the pharmacological merits of apotropaic magic

Just as drills for a zombie apocalypse is a useful heuristic for disaster-preparedness in general, so too are models of the inevitable vampiric saturation of run-away predation verses a more managed approach a tool for understanding contagion and immunity. Deferring to science, Dracula will always best our superstitions and folk-interventions.

pilzfund

H and I wandered a bit in the woods foraging for mushrooms, and while we didn’t really encounter anything that we were reasonably certain was edible and warranted collecting and later research, we found that the forest was ripening with all sorts of fungi, including Wood’s Ear (Auricularia auricula-judae—see previously and which we forgot again was safe for consumption and is widely used in China—I just don’t know about the texture and the prospect of picking one up) that was pretty widespread along the path and some more nice examples of fly agaric (Amanita muscaria, Fliegenpilz, see above). 

A new variety that we had not encountered beforehand, however, were these colourful ones in the same family—sometimes referred to “verdigris agaric” called blue roundhead (Stropharia caerulea, der Grünblaue Träuschling)—the specific epithet caerulea being Latin for blue while for contemporary speakers it generally indicates a shade between azure and teal. Host trees are usually beeches (Buchen) and thrive in alkaline soils.

this is what happens when streams are crossed

We previously enjoyed the musical mashups The Grey Album and the Beastles (full compilations at the link below) and so appreciated making the acquaintance with the broader repertoire of cross-over classics with Kraftwerk and here with Ray Parker Jr’s Ghostbusters vs Intergalactic (see also).

international necktie day

Honoured worldwide on this day, the fashion tracing its origins back to the traditional uniforms worn by Croatian mercenaries stationed in France during the Thirty Years War (1618 – 1648) with knotted neckerchiefs (see previously), which garnered the interest of the courtiers in Paris—especially when the boy king Louis XIV donned this accessory. Worn by both men and women, this article of clothing came to be called the cravat, a compromise between the endonym Hrvati and the exonym Croates, with the lacier variety distinguished as a jabot. Traditionally the observance includes historical and art installations as well as presentations on etiquette and knotting a tie.

6x6

floating worlds: the artistic vision of Joanna Pousette-Dart 

river under earth: profiles of Russia’s indigenous Finno-Ugrian peoples 

a mountain out of a molehill: the burrowing “mole” unit (see previously) of the Martian lander Insight is completely buried 

iso 7000: international standards for symbols on equipment and peripherals—via Things Magazine  

non-rhoticity: Open Culture takes us on a retrospective tour of American accent and dialectal divides  

pearl de wisdom: allow these squirrel and opossum spiritual readings and mediations to lift one out of doom-scrolling

diglossia

(\_/) 
( •_•)  
/ >🎩 

 

Copy, cut and paste but change what the bunny is holding—via.

embargo

On this day in 1973, OPEC (then OAPEC, the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries despite Venezuela being a charter member) ministers came to a consensus to use their cartel powers to influence the West’s materiel and monetary support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War when the country made incursions into Syria and Egypt, advancing towards the economic and strategically important Suez Canal (see previously) and retaliated against Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK and the US by a crippling quadrupling of prices, a shock to markets that precipitated the 1973 Oil Crisis.

Geopolitical antecedents factoring into this stand-off included the decrease in American petroleum production post-war and the rise of OPEC, the decision to float world currencies—unpegging them from the price of gold—with the US unilateral withdrawal from the Bretton Woods Accord in 1971 and subsequent recession, plus the never neglected opportunity for proxy warfare between the US and its allies and the Soviet Union on a new frontier. Because the embargo, which lasted until March 1974, failed to change the West’s stance on the Arab-Israeli conflict, history judges it as ineffective despite the long-term effect it had on international economics and gradually over the ensuing decades pushed the US towards more domestic exploration of fossil fuels and towards energy independence and globally pressured reforms for financial institutions to control for inflation.  Intermediate effects included fuel rationing, a slow-down in factory-orders, a shift in preference for smaller automobiles and a pivot towards China for manufacturing. 

the good lord bird

Having commenced his raid the night before—considered to be the overture to the US Civil War—with the kidnapping of the officer-in-charge, great-grandnephew of George Washington and the seizing of ceremonial weapons presented to the first president by the Frederick the Great and the Marquis de Lafayette imbued with mystical powers, taking more hostages and capturing the federal armoury and seizing rifles for a revolt of enslaved individuals (having failed to enlist the support of Fredrick Douglas and Harriet Tubman who thought the exercise suicidal), the early hours of the second day of the taking of Harper’s Ferry in 1859 by radical abolitionist John Brown first brought a train-jacking which spread the news of this insurrection by a social justice activist whose notoriety very much preceded him—having worked to turn unincorporated territories like Kansas towards the side of freedom rather than slavery.

Delayed until sunrise but otherwise unmolested, the engineer dispatched telegrams to summon the cavalry. The reinforcements that Brown expected did not materialise and soon the white residents of Harper’s Ferry besieged the armoury, forcing Brown and his compatriots to retreat to the firehouse and repel the counter-attack as best they could but were eventually forced to retreat. Having received updates throughout the course of the raid, President Buchanan (whom had previously put a bounty of Brown’s head) sent in federal troops and put the town and garrison under the command of future leader of the Army of the Confederacy Robert E. Lee. Imprisoned and later arraigned in nearby Charles Town, Virginia—now West Virginia, Brown was found guilty of treason and conspiracy against the Commonwealth and condemned to death by hanging on 2 December. The execution was witnessed by a crowd of spectators that included John Wilkes Booth, future assassin of Abraham Lincoln (see also), and though the gathering was kept well back in order to prevent Brown from delivering a final, fiery speech (his last oration in the courtroom was considered by many as nonpareil in American history—he was able to pass along a note to his gaoler that encapsulated his reaction in brief: “I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty, land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. I had as I now think: vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed; it might be done.” Whilst most Northern anti-slavery advocates were sympathetic with Brown’s failed call for uprising, it was condemned in the same circles for being brash and foolhardy, Southern plantation-holders whom did live in fear of a revolt took the coup’s lack of widespread support as an affirmation for the status quo. For Union soldiers, the death of this fighter for freedom became a cadence call: “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, his soul goes marching on,” to which at the suggestion of a friend, fellow abolitionist and woman’s rights activist Julia Ward Howe took the tune and reworded it as the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” as an equally stirring but slightly more reverent tribute in 1861, just as the civil war began.