Sunday 3 March 2024
a roll of the dice (11. 399)
Whilst researching, we came across another variant of Roman die in the form of a spinning top called a teetotum—still used in gambling in Latin America and later adapted into a dreidel (to distance itself from the wages or wagers). In varying accounts, a four- or six-sided playing piece determined the player’s fate: T for totum when winning the whole pool, A for aufer to draw, D for depone signifying a discard or N for Nihil Dabis when nothing happens. Compare to the Ferengi roulette and certainly rigged game of skill and chance of Dabo and the card-sharks associated with it from Deep Space Nine.
Tuesday 6 February 2024
8x8 (11. 328)
the scholar & his cat: a resonant ninth century reflection by Pangur Bรกn
bring your own beach owl: mimicry and semi-automated genre fiction—via Kottkeriverwalk: a one kilometre-long museum that undulates with the reservoir it crosses in Shandong province
steelmaster: a 1966 office furniture catalogue
television stone: the unique optical properties of the mineral ulexite
๐️: the Eames Archive open to the public—see previously
vesuvius challenge: a trio of researchers share the honorarium for deciphering charred scrolls from Herculaneum with the help of AI
ombre: Alexander Pope’s card game
synchronoptica
one year ago: Facebook’s social engineering experiments plus a ska version of the Tetris theme
two years ago: multiple zoom maps, Computerwelt, Sesame Street light jazz plus assorted links to revisit
three years ago: quotation marks, Zardoz (1974), more links to enjoy, the founding of Liberia, I Ching in melting snow plus barbarian tongues
four years ago: Deciminisation Days, Trump acquitted, classical architecture plus photographer Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore
five years ago: Anguilla independence, the Irish border, dress uniforms plus Orson Welles on creeping intolerance
Tuesday 30 January 2024
8x8 (11. 307)
1,44mb: some Japanese ministries are phasing out the requirement of submitting official documents on physical media
forensic linguistics: language experts and crime-solving
jurassic lark: Poseidon’s Underworld recaps the 1960 cinematic experience Dinosaurs!painting with plasticine: Olive Harbutt, daughter of the medium’s inventor, creates art in this 1958 short
▧: Letraset fill patterns—see previously
throwing eggs: popular Chinese card game Guandan may receive sanction for the classroom
esperantido: linguist Manuel Halvelik created an auxiliary diglossia to make translations sound more archaic
omnichord: Suzuki brings back the portable music-maker from 1981
Friday 26 January 2024
12x12 (11. 294)
brownstone: Gotham Gothic rowhouses as playing cards
wall of eyes: Radiohead spinoff artist Jonny Greenwood’s latest album
scrabblegram: a form of constrained writing using all one hundred tiles of the gameblackula: a look at the brave inversion of exploitation cinema
research purposes: profiles in the pornographers of Wikimedia who image and caption—see also—human sexuality, via Web Curios
parks & rec: a map of sites in the US funded by FDR’s New Deal programme—via Waxy
best laptop 2024: readership, AI and the collapse of media outlets
nullification: Texas governor, alleging the US federal government has failed to protect the country from an immigrant invasion, hints at secession
the compaynys of beestys & fowlys: revisiting how animal groupings (see previously on the subject of venery) received such colourful names—via the morning news
schluckbildchen: sixteenth century edible devotionals
mixtape: Kim Gordon, formerly of Sonic Youth, raps her grocery list in new song Bye Bye
ephemerama: a growing archive of modern illustrations from circa 1950 to 1975—via Things Magazine
synchronoptica
one year ago: more trompe l’oeil paintings, assorted links to revisit plus pie-chart studies
two years ago: morphing logos plus more links to enjoy
three years ago: zorbing, the Council of Trent (1545), Australia Day, more links worth the revisit plus Tubman on the twenty
four years ago: modular, prefab kiosks plus the first television demonstration (1926)
five years ago: the longest government shutdown in US history, architect Sir John Soane plus all the world’s writing systems
Monday 8 January 2024
gin rummy (11. 253)
Via the New Shelton wet/dry, we are referred to a vintage but still actively and updating resource that catalogues the rules of play for hundreds of traditional, propriety and invented card games from all around the world and in several languages with detailed instructions and diagrams like this initial setup for a racing to discard hand called Peanuts, Squeal or Scrooge. There are a lot of historic games, some for play with specially suited decks, that sound intriguing like Ruff and Honours, Seven-Toed Pete, the Victorian pastime Pope Joan, Jemima Puddle Duck and Canadian Salad. There are also listings by number of players, available equipment. Try and pick up a new game to play with friends and family.
