13x13 (12. 185)

embossed: turn of the century tactile teaching aids for the visually impaired for lessons on nature and geography  

lab-leak theory: US Central Intelligence Agency embraces controversial vector for COVID-19 pandemic, discounting zoonosis factors 

ghostwatch: the supernatural horror BBC mockumentary broadcast on Halloween (see also) 1992 and never shown again due to the panic it elicited  

sb593: Oklahoma legislature introduces bill to “restore moral sanity” and criminalise production, distribution and possession of adult material—see previously 

minimoog: a fully-functional analogue synthesiser in LEGO  

haptics and macros: an idea to add gait gestures to one’s smart phone—we can hardly do the right kind of fake kick to open the rear hatch on our car 

mox nix: language borrowings from German propagated by US and UK soldiers stationed there post WWII  

electric garden: a run-down lodge transformed into a living museum mapchat: interact with AI shopkeepers for local businesses—results may vary 

wassergöttin: prehistoric figurine from the Hallstadt culture found in 2022 in Lower Franconia goes on display at the Bavarian State Archaeological Museum in München  

walk without rhythm and you won’t attract the worm: graboids—see also—the other in-jokes that Tremors leans into  

underrepresentation: as part of order to eliminate DEI programmes, US Food and Drug Administration curbs clinical trials aimed at diverse populations for cancer research 

 switchmen: the sign language of railroad workers

12x12 (12. 179)

contraception begins at erection: Mississippi lawmaker has introduced a bill called ‘contraception begins at erection’ outlawing male masturbation, hoping to bring balance to the reproductive rights’ restriction that focus on women—via the New Shelton wet/dry  

obayashi world: Japan’s most Lynchian filmmaker  

so long and thanks for all the fish: Joan Ocean’s Dolphin Connection—via Web Curios  

crass competing abstrusities: official, sanctioned transcription of US secretary of state Marco Rubio (鲁比奥) changed—possibly as a way to get around the ban the Chinese government itself imposed plus other politicians’ names—see previously  

 

but if you don’t make your product in america—which is your prerogative—then very simply you will have to pay a tariff: though vacillating somewhat on his commitment and working from home, Trump delivers a message to the Davos WEF summit  

she was nasty in tone, not compelling or smart: Bishop Budde won’t apologise for her appeal for mercy and hospitality  

the birthright citizens’ brigade: a list of organisations pushing back against the slide to authoritarianism in the US  

dreiundfünfzig tage: how Hitler dismantled a constitution republic through constitutional means  

xanthelasma: Florida man on diet of beef, cheese and sticks of butter oozes cholesterol from his skin—see also—via Miss Cellania  

a catalyst for curiosity: Wikenigma documents the unexplained—via Kottke—those scientific and academic questions that evade a definitive answer, like the Collatz conjecture 

you remind me of the babe: Robert Eggers to make a sequel for Labyrinth  

unplanned pregnancy: as an encore to freeing all the January Sixth rioters, Trump pardons dozens of anti-abortion protesters, some jailed for violent tactics to block clinic access and intimidating doctors ahead of the Right to Life March

the tegos tapes (12. 168)

Via Clive Thompson’s trusty alternative to doomscrolling, we learn that pioneering electronic composer Vangelis (see previously) has not only several film soundtracks to his credit but also, among many side projects, recorded a box-set of rather exclusive twelve hour tapes for doctors to listen to while performing the arduous task of surgeries to keep focused during the monotony—see also. The limited-run 1998 compilation (only twenty were made for partners in the practise) was thought lost to history, until one dedicated fan hunted down, on a tip, a copy of a textbook on micro-neuosurgerical (by the eponymous physician, a close friend of Vangelis, asking him to make these tracks and undergo a magnetic resonance scan of his brain, the latter request politely declined) in a bookstore in Athens with the accompanying music on videotape. Much more at the links above.

𓆫𓂋𓁐 (12. 163)

A rather spectacular tomb (mastaba) was recently excavated in the necropolis of Saqqara in the Giza campus, a burial grounds for the royalty of the ancient capital of Memphis dating to the Sixth Dynasty (circa mid 2200 BC) of one multi-hyphenate called Teti Neb Fu, via Strange Company. Richly decorated with relief depictions of everyday life as well as a catalog of offerings and grave-goods (the body and the originals were looted ages ago) and tools of the trade, the individual was not only physician to the pharaoh and chief doctor of the court, inscriptions also bestow the titles great dentist, director of pharmabotany and priest and magician of the goddess Selket (the scorpion deity who governed venom and its antidotes), providing insight into the intersectionality of religious ritual and medicine of the Old Kingdom. The Swiss-led archaeological dig has uncovered other sites in the area in recent years including one of the vizier Uni with an extensive autobiographical record of his administrative and political achievements, greatly augmenting the knowledge and chronology of the time. More from The History Blog at the link above.

