ketchup and mustard (13. 038)

Via Things Magazine, we are directed towards the false lore surrounding a rather infamous and garish colour scheme, referred to a “Hot Dog Stand” for its clashing red and yellow which was not bundled into the 1992 release of Microsoft Windows as a joke or on a dare as some commentators have suggested. It may seem like a petty thing to settle the record thirty-three years later but colour palettes and being able to customise the user experience were very limited back then and any sort of step towards personalisation—no matter how low the stakes—was something radically new, especially when one’s range was limited to just sixteen choices, which despite this relative paucity managed dozens of motifs, including the condiment one that may have been designed for enhanced visibility to those with colour-blindness. More from PC Gamer at the link above.

9x9 (13. 027)

pot to kettle: US bans Europeans who encouraged social media to suppress American points of view—see also, whilst the Heritage Foundation openly calls for the dissolution of the European Union  

sight unseen: a collection of the best video essays of 2025  

winter tarotscope: a collective reading for the coming season from AX Mina  

first and main: store front churches as captured by Rob Stephenson—via Messy Nessy Chic with a lot more to explore including more on glass models of deep sea creatures  

x-mas post: holiday greeting cards to Paul Rand (previously) from other designers, artists and architects  

commodorchestra: Linus Åkesson (previously) performs an ambitious chip-tune arrangement of Boléro (see also) on an assortment of homemade eight-bit instruments 

exhibit a: a simple copy-and-paste undoes redactions to some of the Epstein files  

the address is cbs: the censored reporting on the infamous CECOT prison removed from 60 Minutes was bootlegged by international broadcasts—via Super Punch

synchronoptica

one year ago: the first wholly electronic television transmission (with synchronopticæ), the Bohemian John Phillips Souza plus a Christmas pause 

fourteen years ago: a Star Wars Nativity scene 

fifteen years ago: Christmas Eve greetings 

sixteen years ago: zodiacal mugs 

seventeen years ago: miscellany from Wikipedia 

agitprop (13. 019)

Hacker emeritus, Jamie Zawinski, presents quite a memory dump sharing the original, mostly forgotten logo designs for the open source web-browser Mozilla that was created on commission by graphic designer Shepard Fairey to create a corporate brand back in 1998—a spin off of Netscape that would eventually become Firefox, featuring the dinosaur mascot and backgrounds and colour schemes inspired by the Soviet propaganda of Vladimir Mayakovskii and visual contemporaries. One banner encouraging one to download the code even contains in translation the reference to the Proverbs chapter six: ПОРАБОТАЕШЬ БУДЕТ МУКА; ПОСИДИШЬ СЛОЖА РУКИ БУЛЕТ НЕ МУКА́ А МУ́КА—Sit with crossed arms and there will not be flour, the verse admonishing to not give into slumber. Much more from JWZ at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Southern Solstice (with synchronopticæ), president Musk plus assorted links to revisit

twelve years ago: Bjork’s private island, the blog is dead—long live the blog, Star Wars embraces fan-art plus saintly hand gestures

fifteen years ago: more unseasonable weather

pepperoni and mushroom (12. 978)

As Boing Boing informs, on this day in 1974, Donald Sherman, who had Möbius Syndrome, a rare congenital disease that results in facial paralysis, and had the inability to speak, was able to order a pizza by placing a call from the Michigan State University’s Artificial Language Laboratory. The revolutionary text-to-voice synthesiser (see also) was designed by university researchers and the successful exchange was captured for posterity by local media, though it didn’t go off without a hitch as the synthetic voice was unexpected by the operators—with major delivery chain Domino’s hanging up on the caller—until a sympathetic employee at a small pizzeria took the order. Celebrated annually on campus, Domino’s has been furnishing free pizzas for the commemoration, ostensibly out of the bad publicity for hanging up on Sherman all those years ago.

*    *    *    *    * 

synchronoptica

one year ago: the accidental Republic of Cospaia (with synchronopticæ), a counterfeit caper plus US president-elect Trump threatens global tariffs

twelve years ago: Germany takes on informal hoteliers  

thirteen years ago: Nativity scenes plus more examples of pareidolia 

fourteen years ago: unseasonable weather, loose change plus piracy and net-neutrality

sixteen years ago: US pressures allies on Afghanistan 

seventeen years ago: bail-outs and quasi financial institutions 

x ↦ 𝑓(x) (12. 974)

