darmok and jalad at tenagra

Sourced without a doubt from The Greatest Generation, io9 (named for a theoretical input-output device that allows users to peer into the future at the price of their sanity) presents a collection of some of the strangest plotlines from Star Trek: TNG for the series’ thirtieth anniversary, which debuted on this day in 1987.

public-notice

Chillingly, the US Department of Homeland Security has posted it proposed policies for monitoring the social media accounts of all migrants and their associates to the Federal Register (the official journal of the government) and is soliciting comments from the public. And while there will always hopefully be institutions to challenge the expanding reach of Big Brother (which has been in development for decades and something we’ve all been complacent about and complicit with) and the bureau probably won’t be granted everything its asking for, it is disturbing that any semblance of privacy (and Americans ought not be privileged over the rest of the world by dint of their citizenship since soon they won’t be) is becoming a rarer and rarer luxury only for the powerful and the duly deputised.

6x6

brick and mortar: the trajectory of on-line retailer Amazon very closely mirrors that of Sears and Roebuck  
corporate sponsorship: former London mayor tried to secure funds for the Thames Garden Bridge by allowing Apple to plop a store in the middle of the river

choo-choo: an incredibly charming hand-drawn train journey animation, via Waxy

songun: striking and iconographic ephemera from North Korea

tree of life: a look at how many species and varieties that each plant and animal emoji represents, via Kottke

ama: highlights from an interview with Monty Python alumnus John Cleese

sologamy

A thoughtful, reflexive essay on the trend of self-marriage, after indulging us with a personal peek at the private-public declarations of matrimony (held in a karaoke bar in the former no-man’s land between East and West Berlin), poses the question whether the rite is an emancipation from having to prove one’s worth by merit of relationship status or an oppressive, pathetic totem of self-absorption and a photo-opportunity.
While marriage and companionship has had a lot heaped on it in the past few decades—radically transformed from a utilitarian and practical arrangement that was essentially a commercial transaction to one with heady, superlative expectations of romance, protection, friendship, counsellor and a dozen other roles that might have been cast across a wider social network, it still seems robust and resilient enough to bear that burden. For those whom marriage might not impart an element of social mobility, however, self-marriage might not just be the trite amour-propre of narcissism that it seems to be and rather the staging that culminates in a ceremony (executed or not) is certainly a rebuke for spinster and crone (or whore) and all the other nasty terms that society directs at single women—who are the majority of participants. What do you think? Commandeering social conventions are a way of highlighting the constraints and limitations of our society but rather than betraying ourselves as needy and infantile, and I believe the author’s exercise was neither endorsement or condemnation but rather an expose and exploration worth contemplating on the nature of sanction and the sacrosanct but we’re probably each other’s own best allies for keeping us in good health, accountable and sane, morally and ethically.

jump-cut

Despite its novelty and notwithstanding anecdotes of panicked early audiences rushing away from the screen at the sight of an oncoming train, cinematographers put together and edit scenes and montages in much the same way as humans augment their visual experience by allowing their brains to fill in the gaps, as we learn from Æon Video via Laughing Squid. Previously we were introduced to the rather vexing notion of saccade-masking and how we are effective blind to the outside world a significant portion of the day and how smooth, sweeping transitions are illusory compared to the fragmentary and clawing reality of our sense of sight, and this short documentary does a very good job of demonstrating how resolving focus, peripheral vision, intention and attention collaborate to produce a director’s cut of remembered sight whose stage and screen parallels perhaps couldn’t be appreciated until deconstructed.  Aside from the rather remarkable fact that we were so willing to take to the format and venue and are now more willing to engage with our flat things than the real dimensions around us in terms of narrative and belief, the genius of film-makers for exploiting this visual conceit for story-telling was something taken for granted as well.

