👅 (13. 754)

Inclined to screw up my face and stick out my tongue when doing a delicate or precision task, I can well imagine that this slim dental retainer with a pressure sensitive trackpad to be worn on the palette that personal experience is testimony to the accuracy of the tongue, clicking, scrolling, swiping and dragging—with a range of other haptic cues—to keep one’s pointer from being lost on the screen. Moving from the experimental phase with volunteer trials to public sales, we learn courtesy of Clive Thompson’s Linkfest—individuals with mobility limitation are the first priority, but the hands-free Mouthpad (see also this kiss-by-wire prototype which we are not sure went anywhere) but hundred of individuals have signed on to the waitlist to purchase the device, including professionals like surgeons, pianists, mechanics and technicians. The makers have also recognised the potential to incorporate it with other wearables for text to speech applications with augmented-reality spectacles. More at the links above.

ordinary abundance (13. 741)

Via Things Magazine, we quite enjoyed this cozy turn about a tiny apartment that showcases all the features and amenities which were out of reach or unimaginable to generations just a few removed from the comfortable and sheltered lives that many of us live—taken for granted—scrolling through short vignettes that are inexhaustive, not giving the complete the history behind the unseen conveniences, but in those brief anecdotes we come to appreciate what’s not fully articulated that underpins their engineering and the larger systems behind them. Of course we knew about the savings in labour but it isn’t something that presents itself with enough regularity, particularly when bemoaning doing a chore that used to occupy a whole day, the work that went into a single garment, distances transversed and the cost of candlepower. We also liked how the suite looks like an IKEA showroom.

mundaneum (13. 731)

Established in Mons in 1910 by the collaborative work of two Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine as founding pioneers of the discipline of documentation science, informatics or library science as the study of the recording, storage and retrieval of data, following the their first joint project of establishing the Institute International de Bibliographie in Brussels with the mission to classify and cross-reference all recorded knowledge with a card catalogue system with tables, indicators and connecting mark-up notation, originally as the Palais Mondial in the left wing of the government office complex Parc du Cinquantenaire, this programme of systematic and public-facing linkages, an archive of some twelve million annotated index cards and other documents provisioned the internet—see also here, here, here and here. Though the technical capacity of the peace activist’s time was not up to the challenge, Otlet hoped that people would be able to access his catalogue from their own home studies or the office and experimented with a pre-digital réseau (network), virtual communities of researchers that cooperated via telegraph. As the scope of the project grew, there were plans to move the Mundaneum (World Museum) to Geneva to be housed in an institution designed by architect Le Corbusier (previously) but failing to materialise, the collection was copied and with another branch in the Hague, championed by Otto Neurath in 1933, following the political economist’s flight from Austria after the defeat of the Social Democratic Party following the dissolution of the Hapsburg empire (here is another artefact from Otlet). Under Nazi occupation the Mundaneum was placed in storage with the area in the Cinquantenaire Palace used as an exhibition space for Third Reich Art. The collection was eventually reunited, restored and conserved in a large former department store in the Hainaut capital. On this day in 2015, the massive filing cabinets of the card catalogue were featured as the Google Doodle in tribute to its founders and forefathers of open information. More from Open Culture at the link up top.

light-rail (13. 623)

Via Kottke, we learn that a rather enterprising Swiss start-up has recently concluded the first year’s trial run of a demonstration project in along a one hundred metre stretch of train track in the village of Buttes in the canton of Neuchâtel that placed forty-eight removable solar panels in the space between between the rails (called sleepers—Bahnschwellen, the spot for the crossties). Installed in May of 2025, the short spur has seen the traffic of over eleven thousand locomotives (despite its size and remoteness, it is well-connected to the national transport network), rolling safely over the panels, which despite the narrow gauge, short length of the array and interruptions for maintenance and winter snows, the portable solar generator produced enough electricity to power four average Swiss homes for an entire year. The innovative idea is attracting interest in Italy, France, the Philippines and South Korea.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus Project Ester

two years ago: more links to enjoy plus the Trump-Vance ticket

three years ago: even more links,  Netscape Navigator defunct (1993) plus the Rosetta Stone (1799)

four years ago: Jane Fonda in Vietnam (1972) plus Gangnam Style (2012)

five years ago: the Elder Fuþark plus the Stone Ship of Nassjä

six years ago: a rhapsodic roller-coaster, Castor and Pollux plus more official state junk

the innovator’s dilemma (13. 604)

