bread and circuses (13. 513)

Promising to end the stalemate in Iran and bring about peace in the Middle East for the war he started as a present to himself, Trump is throwing an incredibly crass spectacle on the south lawn of the White House that would make Caligula blanch at the idea for his birthday. His scheduled cage-fight inside of a mesh-wire octagon with gladiators (albeit staged) pummelling each other into submission follows being roundly booed by spectators at basketball game in Madison Square Garden and opting to skip the World Cup opener for fear of more of the same treatment and comes amid court orders removing his name from the Kennedy Center, restoring informational signs to national parks that Trump said disparaged the US with historical accuracies, raging inflation and gas prices stemming from that said war, and the upcoming mid-term elections will be attended by cabinet officials and four thousand audience members with thousands more watching from the Ellipse—G7 leaders postponed their summit in Paris so Trump could attend the next day. Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) which is running the event further announced an official partner—World Liberty Financial, a crypto company co-owned by the Trump family and special diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff, which will create a quarter of a million dollar athlete bonus betting pool for the winners. Having used considerable government resources to bring this series of blood-sport matches together and standing to gain from it financially, I should think Hunter Biden’s laptop would have something to say about all this.

synchronoptica

one year ago: musical cicadas (with synchronopticæ) plus Orwell on No Kings

twelve years ago: a visit to Rapallo and environs plus spa day in Montecatini

fourteen years ago: Toothpaste for Dinner 

fifteen years ago: the Facebook IPO plus the tragedy of the commons

sixteen years ago: Afghanistan’s mineral wealth 

day one-hundred five (13. 512)

British maritime forces intercept a Russian shadow fleet trawling the waters of the Channel. Trump announces that a deal will be signed on Sunday, which will reopen the Strait of Hormuz to all traffic—although Tehran and Pakistani mediators, whilst agreeing that they are closer to peace than any point since the US and Israeli began their war of choice, deny the timing and the exact date when they will apply their digital signatures and are withholding any of the agreed upon terms, despite the US president posting that Iran has surrendered its nuclear dust, which America will retrieve and destroy at a later time. A settlement for Lebanon, one of the key sticking points for Iran, is apparently tabled for now; previous serial claims for the stalled talks to extend the ceasefire and reopen shipping lanes have dissolved amongst contradictory claims, rhetoric and breaches in the truce.

les étoiles d’ivry (13. 511)

Via ibīdem, we are directed to the ensemble housing estate of Ivry ˢ/ Seine, a Parisian suburb just southeast of the capital, designed by architects Renée Gailhoustet and Jean Renaudie constructed between 1969 and 1975, happily still standing though in need of some care and attention. The name of the mixed-used complex with forty residential units for social housing with commercial and office spaces refers the stellar rays of the triangular points of exposed concrete and whilst the overall style could be described as Brutalist (see also here and here), the open form structure with staggered verdant terraces and ramps and platforms connecting public and private spaces has an element of social engagement and spontaneity of interaction not found in all projects of the genre. See more photographs and floor plans from Architecture Lab at the link above.

arts agricoles (13. 510)

Courtesy of Things magazine, we are introduced to Montréal based graphic designer and collage maker Raymond Biesinger and very much enjoyed his pastiche posters (more of his own work in this omnibus post from MetaFilter) and moreover appreciated his side-by-side curation of inspirational samples, as in this archive of covers of publications from the Canadian department of agriculture, scores dating between 1944 and 1977 with topics ranging from animal husbandry, canning and preserves, victory gardens, household economics, dealing with a nuclear winter on the farm, to mushroom foraging. More appreciation of the artist at the links above.

the jig is up (13. 509)

