can’t resist a list

Our AI Intelligencer (see previously), expounding on how the above protocols or inventory—being perhaps what artificial intelligence is—has this remarkable tendency to derail otherwise passingly competent machines as they carry instructions out to their unnatural conclusions, like with the prompt for baking a cake with the nth steps being Wait for the timer to ring. Smell the baked good. forgot to take it out. Hide it all under a carpet. Or the next cue to generate traditional wedding gifts after being supplied the first four anniversaries:

5th Year: Fowl Feathers, etc.
9th Year: Small Dainty
11th Year: Soapsugar Jelly
17th Year: Green Surpluses & Leaves
25th Year: Paper, Spreads and White Sea Shells
34th Year: Wool/Reindeer Hair
48th Year: Lying In Blankets

I seriously want this bot to be my personal shopping concierge for Christmas as it seems to have no problem conjuring up an inexhaustible wish-list. Much more at the links above.

when harry met santa

Fair warning—I thought it was too early for holiday commercials but this is a tear-jerker worth watching and it’s advisable to have some tissues handy—via World of Wonder, we are directed towards Posten Norge’s annual holiday greeting, which this year ahead of the fiftieth anniversary of Norway’s decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1972, featuring a multi-year courtship, whose brief annual encounters are finally extended a bit with the help of the Norwegian postal service. From all of us to all of you God jul!

hoist and heading

Via Web Curios, we are directed towards the simple though diverting application called Flag Waver. The pictured GIF (and while if you choose an animation, it is static, it does look supremely recursive should one pick this image) of the footage is not nearly as fluid as the app will make any image of one’s choosing nor does justice to the photo-realistic skies, not just flags obviously, flail and unfurl in the breeze, which is adjustable as well as the type of flagpole and to display one’s banner on and how it’s oriented.

7x7

limerent limerick: help in recognising unhealthy obsessions and how to work one’s way out of intrusive thinking—hopefully through bawdy rhymes 

there and back again: Gene Deitch’s animated short The Hobbit—the first such adaptation  

roll for perception: a collection of resources, a florilegium from a Society for Creative Anachronism member for the LARP community—via Mx van Hoorn’s cabinet of hypertext curiosities  

avenue of the sphinxes: a restored promenade between Luxor and Karnak opened with fanfare  

opiate for the masses: drug use in Antiquity 

mlhavý: Martin Rak’s fog-draped forests in Saxon-Bohemia—see previously 

here’s mud in your eye: a select glossary of beer and imbibing terminology—via Strange Company’s Weekend Link Dump

 

mysterium hoc arcanum

Located to the left door jamb of the Baptistery of Pisa, one of the other ensemble of buildings in the Piazzia dei Miracoli often upstaged by the cathedral’s campanile, the structure designed by architect Diotisalvi and built from 1153 to 1363 contains an undeciphered epigraph, which while representing an unknown script, is not unique—lost though having

appeared in Lucca and other places in Tuscany—is suggested to in a sense a kind of gamification to hunt for such mystery inscriptions and debate, contemplate what they might mean without any definitive interpretation established. Courtesy of one of the commentators, here is the puzzle to solve.

now i work at the pizza pizza

A brief discussion of the tabletop shuffleboard-like, disk-flicking game that the interlocutors mostly knew from the lyric from the song “King of Spain,” “playing crokinole with the Princess of Monaco” transported me back aeons ago when I was volunteer “security detail” (i.e., checking wrist-bands and stamps of people coming and going between different venues) at a music festival in Vermont with headliner Ani DiFranco and also featuring acts like Moxy Früvous (1989 - 2001) with their ballad retelling the Prince and Pauper story. Now I eat humble pie.

saint catherine of alexandria

Counted among the Fourteen Holy Helpers, one of the counsellors who appeared to Joan of Arc and whose cult according to some academics was cover for sympathies for the murder and defamation of Greek philosopher Hypatia with a broad patronage that includes potters, millers, milliners and spinners for her tortured martyrdom on the breaking-wheel, scholars, scribes, secretaries, stenographers, etc. was a late third century daughter of the governor of the Egyptian centre of learning who converted to Christianity, aged fourteen, and evangelised to many with her winning eloquence and persuasive reasoning—and is venerated on this day. Once persecutions of Christians resumed under the reign of Maxentius, Catherine embarked to Rome and rebuked the emperor. Rather than dispatching with her instantly, the emperor instead assembled a retinue of fifty of his most skilled and pagan orators to challenge Catherine to a debate and refute her arguments. Not only did Catherine roundly carry the day, her words also managed to garner some new converts to the faith, all of whom were summarily put to death with Catherine confined in a dungeon and made to endure terrible tortures daily. A dove and a host angels healed her wounds nightly and Catherine survived her torment for twelve days, persuading the emperor to ultimately proposing marriage to her. Refusing to yield to Maxentius’ overtures, Catherine said she was happily taken by her spouse, Jesus Christ. Enraged, the emperor first had her bound to a spiked breaking wheel (now also known as a Catherine Wheel) and then beheaded for good measure.

7x7

brickover: iconic album covers recreated in LEGO from Pasa Bon’s curious links 

sand castles: an innovative intervention to counter desertification 

all about photos: arresting, colourful best-in-show exhibits from the AAP annual competition—via Kottke

no one listens to cassandra: rediscovering a 1997 article on what could go wrong in the twenty-first century that’s eerily prescient  

parks & rec: a huge collection of vintage outdoor living catalogues and magazines—via the morning news   

what—it’s not magaggie’s birthday: an unauthorised Simpson’s cookbook  

spin-cycle: a gorgeous, inviting laundrette outfitted by Yinka Ilori and LEGO