first instance, last resort (12. 804)

As promised in his campaign focused on retribution for his political critics and opponents, Trump’s weaponisation of the US justice system seems nearly complete with the most chilling headlines going to the recent string of indictments of former FBI director James Comey, New York attorney general Letitia James who led a fraud investigation against the president during the interregnum and most recently former national security adviser John Bolton for mishandling of classified material (the accusations admissions to the letter), we would be ill-disposed to not recognise the scope of the miscarriage of the law is not limited to personal attacks but is also manifest in the dismantling of the separation of powers among the coequal branches of the federal government in the recision and reprogramming of funds, cowing courts into submission to facilitate the illegal firings and shutterings of congressionally mandated agencies, and abusing the power of the pardon to rewrite the history of the January Sixth insurrection and attack on the US capitol and just now the commutation of the prison sentence of George Santos, disgraced New York Republican ejected from the House of Representatives by his own caucus.  The art deco sculpture to the left in the great hall of the Robert F Kennedy, Senior DOJ headquarters is the Spirit of Justice, infamously given a modesty smock in 2002 by then attorney general John Ashcroft to cover her exposed breast.  Her companion across the aisel, scantily clad in only a loin cloth, is called the Majesty of Justice.     

synchronoptica

one year ago: animated artefacts (with synchronopticæ) plus a collection of apotropaic plants 

fourteen years ago: swapping allegiances to shore up economies 

sixteen years ago: stoking the hearth 

crypt of civilisation (12. 803)

With the suggestion of the belief in reincarnation over hundreds of generations following the Platonic theory of metempsychosis with rebirth coming in thousand year cycles and setting the unsealing date six millennia in the future, calculated to be the difference from the height of Egyptian culture until the present, courtesy of Strange Company, we learn that the hermetically preserved installation (entombed in an unused swimming pool on campus)—inspired by the same contemporary craze of Tutmania (see previously here, here and here) and the notable dearth of information that the Ancients left for the Moderns—organised by history professor Thornwell Jacobs of Oglethorpe University in the American state of Georgia gave us the coinage time-capsule. Finally shunted away in 1935 after five years of careful, considered archiving and curation, the collection includes over eight hundred books, The Iliad, the Bible, a manuscript of Gone with the Wind among others, a seed vault, contemporary scientific instruments, cultural artefacts like Lincoln Logs, dental floss, fashions, an electric toaster, a radio—a windmill is also supplied to provide electricity to the appliances and equipment—as well as vocal recordings from Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and FDR with a hand-cranked device called the mutoscope for playback and teaching the eighty-second century openers of the crypt the English language. Designated to be unsealed in the year 8113 CE at noon US Eastern Time on Thursday 28 May, with the assumption being human beings (see also) are conducting the ceremony and a request that they respect and adopt this legacy for future generations.

sister cities (12. 802)

Via Web Curios, we discover a pretty keen interactive visualisation of the globe’s twinned towns (see previously here and here), though I’m given to understand not yet complete—in Iceland there are certainly vinabæir, though one can contribute to the underlying dataset and it’s not wholly intuitive at first how to navigate along the arc that links communities across nations and continents. The effect of zooming in through all those ascendant lines, especially in areas where the twinning is dense is quite impressive. Although this kind of relationship has existed throughout history through trade and cultural exchange, the first official twinning was a pact between municipal leaders of Toledo Ohio and Toledo Spain in 1931, with the idea gaining momentum towards the end of World War II to establish solidarity and promote reconciliation and understanding.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the first private rocket company (with synchronopticæ), first presidential photo-op (1924) plus the Fool’s Cap Map

fourteen years ago: more travels in Ireland plus more on the Greek financial crisis

10x10 (12. 801)

press credentials: all major US media outlets surrender their badges granting them access to the Pentagon rather than consent to only reporting on approved releases—see previously  

pomalo: embracing the unhurried lifestyle of the Dalmatian coast 

🚀: a huge archive of international space agency logos and patches, including private and fictional ones—via Kottke 

my my my my michell: a tribute to Joe Don Baker 

dear new york: an installation featuring the city’s denizens in Grand Central Station  

doxxing and the doxxed: a roundup of hateful boosterism from American Republican youth organisations  

un embarras du choix: perhaps options and avenues are a poor surrogate for being free 

farshoring: Luxembourg’s role as a space hub allows prospectors to claim asteroids—though profits may never pan out  

