fashion statement (11. 704)

Whilst strongly disagreeing with the conclusion that Trump’s party has mastered optics and branding, from the wholly unoriginal MAGA hat of Ronald Reagan to the latest donning on gauzy ear bandages—which caught my attention as truly laying bare the GOP identity as a cult, something reminiscent of the off-putting Ellen Jamesians from The World According to Garp who voluntarily cut out their tongues in solidarity—it is true that at least for now with the RNC over and Republicans confident and congratulatory that the Democrats did not deliver the sort of counter-programming that they wanted, with Joe Biden self-isolating with a mild case of COVID and more and more senior party figures publicly urging him to withdraw his candidacy from the ticket. Although I cannot say for certain that replacing Biden would help the Democrats’ chances, and down-ballot contests to retain the nearly evenly divided congress, I am glad that party leaders are forthcoming about their reservations, since public unanimity with private reservations was too much like Trump’s adults in the room. Moreover Democrats are pretty skilled when it comes to meme-making and wearing white during legislative sessions in protest for women's rights has been striking and classy, and aside from all that, the Democrats’ diversity and plurality speaks for itself.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Siege of Chartes (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: the World of Sid and Marty Krofft

nine years ago: The Golden Bough plus hysteria over overdue earthquakes

eleven years ago: augmented realities, the internet’s free trial period is over plus domestic spying in Germany

twelve years ago: departing for Norway 

i stand before you to proclaim tonight, america is a land where dreams can come true for all of us (11. 703)

Our faithful chronicler reminds us that on this day during the DNC in San Francisco, congress woman of New York, representing Queens the real-world setting of All in the Family, Geraldine Ferraro accepted the party’s nomination for vice president as the running mate of Walter Mondale for the 1984 Democratic ticket. Though many pundits saw this as politically risky, Ferraro reaffirmed her campaigning credentials and proved to be a quite formidable debater against Ronald Reagan’s policies, at times overshadowing Mondale and narrowing the incumbent’s considerable lead in the polls to a tie. The race however was beset scrutiny and criticism, which seemingly would have otherwise been more tempered for male candidates with pro-choice platforms, and criticised roundly in the media for announcing that her husband would not be releasing his income tax returns, as was customary but not a required disclosure, saying that doing so could disadvantage her spouse’s real estate business. Dismissing the issue by joking, “so you people married to Italian men—you know what it’s like,” turned out to be a miscalculation and was again attacked as promoting ethnic and gender stereotypes and some outlets suggested connections to the mob. Although eventually eventually both filings were given to the press and Ferraro endured a rather gruelling two-hour cross-examination line by line of the couples’ separate returns, the closed matter had consequences that lingered up until the election. Carrying the vice-presidential debate against George HW Bush—albeit who was judged the winner was split strongly among men and women polled, Second Lady Barbara Bush, referencing the financial disclosures and property portfolio that ran a bit counter to her narrative of as the child of immigrants and self-determination and angry about her husband being upstaged, publicly called Ferraro “that four-million-dollar—I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich,” with the the vice-president’s press secretary reiterating, “She’s too bitchy—arrogant—humility isn’t one of her strong points, and I think that comes through. Though Mrs Bush issued a backhanded apology saying that she did not mean to imply Ferraro was a witch, none was given for the latter appraisal, saying the campaign was being hypersensitive for complaining about it. Mondale-Ferraro lost to Reagan-Bush in the popular vote by nineteen percent and only won the electoral endorsement of Minnesota and Washington, DC in November.

7x7 (11. 702)

drake’s equation: a reevaluation of the cosmic amenities we take for granted suggests that alien life might be exceedingly rare—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links  

now the chips are down: the archive of the BBC’s Computer Literacy Project—see previously—via Web Curios

sunnyside up: a supercut of the best egg scenes in cinema 

duckmaster: a luxury hotel’s waterfowl tradition  

crickets: how the chirping of the insect came to be synonymous with “a conspicuous silence”—via Strange Company 

blue screen of death: transportation, media outlets and health care disrupted by largest IT outage yet, exposing the fragility of our digital infrastructure—essentially what the y2k patch worked against 

star-studded: the shortlist revealed for Royal Greenwich Museum’s astronomy photographer of the year

synchronoptica

one year ago: a banger from Genesis (with synchronoptica), the UK 1881 census plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: a zombie emoji, an engraved dinner knife, a gameified office, the woman’s signature on the US Declaration of Independence plus a stop-motion fairy-tale

nine years ago: Syncro-Vox animation

fourteen years ago: the landscape of Top Secret America plus an inspired preoccupation with rockets

evil malört (11. 701)

Already a somewhat notorious and reviled Swedish-style liqueur called bäsk, bitter and flavoured with wormwood and anise—Sweden being one of the few countries that never banned absinthe—a bartender is leaning into its noxious reputation with the Chicago distillery Jeppson (Bäska droppar is the most popular domestic label, drunk as a digestif), which imported the blend from the home country in the 1920s, first sold door-to-door as a medicine to bypass Prohibition restrictions. Pure described as tasting like “heartbreak and pencil-shavings” and previously offered as a boilermaker and during the emergence of the last brood, with an infusion of seventeen-year cicadas—no one asked for this—the latest concoction calls for a wash of truffle and sesame oil, chilli peppers, briny cuttlefish ink soaked in tobacco—specifically Newports. More about its reception—“grandma’s furniture from when she still smoked”—at the link above.

