unthinkable

Our appreciation to Miss Cellania for directing us to the litany of horrors—the top fifty to date—that the Trump administration has perpetrated against his own people and the rest of us, since after it’s long over and the syndicate is behind bars we’ll still be dealing with the regressive environmental policies he’s promoted and the squandered opportunities to improve an increasing fraught and dire situation.
Though American is demystified and disenchanted with largess and respect having been much reduced its footprint for destruction has only increased and gone into overdrive. The list consists of headlines as bullet points to the full stories as reported by The Atlantic’s correspondents but the headings alone are more than enough to make one shudder and remember the sheer incredulity.

extra-terrarium or the effect of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon marigolds

Within a tiny biosphere transported to the far side of the lunar surface by the Chang’e-4 probe (previously) containing various plants, yeast and fruit-fly eggs, so far only the cotton seed has germinated and is sprouting. Researchers are closely monitoring the sealed environment to see what happens next. There have been many experiments with plants in microgravity beforehand but this represents the first time to attempt to cultivate something on the Moon.

spoiler alert

The confluence of existential angst of y2k, this generation’s coming of age and the resonance of nostalgia plus the profusion of DVDs and the reinvention of home cinema and continued sales opportunities after the box office run made 1999 a particular banner year for film, with titles including Magnolia from Paul Thomas Anderson, M Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, the Spike Jonze and Charley Kaufman collaboration Being John Malkovich, The Matrix, American Beauty, Fight Club, Notting Hill and Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace. We’ve left out a lot of the great and good that might be visited individually over the course of the year. What do you think? The releases of twenty years ago are certainly luminaries and inform and to a large extent populate our present cinematic universe but we are not certain whether the collection of anti-heroes, indulgences and failed heroes are exactly pivotal and have outsized cultural influence.

wiki wiki wiki wiki wiki room

On this day in 2001, internet projects developer Lawrence Mark Sanger and entrepreneur and philanthropist Jimmy Wales first launched the Wikipedia website, a universal encyclopaedia that aimed for authoritativeness through collaboration and peer-review, living and dying both by the procrastination principle. The foundation shares its anniversary with Coca-Cola, first incorporated in 1889 as the Pemberton Medicine Company (not to be confused with Dr Pepper) and the grand opening of the British Museum in 1759, seeded with the collection and curios of Sir Hans Sloane.

чебурахнулся

The ever peripatetic Messy Nessy Chic makes us a touch nostalgic with the reminder of the character Cheburashka (Чебура́шка)—who was originally featured in a children’s book by Eduard Uspensky (*1937 – †2018) in 1966 and popularised by a stop-motion animated film series by Roman Abelevich Kachanov.
Unknown to science—a sort of hybrid between a monkey and a bear cub (three-toed, tailless Monchhichi, I’d classify him but he was also known under the export market name of Topple), Cheburashka was a stow-away on a crate of oranges that ended up in Moscow, where he befriends Gena Crocodile and has adventures. Below is the opening and some of the incidental music from the scores by composer Vladimir Yakovelvich Shainsky (*1925 – †2017).