ps-752

While the Iranian military committed an unforgivable act in its accidental downing of a passenger aircraft and the loss of one hundred and forty-seven individuals and neglecting to close its airspace, it certainly was provoked by Trump with his order to assassinate Major General Soleimani as a rash distraction from his own domestic problems, the throughline is not impeachment or even pulling out of the nuclear deal but the Trump administration’s racist and xenophobic policies that has severely restricted travel for people with an other than white ethnic-background and put fifty-seven Canadians on that particular flight-manifest, forcing them to take a circuitous route via Kyiv to avoid American border and customs checks. Iran’s admission of this grave error and realisation of the gravity of its actions are in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s lack of contriteness, candor and continued obfuscation.

whyy

Still catching up on my back-catalogue of podcasts from over the holidays, this new-to-me feature might be old news but I found it pretty keen that the radio interview show par excellence Fresh Air has made its forty-five years of archived material, some twenty-two thousand segments available and searchable by topic and by guest. Sort of like the Wikipedia feature that allows one to create a textbook or travel-guide, the website not only hosts the audio and transcripts of all the programmes, it also allows one to create a custom playlist for oneself or to share with others.

flexitarian or opportunistic omnivory

While we think it’s a case of moral panic on the part of the beef and dairy producers to try to outlaw calling an item almond milk or a meatless burger and no one will be duped or harmed by it, we agree with Cynical-C in finding something insidious and dishonest in the label plant-based itself.
Marketing machines are creating a false dichotomy and are on the verge of forcing consumers to choose between health and animal-welfare and the environment when we can indeed have and ought to demand both. Butter from plants is after all just a much-maligned margarine re-branded and such a diet that might have been called vegan—or aspiring in that direction, is shunted under that all-encompassing (and therefore empty) ægis to avoid past conceptions and associations. Not all food substitutes for a carnivorous entree and we shouldn’t let contentious marketers convince us otherwise.

dansa ut julen

Literally dancing out Christmas, some Swedish communities are celebrating Knut’s Day (previously) as the end of the holiday season by “plundering” the tree of its ornaments and ceremoniously tossing it out on this twentieth day (imagine that carol) of Yule—Tjugondag jul—set aside as Knut’s name day (see also).

Transposed from the date (except in Denmark) of the regicide of the Danish duke at the hand of his rival and cousin on 7 January 1131 due to it failing too close to the Feast of the Epiphany, for the past century and the present one, Saint Knut’s Day coincides with Malanka (Маланка—that is Щедрий Вечір, Generous Eve) or since the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1918 and putting aside the Julian one, Old New Year’s Eve for Ukraine, Russia and other Slavic lands. A syncretism of a far older folktale with instruction on how to herald the coming return of Spring and renewal and the observation that the Sun begins to turn toward the Tropic of Capricorn (the sidereal solstice and Midwinter for those in the Northern Hemisphere), it is also the last opportunity for partying and abandon before Carnival.

lotr or there and back again

Via Kottke, we are invited to explore and rediscover the web presence of veteran actor Sir Ian McKellen, which includes among its deep linkages about his acting career and other projects the blog, journal he kept from 1999 through 2003 during the production of Lord of the Rings.

les musées de la ville de paris

A consortium of Parisien museums have gifted the world a cache of over three-hundred thousand works to peruse and with over half of the collection already public domain, use however one sees fit. A running tally tracks the growing collection that includes van Dyck, Rembrandt, Cézanne, da Vinci and gives purchase for a constellation of lesser known artists to be discovered. The fourteen participating institutions count among themselves the Museum of Modern Art and the estates of Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac. Much, much more to explore at the portal here.

no identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings and products is intended or should be inferred

Though we could not recite this disclaimer from memory, it’s certainly familiar to all of us, having been driven into the audience’s psyche as a cinematic preamble for any work of pure or historical fiction. From a litigious perspective, we understand we the distributors are coming from but did not realise until thanks to Miss Cellania, it stemmed from one specific 1932 character defamation lawsuit—involving no less than Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin.
The MGM studio debuted the film Rasputin and the Empress (the only movie starring all three of the Barrymore siblings together) which suggested that one of the princess characters was raped by the charismatic advisor to the House of Romanov and that particular portrayal was intended to be Princess Irina Alexandrovna, surviving the Bolshevik revolution as the sole niece of Tsar Nicholas II. The princess and her husband, Count Felix Felixovich Yusupov whom also participated in the assassination of Rasputin, successfully sued the production company for libel and an additional out of court settlement. The feature began with the introductory claim that “This concerns the destruction of an empire… A few of the characters are still alive—the rest having met their death by violence,” a statement that was completely overhauled to own that it was not a historically accurate portrayal of events at all. To avoid further lawsuits, it was removed from circulation for decades until Irina Alexandrovna’s death in 1970. Be sure and visit the link up top to hear the rest of the story and its legacy.

el bosque

We are presented with the verdant, vertical urban forest concept of the architectural firm of Stefano Boeri to be built in the near future on a tract of land just outside of Cancún that was formerly zoned for development as a sprawling shopping centre.
Happily the area will instead be home to new model city (see previously), one hundred and thirty thousand human residents cohabitating with some seven million carbon-sequestering plants. Project leaders plan for the settlement, campus to become a showcase hub of research and education with facilities focused on redressing coral reef degradation, lessening the impact of agriculture as well as demonstrating the integration of mobility, robotics and renewables into civil engineering and urban planning, backwards planning to bring these reforms and innovations to communities and infrastructure already extant. Much more to explore at the link up top.