freelandia (12. 388)

Not to be confused with the micronation formed by the terra nullis of along the borderlands of Serbia and Croatia but apparently both inspired by the Fredonia of the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup, courtesy of Weird Universe, we are directed toward the ascend and crash of the alternate airline conceived by young venture capitalist Kenneth Moss and in operation from from 1973, folding the next year after only fifty flights due an unsustainable business model. Those few passengers, however, the experience was one of a kind and never again to be emulated by even the most exclusive luxury air-carriers. Cashing out of the stock market at the right moment, Moss found himself incredibly wealthy and sought to do something fulfilling with his life. After a brief and abortive stint as a holy man in Spain failed, Moss returned to California and brainstormed with his future business partner Darcy Flynn about a sojourn to Bali, musing it would be nice to have a whole retinue of friends and like-minded people coming along, just as one might plan a caravanning road-trip. After a year, Moss and Flynn secured landing rights at major airports from the US Federal Aviation Administration, bought a used Douglas DC-8-20, secured a well trained pilot and cabin crew, avoiding high airport surcharges by declaring it to be a travel club instead of a commercial airline and positioned itself as a no-profit with all after-cost proceeds going to worthy causes, like food banks and free clinics. Fare prices, offset by annual membership fees of fifty dollars, were about one third the price of tickets offered by major carriers. Voting on destinations by ticketed passengers, even with rather epic stories of en-route changes of course with a scheduled flight from Newark, New Jersey to Brussels adding a stop-over in Rome and a second one in Bangor, Maine for a lobster dinner, future itineraries were planned including round the world-trips ($400 per passenger) but financial difficulties had already begun as it was a problem to fill flights. This proved to be a problem despite the well-appointed interior of the jet, no class distinction, most of the banks of seats removed and replaced with oversized pillows fitted with safety harnesses, waterbeds and an arcade with home-cooked organic fare on the menu—and surely over favours to create a cross-continental party. Stewards were outfitted in black and creme berets and donned uniforms reminiscent of Flash Gordon. Unable to fill sets and with the oil crisis making cheap flights untenable, Freelandia went out of business and was sued for false advertising.

kvinnan med handväskan (12. 387)

Photographed on this day on 1985 in Växjö by journalist Hans Runesson features the subject of Danuta Danielsson protesting against a Neo-Nazi rally with her handbag, captured at a decisive moment of resistance when Communists were prepared to deliver their rebuttal to Nordic Realm Party supporters and drove out the latter, the residents driving them to hide in the train station toilet until authorities transported them away. Danielsson was of Polish Jewish heritage and her mother survived internment in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, but kept her identity anonymous until 2014 when a number of statues were proposed and commissioned illustrating her act of defiance.

 

synchroptica

one year ago: a self-righting ship cabin (with synchronoptica), a return visit to a local castle plus the cats of the Mexican presidential palace

seven years ago: homonyms, assorted links to revisit plus day names in north west Africa

eight years ago: cultural ambassadors, the overview effect, the Summer of Love, doodling with AI plus a real life medical tricorder 

 

nine years ago: fashematics plus a visit to a local museum

 

eleven years ago: internet gods plus a collection of map pins

 

 

tabella defixionis (12. 386)

Popular and widely employed during Greco-Roman times well into the Christian era, curse tablets (κατάδεσμος—a binding spell) were often discretely or surreptitiously buried with the dead to settle a grudge with surviving competitors over business and romantic affairs and even among rival sports teams as a way to petition the chthonic gods or place spirits to compel malediction for the after life. Like the cache of twenty-two curses recently discovered in an ancient cemetery near Orleans, the most common media was thin lead scrolls as due to their malleability could be easily inscribed and were also an element associated with the underworld deities. What makes this particular discover unique is that one grave contained a curse written in Gaulish, the vulgar language of the region in common parlance (though really preserved in written form) for centuries after the Roman conquest. Because of the paucity of documentation for Gallo-Roman translating is a challenge but there is a another class of curse tablets called Voces mysticae (vox magica) which do not seem to be rendered in any known language and are a secret invocation that only demons can decipher—with scholars teasing out palindromes (previously here and here) and boustrophedon. Much more at The History Blog at the link above.

turnabout is fair play (12. 385)

