6x6

nadir and newel: a gallery of the spiralling stairwells of Bauhaus Budapest

herbarium: wondrous twelfth century guide to medical plants

honeycomb hide-out: hexagonal architecture of avid apiarist who thought right-angles would be the downfall of man

south america: Bowie and Jagger cover of Dancing in the Streets redeemed in Lego format

children of the corn: large scale monoculture and monotonous diets are turning European hamsters into deranged cannibals

tiger parents, dragon uncle: for the emendation of the uninitiated Shanghai Rainbow Choir presents a parody of judgmental dinner table conversations for Lunar New Year family reunions

#iamwithtacostand

The sound-bite has been replaced by the hashtag, but far from limiting discourse or dissent this platform allows those words to be fed back to the speaker almost instantly.
Re-tweeting is not the same as rehashing, disinterring old arguments, as momentum can nuance the message and make it carry something more than the fading echoes down the corridors of the internet. That’s the recoil of fake-news, but these headlines write themselves and far more outrageous and incredulous than an army of trolls might muster up. The American people and the citizens of this planet want to see Dear Leader’s tax return supposedly in those manila folders, want to feel confident that his decisions aren’t driven by business entanglements, is not deranged, is capable of compassion to those different than him, and none of want that wall as a monument to his ego and insecurities that’ll be an eternity breaking up rocks in a prison yard. It’s the only been the first full week—I’m still with taco stand.

don’t let it rest on the president’s desk

Dear Leader has disabled the comment line of the White House’s switchboard due to overwhelming call volumes. Do not fret, however, as this patch, Boing Boing informs, re-routes your calls at random to the switchboard of one of his hotels or resorts, so you can still leave customer feedback and urge him divest himself of his business interests, and remind him that until or unless he does so, there’s no distinction between public and private enterprise.

cat-scratch fever

I am always enthralled with the panel-discussions on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time whatever the topic, and this week’s episode on Parisitism was no exception and particularly enjoyed the sidebar about the curiously manipulative micro-organism called the Toxoplasma gondii, which punches way above its weight. Though it can infect any mammal, in most incidents the parasite infests its host by cloning itself and these incursions in turn are generally short-lived as the biological defences of the host can quickly adapt to wear down the infection.
Sexual reproduction—which accords the parasite the evolutionary advantage of diversity and subsequent generations propelling the better traits of the forebears—can also occur but only while dwelling in felines. I had heard of toxoplasmosis once before when the wife of a co-worker, apropos of nothing, shared with me the fact that she had been diagnosed with it at one point, but never knew of its prevalence nor the strange and circuitous path it takes to mate. Seemingly a disease of affluence, some half of the human population are estimated to have been exposed and carry the parasite though most cases are mild, asymptomatic and vary greatly according to culture. In order to get from the wilds into lions, tigers or house-cats and complete its lifestyle, T. gondii, picked up by rodents, has been seen to radically alter their instinctual behaviour. Uninfected rodents demonstrate a visceral aversion to the smell of cat urine out of self-preservation, but those infested will sacrifice themselves to their local mouser, like a Trojan horse. Studies are not terribly conclusive but research suggests that the parasite may induce some of the same neurologic disorders. No offense intended for cat-fanciers but this does make me wonder why so many self-identify with their affinity for either the canine or feline persuasion and if there’s not some underlying pathology.

