transition team (11. 982)

Now is the time of monsters. Our collective amnesia for Trump’s first four years is slowing receding with this preview of cabinet officials and principals who might serve in the next administration—and who might return (see previously here and here)—who were and will be wholly antithetical to their departments if not dismantling them altogether. We’ve already discussed the sine cure, grace-and-favour posts for Musk and RFK, Jr, and then there’s returning favourites Mike Pompeo is in the running for heading the Department of Defence as well as Richard Grenell for Secretary of State and former US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Tom Homan, architect of the child separation policy, might be reinstated to his former job. Former campaign manager Susie Wiles is slated to become Trump’s Chief of Staff, breaking the glass ceiling as a woman has never held that role, having left her previous position at the White House as director of scheduling for failing to pass a background investigation necessary to obtain a security clearance (an arduous and meddlesome obstacle that the administration wants to get rid of too by taking the FBI out of the vetting process) in 2017 and was reportedly one of the individuals that Trump showed the classified materials that he unlawfully retained after leaving office.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Frankenstein’s reading list (with synchronoptica) plus a very special episode of Star Trek: TOS

seven years ago: a social media fake news experiment backfires

eight years ago: a retrospective of the 2016 US presidential campaign, the musical stylings of Jean-Jacques Perrey plus a ramen-scented bubble-bath

nine years ago: assorted links worth the revisit 

eleven years ago: more fallout from Edward Snowden, the wealth-gap in America plus The Addams Family in living colour

10x10 (11. 981)

peer pressure: Australia proposes a ban on social media for under sixteens 

this is the hour of lead: a few cathartic, consoling verses  

affiliate marketing: the banal world of recommendation-culture—via the New Shelton wet/dry  

airborne microplastic: our pollution influences more than sealife and can facilitate cloud formation and disrupt a whole of ecological systems 

club dei 27: a profile of the very exclusive group of Giuseppe Verdi super fans—via tmn  

augury: from the Greek for “bird talk” plus bonding with poultry 

you won’t believe this: research suggests that people can be inoculated against misinformation by warning them that they might be manipulated and eyebrow-raising antibodies  

die dame von kölleda: Merovingian burial chamber in Thüringen shown to the public  

word of the day: recrudescence: n— the return of something terrible after a time of reprieve 

bytedance: Canadian government orders TikTok to shut down operations in the country but still permits the app and users license to create content

the palmer raid (11. 980)

Occurring in the background of the First Red Scare in America, a nationwide campaign against the real and perceived divided loyalties of immigrants and ethnic groups settling in the US after World War I and the Bolshevik revolution—President Woodrow Wilson rallying against “hyphenated Americans” pouring “the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our nation life” who must be crushed as agitators and anarchists, the first of the surprise onslaughts organised by Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer took place on this day in 1919 (the date picked as it coincided with the second anniversary of the storming of the Winter Palace). After a failed attempt to suppress a labour revolt in Buffalo, the Attorney General, who named one young J Edgar Hoover to head the Justice Department’s investigation bureau, convinced the Congressional Appropriations Committee to give him a budget of one and half million dollars to undertake his plan, saying there was a coordinated effort by radicals to rise up and “destroy the government in one fell swoop. The bureau worked with local authorities to conduct violent raids on the Union Russian Workers with several by-standers also injured and apprehended. While only a few hundred individuals were eventually deported of the ten-thousand arrested, the measure was nonetheless terrorising and many with no affiliation to these groups had their lives ruined. The following year, with the police actions happening at a regular pace, the American Civil Liberties Union (ALCU) was established to combat entrapment, warrantless searches and seizures and unlawful detention.

prêt-à-porter (11. 979)

Via Messy Nessy Chic, we are directed a curated trove of US military uniforms (over fourteen thousand) given the studio and cat-walk treatment—recently declassified but providing no clue about the purpose of the catalogued collection which spans from the 1970s to the 1990s. Artist and photo researcher Matthieu Nicol came across this find whilst browsing for vintage pictures of food (see also) and decided to salvage the pastel-coloured intersection between lethal functionality and the world of fashion and design from archival obscurity. Though not professional models for these prototype suits and ceremonial dress, the certainly look like any glossy fashion show montage produced today. Many more images at the links above.

