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 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 

the stone door (12. 630)

We appreciated the extra insight into the influence and craft of Leonora Carrington through a review of her 1977 surreal novel about World War II narrated with the voices of the displaced and disappeared trying to return to a home and past that no longer exists through characters who vanish from the page as it unfolds—all stories are true; begin. A virtual witches bottle of dreams, the occult and a metaphysical, parasocial relationship between episodic interlocutors, one nameless and unclear who is trapped—much like Carrington’s art—behind the titular barrier, and an attempt to reconcile the rituals that limn the protagonists’ progress that correspond with the occult beliefs of the Nazis and not necessarily the spells of liberation that they sought after with magic just as likely to be found in transformative bureaucracy that made exiles, reducing individuals to stateless persons and statistics. Much more from LitHub at the link above.

no—they got the metric system over there—they call it royale with breeze (12. 629)

Via Kottke and though sadly the crisps that appear in the spot are not an actual product, we applaud alternative energy giant Vattenfall for teaming up with Samuel L Jackson to offer this taste of fossil freedom. This minute-long refutation of Big Oil and its campaign of misinformation and world-destroying legacy not only is a masterpiece for Europe wanting to reduce its dependence on Russia fuel following its invasion of Ukraine, it is also a strong rebuke of Trump’s asymmetrical tariff deal for the EU, demanding the purchase of American energy (previously), which is best undone with renewables, like wind-farming, to shut down a bullying tyrant of a failing petrostate. I’m sorry—did I break your concentration?

*    *    *    *    *

synchronoptica

one year ago: a return to the Frankonian Wine Islands (with synchronopticæ) 

twelve years ago: zebra stripes as dazzle camouflage plus mobile phones as point-of-sale devices

fourteen years ago: austerity in the US 

fifteen years ago: a rainy summer plus take-down notices for Wikipedia, possibly confusing it with Wikileaks

sixteen years ago: rejecting expertise plus political caricatures

medicare bears (12. 628)

The latest syndicated comic from Rubin Bolin for the CBS Saturday morning line up gets on notes and perfectly encapsulates the network’s obsequiousness to the regime in order to secure a merger between the Paramount and Sundance catalogue, welcoming in a demerit system for content that does not reflect its values and a hall-monitor for reporting in order to vouchsafe its capitulation in terms of journalistic integrity, targeted by the Trump administration’s federal communications commission (FCC) following allegations of editing an interview with candidate Kamala Harris as news distortion and paid a nominal settlement, even though the segment in question was not a debate and subject to standard practices of cleaning up prior to air. In addition to monetary concession, the network agreed to install an ombudsman to monitor CBS news for bias. Prior to the deal, the media clearinghouses had joint stakes in franchises like Star Trek and Mission: Impossible and Transformers, but Paramount wanted assets like Nickelodeon and SpongeBob to include derivative spin-offs. Critics have decried this blatant act of bribery for an acquiescent parent company (it seems a bit preferable when American TV was controlled by defence contractors and were capable of push-back.