6x6

lysergsäurediethylamid : Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann first synthesised LSD at Sandoz Labs on this day in 1938, taking his first trip four and a half years later

under construction: photographer Peter Steinhauer captures the colourful bamboo scaffolding of Hong Kong

delay, deny and deflect: a look at the devious playbook of a social media giant

omnishambles: continued Brexit chaos

minimals: animated block creatures from Lucas Zanotto

excelsior: celebrating the incredible career of Stan Lee

sunroof

Thanks to Maps Mania we learn that there is range of services covering different but all jurisdictions that can help businesses and home owners to decide whether or not to install solar panels on their roof-tops by illustrating the electricity and heat production potential at any given address. Customisable criteria are feed into the various programmes and return an estimate of how many kilowatt hours could be unlocked and the value of the energy produced at the going rate.

7x7

table scraps: Dutch designer upcycles food waste as a printable, universal paste

the traveling wilburys: on tour with the hologram of Roy Orbison

going, going, gone: a record-fetching Banksy piece of art (previously) self-destructs after the auction, via Nag on the Lake

that’s my name, don’t wear it out: a tribe of unfortunately named gentlemen

on the docket: the US supreme court’s first order of business is to re-examine Gamble vs America, an exception to the Double Jeopardy clause that could allow Trump to extend his pardon-powers in state jurisdiction

albergo diffuso: a unique but nearly depopulated Swiss village is transforming some of the remaining cottages to a “scattered hotel” model to save the entire settlement

impossi-bagel: our palates and our texts deserve better than the refined, blandness behind the new class of emojis 

sisyphean task

The always engrossing Kottke directs our attention to a classic, low-tech solution to a very modern problem with renewable energy generation: an innovative Swiss demonstration project that illustrates the efficient storage of energy in stacking heavy blocks.
We’ve previously explored how surplus energy (the excess over and above demand when the sun is shiny or it’s windy) can be “saved” for the doldrums by converting it from kinetic to potential energy, a controlled surrender to the struggle against gravity hard won in times of plenty with other applications—including dams and the Sisyphus Train—but this proposal which involves constructing and dismantling a tower seems especially precise and calibrated to needs. In its fully-charged state, a central crane would be surrounded with a block tower it built up using excess energy and when the power supply runs low, blocks are removed one by one and descend to the ground slowly, churning out electricity with a turbine in the process.

squandered opportunity

The World Climate Conference held in Geneva in February of 1979 accrued the collective will of some fifty nations and the public and scientific consensus that climate change was a real and imminent threat to the survival of human kind and for the next decade, it seemed that we were on the cusp of effecting real and permanent change and the that the course towards global catastrophe was not inevitable.
During this decisive time, however, a group of determined scientists failed to convince and influence the requisite governmental participation and policy—which yielded to business interests and unchecked capitalism.  The New York Times presents a truly compelling, long-format, multi-media essay comprised of interviews and anecdotes that helps one to appreciate how close science came to saving the environment and ourselves from what we can now only to defer as long-term disaster and negotiating what we’re willing to sacrifice since we’ve pivoted past any better outcomes. This narrative on the wilful abrogation of leadership is not to exhaust nor to resign the rest of us to our impending doom but rather demonstrate that the future will not look like the past and that we are all stingy with our imagination and rallies us all to be aware of the consequences of our choices.  The warnings are not new.  Though we may be on course for disaster and have remained at the same bearing, we are not beyond redemption.

pontificia cohors helvetica

We discover via Super Punch that the latest class of soldiers to matriculate into the Pope’s elite (notice that this is now the only acceptable context for that word) army, the Swiss Guard, will be issued as parts of their elaborate uniforms 3D plastic printed helmets rather than the traditional worked metal ones.
Though it strikes me as a bit costume-shop, there’s also surely less impact on the planet in having printed gear—which also burdens the wearer significantly less, though at nearly a thousand euros a piece (but still half the price of engaging a blacksmith) one has to wonder when and how the revolutionary, democratising moment of this technology will arrive.

caquelon oder der fondue verschwörung

Reprising an older episode from October 2014, Planet Money helped us get wise to the Swiss cheese cartel (Schweizerische Käseunion) and how the former marketing and trade company—given the powers of a regulatory body, in effect, by the Swiss government, successfully campaigned and unified production to keep the industry safe and solvent while also promoting and popularising fondue and raclette as traditional, national dishes. Chartered in the midst of the First World War, the Käseunion drew up production quotas and a pricing regime to prevent cheese from being too far devalued.

