(12. 994)

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronopticæ) plus parental guidance suggested

thirteen years ago: people in space right now  

fourteen years ago: the 2012 US presidential race a year out 

the size of life (12. 993)

The latest from Neal Agarwal (see previously) evokes the chain-reaction of the zero-player Game of Life and is well worth playing on your desktop with the volume up to appreciate the stirring cello score with increasing intensity and tempo as you scale up. As one advances, there are interesting facts about the largest examples of the small and the smallest of the big, including long extinct species like the Arthropleura, an invertebrate as big as a tiger that roamed steamy oxygen rich forests during the Carboniferous period three-hundred million years ago and the extant but threatened giant barrel sponge, the Red Wood of the Reefs, that could hold a human and can live for two-thousand years.

grand prix (12. 992)

Joining Spain, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Ireland, Iceland’s national broadcaster, RÚV, has voted to boycott the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest scheduled to be held in Vienna over the decision of the organising committee, the European Broadcasting Union, not to expel Israel for its conduct of the war against Hamas and occupation of Gaza. The announcement coinciding with International Human Rights Day, Iceland cites that “give public debate in the country…it is clear that neither joy nor peace will prevail” regarding participation. Members of the EBU voted in a general assembly last week to adopt stricter rules regarding alleged ballot manipulation favouring Israeli contestants during the last Eurovision but fell short of banning them, with the mounting walk-outs casting a pall over what’s supposed to be a feel-good cultural exchange (though it has never been wholly apolitical) with diminishing acts and those remaining seeming like a whitewashing of recent events.

coup de font (12. 991)

In a cable from earlier in the week, US secretary of state reversed a decision taken during the Biden administration to use the modern, more legible typeface Calibri (also the default setting of the Microsoft Office suite of programmes), directing consular staff to resume using Times New Roman, criticising the move of his predecessor as wastefully woke, specifically taking aim at accessibility, saying that this would restore professionalism and decorum (we think that’s a lot to ask of some pixels–see also) to the foreign service, shaped through the typography of serif fonts. The formatting standard moreover aligns with the president’s One Voice for America’s Foreign Relations directive for communiqués, a magisterial order that does not admit for back-channel dialogue and outreach, notwithstanding appreciable readability for those with vision limitations and those whom might not cleave exclusively to Latin lettering.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: the Pope declares a jubilee year (with synchronopticæ) plus Luigi Mangione apprehended

twelve years ago: meme trading cards 

thirteen years ago: apocryphal holiday traditions plus the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales

fifteen years ago: decking the halls 

8x8 (12. 990)

boîte aux lettres: a gallery of modernist mailboxes found around France—via Messy Nessy Chic  

áramótaskaupið: two decades of explaining the smells and bells of the holiday season in Iceland  

semiquaver: “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” is a fine carol but lacks punctuation—via Miss Cellania 

k-id: Australia begins to enforce the world’s first social media ban for under sixteen-year-olds  

there is consensus to merge republican makeup into this article: Mar-a-Lago face, a plastic surgery trend among American conservatives has its own Wikipedia entry—via Nag on the Lake 

zipf’s law: a collection of nearly universal facets of human language  

linus and lucy: A Charlie Brown Christmas premiered on this day in 1965—see previously here and here  

intermodal container: the history of compartmentalised freight and how one innovation in transportation can influence another

jack nasty (12. 989)

Released for general audiences worldwide on this day in 2005 following premiers at the Venice film festival and New York City, the neo-Western by filmmaker Ang Lee—based off of the eponymous short-story by author Annie Proulx first published in the New Yorker magazine in 1997—focuses on the complicated romance between two shepherds-cum-coyboys. In pre-production since 2001, the realised film received critical acclaim and industry accolades and was among the biggest commercial successes of the decade (the first major film to be later released simultaneously as a DVD and digital download), with a global box-office (given slightly cryptic titles for foreign audiences, mostly in essence translating to “the secret of Brokeback Mountain and Túi a barátságon in Hungary, friends with benefits) markets ten-fold of its budget and stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal (Matt Damon, Joaquin Phoenix, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Josh Hartnett, Edward Norton and Ryan Phillippe were among the first choices) with supporting cast of Anne Hathaway and Anna Faris, with the opening set in 1963 Wyoming. Producers rented Airstream trailers for the cast and crew to live on site (filmed primarily in Alberta in the Canadian Rockies, whose wildlife authorities made an exception to allow in domestic sheep with careful controls and limitations to ensure that they didn’t infect wild herds, though the guild defending animal actors took issue with the sheep’ shuttling to location and quarantine, resulting in digitally created flocks) with the atmosphere of a summer camp and the first intimate scene between Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar took thirteen takes before Lee was satisfied with it. Although pleased with the adaptation and screenplay, Proulx has expressed personal, not professional, regret for writing the story since the movie, receiving wide spread criticism from reply-guys who submit fan-fiction and alternative endings—fine for the unsolicited critiques but failing to recognise that the narrative arc is not some kind of choose-your-own adventure scenario.

