life in a day (13. 103)

Contributing footage captured all on a single day, 24 July 2010, some eighty thousand participants from one-hundred-ninety-two countries answering the call-for-submissions on the video hosting platform, the Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald (director also of biopics Whitney and Marley, State of Play, The Last King of Scotland and Touching the Void) collaboration is a crowd-sourced feature length documentary, revelatory at the time, and was previewed on Youtube (conceived in part as a commemoration of its five-year anniversary) one week prior to its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on this day in 2011. Inspired and informed—with new media and technological possibilities—by a 1930s British sociological and ethnographical project called the Mass Observation movement—asking respondents around the UK to share their diary entries for one day per month, anonymously and answering a few basic demographic questions, in order to highlight the complexities and fullness of the seemingly mundane—and to demonstrate that everyone’s the main character in their own narrative, a touch lesson to learn, the director began the appeal for clips with a column in The Guardian, asking simple questions about people’s passions, what was in the pockets and their fears—also dispatching video cameras to people in the developing world. That particular day was chosen as it was the first Saturday following the World Cup. Several countries including Panama, Canada, India and Spain made their own national versions in the following years and a sequel was made in 2020 for 25 July during the height of the COVID-19 global pandemic and premiering just after the inauguration of US president Joe Biden.

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synchronoptica

one year ago: a planetary alignment (with synchronopticæ), the side projects of Vangelis, a longitudinal study of love songs plus more trivial maths

twelve years ago: more data breaches 

thirteen years ago: kitchen implements, self-healing construction plus workplace distractions

fourteen years ago: geopolitical meme templates 

sixteen years ago: privatising student debt 

seventeen years ago: house-hunting 

fabianus (13. 102)

Unexpectedly elevated to the papacy by popular acclaim whilst attending elections in Rome following the brief reign of Anterus as an observer but not a candidate when a dove landed on him—which delegates took as the sign of the choice of the Holy Spirit—Pope Fabian is fêted on this day (shared with St Sebastian in Catholic traditions) on the occasion of his martyrdom during the Decian persecutions in the year 250. On good terms with the imperial government for a stint of fourteen years, loathe to stir up discontent or crack down on Christian upstarts, Fabian was able to arrange the repatriation of earlier exiled Pope Pontian and Anti-Pope Hippolytus, whom had died at hard labour in the mines of Sardinia, dispatched apostles to Gaul, including Saturnin, to christianise the population, reformed Church bureaucracy, establishing hierarchy and jurisdiction and appointing subdeacons as officers of the ecclesiastical court to document the acta of the martyrs and collect proceedings and judgements of oppressed and introduced the clerical orders of acolyte, porter, lector and exorcist and reportedly baptised Emperor Philip (called “the Arab” and the first convert well before Constantine) and his son, whose successor in 249, Trajan Decius, decided he’d had enough of this kumbaya moment plus the bread and circuses of his predecessor, vanquished during an uprising. Decius, elected by the Senate on account his suppression of revolts in the provinces, sought to strengthen state religious conformity, directed that all residents of the empire would have to commit sacrifice before the magistrate of their ward in order to prove their loyalty and and ensure the security of the empire. While possibly not an attempt to impose the cult of the pantheon on all inhabitants, Decius was pressured to legitimise his position as the Empire approached its millennial anniversary and promote Pax Romana, calling out several bishops, Fabian included, of refusing to indulge prescribed idolatry. The Seven Sleepers hibernated until Rome had a more tolerant attitude towards Christians.

agnes english (13. 101)

The one-hit wonder from John Fred and the Playboy Band reached the top of the US singles charts on this day in 1968, holding the number one spot for two weeks with their best known song, whose title is a mondegreen of the Beatles’ track “Lucy in the Sky” which Fred initially misheard. Although never achieving the same success as the lead from their sophomore album—performing well on international markets too with Argentinian singer Anthony Swete’s version of “Judy Disfrazada” among South America’s best-selling singles of the year, very much influenced by the British Invasion, the group hailing from Baton Rouge had a sizeable discography and were active for decades in the local music scene as session performers and openers.