Via Language Log, we are treated to Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal’s latest one panel comic—with mouseover title shown—that provides a funny take on the AI Effect, moving the goal-posts as artificial intelligence advances to redefine what “real” intelligence is, with a tendency to conclude that once a problem is solved, like besting a human grand master at chess, it’s all brute compute and no longer a reliable metric of what it’s gauging, and Moravec’s paradox—the observation that whilst computers can excel at maths and in a bounded game environment, they struggle with perception and mobility. Rather than siding with the scientific consensus that this counterintuitive skill-set is owing to the limits of disembodied cognition and how we take what took billions of years of experience, evolution and gravity to learn effortlessly and automatically for granted, the comic supposes that like an adolescent prodigy that is too smart for their own good, AI is making a conscious decision to avoid doing chores.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Israeli defence forces launch an aerial attack on Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities (with synchronopticæ), AI as stone soup, hip hop party fliers plus variations on the impossible trident

twelve years ago: a visit to Lucca 

thirteen years ago: US army headquarters in Europe moves to Wiesbaden plus protests in Istanbul

fourteen years ago: EU playable characters plus Germany government scandals 

sixteen years ago: a mosaic of photos of Istanbul 

 

day one hundred-four (13. 508)

Again losing control of the narrative and lashing out with chaotic and contradictory claims of progress towards achieving a peace accord, Trump pulls back on his threats to attack Iranian civilian infrastructure and seize petroleum processing facilities, offering that a deal could be reached by the weekend, after first decrying news out of Tehran that nothing had been agreed upon and then accusing them of spreading disinformation with a leaks of the draft as a sign of movement. Unconscionably, world energy markets hang on Trump’s every word, valuations lurching wildly despite the lack of positive news (he has promised a swift resolution no less than thirty-eight times since the ceasefire went into effect) and minting former first buddy and race-baiting Space Karen Elon Musk as the world’s first trillionaire with his rocket company going public. Neither Tehran nor Washington have disclosed what the terms of the agreement are—which seems to largely hinge on Israel’s actions in Lebanon, the aggressor excluded from the negotiations—but the administration is conservatively saying still that a deal is imminent, though to my mind the odds are not convincing.

my only escape from it all, watching a film or a face on a wall (13. 507)

On a recent long road trip, I contracted quite an earworm in the form of the Bananarama song “Robert De Niro’s Waiting…” when it came on the radio. Though not an unpleasant intrusion (in fact such randomness is quite welcome in an overly-curated environment), I was hoping to exorcise it with a little research, discovering that the lead single from the Irish-Anglo girl group—British-Hiberno? I wonder what that particular construction is called and as for girl group, Sara Dallin, Keren Woodward and Siobhan Fahey were true pioneers with an imprint—was supposedly lyrically meant to suggest something edgier and darker than their usual quirky pop-songs but was just about fandom and hero worship in the end.  The accompanying music video for Talking Italian was directed by Duncan Gibbins (making videos for Glen Frey, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Blow Monkeys, Wham! and others, Gibbins tragically perished in 1993 whilst trying to rescue his cat during a wildfire that engulfed Malibu, sustaining severe burns all over his body and jumping into a swimming pool, Gibbins contracted blood-poisoning from chlorine in the water—the cat was later found unharmed) portrays one of the band members being followed by mafia-presenting man for a possible hit. Unable to locate a De Niro lookalike, they used a John Travolta impersonator for the shoot, who ended up being the pizza-delivery guy that they had had summoned. Honoured that someone had written a song about him, the actor, the renowned up until that time for his roles in the Godfather sequel, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull hosted the band for dinner. Talking Italian.

bechbretha (13. 506)

The codex of customary law, fénechas, in medieval Ireland included quite a sophisticated and substantial register of “bee-judgments,” as apiculture was recognised on par with other forms of animal husbandry, requiring regulation and legislation. The concept of justice under Brehon legal traditions privileged the restorative, remunerative and rectifying behaviour over the punitive and provided a framework for the plaintiff and defendant to work out compensation for injuries sustained—whether from an errant sting or bee-trespass, supposedly pilfering a neighbour’s nectar, or stolen hives. More from The Conversation at the link above.