Despite the early acquisition of DeepMind and a bit contrary to the overall consensus regarding the quality of search that’s a bit poisoned by AI tangents (the AI underpinnings should be disclosed but it has a visibility problem—not in its inscrutability—but it making it seen, many problem don’t benefit from shoehorning it into everything and putting it on display in a why that overshadows its potential use as a sounding board or a brainstorming interlocutor), Google has consistently fallen in second place in the field of artificial intelligence. A Planet Money interview with an author profiling the founder and current chief executive officer of the company’s AI research laboratory, now called Google Brain, Demis Hassbis, aside from covering the computer scientist’s lofty and noble ambitions and striving for fundamental understanding, the author also puts forward an intriguing set of reasons that might account for the tech giant’s self-sabotage. As with the case-studies of industry leaders developing potential disruptive innovations—Kodak inventing the first digital cameras, Blockbuster’s early partnership with Netflix, Xerox’ pioneering of the personal computer—likewise for Google, whose business model is based on reliable search results and serving advertising, it may have perceived a threat to its reputation should those answers be seen as something below what we’ve become accustomed to and reluctance to deviate from a proven formula. More from the NPR podcast at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with sychronoptica) plus Campus Crusades for Christ

two years ago: Savage Curtain, impressions of West Berlin in the summer of 1977 plus Project 2025

three years ago: more links to enjoy 

four years ago: TRON (1982), the first animated Hobbit, Choreography for a Copy Machine, Prague’s Charles Bridge plus even more links

five years ago: pets’ past lives regression, more on the Know Nothing Party plus underway to Sweden

six years ago: Bernkastle-Kues, more of Mittlemosel plus the Republic of Palau (1981)

brandweer (13. 602)

Mindful of how Marcus Lininius Crassus financed the First Triumvirate, overseeing the transition of the Republic to an Empire with his enormous wealth earned in large part by controlling the original bucket-brigade in Rome, dispatching slaves ready to extinguish a conflagration but doing little until the distressed owners of the property agreed to a fire-sale and leasing back to the former as tenants, we had thought that the public good of a fire department had just evolved slowly with gradual technological improvements and had not appreciated how maturity came rapidly thanks to a painter and tinkerer in seventeenth century Amsterdam. As the richest city in the world at the time, the capital had recognised and developed a relatively sophisticated system for dealing with burning homes and businesses, a daily occurrence given over to select guilds to patrol with suppression facilitated by easy access to water from the city’s network of canals. After the Great Fire of London, which proved uncontrollable and resulted in the invention of fire insurance, echoing the scheme from Ancient Rome with underwriters installing plaques, fire marks, on covered buildings, and enduring their own losses, artist and inventor Jan van der Heyden suggested improvements to hoses and pumps greatly increasing efficacy. At the expense of his artistic career, van der Heyden engineered a more efficient fire-fighting team, supported by municipalities and illuminated Amsterdam with patrols of gas lamp lighters, which contributed to no blazes in the city.

synchronoptica

one year ago: gendered characters in children’s literature (with synchronoptica), ending the prohibition on churches endorsing political candidates plus assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: the 1948 London Games plus the Thirteen Colonies’ attempt to avoid open conflict with Britain (1775)

three years ago: everything under the Sun, Jupiter’s moons plus more fortifications along the US-Mexico border

four years ago: the Roswell incident (1947), AI ethics plus the animations of Sam Lyon 

five years ago: your daily demon, a lexical database of marine life, uncombable hair syndrome, the first certified Gold Record plus the death of Shelley (1822)

six years ago: the martyrdom of St Kilian plus the Upper Moselle 

social proprioception (13. 598)

Courtesy of Clive Thompson’s latest Linkfest, not only are we rather remarkable obituary for playwright Tom Stoppard whose poetic explanation of chaos theory in Arcadia inspired an audience member, a visiting oncologist to invent the technique of adjuvant systemic chemotherapy as a more effective treatment for breast cancer, through the magic of triangulation, saving untold lives unbeknownst to the author, we have occasion to examine the phenomenon further of happenstance and serendipity of disparate topics coalescing in unexpected ways that we need to be more receptive to. Thompson’s own hedgehog idea and guiding principle (an antidote to the previous post) grew out of a “slow hunch” that took years to germinate to describe the sense-of-self informed by social media, itself engendering amazing feats of coordination and kinship even through the briefest of briefs.

