day one-hundred eight (13. 525)

As the G7 summit concludes, Trump lashed out at a media reports of the publication of a leaked copy of the MOU furnished by CNN—telling world leaders that Obama bribed his way to secure the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the 2015 plan these governments supported and were not pleased with the unilateral and ultimately violent withdrawal from) in order to deflect from the fourteen-point memo’s commitment for restitution and relief from sanctions, squandering whatever political capital and goodwill he had accrued by retreating from the war he started, spending unaccounted billions and causing the death of thousands to not achieve the objectives cited for the conflict—chiefly preventing Iran from building atomic weapons, which it was not doing in the first place but definitely sees the need for now. Rather than apologising or offering thanks to allies and mediators for their patience and suffering, Trump only strangely A much worse and more brittle settlement than the JCPOA, the White House had pledged to release the details prior to Friday’s signing ceremony at the Bürgenstock Resort above Lake Lucerne—the Qatari-owned property chosen for its remoteness—but we are unlikely now to get much of a preview, if privy to the terms at all, I thought though the leak prompted a read-out. Threatening to return to bombing if Tehran backslides, Trump admonished them to “behave,” repeating a line from early failed negotiations headed by the US vice president, “if it works out, I’m going to take the credit—if not, I am blaming JD,” Trump suggests he might he stick around to sign himself with Iranian counterpart Peyeshkian. Meanwhile, Hezbollah and the IDF continue to clash in Beirut (Netanyahu says he has not seen the document and has not asked); the IAEA approaches Kazakstan to potentially store Iran’s supply of enriched uranium as negotiations continue, though Iran now pledges to destroy its stockpiles through dilution—this truce only extends the ceasefire for sixty days—and the first tankers leave Iranian ports, the US blockade suspended.

accessibility settings (13. 524)

Via Boing Boing, we learn that the operating system for iPhones have had a feature for a couple of years now called Vehicle Motion Cues that makes it more comfortable for a car passenger and potentially lessens the effects of motion sickness from staring at one’s phone by taking readings from the device’s gyroscope and accelerometer and placing flecks on the edge of the screen that harmonises with the motions of the automobile. When I am the passenger seat, lately, I am usually too enamoured with the passing scenery to even glance at my phone, but the author, whom road-tested it during an extended excursion—a working-vacation, swears by the magic dots and it could offer some relief (see also) during a bus ride or for a moment’s research and consultation, when I can feel the nausea creeping up trying to focus on one thing for too long.  Motion sickness comes about when our own gyroscope, the inner ear, detects that we are moving but the eyes, fixed on something static, presents a contradiction.

10x10 (13. 523)

nine days in june: landmark US supreme court decisions of years past and upcoming cases during this busy time of the year  

mcmodernslopecore: AI-generated architecture—via Miss Cellania  

photovoltaic: a brief tutorial on how solar panels work—via Kottke  

linguist fingerprints: every AI talks with an accent  

i am not on harry mudd’s client list—stop talking about it, i don’t even know him: the Federation’s war with the Romulans was a total success 

defender of the realm: profiles of medieval warrior women  

dialog society: a trove of leaked documents reveals the activities of Peter Thiel’s secretive cult, prepping for WWIII with a breeding programme—see previously  

spacex: a plan to deploy a million satellites in Earth orbit would ruin the night sky for everyone  

parc güell: Antoni Gaudí’s 1926 failed housing estate has become one of Barcelona’s public spaces  

51st state: rural Illinois citizens petition to eject Chicago and split into two polities—see also 

synchronoptica

one year ago: the G7 in Alberta and the Israeli-Iran war (with synchronoptica) plus the Trump phone 

two years ago: a synthesiser performance piece , OJ Simpson flees police (1994) plus tragic children’s names

three years ago: NASCAR celebrates Pride plus a werewolf exorcism (1983)

four years ago: Star Trek: TAS retcon, the Watergate break-in (1972) plus assorted links to revisit

five years ago: Iceland reforms its naming rules, ASCII standards published (1963), the musical stylings of the Sons of Kemet plus calendrical dating formats

six years ago: US supreme court erodes the Civil Rights Act, the East German uprising of 1953, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls plus Trump sues to stop publication of a tell-all exposé

day one-hundred eight (13. 522)

As politicians and the press debate the merits and durability of Trump’s grand deal with Tehran (the administration hinting it will publish the terms of the MOU ahead of the formal signing ceremony), a Russian frigate, known to escort its shadow fleet of oil tankers through the Channel, fired warning shots at a pleasure yacht off the Island of Wight. The G7 vows for new sanctions against Russia amid optimism for peace in Ukraine. Elon Musk threatens to sue German public broadcaster ZDF for its reporting on how he is stoking anti-immigrant sentiment in Belfast. Scepticism mounts—everyone is angry and dissatisfied for different but overlapping reasons—over the peace plan with Iran insisting that any accord is contingent on IDF withdrawal from Lebanon—the rift between Washington and Tel Aviv apparently widening as Trump criticises Netanyahu and says that Syria would do a better job in extracting Hezbollah without killing everyone else in the process. Destruction in Beirut persists but many displaced Lebanese are trying to return home.

