usage rights

Via Pasa Bon! and their latest curation of remarkable things (opmerkelijke zaken—bijou, incidentally, was long considered to be a Dutch word since it was inconceivable that that forbidden letter combination might be valid in English and the French borrowing is pendantically spelt byou in Holland), we enjoyed this gentle lampoon of the domineering stock image distributor, though they probably deserve worse for their rather infamous cases of copyfraud and overreach in watermarking and demanding payment for public domain photographs. The idea is fun—nevertheless, and makes me wonder about what very niche variety of stock photos I could furnish up, royalty-free.

farce majeure

Tossing out more problematic catch-phrases and loaded buzzwords—this time Richard Nixon’s “silent majority,” Trump is lauding his militarily-enforced curfew and peace-keeping measures as the model for other governors and mayors to emulate when it comes to suppressing the people’s right to assembly and nonviolent activism.
This mobilisation—loftily called Operation Thetis no less, presumably for her role as legitimising the reign of Zeus and defending him against a rising rebellion and coup-plotting on Mount Olympus—has garnered Trump resistance and criticism from both his current and former defence secretaries over his heavy-handed tactics and the wisdom of invoking the Insurrection Act to stop rallies. While pleading ignorance about the photo-op and the general impossibility of working in that dysfunctional regime are plausible excuses, his current minister who is contradicting Trump about the wisdom sending in the cavalry is not beyond reproach for letting the situation get as bad as it is—plus we’re sure that Mr. Esper wants to maintain morale and cohesion among the ranks, which are comprised of forty percent minority service members. As for retired General Mattis, it’s tempting to see breaking his silence now as anything but redeeming since he should have said something whilst he was still in a position to affect change, one can hope, like with all the other rehabilitated war criminals, that his willingness to criticise, even belatedly, might inspire others to do the same.

l’appellation d'origine protégée

Known to his subjects both as the Beloved (le Bien-Aimé) and the Mad (le Fou), on this day in 1411 (see previously) sage Charles VI of the Valois dynasty, in the midst of civil war and trying to win over allies, granted to the town of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon the monopoly to sell cheeses with the designation of “Roquefort”—to include the caves wherein the cheese is ripened (affinage). This exclusive right, still upheld today, is one of the earliest and love-lived instances of legal protected and enforceable designation of origin.

republik freies wendland

Though only in existence for a month before police cleared the protest camp and micronation (see also) on this day in 1980 and evicted the occupants outside of Gorleben to rally against the excavation of a nuclear waste dump there and accused of high-treason by the interior minister of Niedersachsen, the self-proclaimed community of some five thousand encamped on a barren patch of the Lüneberger Heath that was cleared by the wildfires of 1975 had an impressive infrastructure designed for the long-term with permanent shelters, shared facilities, greenhouses, a health clinic, a hair salon, a radio station, sauna and solar- and wind-generated electricity.
Geologists had been conducting drilling tests to determine whether the salt domes beneath the nature reserve were suitable for storing nuclear waste. During the Republic’s final days, a sit-in was staged of at least two-thousand Wendlanders were carried away by police forces with the demonstration coming to a mostly peaceful conclusion, with authorities thanking them for their nonviolent approach. Though the controversial dump was ultimately built in October 1986, the anti-atomic movement progressed and did eventually achieve more and greater, transformative accomplishments, and also despite its brief existence Wendland has an enduring and outsized legacy, including as recently as 2015 the mayor of a nearby municipality extended to Edward Snowden asylum with a “Wendepass” from the days of the Republic.

