the consequences of every act are included in the act itself

On this bright and cold day in April 1984, and the clocks were striking thirteen, Winston Smith returned home from the ministry and retreated to the comfort of his living room and took out this slim old diary with coral ornamentation that he bought from Mr Charrington that runs the frowzy junk shop and makes his first entry:

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER!
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER!
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER!
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER!
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER!

Horrified at his transgression and panicking, Smith was tempted to rip out those first spoiled pages and give up on this silly and pointless act of rebellion altogether but refrained, realising that it did not matter. The Thought Police would be coming for him just the same. He had committed—would still have committed, even without committing it to paper in his small, clumsy letters, the essential crime that contained all others, thoughtcrime.

john of nepomuk

Though not canonised until centuries later and then fêted on 31 May, abbot Jan z Pomuku was martyred on this day in 1393 (see previously) on orders of Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia by tossing him off the Charles Bridge into the Vltava for refusing to divulges the secrets that the queen had confessed to him. For his determination to keep from breaching confidentiality and for the manner of his death, John of Neopmuk was made patron of discretion and invoked against floods and drownings, often appearing in statue form on bridges, including on the above Karlův most. For Wenceslaus’ own popularity and continued reign, killing the queen’s confessor was tantamount to what the death warrant of Thomas à Becket did for Henry II.

[the facebook]

With origins in a website called “Facemash” which culled photographs and profiles of students from nine sorority houses on the campus of Harvard University published in the campus’ face books—a callbook or an annual distributed shortly after matriculation to help students get to know one another and presented them to be rated in terms of attractiveness circulated on the schools listservs that nearly got its author expelled violating individual privacy and breaching the network host’s security protocols, Mark Zuckerberg generously offered to digitise the student directory as a universal face book within Harvard. The university agreed and website thefacebook.com was launched on this day in 2004. Though membership was initialled limited to the college, the speed and spread of registration soon saw expansion to other prestigious universities and shortly thereafter most schools in the United States and Canada.

6x6

fietsstrook: LEGO cycling lanes (see previously) on their way 

pay no attention to that man behind the curtain: Jeff Bezos to hand over the reigns of power at Amazon 

it’s a duck blur: an in depth, retrospective analysis of the 1989 Capcom video game Ducktales  

end effector: Boston Dynamics’ Spot gets an arm and gripper attachment 

nihon no shiro: abstract woodcuts of the castles and palaces of Japan—via Present /&/ Correct  

force multiplier: innovative, portable CLIP drive transforms any convention bicycle into an e-bike—via Swiss Miss

the revolution will be commodified

pic.twitter.com/3bDuvTTpBL

By Quaranteenage Stepdad and from JWZ

secure socket

Via Slashdot, we discover that the freshly-inked Brexit Deal references decades old and defunct software and platforms described as modern services, including Netscape Browser and Communicator, the last version released in 1997. The cut-and-paste job does not just imply laziness or a rushed job but moreover belies a lack of understanding verging on contempt and disdain for technology and the issues that underlie secure communication while upholding these examples as tools to ensure compliance and cooperation going forward. What do you think? More details at the links above.

8x8

before times: one narrative of 2020 as told through fifteen objects and artefacts—see previously

marsha, marsha, marsha: Trump acknowledges months’ long cyber-attack on US government networks for first time—oddly defensive about Russian involvement 

systemic bias: when bad decisions are blamed on algorithms, bad actors are exculpated and trust in science erodes  

breakthrough listen: musing on the nature of signal detected from Proxima Centauri by the Murriyang Radio Telescope 

tape/slide newsreel group and friends: brilliant early 80s photo archive showing Hackney to Hackney—via the splendiferous Things Magazine   

engineer, agitator, constructor: the visual vernacular of utopian graphic design  

creek and culvert: the movement to resurface and revive long buried urban waterways—see previously  

off-limits: virtually visit nine sites not accessible to the public in Washington, DC 

a modern hanukah miracle: there are extra doses of vaccine in each vial—stretching out supplies to inoculate twice as many individuals than expected

5x5

kankyō ongaku: the ambient music (see also) of Hiroshi Yoshimura 

solstice sun: locate where and when in your locality where the streets align with the sun’s path at dawn and dusk as they do for Stonehenge—see also  

star with royal beauty bright: afterwards, check the skies for the Great Conjunction where Jupiter and Saturn appear as one celestial body  

solarwind: a look into the extensive cyber breach of US government networks and what information may have been compromised  

blob opera: a fun experiment with a musical quartet—via Boing Boing

hipaa compliant

A masterful grifter whose practises might even make the Trump crime family blush at some of its techniques whose sole business is that of scalping and alienating both artists and audiences now wants the medical histories of future concert-goers to reboot its venues with a guise of safety, allowing only those certified with a clean bill of health to attend events—facing no consequences of course when these measures fail and ceding further control to their entertainment enterprise. We had hoped that the pandemic would have broken up rackets (as the Trump syndicate will fall) like this rather than make stronger them cling harder to their power.

