strong and stable or disunited kingdom

Castle Mayskull’s gamble backfired with her calling an ill-advised snap, general election in order to reinforce a mandate that her party had already secured to withdraw the UK from the European Union and discourage future referenda on devolution and secession.
The Conservative Party has lost a few seats in Parliament’s House of Commons which brings the critical number to retain an absolute majority. Rebuffing calls to resign as Prime Minister—having squandered her mandate, should the incumbent insist on staying and no coalition can be brought together to support her, she risks precipitating a constitutional crisis and dissolution of government. So called hung Parliaments have occurred in the past but with the political landscape being in such turmoil and congregations so polarised over it seems unlikely that an alliance will be forthcoming and the days to follow will be anything but tidy.  This miscalculation, which drew younger voters in greater than expected numbers to the ballot, threatens to reverse the course of negotiations for a Brexit deal and possibly the decision to leave in the first place and is already boding greater economic disruptions than experienced after the referendum. 

l’honneur de dieu

There were quite a few choice moments during the public testimony of the former FBI director at his congressional hearing, but we really appreciated him dropping a bit of received arch-dialogue extracted from medieval intrigues—specifically, the December 1170 assassination of Archbishop Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.
The context of the quotation comes when the director was pressed whether he understood the hortatory ambiguity of Dear Leader as an order, to which the former director replied, “Yes, yes. It rings in my ears as kind of ‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’” N'y aura-t-il personne pour me débarrasser de ce prêtre turbulent? Though his questioner was insinuating otherwise, once Henry II uttered those words four of his knights interpreted it as a degree and death-warrant and carried out the execution. Henry II was no tyrant exactly but king and bishop were often at odds—especially over the jurisdiction of religious and secular courts of law, the former favoured by the criminally-inclined because of lighter sentences and absolution. The ecclesiastic courts were reserved for the ordained and it wasn’t a matter of royal prerogative who would stand trial where. Becket threatened the king with excommunication, and a contemporary biographer reported that Henry lamented, “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought-up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?” Becket’s martyrdom and subsequent adoration may Henry regret his words, no matter their intent.

main street, usa

The crusaders over at Muckrock remind us of the close friendship that Walt Disney and founding FBI director J Edgar Hoover (with mutual fringe-benefits including earlier indoctrination surveillance state, routing out talent with Communist-sympathies, plus free park passes for visiting agents and their families) and also how a still unnamed Washington, DC socialite in the 1950s had tried to leverage their relationship in an attempt to get the animation studio to produce Christian-based cartoons, convinced that such programming would combat juvenile delinquency.
At that stage in the career of the studio, Disney was venturing into television, nature documentaries and wholly live-action films. Rather than intervening on behalf of this mystery woman, the FBI director’s surrogate who met with her suggested that she present her pitch to Disney directly. I wonder who this was and why her name is still redacted.  Read the entire dossier over at Muckrock, which seems to include an entire, unsolicited spec script. Though there are no overtly biblical stories from Disney, there are arguably allegorical references peppered throughout but in truth that’s a bit specious (Easter eggs and alleged subliminal messaging seem far more likely) as fairy tales like religions tend to embrace universal themes.

junket or gas-food-lodging

Dear Leader’s spawn have reaffirmed the family’s contempt and disinterest in reaching out to those who disagree violently with his world-view and actually governing an entire country and no just a dwindling minority by literally dehumanising those allied with the Democratic party and yet they’ve concocted a plan to bring their trademark to the underclass in the form of a chain of budget-friendly hotels (EN/DE).
Calling the franchise, which will surely be built by re-branding existing structures, American Idea they intend to distinguish the chain with that sort of affected atmosphere of that’s slathered on the walls of other chains of family-friendly restaurants and sports bars with antique artefacts intended to evoke American greatness. Apparently, they saw this market-gap whilst on the road campaigning for their father and found available accommodations to be lacking. There’s no word yet on whether these family properties will be afforded the same expensive security detail that his upscale buildings are and what working-class communities might have to sacrifice in their budgets to pay to guard some tacky motel, nor what a low-wage nightmare it might be working in such an establishment. For someone whose narcissism can’t be placated by becoming the president of the United States, one has to wonder about Dear Leader’s sense of hospitality.

milliarium aureum

Via the always marvellous Nag on the Lake, were treated to the draughts- manship of Sasha Trubetskoy who has depicted the historic road network of the Roman Empire, circa second century, in the style of the (often imitated) schematic transport map of the London Underground. The map is made of up named roads such as Via Appia and Via Flavia as well as some logical liberties, whose license is perfectly justified as many European and north African highways follow these same routes. Be sure to check out Trubetskoy’s website for more captivating cartographic projects.

amplifying random noise

Via Kottke, this take by Randall Munroe of the web-comic xkcd fame (previously here and here) on those viral maps of the USA circulating on the internet made us grin.

this is water

Opening with a parable similar to the one of the puddle, Big Think contributor Philip Perry revisits the 2005 commencement speech (EN/DE) by author David Foster Wallace (*1962 †2008) that may contain a bit of needed antidote for the toxic-levels of polarisation that the world is currently experiencing.
This atmosphere of hyper-nationalism and equally rabid opposition means more than stalemates and pyrrhic victories and disdain for one’s antagonists means that all institutions and experts become subjective, fraud becomes easier to overlook and bigots and bullies few validated. It is an incredibly, almost super-human task to step outside of one’s self and all the trappings of acculturation and personal pride that reinforce the belief in our infallibility, but choosing to ease out of a narrow-minded, doctrinaire attitude can cultivate a critical awareness of our own limiting biases. Sympathetic that empathy and an outward outlook is a challenge even when all other needs are secured, relations, health, and security, Wallace’s delivery acknowledges that so many things that make people feel insecure and precarious in their lives have multiplied whilst the remedies have become staid and perhaps less potent, but no matter how poor, frustrated or bleak things seem we can still afford ourselves the luxury of realising that other ways of seeing are possible and knowing that choices are important and have consequence.

luftwaffenstützpunkt

Having been repeatedly denied access to visit service members stationed at the NATO airbase in İncirlik, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that his country has been left with no choice other than withdraw troops and materiel and re-station them elsewhere.
Turkish authorities have blocked visits by government officials since last summer’s questionable coup d’etat and Germany’s refusal to extradite political asylum-seekers caught up in the swift and subsequent purge. Relations further degraded thereafter. Defence Minister von der Leyen offered that the some two-hundred fifty personnel and Tornado fighter jets now at the base in southern Turkey (where the US also has a presence of around five-thousand soldiers and airmen with their families and fifty or so nuclear warheads) could be re-deployed to an installation in Jordan but the transition would be costly and hamper joint efforts in the fight against the Cosplay Caliphate.