1. outside

The ever excellent Everlasting Blört introduces us to the painting, portraiture and storyboard work of David Bowie through a curated gallery that captures the artist’s soulful legacy, highlighting the influence of contemporaries (many of whom whose works he patronised and collected as well) and the German Expressionism movement that Bowie and Iggy Pop immersed themselves in when they moved to Berlin in 1976. Artwork includes sketches that are studies in cosmetic and costume development, album covers, stage directions for performances and a few panels for an unmade film adaptation of a story called “Hunger City.”

8x8

everything zen: images from this weekend’s European Stone Stacking and Balancing Competition in Scotland are tranquil (rather than precarious) and oddly fulfilling, via Super Punch

soiree: ahead of the fete for Macron’s state visit, the Atlantic reviews White House state dinners of the past decades

boilerplate: discontent over handling of user data may signal the end of perpetuating meaningless fine-print and illusory choice in contracts

bird’s eye view: cameras carried aloft by trained pigeons deliver turn of the century aerial photography (previously)

convolutional neural network: using deep learning and augmented reality, programmes can aid physicians in detecting cancer and other diseases in real-time, via Slashdot

crassus became the richest man in rome by owning the fire department: privatising emergency services will insulate the wealthy from the worst consequences of climate change while making the poor pay

2008 tc3: meteorite found in Nubian desert is one of the last remains of an ancient, doomed proto-planet

rest in grease: a fast-food chain’s release of a mixtape prompts us to question the boundary between music and marketing and what constitutes a brand versus a band

zwischenstopp: willmars

We’ve previously wrote a little bit about the village of Willmars when we went exploring some ruins and contemplated hunting for mushrooms but the side of town one spies from the road is also pretty picturesque and compact—everything that makes a proper village all right together. The bakery/general store is co-located now with the fire department removed a bit from the main street but everything else is right there.
The settlement was originally in the hands of a cadet-branch of the Franconian dukes of Henneberg, controlling the lands with imperial immediacy from the forests of Thüringen to the banks of the Main, from the early thirteenth century onwards.
Once the line died out with no legitimate heirs in 1583, Willmars and its neighbours reverted ownership to the Duchy of Saxony.
With the major re-distri-bution of sovereignty within the Holy Roman Empire of 1803 (der Reichsdeputationshauptschluss), the villages once again traded hands and came into possession of the Free and Imperial Knights von Stein zu Nord- and Ostheim—more or less for keeps and more on this venerable family to come.

spaceship earth

Sponsored by the partnership of a senator and environmental activist in response to a devastating oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, Earth Day was first observed in 1970 on this date. The movement has grown exponentially since and in 1990 spread internationally, set aside by nearly two hundred countries as time to focus on ecological challenges and solutions.
Despite growing support and awareness of the importance of our being better stewards of the environment and that Nature is not ours to dominate, the movement is facing regressive forces, not the least being narratives that global-warming is a myth. Originally celebrated about a month earlier on the Spring Equinox, the 22 April date was chosen so to make the day truly universal and not tied to a particular hemisphere and as the April date would fall within most colleges’ Spring Breaks and allow the chance for students to organize rallies. Unfortunately, as like contemporary conspiracy theorists—the date chosen was a bit inauspicious as 22 April 1870 was the birthday of Vladimir Lenin (unbeknownst to the event’s organisers, especially considering the need to translate it from the Old Style calendar to the Gregorian) and some harboured suspicions in the US particularly at the time (and through to this day) that that signaled a Communist inculcation and was reminiscent of the coerced “voluntary” Saturday (Subbotnik) spent in community service, to include the sorting and recycling of trash. Fortunately, Earth Day’s message has transcended those arguing that we’re separate and outside of the natural world.

consent of the governed

Intrigued as we were by the characterisation of a former CIA director of Trump’s regime as a kakistocracy, JF Ptak did some further spelunking into forms of government that fail the governed beyond khakistocracy. There’s a link to a quite exhaustive list at the source but just as a sample, some of our favourites, new to us, were: an adhocracy—a government whose deliberations are impromptu and without planning or bureaucracy, a mediocracy—rule by the average, the mediocre, and a ptochcracy—a government constituted of the solicitous poor.

zwischenstopp: neustädtles

One of my new low-stakes but hopefully rewarding projects is to document all the scenic but not at first blush distinct places that I pass through when going from home to work on what’s been several years of a long weekly commute. I’d like to stop for a moment in each place with one of the first villages that I go through to being one of a population of about two hundred called Neustädtles (little new town).
Documented for the first time in the 1420s when the village was sold to the Knights of Tann, the territory on the mountainous border of Bavaria and Thüringen exchanged hands several times until finally coming under the ownership of Julius von Soden, count of Ansbach (the previous owner a casualty of the French Revolution).
Charged with managing the surrounding forest he established the manor with several apartments and offices en suite to issue fishing and hunting permits in the early eighteenth century. Though broader events informed the village’s allegiances in the following centuries, its character is essentially unchanged.  Stay tuned to see where we’ll pause next time.