volenti non fit injuria

Via Slashdot, we are referred to the testimony of a former Facebook manager who baldly admits that the company took its cues from the business model and public relations campaign that Big Tobacco waged for decades to rebuff critics and make their addictive product more palatable at a congressional hearing.

Not mincing words, the ex-director of monetisation continued the analogy of growth at any cost—including the privileging of status and on-line reputation that drives ever more extreme content and hollows out any parasympathetic—human inclinations in favour of an insidious tribalism that’s antithetical to dialogue or consensus. We’ve been here before of course but the frankness and urgency are refreshing, though it might make those who regard this criminal enterprise in a favourable light grow further entrenched rather than simply walk away. Far worse than individual harm or second-hand smoke, the drive for engagement—framed as a proxy for user-satisfaction without respect to said-user’s motivation—has brought the US and the world to the breaking point, fomenting violence and unrest for followers.

public law 81-831

Also known as the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 or the Concentration Camp Law, the McCarran Internal Security Act, namesake of its principal champion the senator from Nevada, was enacted by congress on this day seventy years ago—overriding a veto by President Truman. In addition to requiring Communist and fascist organisations register with the Attorney General’s office and the already established Subversive Activities Control Board with the broad powers to restrict movement and revoke citizenship of members, it also provided for the emergency detention of dangerous or disloyal persons were there is reasonable cause to believe that such persons will probably engage in—or conspire with others to engage in—espionage or sabotage.

In 1965, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled to invalidate the requirement for political party affiliates to register with the Department of Justice and the ban on card-carrying Communist party members from obtaining a passport and traveling outside the US, with the board abolished in 1972, following Nixon’s Non-Detention Act of the previous year (passed due to overwhelming public pressure, see also), repealing most of aspects of the law. The clauses of the Internal Security Act (its official title) that remain in effect are cited, invoked by the US military as a means of access control for instalations.

simulmatics

Limning the world as we’ve inherited it, a Madison Avenue advertising agency, crafting detailed but questionably nuanced or accurate reflections of anyone or informing the proclivities of real persons demographic “people machines,” founded in 1959 the nascent business of data modelling, brilliantly accounted in Jill Lepore’s new book.
The corporate architecture originally programmed and coded by women staff members selected from the typing pool—until male executives recognised the prestige and profit in making computing and technology their exclusive domain (see also)—this Big Data approach was quickly applied to other venues besides marketing, but in ways that ultimately seem maladapted and cynical despite best intentions going in. That and the fact that a group of white men feel that those outside of their peer-group have to be decoded to be understood aptly prefigures the trajectory that tech has taken us and offers a glimpse at least of how it could be otherwise when civics are held separate from sales and targeting is not baked-in to community. Listen to the entire interview on NPR’s Fresh Air at the link below.

8x8

filling the frame: long-exposure photographs taken at a distance of the torii of Japan by Ronny Behnert 

kartellamt: Germany proposes law requiring interoperability to break up tech monopolies and hurdles to data portability

shortlisted: this year’s finalists for Comedy Wildlife Photo—see previously

button power: a century of pin-back badges as cultural iconography

playlist: enjoy the latest mixtape from JWZ and DNA Lounge

a splash of colour: artist Camille Walala on public works for London’s Mural Festival

wakon-yōsai: Meiji Restoration-era woodblocks present biographies of Western artists and innovators—see previously

i don’t want to live on this planet anymore: superlative atmospheric and astronomical images from an annual competition—via Miss Cellania’s Links

7x7

r.o.u.s. (rodent of unusual size): a LEGO Princess Bride playset

fifteen men on the dead man’s chest: beach sand skeletal impression kit

colouring london: an ongoing project amassing architectural statistical data from Maps Mania

antimandering: redistricting software that illustrates the trade-offs of proportional representation, via Waxy

splinternet: discouraging trend championed now by the US towards compartmentalising the once global web—via Slashdot

duly appointed rounds: another one of Trump’s antithetical department heads bent on dismantling the institution he is in charge of (see previously)

mind the gap: subway and metro announcements from around the world

bytedance

Though arguably characterising the popular short video montage application as some Trojan Horse infiltrating Americans’ households and siphoning their data to China is a hackneyed red herring with it hitting closer to home with many taking to the platform to insult and ridicule Donald Trump, it is instead worth noting the change in tenor on allowing TikTok to continue to operate within the US from an outright and immediate ban to suiting a quick and slapdash takeover. User data is still collected, presumably pursuant of the same sort of demographic profiling but will graciously be stored on domestic servers and not exported. Though TikTok is Chinese-owned, the app is not available in China. Pressuring the parent company to divest itself of a big part of its business under duress is the stuff of mafia bosses—especially so when Trump thinks that the US government deserves a cut of the sales for having negotiated such a favourable deal.

