we have met the enemy and he is us

First observed on this day fifty years ago and now celebrated in every polity around the globe as the largest secular holiday of them all, organisers in colleges and universities brought out roughly twenty million individuals into the spring sunshine to peaceful demonstrate for environmental reform.
The original impetus was a devastating oil spill of the coast of Santa Barbara, California that was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of marine creatures during the previous winter with city solemnly marking the one-year anniversary of that disaster in January with an Environmental Rights Day, further advancing the idea for a day of action generally for ecological responsibility and justice. For the occasion, illustrator Walt Kelly created an anti-pollution poster with his comic strip character declaiming the above quotation, parodying a missive sent by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry (older brother of Commodore Matthew Perry) to General William Harrison on his victory, more confident and less contrite, in the Battle of Lake Erie—another environmental mess we are trying to remediate—“We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”

do the sabre dance

A short movement in the final act of his ballet Gayane, premiering in Moscow in 1942, composer and choreographer Aram Khachturian (*1903 – †1978, the Georgian artist’s music later denounced by the state as “anti-people”) lamented how this one section based on an Armenian folk dance deflected from the rest of his repertoire, in 1948 becoming a jukebox hit in the United States and elsewhere and being reinterpreted by various charting artists, including a lounge and boogie version in the early 1960s.

please mess with texas

State Attorney General has threaten individuals with punitive measures including incarceration should they make public their belief, conviction, truism that the risk of contracting COVID-19 should not be a trade-off for participating in the democratic process, thus giving credence to ballot-by-mail (see also). Never one to not exploit a crisis for pushing an agenda, one wonders how long it might be a standing-order to patronise one’s local amenities just like before without stint or worry. Interestingly, the AG does not invoke ideology or the economic argument to defend his stance but rather a legal technicality that fear of contracting an infectious disease is not a qualifying reason to request authorisation to vote by post and to advocate otherwise is abetting voter fraud.

over a barrel

Though this extraordinary development has not yet translated to free petrol at stations, the total collapse in worldwide demand for oil and full reserves and reservoirs with no excess storage capacity, a key valuation benchmark in the market has inverted the price per barrel, failing to a negative thirty-seven dollars, meaning that traders looking to offload shares would be paying a premium to do so. The situation has been exasperated by America increasing domestic production through fracking, becoming a full-fledged, failing petrostate and glutting the market in the process and a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia and highlights yet another problem with non-renewable fuel sources that’s a least been partially redress on the renewable market—that of portability and shifting energy and resources to where and where it’s needed.

256 byte boundary

First encountered here, we really appreciated learning about Memories and the economy of engineering that went into coding this MS-DOS demonstration, via Waxy, and wonder if anyone else is practising constrained programming, sensitive to limitations, legacy and backwards compatibility. Considering how enduring Voyagers’ primitive operating systems are or the two-bit viruses that can bring the world to a stand-still, tiny code can have outsized implications.

deaccession

Delightfully temporarily shuttered museums are holding a virtual curatorial showdown to reveal the world’s creepiest exhibit or object in their collection. Entrants, all hideous and artefacts to make one’s skin crawl began with a ancient Roman woman’s burial hair bun and include taxidermied mermaids, talismans and torture devices—like this one pictured from the Tower of London, touted as an executioner’s mask but subsequent research suggests it’s purpose is even darker: an iron muzzle called a Scold’s Bridle, meant for public humiliation. See more ghastly, cursed objects at The Guardian article at the link up top.

spqr

Though there are competing and incompatible origin myths—neither of which square with the archaeological evidence that suggest human settlement in the area is far older, the traditional date for the founding of Rome was on this day in 753 BC (Ab urbe condita 1), eschewing the other candidates for founding father, Aeneas who fled from Troy or Greek Evander from Arcadia or Romos, the son of Circe and Odysseus, by Romulus.
Born along with his twin brother Remus in Alba Longa not far from where the future city would be, the pair were the offspring of Rhea Silva, a vestal virgin and holy priestess, and a visitation by the god Mars (Ares), the king and maternal uncle Amulius who had displaced his own brother Numitor ordered them abandoned to the elements, fearing that they could challenge his claim on the throne and set them adrift on the Tiber. The twins were adopted and suckled by a she-wolf and sheltered in a cave dubbed the Lupercal. Eventually fostered by the shepherd Faustulus and civilised, both became partisans, not knowing anything of their parentage or history, becoming involved in a dispute between supporters of Numitor and his usurper Amulius. With both king and dethroned grandfather suspecting his true identity, Remus was captured and imprisoned. Learning of their past and succession disputes, Romulus launched a campaign to free his twin brother and reinstate Numitor as ruler of Alba Longa. The twins were dispatched afterwards to found a new settlement disagreed over its location, with Remus favouring the Aventine Hill and Romulus preferring Palatine (Mons Palatinus). Omens and augury failed to settle matters definitively and the conflict escalated, resulting in the death of Remus, either by his brother’s own hand or one of his supporters.

dum spiro spero

With a total land area of some seventy-five kilometres—making the micronation larger than some recognised microsates—the Principality of Hutt River (originally called a province) was founded when Leonard Casley (*1925 - †2019) declared his farm to be an independent entity on this day five decades ago and seceded from Australia over a dispute concerning wheat quotas, banding together with four other families who worked the land of the floodplain, lodging a formal objection with the state’s governor.
One item of corres- pondence inadvertently addressed Casley as the “administrator of the Hutt River Province,” which Casley asserted as recognition of his sovereignty. Believing that styling himself as prince would legally shield him from charges of treason as well as levy punishment on those who would interfere with discharging his duties as leader, based on his reading of a thirteenth century law, the principality further claimed that outside of Australian jurisdiction, subjects were not required to pay Australian taxes. After a reign of forty-five years in 2017, Prince Leonard abdicated in favour of his son, Graeme. The principality has no legal status under Australian law and has no diplomatic representation. The title refers to the Principality’s motto—“While I breath, I hope.”—attributed to Andrew the Apostle.