lusofonia

Comprised of over two-hundred and seventy million people across the globe that share a linguistic or ethnographic connection to Portugal and its formerly extensive imperial holdings, Lusophone Culture Day is observed today in Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, East Timor, Goa, Macau, São Tomé and Príncipe and Cape Verde.
The designation is derived from the Latin term Lusitania (after the demigod Lusus, companion of Bacchus, the deity of wine and divine madness), the Roman Iberian province that roughly corresponds with modern Portuguese borders. Comunidade dos Paísesde Língua Portuguesa—the Community of Portuguese Language Countries—representing the commonwealth of diaspora selected this day during a summit in 2005.

the magicks of megas-tu

Following the previous episode and originally pitched for TOS, the October 1973 adventure finds the crew of the Enterprise on an alien world in a parallel dimension where magic is common practise instead of science and are placed on trial for humanity’s complicity in the Salem Witch Trials, subpoenaed to appear by a devil-like being called Lucien with near omnipotent powers. The officers of the court are not pleased that Lucien let the humans know about their planet and letting them dabble in spell-casting and are resolved to condemning both him and the crew for their transgressions.
Captain Kirk is able to successfully make his counter-argument, pleaing that mankind has advanced far since the seventeenth century and urges the judge show clemency—crucially, for Lucien too.  Convinced by this act of sympathy, the Enterprise is dismissed and allowed to return to their dimension. In the end, it is revealed that Lucien is synonymous with and the embodiment of the Abrahamic concept of Lucifer, this moment of dénouement being somewhat of a compromise since the creators wanted to feature an encounter with God as they had later wanted to do with the franchise’s first big screen adaptation—a pitch-script that itself never materialised in the form they had wanted.

6x6

artbreeder: a fascinating, generative branching experiment that makes unique, derivative art from participant’s choices—via Things Magazine (a lot more to explore there)

may the fourth be with you: a disco tribute to the first film of the franchise (see previously)

topocom: mapping a better tomorrow – a 1971 US Army short

econowives: the trailer for a 1990 adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale (previously) starring Patricia Quinn, Elizabeth Montgomery, Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall that’s a strange reverse case of the Mandela Effect (I feel I ought to have known about this yet have no memory of it)—via Messy Nessy Chic

wpa: a look at how the US government funded the arts during the Great Depression

such car: machine learning’s mixed meme metaphors, via Imperica

making waves

Having achieved the goal the group was originally constituted for, the Don’t Make a Wave Committee—established in British Columbia in October 1969 to protest underground nuclear weapons testing in a wildlife refuge on the Aleutian Islands by the US government and halted further tests, the founders revaluated their mission and the power of organising and broadened it to officially be known as Greenpeace from this day onward in 1972.
The devastation of the 1964 Alaskan Earthquake still fresh in residents’ minds, there were fears that the tests could trigger further quakes and tsunami, sparking the initial rallies under the banner “It’s Your Fault If Our Fault Goes”—which failed to stop the US from detonating the bomb but accrued support for the opposition, which eventually prevailed, the protesters blocking the access to the island chain with a flotilla of private fishing boats, including the eponymous trawler, that stood up to the US navy.

tin soldiers and nixon coming

In order to quell protests began five days earlier in response to Richard Nixon’s expansive aerial bombing campaign into Cambodia, the US National Guard were deployed to the campus of Ohio State University’s Kent campus on this day in 1970 and opened fire on a group of unarmed demonstrators, killing four and severely wounding nine others.
The immediate aftermath of the massacre solidified anti-US sentiment world-wide for its invasion of Cambodia and prosecution of the Vietnam War in general, coverage precipitating massive protests and a student strike of over four million. Though the war would continue another four more years, it did so to the sharply critical accompaniment of songs inspired the event, including Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio”—possibly the greatest minstrel act telling of the revolution and also how it failed to materialise, and a host of other musicians, including the students Chrissie Hynde, who would go onto found The Pretenders, and her former bandmates (also fellow students), Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale, who went on to establish Devo. The Pulitzer Prize winning photograph was taken by photojournalism student John Paul Filo of fourteen-year-old runaway Mary Ann Vecchio screaming over the dead body of twenty year student protester Jeffrey Miller.

9x9

horsefly stretches so much time: learning French with these near homonyms that sound like (near) idioms, you know—taon temps tant tends

the lord hardened pharaoh’s heart: as scary as “murder hornets” sound, if they destroy the bees, US agriculture will be in shambles

making muppets: Jim Henson presents a tutorial on creating one’s own puppets in 1969, shortly before the debut of Sesame Street

jukebox: a neural network that’s getting quite good at imitating musical genres and syndicating wholly artificial songs, via Memo of the Air

plastique fantastique: these face shields from Isphere have a certain Avengers’ spy-vibe

do not make me fight you: reminiscent of this montage, stunt choreographer Zoë Bell takes on Hollywood

headspace: cranial collages from Edwige Massart and Xavier Wynn

catamaran: this floating shelter in Amsterdam, de Poezenboot, finds new forever homes for our feline friends

www: this was the internet we were promised—why did it take the collapse of civilisation to bring it?

the infinite vulcan

Via Super Punch, we are reminded of another absolutely gem from the franchise in the form of the titular episode, the first out of any instalment and format to be written by a member of the cast, Walter Koenig, beginning a standing tradition in later series—also notably the only character written out of Star Trek: The Animated Series because the show could not afford to retain him as voice actor to reprise his role of Pavel Chekov.  The crew explore a planet called Phylos for possible colonisation only to find it is already populated by an indigenousness race of sentient, non-sessile plants.

The away-mission, after some dicey encounters, further ascertain that the Phylosians were decimated by the introduction of a blight from Earth, inadvertently brought there by a refugee from the Eugenics War. A giant clone of the original scientist who fled from Earth, convinced that the galaxy is as wholly immersed in destruction as his home world was when his progenitor left it, kidnaps Spock with a plan to together restore peace and order with the help of a giant clone he creates from our Vulcan science officer, at the expense of the life of the original. Giant Spock mind melds with the body of himself in order to save his consciousness and convince the scientist giant that his plans were misguided and that the Federation has been a civilisation force, brining peace and harmony to the galaxy. The two giant clones commit themselves to restoring Phylos and making the ecosystem again viable for the native population and the Enterprise departs. We rather like the idea that there’s a giant Mister Spock somewhere out in the Alpha Quadrant with another giant gardening companion. Koenig unfortunately did not take up producer Gene Roddenberry’s offer to write more episodes.

pierre-papier-ciseaux

In a decision reached in mid-April, we learn that the Court of Appeal of the province of Québec has vacated the outcome of a dispute resolved through the means of best of three rounds of “rock, paper, scissors” and reinforcing the ruling of a lower court that the settlement of debts by the above means was not a legal valid or sufficient one.
The case, which is in fact far more salacious, involving a love-triangle and a soured business investment, than the salient factors was heard and the verdict reached not by dint of poor documentation of said contract, the personalities of the menage e trois or even the stakes involved but rather the technicality that according to legal code gaming and wagers are only an acceptable means of resolution if the underlying contest involves skill or bodily exertion—à la seule adresse des parties ou à l’exercice de leur corps, with the court finding their match involved no strategy and was purely a game of chance. Much more at Lowering the Bar at the link above.