location scout

Daily I pass this office tower that really dominates the Wiesbaden skyline that I formally found oddly satisfying as representative of a cliché corporate headquarters that one might find in a 1980s movie where corruption is uncovered in ill-explained, cartoonish method. Since the accession of Dear Leader, however, the sight of it has grown a little less welcoming and reminds me of his property empire and personal ensemble of consulates. We’ll gladly accept our finders’ fee in any form of fiat tender.

blue birds over

Artist Banksy has created a new mural in Dover, the Guardian reports, that expresses his views on Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, especially timely as France has defied the nationalistic drift with the outcome of its presidential elections—which is located, of course, just across the English Channel from Calais and the Continent. The star being chipped away does not represent membership (there are far more countries in the Union than there are stars on the flag) but rather for “unity, solidarity and harmony.”

bully pulpit

It’s in the nature of social media to induce a fugue-state but that does not excuse Dear Leader’s abusing his position to badger a witness. The former acting Attorney General (the incumbent has of course recused himself from such appearances) testified before the House of Congress on Russian inference in the US presidential election, and how the former administration warned Dear Leader about staffing his ranks with certain individuals. Dismissed by Dear Leader for questioning the legality of his targeted travel ban, the former Attorney General seemed not to be rattled by his threatening tone.

mind the gap or devil’s haircut in my mind

Via TYWKIWDBI (scroll all the way through his Divertimento and let yourself get distracted), we learn of the of the property of symmetry or palindromicity in figures, called Scheherazade numbers by Buckminster Fuller for the leading stories that they tell after the character in 1001 Arabian Nights.
One thousand and one is too a palindrome but not a prime number but another, much larger named-number that shares both properties was named by science columnist Clifford A. Pickover Belphegor’s Prime. In long form, the number which reads the same forward or backward would be one quintillion, sixty-six billiard, six-hundred billion and one or 1000000000000066600000000000001 or easier to recall as one followed by thirteen zeros on each side with the Number of the Beast at the centre. For all these cameo appearances of superstitious numbers (notationally represented by an upside down π) is named after one of the seven demonic princes of Hell (Hebrew for Lord of the Gap), characterised by John Milton in Paradise Lost as the devil that curses man with inquisitiveness and ingenuity—considered sinful as looking for short-cuts is the way of pride and sloth.

release the kraken

Revisiting the topic of persuasive maps, Hyperallergic has scoured the huge online archive of the PJ Mode Collection of Cornell University for examples of cartographic cephalopoid and explores the motif of the land octopus as a common trope of creeping geopolitical menace. Beginning with caricaturist Fred W Rose’s 1877 depiction of an expansionist Russia as a global threat, the tentacles, most maps reflect the fears of competing Great Gamers, but some also address social matters, like this 1909 map of London that extols how high property prices creates unemployment.

bios, bias

Until Apple challenged a competitor that was unartfully cloning its hardware and software, an operating system was not subject to intellectual property protections as programs were not expressive in themselves and utilitarian in nature.
IBM’s 1981 concession licensed its disk operating system to Microsoft, which in turn generalised the boot-up programme to work on a broader platform is what we usually associate with the idea of cloning and PC-compatibles. The case that Apple raised against what it saw as obvious infringement failed in three lower courts but the appeals process finally ruled in 1984 that software could be made subject to copyright and thus brought our idea of coded instruction into the proprietary-fold. At first glance, such restrictions might seem counter to innovation and there are doubtless numerous examples in the rentier economy where protectionism and clearinghouse cartels have stopped independent experimentation, in this case the new legal framework compelled both companies (other competitors had recourse to legal—now it was defined—ways of cloning the Apple through reverse-engineering) to diversify and find niche markets, scalable of course. Apple, for its part might not have diverged from the PC market the way it did had the II remained a secure technological plateau, and Franklin came to dominate the consumer market with those pocket-sized telephone directories, translators and dictionaries and arguably contributed to miniaturisation and the idea of carrying around a suite of gadgets.

enfant déplorable ou clutching at straws, clutching at pearls

The world owes a huge debt of gratitude for halting the march of destabilisation of democracy in rejecting a platform based on fear and xenophobia in favour of an untested (though very much of the same pedigree of the political establishment) candidate whose youth and non-partisanship was last seen with Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte III, plus for resisting the urge to turn inward despite having borne the brunt of recent terror attacks. Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche!, as with the Front nationale, is an outlier of the political parties that had traditional governed France and the results of the first run-off were uncomfortably close, and though the newcomer won by a decisive margin and has a mandate for the direction he wants to take the country.
I am also certain, however, that the transfer of power will be less than absolutely peaceable, owing the tyranny that’s already been unleashed on the world and the upcoming rounds of parliamentary elections that might also reject conventional narratives, since after all there was a not insignificant number of voters that supported Le Pen—quipping just before her defeat that the Republic would be inevitably ruled by a woman: “either herself or Angela Merkel”—and voter-turn out even with so much at stake was historically low with many feeling disenfranchised and disengaged with politics altogether. The last minute breach and release of potentially incriminating campaign documents was a grasping ploy that was diffused and that along with other incidents engineered to either overtly or covertly affect the outcome of the race that failed illustrate how social engineering has the traction that we give it. Even fake news, regardless of the amount that the recipient wanted to be it to be true, was rebuffed with a shrug of resignation—not because the French are jaded or expect less from their leaders, but because response is a measured one, not determined by political machines whose gears are often jammed in translation. No amount of messaging, surrogacy and propaganda trumps education and advocacy. Vive la France!  Vive l’Europe!

saw or the devil and the white city

We were first acquainted with prolific serial killer HH Holmes (and his “murder castle” through Futility Closet some weeks ago. The gruesome true story which is certainly the received wisdom for much of the horror genre took place in 1893 Chicago during the Columbian Exposition when Holmes, hotelier, bigamist and insurance fraudster, opened up his accommodation to the many tourists that came to town to marvel at the fair.
The hostel however was a deadly labyrinth of traps, including a crematorium to dispose of the evidence. It is unknown how many victims Holmes slaughtered, and there’s some measure of doubt whether Holmes was ultimately served justice or evaded it, and fled to South America by some accounts. To settle that debate, his ancestors have requested Holmes’ body to be exhumed and tested. For all the horror tropes we see in this story and how many movies it has influenced (bearing in mind that even if there’s an element of a tall-tale or urban legion, that these are real victims not thirty year old teenage characters in a script), it’s that final act and final question—is the monster dead and the terror resolved or is there a sequel-potential, that seems to loom largest.