i’m feeling lucky (11. 568)

Well before the default search engine began adding AI overviews to its results, users expressed their frustration and rebellion by adding a /r to their query to solicit some community juried results from Redditors less biased towards optimisation and more geared towards what people drove through discussion. Whilst rankings on any platform have never been free from a certain tilt that may create unwanted obstacles—or produce the desired outcome—this sort of copilot mode be default risks the user blaming, shooting the messenger (see previously) for what’s served up through the enhanced algorithm. Although Google chose to showcase its latest AI-focused upgrade on its biggest forum, the alternative filter, emulator of familiar web-caches reaching back a decade before SEO and general bot buttinskis was announced quietly by a liaison on a competing site. Sans ads, knowledge panels and scraping metadata from websites—but with tradeoffs—the parameter and suffix udm=14 brings one back to the unadulterated web to an extent that’s probably more geared to utility rather than simply nostalgia. More from Tedium at the link above.

the great 404 (11. 567)

Via Maps Mania, we are invited to revisit the Kessler Effect (previously here and here) and the pressing, existential problem of space junk. NASA scientist Donald J Kessler conjectured in 1978 a upper-limit for density of satellites in low-Earth orbit, a threshold beyond which (a level that according to some estimates is already passed) even a minor collision could cause a catastrophic chain-reaction, an ablation cascade that would render subsequent launches impossible and leave future exploration grounded and triangulate the implications, connecting the dots, by finding constellations in the debris field as it becomes more fraught and a challenge to break through, like the pictured Broken Compass (see below, see also). What asterisms can you see?

 synchronoptica

one year ago: Blessed Alcuin’s logic puzzle, nine kings, one room (1910) plus an extreme exoplanet

two years ago: assorted links to revisit plus more Alcuin

three years ago: a brood of cicadas in North America emerges,  taxia of twist-ties, naming every colour plus the fly-bee

four years ago: World Bee Day, Theatre of the Orb of the World (1570) plus Meck Dec Day

five years ago: standardising le Grand K, the NSA (1919), fetishising the five-paragraph essay, medieval medical records plus a new single from Vampire Weekend

pfingstsonntag (11. 566)

Courtesy of H’s fancy drone piloting we had a nice bird‘s eye view of the grounds but we were soon sharing the airspace with avian friends (I had never heard the belching cries of swans or the clapping of a stork before) and craft launching from a nearby strip built for model airplanes which could really do some impressive stunt maneuvers—none of which I could manage to capture, not for the lack of trying. 

Later we took a longer hike in the opposite direction through a stand of forest to a Biergarten outside of Oberreichenbach and back again.

synchronoptica

one year ago: St Ivo, The Phantom Menace (1999), assorted links to revisit plus more medieval collective nouns

two years ago: Amy Fisher (1992), St Dunstan, an altarpiece by Titian plus the zine of William Blake

three years ago: a birthday wish (1962), an animated stratified map, a classic by Paul Simon plus the stadio typeface

four years ago: the UK public terror alert system plus unsustainable arbitrage

five years ago: the Dutch Venice, etiquette as a social wedge, a tardigrade stress-ball plus flora and fauna of the New World charted out

neustadt a. / a. (11. 565)

We ventured out to visit the main town of the region, Neustadt an der Aisch—a member of the cohort of European municipalities called Neustädter numbering around a dozen—and saw the old town, which was cultivated through the auspices of House Hohenzollern under the burgraves of Nürnberg into a cultural, political and economic hub along the main overland trade route between Würzburg and Nürnberg already by the twelfth century but ending after the Thirty Years War in the mid-1600s and falling under Prussian sovereignty. Neustadt faded in importance but due to subsequent developments in the rail network (which followed those ancient merchant roads) and repopulated with Germans expelled from the Sudatenland, Neustadt regained some of its former prominence.

We saw the Altes Schloss that now hosts a carp and aquaculture museum and the old town square that features a Neptune, referred to as the Gabelmensch like its former diocese of Bamberg, in front of the Rathaus. 

