t1 (12. 543)

Hardly preoccupied with shuttle diplomacy though none the less busy, Trump has chosen this moment to launch, along side his crypto-grift and peddling access with his branded merch, an eponymous mobile his signature poorly executed fashion, not only with a logo suspiciously similar to Deutsche Telekom’s but the coverage map failed to label the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, since redrawn, the flagship wireless package, dubbed the 47 Plan ($47.45 per month under a contract not easily broken), provides only nominal savings and piggybacks on national carriers, and these Freedom Phones touted as an American made, gold-coloured (only available for preorder, no refunds given) alternative to Apple’s iPhone, cheaper through Trump’s own tariff-subsidies and re-shoring of manufacturing. The latest venture, yet to deliver, is seen as a cheap knockoff (that also is raising privacy concerns) and a licensing agreement rather than anything innovative or patriotic.

6x6 (12. 540)

elbows up: on his way to attend the G7 in Canada, Macron visits Greenland, criticising Trump’s repeated overtures to annex the island—see previously  

ethanol orthodoxy: bio-fuel policy has been a net negative for the environment  

ready for prime time: Google text to video service is rolled out despite sloppy results 

c: MI6 appoints its first female spy chief in its one hundred sixteen year history—Dame Judy Dench only played one in the movies  

sidebar: revised injunction restrictions in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill that requires a bond, bribe to judges got even worst—see previously  

dudley do-right: G7 leaders gather in the Canadian Rockies for their economic summit 

synchronoptica

one year ago: a banger from Supertramp (with synchronoptica)

ten years ago: forbidden colours, assorted links to revisit plus cheap printing and chapbooks

twelve years ago: a visit to Wiesbaden-Schierstein plus Snowden’s formative time in Switzerland

fourteen years ago: revitalising a neglected church in Freibourg 

http 208 (12. 538)

Several accelerationist Silicon Valley chief technology officers have been recruited into the US Army Reserve as part time senior commanders, field promoted as colonels, as part of the newly formed Detachment 201 (the hypertext transfer protocol response status code for “Created”—the title refers to that of “Already Reported”—see previously here and here) to help integrate artificial intelligence into military planning and operations. Drawing from the ranks of Meta, OpenAI and Palatir is hardly surprising as the companies have been working with the military on various programmes including the controversial Project Maven to fully integrate AI into intelligence services. Significantly enlistment puts the companies’ under the purview of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and not subject to the scrutiny, jurisdiction and discovery of America’s civil courts of law should something untoward come up. As Eisenhower said, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sough or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplace power exists and will persist.”

павутина (12. 508)

Some eighteen months in planning—and a strong repudiation of that infamous White House meeting when Trump hurled insults at Zelenskyy and said that his country had no cards left—and with off the shelf hardware and software trained on old Soviet bombers on display in a museum to calibrate and target the semi-autonomous operation, Ukrainian security services carried out a sneak attack deep inside Russian territory, coordinated across five geographic regions, destroying up to a third of long-range air assets, a legacy fleet not quickly rebuilt, if at all. This stunning blow, codenamed Spider’s Web, was carried out on Sunday by three dozen basic quadcopters with heavy armament were covertly transported to their deployment sites near multiple area bases in containers disguised as mobile wooden cabins with retractable roofs on flatbed trucks, not an uncommon site and arousing no suspicions. Once in place, operators helped guide the drones through the domestic mobile telephone network, forgoing the need for satellite telemetry and avoid potential signal jamming technologies, from a command base located provocatively near to an FSB field office. The estimated damage to Russia’s missile carriers—which also includes a class of strategic nuclear bombers from the Cold War which cannot be kept in hangars under the terms of the START treaties—runs over seven-billion euro. 

This ingenious attack—which has drawn some comparisons to the booby trapped pagers that Israel used against Hezbollah, though Ukraine was far more surgical and had no collateral casualties—and was the biggest surprise victory since the sinking of the Moskva, followed with an encore of the third bombing of the Kerch bridge to Crimea. In the past weeks, Russia has significantly increased deadly strikes on Ukraine and comes just days ahead of planned peace talks in Istanbul. While a symbolic win and a potential set back that may spare some beleaguered communities from bombardment, this operation also illustrates a major shift in war fighting strategies and asymmetric engagement.

so long, elon (12. 498)

