🧶 (12. 593)

On this day in 1961, Lee Harvey Oswald was granted an exit visa to the return to the United States after two years of living and working in Minsk, having defected in October of 1959. Oswald taught himself Russian and had saved up a sizeable portion of his Marine Corps salary after his court-martial and hardship discharge and booked passage to the United Kingdom via ship from New Orleans to Le Havre. Telling customs officials he intended to stay in Southhampton for a week before proceeding to a school in Switzerland.

Hiding his plans to reach the Soviet Union, Oswald flew to Helsinki the same day and took a train to Moscow, where granted a week’s permit to stay and assigned a guide by Intourist, the travel agency and tour operator purportedly run by the KGB. Immediately informing his escort that he wished to become a Soviet subject, Oswald was questioned by various officials as to his motivation whom all found his reasoning suspect and a bit incomprehensible and his application was denied with him being told he would need to leave upon the expiration of his visa. The night before he was due to depart, Oswald—distraught and desperate—gave himself a minor but convincingly bloody knick on the wrist in the hotel bathroom, prompting his Intourist minder to refer him to a psychiatric hospital for observation, overstaying his visa, insisting he wanted to remain in the Soviet Union. Later Oswald formerly declared his desire to renounce his American citizenship to an embassy official at the US mission to the Soviet Union, telling the interviewing consular agent he was earnest and would disclose to the Soviets details on the Marine Corps and his speciality as a radar operator, suggesting he had more intelligence secrets he could reveal. 

The consular agent confiscated his passport but did not revoke Oswald’s citizenship. Hoping to be allowed to pursue his studies in Moscow, Oswald was a bit deflated to be sent to Minsk for a factory job producing consumer and space electronics. The future president of an independent Belarus, Stanislau Shushkevich, a coworker, was assigned to Oswald to help him improve his language skills. Despite government-subsidised housing and a generous supplement that afforded Oswald a conformable lifestyle, he eventually became disillusioned, reporting that the the work was drab and there were no little leisure activities and requested to be repatriated. Acquired dependents while Oswald was awaiting the decision and return of his passport were permitted to join him in Texas one year later.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a sign of solidarity with Trump’s failed assassination attempt (with synchronopticæ) plus going Nazi

fourteen years ago: the job market for recent graduates 

militärgeschichtliches denkmal (12. 592)

After doing the weekend shopping in Mellrichstadt (previously), we stopped in the in the Hainberg Arreal on the edge of town for a walk on the groups of the mothballed border garrison of the Cold War. By the old security gate there was a collection of the kind of tanks from the motor pool and the headquarters building preserved in its original condition, furnished as it was during its forty-four year history as home base to the 352nd Panzer Grenadier Battalion of the West German Bundeswehr. 

The museum and documentation centre was closed when we visited but I got immediate feelings of nostalgia for the former US army barracks in Würzburg, Kitzigen, Schweinfurt, Giebelstadt, etc, etc with the same general layout and style of the few representative structures—which of course were German-built and occupied by the Allies at the end of World War II—but learned it contains the command room with access to the bunker and fallout shelter (see also, worth going back for) as well as an arms room and information on the unit’s patrols and foreign missions up to Afghanistan in 2006 after which the brigade was disbanded and the base closed.

sylvanian drama (12. 591)

The Japanese toymaker behind the woodland cast of characters (see previously) is suing a dramaturg who posts popular videos and images across a variety of platforms of the fuzzy creatures portraying bleak and dark adult domestic situations for copyright infringement and causing “irreparable injury” to its reputation. The Irish artist from Kildare, Thea Von Engelbrechten, is filing a countersuit that her creations are parodies and fair-use. There’s a potential for the Streisand Effect and the legacy brand launched in 1985 and otherwise unfamiliar to today’s generation with this soap opera that resonates with audiences.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronopticæ) plus Geraldine Ferraro accepts her party’s nomination (1984)

patrimoine mondial (12. 590)

As NPR reports, twenty-six new sites from all over the world have been inscribed into the UNESCO list of World Heritage (see previously) for 2025, including many we’d have thought would have already been among them like the ensemble of castles commissioned by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, Jamaica’s Port Royal, the memorials of the Cambodian genocide and the coasts of Morbihan with the megaliths of Carnac, necropolises in China and Sardinia and Minoan archeological sites in Crete. Click through at the link above for a full list of the new additions with extensive information about each location.