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synchronoptica

one year ago: Reagan’s second inaugural (with synchronopticæ), planetary alignment plus Trump’s second inaugural  

twelve years ago: the Treaty with Respect to the Final Settlement on Germany plus psychoanalytic comics

thirteen years ago: tinkering with DNA, organic wine plus more yarn bombing

fourteen years ago: piracy and copyfight 

fifteen years ago: regional rights 

10x10 (13. 100)

the cameraman’s revenge: a 1912 stop-motion film featuring taxidermied insects by Ladislas Starevich—see previously  

collateral damage: Trump’s seizure of Venezuela has deliberate knock-off effects for Cuba 

the monkey’s paw curls: prediction markets and betting on everything  

a spirit of dialogue: the World Economic Forum begins its summit in Davos (previously) in moment of geoeconomic warfare 

il tormento di sant’antonio: an examination of Michaelangelo’s juvenilia, the painting (more on the subject) not attributed to the artist for half a millennium  

bic cristal: the flagship product of the French sundry firm turned seventy-five—see previously  

mercator projection: famed Flemish cartographer believed that there was a magnetic mountain, Rupes Nigra, at the North Pole, accounting why compasses point towards the arctic—see also  

snow crash: Facebook quietly discontinues the Metaverse  

vanity project: Trump has formed an intergovernmental agency to oversee reconstruction in Gaza called the Board of Peace as an alt-UN with billion dollar membership dues—see previously here and here 

how now, brown cow: back-scratching bovine causes animal behaviourist to reassess their intellect—see also

we had boats landing there, also (13. 099)

I know that the world is growing weary of his antics and shed little insight into the chaos he is unleashing and it is best to ignore narcissists but this turn of events really floored us: the biggest DEI hire, an entitled, incompetent white man, motivated by a personal grievance that his predecessor earned a Nobel Peace prize in large part by dint of hope and relief, accepted the honour from the Latina individual who earned it, with no reciprocation. The committee refrained from comment other than to say that the award was non-transferable—nor revokable, with their decision being “final and for all time.” The only precedent for this exchange was in 1943 when novelist Knut Hamsun of Nazi occupied Norway gave his literature medal from 1920 to propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, ostensibly in order to be granted an audience with Hitler and petition for the release of political prisoners and fairer administration on the part of the puppet government installed. The Führer was merely irritated by this arranged meeting, and Hamsun, a vocal supporter of the invasion and critical of British forces trying to undermine the occupation, was after the war tried for treason as a collaborator but due to his advanced age and perceived senility, Hamsun’s sentence was commuted from imprisonment to a significant fine. In response to being roundly shamed and rebuked at large for declaring himself acting-president of Venezuela and for continued threats to annex Greenland, whilst still touting his soi-disant credentials as a peace-maker, and levee more tariffs on anyone who disagrees with him, Trump justified his actions with a letter to Norwegian Prime Minister Støre (previously) through diplomatic channels (which frankly to my mind made it seem like a hoax—why would he choose now to go through the ambassador and not just put it out on social media, and albeit another text-book definition of Poe’s Law, did actually just happen) with being rejected for the Nobel and thus freed from the obligation to “think purely of Peace.” Trump goes on to repeat that Denmark cannot protect Greenland from Russian and Chinese incursions (Beijing called out the US and denied any such ambitions and to quit using that as an excuse and Moscow pointed out the hypocrisy though welcoming the potential collapse of the NATO alliance), also repeating his doubts about the Danish kingdom’s “right of ownership,” slightly changing his rant to there are no written documents and that a boat landed there hundreds (more specific and false figure of five hundred years hit a bit too close to Columbus, we suppose). Denmark’s sovereignty over the territory was acknowledged and confirmed by the United States government in 1917 when president Woodrow Wilson purchased the Danish West Indies by mutual agreement for what would become known as the US Virgin Islands, the Caribbean chain including Little Saint James, Epstein’s island. In his complaint, Trump also boasts he has done more for NATO since its founding, implying that American ownership would significantly boost world security.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a natural version of the Colombian national anthem (with synchronopticæ), the soundscapes of David Lynch, an interview with the filmmaker plus Trump’s memecoin