ampelkoaltion (11. 978)

In a press conference, German chancellor Scholtz dismissed his Finance Minster Christian Linder (of the pro-business, laissez-faire Free Democrats—FDP, the yellow party, forming a coalition government along with the SPD—Social Democrats, red, and the Green Party) for being impossible to work with and hindering reforms meant to jump-start the country’s flagging economy, depressed by inflation and the war in Ukraine. Visibly upset and unable to contain his frustration, Scholtz’ made his decision despite appeals for the governing group to remain resolute and unified in the face of Trump’s re-election and will lead to a confidence vote as early as mid-January with the possibility of snap elections in March.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: Enceladus, an exoplanet from 1917, US weapons sales plus Berlin’s beer brush tower

nine years ago: experiencing the forest as animals do, Frtiz Haber’s dreadful excellence plus how blood influences the brain

ten years ago: the fall of the Berlin Wall plus more linguistic studies

twelve years ago: Obama reelected plus more arithromania

free and fair (11. 977)

Amid reckoning, quarterbacking and finger-pointing, supporters of Kamala Harris mourning her campaign’s loss following her sobering concession speech. Urging her voters never to give up, the harrowing hours between the closing of the polls, watching the precincts’ returns and ultimately the race going to Trump, resistance seemed to yield to reflection—as a collective amnesia waxed and waned about the consequences of elections, simultaneously forgetting and embracing the regression, chaos of the first Trump administration and the way it has hollowed out democracy and transformed the Republican party (the Democrats to held hostage to an extent to candidates not necessarily of their choosing) and returning to old grievances, distrust, deflection and xenophobia that never went away. It is a bleak time for the US and the world—the people of Palestine and Lebanon and Ukraine besieged and posed to be fully abandoned, America abrogating its responsibilities for environmental stewardship and of course emboldening other aspiring authoritarian regimes—and the best we can do right now is to be mindful of those in the most precarious situation right now subject to Trump’s policy agenda: the opposition, minorities, migrants and any of othered by allowing others to define us and write our narrative.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a collection of consumer electronics catalogues (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: clockwise and counter-clockwise, mail-order meals plus therapeutic quilting

eight years ago: a shire to defeated campaigns

nine years ago: six degrees of separation plus assorted links to revisit

ten years ago: Kowloon Walled-City

varietà antica (11. 976)

Via Pasa Bon!, we are directed to the Italian scientist Isabella Dalla Ragione who scours medieval archives, cloistered orchards and Renaissance paintings for produce that has disappeared from daily cuisine to bring some diversity back to the table in the form of gnarled but hardy and delicious apples, pears, peaches, quinces, grapes and other forgotten heirloom fruit. Dalle Ragione’s family home with its ancient grounds has become a showcase and incubator for this effort as the interviewer acts as a docent through a quite remarkable gallery of art works that display this culling of an overwhelming abundance of cultivars down to monoculture, hoping to reverse the trend. With a little detective work, an amazing catalogue of outmoded varietals emerge from generally overlooked details, instilled themselves with symbolism and hence the importance of accurate representation to convey the message. Much more at the links above.

omg monteagle—if someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time (11. 975)

Guardian columnist Marina Hyde welcomes the arrival of the fifth of November, admonishing us to remember another guy—Guy that tried to blow up the whole system of government, quite literally even if Fawkes and compatriots might argue that the thirty-six barrels of gunpowder were a metaphor. Ultimately thwarted by an internal leak, a warning to a relative in the House of Lords on a piece of parchment—“that could have also been a social media post on X (which back in the seventeenth century was known as Twitter)” and publicly condemned by ye olde fake news media, the failed insurrection is a day of celebration for Britain.