11 x 11 (12. 622)

ped x’ing: an urban hawk takes advantage of a crosswalk signal to shield it from view as it stalks its pigeon bounty—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest  

whispering gallery mode: peacock plumage can be induced to emit lasers—via the New Shelton wet/dry  

pix: US government going after Brazil’s native digital payment platform—calling it an unfair barrier to trade—meanwhile only President Lula da Silva is standing up to Trump’s tariff bullying  

showrunner: Amazon investing in AI start-up Fable that allows subscribers to make their own TV shows  

pro-somnolence: the technique of cognitive shuffling to quiet the mind and get back to sleep 

manifesto antropófago: a 1928 counter-colonialism and counter-appropriation movement venturing out of São Paulo 

the candy factory: the unique artists’ commune in New York City founded by Ann Ballentine—via Messy Nessy Chic  

query-agnostic adversarial triggers: feline-related textual asides cause marked increase in AI error rates  

one year ago, america was a dead country, now it is the hottest country anywhere in the world: Trump escalates trade war with Canada as Carney suggests they may miss the deadline  

living batteries: cable bacteria thriving in muddy harness chemical gradients to create and electrical circuit and get oxygen in an anoxic environment  

starling network: Benn Jordan saved a .PNG image to a bird by turning a drawing into audio which could be mimicked and reproduced, see also—via Waxy

endangerment finding (12. 621)

Not only has the world’s biggest polluter under the Trump administration sought to abrogate its responsibilities for damage to the planet that does not respect borders through rolling back of regulations and cancelling vital science programmes that monitor and measure greenhouse, it has undone the underpinnings of the accepted science that conducted during the Obama era that is the foundation of a host laws and environmental regulations. The EPA investigation determined, pursuant to several court cases, that six key greenhouse gases (see previously) threaten both the health and welfare of current and future generations and is the basis for the US Clear Air Act. Industries at the time raised strong objections but most businesses have since made peace with the posture for their image and the public good (see also) and have built in mitigating factors into manufacturing and distribution to lessen their impact. After failing during Trump’s first term, the current EPA administrator rescinded the landmark finding at a truck stop in Indiana to much fanfare, an ideological win for staunch denialists which make up much of the MAGA base that stands in stark contrast to decades of evidence and near global consensus. For its part, the agency charged with protecting the environment and averting the climate catastrophe has resigned its commission, offering that because climate change is not localised, it lacks jurisdiction for enforcement, maintaining that the finding failed to balance adverse impacts on manufacturers and distributors (see negative externalities above), or alternately giving up, saying that no policy could make a dent in the problem anyway. Not yet finalised, the decision is already facing legal challenges.

agrovoltaics (12. 620)

Via Clive Thompson’s latest Linkfest—with back links to previous research on the topic, we return to the subject of growing crops underneath solar panels, addressing some of reasonable objections to industrial scale solar-farms (see previously) taking up arable land. Colocation provides numerous mutual benefits that are only beginning to be factored in—not least of which is public support for solar when it’s dual-use but also the symbiosis between plants and their artificial photovoltaic counterparts, many plants growing better with the added shade and the panels trap water vapour, yielding quite impressive leafy greens and the photovoltaic array also get the advantage from the undergrowth by regulating ambient heat and helping to maintain an optimal operating temperature by their off-gassing. Much more at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: mandatory voting in Australia (with synchronopticæ), psychometric scales plus prosperity and apocalypse

twelve years ago: daily affirmations plus more fairy tale Germany 

fourteen years ago: goblin holes plus toponymic etymology

fifteen years ago: for profit privacy 

lolita express (12. 619)

Half-way into Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel, narrator Humbert Humbert, recounting his obsession, victimisation and eventual kidnapping of a twelve-year old girl after becoming her step-father, pens a poetical classified:

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand and three hundred days
Profession: None, or Starlet.

Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?
Why are you hiding, darling?
(I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze,
I cannot get out, said the starling).

Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?
What make is the magic carpet?
Is a Cream Cougar the present craze?
And where are you parked, my car pet?

Who is your hero, Dolores Haze?
Still one of those blue-caped star-men?
Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays,
And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen!

Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts!
Are you still dancin’, darlin’?
(Both in worn Levis, both in torn T-shirts,
And I, in my corner, snarlin’).

Happy, happy is gnarled McFate
Touring the States with a child wife,
Ploughing his Molly in every State
Among the protected wild life.

My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair,
And never closed when I kissed her.
Know an old perfume called Soleil Vert?
Are you from Paris, mister?

L'autre soir un air froid d’opéra m’alita;
Son félé—bien fol est qui sy fie!
Il neige, le décor s’écroule, Lolita!
Lolita, qu’ai-je fait de ta vie?

Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,
Of hate and remorse, I'm dying.
And again my hairy fist I raise,
And again I hear you crying.

Officer, officer, there they go—
In the rain, where that lighted store is!
And her socks are white, and I love her so,
And her name is Haze, Dolores.

Officer, officer, there they are—
Dolores Haze and her lover!
Whip out your gun and follow that car.
Now tumble out, and take cover.

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Her dream-gray gaze never flinches.
Ninety pounds is all she weighs
With a height of sixty inches.

My car is limping, Dolores Haze,
And the last long lap is the hardest,
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,
And the rest is rust and stardust.

The fragrance mentioned in the seventh stanza Soleil vert (Green Sun, Humbert was previously an ad copy writer for the industry) is a fictional perfume but is also the French title of the 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! and the cinematic adaptation of Soylent Green set in the year 2022 (close), in possibly another authoritarian manoeuvre to normalisation and acceptance—after all Romeo and Juliet were underage. I suspect that Nabokov did not suspect that his work would, unironically, become such an American cultural touchstone, ignoring the observations on culture and becoming the same monster of incuriosity as the protagonist, sanitised and made family-friendly like what may be yet to come.

