history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes

Nag on the Lake has just acquainted us with an amazingly dedicated individual by the name of Alwyn Collinson that has recounted every pivotal moment in World War II as it happened for the past six years, concluding 15 August (1945, formally signed on 2 September) with the surrender of the Japanese Imperial Army and beginning another harrowing new cycle on 1 September (1939) when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, using the false-flag operation, the attack on the broadcasting tower in Gleiwitz, then part of Upper Silesia (Oberschlesien) that occurred the night before, by Schutzstaffel (the SS) provocateurs disguised as Polish separatists as pretense for shift retaliation. It’s fascinating to see how quickly matters accelerated in real time, as it were, and history pressing forward unmediated by the lens of history—plus it’s surely a brave and noble effort to be willing to relive these horrors over and over again—repeating them in the hope that we might not. Perhaps, like the Cosplay Caliphate, those aspirants to the Turd Reich would be dissuaded if they knew truly what they were making light of.

rock, paper, scissors

Marking perhaps a heartening turn in the tone of sabre-rattling rhetoric, North Korea appears in its latest propaganda video to be challenging America to a dance-off, as Gizmodo correspondent Matt Novak reports, rather than the usual fare of nuclear warheads striking Guam or San Francisco.  Of course, Dear Leader has produced many counterpoints to this spectacle and there is naturally such ill-will between the two as they are too much alike and need their egos protected.  The narrow characterisation of the North Korean regime does the rest of the world a disservice as the country understands very well that it has the strategic upper-hand at what is at stake, which is nothing short of global thermal nuclear war.

wedlock

The winding down of wedding season is a good time for reflection on the institution and the curators of the Ricco-Maresca Gallery in Manhattan furnish us with a captivating lens to view the changing conventions and trappings of matrimony with a collection of Victorian era cabinet cards that take a slice of late nineteenth century attitudes towards portraiture and keepsakes. These sombre, serious poses (a little haunted but typical for the time when photography was new and reserved for such special occasions and vows weren’t always exchanged out of love but rather for the sake of utility) are contrasted with a progression of wedding cake toppers from that time up to the present that reflect maturing outlooks and rituals that retain meaning in their fungibility.

campaign hat

In what’s surely to further unhinge Dear Leader in ways that we can’t predict, we learn from Super Punch, one major, disruptive retail outlet in selling knock-offs of the baseball caps (campaign hats are those typically worn by park rangers and Mounties) he’s been shamelessly promoting during press-conferences on the hurricane response and recovery in Texas for a quarter of the price. Although Dear Leader seems unable to move beyond campaign mode, apparently he can recognise when his merchandise has gone stale.

borscht belt

Via the always brilliant Nag on the Lake, we’re invited on an idyll odyssey with Pablo Iglesias Maurer inspired by a lot of vintage postcards depicting resorts of the Catskills and the Poconos during their heyday fifty years ago juxtaposed with their present state of wrack and ruin.
The ephemeral nature of the missives served their purpose—much like snapshots on social media—but isn’t meant to rubbish those destinations and experiences now abandoned, while at the same the medium romances both the nostalgia and the decay. What do you think?  Surely the portrayals are all the more awful for those with a connection to the places. We’ve a sudden urge to watch Dirty Dancing and inspect the facilities at Kellerman’s. Be sure to visit the links up top for a whole gallery of rather sad then-and-now transitions.

6x6

the art of vehicle maintenance: further notes and take-aways from Why Buddhism is True

great railway journeys: an intrepid duo visit every train station in the United Kingdom over fifteen weeks

urban spelunking: thieves bore into Paris cellar from catacombs and make off with a quarter of a million euro worth of vintage wine, via Super Punch

interstitial: much like with the latest iteration of the Star Wars saga, fans of Blade Runner will be treated to series intervening short films

psychic-driving: technology and psychotherapy are not guaranteed to be compatible nor risk free

nothing ventured, nothing gained: whilst dashing off to witness the solar eclipse, the Fancy Notions team visited the micronation (we have only gotten to visit one) of the Republic of Molossia 

wohnblockknacker

Seventy thousand residents of Frankfurt am Main—a tenth of the city’s population—will be evacuated on Sunday (EN/DE) out of an abundance of caution as an unexploded bomb (Blindgänger) discovered in the Westend district is defused. The UK-made munition was dubbed “blockbuster” for its capability to take out whole streets and was dropped during one of the seventy-five aerial attacks that took place, destroying some seventy percent of the city. This event marks the largest post-war mass-evacuation and the latest in a series of ordnance uncovered by construction projects in urbanised areas.

gentleman farmer

Writing for the Awl, correspondent Clinton Crockett Peters shares the biography of that charismatic megafauna, kudzu, that has invasively engulfed much of the southern United States and is spreading. Growing up in east Texas, Georgia and Alabama I can remember those kudzu monsters, how trees covered and choked with the vine were propped up and seemed like dinosaurs in the dark, and how aggressively out-of-place it seemed but I never knew its provenance and how it was once peddled as get rich-quick-scheme.
While certainly not without merits if kept under control, kudzu—which was introduced to the American public at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia alongside ketchup, root-beer and the telephone—is native to Japan and afforded greater range will spread with devastating consequences including damage to other agriculture and ecological changes in carbon-cycles, not to mention the pesticides that some resort to beat back its advance. The versatile vine is useful for preventing erosion—though the Dust Bowl still occurred—recharging over-farmed soil and as food for people and livestock, but as with other short-sighted schemes it seems incredible in retrospect that kudzu was subsidised and its planting was encouraged, championed by celebrity “front-porch farmer” Channing Cope through weekly radio broadcasts, and took nearly another century to classify the vine as a noxious weed and begin to realise the effects of introduced species. Read all about it at the link up top.