Monday 26 February 2024

handmaids’ tales (11. 384)

We are turned towards a coupling of sermons, one from a Methodist preacher from 2018 and another more recent commentary from the pulpit of US politics, that highlight the hypocrisy of American fundamentalism and championing the unborn, privileging potential and the least complicated, objectionable over those inconvenient actualities of the poor, unwell, indigent and alien who might not be sufficiently grateful or not present a challenge for the societal arrangement and power structures that put them in this situation to begin with, which—if redressed could take care and truly foster the former as well. The second piece has a more satirical tone but delivers the same message and both are worth reading in full.

Tuesday 13 February 2024

9x9 (11.348)

unwanted legacy: Russia puts Estonian prime minister on wanted list for dismantling monuments to Soviet soldiers 

banned book rainbow: LeVar Burton hosts a very special episode on books banned by adults who don’t want kids to learn, grow or change—via Kottke  

clothesline, skyline: a look at Shanghai’s ubiquitous outdoors drying racks  

blinkerwall: ten-thousand year old megastructure in the Baltic could be Europe’s oldest  

everynoise: layoffs and downsizing at Spotify spell the end of the serendipitous musical encyclopaedia—see previously  

essentially cenobitical: one year in the life of a part time hermit—via the new Shelton wet/dry 

running amoc: the trajectory of the climate catastrophe blows past a calamitous tipping-point  

clearing the docket: upcoming inflection points in the criminal cases against Trump  

portal kombat: French authorities uncover a vast Russian disinformation network designed to overwhelm fact checkers

Tuesday 6 February 2024

saint mรฉl (11. 329)

Son of Saint Patrick’s sister Darerca and eventually accompanying his uncle to Ireland for missionary work, this itinerate bishop with no fixed see during his ministry, this patron of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, supported himself through manual labour and subsistence farming, residing with his aunt called Lupait during a portion of his ministry. In order to quell rumours and preserve the good reputation of their evangelising work, Patrick went to investigate himself, with both aunt and nephew producing miracles (carrying burning coals and fishing a fish from a field) to prove the innocent and chaste nature of their relationship, and the two went to live apart—following the patriarch’s suggestion, who also raised the great hill called Bri Leith between their respective new settlements in Mรฉl’s home parish and Druimheo, further east where Lupait relocated, they separated. Invoked by those falsely accused of incest, the feast of Saint Mรฉl, venerated either today or on the seventh, has become a local holiday of singlehood (there being quite a few other saints devoted to the unpaired but all with the designs of marrying well) with customs including sending cards to oneself ahead of Valentine’s Day and hosting mixers that extol the good things about being confirmed bachelors and bachelorettes.

Saturday 27 January 2024

horsey horseless (11. 299)

Through his 1899 patent for the above automobile mast or grill that fronted the steed of a horsed-carriage to cause less distress in mixed traffic, we are acquainted with the figure of Uriah Smith, Seventh Day Adventist minister, hymnodist, inventor and abolition and pacifism advocate. Disillusioned and disabused from religion following the Great Disappointment when the world did not end as foretold in prophesy but later joining the administration of the Advent church, contributing significantly to its theology and writing their own End Times eschatology, remaining in Battle Creek until expiring on his way to the office in 1903.

deo devota (11. 297)

Likely named Julia rather than the epithet “devoted to God” and occasionally conflated with the similar hagiographies of Saint Reparata and Torpes of Pisa, the patron saint of Monaco and Corsica is venerated on this day on the occasion of her martyrdom during the Diocletian persecutions. The visiting prefect demanded Devota submit to the imperial cult and upon her refusal, steadfast in her faith, was tortured and stoned to death. The Christian community saved her body and put it on a boat bound for Africa—certain to receive a proper burial there—the vessel, beset by a storm at sea, landed on the beach of Les Gaumates, Port-Hercule in present day Monte Carlo. According to tradition, flowers are said to bloom before their season on this day and the Monegasque royal family continue to participate in a special mass and pray to her relics for safety and intercession.

Friday 26 January 2024

paula of rome (11. 295)

Born into one of the richest and most powerful senatorial families, gens Furii—claiming descent from legendary Mycenaean king Agamemnon—and as recorded by later companion St Jerome, lived a life of luxury and intellectual pursuits, but when widowed at the age of thirty-two, Paula turned her interest towards religion and pilgrimage. While touring the Holy Land, Paula visited monastic communities and eventually settled in Bethlehem and established a spiritual retreat of her own—hostel for travellers connected to a monastery for men and a convent for women. Regarded as the first nun, abbess and Desert Mother, and re-examined as not just a patron but also a co-contributor to Jerome’s scholarship and translations, Paula is venerated on this day on the occasion of her death in the year 404, fรชted as well by the Anglican Communion (along with her daughter Eustochium) on 28 September.

