ziggy played guitar (10. 852)

After one hundred eighty two concert performances and eighteen months of touring, David Bowie, with only bandmate and guitarist Mick Ronson knowing in advance, announced on this day in 1973 during live show at Hammersmith Odeon in London that he would be retiring, just before the final song “Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide,” “Of all the shows on this tour, this particular show will remain with us the longest, because it is not only the last show of the tour, but it’s the last show we’ll ever do”—only to clarify to shocked fans and the rest of his band that he meant the persona of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars backing band. This final concert for Stardust was the subject of a documentary by D A Pennebaker and later released as a motion picture a decade on.

curtain call (10. 851)

NPR’s Goats and Soda features a commendable selection of superlative aerial photography from this year’s Drone Photo Awards (previously), which will be displayed in Siena’s Teatro dei Rinnovati during its festivities in October. In its sixth year, the annual competition to challenge our perspectives showcases a wide range of subjects from natural disasters, pollution, playgrounds to the precision symmetry of agriculture, like this strawberry field prepared for harvest as captured by Guy Shmueli in Hadera, Israel, that looks like the opening of a stage play. Much more at the links above.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: Dog Days of summer, Double Indemnity (1944), assorted links to revisit plus DALL-E Mini

two years ago: the Phaistos Disk (1908), IKEA on the US government’s report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena plus on the etymology of the antiquated word hermaphrodite  

three years ago: a narrow-cast channel featuring video artefacts and interstitials, Mount Rushmore plus the proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan (1979)

four years ago: assorted links to revisit plus Krispy Kreme leaves Iceland

five years ago: the cliffs of Lake Garda

civics semiotics (10. 850)

As part of an ongoing series of glossaries on diverse themes (previously), Tedium presents an interesting index of Americana ahead of its national holiday, not as a patriotic apology but rather a celebration of the miscellany that has influenced the shape of the country—and there are some choice facts and figures, like how the Clinton impeachment helped launch Netflix, with the company selling DVDs of the grand jury testimony for 2¢ (plus shipping), Kraft dinner, disco demolition Night at ballparks, Jackalopes and other domestic cryptids, suppressing the metric system, or the phenomenon that is BJ Snowden—a cult figure more for the neighbour to the north of the US for her songs covering each province but also celebrated as an outsider musician in America as well for her album Life in the USA and Canada and this power ballad.

8x8 (10. 849)

♄: JWST captures outstanding images of the ringed planet, completing a family portrait of the gas giants  

dining al fresco: excavations in Pompeii uncover a a still life featuring a proto-pizza—see also  

ɚ: rare phonemes and how to pronounce them  

gas, food, lodging: one hundred twenty pump filling station, the world’s largest, opens in Tennessee as a tourist attraction—via Marginal Revolution 

ripples in a pond: astrophysicists detect new class of gravitational waves rolling through the Cosmos

abacusynth: a unique electronic musical instrument from Elias Jarzobek 

liquid television: MTV’s first animated series, Stevie and Zoya—see previously  

euclid and roman: a joint NASA, ESA mission to survey the skies for signs of dark matter and dark energy

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit

two years ago: your daily demon: Morax, the influence of 70s Japanese soft rock on Nintendo music, mid-point of the year, Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, a trip to Oberwaldbehrungen plus the punishments of Pompeii

three years ago: assorted links to revisit, Airplane (1980) plus the Civil Rights Act (1964)

four years ago: disruptive cake icing to evade IP infringement plus the time that Pepsi (sort of) had the second largest naval fleet in the world

five years ago: holidaying on Lake Garda

six years ago: playable Wikipedia,  a preview of the G20 in Hamburg plus words only said once

amtsblatt (10. 848)

Fresh off the announcement that National Geographic has let go its remaining staff writers after a storied history of one hundred thirty five years and is veering to a glossy legacy publication cobbled together from Wikipedia posts edited by freelancers, we learn also via Boing Boing, that after two republics, ten emperors and three hundred and twenty years of daily reportage, the Wiener Zeitung will end its print edition and severely reduce its operations to online, monthly reviews. Until yesterday the oldest still published newspaper in the world, was the official record of the government of Austria (founded in 1703 as the Wiennerisches Diarium and in 1857 nationalised by Franz Joseph I), a gazette publishing notices of the passage of laws and executive orders, but had editorial independence and featured stories of local and international interest and had a robust circulations in the tens of thousands. Meanwhile the Wiener Zeitung will establish a media hub for aggregating content and training journalist, prompting street protests in Vienna in response to the government’s decision to stop publication.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: one time collaborator turned critic priest Walter Niemöller (author of “First They Came”) arrested by the Nazis (1937) plus the opening of the newly devolved Scottish Parliament (1999) 

two years ago: Tell Me You Love Me Junie Moon (1970), the bizarre sequel to 101 Dalmatians, assorted links to revisit, “The Message” by Grand Master Flash (1982) plus the holdings of the Vatican Library

three years ago: slavery abolished in the Dutch Antilles (1863), reforms to Hong Kong’s Basic Law, a new American Gothic, safeguarding statues plus license plates in Palau

four years ago: Denmark legalises pornography (1969), moving day in Quebec, assorted links to revisit, Lights at Sea plus the Coffer Illusion

nacht der langen messer (10. 847)