10x10 (12. 135)

year of the snek: designer Japanese greeting cards for 2025—see previously from Spoon & Tamago

world record for tiny window inchoateness: Kate Wagner’s McMansion Hell takes on Neuschwanstein  

cloisonné garnet: an elaborate seventh century brooch discovered near Rostock 

dropped: the 2025 edition of Lake Superior State University’s banished words list, including cringe and skibidi 

back to basics: scientific research confirms that exercise is the most potent medical intervention—for one’s New Year’s resolutions  

dumpster fire: an ominous start for 2025  

classical conditioning: the unscientific and unethical Little Albert Experiment that led to stricter standards in psychological testing 

choicest swears: excellence in strong language and two other New Year’s traditions  

monuments men: Italy’s cultural heritage protection squad saves artefacts from a clandestine dig in Naples

new year, new neighbourhood: the transformation of New York City’s Times Square

forschungslaboratorium für elektronenphysik (12. 106)

Autodidact in applied physics and prolific inventor, Baron Manfred von Ardenne, after presenting to the public his concept of Fernsehen a year and a half earlier, achieved his first wholly electronic transmission of television pictures, using a cathode ray tube (see more) for both transmission and reception, on this day in 1933. Following trial runs on broadcasters, Ardenne’s technological advance progressed quickly with the private station of Paul Nipkow culminating with the live airing of the 1936 Berlin Games. Having also conducted pioneering experiments in the fields of radar, radio, isotope separation and inventing the scanning electron microscope, Ardenne’s research facilities in Berlin-Lichtenfelde were put a protective order by Soviet occupying forces in April 1945 and Ardenne and his colleagues were reassigned to laboratories in Abkhazia to work on the atomic bomb project (see also)—like the Russian version of Operation Paperclip. Realising that participation in such a plan would jeopardise his eventual repatriation to East Germany, Ardenne convinced authorities to focus on uranium enrichment rather than weaponising the programme, slowly development until the Americans bombed Japan and an extensive espionage network determined that it was more than theoretical possible. Once Ardenne returned to the DDR and assumed an advisory role in the government, he applied his study and resources to medical diagnostics, inventing an early form MRI scanner and radiotherapies to treat cancer.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: Christmas Greetings (with synchronoptica), Aida (1871) plus more accidental Renaissance art

seven years ago: Sleighrunner, Trump’s challenge coin plus more Season’s Greetings

eight years ago: A Human Document, internet court plus a collection of Yule Logs

nine years ago: more Yule Logs 

ten years ago: a visit from Father Frost

eleven years ago: 2013 wrapped plus a holiday reckoning  

9x9 (12. 082)

blame on the whiskey: DJ Earworm’s 2024 wrapped  

nhtsa: Trump transition team recommends scrapping crash reporting regulations with Tesla among the biggest offender for car-related fatalities—via the New Shelton wet/dry  

swaddling clothes: removal of a keffiyeh from a creche at the Vatican demonstrates how Nativity Scenes are never neutral  

flashpoint: charting possible frontlines on the continent if Russia pushes further on the NATO alliance  

as above, so below: the ensemble of pyramids of the Giza complex have eight sides, visible only during the equinoxes 

theatre of thought: Werner Herzog contemplates the nature of the mind in his latest documentary  

big band: Glenn Miller’s 1944 disappearance without a trace is an enduring aviation mystery, second to Amelia Earhart’s  

ka$h patel: FBI director’s resignation may hinder Trump loyalist’s succession as head of the bureau 

there ain’t no us in the private trust: a folk protest song about the state of American healthcare

deny, defend, depose, diarrhea (12. 073)

Symptomatic of far greater endemic problems with America’s labour and healthcare problems, individuals are submitting scathing reviews of one of the three McDonald’s franchises in Altoona, Pennsylvania that tipped off authorities regarding the whereabouts of the fugitive suspected of killing the CEO of a major insurance provider—see previously. Whilst his life is undergoing vivisection by the police and the press for his apparent act of retribution, the public is lamenting the selling out by an informant of folk-hero Luigi Mangione whose Monopoly money and manifesto speaks for everyone who has had a negative interaction with their insurance carrier by addle-brained employees who will never have coverage either (nor likely any other basic benefits, like paid leave or a pension) and won’t see the bounty as the tip went through local authorities and not the FBI hotline, no CEO stepping forward to reward this act of killing one of their own. PfRC does not condone this type of lawless vigilantism no matter how resonant and righteous, nor do we condone the above-the-law framework of for-profit healthcare and corporate welfare that props up businesses that rely on a woefully insufficient government safety net to make money and a parasocial system that is a feedback loop undermining people’s physical and mental well-being.

