transneft (13. 204)

Whilst the EU has an embargo on the importation of Russia oil and gas since its invasion of Ukraine, landlocked Slovakia and Hungary have been granted a special carve-out to continue to receive fuel transiting through the besieged country from Tarastan via the Druzhba (Дружба, “friendship”) pipeline operating since 1964 in the spirit of mutual assistance for Eastern European satellites. Subject to frequent sabotage since the invasion, the latest supply disruption happening at the end of January, resulting from what Kiev maintains to be the result of a Russian drone attack on a pumping substation straining already tense relations among the neighbouring countries, the members Slovakia and Hungary accusing Ukraine of delaying repairs and the latter suspending electricity delivery and both vetoing materiel and financial aid and the prospect of future EU membership. Whilst putting pressure on Ukraine for resolution and restart the flow of oil from this principal artery, there was no justification for long-term exceptions to the sanctions and stalling Ukraine’s assistance or accession to the Bloc, logistic alternatives through Czechia possible. Now on the eve of the war entering its fifth year, facilities have been struck again—Moscow citing debris from a UAV attack, making the situation and unanimous support an even more fraught prospect.

cipheritis (13. 203)

An alleged mental disorder, reportedly diagnosed by German physicians, though with no clinical description and a paucity of case studies, zero stroke dysfunction was experienced by patients during the period of hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic (see previously here and here) with otherwise well-balanced individuals compelled to write out unending strings of zeros (see also here and here, also called ciphers after the Arabic root) as a coping mechanism for the rapid and exponential increasing of prices and depreciation of paper marks when the buying-power of one’s wages became essentially worthless by the end of one’s shift. Most common among those working in finance, accounting and sales, sufferers also had a tendency to retreat into complicated mental computations whose solutions were logarithmically fleeting.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a catalogue of historic dice and card games (with synchronopticæ) plus Germany votes

twelve years ago: more secession sessions, Kurt Vonnegut’s story shapes plus more on the mysterious Voynich manuscript

thirteen years ago: external threats, UK creditworthiness downgraded plus grammar and financial readiness

fourteen years ago: au revoir mademoiselle plus reforming the German welfare system

fifteen years ago: budget crunch in Wisconsin 

sixteen years ago: church elections 

seventeen years ago: ornate spam 

trade wars are good and easy to win (13.202)

Quite a bit of turmoil has visited not only world stock markets in the fallout of the US supreme court decision ruling many of the duties imposed by Trump to be void and illegal but also on the numerous trade deals that have been negotiated. In many cases, concessions have been made by foreign governments to unpopular with citizens and compromising environmental standards and safety regulation, allowing cheap American goods to flood their markets in order to maintain access and stay in Trump’s good graces with industry paying much tribute and making long term reshoring plans and now many leaders and businesses seem poised to tear up these negotiation. Some caution however remains, especially for domestic corporations with government contracts who could be punished in other ways for reneging on their end of the inimical bargains or for even asking about refunds (having to sue, the US government could argue that businesses have no standing and did not suffer because of them because they passed off expenses to the consumer, effectively admitting it was a tax all along) and whilst individual nations are better situated to ignore future threats, Trump has not relented on his tariffs but doubled-down across the board, imposing a ten percent flat rate on all imports before raising it the maximum fifteen percent the next day, demonstrating, perhaps speciously as their legality is also in question (for those countries like the UK and Vietnam that fought hard for ten percent, it is a real insult not to have those terms honoured, particularly in comparison to China who offered no concessions and only had to endure punishing rates for a few chaotic months), that he has other tools at his disposal. Members of the GOP, aware of the court’s reserved skepticism for the authority of the president to levy tariffs at a whim for months, had hoped eying the mid-term elections falling at the time these new blanket duties are set to expire might have offered them some political cover in close races deflecting from voters’ overall dissatisfaction with the economy—tariffs failing to deliver on promises with the trade deficit even higher than before and the return of manufacturing a pipe dream—and having an excuse to point to in SCOTUS, offering that Trump had an economic experiment going and wasn’t given enough time to realise the results—but now with Trump’s becoming more entrenched, that narrative, flawed and false as it was, evaporates.

nej tak (13. 201)

For reasons unknown and without additional details, Trump announced on social media that he would dispatch a great hospital ship to Greenland to “treat” many sick people on the island. Greenlandic prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen politely declined this potential Trojan Horse of a gesture and urged the US president to talk to him rather than making random outbursts on social media and that Greenland and Denmark has advanced and sufficient medical care that is free to all—excepting perhaps for those seeking a circumcision from an unlicensed practitioners in Antwerp, which is somehow in Belgium, and probably yet a contributing factor to this latest missive. Helpful Trump included in his Truth Social offer an artistic depiction of the vessel, the USNS Mercy, he had planned to deploy from Louisiana.

