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

women on the waves (11.687)

The Dutch NGO founded in 1999 by Dr Rebecca Gomperts has the mission of bringing reproductive health services, education and outreach to women in countries with restrictive abortion laws, with services rendered on board a specially-made ship, which boards women at a pre-arranged port-of-call and sails out to international waters, where Dutch law is in effect. Unsafe abortions administered in countries whose laws provide no other alternative are a leading cause of maternal death and the organisation seeks to champion universal reproductive autonomy. Earlier ship’s doctor on the Rainbow Warrior II, Gommperts and crew of medical professionals have visited Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Guatemala and México—all countries that have since significantly expanded abortion access, and a spin-off programme, Women on the Web, helps women with self-managed medical abortions with the drug combination mifepristone and misoprostol.

9x9 (11. 636)

who is this imposter: AI ruins classic, static reaction memes with animation  

🥖: the bygone baguette boxes of French Polynesia—via Messy Nessy Chic  

quantum compass: London Underground hosts trials for a subatomic sensor that could supplement satellite navigation  

crystal lake: the preponderance of 1980s horror movies set at summer camp  

ball & chain: Nag on the Lake shares a special memory from Festival Express, the touring show of Monterey Pop, when the musicians came to Toronto

message in a bottle: the dozen times humans have tried to communicate with extra-terrestrial intelligences—see previously here, here and here  

encarta: the short, happy reign of the multimedia CD-ROM as part of Fast Company’s 1994 Week—via Slashdot  

casa bonita: a 1974 amusement park restaurant reopens under new management and with a monumental wait-list 

 surgeon general’s warning: US top doctor urges health notices for social media

synchronoptica

one year ago: an AI’s take on emoji (plus synchronoptica), assorted links worth revisiting, a human computer plus Adsense (2003)

five years ago: Sweden’s alcohol monopoly, the UK Carbon Brief plus more links to enjoy

six years ago: a Banksy gallery opens, first issue magazine covers, the War of 1812, a space slingshot, more links worth the revisit plus Trump and Merkel

seven years ago: the US withdrawal from the Paris Treaty plus even more links

nine years ago: tobacco introduced to the Old World, more links, Hocus Pocus plus the nobiliary particle

8x8 (11. 632)

anabolics: the mainstreaming of casual steroid use  

cover model: the identity of the individual on the iconic Duran Duran album revealed four decades on—via Miss Cellania  

rank and file: a woodland-themed chessboard that rolls up into a log 

the imitation game: researchers claim that GPT-4 has passed the Turing Test—see previously 

london underground: spelunking through the strata of the ancient city  

non-playable character: determinism versus emergence and the question of free will  

ticino: a cache of five-thousand photographs spanning from 1900 to 1930 taken by a poor seed-peddler captures life in a remote, Italian-speaking Swiss canton  

food that makes you gay: stereotypes and gender in what we eat—via Web Curios

8x8 (11. 608)

i’m too busy helping plot world domination to bother with such run-of-the-mill liberal brainwashing: a day in the life of Mister Anthony Fauci, according to one Congressional representative  

syllabus: a reading list spanning nine-decades—via Messy Nessy Chic  

psychotronics: the prospect of telepathy is once again tantalisingly close—see previously  

foreign accent: TWA’s 1968 campaign to introduce cosmopolitan flair for US domestic flights  

zoonotic: cross-species viral transmission cases is an ominous warning for the public health community—see previously  

the rot-com bubble: the deterioration of tech began with iterative, virtual fetishes—starting with the gig-economy, moving on to crypto, NFTs, the metaverse and now AI, substitutes and replacements that no one asked for 

anagnosology: the science of reading from Alie Ward

look at me, i’m mtg, lousy with stupidity: one of the latest from Randy Rainbow

synchronoptica

one year ago: The Truman Show (1988) plus a follow-up on an Italian archaeological discovery

two years ago: Uncle Albert (1971) plus a selection of British tongue-twisters

three years ago: a preliminary report of the disease that would become known as AIDS (1981), St Boniface, a sophisticated place name generator plus disco lessons

four years ago: generative copy, assorted links to revisit, a zany public service campaign plus a classic from Crash-Test Dummies

five years ago: US national park typography, the palette of dying coral plus clearing up space junk

