uncontrolled deorbit

Unhinged and counter to the continued spirit of competition and cooperation that sustained a polarised world—at least until billionaires started sucking all the air of the room with their ambitions, the chief of the Russian space agency (Roscosmos) suggests that a not asymmetrical response to mounting sanctions levied against Russia for invading Ukraine would be to crash the International Space Station with North America, Europe, India or China all being within the path of impact. While Russia modules do help keep the five-hundred tonne structure aloft and help to dodge space debris, the process would note be immediate and orbit would degrade over several years, with time for it to be restored.

der höllensturz

Whilst on display at the Alte Pinothek in Munich, the artwork The Fall of Damned by Peter Paul Rubens commissioned by the Duke of Pfalz-Neuberg in 1620 (for whom the great Flemish artist had already created the Greater and Lesser Last Judgment) features a jumble of rather Rubenesque figures being hurled to Hell by the Archangel Michael, the painting vandalised on this day in 1959 by a philosophy professor called Walter Menzl, who doused the canvas with wood polish stripping agent. Fortunately the painting could be saved and restored and the defacer turned himself in to the authorities, offering that he had intended to target rather The Four Apostles (that artist’s last major work) of Albrecht Dürer for the herostratic fame but decided against it for the religious implications.

8x8

squirrel monkey: imagining Wordle vintage 1985—see also  

мистецтво: Ukrainian art community despairs as invasion advances

rumble: the overlooked musical virtuosity of Link Wray  

snake island: Ukrainian soldiers stand their ground and face off a battleship defending a military outpost on Zmiinyi, the rocky islet where Achilles was entombed 

regression to the mean: a spate of controversial laws passed in the US to curtail discussions in classroom that would make straight, white cis people uncomfortable (previously)

existential crisis: dread creeps into the everyday and makes it difficult to focus on what’s vital and the ultimately inconsequential  

архітектурної: Ukrainian designers and architects fight back against Russian incursion  

acrophobia: sociable early internet word game that solicited wrong answers only plus several contemporaries

you wouldn’t right click a car, would you?

As JWZ reports, a group of crypto-enthusiasts are advertising their NFTs with street art murals throughout San Francisco’s Mission district, attracting graffiti of their own, ahead of the collective’s ploy for a five-billion-dollar valuation. Late stage capitalism and artificial scarcity is weird and atrocious. Right click them all.

continuum

As an antidote to the frenetic pace of world events and ploys for attention monumental artist Krista Kim has staged a soothing mediation synchronised across the over ninety blaring electronic billboards of New York’s Times Square (see also) with this cleansing, reflective colour gradient. Their contribution is part of Midnight Moment—the long-running digital art exhibition that takes place nightly from 23:57 to the stroke of midnight in the city that never sleeps.

chipping norten

On the heels of London’s announcement to belatedly amend for years of courting and suffering oligarchs parking their money in real estate that’s out-priced everyone else and another leak regarding the secreted bank accounts of the wealthy and powerful, Things Magazine presents a medley of tone-deaf and ill-timed revelations on past injustice and the debut of a planned, Palladium Garage Mal Hal neighbouring Blenheim Palace, which is only in the range of said above bad actors.

postpositive

Having previously (see here, here and here) sustained a run-in with the proscriptive, unspoken rules of adjectival order from the Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth and the so called Royal Order of Adjectives, we quite enjoyed this panel discussion on the topic that demonstrated not only do the exceptions make the rule but also the convention is no fraught mandate or inconceivable mnemonic to commit to memory of the precedence of opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin material, purpose and then the subject noun but rather in terms of distance and proximity by what’s most to least adjectival and least to most noun-like as well as a fascinating insight into natural language and habit. Come up with some examples and how you would say them.

i like crunchy, i like meaty, tender centres satisfy completely

Observed on this day in Japan (8 August in Canada and the UK and 1 March in Russia) due to the date’s resemblance to the feline vocalisation nyan, nyan, nyan, National Cat Day is celebrated to raise public awareness for the welfare of cats and promote cat adoption, and kept since 1978, traditions include posting pictures of cats with their humans and restaurants serving cat-themed cuisine.