Thursday 7 March 2024

9x9 (11. 406)

harmonisation: Albanian government using AI to try to speed accession to European Union by rewriting local legislation to fit the block’s regulatory framework—via Marginal Revolution  

the once and future sex: enduring medieval views on female anatomy 

gรฉodรฉsie: more on the Paris Meridian and how Greenwich ultimately won out 

walk without rhythm and you won’t attract the worm: Christopher Walken, portraying Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV, unaware of his epic choreography in “Weapon of Choice” references Dune  

mcmxxiv: a curation of photos from Alan Taylor—via Kottke  

here there be tygers: animated adaptations of Ray Bradbury’s science fiction by Sergei Bondarchuk  

the world is a cat—i can’t unsee that now: a geopolitical map drawing challenge  

the school of venus; or the ladies delight: self-pleasure in the seventh century  

circling the wagons: Sweden accedes to NATO as its thirty-second member state after a wait of two years—while holdout Hungary visits Trump

Sunday 3 March 2024

8x8 (11. 396)

a bridge too far: German authorities pledge investigation into embarrassing leak of confidential military talks about Ukrainian aid  

heteronyms: the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa with seventy pen-names  

solar symbology: a survey of the various cartographic representations of North America’s upcoming total eclipse  

phrixus and helle: newly excavated fresco in Pompeii retells the myth of the Golden Fleece  

re:design: Jason Kottke unveils his new website with fresh 2024 energy—maybe we could all use a face-lift  

replevin: Trump fraudulently overvalued his Scottish golf course and resort by £200 000 000—see previously 

club remix: annual competition that invites doctoral candidates to dance their dissertation 

airdrop: US begins aid delivery to a beleaguered Gazan population on the verge of famine

 synchronoptica

one year ago: TIME magazine (1923) plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: more links to enjoy plus the largest capacity cargo plane

three years ago: more links worth the revisit, an artist’s message to get vaccinated plus Rocket Man (1972)

four years ago: the French version of the Dallas theme, Super Tuesday, Nigerian contributions to English plus more on the Human Interference Task Force

five years ago: graphic designer Alvin Lustig, Apollo IX (1969), an example of Celtic Revival architecture, McLaren’s Imperial Cheddar Club Cheese plus artist Pokey LaFarge

Friday 1 March 2024

8x8 (11. 392)

unauthorised avatar: Ukrainian individual discovers her likeness from her self-help videos have been cloned to sell Russian goods, friendship with China  

criterion collection: a curated series of great moments from the film company’s archive of Closet Picks  

il galateo, overo de’ costumi: the age of impoliteness—an influential sixteenth century Venetian treatise of delicacy and manners  

the weeknd stroke psa: a song parody about signs and symptoms of a cerebrovascular incident  

@smalin: graphic artist Stephen Manlinowski creates beautifully animated classical and jazz score—via Web Curios 

the hero’s journey: “the chosen one,” coming of age narratives of Dune, Star Wars, Harry Potter are mostly about adolescent boys coming to grips with their sexuality—via tmn  

dark currents: a 1992 public access occult soap opera from Marrawamkeag, Maine inspired by Dark Shadows, Twin Peaks  

thimblerig: internet retailer’s financial shell game and predatory pricing enabled it to create an untenable monopoly not thought sustainable

Tuesday 27 February 2024

infinite improbability drive (11.386)

Via Kottke, we are directed to an interesting observation, theory by Lisa Riemers (an example of l'esprit de l’escalier—a stair-step realisation, the perfect reply that came too late—shared after a podcast recording) that technology has graduated beyond Star Trek-inspired hardware with tricorders, comms-badges, tablet computers—though we are still lacking the transporters, replicators, warp-travel and post-scarcity society—and is entering the Douglas Adams’ phase, when absurd tech calls for correspondingly absurd inventions. The super computer Deep Thought, in The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, which devised the Ultimate Answer, forty-two, but made no sense as the Ultimate Question was outside the scope of its programming, Electric Monks that did the believing for you to alleviate some of the tedium of it, the exceeding wealthy building custom planets, depressed robots and lab rats (hyper-intelligences in disguise) subjected to experimentation conducting research on the scientists all seem to have their corollaries in chatbot and AI trials, virtual boyfriends, unhinged and hallucinating large language models, rogue driverless cars and luxury doomsday bunkers. Maybe we have attained the Babel Fish / Universal Translator, however, but the verdict is still out. More at the links above.