9x9 (12. 057)

globetrotter—more like globetriggered: a wrap of 2024 in therapy  

new doge, old tricks: Musk and Ramaswamy present their plan to rapture three-quarters of the government workforce but it’s going to be a challenge to achieve real cost-cutting or improved efficiency  

vote de censure: French government collapses after legislature moves to eject controversial prime minister Michel Barnier—see previously 

field of vision: the challenges of bringing the Vera Ruben perched high in the Andes on online includes unidentified intelligence agencies screening images before they are released to the public  

my empathy is out of network: Americas respond to the assassination of a major medical insurance CEO  

ekistical portrait: Rob Stephenson is documenting all the three hundred and fifty neighbourhoods of New York City’s five boroughs—via Kottke  

what just happened: South Korea’s declaration of marshal law, parliament’s rejection and the ongoing political crisis  

stonks: Bitcoin just hit $100 000 a piece  

hot topic: the year in Wikipedia, recent celebrity deaths topped the list again

 synchronoptica

one year ago: the Michelob Music Hour (with synchronoptica) plus modern art presented as a fun-fair

seven years ago: noisy GIFs, assorted links worth the revisit plus 52 more things

eight years ago: the origins of Play-Doh

nine years ago: red cup controversy, a trip to Rosenau plus our faithful chronicler

ten years ago: troublesome ideas in the marketplace plus an A-ha! reunion concert

consul junior (12. 023)

Via Friend of the Blog par excellence Nag on the Lake, we are introduced to the esteemed French-Russian surgeon, Serge Voronoff (see also, though we were hoping they were one in the same personage) who gained international fame for his xenotransplantation experiments (see previously) as a meanings of restoring virility and vitality by grafting simian glands onto human recipients. Controversial and subsequently debunked as quackery, Voronoff’s practise and outrageous claims made him very wealthy—initially he moved from research on the thyroid to transplanting testes from executed criminals onto millionaire clients but soon demand surpassed donors and the doctor turned to using chimpanzee (see above) tissue instead. We learn about this work, which has echoes of modern rejuvenation movements and seemingly similarly ill-informed courtesy of a defiant letter to the editor penned by playwright George Bernard Shaw in May 1928 on behalf of the titular London’s Regent’s Park zoo’s most famous resident of the monkey house, not keen on donating—ahead of Voronoff’s much-anticipated visit to the UK in response to detractors maintaining that the implantation would cause humans to take on the baser attributes of their close relative—as read by Andy Serkis (previously—here’s an alternate source as the original link has been sadly zombified by AI slop)—Golem and Caesar from Planet of the Apes.

xenograft (12. 002)

Tragically on this day 1984 Baby Fae, the first infant recipient of a non-human organ transplant from a baboon donor, died a month after her birth, though having lived by several weeks any other trial preceding hers and surviving the rare and fatal congenital disease, hypoplastic left heart syndrome that would have left her circulatory system untenable outside the womb. The radical operation, as no suitable human heart was available, became the subject of ethical debate, though demonstrating a proof of concept, which the administering surgeon built upon to safe further lives with this experimentation, albeit informed consent on the part of Baby Fae’s parents was questionable. Baby Fae’s death was attributed to rejection by her Type-O blood to the new heart culled from the female baboon population of type AB. Several pop culture encomia came afterwards with for instance from the Paul Simon Graceland album lyric, “Medicine is magical and magic is art / Thinking of the Boy in the Bubble / And the baby with the baboon heart.”

 synchronotpica

one year ago: the musical stylings of King Solomon (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: assorted links to revisit plus the Day of the Imprisoned Writer

eight years ago: a retractable pedestrian bridge, recreating snapshots over the decades, more tributes to Leonard Cohen plus an unusual museum collection

nine years ago: a history of safe-spaces, English is weird, collectors’ items plus Je suis Charlie

ten years ago: the Rosetta mission to probe a comet, the Frisian language, sight and colour in Nature plus obscure units of time

terrain model theory (11. 992)

Though still unclear that RFK, Jr will play a significant role in the Trump administration’s setting of medical care policy and public health practises, a staunch proponent of the anti-vaccine movement accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic but also with antecedent denialism over AIDS and a host of other ailments as well as promoting the idea that the standard, lifesaving regimen of childhood vaccinations cause autism and lately advocates removing fluoride from drinking water, Kennedy’s conspiracy theories have fuelled the embrace of rival Antoine Béchamp’s disproven alternative (see also) to Louis Pasteur’s model of germ theory: pleomorphism—that the state of the internal topology of the body (accumulation of toxins due to poor diet and exercise) is the cause of disease by attracting scavengers and not compromised immunology by invading pathogens.

