el muro fronterizo

Just as bidding closes NPR presents a gallery of some of the design proposals for Dear Leader’s great wall submitted by construction companies eager to build the barrier that will divide the US from México for the Customs and Border Protection agency. Plans range from soul-crushing to absolutely utopian lampoon.

beta-testing

Later this summer, the Museum of Failure will open to the public in Helsingborg, Sweden, which will curate some of the biggest marketing and commercial flops and ill-advised innovations—like the infamous “female” pen. The motivation for assembling such a collection is not to ridicule but rather celebrate failures as true advancement comes with its share of foul-ups—and companies would rather that these object lessons not appear in the spotlight, and the exhibitions hopes to make them available for study so others might glean something from them.

tears of a clown

Via Boing Boing, we learn that Russia has just banned the propagation of the image that depicts Vladimir Putin-like person “with eyes and lips made up” accompanied with an implicit slur suggesting “the supposed non-standard sexual orientation of the president of the Russian Federation,” qualifying it as “extremist material.” As there are many gay clown memes out there—having incubated since September of 2013 when Russia outlawed homosexual propaganda, this very specific prohibition is causing domestic news outlets to scramble to try to guess which image exactly that the ban applies to. Under no circumstances share these images.

latch and locker

Hyperallergic features a nice appreciation of the overlooked Pop Art artist Dorothy Grebenak, active from 1950 to 1970.
Though she never quite owed up to being attached to that particular genre, Grebenak’s creations were as iconic as those of Roy Lichtenstein or Andy Warhol. Possibly relegated to a secondary status due to her medium of choice—almost exclusively working in hooked rugs meant to be displayed on the wall like a tapestry—Grebenak’s work made it into some prestigious museums but got no further than the gift shops, until being championed by one collector and gallery owner. Find out more about this forgotten artist at the link up top.

and i would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids

Exactly one month after the addled accusation that the former US president was wire-tapping Dear Leader during the campaign, it is beginning to make sense—although it’s just another diversionary-tacit—how the baselessness was defended by characterising news as fake “but the leaks are real.”
When the intelligence service conduct surveillance on foreign agents—it being well established that America spies on friend and foe alike—sometimes, often American parties in on the conversation are intercepted in the process. In all cases the identities of the speakers of this collaterally collected conversation is duly redacted in the transcription and are anonymised. Requesting to reveal a name—with justification and truly on a need-to-know basis—is called unmasking. The then US national security director—and it’s impossible to find a reporting source that does not couch the interview with editorial—acknowledged the procedural jargon and protocols while denying any political motivation or leaking any of the intelligence over-reach to the press. This refutation seems perfectly plausible since Dear Leader’s paranoia and continuous fugue state had already confirmed everyone’s suspicions without the need for leaking anything.

confederation

To invoke Article V—not to be confused Article L, in the context of the US federal government is to trigger that process whereby the constitution is amended, designed purposefully to be hard to do and reflective of universal values and not subject to the caprices of demagoguery.
Chillingly, as Brendan O’Connor files for Fusion, last summer saw a gathering of legislators and billionaire lobbyists amid the forced atmosphere of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia for a twisted sort of a model UN that yielded the debate and passage of three trial amendments. In this instance, the convention called for fiscal restraint (the balanced-budget amendment), federal term limits and the end of the estate (death) tax, but it was just an experiment with members attesting to a wide-ranging and ambitious agenda.  This convention was also illustrative of how deeply entrenched influence-peddlers have become and how fragile progressive democracies have become in the face of gerrymandering and ballot-stuffing.