doxbin of history

With predictable irony, the White House’s election integrity commission charged with the prevention of voter fraud that it intends to fulfil by doing away with the right to a secret ballot allayed fears of the public that the registry would disclose personally identifiable information of private citizens by revealing the details (to include full names, emails and phone numbers in some cases as the on-line form to lodge a complaint asked for this information) to the public in raw form, not bothering to mask any of the personal information. While it’s unclear whether the commission’s webmaster was careless or vindictive towards those who wrote in to express their dissenting opinions of this initiative (and actively encourage a bit of vigilantism), it seems to definitely reaffirm the fact that government ought not to be trusted with this scope and breadth of data—which they surely already are in possession of, but contempt for domestic intelligence agencies has made this regime thankfully far from omniscient.

dunkle materie

In the 1930s Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky (building upon some significant antecedents with Lord Kelvin measurements and Henri Poincaré’s matiére obscure) accounted for the exponentially different observed velocity of the galactic clusters he was watching due to the presence of some “dunkle Materie.” Consistent but predictable discrepancies in similar measurements over the intervening decades had persuaded science that there was there was a mysterious form of matter that comprised most of the substance of the Cosmos, which was conveniently allusive and unobservable was necessarily for how we understood the Universe to work—which does sound a bit forced.
Justin Khoury, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Pennsylvania, proffers a new way of understanding dark matter that while not substituting it for the classic idea of æther, a pervading continuum, does invite us to imagine dark matter as not particular or cloud-like (exclusively, at least) but something more fluid in nature. Specifically, we’re to think of dark matter like something called a Bose Einstein Condensate, an exotic state of matter that takes on the quantum property of superfludity. Some particles (and we can only create it in the laboratory under temporary, microscopic conditions) that make up the matrix take on the properties of losing all viscosity—like a super-conductor having no resistance to current—and at the same time other particles retain the sort of fluid dynamics that we are used to. Though we are most comfortable with witnessing or being baffled by quantum weirdness on very small scales, perhaps dark matter and dark energy are macroscopic manifestations of quantum effects at close-range—say just beyond the limits of human reach—and frictionless and virtually undetectable but stretching across vast distances of time and space, dark matter forms pools on galactic-scales that can be seen to influence the way clusters of galaxies and super-structures interact and hold stable. Some hold that dark matter is no better than superstitious preserving appearances—but to abandon it would mean modifying General Relativity—which like the quantum question of scale, has been demonstrated to work very well in our own solar system but remains not so rigorously tested in grander schemes.

diurnal

The curators over at My Modern Met direct our attention to the striking “time slice” photography of artist Fong Qi Wei, who has honed his talent and patience for years to create these evocative composite images of a single subject or landscape throughout the day and night. As the artist states, these limnal—somewhere between a painting and snapshot—but also harmonising works engage the viewers more the longer it is considered and appreciated. It also makes me wonder what it means to take ourselves outside of time as much as we do out of nature and authentic experiences. And naturally, the also take well to animated treatment. Be sure to visit either of the links above to peruse the entire gallery and for related creations.

psychometrics

Of course we’re hurtling towards the moment (accelerating, I suspect if the US Federal Communication Commission gets its way and kills net neutrality) when the whole on-line experience and thus the way our personalities and world-view is informed will just be one vanity mirror to reaffirm our ignorances and prejudice, we are probably not quite there yet.
One platform that’s helping us lurch closer to that sort of dumb, narcissistic Singularity, essayist Paul Bisceglio writing for The Atlantic, explores at length with a rather brilliant, cautionary look at the personality quiz in all its incarnations—which, like many things, has taken a bit of a sinister, prying turn in the digital age. Not to spoil the fun and perhaps something insightful to be learned by which spirit-animal, Disney princess, or silent film star one is, but all these data-points feed algorithms that are destined when mediated through bogus psychologically projective tests inevitably become unreliable, judgmental and often flawed or dangerous. Couched in uncertain and unscientific terms as they are, such demographics are irresponsible and ought not be captured for marketers and political-handlers to use but that’s stopping no one from collecting that information and manipulating digital scenery with it. Instead, if one needs to indulge in some reflection, I’d advise one to stick to the horoscopes—and preferably by hard-copy.

grey poupon or an american in paris

Though nothing of substance is to be gained by entertaining Dear Leader at least while pacified by the pomp and circumstance and thronging crowds he demanded for his own inauguration—and while I can only hope in the same circumstance, we’d be noble enough to take one for the team and lure him away (Germany’s already gotten her lumps), he cannot concentrate on dismantling the tenuous gains towards a more equitable, charitable and cherished world we’ve made in the past decades. France’s traditions too are made of stronger stuff that this blemish will fade fast, and though the temporary relief is surely a welcome one for the US the cost does seem rather steep for a sleep-over. Superficially, some are comparing France’s new maverick president to Dear Leader for a shared flair for optics and betraying favouritism for certain journalists, but I think it’s huge stretch and insult other than to contrast Monsieur Macron from this classless Enfant Terrible and his mobster family.

münzkabinett oder endangered specie

Authorities in Berlin are investigating a rather brazen heist but the pilfered commemorative coin—one of five created by the Royal Canadian Mint (for no particular reasons) in 2007 and acquired in 2010 by the city’s storied Bode museum, was loot too hard to resist.
In late March, a Big Maple Leaf, as they’re known with the Queen’s effigy on the obverse and the national symbol on the reverse , a gold coin weighing in at one hundred kilograms and with a face value of one million Canadian dollars but with a market value over four times higher as bullion. The investigation is continuing and arrests have been made—including one of the museum’s watchmen—and a crime family is under suspicion but police, given the nature of the liquidity of the haul, are not hopeful that the coin will be recovered, even in pieces.