starfish prime

As part of a series of nuclear armaments testing called Project Fishbowl, begun in response to the USSR’s announcement that it would be withdrawing from a mutual moratorium on test launches, the above high-altitude explosion took place on this day in 1962 about four hundred kilometres above Johnston Atoll in the Pacific.
Though nearly fifteen hundred kilometres away, the afterglow and aurora was visible in Honolulu and the electromagnetic pulse it generated (part of the stated goals of the tests were to have a better understanding the disabling effects of the weapon’s fallout)—even in an era when electronics were not so pervasive and indispensable—knocked hundreds of streetlamps and cut off telephone communications. The radiation belt of high-energy electrons lingered in the atmosphere (see also) and caused at least six communications satellites to fail, including the UK’s first satellite, Ariel 1, put in orbit just in April of that year.

urban dictionary

Our thanks once again to Nag on the Lake for directing our attention to the 1909 compendium of nineteenth century slang by J Redding Ware called “Passing English of the Victorian Era.”
Some gems that ought to revived—though one needs to filter through a lot of phrases that have gladly passed out of fashion—include Puncheous Pilate, defined as the jocose address to another in protest of some small asserted authority, S’elp me, Bob, an appeal to the nearest authority at hand, Totty All Colours, a young person who has contrived to incorporate most of the colours of the rainbow into his or her outfit, and mafficking—that is, to get rowdy in the streets. Page through the dictionary and let us know what antiquated slang we ought to champion.

fruchtfolge

Though maybe I am just doing a better job paying attention—which certainly counts for something too—and being engaged with the consequences of our behaviour for the environment or maybe it’s the recently adopted legislation and agricultural reforms made to be more sustainable and friendlier for pollinators, while I’ve noticed that crop-rotation and allowing fields to be fallow for a season, recharging the soil by sewing clover or grasses and letting it rest, I don’t think I’ve seen before sections of land, vast swaths of it, wholly given over to wildflowers like I am seeing now.
It isn’t just the margins and shoulders along tractor trails that are teeming with blooms but also deep into the interior of grain crops, thick with cornflowers (Cyanus segetum, Kornblume—considered endangered due to over-use of pesticides), poppies (Papaver rhoeas, Mohnblume), baby’s breath (Gypsophila paniculata, Schleier-Gipskraut—that is, chalk-loving), thistles (Silybum marianum, Disteln) and daisies (Bellis perennis—pretty everlasting, Gänseblümchen), the fields are droning with the buzz of bees.

evening of the seventh

Japan, ascribed to the Gregorian calendar, will mark Tanbata (meaning above, たなばた or七夕) on this night. Common to several countries in the region that keep this star festival in their own ways, the celebration marks the reunion of two star-crossed deities called Orihime and Hikoboshi—represented by Vega and Altair (α Aquilæ and α Lyræ, which form a bright asterism during the high summer in the Northern Hemisphere)—whom are kept asunder by the gulf of the Milky Way and only allowed together on the seventh day of the seventh month.
Originally introduced to Japan in the mid-eighth century under the more utilitarian label of “The Festival to Plead for Skills” and included customarily the opportunities for girls to wish for better sewing and crafting skills and for boys to wish for better penmanship. The ceremony was conflated with the folklore tale “The Cowherd [Hikoboshi] and the Weaver Girl [Orihime],” a hapless couple whose passion for one another caused each to shirk their duties and allow their talents to atrophy. In order to restore balance to the Cosmos, the two were only permitted visitation once a year, the magpies forming a bridge that crossed the expanse. Contemporary festivities include composing wishes—in verse—on small strips of paper and hanging them from a bamboo wish tree, which are then burnt as votive offerings or released down a watercourse to bare the postulants’ prayers aloft.

calpe mons

In response to a constitutional convention held regarding the promontory’s sovereignty and continued allegiance to the British crown—affirmed by a referendum of Gibraltarians not to become a condominium, Francisco Franco closed the land border with Spain on this day in 1969, stopping ferry services and cutting utilities. The border would not be fully open with egress and ingress restored until 1985. The near unanimity of the 1967 vote to remain an overseas territory is mirrored by the Gibraltar’s strong rejection of Brexit and the contention Spain’s own disputes with Morocco over its exclaves on the Africa side of the straits, Monte Hancho in Ceuta being the complimentary Pillar of Hercules.

рентгениздать

Previously we’ve encountered bypassing censorship and sanction through bootleg distribution of Western recordings pressed on exposed x-ray film, so we were a little surprised to see a resurgence in the method—albeit in a symbolic sense to protest current prevailing attitudes towards censorship and cultural heterodoxy in Russia. A consortium has partnered to release a vinyl with tracks from various groups labelled as subversive.
The title refers to the term roentgenizdat—that is, music on ribs or bone music and the improvised recordings whose centre hole was made with a cigarette burn and resulted in awful fidelity that could only be played around five times before the stylus destroyed the record altogether. True to tradition, the new vinyl editions can be played but with the same limitations as before with the tracks rubbing away after a few iterations—which seems sort of a useful feature rather than flaw of the media, especially in terms of plausible deniability if caught with contraband. Much more to explore at the links above.

me + t

Having explored the proven and somewhat more esoteric ways that plants are networked and sustain one another in the past, we really appreciated Open Culture’s take on plant communications and how, if the titular character of Shel Silverstein’s story, had not been in isolation a You Gotta Be Kidding Me Tree would have intervened when the giving came to taking. See a suite of lessons on how trees talk to one another at the links above.