à votre santé (11. 574)

Via Messy Nessy Chic, we are treated to a tasting-tour of a late fourteenth century wine cellar (la cave)—one of the more historic and storied sites in Alsace, beneath the twelfth century Hôpital civil de Strasbourg, today a preeminent teaching-hospital but twain with viniculture as it touches many aspects of French society. Traditionally different varietals were prescribed for specific ailments and over the centuries grateful patients bequeathed the institution with a portion of their harvest, amassed in the cellars and creating a present legacy of over one hundred thousand premium bottles sold annually and a regimen of wine-cures that were only officially discontinued in the mid 1990s. Financing the upkeep of the institution, proceeds are reinvested and now go to new medical equipment but seen today as no longer Hippocratic—the Greek physician a proponent of such treatments—but rather hypocritical to mix inebriation with healthcare, the hospital accomplishes this volume of sales without advertising. More from BBC Travels at the link above.

xavier roberts (11. 538)

Somewhat cognisant of the strange lore surrounding the adoption process surrounding the dolls introduced in 1983, though we were completely taken aback by this account—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links—of attending the “live birth” experience at Babyland General Hospital (a nursery and gift shop in rural northern Georgia, an area tragically underserved in terms of actual clinical care with the procedure at the maternity ward described unironically as “planned parenthood”) of a Cabbage Patch Kid. With truly unexpected ritualistic gravity, like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale, the visiting public is summoned to witness Mother Cabbage, truly the object of devotion for a mystery cult like some plaster-cast oracle of Delphi, presided over by a pretend nurse who also plays the role of high priestess urging the children in the room to help with the labour. More on this unbelievably strange ceremony at Thrillist at the link above.

liduina of schiedam (11. 487)

Venerated on this day on the occasion her death in 1433, aged 52 after a life of suffering progressively worsening ailments due to an accident as an adolescent, the sainted Dutch mystic (see below) is celebrated as the patron protector of those stricken with chronic pain and disability, her hometown near Rotterdam and of ice-skaters and roller-skaters, which seems a bit of a painful reminder. Cultivating a reputation as a healer, and judging from the symptoms recorded in her hagiographies perhaps the first documented case of multiple sclerosis—though such diagnoses are problematic, she is said to have fasted and foregone sleep throughout the decades and her cultus grew popular following her death thanks to the writings of Thomas à Kempis who epitomised her piety from Keulen.

synchronoptica

one year ago: an AI writes fortune cookies plus assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: solar new year

three years ago: sequencing the human genome, more links to enjoy plus an outstanding landing page, business 

four years ago: a medieval UFO encounter, an unhinged press briefing, a cosmopolitan coffee break, a museum at the Volkswagen factory, safe social distancing plus more accidental art

five years ago: an AI authored country and western song, the N'ko script, designer Verner Panton plus Easter fountains

off his meds (11. 443)

Via TYWKIWBI (indeed), we learn that Dr Lecter’s famously creepy quip from Silence of the Lambs, the psychiatrist turned cannibalistic serial killer consulted for insight to help catch another, “A census taker once tried to test me—I ate his liver with some fava beans and nice Chianti” is more than a memorable quote but also a subtle joking admission that he’s not presently adhering to his prescribed pharmacological regimen. The fictional doctor’s most aberrant tendencies could be managed with a class of drugs called monoamine oxidase inhibitors (a rather blunt instrument from the 1950s used to treat a whole range of disorders with various levels of success), which Lecter would of course know as well as the contraindication of this particular repast, all noted for having high levels of tyramine (as well as blue cheese) and could cause dangerous side-effects—the kind of adverse chemical reactions that the poor grapefruit usually gets blame for. In the novel by Thomas Harris that the 1991 film is adapted from, mostly faithfully, the better-paired wine is Amarone is mentioned but was presumably substituted for cadence in delivery by Anthony Hopkins and as something audiences would be more familiar with.

