tripp (13. 162)

Unwelcome at the Olympics, US vice president JD Vance continues his Eurasian junket to the South Caucasus in order to undergird a peace deal brokered by Trump—one among many that failed to secure him the Nobel prize—through talks with the leadership of Azerbaijan and Armenia aimed to forward progress on a plan to construct a strategic transit artery, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, the forty-three kilometre concept of road (also known as the Zangezur corridor (Զանգեզուրի միջանցք, Zəngəzur dəhlizi)linking Azerbaijan to its exclave, the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic—hailed as a hallmark achievement of recent negotiations though the idea had already been championed by Türkiye during the ceasefire agreement of the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020. The route would bypass Iran and Russia and is seen as an opportunity to expand regional trade with the US. Vance’s presence at a time when tensions are rising in Iran and the US threatening intervention are seen as a sign of commitment to Baku and Yerevan, creating markets for exports and defining minerals strategy that is—with secured development rights—a rebuke to China’s influence over critical resources in both countries. Meanwhile, critics of the settlement see it as efforts towards pan-Turkic expansion and America’s past flirtation with neighbouring Georgia seem to be be very much consigned to the past.

i’m like a minus, she’s like a plus mc skat kat (13. 161)

With the music video inspired by the scene from Anchors Aweigh when Gene Kelly dances with the cartoon mouse from Tom and Jerry, the lead single, “Opposites Attract,” from the debut album of Paula Abdul, Forever Your Girl, rose to number one and number two on the US and UK charts respectively on this day in 1990. The rotoscoped, animated feline character (a collaboration of both Disney and Warner Brothers studios) was voiced by the duo the Wild Pair with an addition rap bridge performed by Derrick “Delite” Stevens would go on to win that year’s MTV Music Award for Breakthrough Video and garnered a Grammy in 1991. Kat and the Stray Mob went on briefly with a musical career, featuring Abdul in another video, “Skat Strut” and were spokespeople (along with Melba Moore, Ozzy Osbourne, Bette Midler, et al) for a recycling campaign, “Yakety Yak - Take it Back!”

*    *    *    *    *

synchronoptica

one year ago: a latter day prophet of peace (with synchronopticæ), assorted links worth revisiting plus The Ugly American

twelve years ago: Swiss vote on immigration policy 

thirteen years ago: pharmaceutical vocabulary plus more on Germany’s renewable revolution

fourteen years ago: splintered support for EU IP bill 

fifteen years ago: stock market mergers 

sixteen years ago: elections in Ukraine 

seventeen years ago: stimulants and sedatives 

société centrale canine (13. 160)

The shelter where we adopted our rescue dog has the convention of assigning unknown birthdays to the Fourth of July, as a touching sign of independence (see also here and here). In France, however, one’s fellow-walkers and veterinarian can surmise the age of one’s companion by their name (which to my mind might impose the potential for compromised passwords) by a tradition established in 1926 by the registry of pedigree dogs that pairs a letter of the alphabet to each year. Not enforced by nearly universally adhered to (though we suspect all pet parents give out several names and find ways around prescriptiveness), the options cycle back every twenty years rotating through twenty initials (with the exclusion of some deemed too difficult, K, Q, W, X, Y and Z as difficult to find French names for, like for hurricanes in the US). Last year as a century ago was an A year with 2026 back to B for the puppies. They’re all good girls and good boys.

11x11 (13. 159)

que rico ser latino: staging Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time celebration  

coed darcy village: a building project on the brownfield site of a former Welsh mine abandoned without explanation—via Things Magazine 

printing films: vintage educational and instructional shorts on typesetting and the publishing industry—via Kottke  

as slow as possible: anticipating the next chord change after almost two years for the organ in a church in Haberstadt playing six-hundred year John Cage (see previously) composition  

wseg-10: with nuclear treaties lapsed and the US retrofitting obsolete silos, an interactive map showing areas of the US most likely to be affected by an atomic exchange 

material worlds: revisiting architecture Bruce Goff and his homespun futurism through a new retrospective exhibit—via Nag on the Lake  

lawful neutral: Jeremy Bentham’s 1817 categorical table of human impulse as an early form of alignment chart 

pitchforks: San Francisco’s pro-billionaire march turns out as a bust  

tangible media: a collection of data one can hold 

hagyomány, identitás, történelemthe: mysterious Rohonc Codex that has resisted decipherment—see also  

viva italiano: Winter Games opening ceremony was a celebration of the host country’s cultural icons—including Bialetti’s Moka Express

wonderful deeds and doings of little giant boab (13. 158)

