duck and cover

Despite the status accorded them as nostalgic, pervasive cultural anchors, the fallout shelter it seems has been magnified by the popular imagination and just over one percent of US households (as opposed to civil and governmental constructions) in the early 1960s had such emergency accommodations.
Paleofuture presents a rather interesting survey that polled people’s attitudes at the height of the Cold War, speaking to collected fears and wafts of the toxic masculinity and the paternalistic patriotism that not a statistically insignificant amount of respondents invoked as reasons to not construct a bunker or otherwise prepare for a nuclear disaster. Contrary arguments included what the neighbours might think of their architectural folly, that only a coward would try to hide from an atomic blast or perhaps most disturbingly that to do so would somehow contravene the will of God and Country, undermining faith in the nation and that it was not within man’s power to destroy himself or the world. The majority took a more philosophic tact, questioning the ability to withstand an attack or whether they would want to be heir to the aftermath.  Imagine there was a time when only the dissolute polluters and climate-change deniers needed to be disabused and the preppers weren’t playing the long game.

we don’t need no stinking patches

The fallout and negative public reception towards the National Reconnaissance Office’s choosing a world devouring octopus (which is a trope all on its own) as a mission patch for its launch and delivery of a classified payload into orbit back in 2013 was exemplary of the sort of obliviousness that dominates that culture and work environment and nearly prompted the White House to demand oversight and creative input on logos and slogans for all future missions.
Several other tone deaf, in-jokes have followed, however, and there’s no push for improving image and relations, of course, and it’s probably too high of a demand to expect anything coming from the NRO or any intelligence service to not be sinister. Though I cannot personally vouch for the authenticity—and wonder what might possess to label something so covert with a scary and inscrutable that only invites speculation escapes me—it would seem that the embargo against Latin mottos (the agency’s own is simply Supra et Ultra—Above and Beyond) might be at least a little premature with this emblem gracing the NRO’s latest launch on a Delta 4 rocket. The watch-word of the Florentine knight slaying the dragon is “evil will never prevail.”

the picture of dorian gray

Despite being available for the past year and half and having genuine educational merits aside from the tout that propelled it popularity, I found myself enthralled with the idea of finding my own digital Doppelgänger, having not been one of those privileged museum-goers to be instantly paired with their portrait gallery twin-strangers, but felt quite inept when I wasn’t able to find the feature as advertised.
Seeing the fun echoed, I wondered at my apparent technical difficulties until I learned that the selfie-comparison was only available in (most) of the United States, due to potential concerns over privacy and the ability to steal one’s digital soul via a willing relinquishing. By hook or by crook, a VPN (virtual private network) is needed for now to access the feature and to  convince the app-emporium otherwise. While I believe that the company behind the application does not have nefarious intentions, I am also grateful that I live in a jurisdiction that will fault on protecting us from ourselves, even if all the cool kids are doing it.

independent counsel

Twenty years ago on this day, the internet news and gossip aggregator Drudge Report beat Newsweek and the mainstream press to the punch by breaking reports of the scandalous affair between President Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Clinton’s initial denial, clamouring for answers whilst the administration was mired in a few other personal affairs (Whitewater, Travelgate) eventually led to Clinton’s impeachment by Congress in December of the same year. Acquitted of the impeachable offenses of perjury and obstruction of justice, Clinton was allowed to remain in office or the remainder of his second term. We cannot know of course the collateral scandals that were either obscured through fatigue or propelled to the fore of public consciousness because of the manner in which this played out nor image how on-line media and personas might have been otherwise informed if their moment had not been limned by the salacious and the scornful. What do you think? We can’t condemn the follies of two decades hence on balance of where that’s landed us but times seem strikingly inverted and while welcome progress is evident in many areas in terms of what we as a culture will tolerate, the forces of regression have taken hold elsewhere.

7x7

see? it’s ok. he saw it on the television: sophist and spokesliar Huckabee emblematically argues that Trump can’t be racist because of his long, illustrious career on t.v.

raupe des monats: an 1837 German guide on caterpillars that introduces them calendar-wise through the year

bloodhound gang: in the mid-70s an Ohio public library experimented with a fragrance- based card catalogue system that associated scents with different sections and encouraged readers to follow their noses
 
mystic krewe: Swedish artist Bror Anders Wikstrom brought fantastic symbolism to Mardi Gras revelry

infinite regression: animated examples of the Droste effect on packaging

philogrobilized: a celebration of outmoded English words (citations needed) just as resonant today as in the past

mi, a name i call myself: an illustrated history of the constructed language Solresol where words are formed from musical notes

rogue one

As Phil Plait extols the fact that rogue—or rather free-floating—planets ejected from their metropolitan stars (previously) have moved rather quickly from the realm of the theoretical and stuff of science-fiction to confirmed entities, most likely numerous, is cause for humanity to step back and not only bask a bit in our accomplishments but also reconfigures our perspective.
Space is still surely vast and there’s great emptinesses between our stellar buoys but what if nomadic worlds outnumber the stars. Given the bounty of exoplanets that we know to be out there, it stands to reason that we will encounter civilisations through archæology and artefacts, but it does give one pause to imagine that our first contact—so to speak—is with the ghostly and haunted. It isn’t a forgone conclusion that a wandering planet would necessarily be a sterile fossil, however, since astronomers have also found that in at least one instance (and on cosmological scales, it seems to be the exception that proves the rule) that a planet can retain its satellites and a moon—of sufficient size—could be a source of energy via tidal force heating.

gobierno en el exilio

Having already expressed displeasure with the idea that fugitive Carles Puigedemont attempts to take office in absentia, Madrid is now declaring that it will reinstate direct rule on the autonomous community of Catalonia and is summoning his physical presence.
Since the dissolution of the county government during its independence referendum, president Puigedemont has sought political asylum in Belgium, escaping charges of sedition and embezzlement that have resulted in the confinement of nine members of the Catalan cabinet, and is virtually guaranteed to be arrested should he return. During the dictatorship of Francisco Franco that began with civil war in 1939 and lasted until the restoration of the constitutional monarchy in 1975, the succession of presidents of the Generalitat (the executive branch) was maintained abroad in France, Switzerland and México. There is of course no hint of equivalence in this comparison and we’re trying to better acquaint ourselves with this topic but paternalistic tendencies always carry the best of intentions.