Departing from his post adhering to the statutory limits of his appointment as an emergency hire—though departing from the usual politicians’ script of “spending more time with my family” to spend more time with his businesses and showing up for his outprocessing with a sufficiently theatrical black eye, which he blamed on his child X although it could have been any number of agency chiefs, department heads or any conscientious bureaucrat (or Brigitte Macron) that socked him one on his way out, Musk as the destructive and chaotic force behind DOGE fell far short of his stated goal of trillions in savings and eliminating government fraud, waste and abuse. Instead the public reputation of Tesla and Starlink have been battered (as well as demonstrating his personal repugnance) , important public work selectively and irreparably, ruining lives and careers along the way. Realising the Sisyphean task and the fools’ errand, Musk’s ego is also bruised—laid bare by wilful ignorance of what services that the US federal government provides and how those functions hang together and so called inefficiencies are by design to prevent mass surveillance, not a legacy to be fixed by AI. For his exit survey, Musk also punched back in a way albeit it too little and too late given his influence, criticising Trump’s reckless Big Beautiful Bill as ultimately economically damaging.

neuspanien (12. 473)

Recalling how their leak of the covert Zimmermann telegram with the German Empire promising to award the lost territories of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico to Mexico if they invaded the United States and created a new front in the Great War in early 1917 pushed the US to engage in World War I, British intelligence forged (see also here and here) and publicised counterfeit attack plans allegedly by Nazi Germany for Central and South America—still very much considered within the US bailiwick as part of the Monroe doctrine—to motivate the administration of FDR to abandon its policy of neutrality in 1941 as Axis forces reached the French coast. The operation likely conceived by Canadian veteran flying ace and spymaster William Samuel Stephenson, responsible for British security on the continent who oversaw covert intelligence and propaganda efforts in South America, originally intended to leave a copy of the map in somewhere in Cuba in the hopes that American authorities would come across it of their own accord but it appears that Britain presented it to Roosevelt through intelligence channels directly, reportedly seized from a diplomatic courier in Buenos Aires. Presented to the American public as cautious not authentic bur rather secret (note the marking GEHEIM), it is unclear if the president was aware of its true nature.

siloed data (12. 425)

Unseriously I‘ve often said that none of us would have jobs if the various platforms we used could talk to one another. Since the rampage of DOGE through the US federal government, I’ve thought differently about this segregation of information is a function of bureaucracy, like the checks and balances of power amongst the three coequal branches. Even if the Department of Government Efficiency were to happily sublimate into an awkward memory and their designs to purge and private equitied were all ultimately foiled and reversed, the damage is still done with copying formerly cordoned off databases to an unsecured server (in the name of efficiency, and not chiefly for me risk of the information getting into the hands of ransomers or nogoodniks though that’s a bad enough prospect) but that the aggregate data points create a custom and comprehensive dossier on every single US citizen—the sort of thing that American social media providers shrilly decried with with integrated platforms like WeChat and lately with TikTok, hurling warnings in the gravest of language that it poses a national security risk and inculcates Americans with Chinese communist propaganda. Again every accusation is a confession, and DOGE‘s legacy despite any thing else will be cementing a surveillance state without equal.

9x9 (12. 340)

us agency for global media: Voice of America director files lawsuit over ordered closure—a federal judge issues a temporary stay   

pecksniffian paragraph: Trump as a Dickens’ stock character over his sermonising on transgender military service members   

entomological adultery: the 1912 Cameraman’s Revenge painstakingly animated by Władysław Starevicz 

deterministic bit generator: a financial institution’s experiment with quantum computing generates certifiably random numbers with applications in auditing and encryption—see also   

the memes have entered the chat: the internet responds to Signalgate (aka whiskeyleaks)

arts décoratifs: rediscovering Betty Joel, Britain’s forgotten maven of Art Deco design—part of a centenary celebration of the movement—see previously

the population of an old pear tree: an 1870 work by Belgian author Ernest van Bruyssel celebrating biodiversity and insect life 

import/export: ahead of the planned tariff action for 2 April “Day of Liberty” Trump announces twenty-five percent duties on foreign cars and components, triggering retaliation 

are you sure ms kerger—because he is red: NPR and PBS testify before congress with its federal funding at stake—see previously

synchronoptica

one year ago: anatomised police lineups (with synchronoptica), assorted links to revisit, a classic from U2 plus a Nordic Easter witch

seven years ago: the dynamic Cosmos, more links to enjoy plus Everything’s Coming Up Simpsons

eight years ago: backmasking and the Satanic panic, the show with the mouse plus the Bombay Sapphire distillery

nine years ago: Easter greetings, revisiting the Leipzig Panometer plus a canting dialect

ten years ago: Holy Blood, Holy Grail, even more links, poet Paul Verlaine plus affecting a holiday accent

