Saturday 17 February 2024

ลผuraw (11. 355)

Via Strange Company, not only do we learn that a medieval token of affection, a tin badge in the shape of a turtledove with the inscription “Amor vincit omnia” was found by the port crane of Gdรกnsk, we also find out that its discovery is owing to an extensive renovation project to preserve the thirteenth century technological and architectural marvel on the Motล‚awa. The crane, human-powered by crew running hamster wheel fashion on treadmills was capable of hoisting cargo and shipbuilding materials weighing several tonnes, has been closed to the public since 2020 but will soon reopen with new exhibits on the city’s mercantile history with holographic docents and period characters to act as guides. More from t he History Blog at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: conspiracy theories about walkable cities plus sending a terminator back in time to save the human internet

two years ago: Saint Mesrop Mashtots plus Chess ‘72

three years ago: first and final frames, ten rules of good design plus more bardcore

four years ago: custom facial coverings

five years ago: AI-generated faces plus new names for very large and very small numbers


Thursday 2 November 2023

6x6 (11. 091)

in front of the children: a Betamax find from 1983 on the BBC’s six decades of television for younger audiences 

ofrenda: a shrine on All Souls Day to the recently departed Paul Rubens, (clap! clap! clap!) deep in the heart of Texas 

terraces: an obscure 1977 made-for-television movie about tenants of a high-rise featuring Miss Julie Newmar, Jane Dulo and some gay neighbours  

forest friends: a profile of ecologist Simona Kossack’s three-decade residence in a secluded primeval wood  

now and then: The Beatles release their final song  

goldar: the late 60’s Japanese tokusatsu series, Ambassador Magma—the original Transformers, that achieved cult status in foreign markets as The Space Giants

Sunday 29 October 2023

the devil’s ball (11. 084)

With introductory remarks on how artists are rebelling against having their works and style scraped and assimilated often without attribution or respect and are fighting back, Fancy Notions directs us to a spooky Halloween treat, fever dream in the form of the uncut animated short from pioneering stop-motion storyteller Wล‚adysล‚aw Starewicz from 1933. The original was considerably edited for length prior to release and many of the film segments are lost but using AI to help fill in the gaps, the original story of this le Fรฉtiche (the Mascot) series has been restored. The surreal cast of creepy toys and re-animated bones (Starewicz’ earliest experiments used dead insects articulated with wires, which reviewers believed were expertly trained bugs) coming to life and vie for a prize orange. Later filmmakers, like Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mister Fox (Starewicz’ most acclaimed work was Le Roman de Renard) or Tim Burton’s Nightmare before Christmas, pay homage to the artist’s influence.

Friday 13 October 2023

9x9 (11. 055)

the witch of positano: a portrait of Bohemian original Vali Myers who inspired Tennessee Williams and danced for Donovan’s signature song, charging one Nubian goat for her performance  

hotel california: legacy luxury in Kabul now jointly run by the Taliban and their quiet dissenters—via Web Curios  

the mysterious land of the grimaults: another look at The Saga of the Viking Women and their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent  

the rest vs the west: proven tech ventures that rival occidental offerings 

my coffee with niles: a meta episode of Frasier remade in the style of one hundred thirty animators and filmmakers  

watermeal: world’s smallest flowering plant could play an outsized role in interplanetary exploration  

don’t crash the pips: the Canadian Broadcasting Company discontinues the long dash time signal—see also  

unauthorised build: this “illegal” LEGO construction bends conventions  

nightclub school: The New Romantics and 80s youth subculture  

synchronoptica

one year ago: another MST3K classic,  the world’s first personal data protection law plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: your daily demon: Focalor, The Style Council plus a psychedelic design collective

three years ago: a fashion show with puppets plus Witchtok community doing the Lord’s Work

four years ago: the introduction of the Ampelmรคnnchen (1961), more links to revisit plus more mushroom finds

five years ago: democracy by lottery, vintage Sainsbury’s packaging plus a music video from Bob Sinclar

Thursday 12 October 2023

mรฉthode polonaise (11. 054)

Pedagogue and prominent adherent of Transcendentalism, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody founded the first kindergarten in the United States, and a vocal advocate that play over rote memorisation ought to be privileged in education and introduced many new ideas into the standard curriculum and public discourse, including the rights and roles of women in society and especially noted for the so called Polish System of Antoni Jaลผwiล„ski popularised by engineer General Jรณzef Bem. This grid system with a prescribed colour and symbol key to follow that although forgotten in modern teaching but very much en vogue for a time across Europe by allowing students to visualise and intuit the assigned chronology, as with parallel methods (see also) of making historical events readily approachable, optically, using their eyes and homework as “feeders to the reservoir of the mind.” These centographs were coded in a similar fashion to flow charts to indicate conflicts, conquests, conspiracies, unions and truces to make otherwise inaccessible historical events (beyond the grasp of living memory) a creative exercise in plotting and more conducive to learning. More from Futility Closet at the link up top.