triumvirate

While it is no doubt terrifying that for the first time since 1957 (before the liquidation of the Deutsche Reichsparte and Vaterländische Union) there are openly fascist elements in the Bundestag (plus representation in the parliaments of thirteen out of sixteen Bundesländer) and that a small percentage of the voting population has given a mandate to such a world-view, it is definitely preferable to suffer a thirteen-proof dotard than take the full, unadulterated wrath of bigoted despotism.
Perhaps it is better to give Nazis the stage to fail spectacularly than expend the efforts—better spent elsewhere—to convince the world that this is not a lesson, couched in the same terms, that we need to revisit. And while the share is not a controlling one and other minority, anti-establishment parties will I am sure will I am sure be willing to cast support to the CDU and SPD (though unexcited about the prospects of continued teamwork) in order to retain a viable government without having to resort to engaging a chauvinistic political bloc, these are untested times and no matter how one interprets the outcome, the AfD still finished in third place. I don’t know if governance by consensus and dialogue can continue with such a foil that represents something far more obstructive rather than constructive, and in this fragmented environment I expect more legislation to succumb to gridlock and internecine fights and flounder. What do you think? We’re grateful that Merkel retains the chancellorship but are repulsed by the way xenophobia and totalitarianism is regaining purchase.

stimmzettel

It’s federal elections in Germany and every suffragan is given two votes—one to choose their local representative to send to Berlin for the Bundestag (the legislative and constitutional body) and the other to select a political party affiliation that determines the mandate each political group carries. Though voting may translate to a cult-of-personality, Germans know that they are not electing a chancellor in any direct sense, just operating under the assumption that a party will want to retain their present leadership and form a government with the assent and cooperation with those garnered a share of seats in Federal Diet. Though it’s not beyond reproach to argue that forming the same coalition among senior and junior partners is not ideal for democratic institutions but it is certainly preferable to chaos and antithetical compromise, and while there are two major groups, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) that usually have to work towards solutions that both can live with, the landscape is wholly other the binary natures of many other national constituencies. There’s the pro-environmentalist Greens plus the Ecological Democrats and the Animal Rights Party, two sorts of independent-voter movements plus those seeking secession for various states, the Pirate party, the further left-leaning, the Marxists and the Communists as a robust counter-balance to the hard right elements Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschland—die NDP which considers itself a successor to the NSDP.
I was also happy to see that among the contenders on the ballot was die PARTEI—an intentional mockery and miscarriage of politics, whose satirical rotation of representatives (listed candidates take turns at the EU and retire after a month) in Brussels won on the slogan “for Europe—against Europe” in 2014, just like Frontfrau Alix Schwarz advocating for both peace and war. The group’s political activities this election-cycle has been infiltrating the social media circles dedicated to AfD adherents and lampooning their message with rather destabilising consequences. Refreshingly, unlike many other joke campaigns, die PARTEI actually had a plan for what it would do if elected to high office.

shibboleth, cool whip

 Recently we were introduced to a phonological concept that struck as completely novel though we’d been acquainted with one of its most cited examples for some time: the rhyming passkey—in a sense—Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis; wa’t dat net sizze kin, is gjin oprjochte Fries (Butter, bread and green cheese; who can’t say this is no authentic Frisian) was employed during an early sixteenth century revolt to weed out Danes in their midst, reasoning that only native speakers could pronounce all the words properly.
The term shibboleth is from a biblical battle where accent and pronunciation similarly distinguished friend from foe and can figuratively refer to not just a language test to differentiate in-groups from out-groups—given that scripts are adapted to the set of sounds unique or common to every language—but more broadly to cohesive, meaningful jargon, shared experiences, anthems, prayers or other common cultural touchstones. I suppose the term could further be abstracted into sort of an anti-alphabet or anti-lexicon of limitations, like asking a German to say “squirrel” or any number of tongue-twisters that it would be a challenge for a foreigner to master. Do you know your own personal set of shibboleths? We are all outsiders and misfits to some group and that’s perfectly fine. Why are you saying it all weird?