Via Clive Thompson’s latest Linkfest, we are directed to towards a hidden reliquary of old, obscure Microsoft Excel functions maintained update after update to preserve compatibility and integrity of spreadsheet data—some being very dated like the ticker-tape age DOLLARDE and DOLLARFR when stocks and bonds were quoted in fractional dollars pre-decimalisation or highly specific like ROMAN which converts Arabic numerals, mainly for decorative use only as they are not well suited to double-entry bookkeeping (see also) and BAHTTEXT that transforms a value spelled out in Thai Baht, introduced in accordance with the country’s invoicing standards that require numbers expressed both ways to ensure clarity. Like the way the amount on a cheque is written out in long form, Excel only offers this feature for Thailand, which isn’t the only jurisdiction that requires it.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a virtual Advents Calendar of work entering the public domain (with synchronopticæ), Saint Zephania plus a game of incense

thirteen years ago: combatting youth unemployment, a post-industrial revolution plus a Lt Uhura My Little Pony

fifteen years ago: extremophiles 

sixteen years ago: holiday shopping 

seventeen years ago: authorised delay 

i am millonaire andrew lloyd webber, welcome to my andrew lloyd website (12. 961)

We’re heard of plenty of sorrowful instances of zombification of abandoned personal pages and outright vandalism or kettling but we had not encountered until now, courtesy of MetaFilter, with the discovery of the moribund Yahoo! GeoCities page of the musical theatre composer and impresario (previously) last updated in 2003 and restore it to full-functionality as a NeoCity. Though some elements, like the title, seem to verge on gentle parody—but who could say for sure as websites at that time were vehicles for confession and reflection rather than self-promotion, it’s a privilege to page through the newspaper clippings, dream diary, home recipes and so on.

11x11 (12. 895)

american psychosis: pathologising along with artist Jordan Sullivan  

kojève and cigarettes: uncovering the history of Hegelian tobacco and the American spirit  

usenet: a 1995 CBC segment featuring Cory Doctorow on how to internet—via Waxy   

karzer: revisiting privilege and imprisonment in German universities  

de facto recognition: leaked US draft to end Russian war in Ukraine  

dress code: ignoring all other disruptions and baseline unpleasantness, US transportation secretary encourages flyers to not dress down for their flights to improve the overall experience for all passengers  

tiled words: a daily crossword puzzle-Tetris hybrid—via MetaFilter  

algospeak: taboo, newly minted unwords of search and social media

victor insulations: the ubiquitous American diner mug—via Miss Cellania  

in like flynn: over-exposure to the stupidest ambitions of society at large has brought us all down—via Web Curios 

operation charlotte’s web: ICE ruins a classic of children’s literature—some pig 

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronopticæ)

twelve years ago: hand-washing and optimism  

thirteen years ago: the holiday winterval plus Martin Luther and bowling

offline crush (12. 879)

Via Web Curios, we quite enjoyed this five unit crash course whose simple yet atrophied syllabus is aimed at teaching those who want to escape algorithmic suggestions (we’ve spilt much ink on the subject of rewilding one’s online and by extension real-world experience—see previously here and here—and one has to really want that instead of the echo-chamber and comfortable confirmations) and appreciated the dogmatic approach that’s an actual framework rather than just the aspiration to get out more, with tips for bypassing the directed traffic presented as exercises. Inspired by some reactions to a recent post about exploration and widening one’s repertoire that suggested that some that bothered to comment—more than the tinge of guilt suffered over scrolling past a picture of someone’s cute dog and not upvoting—expressed that they had forgotten how to internet, the lessons advise one to take stock, make note of behaviours, intentional or otherwise, and has actually homework in form of following a daisy-chain of external links as far away as they will carry one, researching the commonplace—some artefact from one’s own room—until one finds a fact so unexpected that one is compelled to share, preferably in an essay format, long-read, delving into forums and into specific archived file types and pocket the results. The assignment we found most resonant was the reminder to use inspect element—not just to try to lift some coding ideas which usually nets nothing as there’s so many overlays and dependencies to negotiate (recursively represented)—and just mashing all the keys to see what’s there and break or remix it as a local copy. Before AI slop served fake news, this was how the sausage was made but is moreover a prompt that the web was never meant to be a black-box and one was never meant to scratch under the surface and in general whose interactions were siloed by commercial platforms.

synchronoptica

one year ago: movie title drops (with synchronopticæ), the Onion to purchase Infowars plus the Polish-German border

twelve years ago: Wiesbaden’s Südfriedhof 

thirteen years ago: an inexact science 

fifteen years ago: advances in 3D printing 

give into the vibes (12. 866)

Coined this February by OpenAI Andrej Karpathy as a machine-aided solution for those wanting to create a bespoke programme yet never learned the basics of coding—which admitted on a certain level is the sort of in-group jargon that keeps the out-group out but are also instructions that computers understand—allowing users to become transcendental and forget that the underlying code even exists, vibe coding was selected by Collins Dictionary as their WotY for 2025—see previously. As with other forms of rocket-surgery, going with one’s untempered intuition and trusting the machine does not always achieve the desired outcome and the requester would not have the skills to edit or debug something that came close. Other terms on the shortlist included Henry, an acronym for “high-earner, yet not rich,” micro-retirement for a work sabbatical, aura farming, clankers and broligarcy.

