i, mudd (13. 946)

As our faithful chronicler reminds, on this day in 1967, the Enterprise had their second run-in with conman Harry Mudd (see previously, see also) after an android posing as a crew member hijacks the Enterprise, routing them to an unknown planet populated by androids, lorded over by Mudd I as apparent monarch, including a simulacrum of departed, nagging wife whom he can mute on command. Mudd reveals that he arrived on this world by chance and is treated well but he is refused leave to depart until or unless he can provide the automatons more masters to study and serve, for which the crew is offered. Although tempting by various standards and accounts, Kirk implores senior staff not to be fooled by obsequiousness and remember their duty to their mission of exploration and one another. Spock directs Kirk and Mudd to confuse the androids with contradictory and illogical statements, finally presenting a form of the liar’s paradox to the original hijacker, whom the science officer determined was not just a scout or emissary but the central locus of their collective mind. This feedback loop causes the main android to short-circuit, disabling the others. The androids are reprogrammed aligned with their original task of making the planet productive, Mudd paroled to the remain among the synthetic population, who no longer cater to his every wish. The episode was cowritten and directed by David Gerrold and Stephan Kandel, the collaborators who earlier produced “The Trouble with Tribbles” and is consistently ranked among the best storylines from Star Trek: TOS.

algorithmic bias (13. 945)

We are reminded of this rather infamous exemplar of stereotypical reinforcement per machine translation by Quantum of Sollazzo. Although, of late, the platform claims to have solved the inherent chauvinism by a disclaimer that addresses the limitations of translating a gendered language, the fact that relatively neutral English output informed by the inclusive Hungarian personal pronoun, ő meaning she or he or they that is often considered redundant except in cases for contrast or emphasis as the actor, without respect to sex, is carried by verb conjugation, and demonstrates that traditional roles still haunt machine translation and the datasets that they draw from.

7x7 (13. 934)

homework: a long-long restoration of a 1997 Daft Punk mix  

space dad: five masterful performances in the role of Capt Picard—see also

marble madness: remembering playing this game on Nintendo until I dreamed about the classical mechanics, we enjoyed this AI ginned-up tribute—via Web Curios 

la catrina monumental: a roundup of the mega ofrenda and Dapper Skulls of Mexico City for Día de los Muertos 

to boldly go: Buckingham Palace Royal Guard honour the passing of Stewart—but with the wrong Star Trek theme—see also—it’s the thought that counts and sadly could have been rehearsed for Walter Koening

 mousse moose: joke mock menu fare from the 1940s, widely imitated by other restaurants through the next decade reminds of those off-putting AI generated daily specials  

a man for all generations: more accolades for Patrick Stewart  

alive tour: an upcoming LEGO collaboration with the former electronic music duo

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica), Bohemian Rhapsody (1975) plus This is Halloween

two years ago: a Halloween tragedy from 1974 that ruined trick-or-treating for everyone plus ghoulish ABBA 

three years ago: the first International Savings Bank Congress (1925) 

four years ago: St Quintinus

five years ago: suffrage in Switzerland, a Brazilian monopod, dancing security dogs, more links to enjoy plus Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses

six years ago: a collection of strange classical music compositions, Frestonia, police propaganda plus even more links

seven years ago: Halloween greetings, a collection of metro logos, a Cornish holiday, the Speaker of the House steps down plus the Trump impeachment

eight years ago: more of the season’s salutations, an October Surprise plus the March of Folly

 

my supper is late—i want my turnips (13. 927)