⚐ (12. 589)

Reminiscent of the flag of South Vietnam, carrying nuanced meanings for the diaspora outside the communist nation and sadly coopted with little context by some pro-Trump elements, we learn via Web Curios that there’s a comparable battle over the flag of Iran. While the official tricolour adopted after the Iranian revolution of 1979 bearing the emblem in the centre with the name of God stylised as both a sword and a tulip, symbolising bravery and martyrdom. Other groups outside of Iran prefer the older banner of the deposed Shah, the personal flag of the Pahlavi dynasty with the ancient symbols of the Sun and Lion that goes back to Byzantine times, both in the pro-monarchy movement and those protesting the current regime as authoritarian as more inclusive. The older flag’s association with conservative monarchists movements and regime change moreover apparently informed Israel’s decision to name its war the with country Rising Lion. Yet other groups are partial to the three coloured bands with no shield as a way to acknowledge diversity of political allegiances and was historically championed by pro-constitutional, democratic counter-revolutionaries before outside intervention. The pictured further alternative is charged with the slogan Woman Life Freedom that emerged out of the 2022 protests that arose after Kurdish Mahsa Zhina Amini died in the custody of the Guidance Patrol, the religious morality police for not conforming to government standards of modesty in dress, with the message rendered in the same early Persian script, Kufic—cuneiform adapted to Arabic letters, that embroiders the official flag’s fimbriation as the takbīr (تَكْبِير ).

9x9 (12. 588)

may every day be another wonderful secret: a round up on the Epstein files and Trump’s tantrums—for MAGA, Nazis are cool but they’re drawing the line here—at least there’s a line, hopefully  

infra-realism: off-the-spectrum photographs of Palm Springs California by Kate Ballis—see previously  

power of the purse: a much diminished US legislator’s concessions to the directive of the administration not only slashes the budget for public broadcasting and foreign aid, it also signals their redundancy as a rubber stamp for the executive branch 

let’s go fly a kite: instead of windmills, Ireland tries an alternative to harness energy  

there’s a little frank lloyd wrong in all of us: a horrendous split level property in North Carolina gets the McMansion Hell treatment—previously, via Neatorama  

photovoltaic array: a gallery of images from China showing the future of clean, renewable energy  

fascism for first time founders: the broligraghy, the dictator trap and the invisible brain-drain 

long photographs: contemplative landscapes from Noah Kalina 

 the colbert report: CBS cancelling The Late Show next summer after host openly criticised the settlement between Trump and parent company Paramount—though cites purely financial reasons

moffett field (12. 587)

Via Kottke, we really enjoyed browsing the Internet Archive’s expansive exhibit of over five thousand historical images of the NASA Ames Research Centre, built at the tip of San Francisco Bay in 1939 and now surrounded by the campuses of tech giants Google, Microsoft and Apple originally as a facility to conduct wind-tunnel tests and gauge the aerodynamic properties of propeller-drive aircraft, its scope broadened quickly after World War II to compass space exploration, rocketry and computer science. Perusing the collection (see also) gives one an appreciation of the eight decades’ worth of missions, discoveries and breakthroughs that came from this nexus of Silicon Valley and makes us more than a little anxious about the future of public, state-sponsored research and long-term repercussions of short-sighted priorities.

synchronoptica

one year ago: American’s AI-military complex (with synchronopticæ) plus an evil cocktail

paris-flash (12. 586)

Via Messy Nessy Chic (whom has found an assortment of travel-related items including a bit more information on l’îlot rocheux de Nichtarguér) we are directed to the premiere animated short from Champeaux Studios—the founder in collaboration with Jean Image, stage-name of Imre Hajdú, also responsible for France’s first full-length animated film, Jeannot l'intrépide, Johnny the Giant-Killer). This satiric cartoon about a group of tourists, foreign visitors and one provincial, from 1958 but with a thoroughly contemporary style would have been screened in cinemas, like Looney Tunes, with newsreels before the feature. Sparse commentary by chanson artist Jacques Baudoin—unnecessary to enjoy the animation and visual presentations of the behaviour of tourists (we especially liked the montage of snapshots with the American party posing for selfies)—this portrait of Paris in the late 1950s won numerous accolades with its commanding audience-share. There are some light stereotypes, mostly to do with travellers abroad, which dates the work but don’t detract from the fun.