8x8 (12. 862)

rat-race: a cartoon about the frenetic pursuit of happiness—at least from a merchant’s perspective 

close encounters: a 1976 meta-analysis of the surnames of UFO abductees—see also  

caleb weatherbee: venerable Farmers’ Almanac to be discontinued after a two hundred eight year run—see also  

endtimers: Artificial General Intelligence and the Singularity just around the corner has many manic street preachers, cult members and historic antecedents 

lost arcade: an archive conserving unreleased and cancelled video games since 1999, including source code and emulators, see also here, here and here—via Web Curios  

mckinsey in a box: pretty convincing AI-generated consultancy slop with an instant Power Point presentation for the business of one’s choosing  

fringe theory: more examples of the conspiratorial narrative trope—see previously—via MetaFilter 

au 8ème jour: a 3-D animated short illustrating the thread of life in a unique stop-motion, felted style

synchronoptica

one year ago: Trump’s transition team (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links to revisit

thirteen years ago: the history of the boardgame Monopoly, transportation infrastructure plus a premium spoon rest

fourteen years ago: the Aeneid as an economic allegory plus contention over a Russian gas pipeline to Western Europe 

fifteen years ago: US-EU trade policy 

8x8

tor’s cabinet of curiosities: a collection of weird hagiographies 

photographie de rue: photography student Lionel Derimais’ impressions of New York City in the winter of 1980 

non-generative ai: artist Pablo Delcan responds to human prompts  

canary in the coal mine: the collapse of US private equity firms echoes the collapse of the sub-prime real estate market that caused the Great Recession of 2008  

to catch a thief: reconstructing the Louvre heist  

grattacieli: the medieval skyscrapers of Bologna—see previously 

breaker one-niner: the computer industry’s first challenge from the US federal communications commission was over frequency interference for citizens’ band radio—see previously  

elevator pitch: podcasters debate listening to episodes at 2x speed

♪Ø (12. 787)

Having been previously acquainted with several esoteric programming languages (here, here and here), we enjoyed this introduction to Velato courtesy of Futility Closet. Using MIDI files as source code, compiled by Daniel Temkin (see above) in 2009, the syntax provides a unique challenge with constraints (see also) for achieving the desired output and something melodious. The pictured lines of code produce, “Hello World,” the standard programming benchmark plus sanity check to make sure the logic holds. Hear the programming and find related languages at the link above.

7x7 (12. 731)

life is too short to not say exactly what you mean all the time: folk singer Jessie Welles (previously) on one’s calling and being candid in trying times 

post-parade afterglow: clips of Chinese soldiers returning home with identical tan-lines from drilling in the helmets in the sun for the event commemorating the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War II  

crash blossoms: Tropic Storm Gabrielle Spaghetti Models as Hurricane Chances Increase and other headlines 

bijin-ga: a selection of Japanese prints featuring cats and butterflies eau de eight-bit: fragrances inspired by classic home computers 

analyst call: Trump urges US Securities and Exchange Commission to eliminate quarterly reporting requirements for businesses, afraid of how markets will react to the knock on effects of tariffs of 

brahmins and buddhists: an exploration of a right-wing ideologue and influencer who brought yoga to the West

squigglevision (12. 707)

Through this interview with the programme’s art director, Annette Cate, we enjoyed this revisit of Dr Katz Professional Therapist and how its pacing and narrative-voice have an outsized legacy for cartoons for adults. Finding a niche for unscripted animated interstitials, collaborators Tom Snyder and former student Loren Bouchard enlisted the vocal talents of Jonathan Katz, Laura Silverman and H Jon Benjamin with celebrity guest stars to re-enact sessions, which eventually developed into its own show in 1995. Snyder’s loop-based technique involved retracing the outline of each cell loosely to make for the vibrating effect—see also—as a way around budgetary constraints and resulting in a signature style (see also), originally gleaned from the limitations of Autodesk Animator made for MS-DOS, which the duo had previously used to make maths edutainment software. Much more from It’s Nice That at the link above.  You know what the music means—our time is up.