Neutral Switzerland having weathered the war unscathed, it retained its systems of production but no longer had the rest of Europe to export its cheese to. The low demand and high supply was kept under control by the monopoly, who directed production and pared down the thousand varieties formerly produced to just seven authorised kinds and then eventually down to three: the iconic Gruyère, Emmental and Sbrinz. Fondue was not invented in the 1950s and aggressively marketed around the world in the 1960s and beyond as a vehicle for selling more surplus cheese and the characterisation probably is sure to offend but we’re suspecting that that version is not too far off. As attested turophiles, however, we don’t care if the image of bubbling cauldrons (caquelon) of cheese at the ski chalet is a bit of a ploy. Amid scandal and corruption, the Käseunion was officially disbanded in 1999, and while their legacy is still felt, cheesemakers are free to return to producing some of the heirloom varieties.

8x8

revamp: the classic Vespa (previously) reincarnated as an electric vehicle whose dash console is one’s mobile phone, via the always splendid Nag on the Lake

white noise: a multimedia appreciation of the pioneering electronic composer and sound archivist Delia Derbyshire, who also created the opening theme music for Doctor Who

peafowl: an Australian community is divided over whether the urbanised birds are a nuisance or nice to have around

electroconvulsive shock: a FOIA filing includes an unexpected manual on the use of “psycho-electronic weapons,” via Boing Boing

exonym: in order to disburden itself of its past as a British colony—and possibly reduce confusion with Switzerland—Swaziland will return to its precolonial identity of eSwatini 

flóttamaður: still at large, the suspected ring leader behind the mass theft of computers for bitcoin mining in Iceland escapes prison and flees to Sweden on the same flight that carried the Prime Minister

a state in new england: making the Massachusetts oath of office more concise and assorted other constitutional conventions

subliminal education: an educational material publishing house (previously) conducted a massive experiment in classrooms across the US to test the efficacy of its new material without disclosing the “interventions” (previously) to any of the unwitting students and teachers, via Marginal Revolution

7x7

clan of the ice bear: the outsized but possibly overlooked contributions that polar bears made to the development of evolution

hal 90210: Boston Dynamics is teaching its robotic dog to fight back, via Slashdot

one of these things is not like the others: Trump reportedly wears dress shirts with customised cuffs—as a reminder to himself and others, he is the forty-fifth president

tierrechte: Switzerland outlaws boiling living lobsters

we’ll leave the light on for you: a nice, retrospective profile of US National Public Radio essayist and humourist Tom Bodett

service feline: Puffy the cat with hypnotic powers

cultural icon: David Attenborough dance sensation, via Marginal Revolution

sandbox

Having himself matriculated through the patent offices in Bern, Albert Einstein surely saw some proposals with potential though perhaps not commercially viable, so we enjoyed—via Miss Cellania—learning about some of the genius’ forgotten inventions, as documented through his intellectual property filings.
After articulating the General Theory of Relativity, awarded the Nobel Prize or discovering the photoelectric effect and discovering a new phase of matter, Einstein invented, among other things, a refrigerator designed to operate without electricity and only required a heat-source, making it suited for developing countries, and interestingly a tunic, a waistcoat that’s scalable and can expand to accommodate added dimensions.

kreuzstich

Once again Colossal commandeers our attention the work of the crafty Swiss artist Ulla-Stina Wikander who lovingly and ceremoniously retires household objects by enveloping them in cross-stitch.  Here’s an alternate tradition for recognising the career of long, faithful service of domestic artefacts from Japanese folklore. Like a bronzed baby shoe, is there some everyday item that you’d like to have encased and memorialised in such a fashion? See a whole gallery of her creations plus her personal collection of traditional, inspiring patterns at the links up top.

standseilbahn

Residents of the car-free Alpine village of Stoos are now able to make the steep but direct, time-saving descent into the valley and the town of Schwyz in central Switzerland. Construction and planning of this stretch of funicular railway took over fourteen years and there are special gyroscopic carriages on the locomotive to ensure that passengers remain at a comfortable, upright position even when the gradient surpasses ninety degrees. Be sure to check out the link above for more information and some video footage of what must be a thrilling ride.

büsi kitty

We’re grateful to Dangerous Minds to introducing us to award-winning artistic collaborations of the Swiss duo of Peter Fischli and David Weiss († 2012) by way of their non sequitir hijacking of the Times Square Astrovision screen in 2001 and having it display instead of the usual advertisements and news-crawl a footage of a very sedate cat lapping up milk from a dish—for six and a half minutes.
February of 2016 saw an abbreviated revival with the video—in a sense the original cat video though there are of course antecedents,with a three minute version gracing some sixty screens at once at given intervals. The artists are arguably best-known for their Rube Goldberg-like chain of mechanical causality cinematic deconstructionist performance piece called The Way Things Go (Der Lauf der Dinge), whose usque ad aras telescoping enjoys some physical avatars as permanent exhibits, including one in the Wiesbaden Museum that I will have to examine again with newly found appreciation.

