port authority

Atlas Obscura has an intriguing feature on passport collector and expert Tom Topol, whose research and curation run through the entire history of border controls from the seventeenth century up until modern times with US re-entry permits issued in response to one of Dear Leader’s executive orders. The bureaucratic cul-de-sac that the article uses to introduce Topol’s collection is a set of six passport (not pictured) from defunct countries that present an interesting narrative of these former regimes and the travel documents’ bearers.

mazel tov cocktail or then they came for the trade unionists, and i did not speak out…

Law-makers in the US state of Arizona, with precedent and believing rabble-rousers are paying others to incite a riot, affirm civil forfeiture for organisers and participants in protests with the potential for violence and destruction.
The consequence of this chilling bit of legislation being that the state or opposition can requisition provocateurs to make the ruling enforceable, even when proceedings are peaceful. What do you think? The new laws conflate organising a protest with the crime of racketeering—that is offering a service, unbidden, to solve a problem that doesn’t exist or is created by the racketeers, like extortion for a protection scheme. It sounds to me like these senators are in violation of their own statute. A broken window or someone temporarily denied the egress that they signed up for could be cause for seizing the assets from all partakers for dissuading and significantly curtailing anyone’s willingness to act up or stick their necks out for any cause.

stokoe notation

With a vocabulary of over two thousand immediately memorable signs, a visit to actor and American sign language consultant Robert DeMayo (via Bored Panda) is sure to teach and boost retention, imparting a bit of knowledge that’s practical in itself but can also give one a fresh perspective and a new way of communicating.

milliarium aureum

Though far from pardoning all the hardships that the global fast-food franchise has brought on the neighbours that it’s saturated, we did enjoying hearing of how one restaurant incorporated some ancient ruins into its dining experience, conserving a bit of an archaeological excavation in the process.
The parent company invested an additional three hundred thousand euro to ensure that a stretch of Roman road was properly preserved and protected that was discovered during ground-breaking back in 2014, and now is on view thanks to a transparent floor in the restaurant. This compromise reminds me of the shopping mall in Mainz that’s host to a subterranean first century sanctuary of the goddess Isis and the Cybele discovered in 1999 when the mall’s proprietors were looking to expand underground parking.