phonophobia

The always resonant Kottke directs our attention to a thorough-going essay from The Atlantic contributor Bianca Bosker on noise pollution and the deleterious long-term effects that one’s acoustic environment has on one’s health, significant negative impacts dismissed because of the receding nature of the culprit. Despite how we fancy ourselves to adapt to the din of city streets, we cannot turn off our ears and the attendant physiological stress responses are activated even if we manage to sleep through it.
Germany has far more robust regulations and social norms against producing a racket and my experience is far different than the nightmare anecdotes that we read about but I do wonder at my own sonic landscape and how it switches so abruptly from the workweek in a crowded apartment complex alongside a busy road (still tolerable, I’d argue, but now am given cause to wonder if I’m not deluding myself since the only habituation to clatter is training oneself to be even more sensitive and bothered by it) to the holidays and weekends home in a tiny village in a clearing in the woods, serenaded by nature and very little traffic other than the occasional rumbling tractor. The story brings out the assault that becomes intolerable—especially for those without the privilege to remove themselves from the worst-planned and intrusive environs, but also features plenty of meditation on personal soundscaping and finding peace and quiet.

good liars

A duo of satirists who got their start during the Occupy Wall Street have placed some guerilla advertising on the trains of New York City’s subways target Trump, his hatchet men and propagandists, eliciting some much needed comic relief amidst the terror of the times.
One prank banner invites those in need of legal counsel to call Crazy Rudy with a hotline number that’s been flooded with positive responses including many whom chose to extend the premise. As uncomfortably close to the truth as these advertisements are, the comedians are careful to note their activism through the humour and that the ridiculous is deserving of ridicule, lest it become normalized.

circle of friends

First proposed in the 1990s by anthropologist Robin Dunbar, the eponymous number suggests a range of values to the number of socially significant relationships that individuals can maintain, pinning—and certainly not without inviting rigourous debate—the number of cohesive and stable groupings to around one hundred-fifty.
Arriving at this number through ethnographical studies and researching the cognitive capacity of non-human primates defined three categories of decreasing connection as bands, kinships and tribes, being the broadest and largest affiliation. Though perhaps the original studies were skewed towards the WEIRDs and there are appreciable cultural differences as well as varying capacity for differing personality types, the foundation of the theory seems solid and is reflected in institutions and organic organization. The critical question that presently scrutinises Dunbar’s Number is whether social media, especially for those digital natives who have never known a time without an online presence, changes that ratio. What do you think? It is unclear if we are increasing our reach and ability to sustain meaningful relationships with the help of technology or if like the low-demand but rewarding feeling of accomplishment that we get from amplifying outrage, this sort of popularity is a poor substitute for substance.

a synallagmatic act

While former the former colonial outposts of Hong Kong and Macau are far better known, the port city of Tianjin (天津市, Tientsin) in the northern part of the country on the Gulf of Bohai hosted no fewer than nine concessions (small territories “leased” to foreign powers and because of this contractual nature are not subject to international law) granted at the turn of the last century by the Qing Emperor.
Reasoning that trade and missionary work would destabilise the empire, China tried to restrict such activities to special economic zones but was rather relentlessly pressured to allow in more international businesses. For their militaries’ role in suppressing the Boxer Rebellion (the Yihetuan—Righteous Militia—Uprising, 義和團運動) that sought to overthrow the dynasty and expel foreign consuls, Belgium, Austro-Hungary, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US were given districts in the city along the Pei Ho (Hai River) and at the railhead that linked the north with the capital. These quarters were self-contained and had their own shops, barracks, schools, churches and hospitals. War, shifting allegiances and revolution have overseen the return of all of these holdings to China and outside of diplomatic compounds the majority of remaining concessions with extraterritoriality are cemeteries and monuments of foreign wars maintained by the sending nation—the exceptions being Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and the Khmeimim Air Base in Syria.

defender 20

Reminiscent of the massive Exercise Campaign Reforger (Return of Forces to Germany) drills that took place annually from 1969 to 1993 that involved thousands of NATO troops as a demonstration of agility and responsiveness in the event of a conflict with the Warsaw Pact, US and partner military planners are engaged in preparation for the largest deployment in a quarter of a century with next year’s operations.  Some twenty thousand American service members will join seventeen thousand members of the NATO forces (though signals are quite mixed at the moment) to conduct training primarily in Germany and Poland beginning in February 2020, and to strengthen skills in tactical movement and logistics that have otherwise atrophied in the intervening years whereas such rotations were routine and second-nature during the Cold War.

champerty & maintenance

A recent edition of NPR’s Planet Money explored the injection of third-party investors in the courtroom and how in asymmetrical civil cases, backing in the form of extra funds might allow a disadvantaged plaintiff to pursue justice on more equal footing.
While in most jurisdictions, lawyers are allowed take cases on commission, outsiders with no standing are not permitted to meddle monetarily—a doctrine that dates back to medieval Europe meant to discourage frivolous and vexatious litigation by excluding disinterested parties. Whereas maintenance refers to the encouragement to get litigious, champerty (from the Old French champart for the feudal lord’s share of the harvest) is by extension the return on investment one would receive from backing the discovery and trial. Nobles often squabbled at the margins of their holdings and lent their support to rather baseless lawsuits to torment one other when open warfare was inadvisable. Relief and remedy was sought on the basis of detinue sur trover. What do you think? Is the concept outdated? Despite how at first glance, it seems rather antithetical to justice, as the legal system is presently configured, there are a lot of barriers to entry and an uneven field for most to negotiate. Do give the entire podcast a listen and consider subscribing. In jurisprudence, the term though not the concept and practice has been mostly superseded by laws on abusing the legal system and malicious prosecution.

a harry alan towers production

Courtesy ibīdem, we discover the 1967 spy thriller featuring a female supervillain, demonstrating that megalomania is not an exclusively male trait, titled The Million Eyes of Sumuru.
Starring Shirley Eaton (later Bond Girl), George Nader and Frankie Avalon, the plot revolves around a plot for world domination by replacing world leaders with members of her Order of Our Lady. Eaton would reprise her role in the 1969 The Girl from Rio and there was a remake titled just Sumuru in 2003 from director Darrell Roodt—this time set on an remote off-world colony removed from the rest of human civilization where a matriarchy has taken hold. Such role reversals have fun, pulpy implications and are for a large part relegated to the past until one realizes how such gender stereotypes are baked in and how even the most progressive offerings often have truck in those same, tired ideas—exhibit one being the unceremonious end to Star Trek’s original run with “Turnabout Intruder” where James T Kirk and Doctor Janice Lester switch bodies with the implicit message that putting a woman in charge leads to hysteria.