æstivation

Though less well attested and possibly uncommon, there’s a type of seasonal animal dormancy that’s the corollary to hibernation. From the Latin for summer, æstivation is a state of torpor that some organisms enter—both terrestrial and aquatic—to protect themselves from overheating or desiccation. I’ve sometimes noticed snails scale fence posts or nest in crowns of flowers (that are the remains of an earlier season of growth themselves) along with other insects, apparently æstivating it seems, but the slumber is a relatively light one and easy to raise from.

anthroposophy and apogee

Acknowledging the esoteric dangers that have emerged from the pseudo-scientific disciplines that arose towards the end of the era of Enlightenment just on the cusp of Modernity that try to reconcile the onslaught on evidence that the Cosmos is far older and complex than we can account for with the Bible and founding mythologies, Geoff Manaugh introduces us to the writing of one Sampson Arnold Mackey by leaning heavily into the paradoxical nature of such ethnography and theosophy that it’s in the effort of nailing down a narrative that brings up the problematic nature of speculation and amateur pursuits.
Never going away just repackaged and given a different sheen, we look at impossible epochs and receding events that disappear from the archeological record dredged up from archetypal memories and leading down pathways—some branches potentially problematic, either in fiction, espousing dangerous ideology or adopting thinking that rejects any achievement outsized in the mind of the beholder technically or sensibly has to be the work of the supernatural and one is left to deal with various theories that state the Pyramids of the Ancient Egyptians and Nazca Lines were the work of aliens. Mackey’s The Mythological Astronomy in Three Parts published in 1827 is no different than modern day disaster movies that gainsay the slow creep of environmental degradation with something dramatic like the flipping of the Earth’s magnetic poles and makes a deep and earnest investigation into a pet theory relating to the procession of the zodiac—that we’ve moved on from the Age of Pisces to the Aquarian one, except that Mackey hoped for more cataclysmic and drastic transitions—plunging humankind from an time of general prosperity into an “Age of Horror” plunging the world into deep enduring winters and arid droughts. Life and culture are driven so far as we know by stability and not swings between extremes, however distance that time out of mind may be. The work presents calculations, and like trying to pinpoint the primordial flood that haunts and informs our collective memory is a way to privilege one original story over another and suggest in was the deluge that formed the Mediterranean, for example, or makes some similar loaded and elaborated assumption—which again seems to be the overreach of amateurism that breeds more fables—but still invites one to ponder if these larger, unfathomable cycles might not have some bearing on belief and behaviour and constitution and how disaster imprints and lingers and that instinctual awareness of a pendulum fuels dread and hope.

snapmap

Whilst not a panopticon of what the situation on the ground is for an unfolding crisis, like the protests spreading across America, telling only the narrative of a set of witnesses that use a certain platform and are choosing to share their experiences—and a fleeting (by design) glance at that—this tool, via Maps Mania, is certainly a fascinating and informed one that provides important perspective and more or less live-views as new rallies form and take to the streets.
One can also drift away from the hot-spots, turmoil and revolt to get a real-time video dispatch from virtually any point on the map.

a riot is the language of the unheard

As anxious rage spreads across the US in response to the fatal and brazenly entitled manner—it was all filmed—that George Floyd (*1974) was detained over an alleged attempt to pass on counterfeit currency, the outrage at the injustice was institutional and a generous in the making, though Trump’s series of conspicuously violence inciting comments from his garbage pulpit (that again acted responsibly by flagging his words as incendiary while another swaddles itself in agnosticism and neutrality).
These protests are not about Trump no matter how he might have fanned the flames and made a bad situation much worse but rather seeking to restore a justice denied and rebel to reverse the sickening racial divide that has come to define America, with the only appreciable contribution of that doltish, impeached pretender being to have sewn such distrust in the media that the protests would take aim at an ally outlet—either that or Trump has brought in agitators to attack his own enemies, a tactic that the Republicans and their propagandists like to accuse the left of. The unrest—the National Guard is being deployed supported by military police units in a second domestic action after they were sent to the southern US border in support of wall building operations—will without a doubt be used as a pretext for postponing the election or calling its veracity into question. In other events that transpired at the same time, all rather backhanded set-backs presented as accomplishment Trump decided to postpone his hosting of the G-7 Conference when Merkel announced that Germany would not send a delegation until and unless there was dramatic improvement in the handling of the pandemic that’s also raging unabated across America, but only adding that the membership is outdated and wants to bring Russia and India to the table when the summit is finally held at some undetermined future date. The US severs its ties with the World Health Organisation and strips Hong Kong of its favoured status, undermining its position as a financial hub. Finally, for the first time in nearly a decade, the US has regained the ability to conduct crewed space missions from its own territory—although this is not really a restoration of core competencies as the work is being contracted out and has for an end goal not the enhancement of science or exploration but rather the commercial ventures of orbital tourism, prospecting the Moon and assembling a merchant marine force to fight off any claims-jumpers or extra-planetary activities that the US disapproves of. No one confuses destruction for up-building and no one wants to see their city razed but sometimes such actions are the only means to change