Beginning on this evening in 1934 and lasting through 2 July, Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler urged Chancellor Adolf Hitler to pursue a series of executions in order to consolidate power and legitimacy and eliminate the Sturmabteilung (SA), the autonomous stormtroopers who protected Nazi assemblies and disrupted meetings of opposition parties under the leadership of Ernst Röhm, replaced by the group carrying out the killings, the Schutzsaffel (SS) under instigator Himmler.

Though Röhm was loyal to the end, the murders were presented in response to an imminent coup (Putsch) by the SA. Though useful idiots, their thuggish (and homosocial and homosexual behaviour) and often resorting to street violence was seen as bad public-relations and the regular army which saw this paramilitary organisation as rivals, and the purge resulting in the murder of some eighty-five individuals was undertaken, expanded to eliminate critics and loyalist to the old order with hundreds arrested and detained, Hitler personally paying a surprise call at the resort outside of Munich where Röhm and many of his were staying. Justifying his extrajudicial killings in a speech broadcast from the Reichstag, Hitler defended his actions: 

If anyone reproaches me, and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterise to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life. Let the nation know that its existence—which depends on its internal order and security—cannot be threatened with such impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.

The association of treachery and retribution has been associated as such since the fifth century when an Anglo-Saxon settlement was attacked by a local warlord during a peace discussion which resulted in massacre and became the oft-cited metonym twyll y cyllyll hirion or the Deceit of the Long Knives.

biden v nebraska (10. 846)

In a succession of more punching down, the US Supreme Court has struck down the Biden administration’s signature student loan forgiveness programme meaning millions of indebted borrowers burdened. Along the political leanings of the justices, they ruled that federal law does not authorise the Department of Education the right to reduce or discharge loans taken out to cover tuition fees that have become exorbitant, impacting the personal economies of some one in eight citizens, some forty million Americans. The suit, the plaintiff being one of the largest student debt servicers, alleged that erasing the financial obligations would impair its ability to offer future aid to college students and was a “direct injury to the host state itself.” The dissenting argument pointed out that the states (mostly Republican dominated ones that wanted to kneecap this perceived concession to young voters for transparently political reasons) did not have a right to sue and the court was overreaching its mandate by hearing it at all. Repayments are expected to resume in October.  In the same session, the court also struck down a law preventing businesses from discriminating against LGBTQI+ individuals.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: the standoff at Snake Island, International Asteroid Day, document 5 (1972) plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: more links worth the revisit, leap seconds introduced (1972) plus the history of stereotype

three years ago: French video-text service (1980),  happy birthday Kate Bush and Emily Brontë, the first dada exhibition (1920), a car by Raymond Loewy plus more Japanese yōkai

four years ago: burning draft cards plus a Thunderbirds hotel in Slough

five years ago: Marybel the Doll that Gets Well plus mothballed commemorative statues of the US presidents

students for fair admissions inc v president and fellows of harvard college (10. 845)

In a split down ideological lines, the US Supreme Court effectively banned the use of affirmative action in college entry assessments, tossing out over four decades of precedent that were put in place not to redress historic wrongs but in order to foster a more diverse learning environment and better serve all students. Reasoning that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to be colour-blind or race-neutral and using background-conscious considerations as a factor violated this principle, the ruling reiterated the suggestion that the time for preference and quota had concluded and stand on merit alone. Not only does the decision deny historical advantages curried among those that have suppressed and extorted members outside that class and will have immediate effect on college and university composition, creating an echo chamber for the elite to justify their status quo and punching-down, it further sends the message, like with the shrill complaints of critical race theory weaponised as its antithesis and the 1619 Project and de-funding the police, that racism in America is somehow solved and people need to move on. While this counter-factual proposal, now enshrined in law, might placate the conscience of some who believe that preserving the comfort of white people is paramount, the signal to higher learning will erode the pluralism and diversity hard-won over the last fifty years of struggle for civil rights and a more equitable society, telegraphing to businesses and the public at large that equal opportunity is something superannuated.