Friday 23 February 2024

10x10 (11. 374)

walden 7: photographer Sebastian Weiss captures the epic nature of an outstanding apartment block in Barcelona 

shootball: January Sixth themed pinball machines and other Republican swag at the Conservative Political Action Conference—see previously 

swimming with sharks: an overview of the hidden terror that’s haunted, informed humanity for millennia  

google blobs: the animated emoji character set that ought to be brought back—via Web Curios 

38°n: a news source on North Korea rex melly: the riches of Mansa Musa of the Mail Empire—adjusting for inflation and other factors, possibly the wealthiest person in history 

shift to socials: Vice Media is folding, laying off hundreds of journalists—via Waxysee more  

pale usher: introducing a blog mini-series on Moby Dick with a curious etymology  

every sperm is sacred: following the ruling in Alabama that grants personhood to frozen embryos—and the subsequent suspension of IVF treatment for fear of legal implications—conservative think tank forming Trump’s policy wants to end recreational sex 

batpole: homes with alternate stairwells—see previously

Wednesday 21 February 2024

vielecke u. vielflache (11. 368)

This 1900 study of polyhedra by geometer Johannes Max Brรผckner, who taught at a Gymnasium (a secondary, preparatory school) in Bautzen after earning a degree in mathematics and physics from the Universities of Leipzig and Heidelberg and earned his teaching credentials for constructing many models of stellated shapes, compounds of the Platonic solids projected outward until the result in a new uniform and congruent three dimensional figure (see also), is not only noted for its aesthetic and inspirational value (M C Escher’s work was largely informed by exposure to this publication) but is considered among the foundational proofs of the field, documenting all the then known possibilities. In 1930, Brรผckner’s collection of models were donated to the institution in Baden-Wรผrttemberg, which in turn awarded him with another honorary degree. More at Present /&/ Correct at the link up top.

lipogram (11. 366)

Being a fan of constrained writing (previously), a storytelling technique that imposes a specific pattern, meter, rhyme, or bound by a rule that outlaws a certain letter, we quite appreciated being directed towards the book that developed out of a COVID-times project called Ebb by Grant Maierhofer to produce a novel without using the first letter of the alphabet. From a passage about the author’s inspiration—e’s been done already:

Limiting yourself is oddly opening. Limiting your view of things, like stopping yourself from doing something, brings this sense of bliss when you do some close thing to this. This feeling like you’re freed up from thinking one style. This feeling like you’re freed up from being bogged down in your every moment mind. The mind of every moment is too open to every flitting possibility. The mind with one limit put on it knows where it might like to go. To run even. This mind brings out something new in you. Like Wittgenstein’s brother. The composer. The piece written for just one of his sets of fingers. The possibility there. Tehching Hsieh’s work, opening himself to the possibilities in limiting himself for long stretches. The possibility opening up from this kind of thing. I only wish to tell someone to consider it. The possibility even in just considering it. This might be enough. Cut yourself off from something. Limit yourself. See the things which creep out from the sides of the thing you’ve skipped. You’ve stopped yourself from something, now something else opens up there. This is incredible. Simply incredible. The most wonderful thing which could’ve occurred.

One hardly notices the letter’s absence and catch myself juggling with a similar awareness and avoidance in choice of words. Tehching “Sam” Hseih is a retired Taiwanese performance best known for durational works and feats of stamina and endurance and deferment, exploring time and struggle—solitude and commitment, for example not leaving a cell for a year with no human interaction or not stepping inside for another. Much more at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Communist Manifesto (1848) plus a landmark US Supreme Court ruling

two years ago: the foresight of the US founders plus Nixon in China

three years ago: another Roman holiday, life-sized scale models plus an iceberg simulator

four years ago: bridging continents, assorted links to revisit plus AI antibiotics

five years ago: a bacterial battery plus mergers and acquisitions

Saturday 17 February 2024

8x8 (11. 358)

compound interest: Trump’s accumulated lawsuits amount to over half a billion dollars  

vivi o preferibilmente morti: Poseidon’s Underworld reviews a 1969 Spaghetti Western  

epistolary doll: Kafka, a little girl and her beloved, lost toy—via the New Shelton wet/dry 

the wonderful night of hercules brown: a 1968 short film guiding a young boy through his dreams with the help of muppets and puppets 

millions of cats: Wanda Hazel Gรกg’s 1928 children’s book—the oldest American title still in print  

leaning toward more grasshopper, less ant: raising children on the eve of the AI revolution—via tmn  

hero’s journey: a video poking fun at the tropes and archetypes of found in every epic quest—see previously  

never surrender high-tops: Trump launches gold trainers line, goes public with his social network in order to earn cash to pay for his legal judgments—see previously

