papaver rhœas

The poppy seeds I gathered and spread last year failed to germinate—so will try again, but there’s quite an untended eruption of flowers (Klatschmohn) along the neighbour’s fence line, most in the vivid, distinctive red with orange tint, coquelicot from the French name for the wild corn poppy popularised by the paintings of Claude Monet, but there was a singular one with a pale lavender colouring that I had never seen before.
The red symbolises remembrance, white peace and the deep purple cultivar is used to acknowledge the role of service animals in combat, but for this particular shade I can’t find other examples of. Have you seen poppies in this colour?

wüstung schmerbach

Owing to the proximity of the former inner-German border, we knew that there were some depopulated places in the region as well as losses due to geopolitical forces and factors spanning from 1945 to 1990, but had not realised before how assiduously these abandoned settlements (Wüstungen)—often removed without a trace, have been documented and studied nor how recently removal and demolition was carried out.
One such place was the valley village not far from Helmershausen, first accounted for in 1562 as holding of the Henneburg cadet line, Schmerbach was destroyed during the Thirty Years War but re-established in the mid-1600s.
In the late nineteenth century, an industrialist from South Hampton founded a brick factory there and in Weimarschmieden, a village not far away on the Bavarian side of the border. When Soviet forces occupied the area in July 1945, employees of the brickworks were given parcels of land as part of reform efforts by the state, but because the frontier was only a few hundred metres distant and expensive to patrol, authorities decided in 1973 to raze the factory, stables, farmstead and eight homes and resettle the residents. A memorial stone commemorates the destruction and removal.
The surrounding area is all farmland and the only remnant of the village are the electricity transformer tower and a small cemetery in the middle of a field, marked by a grove of trees, the last burial having taken place in August 1948. There are other spots like this and we plan to explore and learn more.

13/10

We selected the same header image as the least cursed one to ease into the ramifications that Janelle Shane (previously here, here, here and here) expertly briefs us on with a preview of the capabilities of OpenAI and how attuned it is to following prompts through this “parody” account it has made of the wholesome Twitter property We Rate Dogs that captures the purpose and tone of the original a bit too well with its introduction and (mostly) generous evaluation. The added element of horror is in the generative gulch (as opposed to uncanny valley) when there’s a glitch in the virtual canine that Shane used to illustrate the ratings for its spoof account but that unease seems to us a distraction from what sort of passable bot armies might be unleashed on any of us contrarians if left unsupervised. Much more to explore at the links above.

do a turn or return the twenty-five

Courtesy of our faithful chronicler, we learn that on this day—along with many others of good and great report—in 1970 Mungo Jerry (yes, named after the character from Cats) had their seminal summertime hit when the song topped the charts in the UK.

the pentagon papers

Leaked to the press by military analysist turned activist Daniel Ellsberg who had researched and contributed to the study and recom- mendations to the US government, the Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force was published on this day in 1971, revealing crucially that successive administrations had deceived the public and the US legislature on its prosecution and expansion—mission creep—of the war in South East Asia. The exposé helped inform the growing sentiment opposing the war and intensified the movement against it. Nixon’s hatchetmen (nicknamed the White House plumbers as they were to see about a leak) went after the credibility of Ellsberg and the papers, bringing up charges of treason, which were later dropped during the Watergate investigation as an unlawful intimidation tactic.

7x7

but vaderbase? only you would be so bold: the Rebellion Republic names its military bases

cause célèbre: documenting Russia’s historic gay cultural icons and personalities

false-flag: Trump crafts propaganda from stock photos, labelling random protesters as agents of Antifa

undisclosed location: a tour of the White House bunker, from nineteen-year-old documentary photos provided by the US National Archives

vote hillary: an artist’s prophetic 2016 appeal in the spirit of Andy Warhol’s “Vote McGovern” campaign screen-print

crimes against humanity: Belgium comes to terms with its genocidal colonial past with the help of toppling statues

karens’ personal racism valet: a bevvy of resources on defunding the police and reforming law enforcement

bodice-ripping

In order to keep up with the pace of publication of pulp fiction paperbacks and special interest magazines cover artists and illustrators often turned formulaic, perhaps becoming generic and predictable.
Active from the mid-1950s through the late 1970s and under contract to Man’s Life and True Men Stories, no one embraced and mastered the model and method better than Wilbur (Wil) Hulsey (*1925 – †2015), we learn thanks to Miss Cellania, whose commissions almost invariably consisted of virile man (the gallery’s curator sees a resemblance to David Bowie) defending a distressed damsel (present or implied) from exotic animals, the protagonist himself sustaining bodily damage whilst trying to rebuff the attack. The subgenre of illustrated narrative that Hulsey propagated is sometimes referred to as “Weasels Ripped My Flesh”—though Cannibal Crabs or “Chewed to Bits by Giant Turtles” would do as well, albeit that none other are Frank Zappa song titles.  See more cover art at the links above.

gömböc

From the Hungarian diminutive form of sphere, this distinctive though not uniquely-shaped geometrical construct (see also) has like a Weeble (which wobble but they don’t fall down) or the bumps on the shell of a tortoise the property of righting itself and is defined—when sitting on a flat surface—as having one stable and one unstable point of equilibrium for resting and rocking.