a pox on both your houses

We’ve covered the vain aspirations of Trump to be featured on the cover of Time magazine previously and how that has translated into a lot of press albeit the infamous type, and now with the regular feature, Your Daily Donald (the gratuitous gluttons for punishment we are) Everlasting Blört directs us to the most consequential and clarion one yet—the one for the 17 August edition that illustrates the cover story of how the pandemic has transformed the election and democracy in America.

galleria stradale del san gottardo

Holding the title of world’s longest road tunnel for two decades before being overtaken by the Lærdalstunnelen in Vestland, the Gotthard Road Tunnel between the cantons of Ticino and Uri, linking the highlands to southern Switzerland beneath the namesake massif opened to traffic on this day in 1980.
After taking more than a decade to construct and given the high monetary cost and the nineteen fatalities of workers, the public balked at the fact there was no supplemental toll for it (the tunnel being covered by the mandatory vignettes for use of Swiss motorways), sighing that “The Italians built it, the Germans use it and the Swiss pay for it.” The inaugural vehicle was a school bus.

early and often

Whilst what Trump advised supporters to do upon mailing in ballots only serves to further his narrative that the postal system is unreliable (the encore performance for rubbishing public confidence in the efficacy of medical science and the undoing of suffering and hard-won gains) and would needlessly endanger poll-workers as well as constituents by causing unnecessary foot-traffic (and delaying egress to already over-crowded and under-served communities) by going to one’s physical polling place to ensure that it had in fact been received and tabulated—and if not vote in person—was not technically urging people to vote twice, effectively it comes across as such. Even if one could verify in real-time that one’s vote had been counted, the disruption and drain on an already fragile may prove overwhelming, encouraging the assembled crowd to test the system as Trump made an appearance in Wilmington, North Carolina to proclaim it a World War II Heritage City just before corroborated revelations came forward on Trump’s history of disparaging remarks regarding the fallen, service members and veterans.   Please vote if you are eligible, but needless to say only once.

7x7

cut-throat competition: gig workers are tethering their smartphones in trees to gain an edge of miilliseconds over others for a limited number of contracts

the hackney year: season after season of recorded back garden bird song and other sonic gems via Things Magazine

october surprise: a cynical campaign ploy threatens to erode public trust in science and medicine

a transparent corridor in the air: a design firm completes the longest glass-bottomed suspension bridge along the approach to Three Gorges

ascii art: artists creates “typicitions” on his vintage typewriter

snitches get stitches: the prohibition against social gatherings are polarising college campuses

eula: monopsonistic on-line retail giant deploys union-busting tactics to perpetuate myth of “freelance” work-force and maintain their impressment

peaceful transition of power

Via JWZ we’re directed to a very sobering glimpse of what may transpire with the US presidential election that’s just two months away with a bi-partisan think-tank running scenarios that nearly end in chaos, constitutional crisis and street violence.
Trump and his supporters have given every indication already that a loss or concession is not forthcoming and the only outcome that did not end badly was an indisputably big win for the Democratic ticket. These prophesies of doom are not inevitable and hopefully the modelling and discussion can help to mobilise voters and help them realise that the enshrined—albeit it beleaguered and embattled though not yet too far gone—institutions of democracy and the rule of law need the full backing and support of the franchise, lest someone else chooses for them.

dateline

Born on this day in 1920, Marguerite Higgins Hall (†1966 having contracted a skin disease spread by the bite of sand flies while on assignment that turned out to be deadly) would go on to attend journalism school at U.C. Berkeley and Columbia and become a reporter and war correspondent.  Covering World War II, Korea and Vietnam for the New York Tribune and the wire services, Higgins advanced equal access for women journalists in combat zones and became the first female to win a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. Stationed in Europe early in her career, Higgins was reassigned from the Paris bureau to Germany in March 1945 and was witness to the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp a month later, decorated for her coverage and assistance during the surrender for the SS guards. Afterwards from the German desk, Higgins reported on the Nürnberg Tribunal and the Blockade of Berlin.

did ye ken...

This is probably old news for most but I was somewhat taken aback to learn that for over six years the Scots language Wikipedia has been moderated and edited by a Wikipedian who isn’t of Scottish heritage nor speaks Scots and has contributed over twenty-thousand articles to the domain that are largely accurate though not written in Scots but rather with the approximation of a Scots accent.
I feel torn because I understand the upset that this revelation causes—though arguably not malicious cultural vandalism—it does have an outsized influence on the minority language and probably represents the largest lexicon of Scots presently—with all the errata that non-native speakers would take as genuine. What do you think? Despite earnest efforts, one probably ought not to assay something this potentially influential given Scots’ status as something once the object of derision and suppressed, but there is also the fact that this was an undertaking that the administrator took on aged twelve and it presumably grew into an obsession and mission, and I think there’s something relatable in that. Again, a people and a language is not fandom but this episode recalls the spurious volume two of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda of Tordesillas—which Cervantes denounces and is probably the first occurance of metafiction in literature.

u-bahn

As Futility Closet informs the transit map of the metro network of the city of Stuttgart, subways, trolleys feeding into on the railways and airport, commissioned in 2000 is uniquely projected thirty degrees askew to create a three-dimensional isometric layout. Other peculiarities of the transport scheme include the only urban Zahnradbahn (cogwheel railway and nicknamed Zacke) in addition to a Standsielbahn (see also here and here) a funicular narrow-gauge track that ascends a forested hill. This clever representation, however, has since been replaced by more conventional diagrams.