retcon

Since first discovering the Maximum Fun network of podcasters about a year ago, I’ve been very pleased with all the series and shows that I’ve ended up subscribing to and have found myself especially enchanted with the wit and wisdom and pop-culture reach of one of the newer offerings, Story Break. Three professional Hollywood script writers get to take a break from the usual industry fare of the safe, sellable or filmable and spend an hour brainstorming, developing and finally pitching a movie based on a pastiche of odd premises, like the Kellogg’s Cinematic Universe with breakfast cereal mascots receiving the Marvel superhero treatment.
If you find yourself already exhausted with the existing holiday special line-up and can summon your imagination to limn out the festive scenario the crew is given, you will definitely want to check out their latest pre-production piece, Sleighrunner. The original arc of narrative began with a hegemonial on-line retailor kidnapping Santa Claus, first to take out the last vestige of competition and then to harness Kris Kringle’s unrivalled, perfect logistics and distribution set-up, which the company’s fleet of delivery drones and virtual omnipresence cannot match. Conceding, however, that the corporation already dominates the holiday, the writers take a different angle and have the online retailor not satisfied with capturing the commercial side of the holiday season but also aspiring to make Christmas magic real for all by raising a drone army of Santa’s Helpers capable delivering their presents in person at the appointed hour, arriving in reindeer drawn flying sleighs. A glitch happens however during the first test-flight and the prototype, sentient robot Santa crashes to Earth and no longer can access his original programming not realise that he’s a replicant (tagline: Naughty or Nice – They All Run). Hunted down by a legion of drone Santas and accompanied by a young child who found the castaway robot who believes him to be the real Saint Nicholas, our malfunctioning robot learns about commercialism and the true meaning of Christmas and in some sense does become the real Santa. Or something—nonetheless, it’s a movie I’d watch.

basti fantasti

Whilst arguably at least a nominal improvement over a regime that seeks to denigrate and defund those institutions that promote the arts and humanities, Vienna’s museum board is nonetheless within their rights to protest the misappropriation of the motto of the Secessionist Movement—co-founded by in 1897 by symbolist painter Gustav Klimt—by Austria’s ascendant right-wing government, under the leadership of Sebastian Kurz.
Der Zeit ihre Kunst, der Kunst ihre Freiheit (as seen on the Secession Hall, which houses some of Klimt’s iconic works) means “to every age its art and to each art its freedom” which the cultural wing of the ironically named Freedom Party and ruling coalition (under the People’s Party) has co-opted, which in this other context sounds rather sinister like another pithy German saying that’s not said any longer, Jedem das Seine, to each his own.

operation blue book

Here is a nice ensemble of articles and footage that really captured our sense of dejection when it came to the media’s coverage (or lack thereof) on the revelation that the US Air Force and Pentagon maintained a secretive programme up until five years ago to study (like its antecedents) the phenomenon of unidentified flying objects and assess their potential threats.
Despite a reputable news source and containing some of the more compelling and credible testimony that we’ve encountered in years, the insanity of the news cycle, morbid scepticism and the contagion of time pressure all conspire (we would be flattering the regime if we expected it not to tell) so we are far more willing to believe the command: “Move along. Nothing to see here,” and perhaps we do so of our own accord. Of course there’s a lot of attention-seeking garbage out there not worth the investment of one’s time and attention (and it is encouraged to argue passionately about made-up aliens), but if journalism isn’t allowed to ever stray into the realms of the speculative, indulgent or even the aspirational, it seems to me to collapse into nothing more than one’s daily-digest of propaganda. I want to believe.

6x6

daft the halls: a fun, festive musical compilation in the style of the artists, via The Awesomer

tulip mania: companies unrelated to cryptocurrency craze are garnering attention by adding “blockchain” to their names

not to scale: Tanaka Tatsuya’s creative dioramas comprised of tiny people interacting with everyday objects, via Nag on the Lake

jólnar: the yuletide Icelandic Ogress Grýla seems far more formidable than Krampus (more on her extended family here), via Miss Cellania

bowling for elves: a look back at the viral 1999 computer game that circulated by email and the ensuing scare that made the public more wary about cyber-security