synchronoptica

one year ago: US military relieves several top officers of command (with synchronopticæ), weekly reports to DOGE plus psyops during WWII

twelve years ago: the fairness doctrine in broadcasting plus unlikely historic simultaneity 

thirteen years ago: the poetry of cast off shopping lists 

fourteen years ago: plants as a passive electric grid 

mother tongue (13. 200)

Established by UNESCO in 1999 in honour of the 1952 movement of East Bengal to have their language recognised as official rather than provincial and leading to the creation of the independent state of Bangladesh from the Pakistani territories, the United Nations annual observance of International Mother Language Day is established to promote worldwide linguistic and cultural diversity as well as polyglotism. Al Jazeera presents and overview of the spoken languages of the world, writing systems and the status of many minority languages, including diglossia between officialdom and convention and endangered ones—forty percent of the estimated seven-thousand extant ones. Defined as when parents-users begin to pass on a more dominant parlance to their children, threatening proficiency and identity, most are in Oceania, Asia and Africa, including some on their way to a come-back owing to community-led revitalisation programmes like Yugambeh of Australia (the exonym meaning “no means no” and preferring the endonym Mibanah for “the sound of eagles”), the Ainu language of Japan’s indigenous peoples (an isolate considered to be functionally extinct) and the moribund Kernowek language of Cornwall. In the spirit of the observance, adopt a word from one of these languages.

tradwife futurism (13. 199)

Lamenting the visions of paleo-futures lost to the branching decisions that inform our present, Telescopic Turnip, complete with a recommended accompaniment soundtrack of optimistic New Age—via MetaFilter—takes us on a journey of one those alternate timelines with the hope and enthusiasm of the Atoms for Peace programmes through microwave cookery. Contemporarily, the oven is not a replacement for the traditional stove and range top but rather a complement and although agreeably there was a course adjustment, this vision was not entirely abandoned, which I think about the every time I notice the custom-built cabinet in our well-appointed kitchen that hides the barely used microwave behind a hydraulic wing-style door—which is also a nice storage space for cookbooks and makes the layout symmetrical but also was a pretty expensive thing to install for that purpose—or how the kitchenette of my workweek apartment only had a microwave, and there was a time when it was promoted as the way of the future. Read more about the accidental discovery and foisted application—along with that of countervailing rival Teflon, at the link up top.

8x8 (13. 198)

the mckinley colonies: the US settlement on Cuba’s Isla de la Juventud 

„…“: another omnibus listing of aphorisms and sage quotations  

manannán: 1940 sci-fi Irish language novel that contains the likely first use of a mecha outside of Japanese literature  

in the realms of the unreal: outsider artist Henry Darger—see previously 

spring has sprung: early heralds of the coming season—see previously 

archive.yesterday: Wikipedia bans controversial news and features article mirror for citations after the service launches denial of service attacks on websites linking to it—via MetaFilter  

lapsis muris: linguists uncover another usage case of uh—see previously  

tron/troff: explore your neighbourhood in the virtual grid

synchronoptica

one year ago: Ukraine and Europe excluded from peace talks (with synchronopticæ), an enigmatic online diary plus an ancient cistern in Naples

thirteen years ago: elision and mishearing 

fourteen years ago: graphic artist Tim Doyle 

grönland (13. 197)

Via Miss Cellania, we learn about Adolf Hitler’s obsession with the acquisition of Greenland, corresponding to our own times and stemming from—ironically as their trajectory deviated very much ideologically—with the adventures of polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen. Already by April of 1934, the Nazi government undertook a survey of the polar island, inventorying the inhabitants, livestock and mineral resources—not rare earths, which whilst present remain inaccessible and have as yet never been mined—like cryolite, essential to aluminium production, as part of an overarching programme to turn-inward and make the Reich self-sufficient and not rely on outside sources and imposed restrictive bars on trade for any non-domestic staples, launching their own whaling fleets, staking claims on Antartica coinciding with territorial expansion in central Europe for the economic interests of Greater Germany. The US, however, had been monitoring these ambitions as well and in 1941, after the Nazi takeover of Denmark, the government-in-exile negotiated with the Americans, eager to protect their access and maintain wartime productions, allowing their presence as a deterrent and endowing the American ambassador in Godthaab (see previously here and here) with plenipotentiary powers as the representative of Free Denmark, a regimental fiction parallel to the one of Vichy France endorsed by Britain, with the arrangement reaffirmed after the war under the auspices of NATO. More from the Atlantic at the link above.