it is what it is

Former First Lady Michelle Obama gave one of a number of rousing speeches during the first night of the Democratic National Convention—harnessing the handicaps of having only a virtual audience to appeal to voters at this crucial juncture for the future of America with many impactful take-aways including:
“A president’s words have the power to move markets. They can start wars or broker peace. They can summon our better angels or awaken our worst instincts. You simply cannot fake your way through this job. As I’ve said before, being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are.” Watch the whole of the prepared remarks, read the transcript and find more coverage from NPR at the link above.

ai claudius

Via Kottke—we are directed to the Roman Emperor Project of Daniel Voshart—Star Trek set designer—who has taken a dataset of over eight hundred sculptures and busts to seed a neural-network to create photo-realistic images of the fifty-four caesars of the Principate, the first period of the Roman Empire that began with the reign of Augustus and ended with the Crisis of the Third Century, which nearly led to its collapse buffeted by civil wars, invasions, economic depression, plague and political instability.
These early days of the Empire were no salad days to be sure but this period prior to the crisis is in contrast to the following one referred to as the Dominate or the despotic phase, beginning with the reign of Diocletian and the downfall of the West. The algorithm was guided and informed by written descriptions in the histories to take into account other physical characteristics in efforts not to flatter or romanticise but show diversity as well as the ravages of rule, age and indulgence. Here is our old friend Claudius, who was rather unexpectedly elevated to the role after his nephew Caligula was assassinated by a conspiracy between senators and the Praetorian Guard. Much more to explore at the links above.

point suscrit

Noticing an all-caps headline with BİDEN rendered as such with the dotted i (called the tittle in English though there’s no case for the letter j in Turkic scripts, see also) as opposed to the dotless that appears later in the word for asylum, I was intrigued about the distinction and wondered how Turkish orthography treated these letters. As with İstanbul, the dotted version usually represents the long vowel sound, close front unrounded, whereas ı most times denotes an oo sound, close back unrounded. Not all computing platforms are able to encode this difference properly—sometimes the numeral 1 is substituted for the dotless ı—resulting in consequential miscommunications.

a pound of cure

Via Super Punch we discover that the joint COVID-19 response and recovery mission of the US government (which is already oxymoronical without even finishing the thought) has created a mission patch for Operation Warp Speed, the public-private venture to fast-track and prioritise vaccines and other therapies against the virus.

The ten-billion-dollar project—which seems rather underfunded considering the toll that inaction has taken for hundreds of thousands of lives and untold livelihoods—could have most likely taken a different, more effective tac had the administration taken the threat more seriously to begin with rather than making the measures that could have controlled the outbreaks into another totem of American cultural wars, and putting forth an effort at least commiserate to that which went into making this logo. The Q is probably accidental, the result of attempting to merge the seals of the Department of Defence and the Department of Health and Human Services but we wouldn’t put it above the graphic design team to reference a conspiracy theory in their work.

dingos ate my baby

Though more likely the mother cried to her husband, “A dingo took my baby,” the phrase attributed to Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton originated tragically on this night in 1980 whilst the couple were out camping at Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) with their two-month old daughter, Azaria.
Though the media and authorities found the claim incredulous initially and the grieving parents were prejudged and stigmatised, the coroner’s inquest later corroborated the mother’s account. In addition to the 1987 Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona, there have been a whole host of cultural references—mostly with the implication that the assertion is unbelievable (myself included), like the excuse the dog ate my homework.

mendicant marks

Previously we have encountered the glyphs left by the hobos, vagabonds and other members of the travelling community as coded guidance (see here), but it was not until this discovery by our faithful antiquarian that we had seen a map made by and for the community in this ethnographic study of Kent that included a chart and key in circulation from 1870. The map was was rendered by a local screever or sidewalk-chalk artist who would normally be consigned with religious iconography and whom captioned figures with such names as “¾ Sarah.” See more at the links above for a glimpse into this world of cunning and survival.

fiddlesticks

Debuting in theatres on this day in 1930 along with the feature presentation King of Jazz, a musical revue of the genre, Flip the Frog’s piano duet with a spider and later performance with a rather familiar looking mouse, the animated short marks the first cartoon from illustrator Ub Iwerks (*1901 – †1971, creator of Mortimer/Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit) since he split with Disney studios. After a brief stint as a free agent before working with Leon Schlesinger and Columbia Pictures, Iwerks returned to Disney, working with them until retirement in 1965. Significantly, this departure was the first animation screened in Technicolor. The cartoon is also featured in the music video for Eminem’s The Real Slim Shady.

acta et vita

Another champion of our canine friends albeit with a wider patronage portfolio, Saint Roch (Rocco, Rochus, Rock, (*1295 – †1397) is venerated on this day with a truly global cult of devotees with namesake churches all over the world, canonised by popular demand fervour. His iconography tells his story: son of the mayor of Montpellier, he divested himself of worldly possession for the life of a mendicant pilgrim and undertook the journey to Rome on foot, and arriving in Italy during an outbreak of the plague, Roch carried for the sick and aided in the miraculous recuperation of many, encouraging the establishment of hospitals for the poor.
Finally catching the disease himself, Roch went into self-isolation and built himself hut in the woods. Apparently not very skilled at roughing it, Roch would have died from starvation had not a dog delivered him a loaf of bread and charitably licked his sores until they healed. The dog was subsequently reunited with his human, one Count Gothard, who became Roch’s first follower. Upon his return to his hometown, not revealing his identity or kinship, Roch’s uncle—now governor of the Savoy outpost—treated him with suspicion and had him arrested on charges of espionage. Roch still remained silent and was executed—though afterwards, the towns people recognised him by his birthmark (or plague pock) on his thigh, appearing as an apparition and performing miracles thereafter. Roch’s extensive benefaction includes bachelors, tile-makers, apothecaries, second-hand dealers and the falsely accused and is invoked against knee problems as well as the plague.