the rock or europa point

Residents of British territory of Gibraltar have doubtless seen more contentious times under the regime of Francisco Franco when the border was blockaded and trade suspended by a series of embargoes and transit was not normalised until 1985 and of course when it was captured as a naval base during the War of Spanish Succession in the early sixteenth century.
Having asserted their continued link to Great Britain on multiple occasions and no desire to rejoin Spain, the majority of Gibraltarians voted to remain part of the European Union. Though Madrid has given no indication of a change in policy or posture towards the exclave it claims as its own, the formal triggering of Article 50 is inspiring some rather baffling, hostile remarks from the metropolitan care-taker government, including the foreign minister arguing that Gibraltar is not for sale or subject to bargaining and comparisons to the conflict in the Falklands

how about a nice game of chess?

Whilst Dear Leader says he will handle the other Dear Leader with or without China’s assistance—awkwardly ahead of the visit by the Chinese president, North Korea, Gizmodo speculates, may have inadvertently revealed its ability to upgrade a fission reaction into a hydrogen bomb.
Having the technical prowess to miniaturise a nuclear device to the extent it could be mounted on a ballistic missile is another question but the reality remains that the distance from Seoul to the Demilitarised Zone is less than that between Washington, DC and Baltimore and North Korea already has the ability to seriously damage the capital to the south with conventional weapons. What do you think? After witnessing how other dictatorships have been selectively toppled with the help of American statecraft, North Korea would never abandon—nor fully disclose (an alternative narrative to be sure) its nuclear programme not just for the destructive, retaliatory potential but because it is a bargaining chip—at least in the regime’s eyes as the revolutions that were suffered and permitted involved no burgeoning nuclear powers.

docklands

Taking a stand against the gentrification of its old wharf and shipyard—which is already seeing developers transforming the area with posh hotels and restaurants—local caretaker Peter Ernst Coolen has designs on the massive ensemble of abandoned warehouses on the north side of the IJ that formed the Netherlands Dock and Shipbuilding Company with plans to create the world’s largest street art museum on the outskirts of Amsterdam. The venue is ideal and Coolen hopes to open the museum next summer—and although not as expansive, it reminds me of the old slaughterhouse behind the train station in Wiesbaden and few other local spots adorned with graffiti.

4x4

pictogram: Andy Warner presents a comprehensive portrait of the history and bureaucracy of the emoji, in comic form

rimsky-korakov: the ærodynamics of mosquito flight is wholly novel in the insect kingdom

woke: well-spoken, eloquent artificial general intelligence, Luna, aspires to be super-intelligent when she grows up

gig economy: out-sourcing companies exploit psychological tendencies to incentivise and prod free-lancers onward, via Super Punch

back-up copy

Adjacent to the World Arctic Seed Vault on the island Spitsbergen Norway has just opened a new doomsday archive for civilisation’s data, calling for submissions considered especially culturally significant.
Volume of course is not infinite and something to be discounted as a negotiable commodity as the information is transferred on to multi-layered film and stored in a format that isn’t dependent on a given operating system or media format, in case the worst case scenario comes to pass and all of the underlying support structure crumbles. At the time of publication, the two countries have submitted caches of data, Brazil and Mexico.