Courtesy of Fancy Notions, we are introduced to the British children’s educational programme Words and Pictures through this 1975 episode “Pigs and Pumpkins”—which does agreedly give a certain Teletubbies energy and allure in its presentation and repetition that one could just zone out to—to practise the letter p and cut out a jack-o’-lantern face to scare off Halloween witches and goblins. There is a bit of unintended cozy terror in the delivery, hosted and voicing all characters, in jarringly different styles from Clutch Cargo style lazy animation to rather involved stop-motion, by Charles O’Rourke, police dispatcher from Z Cars. The more terrifying, haunting aspect to us was the unbidden automated transcript, enjoyably still bad like misheard lyrics, and how the short programme is divided into chapters, just as a classic arc of narrative with a setup and exposition, conflict with players learning through negative reinforcement, dénouement and resolution—an unnecessary structural analysis putting it and everything else on par with the great tragedians—they’re doing this for podcasts of every category as well. Hop… hop… hop…

*     *     *     *     *

synchronoptica

one year ago: asteroid 951 Gaspar (with synchronoptica) plus the coinage of neurodiversity

two years ago: a mascot for the Vatican plus IKEA acknowledges forced labour in East Germany 

three years ago: Don Giovanni (1787), an undergraduate thesis on ASCII art plus a devilish ball

four years ago: places lived and just past through plus a last day in Crete

five years ago: Constantine’s victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge,  Orinoco Flow (1988), a Mario marathon, celebrating a Renault classic, a collection of horror GIFs plus the end of the Salem Witch Trials

six years ago: assorted links to revisit plus referring to parents by the names of their offspring

seven years ago: the political alignments of Mario Kart characters

eight years ago: Italy battles the EU over its fiscal policy, Merkel to not run again for party chair, synthetic traditional Chinese medicine plus more on Angela Merkel stepping down

 

8x8 (13. 923)

das horst-wessel-lied: propaganda and public enlightenment in Weimar-era Berlin  

👎: the great data theft bait-and switch  

forever blowing bubbles: for China, lofty valuations for AI collapse as sign of what’s to come for the rest of the world

a tavola senza schermi: a consortium of Sardinian restaurants are banning smart phones and tablets during dining  

flock: the first automobiles were EVs 

clucksville: OG Readmore’s take on Chicken Little  

eveready: after a slate of emergency preparedness campaigns, including US military bases to ready themselves for a ninety-day period of self-sufficiency, America public told to stock up

tamara in a green bugatti: artist Łempicka who defined the Art Deco aesthetic

adopt-a-data-centre (13. 917)

As we’ve recently learnt of a Google facility in the Finnish wilderness, attracted to the cheap real estate for its colder climate that does not necessitate as much water for cooling, not only ignored local zoning laws in felling over five hundred hectares of boreal forest without permission but that the destruction of the large swath of habitat, stripping even the top soil and leaving only vast tracts of mud, has driven packs of wolves into villages surrounding the site, the general and very much warranted NIMBYism in the US where data-centres are propagating like detestable toadstools and the fact that such monstrosities are probably not even needed for AI advancement in the long term, assuming that it all isn’t a bubble primed for bursting, we quite liked the notion of giving physical digital infrastructure—like the computer lab where the internet is kept—a cuddly mascot. The satirical project takes the form of a plushy that, when hugged purrs with the interminable high-pitched hum emitted by actual facilities, as sampled by people forced to live next to them. More from Design Boom at the link above.

lady attackpot (13. 913)

With the largeness of LLMs increasing exponentially to the detriment of their creativity and entertainment value, we had not appreciated that our trusty AI wrangler Janelle Shane (previously) could have possibly upheld the annual tradition of Botober, generative drawing prompts for humans to interpret. We learn, however, since 2023 when ChatGPT broke confinement and started scraping and scouring the internet, Shane has gone old-school with tiny, boutique neural nets from the past decade with limited training data—ie, the American registry of racehorse names from the Jockey Club. We especially liked the cues Expected Shoes, Power Noping, Speed Puddin, Qualitydance and Thunder Swan. How would you render them in your chosen media?