tuin der lusten: an animation studio reinterprets Hieronymous Bosch’s triptych Garden of Earthly Delights (previously) with contemporary vanities

subtle allegory or indistinguishable from magic

This short synopsis of the premise of a science fiction premise really resonated with us: first serialised in 2006, Liu Cixin’s award winning (and recently adapted into film) The Three-Body Problem (三体) proposes that humans have encountered no alien races because extra-terrestrials conspire to contain one another, lest they advance and become a threat.
Introducing this dominant race dispenses neatly with the other reasons aliens are not visiting. Rather than actively disarming and disabling their machines and modes of exploration, the only thing aliens would need to do to humans or any other planet-bound denizen would be to bring in an element of woo and superstition and pseudoscience, maybe a peppering of miraculous events that defy logical explanation to really enforce and cement beliefs. Playing the long-game, the dominant races’ containment-policy ensures it has no competition by undermining trust in science. Given our violent regression to primitive charms and preserving appearances, however, I think that perhaps blaming a technologically superior alien race for keeping humanity relegated to the cosmic backwaters also violates the principal of Ockham’s Razor, lex parsimoniae. We certainly hope that this message is preserved in the theatrical release.

official channels or meanwhile—back at galt’s gulch

Surely apropos of some sort of unpublicised gaffe with those tag-line salutations that some people choose to personalise their missives with, we received a citation from the governing regulation as a friendly-reminder to cut out the practise.

(2) Use of inappropriate signature blocks when sending electronic messages (emails). Army policies for records management apply to emails. Emails generated by Army personnel in their official capacity from Army communication devices (including but not limited to computers and hand held devices) will not contain slogans, quotes, or other personalized information as part of the individual sender’s signature block.

Signature blocks within emails will contain only the necessary business information, such as: the name of the organization (office, activity, or unit represented); official mailing address or unit information; name of individual; telephone numbers (Defense Switched Network, commercial telephone, cell phone number, or facsimile numbers); office email addresses or government websites (unit web or social media page); government disclaimer (Privacy Act Statement, Attorney Client Notice); unit historical motto or any other information approved by Headquarters Department of the Army. Requests for exceptions will be submitted to the first flag officer or equivalent in the chain of command (with possible delegation to the next in the chain of command, or his/her equivalent).

Most of them, those mottoes either are too arch, not that good (especially after seeing them more than once) or outright embarrassing. I noticed that above coda on an email from a colleague and felt quite sorry for her—having been there myself at one point.

voiture populaire

Just a Car Guy introduces us to the concept automobile built by the French company Panhard et Levassor (who are credited with having created the first modern transmission) in 1948, the Dynavia, as a smaller and more affordable people’s car that the company would be more in keeping with post-war realities. The prototype (another voiture here) with an aluminium, aerodynamic chassis and weighing in at only four hundred kilograms, never went into mass production itself but influenced the design and spirit of the subsequent line of  Panhard Dyna Z saloons (sedans), manufactured from the mid- to late-1950s.

breaking functional fixedness

I’ve found myself mediating on the question of insight and the cultural blind-spots that prevent us from being keen-sighted enough to recognise (both writ large and writ small) our own mistakes, achievements, peril and opportunities in ourselves or in others with this rather brilliant, succinct essay by Umair Haque, introduced by Jason Kottke.
Posing the question, what do you call a world that can’t learn from itself, societies risk cultivating the inability to see beyond the horizon of their established norms and values. Perhaps the dichotomy of a more authentic Europe and an ersatz America is not wholly an accurate one (which does not matter) since I don’t believe that Europeans are beyond the enticements that have driven US quality of life down to new lows, but rather because insisting on perfect generalisations that can be compartmentalised in one way or another is exactly what wedges aspersion between groups and makes one less likely to appreciate how good or bad conditions are and re-enforces the refusal to learn from the success or failures of another. Insofar as both extremes are taken for granted, Americans are loath to experiment with foreign ways of doing things, despite evidence that they work better and might even translate well across the Atlantic, and those nations who’ve achieved are just as disinclined to see how their happy existence is in jeopardy by tolerating the regressive forces of exclusion and keeping others down and out that will undo the underpinnings. What do you think? Can we as individuals and as a society (no matter where we live) cultivate practising insight?