9x9 (12. 339)

debonair: an amazing and comprehensive collection of flight attendant uniforms—via Things Magazine  

contrapoints: a documentary contextualising misinformation to point out it is misinformation 

shortened itinerary: second lady’s tour of Greenland (now joined by her husband) is limited to inspecting the troops at Pituffik Space Base  

seagram’s vo: pallets of American alcohol being returned to the manufacturer  

jug band: a fun cover of Beat It!—with a powerful solo bridge by the Bottle Boys 

boilerfaker: a new trend in microdosing alcohol—via tmn  

duty to report: the 1890 attempt to coerce Canada into joining the US backfired spectacularly  

signalgate: The Atlantic editor inadvertently added to a national security counsel group chat publishes transcript in full after Trump administration downplayed the seriousness of the breach 

hmnd: an incomplete bestiary of humanoid robots

cruelties, collusions, corruptions and crimes (12. 336)

Via JWZ, the crew at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency has regrouped after that initial and unending force majure of flooding the zone to again catalogue the daily horrors instigated by the Trump administration, like last time around, lest we forget. The atrocity legend has been updated with several new and dreadful categories to work into the schedule.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the calculus of Easter (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: Woozle hunting plus a local beverage

eight years ago: art projects informed by the Rijksmuseum collection

nine years ago: digital colonialism,  an AI chatbot comes to a disastrous end plus the Satan-Leaf Gecko

ten years ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus hipster animals

6x6 (12. 335)

reading between the lines: Trump regime shutters access to border-straddling opera and library, the Haskell House, which served as neutral territory for family reunions and marriages during his first term’s travel ban  

shreve, lamb and harmon: hidden details of New York City’s iconic buildings—via Damn Interesting 

kennedy center honors: Conan O’Brien awarded the Mark Twain prize for American humour, embracing the irony and tension of the moment 

backstroke of the west: an incomprehensible translation and re-translation of a Star Wars bootleg DVD  

free spaced repetition scheduler: geography with positive reinforcement—via Maps Mania 

opsec: Trump administration inadvertently shared its plans to to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen with a journalist from The Atlantic

8x8 (12. 318)

first comes the performance, then comes the repetition, then comes the integration: thirty lonely yet beautiful acts of defiance—even including social media—via Kottke 

fubar: Muckrock presents its FOIA Foilies awards for 2025—probably too early—see previously  

not shuttered, per se, just considered complete: venerable UbuWeb started back up after closure last year  

audible enclaves: researchers have discovered how to beam sounds to a targeted listener—via the New Shelton wet/dry 

it’s peanut butter jelly time: froghorn.exe is an homage to what used to be the internet’s biggest draw  

programmable mutterer: the allure of magical thinking and how the displaced grace of AI could prove more analogous to markets and institutions steering better than individuals  

smoking gun: Trump declassifies a tranche of documents on the JFK assassination, unredacted and “ushering in a new era of maximum transparency  

greeks bearing gifts: Senator Schumer votes to let the wooden horse into Troy

and i’m going to use that bill for myself too—if you don’t mind—because nobody gets treated worse than i do online, nobody (12. 289)

Though drafted with the unimpeachably serious aim of curbing the distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII—also known as revenge porn) online, the piece of legislation, the so called “Take It Down Act,” whose immediate passage Trump urged during his address to a joint-session of congress earlier in the week overly-broad language and is blatantly a recourse of the powerful to pressure host platforms to remove content critical of the administration, censoring and silencing dissent. Sponsored in the senate by Ted Cruz of Texas, the act would further require social media to have procedures in place to comply with a takedown request upon notice from a victim and enjoys support from the first lady, who is known for championing a rather unoriginal online safety campaign “Be Best” during her husband’s first term, opponents fear it could easily be extended to political speech and journalistic reporting that leadership does not like, with no penalties for lodging a false or frivolous notice and a requirement for hosts to monitor content shared over end-to-end encryption, potentially leading to platforms abandoning privacy measures in order to align with the law.

11x11 (12. 263)

broadband equity, access and deployment: Trump administration thinks the BEAD programme of the Infrastructures Investment and Jobs Act is too woke   

fermata: a thousand artists release a ‘silent’ album to protest changes to UK intellectual property rights to attract AI companies interesting in training their models on copyrighted material—via the New Shelton wet/dry—also more music without sounds 

late stage capitalism: Washington Post owner Bezos will only allow editorials that defend “free markets” and “personal liberties”—see also   

annual reformulation: important meeting of the US Centres for Disease Control to discuss strains for next season’s influenza vaccine cancelled, confirming fears that the new health secretary will pivot away from proven preventative medicine 

rif me daddy: what Trump’s AI enhanced shitpostings reveal about the administration and plans for the future of Palestine 

