long ambients

We here at PfRC are celebrating the milestone of our four-thousandth post—this episode informed by the always excellent Nag on the Lake—with four hours of outtakes from musician and DJ Moby free to use however one sees fit. A year ago around this time, the artist arranged the unused riffs from other projects into an extended background ensemble that’s really an inducement for yoga, meditation or just rest and relaxation and active twilit dreaming.

the lay of the land or polders en meer

Having walked the streets of Amsterdam recently, it was interesting to read about the unique city’s long term landscaping plans.
Though not quite restoring the city to its golden age layout, civil engineers have a vision for 2020 of making the great arteries of commerce wider and deeper, more in keeping with the original urban design and more aligned with how the river wants to ebb and flow, by removing a lot of the concrete frontage that’s expanded around the city centre. In addition to enlarging select canals, there is also a colossal submerged bicycle parking-lot in the offering.

unquote or falsehood flies and the truth comes limping after

Recalling that fake news is not just any objective fact that challenges one’s world view and how the retraction is never as wide-spread as the misreporting, we are reminded of probably the most popular bits of folksy wisdom that war-time Prime Minister Winston Churchill never said:
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” While the sentiment might be in the right place, there’s no evidence of Churchill having ever uttered the like and he was definitely not the first to whom this phrase or variation was attributed—heroes and luminaries of days past credited with authorship of this quip from Mark Twain, to Thomas Jefferson, to a fortune cookie proverb, to Jonathan Swift. I think indulging in this sort of generational modishness is akin to using props and publicity stunts to forward one’s agenda, and besides there are plenty of very fine things that public figures did without a doubt say.  Its origins, so far as anyone can tell, are rooted in a 1787 homily by Rector Thomas Francklin: “Falsehood will fly, as it were, on the wings of the wind, and carry its tales to every corner of the Earth; whilst truth lags behind; her steps, though sure, are slow and solemn, and she has neither vigour nor activity enough to pursue and overtake her enemy.”

vexing vexillogy or false-flag

Amid reports that Texas law-makers have introduced legislation that would enable them to impose fines on fellow office-holders for misrepresenting the Texas flag with the emoji for the Ecuadorian one (presently, states and other subnational regions* do not have their own emojis) and that Dear Leader’s supporters were pricelessly duped into waving flags with the Russian tri-colours at a conservative political summit before he addressed the audience (they were confiscated by ushers), the vice-president unfurled the banner of Nicaragua to show America’s commitment to Israel.
Granted the two flags do look somewhat alike on a tiny screen and we all make mistakes, but perhaps people should avoid shorthand and symbolism and particular forums if it’s only going to cause more and more political gaffs.

*Contentiously, Danish Greenland, Norwegian Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Caribbean Netherlands, Hong Kong, Macao, Spanish Ceuta and Melilla, French Mayotte, the US Virgin Islands, the Falklands, Gibraltar, Tristan da Cunha and the Channel Islands have their own flags, with perhaps more on the way.

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.