Sunday 14 January 2024

hands-free device (11. 266)

Admitted seen to have one dangling from the rear-view mirror myself from time to time (maybe I ought to have hitched it to my last car), we hadn’t heard of this early 1950s, patented accessory (see also) called the Recording Rosary. Though I imagine it could still lead distracted driving—the innovation was for the Glory bead (traditionally made from the jet sourced to saints’ shrines or carved from olive pits from the garden of Gethsemane though substitute materials are sanctioned) to keep track of the decades if the process needed to be interrupted—and question if praying the rosary is something to be done whilst multitasking, the inventor’s intention were in the right place with proceeds going to charity and engaging in the activity during one’s commute or official duties (particularly for soldiers) was hoped to promote world peace. More at Weird Universe at the link up top.

Thursday 21 December 2023

the ancient yuletide carol (11. 200)

Though conventions of the neopagan Wheel of the Year observes the holiday on the Winter/Summer Solstice, traditionally Yule fell later on the calendar and centred around Midwinter Night, a distinct date that falls several weeks later and corresponds to the first full Moon of beginning the month of ร†fterra Gฤ“ola (Second Yule, roughly corresponding with the Julian month of January). We know of this rescheduling due to documentation in the Saga of Haakon the Good of Norway, ruler during the Christianisation phase in the mid-tenth century, king and country mutually hiding their faith from one another to avoid friction, and synchronising yuletide festivities with Christmas, and mandating that all Norwegians celebrate under punishment of fines. Once Haakon solidified his power and earned the trust of the people, the king imported bishops from England and had them preach throughout the kingdom.

synchronoptica

one year ago: The Czar Wants to Sleep, assorted links to revisit, the American insurrection that nearly happened over WWII plus works entering the public domain

two year ago: the breakaway Republic of Fredonia, Peter Canisius, Jack Russells plus season’s greetings from Tolkien 

three years ago: vรฉvรฉ symbols plus the world’s first crossword puzzle

four years ago: more links to enjoy

five years ago: negative fireworks, the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright inscribed in the UNESCO register plus a very Rex Factor Christmas

Friday 10 November 2023

laterne, laterne, sonne, mond und sterne (11. 107)

In anticipation of the Feast of Saint Martin and the tradition of a lamp-lit procession, welcoming rather than ushering out the darkness and gloam of autumn formerly having roughly corresponded to the first of the month and a continuation of Halloween celebrations prior to calendar reform, we enjoyed this small sampling from a catalogue of chromolithographs of paper lantern designs from 1880 from the Tรผbingen booksellers Riethmรผller—which still sells paperware and party favours. More at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973) plus Radiation Baby

two years ago: sinking nations plus Chaka Khan (1984)

three years ago: Toot, Whistle, Pluck and Boom, the US election, the Friends theme song, expecting more from America, voting irregularities plus an early edition

four years ago: an Art Nouveau printmaker, more Inktober maps, film composer Carlo Savina, a racing bar chart of the biggest musicians plus the debut of Sesame Street

five years ago: more unbuilt architecture, AI writes news copy, The 5000 Fingers of Doctor T plus a historical film lot consumed by wildfire

Friday 13 October 2023

the poor fellow-soldiers of christ and of the temple of solomon (11. 056)

Whilst endorsed by the papacy as the favoured charitable organisation within Christendom and Instrumental in the early successes of the Crusades, subsequent failures and their vast holdings and wealth derived from an early banking service began to curry jealousy and mistrust for the Knights Templar particularly by those secular leaders indebted to them. Leveraging rumours about the order’s initiation ceremony and secretive rites, King Philip IV of France (heavily in hock) issued an arrest warrant on this day in 1307—also a Friday giving rise to the popular superstition though not the origin of it—for Grand Master Jacques de Molay and hundreds of other members. Pressuring Pope Clement V in Avignon to ascent to the mass incarceration and trial by torture, the summons opened with the words «Dieu n’est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume» (God is not pleased—we have enemies of the faith in the kingdom), they were summarily charged with fraud idolatry, blasphemy and homosexual practises, which bore substantial similarities to accusations levied against other persecuted groups including Jewish communities and independent women often labeled witches and which carried little supporting evidence. Under duress, several confessed that they did indeed commit such acts and worshipped a mummified head that they called Baphomet taken from the Temple Mount, which was officially passed off as the recovered relic of John the Baptist. Burned at the stake in Paris, their lands and wealth were confiscated by the state with the pope assigning their role to the successor group the Knights Hospitallers.

