fulfilment-by-amazon

Examining the anti-trust lawsuit filed against the e-commerce giant and the inextricably integrated logistics that makes marketplace and membership one in the same, it’s noteworthy how anti-competitive incentives are introduced by shoehorning French regulations into the conversation—the country has not only been the first one to boldly reform its tax regime to make digital overlords pay more of their fair share (see previously here and here) and very early on a prohibition against social media privelging and the invitation to follow on Facebook but rather “search the internet” for French businesses—with the ban on free-shipping to protect physical retail stores as well as other online boutiques. Amazon—with its captive patrons—has built the most robust and inescapable walled-garden, though it is arguable that anyone sets out with such intentions.

stultifera navis

A Latin, international edition translated by his pupil Jakob Locher in Strasbourg and published by printer Hans Grüninger of Sebastian Brant’s 1494 German-language Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools) on this day in 1497 made the late medieval moral allegory a success all over the continent, prompting several more translations, sanctioned and otherwise. The humanist and theologian compiled an anthology of one hundred and twelve brief satires, illustrated with woodcuts (originally issued in Basel), as commentary and condemnation of the human condition, developing the character of Saint Grobian, a patron for the crude, clumsy and gluttonous and is singled out as the best treatment of the trope taken from Plato’s Republic about a dysfunctional crew unable to pilot the ship of state. Locher (*1471 – †1528), the student who translated the work, went by the Latin name Philomusus and became a professor of Humanism and a dramatist himself and published a multivolume study on comparative religion. Though an artefact of medieval sensibilities sharpened with the focus of scholasticism, the conceit, tempered with allegory, gave the authors’ license to, writing in the voice of the fool, to legitimately criticise church and court.

your daily demon: eligos

This fifteenth spirit on the demonological calendar is this infernal grand duke that presents in the form of a handsome knight armed with a lance, ensign and sceptre. With a smattering of strategy, Eligor knows the outcome of future wars and the encounters of armies. Depicted sometimes sat a gee, his ride (going by the variant name the Steed of Abigor) is a gift of Beelzebub and is reconstituted from one of the horses of the Garden of Eden after the Fall. Governing from today through 5 June, Eligos contols sixty legion and is opposed by the cherubim Hariel.

afn gasthaus

Via Slashdot we are referred to one dedicated individual and his quest to collect public service announcements and other video artefacts from the Armed Forces Network and its predecessor the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFN / AFRTS) which broadcast US news, programming and sports to American service members and the their families stationed abroad.  Filling the interstitial spaces normally reserved for advertising with spots and pauses for station identification, educational opportunities, legal and tax advice, jobs postings, community calendars produced by local or theatre military, this dead air time made for a strangely nostalgic and niche time-capsule of Cold War anxieties and propaganda especially in Germany where until 2010, the programming was broadcast and could be received on any terrestrial antenna near an army installation. A lot of these are before my time but I do remember Kay’s Kitchen and using your Commissary benefit, the weather spots, exchange rates, country-quizzes and think about the jingle to “Whatcha gonna do about Appropriated Funds?” nearly every day. I think that one has not be added yet, but the below short about the difference between a special and general power-of-attorney is pretty memorable as well. There are thousands of shorts and vintage news reels to explore—an interesting piece of history whether or not one shares that background.

my soul doth magnify the lord

Celebrated as a minor feast day in the Catholic and Anglican rite, the Visitation marks the episode in the Life of the Virgin when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, leaves Nazareth to see her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist and help with when she went into labour. The traditional day of 2 July is retained in Slovakia and Germany (Mariä Heimsuchnung) for historical reasons and associated pilgrimmage opportunities. Upon their initial encounter, Elizabeth and John in the womb experience and inflowing of divine grace—prompting Elizabeth to praise her cousin, the experience also new to her—for her faith, forming some of the rubric of the Hail Mary, to which Mary gives in response what’s now referred to as the Magnficat, the canticle that is taken from the exchange as recorded by the Gospel of Luke.

lipps inc

The lead single off of their debut album Mouth to Mouth, released earlier in the year in March, first began to top the charts on this day in 1980, reaching number one in the USA, Canada, West Germany, the Netherlands and numerous other places following. The monumental One-Hit Wonder was inspired by the band’s ambitions to expand from Minneapolis and stake their claim in New York City. The band was originally to be called Lip Sync but that name was already taken. Here they are performing the song in 1982 on the show TopPop.

noordzee

The always intriguing and enlightening Maps Mania refers us to a suite of tools and tracers to help us visualise the huge among of marine traffic that passes in and out of the North Sea bordered by the Low Countries and Scandinavia, the waters off Belgium far exceeding the throughput of either of the shipping industry’s great corridors and potential bottlenecks, the Panama and Suez canals. Especially interesting is the data-driven scrollytelling from the financial daily De Tidj (pictured) which shows the activity and congestion of navigable routes along with the dredgers that keep the trade routes open to traffic.

small barnstar

Despite having not seen another contending example of a table of contents that I can recall lending outsized credence or interest to an otherwise dull article about an Italian-cuisine-inspired restaurant chain (other franchises aren’t so elevated—just with a section In Popular Culture, Litigation or Controversies—even more of a furore could be made of it, like with one Charles Entertainment Cheese and rebranding under bandmate Pasqually P. Pieplate), I am confident that there is a category dedicated to just that—likely contained herein. We wonder if they might mandate that the sensationalism be toned-down a notch.