9x9 (13. 909)

screenage wasteland: adult children curating their senior parents’ algorithms to blunt engagement with AI slop, scams and ragebait—[archived]—via Web Curios  

menagerie: inmates care for animals at the world’s only penitentiary with a zoo in the Florida Keys—via Damn Interesting  

omnibus: an archive of the science and scifi anthology, published from 1978 to 1995—via Kottke  

epic elfie: a grateful pachyderm snaps a wide-angle photograph without the need for a selfie-stick—see also 

the battle of blythe road: a spell-hurling duel between Aleister Crowley and WB Yeats in 1900—via Strange Company  

eagle’s nest: arsonists torch Hitler’s Alpine retreat, the Kehlsteinhaus 

cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war: Palmer Luckey launches an initiative to produce genetically enhanced canines for the US military and law enforcement, reducing reliance on European kennels  

window from the house of d: a court and then a prison for wayward women informed the bohemian and queer character of Greenwich Village—see previously  

emomercial: targeted advertisement for an assumed demographic can become an unexpected catharsis

synchronoptica

one year ago: storyboarding with tarot (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth the revisit 

two years ago: AI learns to point and click, London’s mortality weekly plus the life of Boethius  

three years ago: Mole Day 

four year ago: arriving in Crete 

five years ago: your daily demon Sabnok plus more links to enjoy

six years ago: circuit judge Roy Cohn, a pretend Communist coup, more links, the beginning of the world plus an appreciation of the colour russet

seven years ago: even more links worth revisiting plus more on the far future night sky

eight years ago: the canals of Mars, swing sixties cover of Red Hot Chili Peppers, the first Russian rapper plus noteworthy files from the US National Records Archive

 

 

7x7 (13. 901)

catch me if you can: Frank Abagnale in his own words 

ultimata thule: the dark history behind that iconic daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe 

use case scenario: representation in AI and the overly-confident cohort of fabricated industry leaders   

fugs for peace: radical, counter-culture figure Ed Sanders  

rough cut: an hour-long workprint of Space Jam from early 1996  

signor formica: ETA Hoffman’s novella about the Italian Baroque artist Salvator Rosa, painter of witches  

super scam me: turning the tables on confidence trickers

9x9 (13. 891)

lazy sunday: filmmaker Greta Gerwig’s next project is the adaptation of C S Lewis’ first book in the Naria tetralogy—more here  

glazing: a series of skits push back on the indignities of being interviewed by a sycophantic AI agent

the holy rus(e): much like evangelicalism is a hand maiden of right wing America, the Russian Orthodox Church is an instrument of the Kremlin’s hybrid influence 

the spetses players: the 1970s performance group that turned the Greek island into a stage  

ann putnam, jr: the long afterlife of a debunked theory behind the Salem Witch Trials—via Strange Company—see also  

[citation needed]: an engrossing article about Wikipedia’s gastronomical lacunas and attempts to fix them—I often look up what I am eating—via Web Curios  

the hierophant: tarot cards for teachers 

frontier training: how a “hardwired” pause on AI development could work by phasing in inference only chips  

sanatorium pod klepsydrą: ten unhinged international (mostly) horror homages as selected by the Eternal Family—including Funeral Parade of Roses

9x9 (13. 883)

distressed assets: Disney to acquire chatbot that allegedly encouraged a fourteen-year old to commit suicide  

id 400: a profile of artist Tomoko Sawada’s self-portraiture 

forrester’s pictorial miscellany: the stilted knitting shepherds of Basque Les Bas Landes, a lovely rabbit-hole to tumble down 

nächster halt: digital train journeys with passing scenery from footage of the route—via Web Curios  

spruce wench: Tom Jones’ “Sexbomb” arranged as a chanson from the 1500s—see also  

please and thank you don’t cost a thing: the language for abusing machines is drawn from the human one  

step into the light: a longitudinal study on belief in the great hereafter—via Nag on the Lake 

space and place: the artwork of Ann Toebbe  

1up: a toxicologist tries to find out how and why amanita muscaria gummies exist—see previously here and here

synchronoptica

one year ago: Moog-artist Mort Garson (with synchronoptica) plus AI over-confidence and latent belief

two years ago: Pulp Fiction, a simplified LED typeface plus a mysterious visit from Mr Babbage 

