art funéraire

While touring the Île d’Oléron and stopping to explore the village of Saint-Pierre, we were struck by this significant though rather mysterious monument from the Middle Ages.
This model so- called lantern of the dead (lanternes des morts oder Totenleuchte) dates from at least the 1150s appear throughout western France, and though the oldest and highest at twenty-eight meters, inland, it was not visible for great distances—mostly on the periphery of cemeteries, as this one is, probably was kept as an eternal flame or lit to recall the parish to funerary rites. No one knows for certain to their custom and origin, however.
Most presume that these free-standing spires were early dedications akin to wayside shrines (Weg- oder Bildstöcke) that commemorate accidents or escapes on pilgrimage routes, but given their sturdiness and clean polygonal symmetries (the church of the village had similar early gothic angles), people entertain all sorts of influences (cheminées sarrasines they are sometimes called perhaps as a memory from the Battle of Tours) and forgotten rituals, perhaps even originally to purpose as warning of quarantine or danger, despite the continuance of history.

du hast den farbfilme vergessen

Via Der Spiegel (nur auf Deutsche), we are introduced to a demonstration project in artificial-intelligence “deep learning” in the form of an algorithm that can add a splash of colour to black-and-white photographs.
Like the routine that offers to caption one’s images, the better it gets (provided it is not subject to abuse and ridicule) the more experience it has. It is interesting how when context is available, it’s already very good at inserting the proper soft hue to grass and half-lit canyons, but for historical photographs, things start to fade and come up a wash, as it cannot guess the colour of Kaiser Wilhelm’s dress-coat or differentiate building colour among sepia tones. Give it a try yourself and also help improve the algorithm’s confidence.

trademark, earmark

Though there is no law proscribing that an American president cannot be engaged in private commercial activity—though most are more discrete about it, having their income tied up in plantations, speakers’ fees, book deals or in other monetary instruments, no other candidate has founded his pre-political career on image and personality so as to seem inexorably inseparable from the brand as our mogul Silvio Berlusconi.
Notwithstanding the inherent conflict of interest that presents itself when pledging to restrict Muslim immigration despite lending his name to business towers in Istanbul and Dubai, there are a whole array of products, like premium vodka, subscription steak deliveries, cologne, a winery, a diploma-mill in addition to the casinos and beauty-pageants that the candidate might have to divest himself of. With the campaign slogan, “America—you can be my ex-wife,” I wonder who the lucky recipient of this alimony might be. I suspect Berlusconi or a coalition government formed by one of Stevie Nick’s shawls and the scalp of Trump’s own balding pate might make for a more beneficent rule.

lustration

While it is probably almost always amateur-night at the False Flag, depending on how chuffed one imagines oneself to be and the target-audience to be duped—despite what the hecklers may counter, the manufactured junta, military coup that the current and long-standing regime of the Turkish government sprung in the midst of tragic distraction and suffering ought to be a cue to the world that this Ottoman cabal ought not be accorded the respect and confidence of a legitimate and democratically sourced power any longer.
The rolls of undesirables to be purged were at the ready to be released in the immediate aftermath of the orchestrated failure, like the enemies-list of some paranoid Roman emperor (the attested role of country’s military’s executive estate being to preserve the standard of secularism in the face of the blurring of Church and State) and ushered in the lock-down of thousands of educational, judicial, media and charitable institutions accused of subversion, not counting the depleted ranks of the army and untold political dissidents in the sweeping process. The staging of the whole theatre was sloppy—but also was the media coverage and critical-analysis. Such disdain for difference of opinion certainly and basic human-rights could not be the hallmarks of accession to the European Union—not that the muzzled majority of Turkish people should suffer more for the tyranny of their leaders, nor does it seem to be an ideal location for the US to store its nuclear arsenal or consider its NATO partnership a reliable one. Let’s hope that this pretend narrative could lend momentum to the real thing.