I want to break free

Fears about the Russian leader’s mental and physical wellbeing have come into sharp focus since he invaded Ukraine nearly four months ago.

There is speculation he is suffering from terminal cancer or Parkinson’s following reports of trembling hands and mysterious disappearances.

A video has now emerged from an awards ceremony on Sunday showing the tyrant’s shaky legs.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Pessimism confirmed: Consumer sentiment plummets to 40-year low.

TikTok Star Cooper Noriega Was Found Dead In Los Angeles At 19 The social media star's cause of death remains under investigation after his body was found in a parking lot.

But that’s okay, according to this at the World Economic Forum:  Psychologists say a good life doesn’t have to be happy, or even meaningful. So stop complaining, serfs.

Tucked away in a Florentine Medici Villa is the World’s Rarest Citrus Collection

The dynasty of the lemon has fallen from the aristocratic tree and now occupies the common ground of contemporary cuisine. Lost to us are its exotic cousins, the strange fruits of all sizes, colours and shapes with the family name Citron, not lemon. Together with olives and garlic the now humbled lemon is perhaps the…

Walk like an Egyptian

Posted on June 8, 2022 by things magazine

A triumph of miniaturization: making Lego displays for real / see also The User Experience Design of Lego Interface Panels, at the resting and hopefully refreshing Kottke / this is where all the old cars went, the legacy of the UK’s 2009 Vehicle Scrappage Scheme / a rare opportunity to buy a house by John Outram, The Egyptian House / it turns out that superyachts are incredibly fragile, made from “costly, and perishable materials: marble, gilded metal fittings, sensitive carpets, silk, precious woods and leathers, teak decking, mirror polished stainless steel and a high gloss paint system…. Without the right care, and the kind of temperature and humidity controls normally used to preserve valuable artworks, the captain said the Amadea would “rapidly deteriorate”, leaving “an unsaleable hull”” / photography by An-Sofie Kesteleyn / Generative Artworks / play with parameters at Sliderland / old Japanese guitar catalogues. 

Own-goal football

In a 1994 qualifying match for the Caribbean Cup, both Barbados and Grenada attempted to score deliberate own goals – because it was the best strategy available.

Monsters are not what they used to be.

I’m reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley for school, and the monster is magnificent. He starts out with an elegance of mind and sweetness of temperament, reading Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther and gathering firewood for a poor family. But America’s monster: Capitol riot hearings reveal Trump’s malevolencehis creator, Victor Frankenstein, abandons him and refuses him a mate to calm his loneliness. The creature finds no one who does not recoil in fear and disgust from his stitched-together appearance, his yellow skin and eyes and black lips. Embittered, he seeks revenge on his creator and the world.

New tool from Google shows how the planet is changing in near real time

Fast Company: “A new tool from Google Earth Engine and the nonprofit World Resources Institute pulls from satellite data to build detailed maps in near real time. Called Dynamic World, it zooms in on the planet in 10-by-10-meter squares from satellite images collected every two to five days. The program uses artificial intelligence to classify each pixel based on nine categories that range from bare ground to trees, crops, and buildings. Researchers, nonprofits, and other users can “explore and track and monitor changes in these terrestrial ecosystems over time,” says Tanya Birch, senior program manager for Google Earth Outreach. As the tool was being built last year, Birch used it in the days after the Caldor Fire, a wildfire that burned more than 200,000 acres in California. The pixels in satellite images quickly changed from being classified as “trees” to “shrub and scrub.”..”

Art, But Make it Hot

The 18th century saw a decadent sexual revolution for the privileged, where the old-world pressures of church and state behaviour waned and the floodgates to libertine perversity opened. And Rococo art was this era’s erotic entertainment. Sexually charged painting and erotic literature were abundant, encouraged and consumed en-masse by all: from tacky prints and scratchy…

C-SPAN – January 6 Hearings – First Open Testimony Before January 6 Committee. Held June 9, 2022. After months of closed door investigations, the House January 6 Committee held its first hearing with public testimony about what transpired-and why-during the assault on the U.S. Capitol. Users may search the transcript by choosing text, people or graphical timeline, filter by speaker, or search the text.

• See the PBS News Hour for analysis, commentary
• Washington Post – Officer gives chilling account of ‘war scene’
• Top Trump advisers did not believe election fraud claims had merit, new testimony shows
• From the Archives The Attack: Before, During and After By Washington Post Staff
• New York Times – Graphic Footage and Stark Testimony Show Depth of Jan. 6 Attack
• Trump ‘Lit the Flame’ for the Riot, Cheney Says – The House panel’s leaders, Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, began laying out what they described as a methodical conspiracy led by former President Trump.
• Backing the committee up were the words of Trump administration officials, played in excerpts from videotaped interviews. Follow updates.