Saturday 10 August 2019

vous รชtes ici

Sometimes schedules and agendas don’t allow us time to factor in getting lost, wandering a bit and then that blue pulsating dot that seems to get might bossy when you stray off the path or you can’t orientate yourself to that “You are Here” marker on an information board and things get pretty aggravating.  Fortunately for those hopeless situations, a major way-finder (one that I’ve come to be rather fond of for foot and auto navigation) has added a augmented reality, live mode to its maps where you can show it your position and the application will use that to determine your exact coordinates and provide landmarks to get you on the right bearings to your destination. Read more at the link above.

Friday 9 August 2019

small-arms trade

Depressingly we learn that one of America’s largest purveyors of firearms who tragically lost dozens of patrons and two store managers in a spree of massacres over the past week, remaining steadfast in its retail commitment to keep guns prominently and publicly available, has pledged make one reform in the wake of all the violence.
Unhelpfully parroting Trump’s false-narrative that mental illness or manipulative journalism is behind mass-shootings, the ubiquitous chain will take measures to take down signage and displays that promote video games that model violent and aggressive behaviour—no mention of its hunting assortment. Anyone who patronises these stores is morally bankrupt.

split-personality

Much like that paragon of wisdom and virtue whose reputation for sage judgment extended far beyond his kingdom yet his personal life was rather shambolic given to excess with little signs of succession-planning, we’re often better advisors for other than we are for ourselves, rarely able to follow our own dispensed advise—a phenomenon, the New Shelton Wet/Dry informs, termed Solomon’s Paradox.
Individuals are able to overcome this wilful blindness and bias through reason (not that it is an easy matter, nor that his solution to a custody dispute was particularly tenable), but a new virtual counselling paradigm that allows the subject to occupy two different virtual avatars, one being themselves as patient, and the other being Sigmund Freud, that encourages self-dialogue and a healthy distance might be not a short-cut but rather a segue that may provide helpful therapy for in some cases. Read more about this self-conversation experiment and how it was scripted and gauged at the link above.

well i’m not a crook—i’ve earned everything i’ve got

On this day in 1974, Richard Nixon (previously), embroiled by the Watergate scandal and having lost collegial confidence and faced with impeachment and removal, tendered his resignation as president of the United States of America, asking the nation to support his successor, vice president Gerald Ford. Defending his record with a preamble from Theodore Roosevelt’s 1910 address to the Sorbonne about grit and the “Man in the Arena” who perseveres before listing his accomplishments in office:

Sometimes I have succeeded and sometimes I have failed, but always I have taken heart from what Theodore Roosevelt once said about the man in the arena, “whose face is marred btydust and sweat and blood, who stives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again because there is not effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deed, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knowns in the end the triumphs of high achievements and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

Though not wholly decontextualised nor lost on his audience, there was a notable lack of candour, contrition or admission of wrong-doing with Nixon’s having quoted the same passage for his inaugural speech and Roosevelt’s originally included a rebuke of those critical players on the sidelines instead of in the arena.

histoire de perles

Via the always engaging ร†on Magazine, we are subjected to the rhythmic and beautifully brutal stop-motion animation from filmmaker Ishu Patel, illustrating the cycles of evolution and competition with glass beads—inspired by the handiwork of the Inuit. This 1977 acclaimed short starts from a single cell and concludes with humanity in all its dreadful excellence with a stark warning against a nuclear arms-race.

Bead Game from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo.

Thursday 8 August 2019

and lo, the nation said, “how dare you even say that?”

McSweeney’s contributor Chas Gillespie channels some tough love from God for the country that can’t seem to help itself. Do read the full response and share, but I especially found this passage highly resonant and the moment of honest introspection that America needs to take.

You have prayed for answers, and I have given you answers. You have prayed for guidance, and you have ignored it. So why are you still praying? Is it perhaps because you don’t care about actual holiness and just want to show your low-information followers that you are a religious person even though the particular brand of your religion is based on misleading people by stoking their vanity and replacing patriotic duty with blinkered nationalistic hero-worship?

zebra crossing

On this day in 1969, photographer Iain Macmillan staged the iconic image that would be used as the album cover for the Beatles Abbey Road, captured outside their recording studio.
Released in September of the same year, the picture fueled elaborate but false narrative that Paul McCartney had died and was replaced with an imposter (a conspiracy instigated by MI5 to shelter the public from trauma), and that the “funeral procession” was a sort of confession with McCartney barefoot and walking out of step with the other band members and holding a cigarette (often airbrushed out) in his right hand—whereas any fan would know him to be left-handed. Furthermore, the number plate of the white Volkswagen Beetle in the background behind George Harrison has the characters 28IF—supposedly representing McCartney’s age if he had lived.  The rumour is a persistent and perennial one.

Wednesday 7 August 2019

genesis

Counted in the manifest in what aimed to be the first private space probe to land on the Moon among other cargo including a veritable Noah’s Ark the sum of human knowledge on a medium to last a billion year, Super Punch informs, the Beresheet mission was also carrying a sizable compliment of hardy tardigrade passengers.
When the craft crashed upon landing, it spilled out the water bears famously resilient for being able to withstand extreme and punishing environments, including the vacuum of space. While we cannot say whether this accident has transferred life to the Earth’s satellite, we learn that according to NASA’s Office of Planetary Protection this act of panspermia is not in violation of the agency’s directive meant to protect planetary environments like Mars, Europa or Ganymede that are understood to be more fecund and whose ecology might be threatened by contamination—as considered that humans have already quite befouled the lunar surface some fifty years ago.