Portrayed by Don Quine (*1938, The Fugitive, Peyton Place, The Virginian), swinging Sixties bachelor stock character Don Miles ushered in the new decade with some controversy that American audiences were unprepared for in an episode of Hawaii Five-O aired once and never shown again—even in syndication nor much later in commemorative box sets, called “Bored, She Hung Herself” in which our charismatic gigolo is implicated in the death of his sometimes girlfriend Wanda, played by Pamela Murphy (*1945, All in the Family, Silver Spoons, Dallas), found hanged dead in their apartment. Wanda’s death wasn’t at issue since crime and murder were stock and staple of this sort of television programming, but rather how it presented as accidental, “was she under the diabolic influence of her mystic boyfriends—or was it murder?” a hazard of practising yoga with a noose, as Miles offered as testimony of the couple’s engaging in the activity for health reasons. Though not named specifically, the episode described in some detail auto-erotic asphyxiation and tragically a viewer died while trying to replicate the technique. The family of the victim sued the network and the controversial episode was wiped from CBS archives.
Tuesday, 7 January 2020
police procedural
Monday, 6 January 2020
ultimate rendering
Via our peripatetic pal Everlasting Blรถrt, we are shown a gallery of artists’ final works, curated with a bit of context and perspective for their parting paintings. Quite a few seem a little too on the nose as to otherwise deny the creator their reflection and prescient swan song, like this still-life executed by Frida Kahlo (previously, 1907 – †1954) with watermelons (sรญndria) part of the iconography of El Dรญa de Muertos and completed eight days before the Mexican artist’s death. Watermelons were also the subject of the last painting of Diego Rivera (*1886 – †1957), whom took Kahlo as his third wife.
totem guide
Via the always engaging Friend of the Blog, Nag on the Lake, we are invited to learn more about the rich cultural traditions and customs of the Haida Nation of the Haida Gwaii (Xaaydaga Gwaay.yaay) archipelago of British Columbia through this custom set of emoji that created by indigenous artist Jaalen Edenshaw, renowned the world over for his incredible totem poles, ritual masks and other native art, whose study and talent inform and inspire these new glyphs and engender interest in this severelt endangered though reviving language (see also here, here and here). Edenshaw‘s extended, creative family have devoted their careers to preserving and promoting their heritage including Gwaii Edenshaw who made the first Haida language feature film and artist Guujaaw (Eric Edenshaw), folk singer and political activist. Much more to explore at the links above.
some at a very high level

catagories: ⚛️, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, ๐ฑ, Middle East, The Simpsons
Sunday, 5 January 2020
namรคndg
On this day in 1938, outside of the courts and with the signature authority of the Reichs-Chancellor, the Interior Minister and nominal participation from the Ministry of Justice, Nazi Germany ratified its Decree Concerning the Changing of Surnames and First Names (das Gesetz รผber die รnderung von Familiennamen und Vornamen, kurzform NamรndG) in order to facilitate external identification of those with Jewish backgrounds. Fully articulated and enforced by August of the same year, unless Germans and non-citizen residents identified as Jewish already had sufficiently typical Jewish first names—according to a list authorities drafted—the men were to be called Israel and the women Sara and their former identities stripped away in all official documents and registers.
laderoboter
Though the deployment date for these units is still to be determined, Volkswagen has developed a concept for a seamless, mobile electric-vehicle charging scheme for use in parking garages and similar spaces that will automatically locate and re-fuel cars in need, carrying their banked power in battery wagons to where it’s needed.
Once ready to integrate the system in a given location, it would be relatively easy to set up without much change to existing infrastructure and electric-vehicle owners wouldn’t feel the need to compete for a limited number of charging points or fight over a reserved parking space. Such helpful robots could even patrol metered-parking in urban centres from the sidewalks, searching for automobiles in need of topping-up.
136199 eris
Ultimately named for the dual-natured goddess of strife, on the one hand peddling in the aspirational jealousies that drive competition and one the other sewing discord—like when she tossed that bombshell Golden Apple in the ring and left it to Paris to decide whom was the fairest of them all, Eris was discovered on this day by a team of astronomers at Palomar Observatory in 2005.
Pluto having not been yet downgraded and suspecting that this new find might indeed but a planetary candidate and bigger that soon-to-be dwarf planet (Eris is indeed a quarter more massive than icy Pluto though the latter has a greater diameter), the team used Planet X as a provisional designation. With the campaign to give more representation to female deities and New Zealand actor Lucy Lawless’ Warrior Princess enjoying a cultural moment back then, X transitioned to Xena before in accordance with the International Astronomical Union’s protocols, Eris was decided upon in September of the following year. Meanwhile, it was discovered that the most massive dwarf planet and the largest object not visited by a space probe in the Solar System, had a satellite of its own and following the above conventions before an official name could be given, the team referred to it as Gabrielle, Xena’s sidekick. Eventually the moon was named Dysnomia, after one of the daughters of Eris—ฮฯ
ฯฮฝฮฟฮผฮฏฮฑ, being the personification of lawlessness and an indirect tribute.
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ท, ๐, ๐บ, ๐ญ, myth and monsters
stay-puft
Of the over four-thousand confirmed exoplanets—with some five thousand candidates waiting in the wings—three of the strangest, most unexpected reside in the Kepler 51 system, located in the Cygnus constellation twenty-six hundred light years away and have been classified as super-puffs.
Gas giants with the same circumference as Jupiter, they have only about one percent of the density, their rarefied atmospheres beaten to an airy consistency. Astronomers cannot quite fathom why the planets have such characteristics—though one theory suggests that the apparent surface is an upwelling of dust driven by some equally novel geothermal reaction—but agree that novel systems such as these are good incubators for positing the range of possibilities for planetary composition.