ossuaire de douaumont (12. 545)

On our way back to southern Bretagne, we took a beautiful and peaceful campsite in the countryside near Verdun.

While there, we took a sombering drive through the World War I battle field on the trenches dug through the fields and forest amid destroyed villages and saw some of the remnants of the three hundred day and night slaughter that killed three hundred thousand with four hundred thousand more injured in a small area covering less than twenty square kilometers.

Surrounding devastated farmland was replanted with trees—the ancient forest lost—and the core of the battlefield left to Nature, restored in the intervening century.

At the heart of the slaughter lies the national ossuary and necropolis with sixteen thousand marked graves of the French dead and the former containing the unidentified bones of an estimated one hundred thirty individuals, both French and German combatants, president François Mitterand and West German chancellor Helmut Kohl famously held hand here at the memorial dedicated in 1932 in September of 1984 to honour the fallen in an act of reconciliation, understanding and friendship.

synchronoptica

one year ago: hair shavings as battery components (with synchronopticæ) plus more mysterious monoliths 

ten years ago: assorted links worth revisiting, Hell is other people plus more links to enjoy

twelve years ago: tiny museums plus social contagion

thirteen years ago: willow shoots, the US army in Germany plus Switzerland’s hidden defences

fourteen years ago: using Google search to transmit secret messages 

one does not simply walk into fordow (12. 544)

Whilst Israel and Iran exchange increasingly deadly missile strikes as the conflict enters its fifth day—with markedly no respite for the killing of Palestinians seeking humanitarian aid—The US is continuing to coyly vacillate between distancing its involvement and taking credit for an unconditional endorsement once seeing that the offensive by the IDF was garnering good ratings and reception with select audiences. Reasonably unconvinced that the limited supply of thirteen tonne bombs could successfully take out Iran‘s chief uranium enrichment facility, buried under a mountain, Trump seems to be demurring for a deal before committing to the quagmire of another forever war after being lured into it.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronopticæ), the Kyffhäuserdenkmal (1896) plus a long-running webcollage

eleven years ago: frog forecasters 

twelve years ago: Nature’s virtuosity of the avian kind, more on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership plus Ankara’s Standing Man

thirteen years ago: antique cookbooks plus the EU votes for austerity 

fourteen years ago: a new Art Deco addition plus vacation planning

t1 (12. 543)

Hardly preoccupied with shuttle diplomacy though none the less busy, Trump has chosen this moment to launch, along side his crypto-grift and peddling access with his branded merch, an eponymous mobile his signature poorly executed fashion, not only with a logo suspiciously similar to Deutsche Telekom’s but the coverage map failed to label the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, since redrawn, the flagship wireless package, dubbed the 47 Plan ($47.45 per month under a contract not easily broken), provides only nominal savings and piggybacks on national carriers, and these Freedom Phones touted as an American made, gold-coloured (only available for preorder, no refunds given) alternative to Apple’s iPhone, cheaper through Trump’s own tariff-subsidies and re-shoring of manufacturing. The latest venture, yet to deliver, is seen as a cheap knockoff (that also is raising privacy concerns) and a licensing agreement rather than anything innovative or patriotic.

true promise iii (12. 542)

Departing from the G7 summit being held in Alberta at midnight after posing for the family photo of leaders, all urging deescalation—though short of calling for an immediate ceasefire—of the Iran-Israel War that had broken out the days leading up to the meeting, Trump’s press secretary said that the American president had urgent business in the Middle East to attend to, Macron reinforcing his leave of absence saying that Trump sought a stop to the fighting. The speculation seemed to irritate Trump, however, who exclaimed later that they didn’t known his business and was in no mood to talk with Tehran any longer, no longer pursuing negotiations and the nuclear deal but a permanent solution to keep the country from enriching uranium. Counter to the narrative of Washington and Israel, intelligence sources confirm that Iran (their codename for the operation above) is not actively seeking to build an atomic bomb, and meanwhile missiles have been volleyed back and forth—with an established nuclear power, causing mutual destruction but severely crippling Iran’s civilian infrastructure in a fashion that the country may not be able to recover him. Trump went on, suggesting that American direct involvement may be imminent, calling for the evacuation of the capital and hinting that they could kill Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, knowing exactly where he is hiding, but will refrain from doing so for now, pending Iran’s unconditional surrender. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

synchronoptica

one year ago: a synthesiser performance piece (with synchronopticæ), OJ Simpson flees police (1994) plus tragic children’s names

eleven years ago: memory storage and retrieval plus the history of garden gnomes

fourteen years ago: between Bonn and Berlin 

sixteen years ago: returning from our Roman holiday 

fissures et bosses (12. 541)

 

Recalling this other automobile-related project, we enjoyed leafing through this new coffee table offering from photographer Lycien-David Cséry of mangled cars with a focus of what we choose (or tolerate or celebrate) be it pristine or broken, those bumps, dents and scratches emblematic of use and time.  Such forms of disfigurement elicit a strange visceral response and revulsion, different from the sort typically reserved for collateral damage in living things or ourselves where imperfection and nicks can be worn as badges of honour and an account of an ordeal, whereas the former come across as something regrettable. Much more from It’s Nice That and the artist at the link above.

6x6 (12. 540)

elbows up: on his way to attend the G7 in Canada, Macron visits Greenland, criticising Trump’s repeated overtures to annex the island—see previously  

ethanol orthodoxy: bio-fuel policy has been a net negative for the environment  

ready for prime time: Google text to video service is rolled out despite sloppy results 

c: MI6 appoints its first female spy chief in its one hundred sixteen year history—Dame Judy Dench only played one in the movies  

sidebar: revised injunction restrictions in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill that requires a bond, bribe to judges got even worst—see previously  

dudley do-right: G7 leaders gather in the Canadian Rockies for their economic summit 

synchronoptica

one year ago: a banger from Supertramp (with synchronoptica)

ten years ago: forbidden colours, assorted links to revisit plus cheap printing and chapbooks

twelve years ago: a visit to Wiesbaden-Schierstein plus Snowden’s formative time in Switzerland

fourteen years ago: revitalising a neglected church in Freibourg 

rewatch (12. 539)

Via MetaFilter, as one—like we are accused of in this generation who has not watched an episode faithfully or chronologically since the early 2000s and have a different, rosier esteem for the long-running show fossilised somewhere and anxious that the series had concluded without my noticing, new lobby cards seeming wholly made-up—we really appreciate this rather epic retrospective episode by episode in reverse order that’s been ongoing since 2011 (and retroactive to 1989) for a show that means a lot to a lot of us for just existing in syndication. Detailed synopses for each with ratings, critiques and relations to others, reliving like all of us growing up and aging with these ageless but contemporary characters.

http 208 (12. 538)

Several accelerationist Silicon Valley chief technology officers have been recruited into the US Army Reserve as part time senior commanders, field promoted as colonels, as part of the newly formed Detachment 201 (the hypertext transfer protocol response status code for “Created”—the title refers to that of “Already Reported”—see previously here and here) to help integrate artificial intelligence into military planning and operations. Drawing from the ranks of Meta, OpenAI and Palatir is hardly surprising as the companies have been working with the military on various programmes including the controversial Project Maven to fully integrate AI into intelligence services. Significantly enlistment puts the companies’ under the purview of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and not subject to the scrutiny, jurisdiction and discovery of America’s civil courts of law should something untoward come up. As Eisenhower said, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sough or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplace power exists and will persist.”