9x9 (13. 570)

general magic: an ambitious project to create the smart phone (see below) in the early 1990s failed over lack of constraint and too much freedom, not lack of vision, talent or technology

odyssey: charting the great journeys of fiction—see also  

humphrey’ executor: US supreme court strikes down federal laws that prevent the president from firing heads of (some) independent agencies—see previously  

don’t swear jerry—and don’t bleed in the sink, i’ve just cleaned it: actor and comedian Penelope Keith has died, aged 89  

🧸: Nuigurumi Jinja (Plushie Shire) dedicated in northern Kyoto for honouring beloved stuffed animals—see also here and here 

keedoozle: the grocery store vending machine of the 1930s 

 île de peliz: the solitary natural islet of Lake Geneva, with room for a plane tree  

hypergraphia: history’s most prolific writers 

how about this: 1960s housewife and the pocket phone of the future

synchronoptica

one year ago:  a walk along the beach at Gârves (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: a visit to the Rocco di Caldè 

three years ago: animatronic Trump, an updated We Didn’t Start the Fire plus US supreme court strikes down affirmative action for college admissions

four years ago: goodwill ambassador Samantha Reed Smith 

five years ago: cartoonist Thornton Hee plus a record-setting Van Gogh auction (1987)

six years ago: Quo Vadis,  the feast of SS Peter and Paul, the debut of the iPhone (2007), a chiptune classic, exotic crisps plus Japanese train station jingles

@bitnic (13. 545)

Building off of the concept of distribution lists developed for IBM mainframes to handle email aliases, software engineer Éric Thomas studying at École Centrale Paris released the stable version of his modified application, with his own code, LISTSERV with automated features that allowed subscribers to join or leave groups without human administration as postmasters, edit templates and create auto-replies for system and welcome messages. Still foundational architecture, Thomas’ programme also included the first double opt-in methods and spam filters for junk- and grey-mail (bulk mailers at one point solicited but now considered a nuisance).

synchronoptica

one year ago: the menhirs of Bretagne (with synchronoptica) plus the Quiberon peninsula

two years ago: Lukmanier pass plus arriving at Lake Maggiore

three years ago: assorted links worth revisiting 

four years ago: a banger from The Knack, Logan’s Run plus the sterling area

five years ago: harvesting solar power plus Mid-Summer celebrations

six years ago: more links to enjoy, satisdiction plus scratching an itch

accessibility settings (13. 524)

Via Boing Boing, we learn that the operating system for iPhones have had a feature for a couple of years now called Vehicle Motion Cues that makes it more comfortable for a car passenger and potentially lessens the effects of motion sickness from staring at one’s phone by taking readings from the device’s gyroscope and accelerometer and placing flecks on the edge of the screen that harmonises with the motions of the automobile. When I am the passenger seat, lately, I am usually too enamoured with the passing scenery to even glance at my phone, but the author, whom road-tested it during an extended excursion—a working-vacation, swears by the magic dots and it could offer some relief (see also) during a bus ride or for a moment’s research and consultation, when I can feel the nausea creeping up trying to focus on one thing for too long.  Motion sickness comes about when our own gyroscope, the inner ear, detects that we are moving but the eyes, fixed on something static, presents a contradiction.

10x10 (13. 523)

nine days in june: landmark US supreme court decisions of years past and upcoming cases during this busy time of the year  

mcmodernslopecore: AI-generated architecture—via Miss Cellania  

photovoltaic: a brief tutorial on how solar panels work—via Kottke  

linguist fingerprints: every AI talks with an accent  

i am not on harry mudd’s client list—stop talking about it, i don’t even know him: the Federation’s war with the Romulans was a total success 

defender of the realm: profiles of medieval warrior women  

dialog society: a trove of leaked documents reveals the activities of Peter Thiel’s secretive cult, prepping for WWIII with a breeding programme—see previously  

spacex: a plan to deploy a million satellites in Earth orbit would ruin the night sky for everyone  

parc güell: Antoni Gaudí’s 1926 failed housing estate has become one of Barcelona’s public spaces  

51st state: rural Illinois citizens petition to eject Chicago and split into two polities—see also 

synchronoptica

one year ago: the G7 in Alberta and the Israeli-Iran war (with synchronoptica) plus the Trump phone 

two years ago: a synthesiser performance piece , OJ Simpson flees police (1994) plus tragic children’s names

three years ago: NASCAR celebrates Pride plus a werewolf exorcism (1983)

four years ago: Star Trek: TAS retcon, the Watergate break-in (1972) plus assorted links to revisit

five years ago: Iceland reforms its naming rules, ASCII standards published (1963), the musical stylings of the Sons of Kemet plus calendrical dating formats

six years ago: US supreme court erodes the Civil Rights Act, the East German uprising of 1953, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls plus Trump sues to stop publication of a tell-all exposé

dynalites (13. 502)

