and in flew enza

Via the always interesting Nag on the Lake, we’re directed towards a hauntingly resonant gallery of images from over a century ago that speaks to current times.
These people don face masks to, per instruction of public health authorities, as a first line defence against contagion and spreading the particularly deadly strain of influenza of 1918. We had known that it was spread in an especially pernicious manner by the reintegration of millions of soldiers and displaced populations but hadn’t before questioned why it was popularly known as the Spanish Flu. Neutral Spain (epidemiological records of the time were insufficient to geographically source the outbreak) had no troops fighting in the Great War and therefore no morale to maintain, and unlike British, French, German, Canadian or US outlets, the Spanish press was free to report on the pandemic and the unsuppressed news from Spain forged the connection in the public’s mind (relatedly) since the prevalence seemed especially bad there. Much more at the links above.

♄

Via Kottke’s Quick Links we are treated to a scientific assessment and ranking on the accuracy of the Ringed Planet emoji, assuming that they are aiming for Saturn, across differing platforms and operating systems—see previously. Apple’s version is rated most visually accurate, even including details like the Keeler gap in the rings and the polar hexagon though the tilt is over exaggerated by about twice as much.

free white persons of good moral character

Removing another pesky obstacle on the path towards nativist fascism, we learn via Boing Boing, the US Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs issued a press release yesterday announcing the creation of a section focused on investigating and litigating the revocation of citizenship acquired through the naturalization process.
The first candidates for denaturalization are terrorists, war criminals, sex offenders and other fraudsters and puts the onus of proof on the government to demonstrate, on a case-by-case basis, that the defendant’s citizenship was “illegally procured” or otherwise procured “by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation” and carry no statute of limitations or presumably grandfather clause and coincided with the Supreme Court ruling in favour of Trump’s means test requirement for immigration, allowing the US to deny an immigration claim based on the likelihood of the applicant becoming a “public charge”—a burden on the state. Discounting the very real risk of creating stateless people whom migrated from places that no longer exist, the criteria for adjudication is far from objective.

7x7

barras de mono: vintage playgrounds of México

😷: Centres for Disease Control’s facial hair grooming recommendations for mask compatibility—see previously

open access: the Smithsonian Institution releases millions of images and model instructions into the public domain—via Kottke

mad props: a behind-the-scenes look at the exquisite visual artefacts Annie Atkins creates for cinematic productions—via Nag on the Lake

jodhpurs: these weirdly delightful inflating trousers on the catwalk

minitel: more on the ascent and decline of France’s early internet—see previously

cheesweet: an unlikely Swiss cheese candy that got a mention in a John Steinbeck anthology

ein filmspiel in 6 akten

Debuting in the Weimar Republic on this day in 1920 and released just as the international restrictions on German productions were being relaxed after World War I, the silent horror film The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (Namensgeber also of our faithful chronicler), directed by Robert Wiene with co-writers Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, is considered the defining work of Expressionist cinema and has a legacy that informs all subsequent film-making.
Wanting to emulate an eighteenth century north Italian mystic who reportedly had an unwitting, sleepwalking subject commit murders on his master’s behalf, the director of a local insane asylum poses as a side-show and obtains a license—after some persistence—to hold a hypnotist, somnambulist act during a village fête and use the audience as further victims and test-subjects for his investigations into the psyche through the power of suggestibility and demagoguery.

de strijd tussen vasten en vastenavond

For this Marti Gras, we are given an object lesson on the cusp of the shifting seasons in the form of the composition called The Fight Between Carnival and Lent by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (see previously) painted in 1559. The ceremonies, one raucous and the other serene and reserved, also signalled the shift in cuisine and palette from a time of abundance to privation reinforced by social conventions and Christian iconography, and although we may not be privy to a coherent and linear narrative, there’s much allegory to be found in the details.
Tuesday’s procession is led by a fat man astride a huge beer barrel with a pork chop hood ornament whereas Ash Wednesday’s float, piloted by the Lenten Lady, is laden with mussels, waffles and pretzels, dietary staples of the Netherlands and the time until Easter—underscoring how Lutheranism did away with fasting but still permitted its annual lead-up. Learn more about the details and symbolism from My Modern Met at the link above.

on the cult of personality and its consequences

Though leaked contemporaneously by Mossad and intermediaries to the press, Nikita Khrushchev’s so called “secret speech” («О культе личности и его последствиях») that was critical of deifying the past and of Joseph Stalin’s brutal purges in the name of promoting communist ideals delivered on this day in 1956 to a closed session during the twentieth party congress of the Soviet Union, transcripts of the text were not officially released until 1989 under the auspices of Mikhail Gorbachev’s campaign of glasnost.

The denunciation marked a shocking departure from the unified and coherent propaganda of the day and while notably removing the body of Stalin from public view and interring it in the Kremlin necropolis signified an internal shift (pivotal without qualifications—though his reforms and liberalisation had well-defined limits—the speech a catalyst for uprisings in Hungary and Poland, the author also summarily suppressed them), the aftermath of this revelation accrued greater and more immediate external changes with membership dropping precipitously in the Communist Party in the US and UK over Stalin’s violence and the political, ideological schism between the USSR and China, who condemned Khrushchev as a revisionist and self-serving.

abschaffung von preußen

Though effectively absorbed into the unitary government of Nazi party with the Preußenschlag of Chancellor Franz von Papen that took over the free state under an emergency decree in April 1932, the corridor that linked Germany to Russia along the Baltic, the Prussian State, was formally abolished on this day in 1947 under Law № 46 of the Allied Control Council.
Assessing the region and former Hohenzollern kingdom—ultimately the conquests of the Orden der Brüder vom Deutschen Haus der Heiligen Maria in Jerusalem, that is, the Teutonic Knights, an organized para-military wing of German crusaders—as representative of expansionism and militarism and with the aim of promoting democratic self-determination and peace for a devolved Germany, the Prussian administration and agencies were dissolved and territories not already forfeit were apportioned to respective Länder, Brandenburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, the Kaliningrad Oblast, Klaipėda and the Polish Western Territories. Signatories of the Four Powers were General Marie-Pierre François Kœnig, Marshal Vasily Sokolovsky, General Lucius D. Clay and General Brian Hubert Robertson.