vita panteleímon

Sharing his feast day with the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and counted among the Fourteen Holy Helpers in Western traditions—as one of the Holy Unmercenary Healers in Orthodox contexts, meaning that he did not expect or accept payment for his services, Saint Pantaleon (from the Greek Παντελεήμων for all-compassionate, *275 - †305) was one of the personal physicians to Roman Emperor Galerius who was won over to the church by a local bishop that taught faith was the better medicine.
Finding himself invested with miraculous healing powers, Pantaleon evangelised and eventually drew out the ire of his chief patient, who ordered him put to death, calling his miracles trickery. His executioners employed various means of torture to him, including nailing his hands to his head, which mostly backfired until giving up the ghost himself. He is venerated across Europe—especially in Italy where he is said to furnish lottery numbers in the dreams of winners and as the target of gentle ridicule San Pantaleone is the origin of the word pantaloons and associated slap-stick. After the mutiny was suppressed, the Russian Imperial battleship Potemkin was reflagged as the Panteleimon—Пантелеи́мон.

7x7

you gotta eat them plums: an arcade version of William Carlos Williams’ “This is Just to Say” (see previously)—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links

op art: more on the Hungarian-French artist Victor Vasarely (see previously, born Győző Vásárhelyi, *1906 – †1997) whose work informed the movement

earth for scale: ESA solar probe finds new “campfire” phenomena on the Sun

manhatta: a 1921 short considered America’s first avant-garde experiment set to the verse of Walt Whitman

slob serif: awful typefaces (not this one) for awful protests—via Memo of the Air

primary pigments: more colour stories (see also) from Public Domain Review

hasta la pasta: the history behind linguini, fusilli and every variety in between

e.o. 9981

Though unable to yet influence the country as a whole, on this day in 1948 US president Harry S. Truman was able to impel social justice forward with his issuance of an executive order (see previously) the culmination of years of struggle and advocacy that was finally heeded and which abolished discrimination on the basis of “race, colour, religion or national origin” in the armed forces and led to the end of segregation in the military for the Korean War and thereafter.

dum spiro spero

The global observance of Esperanto Day (Esperanto-Tago, see previously) falls on this the anniversary of the publication of the first book (Unua Libro) in the constructed auxillary language by author, activist and linguist Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhof in Russia in 1887 under the pseudonym Doctor Esperanto. Before the end of the year, there were also Polish, French and German versions of this grammar which attempted to resolve international problems by couching them in a common and intelligible language.

theophrastan model or on character and caricature

Via Strange Company’s Weekend Link Dump (much more to explore here), we are given the opportunity to revisit our familiar and enduring cast of personality tropes, stock characters first put forward by Aristotle’s student Tyrtamus, given the honourific by his teacher Theophrastus “divine speaker” for his eloquent writing and lucid observation in the fourth century BC and resound still throughout the ages to this day.
Though specialising in botanical studies and dabbling a bit in all the liberal arts, Theophrastus is best known for his character sketches (Ἠθικοὶ χαρακτῆρες) that class virtually every fictional and real life protagonist, couched in termsone’s virtues, faults and hubris. Though ancient and fixed, inflexible, they are sustained not only throughout the arc of narrative that they’ve been dealt but also throughout the centuries because their dispositions, relatable though one dimensional they might be, give us the extras needed to limn a society—and we recognise others in them, the Grumbler, the Boaster, the Slanderer even if we fail to see ourselves.

there is an old vulcan proverb

With no sense of irony, the US Secretary of State announced during a speech earlier in the week delivered at the Richard Milhous Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California, that the “old paradigm of blind engagement with China” had become untenable, and subsequently closed and ordered the expulsion of diplomatic staff in its consulate in Houston—characterising the operation as hub for industrial espionage.
Outside the embassy in Washington, DC the Texas compound was the first for China once relations had been normalised in 1979. In response, Chinese officials ordered the closure of the American consulate in the city of Sichuan capital Chengdu (see previously). These heightened tensions come on top of ongoing trade disputes and deflecting the failure of the US to contain the spread of COVID-19 infections by vociferously blaming China.

cuckoo for cucuphas

Despite the Phoenician name meaning “he who likes to joke,” we could find little humour in the hagiography of the saint venerated on this day in France and Spain (though some places postponed until 27 July due to the feast of his compatriot Saint James, the Santiago).
From a wealthy merchant family in Carthage, Cucuphas (*269 – †304) travelled to Barcelona to find converts and aid the Christian community through trade and commerce, gaining a reputation as charitable and a miracle worker. Martyred during the Diocletian persecutions, Cucuphas and his companions were imprisoned by the Roman governor of Iberia, whom unwisely ordered him tortured to prolong his death since the succession of torments backfired through heavenly intervention. The saint was finally dispatched with the coup de grâce of a sword to the throat. Though the association is lost to the ages, Cucuphas is the patron of those suffering from kyphosis (hunchbacks) and petty thieves—and there is a folk practise, arising presumably from the litany of tortures he endured, of praying to the saint for the return of misplaced belongings—symbolically making knots in handkerchief that represent the testicles of the Cucuphas and threatening not to untie them until the lost object is found.

semper supra

The US Space Force has revealed its reworked, official logo (see previously) that’s a bit less derivative and infringing on Star Fleet, replacing the version unveiled in January, albeit this one is just the Pontiac logo rotated 180º but we can leave that to General Motors’ lawyers and the Space Judge Advocate General to sort out. Be best!