herd immunity

After reading this thoughtful essay and reflection by Guardian correspondent Gaby Hinsliff about the Derbyshire village of Eyam during the outbreak of the bubonic plague in the winter of 1664 and its singular self-sacrificing commitment to hold their ground and not spread the contagion until it had extinguished, exhausted itself and how this account begged the question whether any of us has the charity of isolation and deferment any more corresponded in a sense with the more contemporary act of contrition in the village of Tyneham in south Dorset, offered up to the Ministry of Defence as a testing-range as vital to the war effort.
The last victim of the plague of Eyam, a farm hand named Abraham Morten expired on 1 November 1666, the infection having run its course and the last resident of the some two hundred displaced—what they believed then to be a temporary measure, left Tyneham after receiving evacuation orders shortly before Christmas 1943, penned a poignant note to the church door for the troops in training—which has been respected:

Please treat the church and houses with care; we have given up our homes where many of us lived for generations to help win the war to keep men free. We shall return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly.

As Eyam endured the loss of many of its residents, the military requisition of Tyneham became a permanent one and the villagers never returned to their homes, given over to target practise, though the church was spared. Like the author, even for the tremolo heroism that doesn’t demand of us to rise to the occasion, whether we’ll see not kindnesses and succour of the immediate variety but rather the willingness to overcome the inertia of our own plans and priorities in this catastrophe or the next to accept inconvenience, cancellations and dashed arrangements to quietly keep to ourselves in the name protecting others and never know the value of what we’ve done. When the time comes will we be the vicar that convinces his parishioners (whom understood being contagious even if the vector was not known) to not flee the village in a panic or sheriffs and squires (free riders think the herd is other people’s problems) who bolted at the first sign of trouble?  Conversely, would we give up hearth and home for the greater good even if those goals were in a sense indirect and abstract?

tillökningsdagen

Rather than share the turmoil experienced by other parts of Europe in terms of lost weeks when converting from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, in 1699, the government opted to gradually transition to it over a planned four decades, skipping leap days and eventually sychronising the dates.
Due to complications of the Great Northern War with Peter I of Russia, however, this business of calendar reform couldn’t be promulgated properly across Sweden and only the twenty-ninth of February of 1700 was omitted. By 1712, realizing that the provisional calendar was more trouble than it was worth and the country was not only no closer towards alignment with the Gregorian calendar and was moreover a day behind the rest of the world still using the Julian date, Charles XII decreed that Sweden would add that missing day back and at least be synchronous with Orthodox and Protestant Europe, hence the unique 30th of February of that year.

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.