one year ago: Man with a Movie Camera (1929), All Creatures Great and Small (1978) Fourteen Points for Peace (1918), the chemistry of bread plus an insurrection in Brasilia
two years ago: I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (1971), more rogue planets, French Roswell plus the breakup of Ma Bell
three years ago: some loyalists denounce Trump, assorted links to revisit plus more conspiratorial thinking
four years ago: the last of the Beothuk, posters for the Tokyo Games plus more links to enjoy
five years ago: no longer existing urban rail routes, a family-run pizzeria, an artificial moon, songs in minor keys plus cryptic complaints about a lapse in appropriations
catagories: ๐
Sunday 31 December 2023
la montaรฑa sagrada or a funny thing happened on the way to enlightenment (11. 231)
Via a New Year’s obscure filmic tradition, we are re-introduced to the spectacle of Alejandro Jodorwsky’s (previously) 1973 Holy Mountain and considering a re-watch. The sacrilegious, surrealistic movie produced by Beatles manager Allen Klein with financial backing of John Lennon and Yoko Ono relates the narrative of a thief marketed as Jesus returned and collaborates with an alchemist (played by Jodorwsky) to transmogrify and transfix himself along with a constellation of characters representing the houses of the zodiac, ultimately breaking the fourth wall and give up this quest. Prior to filming, principal cast members underwent three months of spiritual training drawn from various practises including the I Ching, yoga, Zen Buddhism and the Kabbalah as well as communal living prescribed dosages of LSD and psilocybin. After premiering in Cannes, the Holy Mountain was screened in limited-release in New York and San Francisco in November and was not widely available until three decades later.
Monday 18 December 2023
high hand (11. 194)
Courtesy of Spoon & Tamago, we are introduced to the portfolio of artist Yuni Yoshida, whose compositions tend to avoid digital manipulation and enhancement and rely instead on poses, forced perspective and meticulous arrangements, through this recent exhibition reimagining the iconography of playing cards, the entire deck—all thirteen ranks of four suits, with engaging and creative still-life photographs of everyday objects ranging from food, to flower petals to hair curlers. Much more at the links above.
Wednesday 13 December 2023
operation red dawn (11. 187)
Codenamed after the 1984 World War III invasion scenario of the US by a coalition of the Warsaw Pact and Latin American countries—starring Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze as resistance-fighters—a task force of American soldiers apprehended deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein on this day in 2003, having disappeared and gone into hiding shortly after the US invasion, discovered in his hometown of ad-Dawr near Tikrik, holed up in a foxhole or spider-whole with guns and three-quarters of a million dollars in cash. The site where Hussein was captured, Wolverine 2, is also a reference to the teenaged band of guerrilla fighters of the movie. Put before a special tribunal called by the provisional authority and interim government (which many characterised as a creature of American jurisdiction and a show trial not representative of an independent Iraq) six months later and found guilty of crimes against humanity for genocidal campaigns against the Kurdish and Shiite populations during the war with Iran and subsequently executed at the trial’s conclusion and having exhausted appeals in November of 2006.
catagories: ⚖️, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, 2003, Middle East
Friday 24 November 2023
top of the deck (11. 136)
Fellow peripatetic and committed flaneur Diamond Geezer is celebrating the milestone of his ten-thousand post, mini-essays since starting blogging back in 2002. We especially appreciate the data analysis that’s typical of his content, showing trends and distribution over the years, unlike my deportment, counting the quick missives and links (increasingly dead ones) and the tendency lately to fudge the dates, use placeholders and shift things around a bit so PfRC doesn’t seem so neglected. Crunch the number, so to speak, he compiled a rather resonant and relatable list of common tropes (not labels) characteristic to his blog:
• I went for a walk• I went on a journey• I went sightseeing
• I went somewhere seemingly mundane
• I visited disjoint linked locations
• I spotted something unusual
• I invented a silly challenge
• I attended an event
• I see TfL have done something
• I wouldn't have done it like that
• I disapproved of some marketing
• I considered the human condition
• I dug into some data
• I made some lists
• I scoured a map
• I made a quiz
• I looked back in my diary
• I was inspired by today's date
• I reacted to the news
• I am being sarcastic
The blogosphere congratulates Diamond Geezer on this achievement and speaking on behalf of quite a few of us, we are grateful to the Blogger platform for its consistency and dependability over the years.
