summermash (11. 826)

Though admittedly not familiar with the majority of the songs in this medley, this latest instalment from DJ Earworm (previously) is a masterpiece of remixing with some outstanding transitions—including key changes—and editing that really bops, despite of the kind of unoriginal material that the artist had to work with for Brat Summer.

when you see something like that, it’s like god is looking right at you, just for a second—and if you’re careful, you can look right back (11. 825)

Premiering on this day at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood on this day in 1999 (in general release 17 September), probably no other film has waned in its critical reception and reappraisal since Gone with The Wind, now almost singular dismissed and regarded as not ageing well, the award-winning Sam Mendes and Alan Ball collaboration about repression, renunciation, conformity and fragile masculinity is nonetheless an artfully crafted if unsophisticated time-capsule that captures the Zeitgeist of fin de siècle ideas of as-yet unrecognised privilege, normative behaviour and attitudes that still reverberate and are relatable a quarter of a century on. Its stellar initial accolades, 9/11 which made much seem trivial that came before, benighted stereotypes and actor Kevin Spacey being cancelled for atrocious behaviour that mirrored the protagonist of the movie certainly didn’t help its problematic legacy. Straddling the enduring (when and if it comes time for critical reevaluation) dichotomy between the message of the meaning of life versus the hollowness of suburbia and sabotaging one’s life and being unable to deal with the consequences, American Beauty relates the archetype of a stranger coming to town in the form of the Fitts, an authoritarian, retired Marine colonel with an ill wife and withdrawn teenaged son who documents everything one his camcorder and pays for his expensive hobby by selling marijuana, to the notionally progressive and liberal picket-fenced community of middle-aged Lester Burnham, unhappy with his career and loveless marriage, and their gay neighbours. In parallel with his wife beginning an affair with a coworker, Burnham becomes infatuated with a classmate of his daughter which sets of a chain of events that that leads him to quit his job, blackmail his former boss, buying a classic car, and taking work as a short-order cook—deportment that might be excused as a “mid-life crisis” in unenlightened times. The 2000 MTV Movie Awards had nominated the film for its Best Kiss category but the studio rejected the overture, not wanting to glorify the “inappropriate” nature of the congress between a forty-two year old man and a sixteen-year old girl. …look closer

mss (11. 824)

Having a bit of a preoccupation with the discipline of diplomatics, we enjoyed going through this collection of missives from Letters of Note when correspondence becomes self-aware and ashamed, feeling the need to excuse itself for bad penmanship—the motor control and coordination to commit words to a page (undiminished we agree by their appearance however verging on the illegible) an important feedback loop in the exercise that’s not much practised lately, and lamented in this vintage selection. Particularly telling is this letter (not pictured—that’s Franz Kafka) from American poet laureate Louise Bogan addressed to essayist and New Yorker magazine editor William Keepers Maxwell with the post script, “Isn’t my handwriting queer? I lost my old one, typing for years; and this one showed up last winter. Odd!” Much more from Sean Usher at the link above.

tsardom (11. 823)

Unveiled on this day in 1862 to commemorate the thousand-year anniversary of the arrival of of the Varangian viking conquerors from Sweden in the Kievan Rus’, traditionally taken as the starting point of statehood, the hundred-ton bronze monument, the Millennium of Russia, in the kremlin of Novgorod is a fifteen metre high globus cruciger atop a bell-shaped pedestal, representing the history and culture of the empire. One-hundred twenty-nine figures line the middle and bottom levels and uniquely for an official state work include academics, writers and artists along with rulers, heroes, military commanders and men of enlightenment, but conspicuously absent is Ivan the Terrible (though is wife Anastasia Romanovna is present) for his pillage and massacre of the city founded by Prince Rurik in the ninth century. The monument was captured and dismantled by the Nazis during World War II but Novgorod was recaptured by the Red Army before transportation to Germany could be arranged and restored the work and put it back on display in 1944. Since 1988, among the signals of easing official atheistic policy, the celebration of this state baptism was the first national observance with a religious character.

writ of mandate (11. 822)