upsampling

We’ve seen the built-in bias on display of this neural network application that turned a pixelated image of Barack Obama into an avatar that presents as pretty Caucasian, and Janelle Shane (previously) does a really good job at unpacking what’s going on here with our own tendency for pareidolia codified and amplified.
Not only is the algorithm informed by representation (and under representation) which is highly problematic and is something that the industry desperately needs to redress lest machine learning become the next commercialised embodiment of unreliability, the artificial intelligence delivers what it’s rewarded for delivering, be that a human face or a serviceable suspect that complies well enough with a blurry or grainy image. Thankfully most of the leaders in this sector, faults and all, are taking a pause in sharing their technologies with bad actors, including law enforcement agencies. The application cannot recover details that do not exist—only invent them based on what’s been judged plausible.

8x8

it’s-a me francis: an upcoming immersive papal simulator

what wizardry is this: augmented reality copy-and-paste

in like flynn: weaponised US Justice Department dismisses case against former National Security Adviser for lying to FBI about Russian connections

the great realisation: or, why we say hindsight is 2020

4f: new rules prohibit individuals who have recovered from corona virus infections from enlisting in the US military

logic gate: cookie-consent walls ruled to violate GDPR (previously)

nation-building: a profile of the Home Shopping Club mercenaries that tried to topple the government in Venezuela (previously)

canvasing: though unable to visit constituents in person, one representative is island-hopping on-line

penny black

Whereas prior to the introduction of a pre-paid, flat-rate and conveniently adhesive postage stamp, first issued on this day in the United Kingdom in 1840, the Royal Mail was beset with complexities and high rates usually collected upon delivery determined by distance travelled as well as the sheet-count of the correspondence.
In order to remedy this situation and make the postal system more customer-focused and efficient (see also), inventor, social reformer and educator Sir Rowland Hill (*1795 – †1879) commissioned a government inquiry which resulted in not only the Uniform Penny Post but also an inexpensive, mass-produced version of an adhesive envelop for privacy, further facilitating the rapid and reliable exchange of correspondence. Honouring the monarch and promoting its adoption amongst the public, Hall and the committee selected a cameo image of then fifteen-year-old Victoria created by engraver and illustrator Charles Theodosius Heath (*1785 – †1848) and son Frederick, this portrait of the Queen used on stamps for the remainder of her reign.

side quest and news cycle

Vis-à-vis this other Hero’s Journey, this earlier commentary on the UX of going off the reservation and visiting websites outside of social media’s walled gardens, and this brutally accurate observation that in terms of open access, security, tracking and general skezziness that news sites have taken on the reputation that was accorded to porn sites a decade ago, this image from Mattsurelee (from Instagram, a platform we want no truck in either but thankfully brought to our notice from Nag on the Lake) really spoke to us.
I fully empathise with how news outlets and reporters are not just underfunded and face withering and atrophy but are facing outright assault and hostility and we all need to do a better job of supporting newsrooms and local reporting, but at the same time, I don’t think this coy, bullying approach is the right one—especially for an established audience that has agency and makes the choice to return to a trusted source and be made to jump through hoops and turn tricks to prise open content, ultimately made to find it syndicated elsewhere.

8x8

egg²: check out Box Vox’ egg-themed week starting with this recipe for apéroeuf including innovations in cartoning and carting

public display: open up and curator your own virtual gallery space in this social simulation game

all hail our morlock overlords: after forcing the in-person ballot in Wisconsin, GOP death cult refuses to ban large gatherings for Easter holiday

contact tracing: a nice primer on how the method can combat the spread of contagious diseases without compromising individual privacy

animal crossing: a quarantined couple in London creates an art museum for their pet gerbils’ edification

armisonous: obsolete. rare. that which produces or is accompanied by the sounds of arms or armour, like clanging pots and pans

after all, you’re my wonder wall: a selection of collaborative music videos shot in isolation

victory garden: some ideas for plant anywhere seed beds and substrates