catagories: ๐, ๐♂️, ๐, networking and blogging
Tuesday 7 November 2023
9x9 (11. 101)
dark universe: Euclid space mission to map the Cosmos and glean insights into the mysterious majority of matter and energy composing it
the earth dies screaming: an effective but bare-bones 1964 British apocalyptic horror flick from 1964go fish: the (possibly apocryphal) origin of the name of the city of Slow Low, Arizona
qr-monster: the artistry of AI prompters—see previously
๐: a teaser for a Backrooms-like game taking place in the Tokyo metro Shinjuku station
lignum vitae: looted leaves of the Golden Tree of Lucignano recovered
purity pals: new US Speaker of the House of Representative announces that he and his seventeen year old son monitor each other’s web consumption
future imperfect: a strangely engaging 1974 series of filmstrips warning against the utopian novel and utopian-thinking orbital plane: an exoplanet’s singular path around a binary star system—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links
synchronoptica
one year ago: Operation Able Archer (1983), Ukraine to change the date on which Christmas is observed plus a gallery of bad Jane Austen book covers
two years ago: a documentary on picking the wrong venue, a bombing in the US capitol plus the Riace bronzes
three years ago: your daily demon: Bifrons, awaiting US election results, the collection point for cataloguing art looted by the Nazis plus the first female US vice-presidential candidate announced
four years ago: an unused deck of tarot cards by Salvatore Dalรญ
five years ago: assorted links to revisit, Nixon’s concession speech (1962) plus more from the Center for American Politics and Design
Monday 9 October 2023
7x7 (11. 047)
haus zum walfisch: explore horror film shooting locations of 1970s and 1980s classics, including Suspiria filmed in a townhouse in Freiburg im Breisgau
concrete feats: a tour of Italy’s Brutalist architecture
rapid electric vehicle retrofits: an Australian student wins James Dyson Award for an inexpensive conversion kit to make gas-powered vehicles hybridearthshapes: fantastic geography from pilot Joseph N Portney
larva convivialis: the miniature dancing skeletons of Roman banquets—via Strange Company
jungian individuation: the Swiss psychoanalyst on the predictive power of Tarot cards
tune-on: veteran television producer and director on the revival of his Laugh-In spin-off five decades afterwards
31 days: a month long celebration of the Spooky Season from Laura E Hall—via Waxy
synchronoptica
one year ago: assorted links to revisit, World Postal Day plus to slander one’s good reputation
two years ago: more links to enjoy, happy birthday John Lennon, Karl-Marx-Stadt, drag queen tarot plus a visit to the Osterburg
three years ago: The Watcher in the Woods, more Phantom plus more links worth revisiting
four years ago: major military exercise in Germany planned by US forces plus other European trade colonies in China
five years ago: Trump’s legacy of failed businesses, more on the fight to save an ancient woodland plus moving Tokyo’s historic fish market
Tuesday 26 September 2023
tarotic art (11. 025)
We appreciated this introduction to surrealist painter and social justice activist Leonora Carrington through her esoteric series inspired and informed by the iconography of the Major Arcana, whose symbolism is reflected everyone when one is ready for it. First exposed to the movement in the works of Max Ernst at the International Surrealist Exhibition, both artists later met, bonded and married, collaborating on projects and supporting one another’s work. Having settled outside of Paris, French authorities arrested the German Ernst with the outbreak of World War II as a “hostile alien.” Remanded to Germany, Ernst was taken into custody again by the Gestapo as a promoter of degenerate art. Dealt quite a hand and inconsolable over the detention of her husband (Ernst later was able to escape and flee to the US with the help of Peggy Guggenheim) and on the verge of a psychotic breakdown, Carrington agreed to a course of treatment in an asylum in Spain and underwent a regiment of electroshock therapy and powerful drugs. Carrington’s parents decided to then send her to a sanatorium in South Africa for continued care. Escaping en route in Portugal, Carrington sought refuge at the Mexican consulate and arranged a marriage-of-convenience to the ambassador so as to be liberated from the custody of her family and given the diplomatic immunity to travel. Ernst married Guggenheim, with Carrington joining a community of exiles in Mexico, where she was also a champion of women’s rights. Carrington’s body of work reflects Mesoamerican folkways and matriarchal traditions that whose points of departure limn her own biography. More from Hyperallergic at the link up top.
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ฒ๐ฝ, ๐, ๐จ, libraries and museums
Friday 2 June 2023
hinter den kulissen (10. 782)
H doesn’t recall watching but we rented Stanley Kubrick’s sumptuous 1975 period drama Barry Lyndon (based on the William Makepeace Thackeray novel about the gentleman gambler and social-climber) several years ago.
Set in Ireland, England and Prussia in the 1750s during the Seven Years’ War, the title rogue travels across Europe calling in debts through various scams, scenes and establishing shots were filmed in Dublin, County Wicklow, Schloss Ludwigsburg outside of Stuttgart, Sanssouci in Potsdam and as we just learned, in between these two locations at around the fifty-three minute timestamp, Lyndon’s regiment on the march, in our very own little village on the Bavarian-Thรผringen border, uncredited but confirmed by Redditors. Not much has changed (the roads are paved now however) and we’ll need to do a re-watch soon.
Saturday 15 April 2023
❤️♣️ (10. 675)
These space cards from 1964 tell the long history of humanity’s progress in freeing themselves of the bounds of gravity—with the iconography of the suit of hearts representing the human aspect, clubs the sciences, spades technical applications (I especially like this sequence from bows and arrows to rockets and satellites) and diamonds modern elements of aerospace exploration. More at the links above.