Wednesday 11 October 2023

archiatra pontifico (11. 051)

Via our faithful chronicler, we learn that this day in 1958, sharing the anniversary with quite a few other events of pith and circumstance, that our friend Pope Pius XII (see previously) suffered a posthumous indignity at the hands the hands of his personal physician Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, a trained optometrist later stripped of his office and medical license and banished from the Vatican for life for leaking photos of the dying pontiff to the magazine Paris Match. Claiming that Pius expressed a wish to be not embalmed and his organs removed in the usual fashion but rather preserved after the model of Christ, Galezzi-Lisi concocted a special treatment of oils and resins (plus wrapping the body in cellophane) claimed would make the papal corpse incorruptible. The unseasonable heat of that early autumn, however, undermined any effectiveness that treatment might have had and the body decomposed rapidly, curtailing the viewing of the faithful and necessitating the regular relief of the Swiss Guard standing watch, overcome by the stench. For the remainder of the procession and funeral service, the casket was closed and sealed and may have exploded from the pressure of gaseous discharge as a result of the accelerated autolysis and putrefaction, thankfully not witnessed by the public.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: Barbarella (1968), ancient animation, a Coming Out simulator plus a declassified map of nuclear targets

two years ago: the micronation of Rose Island

three years ago: an appreciation of the Smiley Face, a system for coding emotional facial reactionsSt Gummarus plus the debut of Saturday Night Live (1975)

four years ago: more on the moons of Jupiter plus the better letterer’s corner

five years ago: pรคntsdrunk,  more on Coming Out Day, the technical mastery of chindลgu, a moon moon plus The Secret Life of Plants

Friday 18 August 2023

reach out, touch faith (10. 950)

Via the ever-excellent Web Curios, we are directed towards an onslaught of AI applications and burgeoning projects including this “divine connection” in one’s pocket (see also) replete with testimonials and the disclaimer that “this app is a tool for reflection and learning, not a replacement for prayer or personal faith” offering a lifeline to the Great Come-Again Christ. This opportunity is coming as some are calling Jesus’ approach too woke and subversively suspect, and recalls an epilogue from a rather incongruous work seminar that I attended ages ago about “Living in the New Normal” which concluded that rather the inevitability of inventing God that maybe we as a society become worthy and create one, though probably not to be parsed as the canonical one. In addition to Jesus which certainly draws from rubric, premium subscribers can also choose other biblical personalities as interlocutors including members of the Holy Family like Mary or foster-father Joseph, who was admittedly kind of long-suffering save for the bit about siring the royal houses of Europe through Jesus’ half-siblings, and didn’t seem to have a lot of wisdom to dispense outside of carpentry, plus the Apostles including Judas and select figure from the Old Testament ๐Ÿ™

 synchronoptica

one year ago: St Helen,  a 1922 gliding competition plus a bubble-wrap instrument

two years ago: your daily demon: Forneus, disfluent fonts, culture wars at school board meetings, School House Rock! maths shorts, more phonetic spelling proposals plus Mid-Century Lithuanian illustrators

three years ago: Roman emperors reconstructed with AI, Michelle Obama at the DNC, Women’s Suffrage in the US (1920), a new American Gothic, constructed languages, aesthetic data visualisations plus Hamlet variations

four years ago: canons for spawning fish,  more odonymy, more McMansions, a visual vernacular in architectural element plus the Lost of Colony of Roanoke

five years ago: a mid-70s vision of future space stations, an Icelandic word for a break from the heat, Wikipedia’s gift shop, making frozen treats heat resilient plus an early AI image maker

Tuesday 15 August 2023

mariรค himmelfahrt (10. 946)

Observed on this day as either the Feast of the Assumption in the Latin Rite or the Feast of the Dormition in Eastern Orthodox tradition, Christians celebrate the translation of the Virgin Mary, either wholly, bodily taken up or having gone to sleep without suffering a mortal death. While this elevation to eternal life has some singular aspects (Mary is said to enjoy the fullness and autonomy of the afterlife that the other saints will only experience after the Last Judgment), there are other instances of the phenomenal honour in Judaism and Christianity, with Jesus and Enoch, the patriarch and father of Methuselah “who walked with God: and was no more” and the prophet Elijah and Pharaoh’s Daughter (see also) who found Moses (himself taken up after his remains were fought over by Satan and the Archangel Michael) amongst the reeds with other instances of being raptured in other traditions. Many figures in Hinduism, kings and swami, are said to have merged with God, essentially dematerialising, Islam teaches that Muhammed was similarly taken up into Heaven and Hellenistic tradition recognises ascendant masters like the thaumaturgist and philosopher Apollonius, a wandering sage who travelled in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia and drew many latter day comparisons to the reincarnated Christ.