Having often wondered ourselves how specialised jargon in general was some sort of professional wizardry (tech, medicine, economics, the clergy) to make their practise impenetrable or inscrutable for non-experts, via Language Hat, we enjoyed this study that postulates that the embedded, dependent clause-rich sentence structure of legalese—forgoing even the spellbinding elements of legal Latin—is like a magical incantation. This obfuscation by design, parsing thousands of court documents, holds despite even lawyers decrying and disavowing this style and repeated calls for “plain language” laws (decisions don’t have a specific requirement for florid and what’s perceived to be “exacting” and only precedent and simpler worded ones are equally enforceable on appeal) and seem to have a performative aspect—a capacity for proscription rather than just description—that lends a sense of a magic formula above the ken of outsiders. More from The Conversation at the link above.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: the debut of Star Trek: The Animated Series (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: newspapers in movies, Hurricane Irma’s path of destruction, Saturn’s rings, London’s Garden Museum, an illustrated ship’s log plus Ford pardons Nixon

eight years ago: a patriotic art counterfeiter, assorted links worth revisiting, more spirit drawings plus New Amsterdam becomes New York

nine years ago: the curious names of US court justices

ten years ago: Scotland’s independence referendum, Roman excursions plus the expanding Empire

8x8 (11. 821)

i voted: the state of Michigan let the internet choose the redesign of its election sticker given out at the ballot box and it’s a werewolf clawing off its own shirt  

selective foresight: the “marshmallow longterism” of conservatives—see also  

turn on subtitles: animated videos using only the closed captioning feature  

psycho a capella: Korean ensemble MayTree shows off their vocal abilities with an excerpt from the film’s tense main theme—via Everlasting Blört  

backchannel: YouTube removes Tenet Media content following US justice department indictment linking them to Russian election interference  

slipstream: the amazing achievements of cyclist José Meiffret 

eidophone: voices made visible by Welsh singer and scientist Margaret Watts Hughes  

the kamala and tim show: the Democratic ticket is bringing 80s sitcom energy—via Kottke

where we’re going we don’t need stroads (11. 820)

Whilst happy to live in a country that has not privileged cars over pedestrians completely where services are walkable and there’s a robust network of public transportation, there is always room for improvement at the margins—parking lots take up a lot of real estate and can be sweltering heat islands that could surely be put to a better use and there’s signs that some mid-sized cities in Germany are tending towards their American counterparts with the same horrendous corridors of strip malls, gas stations, automobile lots and fast food and plenty of investment in infrastructure has been invested in making the car king. Courtesy of Kottke, we are directed towards this reflection on how the car-centric focus of the US is like an addiction impossible to kick because of all the sunk costs and the ingrained and perpetuating cycle of more roads, more traffic and more destinations. The urban planning for the overwhelming majority of places built up post the introduction of the car is going to take a long process of unbuilding to make them liveable, and this is the American experience with hardly any exception—the article quoting Tennessee Williams’ observation that the country only has three cities: “New York, San Francisco and New Orleans—everywhere else is Cleveland,” which unfortunately rings very true for all that are consigned to be stuck in congestion and forever en route and whose errands and commute affords no chance for serendipity, divergence or nature. The title portmanteau of “street” and “road” was coined in criticism to the spreading failures of American civil engineering.

10⁶⁰⁰ (11. 819)

Via Things Magazine (lots more to explore there), we get the chance to revisit the electromechanical rotor cipher machine, the advanced HX-63 developed by a private Swiss firm, which would prove difficult to crack even by contemporary standards and in 1952 was exponentially more secure than the CIA’s top model. Over the course of a decade, only about a dozen of the units were manufactured and though most clientele remained anonymous, the French defence ministry was one known buyer and a defence contractor found the device in a Cold War communications bunker and restored it to working order. The potential of those above undisclosed purchasers to be forces not aligned with Western interests caused the intelligence agency to intervene and not only eventually stop their sales but also to enter into a partnership with the company to produce a model with a backdoor so the CIA could decrypt any transmission. More from IEEE Spectrum at the link above including a video demonstration of the restored, uncompromised model and more on how the technology works to encode messages.

synchronoptica

one year ago: INTERPOL (1923)—with synchronoptica—plus divination through cheese

seven years ago: an appreciation of composer Edvard Grieg,  a meditation on the dacha plus cabmen’s shelters

eight years ago: restoring the Houses of Parliament, the debut of Star Trek, a Buddha-inspired knitted cap plus the debut of Voyager

nine years ago: a partially submerged art installation in the Thames is a statement on climate change

ten years ago: window displays, NATO talks on the Russian invasion of Ukraine plus a visit to Bad Vilbel