Friday 21 October 2022
you know what thot means, right? (10. 243)
During the upheaval of the French Revolution in 1789, an application was submitted for a translation of Livre de Thot,
the French translation promising to reveal the practise of ancient Egyptian magic through tarot (see previously). Engravings by Pierre-Franรงois Basam, Jean-Franรงois Alliette under the pseudonym Ettellia (reversing his surname), they helped introduce cartomancy to the wider population. The first known occultist making a living off of their readings, Attiette issued one of the first comprehensive guides, and is considered foundational to the study of tarot.
Wednesday 5 October 2022
liber null & the psychonaut (10. 196)
Courtesy of Boing Boing, we are given a chance to revisit artist, occultist and acolyte Austin Osman Spare through a campaign to reprint the tarot, cartomancy deck of his design. Spare’s fusion of the mystic and the symbolic prefigure—to some—the surrealist movement, and considered a foundational figure in the realm of Chaos Magic, Spare used magical techniques including automatic drawing and sigilisation as a heuristic to explore how the conscious and unconscious mind inform and influence one another. A growing disdain for Aleister Crowley and his Thelemite followers issuing from what Spare saw as ceremonial and performative magic caused him to split from that side of the occult and focus his studies on psychoanalysis and meditation, triangulating those fields with his particular theories on evolution that freighted much on desire, repression and aspiration. Much more on Spare’s cartomancy and other forms of divination at the links above.
Monday 8 August 2022
7x7 (10. 046)
chorizo: prominent French scientists apologies after posting a sausage slice and claiming it was an image from the JWST—via the always excellent Everlasting Blรถrt
gall stereographic projection: D’Arcy Thompson’s mathematical transformations and correspondent biological speciation—see alsochapel of sound: otherworldliness of a monolithic amphitheatre with views of the Great Wall accentuated with a film short that evokes the landscape of Prometheus (see also)
a bridge too far: there are no crossing over the Amazon—via the New Shelton wet/dry (at a new home at the New Inquiry)
casino clock: a flip-face time-keeper sourced from a card deck
scenic route: a navigation device that emphasises fun and adventure—via Swiss Miss
when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie: the Solar System rendered as food items (with the help of Midjourney—Mercury as a cookie looks a lot like the Disc of Nebra)—via Super Punch
Tuesday 12 April 2022
7x7
mutually intelligible: interlocutors with no common language gravely overestimate the success of their getting the message across
let’s have church: mystery artist of gospel album covers—via Nag on the Lake
partygate: Prime Minister and cabinet members fined for violating lockdown protocols
toto, i have a feeling we’re not in kansas anymore: watch an Iowa television station transition from monochrome to living colour
coin-op: a comprehensive look at Gachapon (ใฌใใฃใใณ) across Japan
1-bit: summon demons with this slightly racy tarot reading
light verb variation: why some people make decisions and others take them
Friday 4 February 2022
traho fatis
The Latin motto—drawn by fate—echoes through this intriguing Renaissance tarot deck called Sola Busca, limned with an anachronistic marshalling of ancient heroes, medieval bestiaries and then contemporary weapons and armour. Housed presently in a museum in Milan and the earliest known deck to illustrate the complete suites of the major and minor arcana—probably engraved in Ferrara in 1491 and later hand-coloured in Venice—the allegory of iconography informs later iterations, including the familiar Smith-Waite design. Nebuchadnezzar II, Gaius Marius, the uncle of Julius Caesar and several members of the Greek and Roman panthea. Peruse the entire deck and learn more about the provenance at Public Domain Review at the link above.
catagories: ๐ฎ๐น, ๐, ๐งฟ, myth and monsters
Thursday 11 November 2021
9x9
silent haitch: the voicing of this letter is “still a significant shibboleth”—a look at h based on modern usage and notes on wh by Alfred Leach
kinship and pedigree: genealogical mapping shows historic spread and retreat of surnames for British Isles and much of Europe
rural free delivery: a superb, thematic collection of vintage picture postcards—via Things Magazinezeta reticulans: a tarot deck from Miguel Romero features the history of UFOlogy
ัะต ัะฐะผัะต ะบะฐััะธะฝะบะธ: collection of avant-garde children’s book illustrations from the USSR
retromod: Hyundai brings back its 1986 luxury Grandeur with a fully electric powertrain
trebuchet: another start-up envisions flinging satellites into space via spinning centrifuge—see previously
get lost losers: a rock band flotilla entertaining the cargo crews stuck in the seemingly insurmountable backlog waiting to unload containers at the ports of Los Angeles
agent of chaos: agnotology, the study of deliberate spreading of confusion