κόπος: Greek parliament passes thirteen-hour work days amidst strikes and labour shortages  

reframing: an exhibit inspired by WEB Du Bois’ infographic “data portraits”

for jointly having negotiated a cease fire in vietnam in 1973 (12. 800)

Co-laureates announced on this day of the same year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee controversially decided to award the prize, following the Paris Peace Accords, to the delegates of the United States of America and North Vietnam, Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ respectively. The treaty negotiated and signed without the input or endorsement of the senate or the government of South Vietnam, having been derailed several times over the demands that all prisoners of war be released, American intervention in the war was ended and troops withdrawn (see previously) leading to an almost immediate resumption of the conflict. Thọ outright refused the questionable honour and Kissinger accepted it only in absentia, fearing the optics of protesters at the ceremony. Kissinger subsequently tried to return the award but the Nobel committee did not want it back. Consideration given to forty-four other nominees that year, deliberations included author Pearl S Buck for work in humanitarian projects and championing racially mixed children, Indira Gandhi, the Hague, Spurgeon Milton Keeny for work in family planning and reproductive choice and Luis Kutner for advocating for a universal law of habeas corpus to counter arbitrary imprisonment and exile, Josip Broz Tito, Universala Esperanto-Asocio and sponsored by several members of congress Richard Milhous Nixon for accomplishments promoting lasting world peace. Further criticism includes recipients Jimmy Carter, the European Union, Shimon Peres with Yasser Arafat and Barack Obama, whose, in the minds of some, electoral award pressed Donald Trump to the to pursue the same circuit of honours. 

synchronoptica 

one year ago: Rocky & Bullwinkel and the Cuba Missile Crisis (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links worth the revisit

sixteen years ago: home-heating units 

7x7 (12. 799)

do not comply in advance: many news organisations are refusing to sign on to new US department of war rules to report on only officially vetted items 

haibao: a look back at the 2010 Shanghai world Expo plus a menagerie of other mascots  

touched by an angle: more biblically accurate heavenly hosts—see also here and here  

the lighthouse, the prioritiser and the flashlight: dozens of strategies for safeguarding one’s attention in an exhausting environment—via MetaFilter 

xeno canto: a geocaching tutorial for birdsong—from a revamped Maps Mania  

zoomorphic stereotypes: the 1806 human-animal hybrid caricatures of Charles Le Brun 

sos: Save our Signs project aims to preserve ten thousand placards in US national parks threatened with deletion for telling uncomfortable truths of the past for present and future generations

acervo (12. 798)

Via It’s Nice That we are referred to the repository, living archive of vernacular graphic design curated by one Alagoas native, Victor Yves, who began his collection after encountering the paucity of visual archives of Brazil’s northeast and resolved to create his own. The personal project of gathering “eye exercises” (exercícios para os olhos) gleaned from posters, prints, pamphlets and other ephemera informed by naïve- and folk-art soon developed into an academic obsession by its own inertia of filling what would become an obvious gap in the region’s creative heritage, amassing a sizeable portfolio of influential contributors whose credit was missing from the national canon. There are over five thousand (and growing) artefacts to peruse in the gallery, each with a short biography of its provenance and artist plus a selection of other exhibits with similar energy.

synchronoptica

one year ago: an incredible Trump rally (with synchronopticæ) plus a creepy featurette

fourteen years ago: adventures in Ireland 

sixteen years ago: blogging-block 

latent belief (12. 797)

A very low-stakes example (see here for a somewhat more consequent one) of human hubris and machine over-confidence seems to be uncovered in queries about the existence of a seahorse emoji—much depending on how one broaches the question. Whereas a straight yes-no answer elicits false assurances, a more casual manner of asking incites a sort of freak-out including citations of the Mandela effect to disabuse the questioner, the variety of other marine life in emoji form, how to convey the sense of seahorse by a combination of symbols, and how petitions and appeals for its inclusion failed in 2018 (in the same release as the dodo, which did make the cut)—with means of redress for submitting one’s own ideas to the steering committee. It seems a simple question yields the hallucinatory false memories and goes the way of other proposed but declined representatives, like the yurt, triceratops, wind turbine, wheelie bin, tattoo, lighthouse, face with laser eyes but yet four types of waffle and five variations on the polar bear.