Saturday 26 August 2023

gaberboccus press (10. 965)

Named after a Latin translation of the Lewis Carroll poem Jabberwocky, the multimedia concern founded by the Polish refugee couple Stefan and Franciska Themerson in 1948, we learn courtesy of Languagehat, produced over sixty titles in its three decades of existence—ranging from the collected essays and lectures of philosopher Bertrand Russell, poetry by David Miller and Henru Chopin, the calligrams of Apollimaire to their work works and perhaps most famously a faithful English translation of the pataphysical play by Alfred Jarry Ubi Roi (previously here and here). Eventually sold to a publishing house in Amsterdam, Gaberboccus immediately following World War II was a rejection of the stateless author and political exile, bolstering the International character of their clients and exposing them to a wider audience with a experience and fervour that resists displacement.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit plus the tyranny and utility of time

two years ago: prayers to saints during plague times ranked plus Steven Spielberg’s a.i. promotions

three years ago: the Isle of Wight Festival (1970), Ten Million Photo Play Plots, Space Force hierarchy, IKEA in Animal-Crossing, guerilla video documentarians plus more unbuilt New York

four years ago: pirate treasure plus the introduction of the Austin-Mini (1959)

five years ago: RIP John McCain plus the Chinese script for women only

Wednesday 10 May 2023

8x8 (10. 730)

grift for the mill: New York congressional representative George Santos (previously) surrenders to federal authorities for arraignment on thirteen counts of criminal deceit and defrauding donors 

choose or loose: following the shuttering of Buzzfeed and the uncertain future of Vice, Paramount shuts down MTV News, cutting a quarter of its global workforce—see more, see also

in-go-nom-pa-shi: a Plains Indian Sign Talk primer—via Nag on the Lake 

i want to believe: UFO-hunters’ grassroots surveillance network project to scan the skies 

past-exonerative tense: copaganda and other choice of tone that normalise police violence—see also  

krรณlewiec: Poland renames the Russian exclave with a native endonym, in what is deemed a hostile act by Moscow  

content farms: AI chatbots being used to generate dozens of breaking news sites to draw advertisers—via the new shelton wet/dry  

townhall: CNN takes a big risk in giving Trump a platform with a live studio audience—see previously

Thursday 4 May 2023

sankt florian (10. 719)

Fรชted on this day on the occasion of his martyrdom by drowning in the River Enns in the year 304, Florianus from the ancient Roman outpost of ร†lium Cetium—modern day St Pรถlten, in the province of Noricum north of the Danube—is the patron-protector of Linz, Oberรถsterreich and Poland as well as soap-makers, brewers, firefighters and chimney sweeps. Rising in the ranks to commander of the imperial army, Florian had the extra detail of organising fire brigades (there no long being a monopoly on public safety) but once rumours spread that Florian was not enforcing restrictions against practising Christianity among his soldiers, Diocletian opened an inquiry. Summarily, the emperor’s ombudsman ordered Florian to be burned at the stake for defy the edict, but after scoffing at a death by fire, the executioners instead tied a millstone around his neck and tossed him into the water. Invoked against fire, flood and the pains of Purgatory—in Austria and Germany used as the universal call sign for a fire emergency—a saying, Sankt-Florians-Prinzip, in the Sprachraum has developed following the sentiment of the fantastic word ฮŸแฝฮบแพฐฮปฮญฮณฯ‰ฮฝ out of a slightly ironic prayer “O heiliger Sankt Florian, verschon’ mein Haus, zรผnd’ and’re an”—that is, Saint Florian, spare my house and set another alight.

Wednesday 22 March 2023

8x8 (10. 628)

springfield, usa: a map of places in America with the same names with a locus of which locality most likely meant—via Kottke  

koล›ciรณล‚: modern and Brutalist churches of Poland  

panspermia: researchers studying samples from the Ryugu asteroid find traces of a RNA component, supporting theories that the building blocks of biology were incubated in space 

before karen, there was nellie oleson: the propagandising of homesteading in Little House on the Prairie  

gemรผths- und augen-ergรถtzung: the microscopic illustrations of Martin Frobenius Ledermรผller  

reliable sources: Microsoft and Google’s chatbots are using each other as professional references, calling into question the ecosystem of the internet’s information 