7x7 (12. 701)

people are flushing toilets ten times, fifteen times, as opposed to once—john jay: other AI-generated quotes of America’s foundational figures at new Smithsonian exhibit—see also  

coronation street: a recent celebration of the eleven hundredth anniversary of the enthronement of King Æthelstan, the first ruler of united England  

_invalid_username: a short, seemingly intuitive quiz—we failed miserably at—on what constitutes an email address—via Web Curios  

in a galaxy far, far away: the official map of the Star Wars paracosm 

dj earworm: an end of summer mashup  

double, double toil and trouble: Shakespeare added the witches, weird sisters (see also) to Macbeth for the benefit of his patron James I—see previously  

founding fathers: the colourful life US constitutional signatory turned harsh critic of the mythos Gouverneur Morris—via Strange Company

synchronoptica

one year ago: a nuclear war preparedness exercise (with synchronopticæ)

twelve years ago: Iranian president offers a Rosh Hashanah blessing 

thirteen years ago: some castles of Rheinland-Pfalz plus a bleak economic picture

fourteen years ago: revisionism and security theatre persist ahead of the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks 

fifteen years ago: bird-watching plus a trip along the Danube

sixteen years ago: mascot mayhem 

seventeen years ago: a trip to the Wasserkuppe 

8x8 (12. 679)

short imagined monologues: the abandoned new Cracker Barrel logo speaks out  

internet caretaker: Messy Nessy returns from vacation with another roundup of things found on-line—no notes  

 ticker-tape: a 1967 home computer—via Damn Interesting  cybersitter: a look back on the ways of filtering the web

ai upscaling: multimedia artists complain about unbidden tweaks to their signature videos—via the New Shelton wet/dry

dark dwarves: astrophysicists theorise a new class of stars that may never exhaust their fuel  

🖇️: an annotated collection donated to Present /&/ Correct 

divertimento № 198: assorted links amid gustatory delights from the Minnesota State Fair 

the united states is not made up of well-adjusted adults—it’s made up of americans: simulation and simulacrum in the USA—via Miss Cellania

synchronoptica

one year ago: the introduction of Pepsi (with synchronopticæ)

thirteen years ago: the evolution of screen-time plus frozen fireworks

fourteen years ago: reimagining Space Oddity 

seventeen years ago: driving on autopilot 

7x7 (12. 652)

tariff tango: Canada’s claymation response to Trump’s thirty-five percent levy on exports and other affronts 

modulator-demodulator: a tribute to AOL’s decision to discontinue its dial up service and how technologies gradually fade out rather than disappear overnight  

periphrasis: the search for the perfect English infinitive   

a sunday in the park with georges: the symbolism of class and segregation on display in Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières—see previously—via Damn Interesting  

koń jaki jest, każdy widzi: the Polish language’s first encyclopaedia was an eccentric compilation that didn’t have time for the manifestly obvious 

silicon doodles: a gallery of microchip art added by engineers for fun and whimsy—see also  

comprehensive internal review: Trump orders Smithsonian museums to highlight American exceptionalism

synchronoptica

one year ago: a gallery of images that look like AI but are not (with synchronopticæ) plus the proposed state of Absaroka

twelve years ago: ligature letters 

thirteen years ago: auspicious births, WWII week: D-Day, more Wikileaks extradition manoeuvrers plus plumbing and public conveniences 

fourteen years ago: a balance siphon coffee maker 

fifteen years ago: Lutherstädte 

6x6 (12, 643)

levi strauss waltz: fledging Jefferson Airplane’s commercials for blue jeans 

moral high-ground: despite what justice we might entrust to AI, ethics remain a human responsibility  

whittle: a reductive word challenge—via Web Curios  

keygen.exe: the soundtrack of internet piracy  

si te fata ferunt, fer fata, ferere: the inscribed joists of Montaigne’ tower of his favourite classical aphorisms   

the cube: Jim Henson’s experimental 1969 teleplay for NBC

moffett field (12. 587)

Via Kottke, we really enjoyed browsing the Internet Archive’s expansive exhibit of over five thousand historical images of the NASA Ames Research Centre, built at the tip of San Francisco Bay in 1939 and now surrounded by the campuses of tech giants Google, Microsoft and Apple originally as a facility to conduct wind-tunnel tests and gauge the aerodynamic properties of propeller-drive aircraft, its scope broadened quickly after World War II to compass space exploration, rocketry and computer science. Perusing the collection (see also) gives one an appreciation of the eight decades’ worth of missions, discoveries and breakthroughs that came from this nexus of Silicon Valley and makes us more than a little anxious about the future of public, state-sponsored research and long-term repercussions of short-sighted priorities.

synchronoptica

one year ago: American’s AI-military complex (with synchronopticæ) plus an evil cocktail

cyberstress (12. 580)

We quite enjoyed this rather wholesome reminder, via r/ObscureMedia, from 1997 that goes beyond office ergonomics—which is frankly where most concepts of workplace well-being stopped and didn’t progress any further, from this cosmic guide to relax… take breaks… relax… take breaks… Me in 1997 would have been suspicious and very dismissive of such advice but now realise it was way ahead of its time—like an epiphany—and did manage to relieve my tension.