Wednesday 14 February 2024

9x9 (11. 351)

planisphere: explore the fifteenth century Mappa Mundi—made by a Venetian cartographer and monk map who never left the lagoon  

high rollers: the character and history of burlesque shows  

robots.txt: a tiny text file that has been the underpinnings of the internet is unravelling due to AI 

a load-bearing day: the confluence of several celebrations, including Ash Wednesday (be furiousing rather than fasting), Valentine’s and the Luni-Solar New Year  

my unfortunate incarceration: the abundant prison-tech alliance is a brutal harbinger of what’s to come

bulletisation: the functional literacy crisis in reading comprehension—via the morning news 

service sector: some large companies requiring AI-informed personality tests for vacancy applicants  

disco vicar: some Anglican churches and cathedrals opening for parties  

news deserts: explore local journalism and those newsrooms hanging on—via Maps Mania

Tuesday 13 February 2024

9x9 (11.348)

unwanted legacy: Russia puts Estonian prime minister on wanted list for dismantling monuments to Soviet soldiers 

banned book rainbow: LeVar Burton hosts a very special episode on books banned by adults who don’t want kids to learn, grow or change—via Kottke  

clothesline, skyline: a look at Shanghai’s ubiquitous outdoors drying racks  

blinkerwall: ten-thousand year old megastructure in the Baltic could be Europe’s oldest  

everynoise: layoffs and downsizing at Spotify spell the end of the serendipitous musical encyclopaedia—see previously  

essentially cenobitical: one year in the life of a part time hermit—via the new Shelton wet/dry 

running amoc: the trajectory of the climate catastrophe blows past a calamitous tipping-point  

clearing the docket: upcoming inflection points in the criminal cases against Trump  

portal kombat: French authorities uncover a vast Russian disinformation network designed to overwhelm fact checkers

Monday 29 January 2024

castaways (11. 303)

First airing on this day in 1942 on the BBC Forces station, conceived and originally hosted by presenter Roy Plomley (until his death in 1985) and still broadcast on a weekly basis—making it the longest running radio programme after the Grand Ole Opry which began in 1925—Desert Island Discs invites celebrities, politicians, scientists, journalists, authors and artists as guests to choose eight audio (originally gramophone) recordings, a book (castaways are automatically given a volume of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare and the Bible or other appropriate theological or philosophical text) and a single luxury item that they would wish to have should they find themselves marooned, talking about their lives, careers and reasons for the titles selected. Over the course of three thousand episodes, guests have included Eartha Kitt, Bing Crosby, David Attenborough, Dave Bruebeck, Alfred Hitchcock, Liberace, Alec Guinness, Julie Andrews, Sophie Tucker, Cilla Black, Marlene Dietrich, Harold Pinter, Anthony Burgess, Magnus Pyke, Lauren Bacall, Elia Kazan, Burl Ives (who selected the I Ching), Norman Mailer, Bob Geldof, Stephen Hawking, Brian Blessed, Stephen Sondheim, Stephen Fry, Debbie Harry and Zadie Smith. Over the decades, the most requested piece of music has been “Ode to Joy,” the last movement from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Conceived with the sounds of crashing waves and the cries of seabirds as the introduction and conclusion, producers however insisted on “By the Sleepy Lagoon,” an instrumental by Eric Coates, composer of light music—see also.

synchronoptica

one year ago: School House Rock! at 50, Dr Strangelove plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: more banned books, a Mozart opera, Axis of Evil, an AI creates bespoke colours plus more conspiratorial thinking

three years ago: an opera by Peter Josef von Lindpainter, more links to enjoy plus a digital demesne

four years ago: Mantra Rock Dance (1967), the Rubik’s Cube (1980) plus the Space Cat gets a monument

five years ago: the event that inspired Boomtown Rats, an excellent Rube Goldberg machineSleeping Beauty (1959), a Trump attorney’s political thriller plus artist Javier Riera

Thursday 25 January 2024

anapodoton (11. 293)

From the Greek แผ€ฮฝฮฑฮฝฯ„ฮฑฯ€ฯŒฮดฮฟฯ„ฮฟฯ‚ for “I give back,” the ellipsis refers to a rhetorical device by which the gist of a saying is supported by its subordinate clause without mentioning it, like if the mountain won’t come to the prophet, when in Rome, a bird in the hand, if the shoe fits or when the cat’s away. As with the spoonerism I heard once and since incorporated “paying Peter to rob Paul,” I thought the former idiom (fabricated by Francis Bacon) was “Let the mountain come to Mohammed”—an anacoluthon, a disruptive thought expressed in reported speech by my favoured em-dash to mark the divergence—and is entirely missing the intention and making a postproverbial or preverb. The study of such maxims and their variants, dating back to Aristotle’s collections, is called paremiology, classing them into the categories of comparison, interrogation, their above misuse and metaphorical or allusory.