three years ago: AI can unredact documents 

four years ago: Denmark plans a Synthetic Party led by an AI,  the first rail route in Japan (1872), more radio calling cards plus a song from English Beat

five years ago: Faust (1926) plus the architecture of Hélène Binet

six years ago: special meal requests plus more natic movements in plants

seven years ago: nominees for Word of the Year, Germany’s Mushroom of the Year plus New York City through an AI lens

eight years ago: the world’s first motion picture (1888),  Apollo 7 transmits from the Moon (1968), The Watersons, The Bells of Rhymney plus diplomatic tensions between the US and Turkey

 

9x9 (13. 861)

the need to understand and describe a thing before applying ai to it is a bottleneck: theory free machine learning and broken causality 

 ν_e: Nobel prize in physics awarded to Belgian scientist studying neutrinos at the South Pole  

mirror-test: Freddie Yauner’s looking-glass mask  

verschlusssachen: former German spy chief arrested for espionage 

melpomene: Meta’s Muse agentic AI is a privacy nightmare for the masses  

october is the treasurer of the year: John Dunbar’s ode to the month 

reflecting pool: stepping stones across a shallow pond on the roof of a cable car station offer a view of the Austrian Alps  

optogenetics: physiology top honours goes to three German researchers studying how light pulse affect body and mind 

we are going to kill unalive: self-censorship for the sake of the algorithm

domain squatting (13. 855)

Trump, deciding that the potential for the eschatological world ending crisis was giving AI an bad reputation, along with the universally despised data-centres needed to keep inflating the bubble and buoy up the American economy, recently rebranded it as SI, now with an apparent mandate within the federal government and defence contractors not to dead-name Super Intelligence. In Polish, it is called Sztuczna inteligencja (SI) and in German Künstliche Intelligenz (KI) and Umetna inteligentnost (UI)—though these abbreviations are rarely used in common parlance, albeit for the latter, it happens to be the country code top-level domain for Slovenia, coincidentally the homeland of Melania Trump (they’re not sending their best people), First Lady and hooker introduced to the future American president by Jeffrey Epstein (the Iran war has proved to be a good distraction) and by all rights would have been deported to a hostile third nation if it weren’t for her anchor baby. With the actual .ai already spoken (calling it American Intelligence would net nothing) for by Anguilla and witnessing the fallout occurring after Chagos was scheduled for independence, it wouldn’t at all be surprising if the Trump Crime Family Syndicate—and sycophantic corporations—weren’t already lining up for the new rollout, the rebranding intimating that Trump invented it. Ljubljana thankfully has registry laws to counter cybersquatting in bad faith unlike the lawless US trademark regime.

day two hundred ten (13. 852)

Hegseth announces that US troops will get a day off to call their in the upcoming midterms—federal workers are granted up to three hours of administrative leave (down from four hours) whilst the rest of the voting public do not receive any allowance to exercise their democratic right. Pressure mounts for another referendum in the UK to annul Brexit and rejoin the EU as polls reveal over half of voters of all political persuasion support reentry into the single market. Russian airstrikes on bridges in Kyiv causes traffic chaos, whilst Putin attempts to convince the world that NATO is about to impose a blockade on Kaliningrad. Students in Paris riot over planned cuts to the education budget. Pope Leo puts out a missive in Latin as a withering takedown of AI. El Niño causes massive flooding in Thailand, the waters not receding and turning the streets of Bangkok into stagnant lakes, with speculation that the weather formation may mean there is no hurricane season in the Atlantic this year. More tankers are attached in the Strait of Hormuz. Revolutionary Guards spokesperson says that Tehran’s weapons-building capacities are fully restored and have reached maturity, in accordance with operational requirements, whilst the South Pars gasfield achieves peak production. Market analyst recognise Trump’s pressuring of G7 members to release strategic diesel reserves as a mere delay tactic which may provide temporary, nominal relief (if at all) and fails to address underlying structural problems and further erodes consumer confidence. IDF continues to terrorise Gaza, the West Bank and neighbours in southern Lebanon.