Sunday 30 July 2023

chick tracts (10. 914)

99% Invisible turns our attention to a strange and virulent form of evangelising in the form of an oddly collectible and exhaustive series of Christian comics from erstwhile cartoonist and Born-Again Jack Thomas Chick. First published in the 1960s from its headquarters in Rancho Cucamonga, California and continuing through to today, this pocket-sized artefact of conservative mainstream Protestant theology that’s become a self-parody veered at times to hate-speech and attacked Catholics, Masons, queer-people, socialists, Communists, drug-users, trick-or-treaters (collect them all!) and denounced non-conformists and non-Christian faiths as devil-worshipping as well as stoking ugly conspiracy theories and paranoia. The back-panel of each tract includes a blank spaces for churches to stamp their name and contact information as well as a bespoke salvation prayer for sinners to recant their ways. More at the links above. 

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit

two years ago: the Norse goddess Freyja plus recreating classic screen-savers

three years ago: the microcars of Robert Hannoyer, pioneering oceanographer Marie Tharp, special edition Canadian coins,  fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto (RIP), St Hatebrand plus the rich tradition of Japanese souvenirs

four years ago: algorithmically-directed decisions and the architecture of choice, disruptive jewellery plus non-overlapping magisteria

five years ago: Outsider Art from Austria, BBC’s sound archives plus building a Martian base in situ

Saturday 29 July 2023

you will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me (10. 913)

Fรชted on this day along with her siblings Lazarus and and Mary (often conflated with Mary Magdalene), Martha of Bethany, patron saint of hospitality workers, domestics and try-hards, is characterised in the Book of Luke as being conscientiously preoccupied with the task of hosting Jesus when he came for a visit.

Both sisters lamenting that had Jesus arrived earlier he might have healed their brother and prevented his death, Martha came out of mourning to receive their guest, while Mary waited and wept for her departed brother. Jesus wept. Moved by Mary’s emotions (whose patronage includes Spiritual Studies), Jesus resurrected Lazarus, restoring him to life after four days dead in a tomb. Later, the siblings hosted Jesus again for a in celebration and gratitude of Lazarus’ return with Mary in the course of the feast anointing the feet of Jesus with an entire vial of expensive perfume and wiped his feet with her hair. Many of the other other disciples were upset by this ostentatious display, especially Judas who argued that this costly albastron represented a year’s wages and could have been sold to benefit the poor—to which Jesus rebutted the above (somewhat confusingly as parables are not always the best didactic tools in one’s quiver) that Mary was saving the perfume for his burial, suggesting that she somehow sensed his imminent capture, trial and execution.  

synchronoptica

one year ago: departing Scotland
 
two years ago: St Olaf,  fighting runaway inflation with video game money, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil plus some philosophical captchas
 
three years ago: a collection of conchs, more Universal Everything, the wedding of Charles and Diana (1981) plus Trump’s medical advisors
 
four years ago: more consequences for America leaving the Universal Postal Union plus a feline fragrance
 
five years ago: the birth of NASA (1958) plus the portfolio of photographer Joshua Blackburn

Saturday 22 July 2023

the magdalene (10. 898)

Fรชted on this day as the patron protector of converts, glovers, milliners, perfumeries, apothecaries, penitent sinners and sexual temptation, Mary of Magdala, which gives us the name Madeleine, travelled with Jesus and the apostles and was regarded as the only disciple that truly understood Jesus’ message, garnering the jealousy of Peter and the others—and according to some persistent extra-canonical traditions, the bride of Christ, having journeyed to Gaul to start a family. Her depiction as a reformed prostitution began in the late sixth century with a sermon by Pope Gregory I that conflated an unnamed “Sinful Woman,” later identified as Mary of Bethany, who is deigned to anoint the feet of Jesus, which the Catholic Church didn’t officially dispel until thirteen hundred years later with Pope Paul VI’s calendar reform but has proven another persistent association. Elaborated and romanced during the medieval period through modern times, Mary Magdalen was upheld as a example of redemption, though her popular cult was ignored by authoritative theologians, and it was said that seven demons were exorcised from her which became embodiments of the contemporary idea of the Seven Deadly Sins, and from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance is often depicted as rather hirsute by dent of her newly acquired modesty, iconographically publicly nude (vulgaris meretrix) but not obscured with a fig-leaf or Daryl Hanna Mermaid-style with strategically placed plaits but rather lycanthropically in full body hair (like this painting in Gdaล„sk or Tilman Riemenschneider’s altar ensemble in Mรผnnerstadt), like the so called ‘feather tights’ affect given to angelic figures, a costume of scales aligned with the fashion and sensibilities of the time. Elevated from a memorial feast to a liturgical one in 2016 by Pope Francis directed Mary Magdalene be hailed as apostolorum apostola, the “Apostle of the apostles.”

