11x11 (13. 268)

epistemic cocoon: filters, bubbles, synthetic friends and the personal theatre of disinformation—via Web Curios  

no yokes: a quarter of a century in market fluctuations  

semantic drift: the etymological and entomological history of the word drone  

belated blogoversary: Kottke turns twenty-eight  

wet shelter: the house photographer of the aid mission in the crypt of St Botolph’s 

le salaire de la peur: in a demonstration project to expand research partnerships with other laboratories, CERN attempts to transport a microscopic payload of antimatter for the first time—see previously  

caged lorries: Singapore, despite pressure from businesses that rely on migrant labour, is moving towards banning the dehumanising way workers are transported to job sites  

unbirthday: salutations and reflections from veteran blogger Diamond Geezer  

áfram með smjörið: delightful Icelandic idioms—via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake  

what’s that got to do with the price of tea in china: US egg cost down forty-two percent—hope it was all worth it  

ai is african intelligence: the exploited workers who tutor and moderate chatbots fight back

any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes (13. 256)

Revisiting an classic episode, Planet Money repackages a clutch of workplace adages, observations and eponymous laws as potential indictments of office culture—with an inflammatory demotivational poster fit for framing in one’s breakroom, I could cite several poster children for each among my own coworkers and colleagues. Particularly relatable was Goodhart’s Law (see previously, see also), reformulated from the above as when a measure becomes a target, it ceases being a good metric, resonating with how we’re encouraged to cook the books to get fill-time down and play a numbers game that doesn’t reflect other extenuating factors though exceeds the standard—in other words, those who know the indicators will game them. Also depressingly resonant was the Peter Principle, a management concept articulated from intended satire that individuals within a hierarchy tend to be promoted to “a level of respective incompetence,” that a worker’s talents are recognised and advanced through the ranks and find themselves eventually in over their heads with expectations and responsibilities outside of their skill-set, plateauing at usually conspicuous placement with a supervisory role. The phenomenon which Germans call “falling up the ladder” is also addressed in the source material by Canadian educator Laurence Peter and screenwriter Raymond Hull when the progression seemingly does not stop despite graduated ineptitude, this apparent exception is an example of “percussive sublimation” and a move from one unproductive role to another, with other instances of pseudo-promotion being the “lateral arabesque,” retaining an individual to buy their silence but moving them out of the spotlight with a longer job title.

checkpoints (13. 252)

Reminding us of the phenomena we encountered recently of being blessed by the algorithm, we appreciated this essay by Bijan Stephen about happening across a soothing montage of ambient sounds accompanied with a pristine arcade sky—evoking vague memories that one couldn’t quite place. Even more remarkable than the occasional videos posted by an anonymous user—since removed with the ephemerality of much of the internet though archived and re-uploaded—were the comments by the thousands from others who stumbled there by chance. Sincere and confessional, many referred to the collection as a “checkpoint”—a place to save one’s progress in video game parlance, where should one fail the next challenges, one does not have to start over from the very beginning. In early 2020, something in the platform’s recommendation protocols changes and suddenly began previewing these vignettes to more and more users—like the above algorithmancy—found serendipity and community outside their accustomed fare in these years old videos with titled in Japanese titles, inspiring more lore in this second wave: “Legends say, if you find this video in your recommended, you truly are a main character in your world—not an NPC,” albeit not the most uplifting turn of phrase nowadays with term coopted by those who punch down. More from Longreads at the link above.

growth-hacking paradigms (13. 247)

As a bit of a vindicating corollary to a previous post on business jargon, we are referred to via Slashdot, a longitudinal study by Cornell university cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell introducing their Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR) as a gauge of susceptibility to empty rhetoric, corresponding with overall poor job performance and a deficit of practical decision-making skills. Although BS can happen in any context, it can be especially fraught in the workplace where such lingo is an institutional protection, structurally built in, to cushion misdirection and feign accomp-lishment, and so for their experiment for insight into how such language is reenforced and paradoxically is a poor surrogate for job management skills, Littrell commissioned a LLM to generate corporate soundbites and had a large sample of workers to rate the business savvy of such phrases revealing quite a knowledge gap, enticed with what passes as transformative, inspired and visionary. More at the links above.

mythical reel pull (13. 227)

