diurnal cycle (12. 638)

Launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome on this day in 1961, the Vostok 2 capsule carried aloft mission pilot Gherman Titov, who became the second human to orbit the Earth after Yuri Gagarin (below right)—and the four person in space counting the suborbital flights of US astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom. Based on the determination that safe re-entry in the open steppe of southern Russia would not be possible if the craft overshot two orbits—much to the protestation of flight medics that believe that human physiology could not withstand an extended time in space—the mission became an endurance test, lasting just over twenty-five hours, and equipping the capsule with more advanced communication and climate controls. Proving that humans could live and work in space, Titov orbited the Earth seventeen-and-a-half times, achieving many firsts, including the first nap in space and a minor bout of space sickness (adaptation syndrome) being the first to vomit aloft, and equipped with a professional still- and film-camera captured the first images of the Earth from above aside from earlier V2 rocket-mounted footage. Titov was subjected to a battery of medical tests afterwards and the mission was considered an overwhelming success. The day of his safe record, the US congress approve, by voice vote, a spending package of over one and a half trillion dollars to fund the American space programme, including almost five hundred billion earmarked as seed money for a crewed mission to the Moon. During a visit to the World’s Fair in Seattle, when questioned by reporters how his space flight had changed his philosophy and outlook on life (see also), Titov was quoted: “Sometimes people are saying that God is out there. I was looking around attentively all day but I didn’t find anybody. I say never angels nor God.” Misattributed to Gargarin, it was cited as evidence of wide-spread Soviet atheism and used as anti-religious propaganda by the Americans.  

synchronoptica

one year ago: a 1963 surf-rock banger (with synchronopticæ), chess notation plus presidential candidate Kamala Harris introduces running-mate Tim Walz

thirteen years ago: hot Eastern European girls, return for deposit plus some impressions from Norway

sixteen years ago: the German Thirteenth Month bonus 

homoplasy (12. 637)

Having recently pondered the convergent instances of evolution that birthed multiple iterations of the crab and crab-like, we quite enjoyed this corollary from MetaFilter on new findings that show that among mammals, by dent of the food source’s sheer abundance—a ready and steady diet, have developed specialisation for eating ants and termites at least a dozen separate times. Myrmecophagous species have occurred independently, from aardvarks to pangolins to armadillos to echidnas (a monotreme), but the rate and occurrence of this adaptation has happened far more frequently and at a much faster pace than the above carcinisation. Everything becomes anteater.

turnover rate (12. 636)

https://www.perfectforroquefortcheese.org/2025/07/endangerment-finding-12-621.html On 1 August, Trump controversially directed White House staff to fire Commissioner of Labour Statistics hours after delivering, on schedule, a weak jobs report for July, which additionally included a downward revision for the prior two months, which had previously suggested despite significant market insecurities caused by the tariffs, the One Big Beautiful Bill and immigration restrictions. In a post on Truth Social, Trump, without evidence, accused the commissioner of having ulterior motives to discredit Trump’s success and altered employment figures, moreover that the bureau had distorted job gains ahead of the US presidential election in order to make Harris look more favourable and competent. Neither accusations were true and in fact, Labour also revised downward jobs numbers in September just before the election, the department being staunchly non-partisan and neutral, famous for the anecdote when asked if the glass is half-full or half-empty but rather it is an eight ounce container with four ounces of liquid. Whilst numbers were soft and not aligned with the administration’s expectations, the response was chillingly disproportionate, vowing for transparency and integrity in government data, intimating that career staff will be replaced with Trump appointees (see also). Following the unrelenting assault on science—particularly medicine but also weather forecasting and making international students feel unwelcome in American universities, the report would have hardly been newsworthy were it not for Trump’s rather unprecedented move and the knock-on implications in eroded trust in the reliability of this metric as a gauge for economic performance, informing the decisions businesses and investors, including those foreign companies Trump is interested in re-shoring, coerced by the above tariffs. A rosier outlook, timed and recalibrated for political expedience, is the stuff of authoritarian regimes and command-economies and would not instil market confidence. As the US is having its Brexit moment by stoking a potential trade war, there’s a parallel lesson from the recent past in Greece’s eurozone membership (see previously here, here, here and here) when optimistic accounting, overvaluation and outright fraud nearly brought down the whole EU experiment. Individuals’ ability to be hired and runaway inflation will tell the truth, even if the numbers stop being reliable.

public law 94–67 (12. 635)

The culmination of the five year effort which saw the passage of US Joint Resolution 23, begun on the centenary of the 1870 death Confederate general and increased interest in the figure as evinced by growing tourism to Georgia’s Stone Mountain memorial site and other commemorations, on this day in 1975 Gerald Ford (previously) signed into law a declaration championed by senator Harry Byrd of Virginia to posthumously restore citizenship to Robert E Lee. In 1865, after the civil war concluded Lee was paroled and took an oath of allegiance to the United States, petitioning for the revocation of citizenship to be nullified. Portrayed by proponents of the bill as clerical oversight on the part of secretary of state William Seward for not processing the pardon application, thus leaving him a stateless individual, while detractors thought such a symbolic gesture strengthened the mythology and romance of the Confederate cause and was a legitimising acknowledgement of Lee’s status as an icon and cultural hero—something which Lee himself rejected as counterproductive to healing the rift of fighting the war. After the civil war, Washington, DC appropriated Lee’s mansion and grounds in Arlington, Virginia and designated it the National Cemetery, in part so Lee and his family would never be able to return home.

