pedigree or animal fancy

Though it might be overly-charitable to describe Andrew Johnson’s kindness to mice that he found in his residence as having pets, no other occupant of the White House has not kept animals of some type—usually dogs, but sometimes a whole hobby farm and menagerie to include donkeys, horses, bears and exotic gifts from visiting heads of state. We’re unworthy of our animal companions as it is and robots have already expressed their aversion for his ilk, and while I feel it would be inhumane to force an animal on Dear Leader as a full-time commitment, since he’d probably delegate their care and attention to others, but I suppose he could be subjected to the supervised company a therapy hen—one of those acculturated to comfort the most damaged among us.

manchurian candidacy

Despite denials of the allegations that wire-tapping in any form was directed at the lair and campaign headquarters of Dear Leader and that it would have been a contravention of US law to order the surveillance of any entity by the federal government without certainty that the target were an “agent of a foreign power,” Dear Leader recognises the opportunity to further distract the public’s attention from his relations with Russia by directing the legislature to open an investigation into his paranoia before they can make any progress on launching an official inquiry into his political machine’s own inner-workings.

Besides, if there actually any snooping going on, Dear Leader could order it declassified, and if innocent as he claims, would prove instantly exculpating. Alternatively, such evidence could be damning—if it is out there. Dear Leader draws comparisons to Nixon and Watergate as well as McCarthyism but I think his metaphors are mixed in the wrong direction—unless he wishes to lead us to his own misdoings. Richard Nixon, running for president in 1968, against the vice-president Hubert Humphrey of the Johnston administration, was worried that treaties would end the conflict in Vietnam as early as 1968 and mean a sure win for his rival so candidate Nixon got in touch with the ambassador of South Vietnam, assuring him it was in his people’s best interests to hold out for better terms of peace. Johnson suspected that this “treason” was being perpetuated and even had the embassy bugged but too close to the election, never came forward with his evidence, not wanting to be accused of subversion. Nixon’s actions prolonged the war by four years and cost countless lives on both sides, with America eventually withdrawing in defeat.

data knows best or don’t forget your toothbrush

Via the globe-trekking Nag on the Lake comes an interesting experiment, practical exercise in surrendering oneself to thinking machines that’ll eventually be better planners than any of us—not for virtue of being more adventurous or resourceful but because they can best navigate and game those electronic corridors of optimising deals and schedules and vacancies with far more efficiency than we can summon—in the form of a spontaneous vacation that’s fully arranged by a robot travel agency to specified parameters.
One doesn’t have to hunt for deals oneself or do the booking, and the computer keeps the travellers in suspense about their destination until in the departures lounge of their local airport. Of course, the machine works within your given budget and allows one to exclude places where one does not what to go (having recently been there) and seemed for a brand new service to not do all that bad. The pair enjoyed a nice weekend getaway in Basel and their only complaints were economic ones—the weak pound and the strong franc, but just imagine how perfectly tailored holidays could become if the robots doing the booking and bargaining knew the likes and interests of the travellers even better than they do themselves, pouring over their social media feeds, etc. What do you think? Would you be willing to invest a not insignificant sum of money to have an algorithm dictate your agenda? It strikes me a little like when you veer off-course from what one’s satnav is directing and the device loses its cool and gets panicky instantly, and if everyone started relying on computerised vacation packages, there’d be no deals left to be scooped up.

the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight

As Colossal reports, Banksy and some of his artist friends are opening guest accommodations in a reclaimed hostel they’ve just refurbished adjacent to the concrete barrier that divides Israeli and Palestinian Bethlehem.  Fully-functional, the establishment will be open to guests soon—with the Walled Off Hotel (a bigger gallery and booking features here) promising the worst views in the world.
Since dismantling Dismaland in 2015, aside from expressing his honour to a grade school for naming its new wing after local son, it seems that this hotel has been his exclusive focus and is sure to make a statement that scales the divide.

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.