it was the third of june—another sleepy, dusty delta day

As our faithful chronicler reminds, today was the day that Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge, according to his 1967 ode by Bobbie Gentry, songwriter and performer from Chickasaw County, Mississippi whom was familiar with the rural span and the indelible impact of suicide on a family and community that have no language (excepting perhaps these lyrics) for it.
Addressed as mealtime pleasantries by another family adjacent to the tragedy and not knowing their own daughter’s connection or feelings, the narrator has to reconcile what has transpired for herself and suffers silently. As an interrogatory prelude as to why McAllister killed himself, fans pressed Gentry what the pair had tossed off Choctaw Ridge with theories ranging from an engagement ring, LSD and a draft card. Gentry demurred, saying only to “Suppose it was a wedding ring.” The eponymous bridge became quite a tourist draw in July and August in that same year once the song began to chart and the county began imposing fines for those leaping off of it but as the height was low, the risk of injury or death was in fact minimal. The original bridge was destroyed in a fire in 1972, the tune overshadowing a very real tragedy that took place in the immediate area in 1955 when fourteen-year-old Emmett Louis Till was accused of offending a white woman in her family’s grocery store and lynched by an angry mob, his body sunk in the Tallahatchie river on the twenty-eighth of August. The Ode saw sustained international popularity as well with a French version by Joe Dassin called “Marie-Jeanne” some months later, a Swedish one by Olle Adolphson titled “Jon Andreas visa,” a German and Italian translation called “Billy Joe McAllister” and “Ode per Billy Joe” respectively—all true to Gentry’s story but told with local landmarks, and there was even a novelisation and film adaptation in nearly a decade after its release.

bandersnatch

Doubting that their audience would have the appetite for any more dystopian vignettes that depict the hollowing out and collapse of societies, the showrunners of Black Mirror (previously) had announced weeks ago a hiatus for the show. As reality is already starting to feel like an episode, however implausible and with writing not up to their usual standards, the network has put out an advertising installation inviting one to experience the next series, anytime, anywhere—though not the message, running the campaign in Madrid seems particularly tone-deaf and insensitive. I’ve been feeling all our pop culture training with apocalyptic and zombie movies have failed us and haven’t made nimbler and wiser in the face of multiple calamities.

we have a great country... greatest country in the world. and we’re going to make it greater. we will make it even greater, it won't take long... it’s coming back strong, and it will be greater than ever before

After emerging from hiding in his bunker with a sizable entourage of sycophants and a squadron of National Guard troops to disperse a gathering of peaceful protesters by firing tear gas canisters, rubber bullets and flash grenades, Trump, unannounced and uninvited, proceeded to make the short march from the White House to Saint John’s Episcopal Church in adjacent Lafayette Square, the historic Church of the Presidents, to pose with it as a backdrop and brandishing a Bible as a prop. Proximity was a factor as well as the fact that the church’s basement had sustained some collateral damage from a fire that was quickly extinguished. In the previous days having broadcast “when the looting starts, the shooting stars. Thank you!” and to mayor and municipal councils “You’re going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate,” and ostensibly building on his narrative of a “few bad apples” (led by one rotten orange and not even the kind that makes penicillin) reaffirmed his commitment to law and order, surveyed the fire damage and invited members of his staff to join him for a photo-op.
Angered and appalled, beyond trouncing on the US constitutional prohibition against the state endorsing or privileging a particular faith—or any at all—his stunt garnered him a cut response from the diocese’s bishop, citing his violent escort, not praying to unite and heal the country but rather using sacred space and symbols to reinforce a message that goes against what those same symbols—including symbols of civility—stand for.  There were some rumblings within the GOP but few chinks in that wall of silence since giving voice to their collected revolution would only serve to direct attention to the fact that they could have easily voted as the senatorial jury to remove the impeached Trump but chose not to without even suffering much retribution by their constituencies as they could assign all blame to the Democrats and their undermining democracy.

zoot suit riots

On this day in 1943 in Los Angeles and continuing for the next five days, US sailors and Marines stationed there (either on rest and recuperative or transitioning for deployment to the Pacific theatre) and white residents, enervated by sensational coverage of the so-called Sleepy Lagoon murder trial of the summer prior, and ostensibly over the extravagance of their flamboyant clothes and accessorising that was seen as using up valuable fabric during wartime rationing, clashed with Mexican-American youth.
The attacks spread to other industrial cities across the US, expanding to other minority populations. The violence subsided by mid-June but tensions remained high and concern for the economy of southern California was brought to the forefront, given its reliance on the inflow of inexpensive labour in order to harvest produce, eventually leading to the papering-over of the underlying problems, with local authorities squarely assigning blame to delinquent and idle youths rather than systemic racism contrasted with the inquiry launched by the federal government into the riots which had the aims of determining whether Nazi or Axis agitators were not stoking unrest and sponsored the protestors. The defiance of the Zoot Suitors in the face of this unrelenting violence and antagonism is regarded as a pivotal moment for El Movimiento and related civil rights movements to combat institutional racism and disenfranchisement. As young men, civil rights leaders Cesar Chavez and Malcolm X were both Zoot Suiters.