Through there’s possibly no longer such a thing as serendipity and salvation in the endless feed with the machine knowing better and better what’s a hook for fleeting attention, there was once a belief in algorithmancy as a form of divination when scrollers were blessed or cursed with a presentation so jarring and out-of-keeping with the content bubble of one’s usual FYP fare. Though these incidents of benighted and inscrutable magic seem to be the antithesis of traditional bibliomancy and other forms of divination with an injection of chaos built into the calculus—some pseudo-random variables or tenuous connection that evades linkage—there is on a certain level the same pretended element of chance as with thumbing through a well-worn tome to land on an inspired or affirmative passage—the rhythm of flipping through a book, bindings and subtle dog ears make the process less random and more resonant in the dissonance. There’s strong appeal sometimes in being told what to do. It has been a minute but we suspect one’s feed has not been completely disenchanted.

cipheritis (13. 203)

An alleged mental disorder, reportedly diagnosed by German physicians, though with no clinical description and a paucity of case studies, zero stroke dysfunction was experienced by patients during the period of hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic (see previously here and here) with otherwise well-balanced individuals compelled to write out unending strings of zeros (see also here and here, also called ciphers after the Arabic root) as a coping mechanism for the rapid and exponential increasing of prices and depreciation of paper marks when the buying-power of one’s wages became essentially worthless by the end of one’s shift. Most common among those working in finance, accounting and sales, sufferers also had a tendency to retreat into complicated mental computations whose solutions were logarithmically fleeting.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a catalogue of historic dice and card games (with synchronopticæ) plus Germany votes

twelve years ago: more secession sessions, Kurt Vonnegut’s story shapes plus more on the mysterious Voynich manuscript

thirteen years ago: external threats, UK creditworthiness downgraded plus grammar and financial readiness

fourteen years ago: au revoir mademoiselle plus reforming the German welfare system

fifteen years ago: budget crunch in Wisconsin 

sixteen years ago: church elections 

seventeen years ago: ornate spam 

prosopagnosia (13. 194)

Scoring the average ourselves and not much better than chance, we found this research project from the British Journal of Psychology and the University of New South Wales, pitting control participants with verified super-recognisers, we found some upbuilding ironies—via MetaFilter—to the self-selecting experiment to identify authentic human faces among AI-generated ones. First there was some gatekeeping to take put with a series of CAPTCHA verifications to prove one is a human by identifying traffic features to covertly train autonomous vehicles, and then, I wanted to repeat the trial to test my own biases, wondering if I was giving women and non-white presenting personae (a rejection of the Mar-a-Lago look to embrace our faults and asymmetries) pass or whether I was actually detecting certain tells. Glancingly as profile pictures or avatars, we wouldn’t have questioned the authenticity of any of these and erring on the side of voting human versus depersonalising is much preferable to being deemed a composite image but were nonetheless disturbingly off-putting judgments to make and revealing the tells only will make the masquerade harder to detect.

8x8 (13.191)

sandboxels: a fun construction simulation with hundreds elements and building materials from Neil Agarwal—see previously, see also  

tax-payer funded settlement: Trump is suing the US government for billions  

innermost ward: a 3D reconstruction of the thousand year history of the Tower of London—via MetaFilter   

pantone 222: test one’s memory for colour—via Miss Cellania  

shallow fakes: historic image manipulation—see also  

canary wharf: a visit to the impounding station of the West India docks 

forbidden paradise: as Trump renews threats on the Chagos deal, a look at the mysterious atoll—see previously, via Damn Interesting  

a sense of getting closer: a music video by Max Cooper and Conner Griffin about spectacle that isn’t inspired

rede an den kleinen mann (13. 144)

Having a passing familiarity with one of the more radical and controversial figures in the field of psychiatry, Wilhelm Reich, we were rather absorbed with his 1945 illustrated essay, Listen, Little Man!—call-out quotations limned by cartoonist William Steig (best known for his 1990 children’s book Shrek! and the basis of the animated movies) a personal friend and originally self-published by Reich’s Orgon Press. Aligned with overarching philosophy that neuroticism, self-destructive behaviours and fascism were rooted in sexual frustrations, the tract, translated with multiple reprintings and influencing the likes of Saul Bellow, William S Burroughs and Norman Mailer and Joan Didion among others as writers of creative non-fiction, documents the evolution of a psychoanalytical session from the point of view of the derided therapist, Reich himself as a stand-in for the whole backlash against the industry and skepticism towards expertise in general, from bemused naïvety, amazement to panic and horror about how resistant the patient can be to being disabused, esteeming his enemies and persecuting allies, becoming crueler than through grievance than the power structure one hopes to supplant. Much more to discover at the links above.

dérive (13. 135)

Via {feuilleton} we are directed towards this essay by Hari Kunzru whose recent rather disenchanting drift through London gave him pause to reflect on the Situationists and their manifesto of psychogeography and how, under a permanent curfew, not just by law enforcement but also by consumerism and spectacle, were a boxed in by the geometry of our built environments—a situation that the peripatetics of sixty years ago could have imagined and warned us about that makes the spirit of wandering and discovery near impossible in our unconscionable architecture of choice. Albeit while such a lament may be overdue for us idle flâneurs and has been sometime in the making with algorithmic and optimised nudges not allowing us to stray from the well-trodden path, it’s still worthwhile to consider what sort of blinders our routines and deviations are heir to.