twelve years ago: bridging the air-gap 

thirteen years ago: moving day 

fourteen years ago: bypassing EU emission standards plus EU member creditworthiness 

fifteen years ago: the slow media movement 

sixteen years ago: god and guns 

hands off kalaallit nunaat (13. 098)

In response to the limited deployments of eight European and NATO partner nations over Trump’s continued threats and overtures to annex Greenland in Operation Arctic Endurance and Trump’s retaliatory levee of an additional ten percent tariffs on the participants and any country opposing the US ownership of the semi-autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, a three-hour emergency meeting was held in Brussels with strong rebukes for America’s behaviour, igniting yet other trade war when the aggressor has full-access to the strategic island in the north Atlantic. The EU, UK and Canada were united in solidarity and refused to be blackmailed further—the extra punitive tariffs on top of the not insignificant ones of ten percent for the UK and Canada and fifteen percent for the rest of Europe from a deal reached in July now void, demonstrating that they were not wrong to roll-over on this earlier appeasement plan. Russia, which stands to benefit from the turmoil in the trans-Atlantic alliance surely pleased its agent is doing its bidding, even called out the US for its double standard over sovereignty. Macron and several other EU leaders have advocated utilising the so called “trade bazooka,” the untested Anti-Coercion Instrument that bypasses the required unanimity on negotiations for the infra-national bloc and makes available an arsenal of countermeasures to deploy including sanctions, embargoes, boycotts, reciprocal tariffs and procurement, with some ninety-three billion euro in leverage on stand-by, not to be bullied into submission by dumping US debt holdings, some nine trillion in bonds and equity. Canada, meanwhile, freshly returned from China with new trade deals, announced it will open an embassy in Nuuk.

8x8 (13. 097)

galactic resource utilisation: unfortunately named San Francisco startup’s designs for a lunar luxury hotel  

byob: meeting minutes from your local wine moms gang  

go: an obituary of Niè Wèiping (聂卫平) who helped restore Chinese interest in the ancient game of strategy—see previously

vmware: the history of virtualisation 

time’s arrow: the implications of shifting our concept of time from cyclical to linear  

urjo: an infinite series of logic puzzles to solve of red and blue dots on a grid—via MetaFilter  

the party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears—it was their final, most essential command: protests, ICE raids and false narratives 

artemis ii: giant rocket positioned on the launch pad for the first crewed mission to the Moon since 1972

synchronoptica

one year ago: a 2012 internet blackout in protest of US regulations privileging copyright over access (with synchronopticæ), The Jeffersons (1975) plus assorted links worth revisiting

twelve years ago: an encounter with a comet, artisanal signage, more on dragnet surveillance, more Unwörter plus desserts that have shaped history

fourteen years ago: more on the protest blackout plus a deeper look at the threatening legislation 

fifteen years ago: uprisings in Tunisia 

 

serial comma (13. 096)

In honour of Wikipedia’s recent birthday (with the reminder that the best belated gift that one can give is their time and attention in editing contributions—though cash always helps too) our fellow spelunker directs us to their Manual of Style for English language formatting and tone standards that’s a fun, quirky page to review that could incite pedantic debates, like the Oxford comma, without being over prescriptive and invites one to think about their own writing style, preferences, clarity, consistency and unwritten rules. We are also reminded how the editing history of all articles are public and previous to the earliest versions circa 2001 are only a few clicks away and one can appreciate how far we’ve come with this community project that’s turned into something quite invaluable and first to press as the paper of record on so many current events, undergirded with deep and circumspect research through self-organisation and the dedication of volunteers with no hierarchy to pass judgement.