toddy and crank (11. 437)

Via Nag on the Lake and Weird Universe, we are referred to a delightful reprint (circa 1941) of an advertisement for a Colonial Williamsburg public house called Chowning’s Tavern whose verso gives a scale of the temperance or intemperance of various potables from the drinks menu from 1789. “A moral and physical thermometer small beer, grouped with water and milk, disposes one to “Health, Wealth, Serenity of mind, Reputation, long Life and Happineſs.” Whereas Gin, Anniẛeed and Rum has the attendant vices of Swindling, Perjury and Burglary leading to the Diseases Dropſy, Madneſ and Melancholy and the Punishments of the Poor-houſe, Jail and Whipping. We are all on the spectrum and can have maladies without picking one’s poison—see if you can tag yourself.

synchronoptica

one year ago: middling large numbers

two years ago: World Storytelling Day plus Easter origins

three years ago: Leipzig’s boy choir,  the science of pasta, Roman Emperor Thrax, reflections of dadaism plus St John of Neopmuk

four years ago: the Spring Equinox, assorted links to revisit, pandemic payments plus cats and dominos

five years ago: Bed-In for Peace (1969),  Apollo press kits, exercises in root system domestication, EU copyright reform, calls to expel the US ambassador to Germany, myth retold through physics plus creating landscapes with AI

6x6 (11. 422)

merica: singular, normalised behaviour of US residents that they’ve become inured to 

sfx: more mind-blowing short videos from OpenAI’s Sora—see previously 

outstanding in the field: highlights from the annual British Wildlife Photo  

negative pressure ventilator: an obituary for author, lawyer and polio survivor who used an iron lung for seven decades  

getty images: foundation and museum has made over eighty thousand artworks and artefacts from its collect available to the public  

free drawing: lessons in illustration from 1925 by Franz Čižek and Hermann Kastner bytedance: users react to app’s uncertain future in the US

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit

two years ago: another MST3K classic, a Roman holiday plus the Doomsday Clock

three years ago: the Ides of March, the Feast of the Holy Lance, more links to enjoy plus a lost and found project

four years ago: the Osaka World’s Fair Expo (1970), a Roman Star Trek episode, disease vectors, antique bills of sale, some blasphemous graffiti plus Scotland’s new bank notes

five years ago: a non-gendered digital assistant, xenophobic dogma, unblurring photos, college admission and privilege plus more links worth the revisit

castle bravo (11. 393)

Already subjected to a series of nuclear weapons tests as host to Operation Crossroads (see previously, see also), on this day in 1954 the United States conducted the first in the battery of design experiments with Operation Castle, detonating the a high yield thermonuclear, fusion bomb on an artificial island platform in the lagoon of Namu in the Bikini Atoll of the Marshall Islands. The strongest tactile explosion in history, the bomb was more than one-thousand times stronger than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, exceeding expectations of developers and spreading fallout (the heaviest in the form of pulverised and irradiated coral) across the region and far beyond. Residents were not evacuated and the decision was made not to abort the test despite wind shear that imperilled the islanders as well as personnel involved in the research. Trace amounts of radioactive material detected as far away as Australia, Europe and North America turned Castle Bravo into an international incident, prompting worldwide monitoring of fallout levels and a ban on further atmospheric tests.

8x8 (11. 392)

unauthorised avatar: Ukrainian individual discovers her likeness from her self-help videos have been cloned to sell Russian goods, friendship with China  

criterion collection: a curated series of great moments from the film company’s archive of Closet Picks  

il galateo, overo de’ costumi: the age of impoliteness—an influential sixteenth century Venetian treatise of delicacy and manners  

the weeknd stroke psa: a song parody about signs and symptoms of a cerebrovascular incident  

