ofdon

Trump’s nomination of a handmaiden (see previously) to the US supreme court to fill the vacancy left by Ruth Bader Ginsburg does not complete America’s transformation to a regressive, angry and cultish theocracy but certainly inches it closer, since unfortunately any line of questioning what uploading the law has to do with religious convictions now carries a sacrosanctity that is inviolate under the prevailing hypocrisy and happy talk that dominates political discourse.

A not insignificant portion of the electorate believe that Trump was appointed by God because reasons. Not only is the party gaining an ally that will help throw the election just like in the 2000 outcome of Bush vs Gore when the results are too close to call but will also cement an agent to overturn all the progress towards a more equitable and transparent society made for the past six decades, effectively transforming the USA into that amorphous monolithically purple blob on the map that marked the Soviet Union, only ascribing to the saddest and most decrepit ideology.

panda diplomacy

Via Nag on the Nag’s expertly curated Sunday Links (always a lot to explore here), we are introduced to the latest obsession, research rabbit hole from the contributors of Artsy magazine in this 1861 portrait of a pedigree Pekingese by German transplant painter Friedrich Wilhelm Keyl, who specialised in the subject and received many commissions from the court of Victoria and Albert. Though living a contented to all appearances and happy eleven more years in the lap of luxury, there’s a dark side to little Looty and her role as a political prop—sort of like Nixon’s Checkers speech.

Charmingly called after the diminutive for the spoils of war by the queen, this example of the exclusive companion breed reserved for the Imperial family of China was one of five Pekingese dogs found guarding the corpse of a lady who took her own life in 1860 as an Anglo-French exhibition force advanced on the Old Summer Palace (The Garden of Perfect Brightness and royal residence) and under the orders of Lord Elgin in retribution for an earlier failed peace treaty began to ransack the place at the height of the Second Opium War. The plunder and destruction took a force of four thousand men three days to carry out, owing to the palace’s monumental size. The sentimental portrait takes on new meaning when looking at it through the fraught historical context of colonialism and is still a matter that the European powers are coming to terms with. Not to be outdone by his father that stole the Marbles, Elgin’s (who also served as governors of Jamaica, Canada and India) wanton act forced the capitulation of the Qing Emperor and ceded the rest of the Kowloon Peninsula to the crown colony of Hong Kong. Posing before a Ming vase that was surely also part of the pilfered treasure, you can detect a hint of saudade and longing her eyes. We’d like to give back Looty her old name as well.

art povera

Presented to the public on this day in 1967 with an exhibition—Im Spazio—opening in Genoa and showcasing the works of seven Italian, described by art critic and curator Germano Celant as impoverished art, the movement often deploys found objects, the ephemeral and everyday and imbues them with meaning by revealing the lost intersectionality of nature and industry.
Due to the nature of the media (not cheap or perishable materials necessarily but rather an intentional apposition to the canvas and marble of established art), many of these first works are no longer around and the movement ended in the early 1980s and being no expert I couldn’t say what legacy and successors that the school has but the term does seem useful and fitting for a lot of modern installations.

america is hard to see, kids

Via one of our favourite newsletters, Kottke, we come to discover the extensive and ethnographic photorealistic art of Robert Bechtle (*1932 – †2020) in memoriam with the reports of his recent passing.

Indistinguishable from a candid, house-proud family photograph from a distance, this representative triptych ’61 Pontiac (1968-1969) captures his style and message, life at the pace of point-and-click documentation but fastidiously rendered by brushstrokes. The painterly quality to this deadpan portrayal is unsettling, rattling the viewer until one can appreciate the beauty underlying the freeze-frame of the moment. Almost the entire portfolio of this San Francisco Bay Area painter features cars though human subjects are the exception. Much more to explore at the link above.

7x7

more than meets the eye: introducing the Ephemera Society of America through Hunt’s Remedy—via Everlasting Blört

cheesemongers: a tour of London’s venerable Leadenhall Market  

divergent media narratives: a battle designer wargames the upcoming US presidential election to terrifying, bleak ends  

more than means the eye: transforming everyday objects from the studio of Max Siedentopf  

try this at home: a demonstration of the allassonic phenomenon—also known as the hot chocolate effect  

non-canon: among the three hundred known apocryphal books of the Bible includes epic wizard and demon battles and a border guard that tried to help Jesus from Strange Company  

parfumez vu: an antique, coin-op scent dispenser

corde, ore et nutibus

While we won’t be deferring to Urban Dictionary’s contemporary definition, we did find it an amusing correspondence between modern portmanteau and an eighteenth century classicist terminology. Antiquated and obsolete as it is nutual does seem like a useful word that would retain its niche in the language signifying something expressed by gesture alone and was borrowed, introduced to English to translate the above Latin phrase said of prayers, made by heart, voice and genuflection.

volenti non fit injuria

Via Slashdot, we are referred to the testimony of a former Facebook manager who baldly admits that the company took its cues from the business model and public relations campaign that Big Tobacco waged for decades to rebuff critics and make their addictive product more palatable at a congressional hearing.

Not mincing words, the ex-director of monetisation continued the analogy of growth at any cost—including the privileging of status and on-line reputation that drives ever more extreme content and hollows out any parasympathetic—human inclinations in favour of an insidious tribalism that’s antithetical to dialogue or consensus. We’ve been here before of course but the frankness and urgency are refreshing, though it might make those who regard this criminal enterprise in a favourable light grow further entrenched rather than simply walk away. Far worse than individual harm or second-hand smoke, the drive for engagement—framed as a proxy for user-satisfaction without respect to said-user’s motivation—has brought the US and the world to the breaking point, fomenting violence and unrest for followers.

telekino

Prolific inventor and Esperanto advocate Leonardo Torres y Quevedo (*1852 – †1936), probably best remembered for his Aerocar that is still in use for ferrying passengers above Niagara Falls, was responsible for a whole string of innovations across several disciplines including an analytic machine in the style of Babbage’s difference engine though utilising electromagnetic components rather than mechanical ones, improved designed for dirigibles, a chess-playing automaton (El Ajedrecista) and perhaps most significantly was a pioneer in the field of remote control. On this day in 1906 in the port of Bilbao in front of a royal audience and many other spectators, Torres-Quevedo made a public demonstration of his experimental radio-controlled robot—called Telekino—in the form of a boat that he guided from shore. King Alphonso XIII also was given a turn guiding the boat with passengers at distance.