Though neither “kissing ass” to placate his malignant narcissism nor advancing retaliatory tariffs, a move by China that has only escalated the trade war, without a matching concession from the US (America has not doubled duty on exports from Europe and halved its schedule announced on Liberation Day but the blanket ten percent over and above any established scheme is still there as are last month’s tariffs on steel and aluminium and auto exports), the Europe Union (accused of being specifically established to cheat America) is underestimating its power and has an unprecedented chance to establish itself as a true counterweight and alternative to US hegemony.  Trump did back down over the bond market, although not before engaging in some insider trading, and those rates were based on deficits in terms of good exchanged only (we all have a trade imbalance with our preferred supermarket), not services like banking and tech that are the chief US exports, and Europe had the capability to hasten the retreat from the safe haven of American debt if it uncoupled itself from fintech and franchises with a variety of tools already in its quiver: taxing social media, building up its own alternatives and curtailing non-domestic credit payments, which while bank debit cards have been nearly universally accepted for some time, it was not until the last decade that Visa became widely honoured. The consumer plays a big part too, as Canada has shown, with boycotts being more potent than a symbolic tit-for-tat—and that sentiment is a prevailing factor in Europe’s strength: they play by the rules, at times to their detriment, and when there is already a widening credibility gap for the US, and still believe in science and incontrovertible facts (global warming, the climate catastrophe, that race and gender are social constructs, the dignity of the worker, social safety nets and the common weal), not only making the euro a more attractive reserve currency by pivoting away from US-based services but also by further denying the aspiring petrostate another market to encroach upon by holding the lead in clean energy. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was in part a proxy war to supply Europe with natural gas from two competing bidders and the EU is well-positioned to free itself from both.

synchronoptica

one year ago: photographing the pyramids (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: a curious optical illusion 

eight years ago: more airport security theatre, Middle East diplomacy from the Trump administration plus more gun-violence in America

nine years ago: renderings of emoji across different platforms, the paper airplanes of Peter Max plus making Iceland a safe haven for freedom of expression

eleven years ago: the Saar protectorate plus the photography of Alfred Eisenstadt

use case (12. 384)

Keith Houston of Shady Characters, who has just published a new book on the evolution of the face with tears of joy emoji (previously), reports on their repurposing as featured in a new streaming series (which we’ve started) that explores incel and misogynistic online culture through in-group coding. Such coopting is nothing new (see previously here and here) but the collective autobiographical vocabulary is noteworthy if not dispiriting, like using 💯 for the prevalent idea that twenty percent of men attract eighty percent of women and thus the latter are blameworthy for their lack of success. Kidney beans are somehow also a part of the mansophere.  In related news, Houston also highlights how all office chatter is the same and peppered with emoji—no matter the context or gravity—through the lens of the “Houthi PC small group”—which was not so small even before the accidental inclusion of a journalist into the war room—with reactions like 👊🇺🇸🔥 and 🙏 celebrating airstrikes and potentially compromising national security.

basket case (12. 383)

Though resigned to a therapeutic activity, the art of basket-weaving is something unlike other textile crafts that defies mechanisation and automation and is being championed clubs and consortia all over embracing these ancient ways with both materially traditional and novel substrates, rallying around the 🧺 emoji to express affiliation, included in 2018 rollout. There was some discussion a few years ago about adding a truck emoji as a concession to conservative Americans, a symbolic move that probably would have garnered more mileage and not seen as a bow to tribalism—see also here and here—the pickup created in 2020 in response being seen as too twee and the expectation was for some monster all-terrain SUV. Originating with the asylum system of the nineteenth century with institutionalised individuals mildly dehumanised with such activities that were regarded as childlike and busy-work, basket weaving was somewhat rehabilitated following World War I as occupational therapy for returning soldiers suffering from shell-shock (what we would now recognise as post-traumatic stress disorder), the title epithet probably comes from not the activity but rather the wicker wheelchairs provided to recovering and disabled service members—like the etymology of gone to hell in a hand basket stems from being carted off on a litter. Find out more about those retaking the craft and carrying it forward from It’s Nice That at the link above.

digital preservation jumpers (12. 382)

Courtesy of Web Curios (many more delights at the weekly roundup), we are directed towards this wonderful collection of knitwear with pixelated patterns inspired by legacy media formats that celebrates the intersectionality of punchcards and prints, albeit at scale rather than projects that one could undertake oneself. There’s also a sweater featuring the jumping dinosaur that Google displays when off-line. Detailed designs from archivist and creator Leontien Talboom of Cambridge library at the link above—even the floppy disks have the detail of the notch punched that made read-only ones writable and utilise both sides—replaced in the 3½" version with a shutter to prevent over-writing.

synchronoptica

one year ago: resurfacing buried rivers (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: a visit to the University of Heidelberg  

eight years ago: a cantilevered, overhanging pool, Lake Nemi, assorted links to revisit plus a Star Trek podcast

nine years ago: breaking the fourth wall, Jevon’s Paradox plus the Daily Mail to acquire Yahoo!

eleven years ago: a pioneering teutholog

9x9 (12. 381)

domestic box office: in response to escalating tariffs, China is curtailing the number of American films screened in the country  

redeployment: decision to reposition US troops stationed in Poland causing concern  

dixonary: improprieties in pronunciation among New Englanders 

 𐦉: the Latin alphabet expressed as hieroglyphics  

now is a great time to buy—$djt: social media posts and a spike in options activity may indicate insider trading within the administration  

א₀: physicist Dominic Walliman charts out the fields of mathematics and how the academic informs application 

from the gigantic bones displayed at roncesvalles: an adjective that should be brought part back into use 

a man, a plan: US defence secretary floats idea of reopening mothball military bases from the 1989 invasion of Panama 

trading floor: the history of the ticker-tape machine