10x10 (11. 983)

chonkus: a cyanobacterium discovered in a underwater volcanic vent gobbles up CO₂ at prodigious levels—see previously  

attentat im bürgerbräukeller: the meticulously planned attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler and other Nazi principals, foiled on this day in 1939—see also here and here  

off-course: an Emperor Penguin recovering after a epic trip from Antarctica to Australia  

for unlawful carnal knowledge: the various folk etymologies of a famous and satisfying swear—see also  

files’s done, goodbye: Elwood Edwards—who voiced AOL’s “You’ve got mail” greeting—passed away, aged 74 

bj blazkowicz: Wolfenstein franchise is enjoying a resurgence among those wanting to smash Nazis right now  

the tiktok electorate: Facebook got the blame for Trump’s win in 2016 so it follows that P’Nut the Squirrel’s influencer status might be in part responsible for 2024—via tmn  

🦘: when the last 747 of Quantas’ fleet departed Australia for retirement, its flight path drew its logo  

mauerfall: juxtaposing photos of Berlin then and now thirty-five years after the Wall came down  

cells and organelles: thousands of professionally made vector illustrations and icons from the US National Institutes of Health—via Web Curios

kild by severall accidents (11. 926)

With casualty data drawn from the London weekly “mortality bill,” reporting on the causes of demise from most of the city’s parishes during 1665, Open Culture directs us to a morbid little diversion in a seventeenth century death roulette, which delivers the croupier (originally meaning rump or one who stands behind the gambler with extra cash reserve to back them up during play but now spins the wheel—that too originally a study in perpetual motion machines from Blaise Pascal) their grim fate. Given the state of medical science, the causes listed are vague at times and ring more like curses than disease but provides an engrossing glimpse at historical demographics and record-keeping (compare to this treasury of antique prescriptions and treatment plans that may or may not have improved one’s condition). Spin at your own peril and probably it is best to remain ignorant of what such terminal ailments like the riſing of the lights (lung disease, using the term for the organ as an ingredient), strangury (the inability to empty one’s bladder despite the urgent need to do so), surfeit (over indulgence), kingſevil (scrofula, an infection of the lymph nodes supposedly cured by the touch of the sovereign), etc. as those were that compiled these list. There was also the Plague and any number of environmental hazards.

6x6 (11. 858)

second-hand baloney boys: director Bong-Joon-ho’s Mickey17 explores indentured immortality with his expendable space colonists—like the duplicates paradox of teleportation 

r/no burp: a Redditor community brings recognition to an undiagnosed but pervasive syndrome 

ultimate world cruise: the social media coverage of a trip to seven continents plays out like reality television  

the ladies annual journal; or, complete pocket book for the year: the 1776 diary of Susannah Dalbiac kept in the back of an almanac 

twenty-eight years later: latest instalment of Danny Boyle’s zombie franchise was filmed entirely on iPhones 

sanewashing: how journalists can resist normalising outrageous and radical ideas—via the New Shelton wet/dry

to honour achievements that make people laugh and then make them think (11. 840)

The laureates of the Ig Noble Prize (see previously) have been announced in a competition organised by the scientific humorist society Annals of Improbable Research since 1991 and hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who arrange the ceremony with awards in ten categories, celebrating the best in unusual or seemingly trivial studies, presented by their Noble-winning counterparts. The botany prize was awarded to a team of researchers that found that the leaves of the parasitic chameleon vine (Boquila trifoliolata) will imitate an artificial host plant in order to blend in. Building on the effects of the placebo and the nocebo, the award for medicine went to an experiment demonstrating that fake drugs with painful side effects can be more effective than real treatments with none, and as has been widely reported, the prize in demographics was awarded for research that helped debunk some of the mystique of the so called Blue Zones, areas famous for having supercentenarians, also excel in bad record keeping.

waldberg/sandberg (11. 789)

For a quick overnight camping trip, we travelled to the collective municipality (Gemeinde) of Sandberg in Lower Franconia in the valley on the opposite side of the Kreuzberg, cleared and settled from heavily wooded land in 1691 to alleviate overpopulation in neighbouring villages, which though remote had too many people to sustain their subsistence farming and forestry due also by dint of their isolation had been spared waves of the plague. A remnant of their survival remains in the singular dialect of the villages that make up community that are verging on the unintelligible from one settlement to the next. In the Kirchdorf of Waldberg where the campsite was that was supposedly the case as well. The above increasing numbers of residents through the nineteenth century put stress on the fields and pastures due to their sandy soil (hence the name) and from the 1830s through the next century saw a mass immigration to America, many families from this area settling in Cleveland, Ohio.

