7x7

spomenik database: ten year’s worth of documenting Eastern European monuments from Darmon Richter, via Present /&/ Correct

clip-art: an appreciation of the medium, discontinued from the Microsoft Office suite of programmes in 2014

clean-up operation: Boyan Slat’s system of floats (previously) designed to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is to deploy soon

86ed: a look, in increasing weirdness, that led to the security clearance questionnaire of a politician running for office being leaked to her opposition

globus gömb: a vintage Hungary Rubik’s globe puzzle

balustrade: a series of the spiral staircases of Budapest by Balint Alovits 

may day: a visual lesson on why and how work is celebrated differently in the US (previously)

qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent

It is unhelpful and counter-productive to label anyone and everyone that is against migration and refugee policies who wants to voice their opposition as a Nazi—setting aside for only the briefest of moments what crimes the Nazis carried out, but anyone who marches alongside or in a group infiltrated by Nazis is de facto a Nazi themselves—or a useful idiot thereof, which is arguably an even worse fate, to be a tool without agency of hatred and nihilism.
This applies universally across space and time but Germany has made some very simple guidelines should one find their demonstration impinged upon by Nazis which should prompt one’s hasty retreat and alert the authorities: the Hitler greeting, Swastikas and other symbols of Nazi Germany and denying the Holocaust and extent of their crimes against humanity are illegal and finding oneself in the midst, even marginally and uninvited should signal one to get out and regroup right away. There’s no acceptable common-ground and one’s polite and practical arguments for xenophobia and racism are quickly accelerated to their natural conclusion, institutionalised ostracism and alienation and perhaps even industrialised murder. Are organisers and political figures responsible for the behaviour and outlook of all of their constituents and benighted disciples? In the legal sense, no—lest one prove a calculated neglect, but in the moral sense, leaders should always police for extremism and make the effort to reform their stance and clarify their own position to ensure that there’s truly no place for such views. Anything short of that is dereliction of duty and makes one’s crusade and campaign just another rung in the ladder for the forces of regression and division, no matter how one pleads or equivocates.

the peachdate mall or gruen transfer

Shopping centres all over the world generally have names that reflect a balance between the conservatively familiar and the elegant, exclusive—no matter how humble the location and the anchor stores, and of course artificial intelligence tasked with naming a mall ought not to upstage its human imagineers and nor should it be guilty of the crime of ‘overfitting,’ the tendency of neural networks to sometimes find the most obvious solution through plagiarism. After a few iterations and trial-runs, our friends Lewis & Quark (aka, AI Weirdness, previously) got the hang of the job at hand (with illustrations) and began churning out suggestions like Town Centre at Citylands, Outlets of the Source Mall and South Unit Presence.

unkraut bleibt unkraut

The other day I was weeding a bit as part of getting our yard prepared for Autumn—a presumptuous task I realise since only so called weeds managed to do any growing at all during the hot and dry summer, and while pruning back one plant that was growing too close towards the foundation, I noticed where the stem broke away from the root (I do that on purpose so I feel I haven’t killed anything) there was a carrot-like bit of meal and there was some orange splotches on my hand from the plant’s latex (Milchsaft—like the fluid in the stems of dandelions).  Afterwards, I researched a bit and found that I had come across a bit of Schöllkraut (properly known as the greater celandine, Chelidonium but with some unfortunately English folk names like the nipplewort.
The plants use an interesting though not unique strategy to propagate their seeds called myrmechory, that is in Greek, dispersal by ants, by topping of each seed with a little nutrient morsel that the ants will take back to their nests as food for the growing larvae. Once the larvae have eaten off the coat, the seeds are disposed of in the workers’ burial chambers and benefit from the nutrient-rich environment there. Evolutionary biologists believes one finds this symbiotic relationship in temperate, fertile climates as well—and not just in drier places, because the seeds that the ants bear away are not eaten by other predators and stand a better chance of germinating. Native to Eurasia, it’s considered a bit of a nuisance elsewhere but this plant related to the poppy has some noteworthy pharmacological merits including antimicrobial properties owning to the range of alkaloids it contains, which can be in large amounts toxic to humans and animals as well—especially during the Fall when the chemical is concentrated in the roots. It’s efficacy in traditional medicine as a topical treatment for toothaches, foot odour and skin disorders should be taken with skepticism and any relief is probably due the afore-mention antiseptic properties.

corallivorous predator

Underwritten in part by Google, we learn via Slashdot that those working to preserve Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have gotten a new, powerful ally in the form of Rangerbot, an autonomous aquatic drone that is designed to detect and administer a lethal injection to a very specific type of starfish plaguing the reef.
The crown-of-thorns starfish feeds exclusively on coral polyps—which makes it seem already like the most rubbish, laziest hunter in the animal kingdom already—and while not an invasive species, overfishing and climate change have made those creatures who’d help keep the starfish’s numbers in check are few and few and the starfish is free to munch on the coral unchecked. Scuba divers have been culling this poisonous pest responsible for coral bleaching and nearly as much harm as fertiliser run-off, overfishing and warming oceans for years themselves, but this drone will patrol the reef day and night, programmed not to give its poisoned injection if there is any doubt about the identity and guilt of the target, as well as gathering a wealth of data on the health and well-being of the ecosystem. What do you think? It strikes me as a preferable alternative than swallowing a spider to catch the fly but deputising a drone with license to kill seems (especially in the light of a New Zealand island debating the outlawing of cats for similar reasons) problematic.