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: Trump assures Christian supporters that if they vote for him this once, they’ll never have to worry about voting again (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links worth revisiting 

twelve years ago: the Moses Bridge Stairs 

thirteen years ago: smoking is derpy 

fourteen years ago: the debt-ceiling and creative accounting 

arguably the most famous and celebrated cnidarian of all time (12. 634)

Outliving her discoverers and with a career spanning the Victorian Era, under the care of a succession of Edinburgh naturalists, the beadlet sea anemone (Actini equina), affectionately known as Granny passed away on this day in 1887 at the advanced age of sixty-seven—though reports of her death were embargoed for the public good until October, with lengthy obituaries first published by The Scotsman and then The New York Times. Receiving many distinguished visitors, as evinced by a guest book with over a thousand entries, Granny, whom was collected as a mature specimen off the shores of North Berwick, is credited with educational reform, igniting popular interest in the sciences outside of professional and specialist circles, and inviting Victorians to bring nature into their homes, with various fashions from houseplants to terraria and aquaria and imparted a sense of curiosity, albeit kept, that advanced understanding and appreciation of marine ecology.

pending adjournment (12. 633)

Though both Republicans and Democrats regularly engage in gerrymandering, depending on the party in power when it comes time for redrawing the boundaries of voting precincts (normally conducted during a pre-set period follow a national decennial census—which some states attempting to remove partisanship from the process of re-districting altogether by soliciting a neural third party to set apportionment), rarely has such a push been made off-cycle and so transparently to disenfranchise Democrat-leaning districts than what is now happening in Texas with Democratic state legislators having fled to Chicago in order that the bicameral congress does not meet quorum and cannot proceed with voting to affirm the changes to the electoral map. Through the state’s governor, Trump has explicitly ordered redistricting in order to eliminate solidly Democratic areas and redistribute a sixty-forty percentile spread over all voting precincts so as markedly reduce the chances of Democrats of the Congress retaining their seats in the mid-terms and not dilute historically GOP-leaning areas—based on a calculus of by what percentage Trump carried the districts. This extreme measure by Texas Democrats is only a temporary delay tactic as they cannot wait out the entire special session called for deciding this issue and face daily fines for the absence. Had they remained within the state and not this self-imposed exile, state troopers could summon them to the capitol and compel their participation. With only the narrowest of majorities in both the House and the Senate, state legislators of other jurisdictions may try this manoeuvres after seeing how Texas combats truancy and forces the matter. Meanwhile, the Democratic caucus is entertaining countermeasures in kind, acknowledging that changing the rules and demographic landscape ahead of the election in eighteen months is not how democracy works, but also realising that further sidelining the minority party by minoritarian strategies is more unacceptable and they can’t roll over again and again.

pizzaioli (12. 632)

 We enjoyed this travelogue on the quality control team that vet restauranteurs and ensure that their menu is in keeping with the standards of the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, founded in 1984 to protect the status of the art of pizza-making in the Neapolitan tradition accord with its UNESCO inscription among the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. This month long certification process involves rigorous training to exacting standards and the agents also conduct covert follow up missions to authenticated pizzerias to ensure quality is maintained. Much more about the Naples-based association and pizza foodways from BBC at the link up top.

best picture ever (12. 631)

Witnessed on this day in 1990 by two unidentified hikers in the moors above Calvine in Perthshire, the pair later told their account of their encounter with a diamond-shaped craft hovering silently with Glasgow tabloid Daily Record, handing over their prints and negatives to the newspaper. The story was never published and the tabloid handed over the photographic evidence to the Ministry of Defence. Despite or perhaps because of the paucity of substantiating documentation or corroboration, rumours and speculation persisted over the years, teased by a partial acknowledgment on the part of the MOD, claiming to have lost the pictures that piqued researchers’ curiosity even more. One of the six lost photographs was discovered in archives in 2022 and published by the Daily Mail, close to the anniversary of the reported sighting. With an veneer of authenticity suggested by the ministry as undoctored and witnessed two days after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Calvine UFO has undergone various interpretations as proof of the semi-legendary Aurora reconnaissance jet, a secret black project supposedly launched by the US Air Force with stealth technology, and the subject, exhibit of a more recent American congressional effort to expose government knowledge about UAPs. 

  synchronoptica

one year ago: Trump belittles Harris (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links to enjoy

thirteen years ago: more Irish sheep counting plus more flea market finds

fourteen years ago: a return trip to Dresden 

fifteen years ago: a bus that towers over city traffic