quo vadis: a monastic brotherhood outside St Stephan’s in Vienna has set up a tattoo parlour—see also  

bracket: a more relatable March Madness

Monday 6 March 2023

9x9 (10. 596)

destination berlin: a Royal Military Police guide to the divided city from 1988—see also

geodomesticeerde: one Dutch rancher spearheading the protest against livestock reductions 

gado gado: the Indonesia version of the cult Cobb salad that may be the best in the world—via Dig

fret and fingerbรธard: a guitar nearly exclusively sourced from IKEA furnishing elements—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest  

paratethys sea: the ancient lake that stretched from the Alps to the Arals was the world’s largest lake  

florilegium: botanical collages by an eighteenth-century septuagenarian—via Kottke  

mar yousef’s: the “pizza church” of Jordan imparting Iraqi Christian refugees with marketable skills—via Miss Cellania  

heritage graziers: regenerative agriculture, no farmstead required  

orange alternative: how a diminutive graffito helped bring down the Soviet Union

Sunday 5 February 2023

9x9 (10. 527)

famous one hundred twenty-three metre spire of salisbury cathedral: Polish coast guard rescues divers near critical infrastructure who were searching for amber 

macroagression: some GOP members in the US congress have switched their American flag lapels for tiny assault rifles—see also  

backbox: watch composer and sound designer Suzanne Ciani, Diva of the Diode, create a soundscape for a pinball game  

donks: a new animated short from Felix Colgrave explores lost cargo, avatars and adaptive bottom feeders  

mastodon flock: find your following—via Waxy  

cel-ray: a peppery, celery soda that one can still find for sale  

rosetta stone: two trilingual ancient clay tablets rediscovered help scholars decipher a lost Canaanite script  

brought down by the left-wing economic establishment: Liz Truss attempts to revive her political career with a long screed in the Sunday Telegraph  

sรฆstrengur: Iceland developing contingency plans in case the undersea cables connecting it to the rest of the world are severed

Friday 30 December 2022

mcmlxxxix (10. 370)

By dint of the limited permutations of the Gregorian, civil calendar, we discover that we can helpfully recycle (see previously) our calendars from 2017 or 1989 for the upcoming 2023. Not to be dismissive of the events bookended six years ago, the political turning points of the latter with the fall of the Berlin Wall, Perestroika, the Velvet Revolution, the uprisings in Romania and China, as well as the gradual dismantling of the apartheid government in South Africa, the return of democratic norms to Brazil and Poland and the first internet service providers seem to bode as auspicious points of correspondence. Having lived through it, may we may live in exciting times. 

Thursday 22 December 2022

rzฤ…d rzeczypospolitej polskiej na uchodลบstwie (10. 354)

Established in 1939 after the invasion and annexation by the Nazis in September 1939 and exerting considerable influence diplomatically and militarily throughout World War II and subsequent occupation by German and Soviet forces which effectively ended the Second Polish Republic, the government-in-exile, first based in Paris and Angers and following the Fall of France, continued its caretaker role—albeit it with waning internation recognition after the formation of the Provisional Government of National in 1945, opposed by the majority of the diaspora as demonstrative democracy and the chance for Communists to assert power—a suspicion that proved correct, until its dissolution on this day in 1990, when president in exile Ryszard Kaczorowski passed the responsibilities, constitution and state seals to Lech Waล‚ฤ™sa of Poland’s Third Republic during a special ceremony at the royal palace of Warsaw.

Thursday 21 April 2022

red baron or what do you want on your tombstone?

Vaunted as the ace-of-aces of the Great War, Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen was shot down and killed on this day in 1918 after scoring his seventy-ninth and eightieth air combat victories the day prior. Previously we had poked about Wiesbaden’s Sรผdfriedhof in search of the Red Baron’s resting place and thought it appropriate to visit today. Already elevated to legendary stature in life and subject to hero-worship that Richthofen was wont to indulge as well as respected by his enemies, the circumstances surrounding his death are a matter of controversy and speculation, coming to the aid of his cousin, another member of the elite Flying Circus (see above), Lieutenant Wolfram von Richthofen, who was taking enemy fire. The source of the fatal bullet is uncertain with several vectors entertained. As was
customary, the commanding officer of the Royal Airforce combatant squandron accorded the Baron a military funeral with full-honours, near the spot where the fighter pilot fell in Bertangles in the Somme—and had a more active than usual career in death, disinterred and reburied in the German Military Cemetery at Fricourt in Picardie, brought to Berlin by his brother Lothar (a site that was later relegated to a no man’s land on the boundary of the Soviet zone of occupation and often pelted with stray bullets in attempts to stop people from fleeing for the West—his brother’s gravesite in their hometown of ลšwidnica too was levelled once Silesia was restored to Poland after World War II) and finally in 1975 transferred to the family plot in Wiesbaden.