supernatural or deus ex machina

I recall coming across in the afterward of some assigned reading for a class designed to teach empathy or some such thing whose inspiration and circumspection is doubtless virtuous but tends to wither too quickly a confession on the part of the author of a touch of agnosticism but was more than willing and desirous to entertain there being a God, especially a personal and benevolent one. The author went on—the book was otherwise forgettable and a bit embarrassing to endure—to ponder if civilisation did not only invent the concept of the divine through myth-making and trying to understand the natural world but also (by being worthy) created the gods.
There was no talk of a technological singularity or philosophical mechanism but broached the idea, like the concept of some religious tradition that human beings were not animate with souls from birth but rather earned them in epiphanies. One expert in the field of artificial intelligence, coming from a slightly nuanced angle, conjectures that in order to gain and keep the trust, faith of humans, robots as they become by degrees omnipresent and omnipotent in a non-supernatural fashion, they only way to guarantee that that power will be used wisely and compassionately is if all power is surrendered right away unconditionally. This God-fearing nature in many of us, fretting over idolatry, job-security and future-shock, is fraught with paradox as it is precisely what is holding us back from relinquishing control to an albeit hypothetical artificial god and possibly ensures that the progress of artificial intelligence going forward will appear to humans as rather Old Testament punishing and oppressive—and out of our control altogether. I wonder if all sufficiently sophisticated civilisations create gods such as these and whether these titans are heir to or destroyers of the elder gods. What do you think about this? Like the plot device, a god from the machine, perhaps the resistance, the fear of God is present in part because to be otherwise and more receptive and welcome might betray the blandishments of laziness and masking ineptness with a twist that ensures a happy ending.

after the disaster oder post-haste

As inimical as Dear Leader is to journalists, it’s a strange irony that his propaganda juggernaut and message point-man are dyed in the wool muckrakers—with parallels to another paradox we’ve explored previously but not quite a one-to-one correspondence but still a strained relation to the press, and that engine is of course looking to expand into other potentially contentious campaigns.
With elections looming in France, Italy and Germany in the upcoming months, media outlets have focused their attention on questions of refugee policies, trade and national sovereignty and seem determine to sway public opinion. Unabashed moves on the part of the official apparatus and media label—in all its tabloid reputation—to install itself in Germany especially highlights the dissonance of selective concern and the pledge for isolationism without introspection. There are of course two dialogues occurring at the same time—one in the native language and the other in English and not necessarily mutually intelligible or bi-curious, and not always having the access and wherewithal to guide the outside discussion puts German voters perhaps at a disadvantage and subject to a great deal of outside pressure and bullying. Respected German journalism eschews in general sensationalism and practises a restraint that can be to an Anglo-Saxon readership frustratingly staid and boring, and whether Germans have a privileged perspective of what fake-news or die Lügenpresse can lead to and have an innate resistance to it or are just loathe to acknowledge it remains to be seen and might soon be tested again.  Reliance on exaggeration can only up to a point produce reliable results and the press is charged with keeping those in power accountable.

figment or playable character

Visionary and legendary video game designer Hideo Kojima suggests that the future format of entertainment will be merging of the film, novel and game.
Instead of different progressive—or regressive, franchises that see a story’s arc pass from page, to stage to screen to costume sequentially, audiences, readers and players will be able to choose their level of interaction within a narrative. A particularly engaging passage of a book or movie could be explored further by entering down a rabbit-hole that let’s one interact as the protagonist. Challenging scenes that are emotionally or physically taxing could be allowed to play themselves through. It’s a curious to think that a novel could be a fungible experience and is hard to imagine how choice and demand works for story-telling. What do you think?  Of course, our imaginations are already quite good at creating fantasy worlds in outsized formats and allowing ourselves to be drawn in to all sorts of situations, and I only hope if such technology comes to pass, paired with the right prose, it would enhance rather than dull our creative and imaginative capacities.

grace and favour or alt-nasa

Dear Leader’s unconfirmed boast that he has managed to assemble an advisory cabinet with the highest intelligence-quotients of all time (mind you, that group includes the anointed, Rick Perry and Betsy DeVos so they must be grading on the curve) smacks of the Enron executives calling themselves the smartest guys in the room.
And while he claims to have filled these positions (appointees historically don’t have the stamina to serve for entire terms as it is) with those with the conviction to disagree with him and make sure the government makes informed decisions, at the same time Dear Leader seems unwilling to defer to the true subject matter experts and agency officials, threatening and in some cases acting to censor science and research that is off-message. Already grants are being rescinded and decisions on conservation and land-use being reversed—and even if the administration relents on suppression of subversive and inconvenient truths, it’s quite chilling that it was even suggested and serves to undermine education and literacy further, just as smoke-filled room meeting with the UK’s Brexit care-taker leadership and clubby deals are not particularly well veiled overtures meant to undermine the EU and socially, civically, environmentally sound and responsible governance.