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[ by Charles Cameron — a pair of DoubleQuotes and a whole bunch of the questions the two of them raise ]
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DoubleQuote I: St Greta, Virgin and Guevara:

Questions:

Is either meme valid?

including its implications?

Are those implications obscure to you?

Can both sets of implications be valid at once?

Could both memes be irrelevant?

misleading?

Are they in conflict?

counterpoint?

harmony?

Do you have a preference for one meme over the other?

What’s your opinion of the other meme?

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DoubleQuote II: St Greta and St Malala:

Each of these young women is addressing the United Nations, Malala asking for universal education, Greta for immediate action on climate change.

Questions::

Is there urgent need for universal education?

Is there universal need for action on climate change?

is Malala Yousafzai a sort of saint?

Is Greta Thunberg a sort of saint?

Does either one set your teeth on edge?

Why do I even have to ask that question?

[ by Charles Cameron — ouroboroi — i’ll take the elephant first, since the cats are frankly vulgar ]
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More vicious circles — serpents biting their tails. As I’ve suggested elsewhere, the serpent biting its tail or ouroboros, is one of humankind’s oldest and most profound patterns.

It appears that cats, and elephants too, can enact it.

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The circle here is a triple one — same transformer which killed child elephant is avenged by child’s mother:

Mother elephant uproots transformer that electrocuted her baby in Andhra – a sad but also a fascinating read. Thankfully the villagers understood the mom’s emotions – for most part the human ego assumes these to be ‘human’ emotions https://t.co/zn2FdxdmFb

— Anurag Vohra (@anuragv1) July 23, 2019

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I can’t do better for a follow-up than to embed for you this tweet by my friend Bill Banzon;

Medieval Paintings of Cats Licking Their Butts > alternative Uroboros > @hipbonegamer https://t.co/QLiySbThQZ via @SadAndUseless

— Bill Benzon (@bbenzon) July 23, 2019

Click through to the full thread he links to, if you want to see a dozen or so more examples of cat-lick.

I mean, this was clearly a medieval meme..

[ by Charles Cameron — Mad Scientist asks, John Robb responds]
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Today’s call and response comes to me via two blog posts that followed one another in my RSS feed — in the reverse order to the one I read them in. I’ve straightened that out so response now follows call for your convenience.

From Max Brooks (World War Z) lecturing for the Army’s 2016 “Mad Scientist” initiative:

One of the US government’s biggest challenges today, particularly in the context of military issues, is its inability to communicate big ideas to the American people .. This has caused a significant portion of the population to disengage from government, including and especially from the military .. It may take several decades to reverse the trend ..

There’s more there in the report at the Atlantic Council‘s Art of the Future blog, as Brooks discusses particular big ideas that need communicating — but it’s the communication issue itself that caught my eye.

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So how does communication happen most powerfully in todays media environment?

Here are a few points from John Robb‘s thoughts on that very question, posted today at Global Guerrillas. First, a sample of what’s commonly known as an internet meme, but which John would prefer to call a MediaGlyph — his candidate for the punchiest mode of delivery:

And now his comments under the header All Hail The MediaGlyph, The New King of Political Communications:

Successful mediaglyphs blanket social networks, often going viral to reach tens of millions of viewers in days as they are rapidly with an ever expanding network of friends.

Collectively, mediaglyphs generate tens of millions of impressions an hour. Several orders of magnitude (100x) more than any other form of political communication.

Unlike TV, Print, and most forms of online communication, mediaglyphs are built for consumption on smartphones and visual modes of social networking. They are also built for speedy consumption, providing a quick emotional hit in comparison to a long winded article with an uncertain payoff.

Nothing other form of political communications compare.

Mediaglyphs are one of ways online conflict, in this case political conflict, is being fought. These online wars are occurring everywhere, all the time, at every level. They are deciding the future.

That’s why I’m writing a new book called as a natural follow on to my previous book: Brave New War:

The War Online: How Conflicts are Fought and Won on Social Networks

I look forward to reviewing John’s book, which will no doubt get into some detail not easily stated in a single MediaGlyph — my guess, however, is that John’s text will itself be a terrific mine for glyphs, given his obvious delight in short, quotable one-sentence paragraphs.

[ by Charles Cameron — in using the word apocalyptic to describe mundane (or zombied) disturbances such as Brexit, we lose sight of the beauty and mystery it conceals & reveals ]
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In fact, not so much as a whiff of fresh napalm in the morning.

Tim Furnish has been on a mini-crusade recently against the misuse of the word apocalypse, tweeting examples along with this meme-image:

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Here are two examples of the genre. which Tim featured last night because each comments on Brexit in apocalyptic terms:

Sources:

Financial Post, Trump, Clinton and Brexit — the three horses of democracy’s Apocalypse

Japan Times, Brexit: The Apocalypse … or not

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Tim is right.

The word apocalypse properly refers the vision John, the seer of Patmos, had, tearing away of the veil which so often hides the divine glory from mortal eyes: the Greek word apokalypsis is appropriately translated revelation, and the first verse of the book called The Apocalypse by Catholics and The Revelation of John in the King James Version runs as follows:

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John.

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Consider the beauty — and the otherworldiness — of this image from Albrecht Durer. illustrating the “woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars” of Revelation 12.1

:

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The imagery of this final book of the Bible does not show us the usual world of our senses, but a realm of great symbolic beauty, far beyond the reach of unaided eye or camera — as the great literary critic Northrop Frye notes, when he calls the book “a fairy tale about a damsel in distress, a hero killing dragons, a wicked witch, and a wonderful city glittering with jewels” in his Anatomy of Criticism, p 108.

Like the works of the English visionary William Blake, Revelation is more poetic than literal, visionary in the best sense — and it is hardly surprising that Blake is among its foremost illustrators:

Blake, Four and Twenty Elders Casting their Crowns before the Divine Throne, The Tate Gallery

Brexit simply cannot match the darkness of Revelation’s Babylon in its final throes, nor the “new heaven and new earth” that succeed it — “for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away”.

[ by Charles Cameron — once again learning the language i already speak ]
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Okay, now the humor:

Pursuant to my interest in learning the language which is now my mother tongue — including such terms as sperg out and edgelord —– Adam Elkus today updated me on the concept of the Dank Meme —

Dank meme? It’s another of those serpent eats tail things:

— scrambling my mind in time for breakfast by introducing me to Thomas the Dank Engine:

I must admit I’m more used to his Tank Engine cousin:

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I’m a big fan of Gordon, the fictional anthropomorphic tender locomotive, by the way — it’s a clan thing.