synchronoptica 

one year ago: more adventures through the Scottish Highlands, a hit from Take That (1991) plus driving along the North Coast 500

two years ago: Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) 

three years ago: the origins of the depiction of Jesus as a white European

four years ago: and whitey’s on the Moon plus assorted links to revisit

five years ago: the search for Dark Matter, assorted links worth revisiting, on eggccorns and oronyms plus the smell of rain


Sunday 25 June 2023

confessio ausgustana (10. 835)

Presented to the public on this day in 1530, the primary confession of faith of the Lutheran Church was drafted during the previous summer (as the Articles of Schwabach) by Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon and Justus Jonas as a summary of the faith to be given to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who decided to convene a diet in the city city of Augsburg, calling on the princes and free states to advocate and explain their religious convictions in an attempt at reconciliation—aimed at restoring political unity within the empire and present a united opposition to counter Ottoman incursions in Austria and prevent a repeat of the ultimately unsuccessful Siege of Vienna. The twenty-eight articles of faith were read out by the rulers of the territories where Protestantism was the majority and consisted of twenty-one positive teachings (theses)—chief tenets of the confession, and seven negative (antitheses)—representing their split with Catholic doctrine and ceremony, mostly do to with dietary proscriptions (XXVI: On the Distinction of Meats) and the requirement for confession (XXV) to a priest for absolution of sin. At the conclusion of the diet, the Lutheran princes concurrently entered into a military pact called the Schmalkaldic League, an alliance of mutual protection should the emperor make untoward demands of their domains, which eventually petitioned for official recognition of the faith in the empire under the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 under the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, “whose realm, his religion,” where the confession of the ruler became the state religion and all of its subjects.

Friday 16 June 2023

7x7 (10. 812)

sister act: a serendipitous find of a bawdy collection of Renaissance era songs leads to a trove of research on bad nuns  

slow tv: Pennsylvania governor sets up a live stream so the public can view the progress on rebuilding the main traffic artery (previously) the eastern seaboard  

whichcraft: a look at the usage and abusage of the relative pronoun  

⛩️: an urban exploration of Toyko’s hidden Shinto shrines 

freshies: a look at what’s on the menu at the South Pole and other in-person observations (see previously)—via Strange Company  

gullinhjatlti: stunning three-thousand year old bronze sword unearthed in Nรถrdlingen  

oude doolhof: a a late Renaissance labyrinthine pleasure garden on the outskirts of Amsterdam

Sunday 11 June 2023

6x6 (10. 800)

reagan candy: the Taiwanese term for jelly babies  

treuhand: the privatisation of East Germany and the long reach of its consequences—via Maps Mania

mexico filter: the cinematic colour scheme applied to movie set in the “Global South” evokes corruption and pollution is the tinge of New York City (previously) now—plus lots more from Hyperalleric’s Required Reading—see also  

tag yourself: what your favourite classic rock band says about you—from Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links  

ekd: hundreds of parishioners attend a Lutheran service in Fรผrth delivered by an AI—see previously—via Slashdot 

lu xun: the memes telegraphing generational disillusionment in China—see also

Sunday 21 May 2023

dux croatorum & dux sclavorum (10. 757)

Granted recognition as an independent state by the Holy See when Duke Branimir (see previously) received blessings from Pope John VIII on this day in 879 (letter postmarked 7 June), overseeing reform and reorganisation of the former Roman province of Dalmatia and in return for this legitimising gesture, swore obedience to the ecclesiastical authority of the bishop of Rome rather than Patriach Methodus I and Constantinople, and maintaining its sovereignty whilst sandwiched between the expansive aspirations of the Carolingian Empire to the west and Byzantium to the east. The day is observed as Croatian Diplomacy Day with 30 May, from 1991 to 2001 and since 2020, being Independence Day, formerly the Day of the National Parliament.