8x8 (13. 133)

i’m blue jeans and apple pie and the indian removal act: America reminds its citizens that it is still their country 

heated rivalry: Don DeLillo’s contribution to the erotic sports genre with the pseudonymous novel Amazons—via MetaFilter   

thermoradiative diode: reverse solar panels harness infrared energy at nighttime  

your money’s no good here: photos of ICE with their backs turned posing with detainees (Minnesota rioters) is sending the opposite message 

once upon a prime time: a 1966 Canadian parody about a housewife who loses her family to television and then sees her home invaded by TV tropes  

mirror, mirror: our brains interpret a left to right reversal in our reflections when its really back to front hézmənd-halsh: more unexpectedly effortful British family names—see previously   

another country: Adam Shatz writing for the London Review of Books on the sublime abomination—via Web Curios

7x7 (13. 105)

helix nebula: JWST captures amazing images of the planetary incubator 

academy cinema two: the linocut posters for movie classics from Peter Strausfeld  

degrassi high: an appeal for Canada television to bring back its weirdness—via MetaFilter  

deus ex machina: a survey of the long history of technology assisted writing  

the attention economy: cybernetic interface and the tolerance of distraction as told through “pursuit tests” on the last century  

public domain revue: an call for submissions to remix properties like Betty Boop, Nancy Drew, Flip the Frog and more—see previously, see also  

galileo let me go: the most challenging mission in the history of NASA

8x8 (13. 057)

the gift of the magi: Better Living through Beowulf shares a Godfrey Rust poem for the Feast of the Epiphany  

wegmans: NewYork grocery store chain collecting biometric data, conversations of shoppers  

year of the fire horse: zodiacal facts about the upcoming annual cycle 

heavy sour crude: how realistic Trump’s designs on Venezuela’s reserves are—see more  

pea-brained: organoid culture research and experimentation raises ethical, philosophical concerns 

big brother and the holding company: the numerological and business significance of six-and-twenty  

john players’ special: the tobacco purveyor presents the celebrated gates of London 

mother superior jumped the gun: convert Elizabeth Ann Seton feted as first American saint for establishing the parochial education system in the New World

synchronoptica

one year ago: Trump does not want lowered flags for his inauguration (with synchronopticæ), the chaotic twin of Pi, the right attacks Wikipedia plus Mussolini’s Black Shirts

twelve years ago: vaping regulations, landmarks lost to progress, miniature artists plus hyperobjects

thirteen years ago: the push for green energy plus fake smiles

fourteen years ago: marginal victories plus Three Kings’ Day 

sixteen years ago: holidays unwrapped

seventeen years ago: New Year’s resolutions 

wall flower (13. 052)

A bit late to the party, World Introvert Day, founded in 2011 by psychologist and author from Heidelberg, Dr Felicitas Heyne, was designated for 2. January to acknowledge the toll that the season of revelry and socialising can take on the quiet ones and as an opportunity to raise awareness for the personality type and the challenges experienced by expectations and conditioning for those who are not shy or anti-social—just mentally exhausted by extroverts—and for introverts to take stock of their unique talents and perspective. Suggested ways of celebrating include leaving everyone alone.

life kit wrapped (13. 004)

Though I often make a mental bookmark to go back and read NPR’s self-help studies and similar resources for pro-tips, those best intentions are seemingly always OBE (overcome by events), so we appreciated this year-end digest with practical advice ranging from mental well being, home economics, and travel planning—including seeking out local look-alike alternatives—see previously, if your first choice is beyond your budget.

