antipodal

Amusing Planet brings us the story of the planet’s loneliest tree, a stunted Sitka spruce, and how this transplant is the perfect candidate to mark the separation of the Anthropocene geological epoch. While on a survey expedition, Uchter Knox, Earl of Ranfurly and Governor of New Zealand, visited the remote Campbell Island and was possessed for to plant a tree on this otherwise treeless piece of land, whose climate is hostile to anything growing above ground level.
The specimen that Knox choose, however, is indigenous to a strip of coast in British Columbia—from the opposite ends of the Earth almost—and while not exactly qualifying as an invasive species, the spruce having taken root but never matured to produce cones, it does demonstrate the effect that humans have on the environment. Moreover, the tree is a contender for a “golden spike,” a symbolic milestone like the ceremonial final spike driven that marked the completion of the North American transcontinental railroad that arraign other epochal transitions like the asteroid strike that ended the Paleocene and age of the dinosaurs sixty-six million years hence, as the tree is also a living record of humanity’s attempt to harness and weaponise nuclear fission and fusion. In order to demonstrate that the impact of nuclear testing was truly pervasive and global—that no one was out of range, no matter how isolated or removed—researchers took core samples of the Sitka spruce and found traces of the radioactive carbon isotope that is the signature sign of atomic explosions especially concentrated in the growth rings that corresponded to the mid-1960s when testing was at its peak.

bluff and blunderbuss

Not that America had not already squandered any modicum of faith and confidence that the rest of the world might have held for it, Trump managed to destroy all traces of esteem and trust in a rambling, confusing speech at a party fund-raising event—having never made the transition from campaigning to governing—with the boast that he fabricated the trade imbalance between the US and Canada while meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, claiming that America had been put at a disadvantage when the opposite was true and the country’s northern neighbour had been an honest and true broker all along.
Though it’s to be expected that the Grifter in Chief and his apologists will traffic in lies and low information, repute (especially one based on garbage and insincerity) does not replace facts and the rest of the world is not having it and will not suffer these dumb antics. Aside from this maneuver, Trump lashed out at other allies and trading-partners, including South Korea with the implied threat that the US would recall its thirty-thousand service members from the peninsula if the country does not pivot towards more American exports and Japan for its unreasonable (and imaginary) bowling ball impact standard that keeps American-made cars out of its markets but failed to address the protectionist embargo he enacted to impose tariffs on steel imports, which conversely make manufacturing outside of the US more attractive to industry and will most certainly translate to more jobs going overseas. His remarks also omitted the dismissal of his chief diplomat, the dangerous repeal of banking regulations put in place after the last global recession to try to stave off another one, the ongoing investigation into his regime’s ties to Russia, his affair with a porn star and rebuffed any hint of blame for the state of the Republican Party.

indelible

In circulation from 1883 to 2011, Inland Printer was among the first periodical to change its cover with every new issue and was instrumental in spreading the Art Nouveau movement in the US, itself launched in response to the booming Mid-Western print industry. The venerable trade magazine highlighted and heralded changes in design and style, showcasing new talent, and helped usher in other movements as it kept publishers abreast of the latest advances in colour printing and engraving—both for promotional ephemera and books meant to last. Check out a whole gallery of cover art and vintage advertisements from the magazine curated by Dangerous Minds at the link up top.

in the temple of science there are many mansions

To mark what would have been his one hundred-thirty-ninth birthday, Aeon magazine features an engrossing and retrospective essay on the life and times of Albert Einstein and his contributions to science and social justice and his rather fraught and puzzled relationship to fame and celebrity. Speculating on why such rarified pursuits touching the nature of the Cosmos with rather destructive practical application resonated with the public, Einstein eschewed worship and was himself highly skeptical of appeal to authority, though owning he’d been duly punished for his distrust by becoming the expert witness for himself.