first-past-the-post

Via Imperica, one is invited to build one’s own fantasy Parliament using a Generative Adversarial Network (see previously here and here) to create perfectly plausible virtual members.
Despite inherent bias built in to artificial intelligence that tends to reflect back to us our worse inclinations, I think that these representatives might turn out to be fairly agnostic though there’s no way to gainsay or guarantee that they would turn out any better than the current sitting legislative, apparently willing to squander progress, trust and goodwill by creating one set of rules for the governed and another for the ruling and expect the underclass to gladly accept more austerity and isolation in the bargain. Do let us know how your rotten borough, your pocket constituency fares.

silesian pallas

Polyglot, polymath and one of the most important contributors to stellar cataloguing, star charts and calculating the course of the planets of the early modern era, Maria Cunitz was born in present-day Wołów on this day circa 1610 (†1664).
Her work Urania propitia—generous Urania, the Muse of Astronomy, corrected and simplified the logarithmic tables of Johannes Kepler—which while serving purely for astrological forecasts were rooted wholly in astronomical observation and calculations—and included sections for tabulating future solar and lunar eclipses, computing the mean motion of astral bodies across the firmament and the use of stars for navigation. Aside from the more accessible presentation of methodology, the book’s publication in Latin and German gave it a far wider readership and helped establish German as language of the sciences.

minitrue or signal-to-noise ratio

Accruing no irony for the fact that Trump has his soapbox and megaphone by the graces of the provision of Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which shields social media platforms from being sued for libel and leaves posting and moderation up to the internal policies of the host (since in this case freedom of the press is determined by whom owns said press) so long as those decisions are enforced in “good faith,” the same which he proposes to undermine—perhaps fecklessly with an executive fiat, is the last, best safeguard that any outlet has in carrying his threats, incitements and character assassinations since no one would want to risk the liability of amplifying such lies if there was not a reasonable guarantee of being immune from prosecution.
This legal aegis has of course emboldened Trump to take his message to greater extremes (not to mention to legislate and publish policy changes via tweet) and is the sort of sensationalism that underwrites the apparent free cost and freedom of speech that is served up on these commercial platforms that are draped—or swaddled, in the robes of a public utility, and mostly likely as with earlier efforts to confirm a media bias will prompt no change—including doing less than nothing to combat disinformation—may signal a chilling when it comes to hosting statements critical of the regime, which is full-stop propaganda. This side-show is of course a cruel distraction from the abject failure of the United States to respond to a health crisis made far worse by the government’s abrogation of responsibility and leadership and a push to reopen businesses and return to a loathsome status quo that wasn’t expressed in pent up purchasing and hiring to stimulate the economy and get people’s livelihoods restored but rather satisfy the entitled desire of people to be waited on and to make up for lost time with gun violence and police brutality.

tma-0

According to the director’s original vision, the iconic and arresting prop from the 1968 cinematic adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey and a character in its own right (see previously) was to be a transparent hulking block of acrylic.  After having the two tonne megalith delivered—fulfilled by Stanley Plastics, a speciality company near Portsmouth, it failed the camera test and Stanley Kubrick went with the matte black basalt structure that we’re familiar with.
The Tycho Magnetic Anomaly has an exacting ratio of 1 : 4 : 9—1 : 2² : 3³, suggesting that the sequence extends out beyond our three spatial dimensions. Although the transparent version was mothballed and gathered dust in a studio backlot for years, the rejected prop did see a second career in the hands of Slovakian artist Arthur Fleischmann (*1896 – †1990), who was generally besotted with modern materials like Lucite and Perspex (also creating the UK Pavilion for Expo70) carved it into a sparkling “Crystal Crown,” unveiled by the Queen herself on the occasion of her Silver Jubilee. The commemorative artefact can still be visited at St. Katherine Docks just downstream of the Tower of London.  More to explore at Amusing Planet at the link above.