8x8 (12. 618)

eight limes, no more: a list is a map, a compass, a prayer—via MetaFilter  

ключевская сопка: volcanic eruption in Russia’s far east sets off earthquake and tsunami warnings  

windrunner: turbine manufacturer—in defiance of Trump’s claim that windmills are killing us—building world’s largest aircraft (see also) to transport huge blades to remote wind-farms  

foredone: useless etymology and some very cromulent words

twin primes: pairs that only are separated by an even number in between grow rarer as one looks at greater ranges of values but no one knows if they run out altogether  

evrópusambandið: Iceland considering resuming accession talks with the supranational body  

this guy is taking people from the spa: Trump reveals to press-pool that falling out with Epstein was over him stealing staff  

an oral history of atlantis: a conversation about metafiction with author Ed Park

made man (12. 617)

On this day, at some time after 15:00 local time, James “Jimmy” Riddle Hoffa, American labour activist and president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Bloomfield Township, Michigan—a suburb of Detroit. Involved with organised crime and the Mafia since his early years working with the union, making accommodations and compromises with gangsters that often controlled trucking and warehouse guilds through the 1930s in order to leverage strength in numbers and consolidate disparate associations for collective bargaining, though the influence of the Mafia increased as membership grew.

Various allegations of bribery, fraud and corruption cast a pall over his tenure from 1957 through his 1963 indictment for jury tampering, prosecuted by Attorney General Robert F Kennedy. Despite harsh sentencing, Hoffa was reelected to a third term as the Teamsters’ president, resigning from office in 1971 while still in prison as a condition of a presidential pardon, Nixon commuting his sentence of thirteen years to time served, less than five, pledging not to engage with any labour organisation for a period of nine years. The unions endorsed Nixon’s 1972 reelection bid, breaking with tradition of supporting the Democratic candidate. By the following year, Hoffa sought to return to union leadership and unsuccessfully sued the administration to invalidate those restrictions, and undeterred planned to regain his role—despite his parole and vocal opposition from dons and caporegimes of prominent criminal syndicates. Hoffa had arranged a meeting on the afternoon of 30 July at the Machus Red Fox restaurant, venue of his son’s wedding reception, in order to make peace with two of those Mafia families. Hoffa was stood up however when none showed at the appointed time, documented by a call home from a payphone, and friends found his unlocked car in the restaurant’s parking lot early the next morning. Extensive searches, surveillance and depositions yielded no leads, and Hoffa was declared legally deceased by a judge on the anniversary of his disappearance in 1982 with no individuals charged. Not infrequent excavations in the Detroit area and perennial indulges from The Irishman to Bruce Almighty sustain the mystery and haunt America’s attitudes toward the labour movement and unions to this day.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronopticæ) plus Monty Hall enlightenment 

twelve years ago: sci-fi author Hugo Gernsbach

fourteen years ago: a trip to Aquitaine and Medoc 

fifteen years ago: metamorphoses plus Big Tech’s partnership with spy agencies

mama appelsap (12. 616)

Delving the depths of Wikipedia, we learn that in Dutch, with a much more contemporary and relatable mishearing than the seventeenth century Scottish ballad The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray (see previously), the concept of mondegreen is customarily referred to as the above, “Mommy apple juice,” from the 1982 Michael Jackson song Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ with the lyrics “Mama-se mama-sa ma-ma-coo-sa”—popularised by a long-running radio call-in segment where listeners were encouraged to contribute their own misheard music under that name. More formally referred to auditieve pareidolia, the Jackson song’s coda is sampled from Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango’s 1972 disco hit hit “Soul Makossa,” whom later sued for a monetary settlement for copyright infringement. Although I am disinclined to believe the prevalence of the name—it sounds like something I would make up in my head, the Wikipedia goes on to inform that in Germany mondegreens are informally called Agathe Bauers—misinterpreting the refrain from the song from Snap!

handelsbilanz (12. 615)

Aside from getting an ostensibly raw and lopsided tariff deal out of Trump—though far from finalised and terms and conditions could always change—using trade as foreign policy tool, a particularly blunt and inappropriate instrument as Trump as done in order to bypass more traditional channels, the EU’s capitulation has proved to be not only a disappointment among academics and the press but also leaders and is representing a split in solidarity in the already fractious bloc, with many regarding the submission as a concession to German industry at the expense of the agricultural and pharmaceutical sectors. The onerous commitment riding on the deal to purchase over a trillion dollars in US energy and weapons is an assurance that Brussels can not compel members to do—so there’s that Ausfahrt, and moreover very little of these burgeoning conflicts address the consumers’ role in the opening of markets, who do indeed collectively punch their own weight—with the notable exception of Canada, also under threat of annexation. Flooded with cheaper, lower quality American goods, shoppers can still choose to boycott them and retailers will no longer stock them. Individuals can also forgo an albeit more entrenched and harder to avoid US dominance on financial and internet services—which for the American rentier economy—would send an even bigger message though a bit of inconvenience and creative work-arounds, refraining from using credit cards and payment clearing houses and American internet companies.

synchronoptica

one year ago: JD Vance’s sofa memoirs (with synchronopticæ), nobody reads ads, twirling towards freedom, a phoney controversy over the Olympics opening ceremony plus Friday Night Videos (1983)

twelve years ago: derivative blockbusters, stormy weather plus a visit to Gelnhausen

fifteen years ago: smoking ban in Bavaria plus word clouds as CVs