Wingtip 30,000 feet over the English Channel. Source: It’s a real photo, really. Taken by me.
The Library of Congress (LOC) gives a full context presentation of John Gillespie Magee’s famous “High Flight” poem written from the cockpit of his 1941 Spitfire, as he trained to defeat the Nazis.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor ever eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
LOC offers us this concluding analysis, a nod to cognitive warriors of non-physical battles.
By writing “High Flight,” John Gillespie Magee, Jr., achieved a place in American consciousness arguably greater than any he could have achieved through heroism in battle.
*cough*
Non-physical, lyrical combat is in fact… battle more relevant today than ever with the acceleration of attacks using AI.
For decades there has been a dilemma of privacy versus safety nagging commercial malls, as compared with public spaces.
More specifically, law enforcement trying to provide safety faced a serious data ownership boundary issue when many large open spaces for assembly were privatized and controlled for profit by very small groups (e.g. corporations).
Enter detailed map and geolocation software vendors.
While many, or perhaps nearly all people, think about databases of spaces in terms of shoppers and commuters, behind the scenes are special operators training in high stakes rapid targeted insertions for hostage rescues and threat elimination.
A very long time ago we would be talking about some maps of rebel compounds traced in charcoal by hand onto a headscarf that gets imaged and transmitted by radio to rescue teams (de oppresso liber)… and “here” we are today simply talking about APIs and a finger touching a screen.
A good example of the latest achievement — very open steps for public knowledge through private space boundaries — is being showcased by German engineers at HERE working with Japanese corporations.
“Yahoo! JAPAN Maps’ easy interface guides users through complex indoor venues such as mega-shopping mall LaLaport Tokyo Bay (shown on left) and the commercial hub around Shibuya — Japan’s world-famous fashion epicenter (shown on right).” Source: HERE
With HERE, opening Yahoo! JAPAN Maps on your smartphone will reveal a seamless navigation experience. Each shopping mall floor is clear and easy to read. For example, all stores are shaded in pink, restaurants are colored orange and additional icons for escalators, elevators, ATMs and toilets are highlighted accordingly. As you are guided through the space, you can quickly switch floors with a simple tap of your screen.
Tokyo’s shopping centers are just as fast-paced inside as the roads that surround them — powered by HERE Indoor Map, Yahoo! JAPAN Maps’ floor plans are updated monthly so any renovations or new store launches are automatically captured and made visible.
Private spaces “automatically captured and made visible” sounds like constant surveillance positioned as for good, or in other words some subtle law and order enforcement direct marketing, if I’ve ever seen it.
Shopping, dining, or eliminating a dangerous threat. What’s your preferred tool and destination? “A woman walks past as South Korean soldiers participate in an anti-chemical and anti-terror exercise… Seoul, South Korea, August 22, 2023.” Source: Chung Sung-Jun / Getty
After all, who truly benefits from the mass privatization of open spaces especially in terms of freedoms, such as from harms?
The next logical step of this map innovation will be highly precise 3D fly-through data in VR for practice rescue training (like 1990s VRML all over again). It’s a relatively small data storage and processing market, but there’s nonetheless a lot of quiet public money fueling these seemingly large commercial efforts.
Here is an interesting essay from a year ago, worth contemplating for the next year.
Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York had been far too progressive on racial issues for most southern Democrats, and when Harry S. Truman took office after FDR’s death, they were thrilled that one of their own was taking over. Truman was a white Democrat from Missouri who had been a thorough racist as a younger man, quite in keeping with his era’s southern Democrats.
But by late 1946, Truman had come to embrace civil rights. In 1952, Truman told an audience in Harlem, New York, what had changed his mind.
“Right after World War II, religious and racial intolerance began to show up just as it did in 1919,” he said. ”There were a good many incidents of violence and friction, but two of them in particular made a very deep impression on me. One was when a Negro veteran, still wearing this country’s uniform, was arrested, and beaten and blinded. Not long after that, two Negro veterans with their wives lost their lives at the hands of a mob.”
Injustice. Truman recognized gross violent injustice. He talked in 1946 about the Black experience in America like he hadn’t thought much about his own role in improving it for his entire life. Like he didn’t oppose all those lynchings and murders under the “America First” banner he knew about for the prior 30 years (“Late 1946… just as… 1919”).
The KKK adopted the nativist slogan “America First” in 1916 and soon after began wearing their infamous white robes to enact mass domestic terrorism, a copy of costumes used in a racist propaganda movie called “Birth of a Nation”, which had been promoted by President Wilson after he screened it in the White House.
I think the Truman library doesn’t do him justice when it awkwardly and arguably unfairly tries to lavish him with praise for being so late to recognize Blacks as human.
It was assumed he would follow the lead of most other politicians of that time period and not show sympathy for African Americans’ goals for equal treatment.
