post-modern prometheus or the year without a summer

The anecdote that without the catastrophic eruption of Mount Tambora was responsible for the birth of the Gothic genre, since—if not for the volcanic winter that spoiled their holiday weather, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin), her future husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley and some literati friends would have been able to enjoy the scenic shores of Lake Geneva and wouldn’t have had to resort to telling each other stories around the campfire (so to speak) and finding other indoors diversions.
The story behind the origins of what became Shelly’s famous Frankenstein is fascinating on its own, this summer of discontent marking two centuries since the 1816 delusory and haunted visit to Switzerland, but like the milieu of the Canterbury Tales at another time of crisis, does tend to overshadow the grave consequences of the release of so much ash into the atmosphere which—beyond poor weather and anemic sunshine, perpetrated a global famine, dread and the last one to affect the Western world on that scale. Although the Modern Prometheus is usually interpreted to be about the encroachment of technology and the creation escaping control of his creator (as a cautionary tale for artificial intelligence or genetic-modification) and there’s the feeling that the happy band were far too self-occupied, making the most of a rainy day, to concern themselves the plight of the hoards of weather-refugees coming into the cities after their crops failed. Though there’s a danger in transposing even the timeless to contemporary events, there’s much resonance to be found in the season of today, brilliantly investigated and considered further in this essay from Public Domain Review. Far from disdaining the suffering that was happening just beyond their guesthouse confines like the Lit Crit response to the debates on global-warming or migration politics, Shelley did notice this encroachment too and incorporated it into her novel and it could be read in that bleak light of the sun in that year with no summer, even if that monster was not of our own making.

armorial achievement or ladies companion

The College of Heralds, as Boing Boing astutely informs, has established protocols for the management of shields and devices for the union of same-sex couples, which would pass muster during a royal heraldic visitation. “A man who contracts a same-sex marriage may impale the arms of his husband with his own on a shield or banner but should bear his own crest rather than the crest of both parties…” No matter what one thinks about the landed-gentry and old-money or the relevance of such institutions, it was nice to learn that even such a conservative and exclusive custom can become receptive to change.

pastiche or ultraviolence

The subversively engaging Dangerous Minds has a nice appreciation for the 1969 Japanese counter-culture work of director Toshio Matsumoto called Funeral Parade of Roses (薔薇の葬列). The film, itself based on Sophocles’ Œdipus Rex, focuses on the misadventures of a cadre of transvestites in contemporary Tokyo, and was a major stylistic influence on Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange—thematically, no equivalence in delinquency—along with the short story Flowers for Algernon, which sort of makes the idea of inspiration material and footnoting all the more dissonant and it takes an artist to understand the echoes of homage.

media black-out or all the news that’s fit to print

While after having its servers compromised and fearful at the DNC that whatever muck has been raked (which ought not be such a bombshell, we suspect) might be released prematurely and spoil their impact, meanwhile the Republican National Committee has been presented a challenge by the third estate.
Although we have serious objections to the concept of denying dissenting voices a platform out of fear of causing trauma, the threat, pledge of journalistic abeyance strikes me as an effective way to take the wind out of certain sails. The time and resources formerly dedicated, thoughtlessly and without stint, to covering every stump speech would instead be pledged to uncovering the veracity of such claims that might only pass as the news ticker. Media organisations would also petition the party for the reinstatement of their credentials and access, revoked for having crossed the presumptive candidate. What do you think? Just apply the resolution equitably (when any candidate denies an audience to media outlets because it is not supportive of his or her platform) to preserve journalistic integrity and spare us all the awful spectacle. Is it biased or undermining to deny demagogues their expected and free publicity?

lavoiſier or eisenhower sez

I am overly fond of these sorts of anecdotes, and appreciate a fellow typographical aficionado sharing an intriguing enigma—after a stranger left this mysterious mcguffin on her doorstep, begging for authentication.
Apparently in the 1950s, the New York Times experienced a kerning dilemma on finding that the headline EISENHOWER SAYS was just a tick too big to fit in a single column, which certainly sounds deflating but probably far less frustrating that margins that try to outsmart the type-setter. In order to preserve the spacing of their copy, the newspaper turned to their foundry and commissioned, for the nonce, a super-skinny “S”—reminding me of the old-fashion Latin long minuscule s, that I think I first encountered in an older book about scientist Anton Lavoisier; I called him Lavoifier. To find out if this rumour could be substantiated, please check out the full investigation at The Atlantic.

daisy bell or oneironaut

A bit ironically—as I think this Stanley Kubrick classic taught us rather to start worrying and fear the machine, artist Bhautik Joshi, as the always brilliant Colossal shares, transformed the entirety of 2001: A Space Odyssey into a neural dream sequence, a routine that enhances visual input by trying to recognise patterns and begins—logarithmically, to tease them out of every detail, sort of the artificial intelligence (one assumes) version of human pareidolia. Some adjustment to the protocols allowed Joshi to reinterpret the visual style of the movie after his favourite artist Pablo Picasso, which makes for some wildly hallucinogenic scenes. Be sure to check out Colossal to watch the full feature and learn more about the artist’s oneironautic (pertaining to dream-travellers) adaptions of other visionary sci-fi films.

5x5

уотергейт: working independently, hackers Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear breached the database of the Democratic National Committee

feather-brained: scientists are discovering why birds are so preternaturally clever and that Nature has more than one approach to crafting cognition

kardashev scale: astrophysicist posits that there have been advanced extra-terrestrials but there may be a Great Filter behind the Fermi Paradox

two weeks: concept art for the David Cronenberg directed Total Recall that could have been

capilla sixtina: the glorious frescoed ceiling by Michelangelo reproduced to scale in México

equal time or frontierland

Vice Magazine gives us an important reminder that debate regarding the UK’s withdrawal from European Union membership is not only championed or disparaged by the alternatively shrill and even-keeled political figureheads that try to mold public opinion and secure votes, to the exclusion of the opposing antagonism—but there are also underlying ideological battles that strangely are not the bailiwicks of our familiar ideologues.
Left of centre proponents’ arguments to leave the EU include that the union is akin to empire and client states are unable to fulfill the social-contract to its citizen subjects, owing to the fact that so many laws and regulations are crafted at the supranational level and thus estranging governments from their responsibility for good governance. Local authorities could rightly throw up their hands in frustration over the deficit of influence they and their constituents have on big issues, like trade policy, that have global effects. Alternately, with trade also as the driving vehicle, those liberals in the bremain camp argue that an insular Britain detached from the EU would strip-mine labour protections and cost many their livelihoods, which the common-market fosters. Next week, Vice will air the views of the right-wing on the referendum and perhaps the squabbles for and against won’t be the televised predictable pedantry either.