spy-in-the-sky

Having disappeared seven days prior whilst presumably over Soviet airspace and the US government issuing a detailed cover story to the press about a missing NASA research aircraft lost in northern Turkey with the possibility that the auto-pilot had kicked in and led the plane further afield, Nikita Khrushchev made the surprise announcement (previously) on this day in 1960 that CIA espionage operative Francis Gary Powers (*1929 – †1977) had been intercepted and was in Soviet custody, embarrassing the Eisenhower administration who faced a dilemma in either owning up to the act or denying responsibility and blaming inscrutable bureaucracy in the intelligence agencies—both alibis potentially endangering a settlement at the upcoming Paris Peace Summit.
In the summer of 1958, the US government negotiated with Pakistan to establish a base of operations to run secret intelligence-gathering sorties over the USSR, using U-2 spyplanes to photograph missile silos and other infrastructure—aloft in the upper stratosphere and out of range of Soviet countermeasures, or so it was believed. The captured agent and photographic evidence was impossible to deny and Powers acceded his actions. Caught in a lie, the US disclosed the full nature of the U-2 missions and the involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency—which was in itself another surprising revelation. Powers, though sentenced to three years in prison with seven additional years of hard labour, was treated very well by his captors and spent most of the time with handicrafts, was freed after two years in a prisoner exchange on the Glienicker Brücke (the Bridge of Spies that connected West Berlin with East German Potsdam) for KGB officer and Soviet spy Rudolf Ivanovich Abel (*1903 - †1971). After being repatriated, Powers retiring from the CIA and took a job as a helicopter pilot for a television station in Los Angeles, dying in a crash whilst filming footage of wildfires, reportedly wilfully diverting his descent to avoid children playing near his intended landing spot.

béton brut

Beginning with an overture on aesthetic differences immortalised in in the 007 franchise, 99% Invisible (both in written form and as a podcast) presents an excellent and comprehensive look at the landmarks of Brutalist architecture.
Aside from the distinct pleasure of revisiting a selection of these sometimes reviled yet unrivalled masterpieces of formalism that often courted condemnation as fallout shelters, urban blight or Soviet-era slab with a guided tour—sadly prompted by the premature loss of two architects synonymous with the vernacular—rather than the utopian and optimistic impulse the construction medium brought. Much more to explore at the link above.

analytical analyser of harmonics

From Pasa Bon! we are acquainted with the with the 1959 breakthrough computing advancement from engineer and scientist Jacek Karpiński (*1927 – †2010) in collaboration with Janusz Tomaszewski, the transistor-powered AKAT-1.
Constructed to solve differential equations for better modelling of heat dissipation in motors and shock absorption in brakes and building off the success of an earlier prototype used to make more precise weather forecasts, Karpiński gave his latest analogue unit a space-age housing and interface that looks like something out of science-fiction. Later achievements in the industry include standardising coding language and a machine called the Perceptron that could distinguish objects by shape and was one of the pioneering examples of algorithmic learning through supervised learning. Normally the AKAT-1 can be visited at the Muzeum Techniki in Warsaw.

chronogram

As much as these days can seem rather untethered, time still marches forward and Messy Nessy Chic brings us a thought-provoking survey of some of the myriad ways that civilisation has tried to regulate and legislate the cycles of the Sun and Moon.
One will encounter some of the earliest attempts to figure human reckoning, superstition and experience with cosmology and the progression of the seasons—and whether indeed time’s arrow isn’t a flat circle that brings everything around again, to efforts to install decimal time (or at least one that followed more regular rules) and the French Revolutionary Calendar plus other ways of resetting the clock. A chronogram, incidentally, is a headstone, plaque or commemoration that one sometimes encounters with those seemingly random capitalised or illuminated letters, like in the more straightforward epitaph for Elizabeth I of England: My Day Closed Is In Immortality—or, MDCIII corresponding to 1603, the year of her death or in lengthier passages called chronosticha on buildings that relate a parable and record when construction was completed.

over the hedge

Clad in eight kilometres of hardy, living hornbeam (Hainbuche Hecke) local architectural studio Ingenhoven has recently completed its landscaping of an office block in the heart of the city of Düsseldorf (previously), creating Europe’s largest green façade. Although as is the problem with most bold architecture is that it’s mostly lost on the occupants and can only be properly appreciated from afar, above, it is nonetheless the sort of innovative intervention that we need to see developed and while probably not half so sustainable, the neat hedgerows askance look like a vineyard and seem ideal for the city.

conversational implicature

First encountering this lesson on the “hidden rules of conversation” until I took the time to view it, I was assuming that it referred to the unwritten order of precedence for adjectives which English speakers follow and whose violations are called out—a fascinating if not narrow phenomenon in its own right, but subject tackled—quite well, the cooperative principle, the attainment and sustainment of effective communication, speaks to something fundamental to the nature of language—reinforced again by disregarding the above norms of exchange. The basic guidelines that define this pursuit of a social goals and consensus-building—as opposed to rhetoric and sophistry are known as Grice’s Maxims—as set out by H.P. Grice (*1913 – †1988): try to make only the contributions to the conversation that are confidently true, relevant, succinct and orderly. It was really engaging to note how much of our speech and correspondence can be implied and what mechanisms act as a leveller for assumptions, intuitions with those shared shortcuts being a vital and integral component for efficient communication.

the house around the corner

Born on this day in 1951 (†1999) in Melbourne, Howard Arkley became famous in art circles for his airbrushed depictions of the vernacular interiors and architecture of suburbia.
Having taken up an artist residency in Paris early in his education, Arkley realised that the trappings of home and the aspirational grammar of house-proud and prized real estate were a sort of formalism and energy that could be harnessed—perhaps to certain audiences—as handily as any of the past movements in art and design and these spaces could be celebrated and elaborated upon rather than escaping from them. Arkley had his big break when commissioned to execute a large mural, Primitive—a landscape coursing with cactuses, masks and tattoos, and then got to paint a carriage for the Victorian Ministry of the Arts and was invited to exhibit in Venice and Los Angeles. Shortly after returning to Australia from California, Arkley died from an accidental heroin overdose, a habit he’d kept a secret.

dorfgebiet

Exploring a newly discovered footpath (previously) that meandered along the periphery of the fields, I came across this beautiful though seemingly strikingly impossible to plan and envisage panoramic vista of our village. It’s not taken from an impossible angle but when a settlement has been allowed to grow slowly (or not) by dint of topology and location but rather it is quite rewarding and privileged to find such a vantage point.