To the astonishment of many, including many in his own party, on July 26, 1948 Harry Truman made one of the biggest contributions to date for racial integration and equality. In issuing Executive Order 9981 Truman ordered the desegregation of the armed forces. These documents trace what some call the beginning of the Civil Rights movement.
*cough*
*cough*
“Some call” what?
President Grant had signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1875 (reaffirming The Civil Rights Act of 1866, which had overturned President Johnson’s veto).
Yet President Truman more than 70 years late to the table is going to be credited for “the beginning of the Civil Rights movement”? NO.
…the concept of “civil rights” was established [immediately following General Grant’s victory in Civil War]. Grant was nearly universally revered by the time of his death in 1885. A monumental tomb in New York City was constructed in his honor as a result of what was the largest public fundraising campaign in history up to that time. However, what gains were made in the realm of civil rights were under assault by the time Grant died and almost completely destroyed by the turn of the century.
Destroyed by the turn of the century (1900) is a reference to highly decorated Black soldiers returning from the Spanish American war to violent racist injustice at home.
This was the tragedy that led into the horrible racist Woodrow Wilson elected President (1912), restarting the KKK (1915), forcing all Blacks out of public office, and unleashing federal and private troops to ruthlessley murder the Blacks who tried to organize or unionize for Civil Rights (Elaine 1919 and Tulsa 1921, etc.).
Domestic terrorist planes dropping napalm bombs on an American city to destroy Black prosperity, all-white fire departments standing down to instead throw hundreds or thousands of murdered American veterans into mass graves… all these Civil Rights movement battles somehow are overlooked by Truman for his adult years, while winning all his elections? Unlikely. He allegedly hated the KKK, for example, not least of all because the Kruel Klown Klub of America had inspired Hitler and dared to run candidates against him.
“Today — not tomorrow — we must do all that is humanly possible to provide a haven and place of safety for all those who can be grasped from the hands of the Nazi butchers. Free lands must be opened to them. Their present oppressors must know that they will be held directly accountable for their bloody deeds. To do all of this, we must draw deeply on our tradition of aid to the oppressed, and to our great national generosity. This is not a Jewish problem. It is an American problem — and we must and we will face it squarely and honorably.”
To everyone’s surprise he not only recognized Blacks, he brushed aside antisemitic rants from U.S. military and state department officials in 1948 to immediately recognize Israel.
Fun history fact: today, not tomorrow, was a war-time anti-Nazi slogan.
WWII British rail propaganda poster. Source: British Transit History Museum
And that’s why Truman took Civil Rights action for Blacks right away in 1946, not back in 1919… Whoops.
Perhaps given his background in racism he never felt he could push ahead and enact a real change until he had won the executive right to do it at the highest level.
Truman is a very interesting politician for his career rising out of the horribly deceptive “Missouri compromise” of Civil War, and eventually coming out as anti-racist after being known as so racist. But his latter day public switch to the right side of history, more than a half century late, was most certainly NOT at the beginning of the Civil Rights movement.
According to an Arkansas State Police preliminary fatal crash summary, 48-year-old Tourke Hooker, of Camden, was traveling south in a 2018 Tesla T3 when he negotiated a curve and lost control of the vehicle, rotating counter-clockwise and crossing the centerline into the northbound lane. The rear of the vehicle collided with a northbound 2017 Nissan Maxima driven by Ashley French, 28, of Magnolia.
A T3? They meant a Tesla Model 3, surely.
And negotiated a curve? The southbound curve is clockwise, while the Tesla somehow rotated counter-clockwise when it veered into oncoming traffic. Sounds like a Tesla control arm failure, a known unfixed design defect.
Highway 79 South of Camden is a very wide arc, nearly straight, where the crash was reported, not to mention the posted speed limit of 40mph.
Does this curve look like it needs negotiating? Source: Google Maps
Let’s be honest, Arkansas press isn’t known for its reporting integrity.
For further proof, note the two ads posted on such tragic news of those killed by a Tesla: a funeral home planner, and a grim reaper from Facebook trying to scare people into giving “$10 and 1 non-perishable food item”.
Source: ArkAdelphian
Here again is an example of reporting integrity failure in Arkansas. An ad placement of a white hand that apparently is celebrating death of a Black woman, as the end of debt.
Source: MagnoliaReporter
Awful, callous, shameless.
The text of the obituary for Ashley French says she was a student of healthcare and a mother of two. She was killed by the Tesla on her way to class, in front of other commuting students.
Ashley French was enrolled in the SAU Tech LPN/Paramedic to RN Program. She was commuting from her home in Magnolia to the campus when the accident happened. French had recently completed the university’s PN Program and was actively involved in the current RN program.
The Dean asked for prayers for Ashley’s family, including her two children, and the SAU Tech community. The incident has affected the university, with students and faculty expressing their sadness. Some students, who also travel from Magnolia, saw the accident.
Ashley French was known in the university community for her kindness and smile. Her death has had a significant effect on the SAU Tech community.