11x11 (11. 292)

liar’s dividend: digital propaganda and implausible deniability—via the New Shelton wet/dry 

working cows dairy: a collection of superlative cheeses—via Kottke 

the blazing world: a 1666 novel considered the first world of science fiction by a woman author 

everglades jetport: uncovering the ruins of a failed supersonic runway floundering in the in the Florida wetlands—see previously  

the furby panic: US National Security Agency compelled to release a trove of documents outlining their ban of the toy as a potential instrument of espionage—via Waxy  

press-gang: while most news outlets block AI crawlers used to scrape training data, right-wing media welcomes them—see previously 

mac@40: a website showing every model of the Apple computer as it enters its fifth decade  

winter in aizu: a woodblock series from Sosaku Hanga artist Kiyoshi Saito 

you are both so much more than kenough: Hillary Clinton weighs in the Oscar nominations for Barbie—via Super Punch  

time in a bottle: one bar’s water-clock has drained—though we’d not be adverse to a Harvey Wallbanger  

white stork: the Ukraine war-sandbox and the rise of the AI-Military Complex—see previously

synchronoptica

one year ago: data-scrapping and copyright

two years ago: MediaWiki Day, more custom cars, Roman milestones plus an inexplicable fast food mascot

three years ago: your daily demon: Valac, assorted links to revisit plus the Torlonia Marbles

four years ago: vintage virtual dressing rooms, happy birthday Volodymyr Zelenskyy, more on the US Space Force plus Mendelssohn’s Wedding March

five year ago:  photojournalist Jessie Tarbox Beals, a Droste homage, more links to enjoy, a Trump associate arrested plus cardinal notions

Thursday 18 January 2024

ascendant masters (11. 277)

The always excellent Linkfest from Clive Thompson directs us to revisit a 1905 theosophical volume co-authored by Annie Besant, orator, activist for Indian independence and atheist and later adherent of founder Madame Blavatsy, and CW Leadbeater, writer occultist and co-founder of the Liberal Catholic Church, called Thought-Forms, a study of how the human mind “extrudes” these visualisations of experiences, emotions and music into the external world, formed as subtle bodies observed by clairvoyants. Tinted by colour, sympathetic vibrations and the aether as expressions of quality, nature (like the pictured happy thoughts) and directedness, these manifestations are created either by feelings, experience, mediations or in their highest form, music, as in this vision formed from the operas of Charles-Franรงois Gounod. Whilst written for a specific, receptive audience, the astral diagrams have broader appeal and were influential to the world of modern, abstract art, particularly Wassily Kandinski, Piet Mondrian, and Hilma af Klint, and inform to an extent the concept of synaesthesia.

synchronoptica 

one year ago:the High Committee of the French Language plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: the musical stylings of Manuel Gรถttsching plus time flies

three years ago: Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday and Martin Luther King Jr 

four years ago: railbanked railroads, separating entertainment and news plus more links to enjoy

five years ago: more links worth the revisit plus performance of the Diva Dance from Fifth Element

Wednesday 17 January 2024

10x10 (11. 276)

durianrider and banana girl: a personal account of joining a fringe diet community and subsequent de-programming  

curricula: an archive of Japanese school books from 1898 

i’m feeling lucky: a mostly facetious collection of laws about discourse from Osmo Antero Wiio that posits that communication usually fail except by accident 

it’s not your imagination: research shows that Google search, overrun by competition for rankings, has gotten worse—along with other indexing engines  

flickr commons: sixteen stories for the image platform’s sixteenth birthday—via Waxy  

pps: Chuck Wendig warns against using AI to enhance one’s creative outlets

chevron v natural defence council: US Supreme Court posed to overturn a forty-year precedence on regulators and agency enforcement—more here   

rewatch: Netflix is airing a bevy of classic films, celebrating their milestone anniversaries 

reference desk: as part of an “inappropriate content review,” a US school district is banning dictionaries and encyclopaedias 

the ouroboros of the passive-income scam: an escape from a get rich quick cult

Sunday 14 January 2024

stepford authors (11. 265)

