17-1618 or equal opportunity omission

Rather than relying on hit-or-miss labour protections different in every jurisdiction (or lack thereof) or the charity of corporate policy, the Supreme Court, against expectations and the judge-stacking efforts of Trump and the Stepford Republicans that have tolerated his antics to push their social agenda, ruled earlier in the week that gay and transgender individuals (LGBTQ+) are protected under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a landmark case that protects (having not universally fallen under the covered categories before) them from employment discrimination on a federal level.

The decision hinged on two parallel cases, one county employee dismissed over his joining of a gay softball league and recriminations against an undertaker for presenting as transgendered, interpreting that the prohibition of exclusionary practises based on sex extends to cover sexual orientation and well as gender identity and non-conformity.

captain picard day is one of the children’s favourite activities—they look forward to it all year

Celebrated annually on this Stardate 47457.1 (based on the Julian epoch, referencing noon on a fixed date in the fifth millennium before the common era and believed safely out of range for recorded history) and first introduced in the season seven, episode twelve broadcast of The Pegasus, involving a salvage attempt of an advanced experimental vessel to prevent the technology from falling into Romulan hands, first airing in January 1994 though set in 2370. Though disdaining the attention generally, the captain along with senior crew participated in the judging and events and the celebration (see also) and its artefacts were carried forward throughout the franchise.

восток-6

The first and still youngest and only woman to pilot a solo-mission into outer space, Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (*1947), accomplished engineer and current deputy of the lower house of the federal assembly—one of the few elected representatives to span from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet to the Russian Duma, was launched into orbit on this day in 1963, spending nearly three days circling the Earth forty-eight times.
An amateur skydiver and in training to be a textile-worker, Tereshkova joined the Cosmonaut Corps and was commissioned as an officer with the first cohort of female space explorers and continued to instruct new recruits until 1997, though not going on another mission herself, despite subsequent re-qualifications. Her call-sign for the Vostok 6 mission was her nickname Seagull—Ча́йка, the asteroid 1671 Chaika so designated in her honour.

vaderbase

Unsurprisingly, Trump is confirming his intention to withdraw soldiers stationed in Germany over rather baseless accusations that the host nation is either not contributing enough to the NATO common defence fund—or more likely, is not willing to pay protection money (pizzo, Schutzgelderpressung) for the increasingly questionable privilege of quartering troops. The corroborating reporting also reminds that the art of pandering is not the exclusive bailiwick of the United States with Poland’s willingness to take displaced army units and even finance (haracz) the construction of large installation, the namesake of their attested benefactor and defender.

hausnummer

As the scaffolding came down and realising that my workweek apartment (previously here and here) had after its latest exterior paint job also embraced the trend, we appreciated these monumental numbers on the housing estates of Singapore—albeit these are funkier and more personable—captured by photographer Peter Steinhauer, via the always excellent Present /&/ Correct (check out their sundries).
One’s address writ-large makes for an interesting contrast and we’re noticing all the new blocks going up in the city recently. Much more to explore at the links above.

townies

On the day in 1381, the Peasants’ Revolt that spread throughout Europe caused by levying higher taxed on a population significantly diminished by the Black Death yet having little leverage for higher wages over the scarcity of labourers, visited Cambridge with the mob under the leadership of the town mayor and one Margery Starre. The colleges of the University were ransacked with deeds and other legal documents destroyed as well as the library and archives set ablaze.
Starre raided the registrar‘s office and removed student ledgers and tossed them into a bonfire in Market Square, shouting what would become a rallying cry of the movement: “Away with the learning of clerks—away with it!”  Starre and her compatriots were not opposed to literacy and learning per se but rather to the system of oppression that charters and ecclesiastical jurisdiction represented, students and priestly professors alike aloof from the Cambridge‘s civil authorities. Starre—not much else is told of her story—was the inspiration for Geoffrey Chaucer’s character, the Wife of Bath—though expanding her conceit with the trope of the “loathly lady,” a medieval story-telling type (c.f., La Befana, Papageno’s Papagena or Princess Fiona) where a woman’s coarse nature is a curse to be broken by a hero that recognises her inner-beauty.  Starre was having none of that.

magna carta libertatum

On this day in 1215 in a meadow near Windsor, the Archbishop of Canterbury mediated a peace treaty between a contingency of rebellious barons and John, the unpopular king of England, signed and sealed with the promise of swift justice, a statutory limit on fealty to the Crown by the landed-gentry, a council for arbitration and restraining the monarch by rule of law.
As much as the document is romanticised and mythologised, neither party kept their ends of the bargain, leading to the decision to be overruled as moot and void by the pope in Rome, Innocent III, precipitating the First Barons’ War. John’s successor reissued the charter, albeit with some of its more radical provisions removed to win an uneasy peace and setting the precedent for subsequent monarchs to renew the deal at the start of their reigns until the Civil War and the execution of Charles. No correspondence is implied though certainly some would be willing to unyoke themselves from the tyranny of science—even if the disburdening of the tiresome proves ultimately uneconomic—but this anniversary greets England (again disunited, fortunately) approving the opening of non-essential retail. Most things don’t just end once we’re fatigued or told we’ve had enough and time to move on. I wish Lisa had been allowed to finish her mnemonic device—I wonder what the next verses would be.

look to this day graduates

Whilst not a word for word quotation of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler in the Munich Accords, agreeing to the annexation of the Sudentenland, for the sake of “peace in our time,” Trump’s vapid and vain commencement speech delivered to the graduating class at West Point Military Academy, cadets called back to attend in person placing themselves at their families at risk for catching and spreading COVID-19 does hit all the same points.
“It is not the duty of US troops to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have never even heard of. We are not the policemen of the world. But let our enemies be on notice. If our people are threatened, we will never ever hesitate to act,” Trump intoned—an address written by Stephen Miller, an actual Nazi. The “quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing” could perhaps refer to ongoing incursions in Donbass that recently caused Ukraine to concede and the equally recent announcement to reduce the number of troops stationed in Germany.