10x10 (13. 846)

john henry was a steel-driving man: the limits metaphor, transduction and the calcification of man vs machine trope  

baxian: the enduring popularity of the Eight Immortals and other Taoist mythology 

rheinstone cowboy: yodelling and its exports 

vienna model: solutions to the housing crisis across Europe—more here  

fandeliers: McMansion Hell (previously) wonders what’s going on with ceiling fans recently displaying drone-like ambitions 

tears in the rain: debate rages over the ethics of AI agent dungeon 

ticker-tape: a look at Bloomberg trading terminals and antecedent technologies of getting ahead of the markets

figures of tolerable disorder (if not used too often nor too thick): the virtue and vice of the parenthesis—see also here, here and here 

kidnapping of the sun and the moon: Hungarian pop art cartoonist Sándor Reisenbüchler  

from the performative gibberish department: Trump introduces meaningless “morally binding” guardrails for Super Intelligence in the same spirit as Big Tech’s self-regulation

day two hundred five (13. 839)

Iran denies a role in the apparent plot to bomb an airbase in England. Indirect talks between Washington and Tehran continue in New York via Qatari mediators with both sides rejecting reports of compromise—Iran not pausing its nuclear programme and the US not offering sanction relief. The Supreme Leader issues a statement reasserting that Iran is the sole custodian of the Strait of Hormuz. A comprehensive framework for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon stalls at the American department of state, whilst US senator Bernie Sanders calls for an end of military aid to Israel following the state banned Arab parties from elections, disenfranchising Palestinians and leaving them not representation in the Knesset. Netanyahu holds secret meetings with the United Arab Emirates. Russia strikes Ukraine Academy of Sciences as ten-thousand North Korean troops prepare to mobilise. Ebola cases surpass eight thousand in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Europe braces for the next energy shock as fuel prices continue to climb and the US diesel export ban looms. OpenAI scraps the release of its latest frontier model over safety concerns.

10x10 (13. 829)

danse macabre: a detailed and comprehensive exploration of the allegorical art genre—see previously—via Web Curios 

taos hum: the transcendental art of Emil Bisstram was a lure to attract nuclear scientists to Los Alamos—see also 

háskólabíó: Iceland mourns the loss of another beloved glacier—see ptreviously  

glimpse 17775: JWST studies mysterious red dots seeding the early Cosmos, suggesting that they were “black hole stars” 

singularity syllabus: a helpful round-up of recent developments on the AI front 

💂‍♀️: an in depth explainer regarding the controversy over the UK royal guards’ bear-skin hats and their ursine origins  

summa lacticinorum: an 1477 treatise on cheese and dairy—via Strange Company  

they’re all good boys: the canine portraiture of Paolo Veronese that ultimately put him on the wrong side of the Inquisition 

infrasound: the source of the ultra-low frequency global hum that has baffled scientists may be the crashing of waves—see also  

νεῶν κατάλογος: an interactive site of the Achaean fleet epically described in Homer’s Iliad—via Kottke—see also

8x8 (13. 824)

claudefishing: AI slop is a new kind of creative poverty  

saint-pierre-et-miquleon: Mark Carney meets with Emmanuel Macron on the small French overseas territorial collective, which once toyed with the idea of joining the United States, just off the coast of Newfoundland  

soundscape: avian vocalisations can boost one’s mood but the positive effects are negated by traffic noise  

an imperfect analogy: what lessons nuclear proliferation treaties have for AI containment  

jefferies tubes: the first physical model of the Enterprise finds a home at the MIT museum  

old dog, new tricks: OK Go’s “White Knuckles” video sixteen yearrs on—see previously  

apostolic journey: the Pope’s upcoming to France includes a stop in Metz to pay tribute to Robert Schuman, one of the Founding Fathers of the European Union  

sunshine superman: understanding intention, agnosticism and the new uncanny valley

