establishing shot, eröffnungsszene

In the television—prestige television as opposed to broadcast, serialisation of Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, an alternative history wherein the Axis powers won World War II and the eastern seaboard is a province of the Nazi Reich, with the west coast under the control of Imperial Japan, there are handful of people that wonder past their awful reality to peer into another timeline where the Allies prevailed. Additionally, in that parallel world, civil engineer Albert Speer would have had the opportunity to realise his vision and transform Berlin into der Welthauptstadt Germania—which the programme uses as a backdrop for its opening credits. Citylab examines how those plans might have shaped the day-to-day existence of its dwellers in practise and Speer’s philosophy on architecture in general, which included a future provision for Ruinenwerttheorie—that a city should age graciously and in a millennium the crumbling buildings, conserved as ruins should continue to inspire.

trial balloon, probefahrt

Although allowing a foreign government to play in Peoria to its diaspora (many of whom left their homeland for fear of political reprisal) would be without precedent, the refusal of Germany and Austria to permit the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to campaign at venues in those respective countries with sizable Turkish populations has garnered much angry and caused further tensions between the outlier and EU member states.
In mid-April Turkey plans to hold a referendum not on EU membership but rather on changing the country’s constitution to invest the office of the president with greater executive powers, more akin to those of the president of France or the US rather than the largely ceremonial, soft-power that Erdoğan enjoys now. With rallies in Turkish communities, the administration is hoping to persuade (or perhaps intimidate) the expatriate population to vote to strengthen the presidency—while many outside Turkish jurisdiction probably harbour the exact opposite sentiments. While in Austria the denying of a platform is coming from the government directly, the federal government of Germany, who has seen continual strained relations for some time now, insists it’s played no part and local venues are wholly cancelling engagements at their own volition without the government’s influence. As stated, it would be highly irregular to allow a foreign politician a pulpit from which to bully exiles in a power-grab—Obama passing the mantle of leadership of the free world to Merkel is something quite different, though these are quite irregular times—but perhaps this refusal is a sign that other institutions will stand up to America’s Minitrue and Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda when he and his minions try to through European elections.

kellyanne’s world

Brilliantly, artist Tim O’Brien saw the opportunity to insert White House spokes-skank into Andrew Wyeth’s famous 1948 painting “Christina’s World” after the image emerged of her indecorously perching atop a sofa in the Oval Office (it’s not as if they wouldn’t have had stick of furniture in the White House reupholstered, irradiated or burned like the Velveteen Rabbit anyway after Dear Leader moves out) with her shoes on and sitting like a toddler watching cartoons, uploading a picture she’d just taken a photograph of Dear Leader flanked by leaders of historically African-American colleges and universities. The subject of the original, Anna Christina Olson, is captured crawling in a field a distance from home in a fugue state, suffering from an undiagnosed debilitating neuropathy.  The juxtaposition in the painting and the original scene is jarring, with the later (check it out at the link up top if you have not seen it) begging the question of how many ways can one be condescending and dismissive and indeed racist without donning a white hood.

exeunt stage right

To The Right / Candice Drouet from Really Dim on Vimeo. Thanks to Nag on the Lake for persuading us to watch this supercut series of transitions that’s one long pan to the right from Candice Drouet. She’s complied clips from a host of iconic films and modern classics. How many do you recognise? The entire reference is listed at the link up top.

spear-phishing

Whilst the then Indiana governor and the current US vice-president was technically following state statute regarding mixing private and official email accounts and those individuals who hacked into his America Online account—despite having prised their way into a cache of correspondence that has been deemed unsuitable for public-release for its sensitivity—apparently did not know and appreciate who this figure was, it’s really ironic given his deportment shown towards the opposition for showing the same degree of sloppiness handling her official missives.
Notwithstanding the undisclosed material, it seems no harm came of this transgression save that those who had commandeered his email account had full control and made entreaties to all those in his contact list that he and his wife were in dire straits, stranded in the Philippines and having lost their credit cards and mobile phones. I wonder how their friends and family responded. Of course this take-over was part of a much wider campaign and anyone who has ever held an AOL or Yahoo! account or a security-clearance in the past and present is arguably similarly compromised and equally poses a liability insofar as the account-holder might be susceptible to extortion, but I wonder what dirty-laundry might be left to fester.  Despite one’s self-styled skills at dickering about, these arrangements seem quite asymmetric and fraught with weaknesses.

7x7

nine lives: wild turkeys ritually encircle a dead cat on Boston street

terra-forming: NASA suggests that by recharging the Martian magnetic field, the planet would become more amenable to colonisation

gakubuchi: commemorating when the burlesque show came to Japan through vintage advertising

ditto: Norwegian media site is experimenting with a reading comprehension quiz that commentators must pass before they’re allowed to chime in—maybe this should apply to sharing as well

best in show: highlights from the Smithsonian’s annual photography competition, via the always inspiring Nag on the Lake

all-star: surreal Disney sports-themed resort

dance, magic dance: Firey plush figure from Labyrinth, whose performance was choreographed by Dr Crusher

silver surfers

The eighty-one year old life-long learner Masako Wakamiya is not only constantly improving her own computer literacy and encouraging other senior citizens to embrace technology rather than shun it, she also managed to teach herself how to write code and produced an application that instructs on the arrangement of the traditional dolls that represent the emperor and his court displayed during Hinamatsuri (雛祭り, Girls’ Day) celebrations. These elaborate displays consist of multiple figures in a hierarchy of seven tiers according to very specific protocol—like the royal court itself, and the programme teaches the order and orientation with a game. I’d like to hope I could retain my savvy like that in the future.

beanstalk

At a fraction of the cost and effort of defending the southern border of the United States, America and the rest of the world could invest in a very different large-scale infrastructure and materials science project and construct a space-elevator—a tethered counter-balance that’s anchored to the surface of the Earth by a cable and held aloft by centrifugal force above the boundary of geostationary orbit. Dispensing with the needs for conventional rockets to escape Earth’s gravity and in the absence of a teleportation device to save on production costs, a space-elevator would confer an enormous economic advantage to the first country to develop it and make space-faring a reality. As a planet, we ought to ask ourselves where our priorities and our aspirations lie.