Via Waxy, we are lured down a deep rabbit hole on the subject of commercial signage that are especially ubiquitous in the US, bas relief and embossed vacuum or thermo-formed pan-faced signs that go by various trade names with this appreciation of their origin and design from Beth Matthews. Appearing in the 1950s after the novelty of neon was replaced by the durability and low cost of moulded plastic, the spread of the new format can be credited to a salesman in Los Angeles, Conrad Escalante, who developed and patented the layout of standard variants seen on guest lodgings, salons, repair shops, eateries and other businesses in need of a shingle. The docent then conducts us on a tour to see iconic examples in the wild. More at the links above.

9x9 (13. 499)

of all the us presidents he’s still the mussoliniest: Randy Rainbow reprises his rendition of the Major General’s Song, see previously—via Miss Cellania  

twenty-first century nightmares: Bill Hsu presents a collection of dark animated films 

hello dalí: a marginally remastered copy of the bizarre 1973 ITV profile of the artist surfaces on Youtube  

éolienne: an innovative nineteenth century redesign for the windmill  

responding with improvisation and exhaustion: meeting the subliterate where they are is a disservice to education  

necropolis: marine researchers discover the site of a whale fall in a deep rift valley of the Indian ocean  

guest-starring in alphabetical order: Poseidon’s Underworld on the short-lived 1984 television series Glitter about the cast of a glossy magazine  

the meatseller: an harrowing and brutal animation of a young migrant’s journey from Nigeria to Italy 

 there was nothing in al capone’s vault but it wasn’t geraldo’s fault: premiere episode of America’s history in one hundred objects (see also) begins with an underwhelming time capsule opened in 1976

gated reverb (13. 493)

Celebrating accidental discoveries, Clive Thompson’s latest Linkfest explores how Phil Collins inadvertently invented the signature sound of 1980s drumming whilst in collaboration with Peter Gabriel, the artificial muffler quintessentially demonstrated in the iconic bridge to his “In the Air Tonight.” The natural reverberation of the percussion is clipped, booming and punchy but not bleeding into the next beat—something even the most skilled could not accomplish without the ambient audio processing technique, illustrating how mixing and sampling factors into the perceived purity of acoustics and record takes, like with the airbrushing and editing we expect for images nowadays. In addition to Collins’ solo career, the effect was also embraced by Prince, Psychedelic Furs, Kate Bush and Duran Duran, the effect eventually falling out of favour but experiencing a resurgence.

in search of… (13. 479)

Polymath and multi-hyphanate, Dr Robert Harvey Rines, whom helped develop the Microwave Early Warning System in the Cold War after serving as an officer in the army signals corps, as trained a jurist for intellectual property, prolific inventor, librettist penning musicals about the life of HL Mencken (previously) among others, violin prodigy playing a duet with Albert Einstein at age eleven at a summer camp in Maine, and adjunct professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the last forty five years of his career, is probably best known for leading the American expedition, sponsored by the US Academy of Applied Sciences and the The New York Times, the quest for Nessie, the most thorough and comprehensive search for the Loch Ness Monster up to that time, that commenced on this day in 1976. Becoming obsessed with the mystery of a possible cryptid after a visit to the area four years, Rines launched a scientific safari provisioned with sophisticated sonar and photographic, many instruments of his own design, and whilst garnering a great deal of publicity for his efforts, including several intriguing but blurry photographs, after six months, the project was halted due to lack of hard evidence. This famous “gargoyle head” image was later discovered to be a rotting tree stump on the silty bottom of the loch, since located and put on display in the Nessie gallery at Drumnadrochit on the western shore. Rines for his part never stopped believing that there was more to the legend and kept up the exploration, albeit on a smaller scale, for the next decades.

synchronoptica

one year ago:  automated purging of US government workers (with synchronopticæ) plus a Star Trek: TNG superfan

fourteen years ago: looking forward to our Norway holiday 

fifteen years ago: Ascension Day 

sixteen years ago: the Deepwater Horizon oil spill 

the do-nothing machine (13.434)

Courtesy of friend of the blog, Nag on the Lake, we are introduced to the 1957 experimental demonstration, one of the first uses of solar power at the time (see previously) from dynamic design duo Charles and Ray Eames (see also here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), over which the couple expressed some reluctance over the invitation to participate in the project sponsored by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). The whimsical initiative, called the Forecast Programme, and included Isamu Noguchi (野口·勇, furniture designer and landscaper who contributed the Prismatic Table) and Alexander Girard, specifically commissioned the Eames to construct a sampling of aluminium toys, at first considering items powered directly by passive sunlight and then introduced to photovoltaic technology, initially had reservations, saying that “Life is too full of real problems to permit introducing hypothetical ones,” but were persuaded by the observation that the demonstration was ultimately not an uninteresting and engaging assignment and that playthings are not as innocent as they appear.

