daytrip: milseburg

Bright through very windy, H and I took a trip to another of the nearby peaks of the Rhön highlands (Mittlegebirge, mountain ranges that tend to not rise above the treeline and are forested the entire way up) and hiked up the Milseburg with views of the Wasserkuppe and the valleys beyond. This trapezoidal massif and extinct volcano is most significant for the remains of its ancient Celtic settlement—oppodium, which was one of the first well researched and preserved sites of its kind in central Germany and led to the establishment of societies to maintain places of cultural heritage and accord them protected status, beginning nearly a century and a half ago.
Though now covered in moss, the basalt stones still in parts comprise the base of defensive walls (see also) and foundations of domiciles and the abrupt abandonment of the fortress, first in 1200 and then again in 400 BC, suggests that the site set the scene for a clash of cultures between the Celts and the Germanic tribes of the area. At the top of the mountain is a chapel dedicated to Saint Gangolf, a Burgundian knight and wealthy landowner under King Pippin the Short, whom was killed 11 May in 760 for his express wish to renounce his worldly possessions by his wife’s lover.
Prior to his martyrdom, however, Gangolf had several heroic exploits including, reportedly, no less than vanquishing the giant Mils, who in league with the devil was preventing people from taking the sacrament of baptism by a monopoly of water sources—and generally causing crops to fail by withholding irrigation access. They shall not pass—Gangolf fought valiantly but had no refreshment to regain his strength for the next attack, and a local farmer, himself desperate, refused the knight any relief unless he paid an exorbitant price, which for all his wealth Gangolf could not muster. Resigned to defeat, he removed his helmet and on the spot where he laid it down, a new spring broke forth, still flowing to this day, and gave the knight the resolve he needed to finish off the giant and furnish the locals with a new source of clean water.
The devil entombed the defeated Mils and hence the Milsburg. No recent excavations have been undertaken but the mountain is protected from an archaeological standpoint as well as a being a nature preserve that welcomes visitors and remains a popular destination. Being stormy, it wasn’t the best conditions to be exposed on a summit but it is one that we’ll be able to explore again soon.

earshot

The always interesting Strange Company directs our attention to contemporary survey of the restaurants and public houses of Westminster that are still outfitted with the now sadly disappearing division bells (see previously) meant to recall members to Parliament to cast his or her vote.  These mechanical alarms, largely replaced by other forms of signals, are relics—usually maintained as marks of honour—from the rebuilding of the palace in 1834 after its devastating conflagration (see more), when kitchens and other provisioning sufficient for the entire chambers were not part of the rebuilding, and representatives were allowed to wander out during legislative sessions. Learn more at Spitalfield’s Life at the link above and even arrange getting a map of the establishments left with such a feature of democracy-in-action to recreate this gastronomic tour oneself.

ма́кс xэ́друм

Kazakhstan’s news network Atameken Business has a new pixelated, virtual presenter for its flagship show the Daily Format. Called i-Sanj after his namesake and model Kazakh actor Sanj Madi, he is able to report and banter with other anchors as convincingly as any other talking head.
Maybe such artifices should be branded with a scarlet letter, a V or an H like the hologram Rimmer on Red Dwarf as they become more common and create this duopoly between the pundits, investigative reporters and interviewers that cycle out and retire and the ageless anchors who don’t tire or challenge the producers or censors, since i-Sanj’s inaugural, live segment—see footage on the Calvert Journal at the link above—is indistinguishable from any other newsroom interaction.

synaxarion

An ecclesiastical ambassador to the Byzantine Church of Constantinople whom only served a term of less than two unremarkable years after his predecessor’s impressive reign and missionary outreach work, the only appreciably certain contribution of Pope Sabinian was introducing bell ringing to peal in the canonical hours—though attributed to him by a French scholar some seven hundred years later. An equally reliable though much more fantastic account follows shortly after his enthronement with death not far ahead in the future. A famine was visited on Rome and Sabinian was either unwilling or unable to distribute grain for free to the hungry and it was going in the market for exorbitant prices, buoyed by runaway inflation and the nascent threat of Frankish invasion. For his apparent avarice according to the Golden Legend—especially in comparison to the munificence of Gregory the Great, the Pope before him (though that generosity may have just pushed off the problem to his hapless successor—the sainted pope himself returned in spectral form (like a Force Ghost) and smote Sabinian dead in the Lateran Palace (after three visitations to try to convince him to share) on this day in the year 606. Due to his universal unpopularity, Sabinian was not venerated in death

course of medication

Via Slashdot, we learn that a novel organic chemical compound has been isolated by an artificial intelligence trained on the corpus of literature of pathology and drug-resistance that potentially has powerful implications for continuing to combat infectious disease and make amends for the systematic abuse of antibiotics (over-prescribing, battery livestock, wastewater, etc.) that threatens to revert medical science to that of the Middle Ages.
The compound, named halcine after HAL 9000 by one member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers, seems to put back in our quiver the means to deal with the most pernicious strains of multi-resistant compounds that make environments that ought to be sterile incubators for germs that have become immune to traditional medicine through over-use and over-exposure. Furthermore, given the expense that new drugs trials entail—making their development a pricy trade-off despite the benefit of lives saved, being able to find leads to follow from computer models may usher the best contenders to the laboratory first.

7x7

en nat på bloksbjerg: the incredible art work of Dutch illustrator Kay Nielsen—see previously, whom contributed to Fantasia but Disney let go

band camp: an overlooked and not unlistenable resource: Can This Even Be Called Music?—via Kicks Condor

theire soe admirable herbe: English colonist discover what the natives have been smoking in seventeenth century India

winter stations: interactive installations of Toronto’s beach to encourage outdoor play in the cold months

cabin-crew: the JFK retro TWA terminal hotel (previously) turns the body of a vintage jet into a bar and museum space

salon d’automne: a neural network trained on cubist art produces an infinite stream of paintings, via Waxy 

a parade of earthly delights: scenes from recent annual aquatic celebrations of Jheronimus Bosch (previously) held on the waters of ‘s-Herogenbosch—the next event begins in mid-June

boğaziçi köprüsü

Construction finished some three and a half years later and coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the modern Republic of Turkey, work began on spanning the strait separating Europe from Asia, Anatolia from Thrace on this day in 1970. The suspension bridge was the first to cross the Bosporus in some twenty-five hundred years when Persian emperor Darius and later his son Xerxes separately commissioned pontoon bridges to connect the continents.

hiobsbotschaft

Though many of the doors of diplomacy were already closed to him for his raving support for Trump's foreign policy priorities and business ties seen as some as meddling in internal affairs and was very much isolated in Berlin, to be rid of the US outspoken ambassador in any sense is a bit of a relief-wondering whom might be lurking in the wings to replace him.
Grenell (previously) now becomes the Acting Director of National Intelligence, with oversight of America's seventeen spy agencies, replacing another term-limited appointee to the post, Trump having shown his preference for this management flexibility when it comes to filling vacancies in his cabinet since temporary appointments do not require the confirmation of the Senate. Despite Trump's disdain for his intelligence apparatus, some members of the congressional committees on operational security contend that his lack of intelligence background and organisational leadership is quite alarming (qualifying solely by dint of his loyalty) and signals further erosion in public confidence for these institutions-especially since, reportedly somehow, Grenell will manage both jobs.