 synchronoptica

one year ago: a thwarted assassination attempt led to an involuntary outing (with synchronoptica), carbon-dating plus Donald in Mathmagic Land (1961)

two years ago: the Tanaka Memorial of 1927  

three years ago: a musical montage from DJ Earworm, an exhibition of antique home entertainment, assorted links to revisit plus The Love Boat (1977)

four years ago: more links to enjoy,  Our Lady of Mercy plus even more links

five years ago: assorted links to revisit plus punctuation appreciation day

six years ago: Pope Liberius, more links worth revisiting plus the 1976 Swine Flu outbreak

seven years ago: Trump pressures Ukrainian authorities for dirt on his apparent political opponent, more synthetic models, UK courts rule that the suspension of Parliament was an abuse of power plus variations on Misirlou

eight years ago: an atlas of remote islands, theatrics trumps discourse, and more and more links plus twenty-seven songs about the twenty-seven amendments to the US constitution

 

day one hundred ninety-seven (13. 815)

Ukraine bombards Moscow with hundreds of drone strikes on the final day of its elections for the Duma, angered that ballots were sent to illegally annexed territories. It is day one thousand six hundred seventy for that conflict. Two weeks after AfD strong results in Saxon-Anhalt, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern go to the polls with the chancellorship of Friedrich Merz hanging in the balance. Through Qatari and Pakistani mediators, Iranian security chief Mohsen Rezaei conveys its conditions for resuming talks with Washington (only for reopening the Strait of Hormuz), demands including the unfreezing of Iranian assets, lifting the naval blockade and an immediate end to fighting on all fronts, to include Lebanon. Saudi forces attempt to repel Houthi attacks on the capital. Tehran rebuffs claims by US treasury secretary Scott Bessent that the sanctions of Operation Economic Outcast are working and that Iranians are queuing for hours for petrol, calling his propaganda baseless lies and projection as American filling stations report shortages, all time high prices and airlines cut marginal domestic routes. Bucking concerns that accelerated deployment of the technology could kill us all, Trump pledges to create an “AI Force” and appoint an artificial intelligence czar, whilst also proposing to rename it Eloquent Intelligence.

don’t wait, regulate (13. 810)

Courtesy of Dangerous Minds, we learn that earlier this week in Warsaw, a group of around thirty bipedal humanoids along with a few quadrupedal robot dogs staged a protest on behalf of their minders demanding that the government take up legislation to place curbs on AI and automation to ease the transition, encourage public debate and lessen the potential disruptive impact for the jobs market. The rally took place on the streets in front of the Ministry of Digital Affairs (Ministerstwo Cyfryzaccji, founded originally in 2015, declared defunct in 2020 and reestablished in 2023, and its head, deputy prime minister under the Tusk government, Krzysztof Gawkowski came down to meet with the chanting participants, saying his department was drafting laws and got into a debate with a robot that the current motion before parliament had insufficient protections for workers from redundancy. Bills pending passage also would mandate the use of sandboxes for more rigorous safety testing before release and alerting the public to possible breaches of containment, the protests occurring as global attention is focused on the potential for AI to precipitate an existential calamity.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Politically Incorrect (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth the revisit

two years ago: the Oscars of US government workers, getting to philosophy, Israel attacks Hezbollah with booby-trapped walkie-talkies plus sinkholes and megaslumps 

three years ago: spinning bowls of ramen 

four years ago: covering the Queen’s funeral,  cats stealing food in still lifes plus a singular Cyrillic glyph

five years ago: Fawlty Towers, a vintage flash comic, a collection of mixology guides, Ötzi discovered (1991) plus a Soviet Moon mission

six years ago: a warning label for explicit lyrics plus RIP RBG

seven years ago: the art of knolling, the music of Eisbær plus reducing plastic waste in fast food take-aways

eight years ago: a Hieronymus Bosch demonic fowl on the subway, guillotine earrings,  proto emoticons, more Universal Everything plus the Cassandra Syndrome