8x8 (13. 423)

all roads lead south: US Democrats disadvantaged further by gerrymandering and redistricting reversals ahead of mid-term elections with rules tossed out—more here  

jeppe on the hill: on Swedish surnames and patronymics  

if only i had a little humility, i’d be perfect: Tedium’s obituary of Ted Turner and a bygone era of benevolent billionaires and media magnates  

straight from the horse’s mouth: a patented animal-human communications helmet  

some call it a war, i call it renovating my middle east ballroom: Operation Epic Fury as a 1990s RPG, playable arcade consoles set up at the DC War Memorial—via MetaFilter  

clipart: everyday objects by Philograph Publishers of London  

gleemonix: the regulations driving the poetry behind brand name pharmaceuticals—see previously here and here  

sortition: democracy by lottery could improve our civic nature—see previously

ss ideal x (13. 386)

The refurbished WWII T2 class “navy oiler” manufactured originally by the Marinship Corporation at the shipyard in Sausaltio California as the Potrero Hills and purchased by Malcolm McLean, who used this demonstration project to refine the concept of the intermodal shipping container that he had invented—revolutionising freight transport, undertook her first voyage with the new configuration on this day in 1956, carrying a cargo fifty-eight standardised boxes from the Port of Newark in New Jersey to the Port of Houston in Texas, where the boxes were offloaded to awaiting trailer trucks. The first commercially successful container ship, by organising and grouping what’s call bulk break goods—that is manufactured items for distribution, warehousing and retail sale, as opposed to dry bulk like grain, containerisation made the stevedoring process far more efficient, the concept copied and expanded to a fleet of fifty thousand ships today operating worldwide, adopting industry uniforms in part a wartime legacy from the US (see previously) and transporting some ninety percent of exports.

renatured (13. 338)

Although from childhood until recently, my only exposure to instant coffee, a topic not given much regard in the interim, was using Sanka decaffeinated crystals for a school project to make a poster illustrating the massive meteorite strike that wiped out the dinosaurs—it was a good medium for the rocky texture for the volcano and for the ominous asteroid streaking through the sky, H and I have really started appreciating the dehydrated beverage for camping, the outdoors seeming to imbue it with a certain aroma and flavour profile that we suspect wouldn’t cut it at home for the convenience. Courtesy of Web Curios (lots more to explore there and well worth your time), we found this thoroughly researched history on the development and triangulating factors behind the improvements in reconstitution, global trade, spinoffs from R&D in photography and keeping an army sufficiently caffeinated of course playing a role quite fascinating and illuminating. Advances in the understanding of chemistry and preservation, freeze-drying grounds, led to a more palatable cup, though beggars couldn’t be choosers and the earliest versions of the potable, soluble brew were savoured as well. Much more from The Works in Progress newsletter at the link above.

saxomophone (13. 283)

Awarded a patent on this day in 1846 for his most well-known but not most successful and certainly not his only eponymous instrument, Adolphe Sax was already a respected faculty member of the Paris Conservatory. The eldest son of a husband and wife team of brass and woodwind specialists in Dinant (present day Belgium) and amazingly surviving a notoriously accident prone childhood—recovering unscathed from a fall of three storeys, swallowing a pin, mistakenly drinking an acidic solvent somehow not dying of asphyxiation from sleeping in a room nightly that doubled as a storage space for drying varnished instruments—the prolific tinkerer’s most widely adopted improvement was for valve controls for the bugle, which he tried unsuccessful secure rights on as the Saxhorn, which led to the development of the euphonium and flugelhorn, adaptations particularly useful outside of the concert hall for marching bands. Later during the Crimean Conflict, Sax also patented two inventions for the war effort in support France and her allies, though never field-tested, in the Saxotonnerre–an organ powered by a locomotive engine loud enough in theory to be heard across an area the size of Paris and in response to the stalemate during the Siege of Sevastopol, the Saxocannon capable of launching half-tonne rounds with the aim of curtailing protracted standoffs. Sadly the upkeep of intellectual property and fighting infringement by challengers and rivals in later life took a huge toll on Sax‘ finances and health.