ux (13. 521)

Vis-à-vis a recent post airing online exasperation, we felt this expanded list of rage-inducing shortcomings in networking and technology, via Kottke, to be quite resonant and an thorough examination of what’s a bug and what’s a feature and wither and wherefore the friction and disconnects occur. Through the lens of Pope Leo’s first encyclical, On Human Diginity (known by its incipit Magnifica Humanitas), a lengthy treatise about the struggle to uphold our universal commitment to society when awash in alienating artificiality, we look at that frustration and fatigue that grinds us down with the mill of a thousand micro-interactions that don’t need to be—not exactly a force majure or existential crisis, in a landscape where many are possible, in isolation but taken together nonetheless inform out experience and seep out into the real world: touchscreens in cars, having to scan a QR-code to read a menu—or having menu items reshuffle themselves whilst one is ordering at a kiosk, being lectured to about the Anti-Christ, shoehorning AI into everything, forced updates at the worst possible time. The final items on the list do address the industry’s insatiable drive to commodify and fetishise everything, which is a bad thing, and though maybe not a direct consequence of the litany of disruptions for the end-user, peppered with rubric—Jesus wept, but possibly of supplanting the frictions and imbalances of capitalism (see above) with new obstacles, leaving the experts and agents nowhere to go. Much more from Brian Phillips and The Ringer at the link above.

8x8 (13. 520)

bff: open-source branding for fast foods and convenience stores  

slopaganda: the fake Canadians behind Alberta’s separatist movement  

painting with light: a look back at the pioneering Quantel Paintbox system that debuted in 1981  

it is long since i saw you: the flying monk Eilmer of Malmesbury who witnessed Halley’s Comet twice  

jam handy to the rescue: The Girl on the Magazine Cover (1940)—say do you mind if I take a picture?  

biosphere: the unrealised spherical, utopian architecture of nineteenth century France—via Messy Nessy Chic  

homefront: mapping all Russian casualties in the Ukraine war in order to expose the human costs of the fighting  

at participating locations: a 1977 commercial for the McFeast

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronopticæ) plus photographer Lycien-David Cséry

day one-hundred seven (13. 519)

Far from settled or over with the MOU digitally signed, unless America is accepting their defeat in this adventure, the chronology continues. With no force behind it, the grand deal is akin to an empty table of contents, waiting to be limned by a negotiation process that will prove thornier than the talks—or lack of dialogue—that brought us to this juncture. The terms, not fully disclosed to the public, provides a cessation of strikes in Lebanon but provides no timeline for IDFs withdrawal from southern Beirut. The Israeli government, with Netanyahu also using the opportunity to announce his reelection campaign, has said it will not leave its security zones established in Lebanon, Syria or Gaza, and the country’s defence ministry denounced the draft agreement as not only bad for Israel but for bad for the entire world, accusing US special envoys Kushner and Witkoff of driving a wedge between Washington and Tel Aviv. In addition to sanction relief, apparently with no strings attached though Trump says otherwise—saying a lot things—with its own funds unfrozen, the US tax payers will be remitting some three-hundred billion dollars in reparations under the aegis of an Iranian freedom fund, without reform or the promised regime change nor appropriating oil revenues to repair gulf nation energy infrastructure damaged in the war, with monitoring of its nuclear programme and the matter of its stockpile of enriched uranium deferred for negotiations yet to come. The Strait of Hormuz will supposedly be open to all traffic without restriction as well as Iranian ports—tensions between India and the US flaring over the refusal to apologise for attacking an Indian tanker accused of violating the US naval blockade—on Friday following the formal signing ceremony, with all parties uphold their commitments. Blasts were heard in the area of Qeshm island and the strait.

vignette effect (13. 518)

Though the annoying and frustrating modal pop-overs might prefer a different nomenclature—like splash screen, the unwanted, though in some jurisdictions legally mandated for privacy protections or deployed as an obstacle to AI scrapping, interactions that curtain websites with phoney consent or relentlessly invite one to subscribe to a newsletter, engage with its app version or donate deserve the name dickover. We are primed to brace ourselves when clicking a link for this treatment and the placebo-buttons to bat them away but the impunity really heats up once one starts reading a post and the message stops one’s progress several paragraphs in—this article is for paid subscribers only or you have read your last free story—see also here and here. On some level, I get it, especially due to ad-hosting revenue being what it is, but it’s still a particular dick move.