Celebrated from 1950 to 1989 on the anniversary of the founding of the Deutsches Demokratische Republik on this day in 1949 from the Zone of Soviet Occupation, five months after the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (West Germany) constituted itself by the adoption of its codex of Basic Laws (Grundgesetz) on 23 May, der Tag der Republik was initially observed with military parades and the issuing of honours to individuals who had made significant achievements in the arts and sciences in the last year.
In the 1970s, the holiday was cast more in the light of a people’s celebration without the pomp of a demonstration of force but also invited protests and dissent. Presided over by Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, he warned the government that dangers awaited those unwilling to reform and adapt to emerging realities while authorities were dispatched to arrest and detain arbitrarily over a thousand individuals on suspicion of subversion. This mass arrest prompted the calls for an official inquiry that began its investigations on 3 November, with the Berlin Wall coming down six days later. Der Tag der Deutschen Einheit is not observed on that day in November for reasons previously covered but was also championed at one point to always fall—for economic reasons—on the first Sunday in October instead of a fixed day. This was ultimately rejected because, like today this year, the celebration of German unity would sometimes take place on the birthday of East Germany.
table scraps: Dutch designer upcycles food waste as a printable, universal paste
the traveling wilburys: on tour with the hologram of Roy Orbison
going, going, gone: a record-fetching Banksy piece of art (previously) self-destructs after the auction, via Nag on the Lake
that’s my name, don’t wear it out: a tribe of unfortunately named gentlemen
on the docket: the US supreme court’s first order of business is to re-examine Gamble vs America, an exception to the Double Jeopardy clause that could allow Trump to extend his pardon-powers in state jurisdiction
albergo diffuso: a unique but nearly depopulated Swiss village is transforming some of the remaining cottages to a “scattered hotel” model to save the entire settlement
impossi-bagel: our palates and our texts deserve better than the refined, blandness behind the new class of emojis
Sponsored by the League of Women Voters, the 1976 US presidential campaign for the first time saw more than one televised debate among the contenders and challenger Georgia governor Jimmy Carter and incumbent Gerald Ford (the first president not having been elected to office, having replaced Richard Nixon’s vice-president Spiro Agnew when he resigned and then Nixon himself as president when Nixon resigned in lieu of impeachment, pardoning his old boss afterwards) agreed to a series of three debates: one on domestic policy, one on foreign policy and one on the audience’s choice of topics.
After a fairly good showing when speaking on home issues, Ford stumbled and never recovered on geopolitics during the second debate, held on this day, 6 October 1976, announcing that “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” adding that there never will be under a Ford administration. The vacillating pander of Trump’s relentless stumping and preening with the refrain “there was no Russian collusion” and “collusion is not a crime” has a strange echo of Ford’s words—perhaps too not so innocently offered.
As a gesture of goodwill after her husband vulgarly disparaged the continent as an undesirable source for immigration, former fashion model Melania Trump seemed to once again forget about the power of optics, donning jodhpurs and a pith helmet for her (thankfully) photographic safari at a nature reserve in Kenya.
Who has such things in their wardrobe? The nineteenth century headgear has been all but abandoned for more sensible cover, owning to the fact that most visitors do not want to project antiquated colonial attitudes and willingness to bear the burden of leading the world toward civilisation.
Via Slashdot, we are introduced to a typeface developed and distributed at no cost (also compatible as a web font for some browsers) by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Behavioural Business Laboratory to help boost retention by presenting text in a finely-tuned balance between legibility and obstruction—capitalising on a principle called “desirable difficulty”—in order to make passages more memorable.
Designed in consultation with a team psychologists and typographers, the founders hope it is precisely disruptive enough to make readers pause and take note but not so irascible as to repair to easier viewing, something especially useful for students cramming for exams or representatives saddled with tomes of last minute legislation to review before voting on it essentially sight unseen. The sans of course like Sas Serif signifies “without” like those flared ending and corners on letter strokes. See a font sampler and download Sans Forgetica at the links above.
Via the always interesting Things Magazine, we learn that the Islands Bill, passed by the Scottish Parliament back in May of this year, has recently come into force and includes a provision championed by Member Tavis Scott that prohibits the Shetlands to be depicted alongside the mainland’s coast in inset boxes, a geographical fiction quite irksome to the widely scattered archipelago’s residents, and demand that cartographers portray the islands accurately, empty space and all. The Ordinance Survey agreed with opponents who called the change impractical and warned it would reduce the level of detail that could be attained in all maps by changing the scale.