Saturday 9 April 2022

narkotyki

We thoroughly enjoyed this introduction to the artist, novelist and political theorist of the inter-war period in Europe Stanisล‚aw Ignacy Witkiewicz (*1885 - †1939, known professionally as Witkacy), witness to quite a bit of history, through the lens of his portrait factory, with many of his commissions documenting his drug intake—even if just the dregs of caffeine from a cup of coffee—with coded annotations whist painting, usually under a course of self-medication of synthesised mescaline, cocaine, nicotine and alcohol, aggressively marketed to the masses at the time, despite addiction and substance abuse being acknowledged problems, as relief for those broken by World War I. Wikiewicz died by intentional overdose after fleeing to eastern Poland after learning of the Nazi invasion on the western border when he heard reports of the Soviets approaching from the opposite flank. More from Public Domain Review at the link above.

Sunday 13 March 2022

6x6

choose your own adventure: the character-driven photography of Grzegorz Kurzejamski invites the viewer to create a narrative for them  

warp and werf: the Scottish Register of Tartans welcomes a new Ukrainian pattern  

(oh what a night): reaching number one on American charts on this day in 1976, the Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons hit was originally called “Fifth December 1933” and about the end of Prohibition 

cat naps: Hosei University researches what humans can glean from feline sleep patterns  

toad town: an exhaustive collection of level maps from many video game franchises—via Things Magazine  

photovoltaics: the photographic portfolio of Catherine Canac-Marquis

Monday 28 February 2022

horodecki house

Via the always excellent Everlasting Blรถrt, we learn about the remarkable Art Nouveau structure that has been the backdrop of President Zelenskyy’s latest dispatches to the nation and the world, opposite his office at № 10 Bankova Street in Kyiv. Also known as the House with Chimaeras, it was created by architect Wล‚adysล‚aw Horodecki in 1902 as a luxury apartment block and features a number of ornate decorative elements of rhinoceros, elephants, lotuses, giant catfish grotesques and frog battlements by sculptor Emilio Sala, earning the collaboration high praise and comparison to Anton Gaudรญ. With occupants including a safari club, sugar baron and exclusive clinic for party elite, it is presently used as a governmental residence and conference centre. More at the links above.

Friday 18 February 2022

7x7

pigeon fancy: Emil Schachtzabel illustrates unnatural selection in prize breeds  

act local, think global: a twenty-question quiz about one’s bioregion, immediate surroundings and a challenge for low-scorers 

onomastic terminology: petrichor, overmorrow, interrobangs and other proper orthonyms  

wysiwyg: Jane Austen used straight pins to edit the rough drafts of her manuscripts before word processors and correction-liquid  

device orchestra: various peripherals, gadgets and appliances perform “Seven Nation Army”  

pandemic cartograms: our unvaccinated world  

hodowla goล‚ฤ™bi: profiling Poland’s pigeon keepers, moving up in the pecking-order

Monday 24 January 2022

mล‚oda polska

Via Calvert Journal, we are introduced to the movement that has parallels with the near contemporary Arts and Crafts in England, owing as much to independence and freedom from foreign influence as it does to synergistic aesthetic opposition against Positivism in Young Poland discovered in the country’s sanatoria, Zakopane, high altitude and remote and relatively free from the intrigues that had despoiled the cities that became a focus of these restored values. Questioning the emphasis on progress, adherents sought to bring beauty and wonder into the daily dialogue of every individual regardless of their station or circumstance and a rebuffing of industry and occupation.

Monday 17 January 2022

die sternjรคgerin

Born this day in the City of Gdaล„sk in 1647 (†1693), Elisabeth Catherina Hevelius (nรฉe Koopmann) is considered to be one of the first women astronomers and significantly contributed to observational knowledge of the skies, publishing Prodromus astronomiรฆ in 1690, a catalogue of over fifteen hundred stars. Sharing the same professional passion as her husband, Johannes Hevelius (Jan Heweliusz), the two—both from a wealthy merchant background, moved around the various cities of the Hanseatic League before returning Danzig and constructing a complex of buildings which was at the time among the best observatories in the world (Stellรฆburgum—Star Castle) and garnered quite an international reputation with extensive joint research on sunspots and selenography (charting the features of the lunar surface) and hosting visiting dignitaries and scientists like Edmond Halley—greatly impressed by the couple’s calculations that articulated how comets orbit the Sun in parabolic paths.