absalom, absalom: William Faulkner’s record-setting run-on sentence 

torus and tokamak: a German fusion startup is lauded for its plans, peer-reviewed, to launch a functioning power plant   

only the markets can save us: America’s total economic boycott planned for the last day in February 

touch grass: an app that blocks screentime and doomscrolling until one has proven one’s gone outside—via Waxy  

snoopers’ charter: Apple’s capitulation to the UK’s Investigative Powers Act is Chekov’s Gun for privacy worldwide   

by the people and for the people: dossiers of the people working for the Department of Government Efficiency

synchronoptica

one year ago: ceramicist Yoonmi Nam (with synchronoptica) plus the age of ludicrous inventions 

seven years ago: A Million Random Digits plus assorted links to revisit

eight years ago: more misattributed quotes 

nine years ago: Sàmi tone poems

ten years ago: theodicy, get anything delivered, more links to enjoy plus RIP Leonard Nimoy

eye opener (12. 259)

Via Clive Thompson’s always excellent Linkfest (lots to explore there), we are directed to a revealing tool created by the photo app-maker Ente that discloses what the Google Vision API (Application Programming Interface) sees when it sees your photos. Intrigued by the idea of seeing myself how the algorithms see me and not having a standard headshot handy, I snapped a quick selfie and uploaded it—not the best picture and obviously it got a few things right but didn’t think I necessarily presented as fatigued or wary—or particularly agnostic (I like to think of myself as a vaguely Jesus-y bon vivant, thank you), and not only did it zero in on my location, it also annoyingly focused on the pile of laundry in the background and decor and makes up a little narrative of insights for targeted advertisements, which are way-off base. I understand that’s how the commercial ecosystem works and people are algorithmically pigeon-holed and typecast all the time—sometimes with consequence, but seeing it in action, all the good and bad bits to be gleaned even from information and artefacts that are not public-facing, is a bit of off-putting fun.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Austria’s national anthem (with synchronoptica), assorted links worth revisiting plus Hitler’s first official postion

seven years ago: a Trump-branded property in Panama, street debater kits plus animator Len Lye

eight years ago: signals to the stars, a cruel captivity called off, our privileged view of the Cosmos, a flatpack pavilion for urban gardening plus a fast food franchise with a view of a Roman road

nine years ago: where are my flying cars, attentive listeners plus a Beaux Arts apartment in Manhattan

ten years ago: a tarot deck inspired by the art of Edward Gorey

star turn (12. 253)

Via the always engrossing Things Magazine, we are directed towards the vexing but useful author and astrologer of German extraction employed by MI5’s Special Operations Executive—an agency established by Churchill best known for sabotage and helping the resistance in occupied territories—Louis De Wohl (having changed it from Ludwig von Wohl when he fled Berlin) for psyops purposes during the darkest days of World War II. Despite his reputation as a vain and flamboyant “bumptious seeker after notoriety,” as one of his handlers described him and a real risk to compromising the security service’s mission through his indiscretion and high opinion of himself, officials were persuaded that his horoscopes might be an effective way to influence Hitler and his advisors. Dispatching De Wohl on a US lecture tour in 1941—already a figure of certain renown as a dozen of his early books were adapted as films from the late 1920s to the mid 1930s (mostly crime and romance novels, after his spy career, De Wohl continued writing but mostly hagiographies, following his conversion to Catholicism), Britain wagered that American audiences might be more receptive to and sympathetic for these fringe believes and might bolster public endorsement for joining the war effort. While there was certainly occult elements of the Nazi regime, Hitler’s confidence in and reliance for signs in the stars and cadre of astrologers was an elaborate fabrication, supported by the press to make De Wohl’s predictions seem accurate with supernatural corroboration on the part of the media, even reviving a German defunct horoscope newsletter (edited by De Wohl) and surreptitiously distributed in the country. Not foreseen though the propaganda campaign seemed to be paying off with American attitudes more accepting of such beliefs (see also here and here), the attack on Pearl Harbor rendered the efforts redundant, and recognising the potency of his charisma and power to influence the superstitious, De Wohl was quietly retired to write his stories about the lives of the saints, the extent of the operation not revealed until 2008 in a document release from the National Archives.