Afterwards we made loop along a hiking path through the forest from the campgrounds to a little community called Kästel with a twelfth century church dedicated to St Mauritius next to this ivy covered guesthouse. The church was closed by a tablet indicated that it was founded by the Knights Templar with the incipit Non nobis—from the Latin prayer of thanksgiving and humility: Nōn nōbīs, Domine, nōn nōbīs, sed nōminī tuō dā glōriam or ”Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to thy name give the glory.“

synchronoptica

one year ago: a classic from Looking Glass plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: the Geneva Convention on Environmental Modification (1977), another MST3K classic, a national assembly in Frankfurt (1848) plus more links to enjoy

three years ago: even more links plus the plan to put a roller coaster on the Golden Gate Bridge

four years ago: the eruption of Mt Saint Helens plus more links

five years ago: an old/new painting by Vermeer 

einöde (11. 564)

For a weekend getaway, H found a camping spot on a carp aquaculture site in the single settlement of Sintmannsbuch in the Aisch valley, a tributary of the Regnitz. 

The country estate (Guthof) with fish farm was informal campgrounds with room for a few pitches (surely usually outnumbering the nine residents of the community) has its first documented mention in 1348 on the rolls of the provost of Bamberg and in the imperially immediate city of Nuremberg and the tradition of raising fish in captivity (see previously) goes back over a millennium and the scheme saw a marked

increase from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries following the enforcement of fasting and dietary abstention and could be sold for a premium as free-range supplies failed to meet demand with secular landlords and monastic communities especially encouraging pond management.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: the first colour photography

three years ago: the East German film industry, Bob Dylan in Manchester plus more on Morse code

four years ago: the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Bifobia, last normal photo plus a windshield tour around the region

five years ago: Morning Edition’s new theme, more on the TWA hotel, celebrating the work of IM Pei, mall muzak plus same-sex marriage legalised in Taiwan

scope of practise (11. 563)

Via Kottke, we that the inaugural World Umarlling Championship has been announced and is taking submissions, giving us a chance to revisit the gentle stereotype, classically a male pensioner who pauses to observe and inspect construction works in progress. Self-appointed foremen, the interest that umari take in infrastructure and built-environments is a model that we could all take a lesson from in terms of civic engagement without being a busybody or a backseat driver, especially under the terms of the competition. Learn ore at the links above.

10x10 (11. 562)

crimes of atrocity: a long, dense episode of -ologies with Alie Ward on the hugely fraught and difficult subject of genocide with a powerful and circumspect post-script 

airoboros: artificial intelligence trained on AI made content is becoming highly problematic and only compounded—see previously  

the city on the edge of forever: public portal linking Dublin and New York City suspended after inappropriate behaviour  

palmerston’s follies: two maritime forts off Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight that have been converted into boutique accommodations go up for auction  

the deuce: the Greek grandmother who built an adult entertainment empire in Times Square before its Disneyfication 

foot on the gas: the inevitability of the climate collapse and humanity’s capacity for adjustment  

⌘ |: the lost history of pre-internet emoji and rendering software—via Waxy—see previously 

flashing headlights: the giant Dana squid’s photophores in attack-mode  

eternal return: cosmic cycles and time’s resurgence  

first-day agenda: how Trump is framing his vision for a second-term

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit plus a visit to Arnstadt

two years ago: St Brendan, more links to enjoy plus the Electrotechnical Exhibition of 1891

three years ago: a classic from Kim Carnes, a language quiz, more links worth the revisit plus an ancient action figure

four years ago: more Trump’s Space Force, birdhouses, the stress of social media moderation, a medieval manuscript game plus a musical typing tutor

five years ago: GenX, consular services at McDonalds, soliciting grievances, Japanese mascots plus office equipment

he will not go out in the fresh air or eat his vegetables (11. 561)

Via Futility Closet, we learn that the four-year-old son Junior—called Tony—of humorist, critic author (an

auxiliary member of the Algonquin Roundtable) and eventual editor of the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town section, Wolcott Gibbs, composed a defiant chant intoned one evening while taking a bath. With the opening and refrain, his father took down the words with the opening and refrain: 

He will just do nothing at all.
He will just sit there in the noonday sun.
And when they speak to him, he will not answer them,
Because he does not care to.

Folk singer and activist Pete Seeger (previously) adapted the lines into a song, finding the opposition highly relatable.