We really were in agreement with this comparison of AI plagiarism to the 1975 horror film premising that the human wives of Stepford, Connecticut are having their identities transferred to more able cyborg replicas (to excel at household chores, cooking, sexual acts) without all the shrewish, independent aspects of their personalities that make the slightest bit objectionable to their husbands, having dispatched their biological templates and replacing them. Substituting a human writer with a synthetic one, for the publisher—or any employer for that matter—strikes one as far less bothersome. Meanwhile, the tech giants’ behind large language models arguments for “fair-use,” that machines are digesting and learning from the written word in the same way human readers do and not merely copying them is keeping lawsuits at bay within a legal-framework wholly unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with wholesale violation and lacking attributions—insufficient to even form a rigorous standard to hold the robots to. 

 synchronoptica

one year ago:  the Human Be-In (1967), Davy Jones changes his professional name (1966), ten years of Question Hound plus assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: Davie Bowie’s Low (1977), a short by Gรฉrald Frydman plus training an AI on vintage Batman comics

three years ago: a celebration of donkeys, Trump’s second impeachment, Laocoรถn, the US Congress’ electronic voting machines, marijuana and the munchies, premium pluralisation plus more on snail compasses

four years ago: forty-five-plus years of Fresh Air, US-Iranian relations, for America, separation of Church and State is becoming blurred plus Germany’s Un-Word of the Year

five years ago: pop-up poetry, view from a bus plus Cherubrashka

Thursday 11 January 2024

dune messiah (11. 258)

Via Super Punch, we learn that a journalist writing for Wired! has uncovered the half-finished script treatment for David Lynch’s sequel to Dune, a follow up to the albeit flawed and disowned but beloved by many—considered canon and cult—to the director’s 1984 adaptation of the epic novel by Frank Herbert. Originally planned as a back-to-back shooting of both the second part and the third in the trilogy, Children of Dune, for 1986 with the same cast and starting pre-production work on models for special effects before the box-office failure to bring this saga ambitiously to the big screen, Max Evry had heard rumours of the lost screenplay while researching his book on Lynch’s version and was bowled over to actually track down and read the artefact. Although aspects of Dune II would appear even more unfilmable with the palace intrigues and most of the narrative focusing on the introspection of Paul Atreides as a “benevolent” but reluctant ruler, Lynch unfinished work suggests he could have pulled it off cinematically, with all the shape-shifting, reanimating and spell-binding arts in lieu of technical craft of the book. Much more at the links above. 

synchronoptica

one year ago: the first state lottery, voice-sampling, social media and mental health plus candid shots from the set of Hackers

two years ago: assorted links to revisit, The Night Stalker (1972) plus the Metric Marvels

three years ago: your daily demon: Orias, more links to enjoy plus a mechanical computer toy to teach logic

four years ago: Koyaansiqatsi in GIF form, more Roman holidays plus pet moss

five years ago: planned reforms for the US Patent Office

Friday 5 January 2024

book revue (11. 244)

As our faithful chronicler informs, on this day in 1946, the Looney Tunes short directed by Bob Clampett was released in theatres as a preview reel before the main feature on this day in 1946. Set in a book store where the characters come to life after midnight, it features a zoot-suited Daffy Duck (voiced of course by Mel Blanc) in one of his zaniest performances.

Tuesday 26 December 2023

9x9 (11. 218)

inukshuk: CGP Grey grades the flags of the Canadian provinces—see previously  

omnibus: a compilation of the best books of the year 

52 things: Kottke shares some inspired, superlative gleanings from the past twelve months 

black smokers: hydrothermal vents evolved to prey on benthic Santas  

editors’ picks: some of NPR’s favourite, possibly overlooked stories of the year  

in a big country, dreams stay with you: assessing the size of YouTube—via Waxy  

there are two kinds of bubbles: speculation on the speculative nature of artificial intelligence from Cory Doctorow  

font foundry: the year in typography  

first nations: the contentious, selective display of tribal flags at the Oklahoma state capitol

Saturday 23 December 2023

11x11 (11. 208)

mmxxiii: the year in anniversaries, including the debuts of Question Hound, Casablanca, the World Wide Web, The Exorcist and the Yom Kippur War 

seasons greetings: decades of off-kilter Christmas cards from John Waters 

explainer: five video essays worth your holiday downtime 

tl;dr: public nominates longreads worth revisiting  

enigmatic chemical reactions: runaway chaotic catalysts are heating up two massive landfills near Los Angeles  

cash-on-deposit: leaving money in your bank-account also contributes to one’s carbon-footprint  

lithub: the biggest literary stories of the year 

a year in illustration: the collages accompanying Pluralistic posts  

re:view: Dezeen’s annual top tens 

et exaltavit humiles: a medieval token likely dispensed by a Boy Bishop, who held authority from the feast of Saint Nicholas through the Day of Holy Innocents, was discovered in Norfolk  

2023: the year in review from the Financial Times