alcohol, once the domain of legitimate business, became contraband and the quarry of organised crime syndicates, smugglers and gangsters who were quick to capitalise on this underground market. Moreover, despite the ban on recreational use, alcohol was still inchoate with medical exemptions and the bill recognising the need “to insure an ample supply and promote its use in scientific research and applications in the development of fuel, dye and other lawful industries”—a supply from which it was tempting to siphon off the top. Frustrated by this losing battle, government authorities enlisted an army of chemists to shift their enforcement methods to one of sometimes deadly deterrence. There were many methods of denaturing industrial grade spirits including non-lethal ways to render them undrinkable but often the cheapest and most expedient way was to add a bit of toxic methyl alcohol to random batches and let the public witness the consequences. This paternalism may have killed ten thousand individuals during Prohibition. The eventual repeal returned the management of controlled-substances to the individual states.

witness for the prosecution

The US House of Representatives transmitted the articles of impeachment to the Senate yesterday and announced the appointment of seven members of Congress that were dispatched to the other chamber to formally exhibit, present their case.
Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was earlier criticised for her timing by detractors and snapped back that her decision to start the trial now was beyond reproach, since she had resisted calls for impeachment for months until Trump’s behaviour made them irresistible (Republicans were noisily sharpening their knives for the impeachment and imprisonment of Hillary Clinton before election night)—and that exchange was itself overshadowed by the number of writing implements Pelosi used to sign the articles of impeachment (an established tradition) as a trigger for the GOP. Though the Republican majority in the Senate will almost assuredly deliver a swift show-trial, there’s also a calculated and accepted risk insofar as the every senator is on jury duty—and they’re to sit in silence and contemplation in the well of chamber whilst the court proceedings continue—and that means that a good number of the Democratic party candidates, other than the former vice-president and the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, will be off of the campaign trail.

wollemia nobilis

Via Super Punch, we learn about the clandestine, successful mission pulled off by botanists, park rangers, conservators and New South Wales’ brave firefighters to save the only known wild population of Wollemi pines.
The trees, which may be up to one hundred thousand years in age, number about two hundred individuals and prior to their discovery in 1994 (akin to finding a living dinosaur), were believed to be extinct and only known through the fossil record. The operation was kept secret so as to not disclose the grove’s location as caretakers fear that visitors could bring contamination that could harm the critically endangered species. Clones have been propagated worldwide and have distinct broad needles and knobbly bark.