o come, o come, emmanuel

With the evening prayer of the last week of Advent (previously) denoted as the hortatory Antiphons—a short chant with refrain textually based on the Book of Psalms and a call to meditate on one of the aspects of Jesus as Saviour, the last and final falling on the eve of Christmas Eve exhortation that O God is With Us, expanded into the carol.

worldbuilding

In contrast to an early twentieth century conjecture that the then three and a half billion humans could all be fit on the Isle of Wight if all were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, science fiction author John Killian Houston Brunner (*1934—†1995) predicted that the population of seven billion of the 2010’s—an accurate foresight like many of the other visions of his future, overcrowded world, with all its attendant calamities—in his 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar would need a significantly larger landmass.
The rather pioneering piece for the genre alternated between narrative and expository chapters that formed the future world setting that’s strangely familiar and would be one dystopia recognisable to contemporaries. A world of propagandised social media, centralised super computers, American hegemony, nuclear proliferation and mobile, instantly-accessible encyclopædic knowledge, the litany of negative predictions that do ring true is a bit bleak (though there are on balance enlightened ideas and attitudes towards gender-identity, sexuality and race that have their place in this future as well) but the methodical process that led Brunner to correctly extrapolate the fantastical and unimaginable by the conditions and trajectory he witnessed more than a half a century ago confer a certain solace on our inability to appreciate future consequence.

7x7

fintech: the Nordic country put together an artificial intelligence crash-course for its citizens and now is making the curriculum available to all—via Kottke

chirogram: a deaf student at the University of Life Sciences at Dundee, seeing a deficit in communication, invents one hundred new signs to quickly articulate complex scientific concepts—via Dave Log

the year in pictures: TIME curates one hundred iconic images that tell the stories of the past twelve months

the decade in content: Vanity Fair reviews the trends, memes and moments that defined aspects of the past ten years

dj earworm: the decade encapsulated (previously—albeit on a smaller scale) in a mashup of one hundred songs

klaviatur: a demonstration of the six-plus-six, four row Jankó keyboard—which allowed players to cover ranges impossible by a single performer on a traditional piano

headspace: the framework of current privacy protection advocacy and laws is unprepared to safeguard us from the coming mind-reading technologies 

backstop, full-stop

Retaining a comfortable majority of votes in favour on the bill’s second reading, the newly constituted Parliament of Boris Johnson (previously) has passed a Brexit arrangement, essentially the same framework (albeit with a few key adjustments) as the one rejected numerous times proposed by Teresa May, just with the comfort of couching this disaster with mansplaining, which looks to guarantee that the UK will leave the EU by 31 January 2020.

battle of the bulge

With one of the last remembrance ceremonies thought to include witnesses to history taking place and the siege of Bastogne begun on this day in 1944, Allied forces in the Ardennes cut off by the resurgence of the Nazi army in efforts to recapture the port of Antwerp relieved by General Patton’s Third Army seven days later, I recalled this artefact, souvenir that I found at a Flohmarkt earlier in the summer.
The troops were ambushed in this nexus of roadways in the region with Generalleutnant Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz requesting the surrender of the city—to which acting commander of the 101st Airborne Division Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe replied succinctly “Nuts!”—holding the line until reinforcements arrived. The cast iron disc, which I didn’t know how to interpret at first and supposed still, is fitted with mounts, suggesting it was the plaque of a larger memorial and on the reverse is inscribed MADE IN COUVIN, a nearby municipality that was also the staging grounds for Adolf Hitler’s headquarters and bunker during the occupation of France.

5-7-5

The cynical, suspicious part of me that prone to insidious conspiracy and thoughts that immediately retreat to somewhere dark in every fun application that triangulates one’s whereabouts is just a cutely disguised ploy to harvest one’s data and commodify it is often vanquished (possibly an instinct that should be overcome) as it was with this non-proprietary mapping service that generates haikus based on the address (or coordinates if you choose to disclose them) we are referred to by Nag on the Lake and Maps Mania.
The poetry is a bit hit-or-miss but the element of serendipity is fun and keeps ones poking around. Nearby, I especially liked “The warm belly of the bus / High up in the trees / Branches of the tree” discovered while zeroing in on my actual spot.

h. res. 611

Becoming the second president in US history to be impeached (previously), specifically for lying while under oath and obstruction of justice in charges stemming from a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Paula Jones (the Supreme Court ruling that incumbency did not impart immunity from civil lawsuits) and sexual relations with a subordinate, White House intern Monica Lewinsky, the House of Representatives voted to impeach William Jefferson Clinton on this day in 1998.
The articles were later exhibited to the Senate for adjudication, acquitting Clinton on both charges. Against protests that dismissal would signal that perjury was merely a breach of etiquette, White House Counsel Charles Ruff presented the compelling argument: “There is only one question—albeit a difficult one—that is a question of fact and law and constitutional theory. Would it put at risk the liberties of the people to retain the president in office? Putting aside partisan animus, if you can honestly say it would not—that those liberties would be safe in his hands, then you must acquit.”