Via Miss Cellania, were are directed towards the lawyer, diplomatic consul to the Kingdom of Hannover and children’s author Ingersoll Lockwood whose fiction seems to eerily predict the rise of the god emperor and dynastic aspirations—see previously, although it appears that that Bene Gesserit reverend mother, Ghislaine Maxwell, was only interested in producing the Kwisatz Haderach of paedophiles. Establishing a practise in New York City after the conclusion of his foreign posting (appointed by Abraham Lincoln), Lockwood found a second calling as a lecturer and writer, authoring Travels and adventures of Little Barron Trump and his wonderful dog Bulger in 1889, with a sequel, the Marvellous Underground Journey four years later. Received by educators and his target readership with indifference and derivative rather than inspired by the works of Lewis Carroll, the two volumes were all but forgotten until their rediscovery in 2016 and 2017 with the similarities to the once and future president and his issue, Barron (the pseudonym “John Barron” was also used by Drumpf in the 1980s) with the title character, a young German boy called Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Von Troomp, styled as Baron Trump, secreting away from the family estate to strange lands (first to Russia), offending natives and getting into entanglements with local women, escaping back to Trump Castle before he can be missed and repeating the adventures night after night. In 1896, in the run-up to the contested presidential election, Lockwood wrote his third and last novel, one with a decidedly more dystopian theme called 1900; or, the Last President, which we hope is not as prescient, of a near-future NYC torn by riots and protests following the shocking victory of a populist candidate who brings about the collapse of the republic.

synchronoptica

one year ago: futuristic sleepwear (with synchronopticæ), French cocktail hour plus Trump’s return-to-office mandate

twelve years ago: a recipe for kuri squash soup, strategic positive thinking plus an ostentatious bishop

thirteen year ago: the mediatisation of church land in Germany, the sense of smell in fish plus Germany debates fracking

fourteen years ago: the launch of the He-Man franchise 

fifteen years ago: machines talk back 

sixteen years ago: Germany combats tax evasion 

seventeen years ago: neglected social media profiles 

simply paris (13. 157)

Among the latest tranche of documents released by the US Department of Justice, there was an email with the above subject line picturing an unidentified couple at various tourist attractions of the French capital in July of 2009. Not only is the woman’s face obscured with redaction but so is for whatever reason the visage, arguable amongst the most-well known in the world, of Leonardo Da Vinci’s portrait of Mona Lisa—possibly betraying the use of AI or poor taste and certainly reaffirming the rather sloppy job that’s characterised this mandate, which the department has claimed to have satisfied its legal obligations but has failed to uphold its own expressed pledge and excuse for the months of delay of protecting the identity of the victims of Epstein and associates’ sex-trafficking and rape, including so far the names, images and personal information of around a hundred survivors of the the expansive scandal.

general directions (13. 156)

Via the weekend links of { feuilleton }, we enjoyed this profile of Margaret Calvert whose work in graphic design and typology brought together road signage in the UK under a standard for uniformity and visibility still in use today, in Britain and beyond. Her pictograms and eponymous typeface, the slab-serif Transport font, the result of a survey that reformed protocols more in line with European conventions with the expansion of expressways, shifting away from traditional fingerposts are used not only for motorways, the rail system, airports and for warning of potential hazards, the farm animal caution based on a cow called Patience Calvert recalled from her childhood and the wildlife iconography inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s studies of animals in motion. More from the Guardian interview at the link above.

draft pick (13.155)

Courtesy of Strange Company, we learn that sometime in the early months of 1926, the exhibition basketball team that uses athleticism and comedy to break down racial barriers that exist in the professional sport was formed as the Savoy Big Five to promote flagging attendance at he storied jazz venue of the ballroom in Chicago’s South Side, rebranded independently as the Harlem Globetrotters (see previously) within a couple years and touring the US Midwest and Eastern seaboard, the international tournaments would not start until decades later but the name helped build their cosmopolitan mythos. Signalling a significant thaw in American-Soviet relations, they played a game in Moscow in 1959 with Khrushchev and fourteen thousand spectators in attendance (see also), with numerous media appearances, cross-over episodes, and their own Saturday morning cartoon (a later animated series gave them superpowers) and an soundtrack album produced by frontman Meadowlark Lemon, honorary membership has been extended to Henry Kissinger, Bob Hope, Nelson Mandela, Whoopi Goldberg, Popes John Paul II and Francis and Jesse Jackson, whom at first was highly critical of their style of showmanship but then in reevaluation decided that the franchise were overall ambassadors of goodwill and positive role models.