8x8 (12. 997)

you think hamilton wrote the federalist papers in trebuchet ms: Times New Roman turns rightwing 

the night that the loving ended and the killing began: Hitchcock knock-off Crescendo! reviewed in depth  

mercatino di natale: Brothers of Italy host a week-long winter wonderland named after the protagonist of The Never Ending Story—see also, see previously 

the glazed pagoda: East meets West through cultural depictions of Nanjing’s Great Bao’en Temple  

running on empty: peak copper’s coincidence with peak oil and what that means for the renewable transition with or without the matinee darlings of Rare Earths—via Web Curios 

castello di sammezzano: the Moorish and Oriental follies of Cesare Mattei and Ferdinando Panciatichi  

asahi illusion: from the Japanese for morning sun, the centre of this optical deception is no brighter than the background 

журнальная рубленаяa: Journal grotesque and typographical options in the Soviet Union—via Kottke 

gpt@3 (12. 980)

Via Web Curios, we find this quite astute retrospective of the state of artificial intelligence and large language models as it enters its fourth year, introduced to the public at the end of November 2022, with a set of certain precepts that encapsulates the hype and fear of the technology, allowing that AGI is achievable and could be beneficial to society at large but with the reservation that the current pathway is not the means to get there, the Singularity is not predictability, and the current phase, fraught with infringement, entrapment and havoc-causing for the environment and the economy when the bubble bursts is only intrinsic to moving beyond regurgitation. Though a bellwether for the recursive improvement on old fashioned automation, the histrionics have not borne out—with valid objection from those prematurely made redundant—stagnating corporate adoption and quietly lowered expectations the one front that make the present state of the art inherent and leading towards something genuinely useful lies in its allure of infinite patience. Notwithstanding all those attendant scourges ennumerbated above, the current LLMs will suffer (buffered with hubris) unlimited indignities, tweaking, and asking for the thousandth time and deliver, though scaling and devouring the totality of human-juried exchanges has not solved problems of basic alignment between input and output.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronopticæ) plus the condemnation of witchcraft (1484)

twelve years ago: more Wikileaks revelations plus the shift towards realism in Western art

thirteen years ago: homages to memes 

fourteen years ago: a broccoli curry 

hook, line and sinker (12. 971)

Named the word of the year after a public vote for Oxford University Press (previously) recognises the rise of outrage-driven online content over contenders like aura farming and biohacking with rage bait. A survey of digital climate has found a three-fold increase of the term that refers to content deliberatively stoking anger by being frustrating or offensive as a proxy for engagement, attention commodified as emotional manipulation over the lexically related but somewhat dulled and less potent clickbait. The OED sources the first instance of the term in relation to the phenomenon of “road rage” in attempting to provoke a response from a Usenet forum in 2002 with the concept now migrating to standard use in news rooms and on social media.

quiet piggy (12. 963)

The misogynist rhetoric directed towards female politicians and journalists is nothing new and Trump does not have a monopoly on using disparaging words that translate into actual violence—and whilst wishing that the media would stop hanging on his every demented utterance and thus dignifying his addled, hateful invectives, we do hope that every reporter in the press pool is crafting their response of a colourful epithet, an insult to lob back that if it doesn’t get them arrested would at least result in a ban from the White House, something which the outlets have already signalled their willingness to give up (see previously) with what would be the most withering to these monsters by starving them of attention—and betrays a real weakness of character and a vulnerability to shield from the public at all costs. I’ve got my duly vulgar aspersion to cast on the non-zero chance that I would get called on to use it. What’s your prepared statement? Senator Mark Kelly has entered the chat. Not to psychoanalyse broken, small characters, but we suspect that Trump’s attacks against competent women—and their reception by his base, splintering as it is—is due in large part to the fact he’s only ever beaten female challengers for the presidency, those pyrrhic “victories” not without contention, so much winning, and feels denied the chance of a worthy opponent to trounce.

9x9 (12. 962)

content without context: think twice before making that AI generated video—especially featuring a cameo of yourself 

things that aren’t doing the thing: anticipation is not the same as execution 

dead wood: the evolution, anatomy and biological system of our tree friends  

lightbox: TIME magazine’s photos of the year  

inbox: a clever way of researching and processing the tranches of email released by the Epstein estate with an interface that’s like going through one’s own account from Like Igel and Riley Walz (previously)—via Web Curios  

traceroute: an overview of how the series of tubes work 

the dog’s pyjamas: dressing up canines has a longer history than one might expect—via Strange Company  

never break the chain: streaks are important motivators and one should pair new habits and practise with “micro-versions” to avoid feeling derailed 

$spsc: Trump’s World Liberty Financial (see previously) promotes another shock token as a legitimate store of wealth

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronopticæ) plus the discovery of the first pulsar (1967)

fourteen years ago: sociologist Jürgen Habermas on post-democratic Europe 

fifteen years ago: more flea market finds plus security theatre and a crackdown on counterfeits