@smalin: graphic artist Stephen Manlinowski creates beautifully animated classical and jazz score—via Web Curios 

the hero’s journey: “the chosen one,” coming of age narratives of Dune, Star Wars, Harry Potter are mostly about adolescent boys coming to grips with their sexuality—via tmn  

dark currents: a 1992 public access occult soap opera from Marrawamkeag, Maine inspired by Dark Shadows, Twin Peaks  

thimblerig: internet retailer’s financial shell game and predatory pricing enabled it to create an untenable monopoly not thought sustainable

sarah t—portrait of a teenage alcoholic (11. 341)

Also featuring the acting talents of Dallas’ Larry Hagman and Star Wars’ Mark Hamill, the made for television movie starring Linda Blair of The Exorcist (previously) in the title role was first aired on the NBC network on this day in 1975. Dealing with isolation and loneliness, a fifteen-year-old takes after her estranged father, drinking to cope with feelings of inadequacy and begins to surreptitiously raid her mother’s liquor cabinet, having associated inebriation with greater social stability. Having passed out whilst babysitting and numerous interventions, Sarah can’t admit she has a problem until a near-fatal horse-riding accident (mortally wounding the horse, who is euthanised) and joins Alcoholics Anonymous. 

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit plus Planet Money Valentines

two years ago: an AI reimagines sci-fi comics panels, the Internet Sacred Text Archive plus more links to enjoy

three years ago: more links worth the revisit, bar sounds plus a unique file naming convention

four years ago: political engagement, Merkel’s would be successor steps down, gravity wells plus European emergency numbers

five years ago: the American Petrol-State, anosmia, medals for the Tokyo games to be made out of recovered specie from electronic waste plus the art of Andy Dixon

dark arts (11. 331)

Whilst most town councils either rescinded the ordinance or made the application process for an exception to policy a routine and perfunctory one, the legislation of the Hypnotism Act of 1952 is still on the books in some jurisdictions and subject to a blanket ban, prohibiting public performance of mesmerism or inducing a trance-state due to perceived dangers of making an audience, singly or en masse susceptible to suggestion. Proving ruinous to a scheduled comedy routine, an entertainer (without apparently having to resort to putting local authorities under) successfully appealed for the municipality to rescind the law and grant a license (the exemption not needed under the statue to practise hypnosis for clinical and therapeutic purposes) to go ahead. Though public attitudes have changed significantly for the latter with the method widely accepted in medical settings, the former stage acts is notably low and venues risk-adverse and putting responsibility on the performer.

emotional support muppet (11. 312)

The dear child furry red muppet from Sesame Street Elmo did a social media check-in with his substantial number of followers with a seemingly innocent and innocuous question: How is everybody doing today? The responses immediately went viral with over ten thousand comments and a hundred million views, underscoring a deep sense of widespread despair and anxiety and enlisting Elmo as a therapist ready to take it all in, though the trauma dumping was a lot to lay on any single individual. A lot of us are going through a lot, and by Tuesday as replies were still coming in with Elmo and friends giving supportive answers, having read through the overwhelming amount of messages, shared, “Wow! Elmo is glad he asked! Elmo learned that it is important to ask a friend how they are doing. Elmo will check in again soon, friends! Elmo loves you ❤️”

défi de janvier (11. 223)

Introduced with various levels of societal and political traction since about a decade in the US and the UK, the abstinence campaign Dry January (translated as January Challenge) is not being endorsed by the government of France, contrary to the urging of addiction experts who want more to be done to address the risks of alcohol, as out-of-step with French culture and traditions. What do you think? A keen imbiber himself, the president is seen as a strong advocate of the wine industry and that a meal without it was “a bit sad,” and at the same time overall consumption has been seen to drop rather precipitously.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: 2022 in review, recycling calendars, the union of soviet republics, Swedish words of the year, more General Knowledge quizzes plus more year-end lists

two years ago: more calendar recycling plus an AI suggests New Year’s resolutions

three years ago: assorted links to revisit, more calendrical correspondence plus Ra-Ra-Rasputin

four years ago: more words of the year from Sweden,  more links to enjoy plus novelty New Year’s eyewear

five years ago: intercalary days, In the Land of the Silver Birch, 2018 in review plus Starcrash