entrêpot

On the return leg of a recent trip, Jason Kottke was treated to a windshield tour of Geneva (Genf) and introduced to the city’s Freeport that is located at an private airfield annex off the main commercial runway.
The notion having a place to store goods not subject to taxation is an old one (examples here and here) but until recent times such warehousing was reserved for staples destined for the market and imminent resale and not as a tax-haven for the perversely wealthy to speculate and horde treasures until it becomes favourable again to trade amongst themselves. There’s a short documentary and more information at the link up top. Discretion being amongst the chief enticements of the Swiss facility (there are others, of course, and probably this idea of creating exclaves beholden to no tax jurisdiction will spread), no one can say for certain what all is stored in the Freeport but there seems to be agreement that were it a museum, it would be amongst the largest. As if frustrating the art world by making so many priceless works inaccessible (plus some looted patrimony) weren’t criminal enough, the building is neighbouring the old army barracks where political refugees are housed when they first arrive in Switzerland—sheltering next to the place where the despots and their associates they fled hide their fortunes.

shutter-bug

Researchers have trained a neural network to scour Google Street View (which of course is not limited to urban environs) and frame what it believes to be æsthetic scenes, applying algorithms on cropping, lighting and composition that its acquired in the learning process. The coda to this experiment was to subject the photographs to a sort of human-juried “Turing test.” The judges were not told that a machine had selected and perfected the images and rated nearly half of them to be the work of a professional. Chew more of the scenery over at Twisted Sifter at the link up top and learn more about the exercise in deep learning and wonder about its implications.

nutzhanf

Having legalised the possession of cannabis containing one percent of tetrahydocannabinol (THC) or less back in 2011, a major Swiss supermarket chain is now poised to add low-dose marijuana cigarettes to its line of other hemp-based products—Industrie- oder Nutzhanf. While the cannabinoid content is too low to induce a high, the manufacturers believe that it retains enough of its psychoactive properties to help relieve anxiety and pain management, and warn customers about smoking their product outside of the country, as the EU tolerance for THC in hemp is exponentially lower and policies vary greatly by jurisdiction.

blottentot

Informed by the creative dotage of poet Justinus Kerner when he spilt ink in his notebook and was inspired to versify on the intriguing smudges, Hermann Rorschach as a young child was fascinated with this technique and earned the nickname “Klecks”—German for inkblot.
The chain of development of klecksography from poetry to psychological tool to study the subconscious did enjoy an intermediate phase as an international popular pastime, we learn from Atlas Obscura, just a few years after the publication of Kerner’s book of poems with a pamphlet instructing people how to create shadow-pictures or gobolinks for festive occasions and use the resulting image (tellingly, taken as monstrous mostly) as a writing-prompt. Similar to a test in word association or talking therapy but with a visual media, a patient’s interpretation of the stains is a way to access involuntary imagination and probe impulses not yet manifest came about in 1921 when Rorschach was studying Sigmund Freud’s theories on dream symbolism and was reminded of his childhood hobby.

ethernet

Via the intrepid adventurers at Atlas Obscura, we learn that researchers at the University of Zurich have created the largest and most complex virtual universe with the Piz Daint super computer (named after an alpine peak).
The simulation, this meta-cosmos is to be used in conjunction with the Euclid space probe mission, launching in 2020, to scour the skies for signs of dark matter and dark energy. Astrophysicists hope that virtual models seeded with informed guesses as to the composition and arrangement might help them plot out the satellite’s course to maximise the chances of detecting the illusive substance (sort of like using augmented reality as a heuristic tool), which is thought to be the chief component of the Universe and far more prevalent (but weakly interacting) than the matter that we are accustomed to working with.

retronautics institute

First introduced at last year’s Geneva Motor Show, the darling little Microlino electro-auto by Swiss designer Wim Ouboter evokes the bubble chassis of the BWM Isetta of the 1950s. Priced at twelve thousand euros, the company is slated to reach its production goal of five thousand by the year’s end.

poker-face or the zeroth law

Via Gizmodo, we learn that a pair of Swiss futurists, realising that technology is advancing to a point where it can essential read human minds by analysing tells and galvanic responses in the background—non-obtrusively but without our submission, have chartered four proposed inalienable rights to give us some safe-guards when it comes to reading and/or planting thoughts.
The neuroethicist and human rights lawyer suggest that we retain the rights to cognitive liberty (opting-out), mental privacy (consent required), mental integrity (mind-hacking or Inception-style inserting the germ of a thought), and psychological continuity (the right of individuals to refuse procedures and enhancements that might impact their personality or sense of self). What do you think? It may seem a little premature to being fretting over a legal framework to vouchsafe our inner thoughts—especially when we haven’t yet codified the rules of engagement for robots or genetic-tinkering—but we absolutely cannot afford further underlap in terms of privacy and volition for inevitable conflicts.