The main building of the campgrounds was an old mill (dating from before an incident during Holy Week pilgrimages to the Kreuzberg when bakers from Waldberg tried to sell their wares but the main town of Bischofsheim asserted their monopoly over baked goods and saw its operations shut down—those who remained resorting to seasonal work, fruit-pressing and collecting berries and beechnuts to survive, relying on remittances from family abroad) on a watercourse coming down from the mountain.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: US Republican primary debates (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth revisiting

five years ago: the company Kalashnikov is making an electric car, a typical White House press briefing, drought reveals ominous hunger stones plus one French community’s fight to keep McDonald’s out

eight years ago: a word for St Bartholemew’s Day

nine years ago: more Venus Flytrap weirdness

eleven years ago: Six Degrees of Wikipedia plus Staffordshire pottery

 

 

omnis cellula e cellula (11. 781)

On this day in 1858, the Berlin publishing house of August Hirschwald released the foundational work Cellular Pathology by esteemed physician, sociologist and anthropologist Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow, which informed modern medical thought. Not only recognising the mechanisms behind disease, injury and healing broadly, Virchow was the first to describe and name ailments and disorders, including coining terms like leukaemia, thrombosis and spina bifida and helped to formalise the practise of autopsy and forensics. Drawing on his interest in ethnography and archeology (accompanying Heinrich Schliemann during some of his Trojan expeditions) and adopting it into his medical research, while teaching at the University of Würzburg, Virchow coined the maxim that medicine “is a social science, and politics is nothing more than medicine on a large scale,” pioneering public health campaigns to counter outbreaks, and perhaps aligned with this guiding aphorism rejected the germ theory of infections (believing that they were symptoms rather than causes and that poverty was the biggest cause of sickness and death—although contributing a lot to the study of macroscopic parasites) and adamantly disagreed with Darwinian evolution—recognising natural selection but rejecting the emergent theory as flawed—see the above teaching tenure. Also opposing the social Darwinism ideas of his student Ernst Haeckel as dangerous propaganda, Virchow—for all his drive to classify and categorise—went against popular contemporary thinking by declaring race to be a social construct and thus denying anyone their designs of primacy through a large-scale study of ethnic communities across Europe and beyond.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Wattstax (with synchronoptica), assorted links to revisit plus the first school strike for the climate

seven years ago: the first FedEx delivery van,  Total Eclipse of the Heart plus grace and favour appointments

eight years ago: an exoplanet in the Goldilocks Zone, Team Refugee to get its own Olympic flag plus trying to sprout Indian Bean Trees

nine years ago: an antique look at four-dimensional space

ten years ago: disruptive natural and unnatural disasters, Netpolitiks plus Gaulish conquests

8x8 (11. 770)

received pronunciation: expectation for Romans (and more broadly villains) with British accents in film  

bardcore: Teenage Engineering debuts a beat sampler for making Middle Ages-style music 

misery rankings: how painful would Olympic events be for average non-athletes—via tmn  

mpox: World Health Organisation declares latest outbreak an international health emergency  

growing up underground: the autobiography of Steven Heller  

a fable for the mind’s eye: the making of Star Wars as a radio drama 

radiophonic workshop: pioneering artist and engineer Daphne Oram—previously—introduces electronic music  

madonna odigitria: medieval icon of the consecrated Pantheon restored

8x8 (11. 693)

priscila, queen of the rideshare mafia: the tale of a gig-economy pyramid scheme  

fête nationale: a comprehensive list of what Americans and the French know about each other 

80s lifestyle icons: health and fitness guru Richard Simmons and sex therapist Dr Ruth Westheimer pass away  

stillsuits: researchers develop Fremen inspired garments for astronauts that improve comfort, hydration and hygiene  

my israel home: US real estate companies profiting off expanded, illegal settlements in the West Bank—see also 

paranormal phenomenon: Japanese terms for déjà vu, telepathy and incredulous serendipity 

🛒: the trend of grocery store tourism really resonates with us and a cultural experience we always are sure to have—via Nag on the Lake 

kein brot und keine ehre: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s correspondent’s categories of human endeavour