skynet (11. 700)

With the snowclone of a slogan “Make America First in AI” that appropriately spells out “mafia,” as I originally only suspected that Silicon Valley’s recent rally behind Trump was mostly an attempt to revitalise cryptocurrencies as a legitimate and safe store of wealth for tumultuous times, Trump’s draft executive order to eliminate burdensome regulations on development of artificial intelligence technology and military applications—described as a new “Manhattan Project” and scuttling ethical and safety-testing requirements for autonomous weapons—to ensure US dominance in the field is a worrying shift in policy. While the capabilities of AI as they currently stand are far from proven, the potential for a robot holocaust was not my first pick as existential threat that a second term would pose for the world, leaning towards either a cascading environmental collapse, a re-polarised geopolitical landscape or American irrelevance and dictatorship first and foremost. Furthermore, Trump’s vice-presidential pick as a former venture capitalist has the same mindset as the tech utopianists and accelerationists and is a vocal opponent of government interference, which if the technology realises its potential, would be wholly ungovernable.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Trump under to investigation (with synchronoptica)

nine years ago: typewriter...tip, tip, tip

eleven years ago: bad banks 

twelve years ago: baubles and market bubbles  

thirteen years ago: a mosquito-plagued campsite

amusing ourselves to death (11. 699)

Using the 1985 bestseller by educator Neil Postman, which draws on the dichotomy of the dystopian futures envisioned by George Orwell in 1984 and Aldous Huxley in Brave New World with the public stripped of rights by totalitarian governments in the narrative of the former and people voluntarily self-medicating and foregoing their liberties in an induced and voluntary state of blissful ignorance in the

latter, Boing Boing contributor Mark Frauenfelder presents an analysis of this dilution, delusion of news, culture and politics repackaged as commodities in our present forms of media, our soma. Presentation and format—“the medium is the metaphor,” see also—makes everything entertainment and a passive and non-critical one at that, written at a time when another celebrity held the office of US president, impressed on the general psyche not in words but in glancing television images and photo opportunities and carefully staged soundbites. Frauenfelder’s excerpts, like the below citation are addressing the fragmentation-effect of network news but accord perfectly with social media as well, TikTok substituted here:

“Now … this” is commonly used on radio and television newscasts to indicate that what one has just heard or seen has no relevance to what one is about to hear or see, or possibly to anything one is ever likely to hear or see. The phrase is a means of acknowledging the fact that the world as mapped by the speeded-up electronic media has no order or meaning and is not to be taken seriously. There is no murder so brutal, no earthquake so devastating, no political blunder so costly—for that matter, no ball score so tantalising or weather report so threatening—that it cannot be erased from our minds by a newscaster saying, “Now … this.” The newscaster means that you have thought long enough on the previous matter (approximately forty-five seconds), that you must not be morbidly preoccupied with it (let us say, for ninety seconds), and that you must now give your attention to another fragment of news or a commercial.

Much more at the links above.

the unchained goddess (11. 698)

Open Culture directs our attention towards the highlight of the Bell Systems Science Series, nine television specials originally broadcast between 1956 and 1964, with the first four written and produced by award-winning filmmaker Frank Capra (previously), recently having found himself “retired” from Hollywood due to being blacklisted as a communist sympathiser over his body of work (previously here and here)—despite being holding rather conservative political views himself, with the AT&T sponsored commissions being viewed in retrospect as a quiet means of rehabilitating his image and reputation, with the 1958 examination of weather. Though somewhat less well received by critics and audiences than Capra’s previous three instalments (perhaps the topic considered too pedestrian in comparison with the others on the circulatory system, the sun and cosmic rays), The Unchained Goddess is indelible and enduring with a prescient message about the effects of Anthropogenic climate change and the cascade of the warming atmosphere and sea-level rise. Much more at the links above.

* * * * *

synchronoptica

one year ago: photos of the Anthropocene (with synchronoptica) plus a continued blockade on Ukrainian grain shipments

seven years ago: swimsuit models, Voltaire’s science-fiction, the premiere of SpongeBob plus the Golden Submarine

nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus Merkel’s immigration policies under scrutiny

twelve years ago: climate change and too much water plus a branded look for US Commanders in Chief

fourteen years ago: a trip to the Baltic coast

only the lonely (11. 697)

A part-talkie (with mixed audio-dialogue, sound-effects and score plus intertitles), Public Domain Review presents Paul Fejős’ 1928 Lonesome, exploring the subject through following the lives of two working-class New York City urbanites apart and together over the course of a single July day, the telephone operator and factory worker get a break from their drudgery, met and have a splendid time at a funfair but are separated by a sudden downpour and regret loosing each other only to later discover that they’ve been neighbours in the same apartment block all along. The featurette, considered a masterpiece, has the narrative of an O Henry story and many innovations in terms of cinematography including fast-motion, superimposition, split screens and a roller-coaster mounted camera.