park place and pall mall

With a long layover and an afternoon to wander Londontown, markets consultant Dan Barker (via Kottke’s Quick Links) used his time to document the properties on that city’s version of the game Monopoly (previously) and provide a bit of history and context for each as he moves around the board with the capital’s streets and stations still in the grips of quarantine and social distancing. Real estate costs have increased significantly as compared to Atlantic City.

ad damnum clause

Not being a lawyer but certainly at least a legal enthusiast, I very much enjoyed encountering this section of the suit that the Trump team of attorneys have filed against the cabinet’s former National Security Advisor—after Trump first tried to claim that all conversations with him are classified or registered copyrights of Trump Inc.—as an injunction to stop the publication his tell-all exposé The Room Where It Happened—has the heading Prayer for Relief. Something which had not caught my attention beforehand, this petition is the portion of a complaint reserved for the plaintiff to enumerate the remedies that the suit seeks from the court. Synonymous with the eponymous measure of damage inflicted, meaning commiserate with the harm—but dayumn, the lawsuit is one hundred sixteen pages long, seeking to delay publication and pulp any advance-copies, so it makes us wonder what he might have to hide.

this is my happening and it freaks me out!

Co-written by film critic Roger Ebert (*1942 – †2013) and director Russ Meyer (*1922 – †2004) and originally intended as a sequel to the 1967 cinematic adaptation of Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls, the property’s earlier rejection lead the project to be revived as a satirical pastiche of the commercially successful though critically panned first instalment, the X-rated Beyond the Valley of the Dolls had its premiere in Los Angeles on this day in 1970.
Applying the same formula as the original screenplay, telling the heroes’ journey of three young women coming to Hollywood to seek fortune and fame—either finding redemption or not, its parody and exploits extend beyond the protagonists’ dreams and aspirations to lampoon conventions of show business and the creative industry in general. The musical melodrama was unflinching with the first screenings continuing even with the recent murder of Sharon Tate by the Manson Family who had starred in the original film, whose unwillingness to reprise her role—along with that of co-star Patty Duke—caused the development to shift direction in the first place. Lynn Carry, was led signer for the fictitious group the Carrie Nations and wrote some of the songs but no band members actually performed on screen. Below is the opening sequence, Come with the Gentle People, with the full movie plus supplemental material available at this link.

volksaufstand vom 17. juni 1953

Observed annually as a public holiday in West Germany up until reunification as a sign of solidarity with the strikers, the East German Uprising of 1953 began with group of construction workers at two sites in East Berlin, Stalinallee Block Forty and Hospital Friedrichshain, whom were left betrayed and confused by contradictory announcements to shift away from heavy industry and the privations that that strategy had precipitated to more balance and consumer goods which despite relaxation of the command economy in some sense, developers would still be allowed to impose an expectation of more productivity on them with no equal compensation.
The demonstrations quickly spread to over seven hundred locations all over the capital and beyond to the DDR’s larger cities. Soviet tanks were deployed once local authorities were unable to contain the marchers with the protests finally subsiding after a week. Many became disillusioned with the party and the labour movement once they realised the lengths that the government would go to in order to suppress the strike action to include deadly force (thirty-four demonstrators and bystanders were killed as well as five security personnel), although to an extent the protests achieved their aims and quality of life standards and wages improved. The holiday in the Bundesrepublik was known from 1954 until 1990 actually as German Unity Day (Tag der Deutschen Einheit) until translated to October to commemorate the Wiedervereinigung.

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.