11x11 (12. 214)

traitor tots: Musk’s merry band of pickpockets and the corporate raids behind the Putsch and purge 

temper tantrum: extinction burst behaviour is one accounting of the ascendancy of MAGA intolerance  

fifty-first: Trudeau warns Trump is serious about annexing Canada—insultingly offering it statehood before Puerto Rico and DC 

isolation mode: after three decades, Baltic nations are switching to the EU power grid, getting off the Russian network

nosotromo: the high school play adaptation of Alien   

endless jeopardy!: hourly answers, honours go to the best, most creative questions—via Waxy   

expo 67: revisiting centenary celebrations in Montreal—see previously 

re-apartheid: Trump administration launches volley of complaints against South Africa, cutting of foreign aid and promote the “resettlement of of Afrikaner refugees”   

center for the performing arts: Trump declares himself chairman of the Washington, DC cultural institution and dismissing board members who disagree with his taste 

hr@opm.gov: unencrypted mass email to CIA operatives offering them the chance to resign may have compromised the agents’ identifies with serious counterintelligence concerns   

federal communications commission: Trump threatens to shut down the CBS television network, calls for the firing of journalists critical of the administration and for doxxing one of Musk’s minions

 synchronoptica

one year ago: vintage hotel luggage tags (with synchronoptica) plus a banger from Billy Ocean

eight years ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus augmented metrics

nine years ago: the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s charter, neologisms and nomonyms plus the Lunar New Year

ten years ago: LARPing at large plus more links to enjoy

eleven years ago: targeted political advertisement, Russian ban on genetically modified foods plus sugar-based batteries

senate select committee (12. 188)

Created on this day fifty years ago by a vote of eighty-two to four in the US upper house of congress, sponsored and chaired by namesake, Democrat senator Frank Church of Idaho, the bipartisan group charged with investigating various allegations of abuse and overreach of the CIA, the NSA, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service as the opening of a series of such inquiries earning the monicker for 1975 as the “Year of Intelligence,” whose findings resulted in the establishment of a permanent panel on espionage and reconnaissance. Among the more shocking revelations were of the existence of MKULTRA, involving unwitting citizens in mind control experiments, operations that infiltrated political, pacifist and civil-rights organisations, dragnet domestic spying abetted by telecommunication providers and Family Jewels, a covert programme that targeted foreign leaders for assassination, many of these projects uncovered by the press though the government agencies maintained plausible deniability and the the public was unaware of the full scope of them.

Published in six volumes the following April, the recom-mendations led to a presidential executive order banning the killing of foreign leaders (like with pictured dart gun loaded with shellfish toxin, as an untraceable and lethal weapon) issued by Ford and reaffirmed by Carter and Reagan (watch the numbering—they are sequential and skipping a few means it is classified, starting with EO 14147) and the publication of an NSA watch list that included activists, journalists, actor and Church himself. After briefing before congress (testimony was not unauthorised by the Ford administration’s advisors), Senator Church appeared on the news programme Meet the Press (previously)—discussing No Such Agency without mentioning it by name, warned:

In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air… Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.

If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government—no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology…

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.

11x11 (12. 172)

concrete feats: the landmark Våga Water Tower on coast Varberg, Sweden  

ſpy v ſpy: a look at the world of espionage in the Middle Ages—via the new Shelton wet/dry 

obelisks: researchers discover a new form of life with circular RNA—that appear less alive than viruses  

we were wrong that day—we broke the law: convicted January Sixth capitol rioter known as MAGA Granny rejects clemency offer  

winning odds: a collection of vintage Japanese lottery tickets  

cinematic universe: The Goonies and Back to the Future happened on the same day in 1985—via Kottke  

шрифт: foundry excavating Ukrainian fonts from the underground  

dark web: Trump has granted an unconditional pardon to Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht 

red team: research students—under supervision recreate—viral pathogens identical to those that caused the 1918 influenza pandemic  

lexicon: a glossary of medieval words from Middle English whose meanings have shifted  

solar gate: 4D printed blinds mimic plants to open and close on their own

fight for the future (12. 189)

On this day in 2012, over one hundred thousand popular (and unpopular, we figured out how to draw the curtains too) sites joined Wikipedia, Google and other prominent social media platforms in solidarity with a twenty-four hour web blackout in protest, formalised and coordinated under the above grassroots aegis, against two bills in the US congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act. Privileging copyright security over online freedom of speech and making hosts, particularly non-domestic ones liable for infringement, the mass movement garnered millions of signatures for a petition as well as millions of constituents contacting their representatives in the American government to express their opposition and ultimately defeated both SOPA and PIPA as senate sponsors withdrew their support.

synchronoptica

one year ago: theosophical Though Forms (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: White House imposes creative input on mission patches

eight years ago: the relics of war plus an atmospheric death ray

nine years ago: the Cosmological Constant plus more links to enjoy

ten years ago: Lovelace and Turing, the Satanic Children’s Big Book of Activities plus German currency harmonisation