*    *    *    *    *

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revist (with synchronopticæ) plus Noah Webster’s daily newspaper

 

twelve years ago: electro-swing plus more persuasive maps 

 

fourteen years ago: UK objections to EU budget 

 

seventeen years ago: sick days 

the play’s the thing (12. 988)

As our faithful chronicler reminds on this day in 1966, the Star Trek:TOS episode “The Conscience of the King” (S1:E13) was originally aired with the USS Enterprise diverted three light years off course to ostensibly investigate a synthetic food source developed by Captain Kirk’s childhood friend Dr Thomas Leighton on Planet Q as a novel way to remedy dire shortages on Cygnia Minor. Both among the survivors of Kodos the Executioner, former governor of the Earth colony of Tarsus IV—who ordered the execution of half the settlers during a famine to prevent more starvation with the ensuing resistance precipitating an all out massacre, just days before a relief ship arrived—it is revealed that Leighton’s deception was a coded ruse to lure Kirk to confirm or deny his suspicions that an actor of a touring Shakespearian troupe might actually be the revolutionary provincial leader, Kirk and Leighton among the handful of survivors ever to see Kodos in person. Though convinced that Kodos was killed during the uprising, Kirk’s curiosity is piqued and returns to the surface to attend a cocktail hour held at the Leighton estate, hoping to encounter the supposed fugitive and in the meantime courts the actor’s daughter, the suspect not in attendance, excused as her father does not socialise. Strolling the desert grounds, they come across the murdered body of Leighton and Kirk contrives to strand the company on the planet. Spock conducts independent research and learns that the other eyewitnesses of the elusive governor have died in mysterious circumstances when in proximity to the acting company. More evidence is gathered and the Enterprise offers to ferry the players to their next venue, whilst the ship’s theatre club is rehearsing Hamlet, which the guest stars join, performing the play-within-the-play. Despite the non-fatal poisoning of another crew member who also survived the killings, tampering with Kirk’s phaser and the actor’s apologies in defence of the actions of the colony’s leader, Kirk remains hesitant to forward his accusations until his daughter reveals that she has been executing witnesses, unbidden, to help her father escape his past and whilst attempting to shoot Kirk, phasers her father, having jumped in the beam’s path, and like Ophelia with the accidental death of Laertes, descends into madness, attended by Dr McCoy. The episode also marked the last appearance of Grace Lee Whitney as yeoman Rand until brought back for the movies in that role, giving a resigned dirty look to Kodos’ daughter knowing it was her last scene, a fellow blonde and herself released so Kirk could pursue other love interests, and this show plus “Day of the Dove” (S3:E11), responding to another distress call that pits the Enterprise a in pitched battle with a Klington Bird of Prey gave Simpson’s producer Matt Groening the characters of Kodos and Kang.

department of the interior (12. 987)

Having encountered some of these brilliant and iconic Depression Era posters sponsored by FDR’s Works Projects Administration, we appreciated learning about the landscape architect and graphic designer behind the strategic and unified tourism campaign to promote US national and state parks, Dorothy Waugh, through an exhibit of seventeen of her placards—particularly at such a fraught time for these preserves, understaffed, subject to revisionist histories, corporate encroachment and surge-pricing. Due to the scope and scale of her work for the Civilian Conservation Corps’ infrastructure projects for the parks system, Waugh went from being the sole artist to hiring and supervising a team of draughtsmen and also produced easy to follow diagrams and designs, most workers unable to interpret blueprints and formal specifications, for the construction picnic areas and campsite conveniences as well as other basic structures. Much more from Print magazine at the link above.