10x10 (12. 325)

isolated dictatorship: Canadian MP urges citizens to avoid travel south of the border  

sykkelinfrastruktur: an amazing bike tunnel in Bergen  

incel camino: a new make and model for the Swasticar for all the domestic terrorists 

four of swords: Hyperallergic’s tarotscope for the coming of Spring  

fabio and the goose: Bobby Fingers (previously) reconstructs the encounter of harlequin novel author and pin-up’s encounter with a migrating bird whilst on a rollercoaster  

arbour day: tree planting activities cancelled over anti-DEI posture  

cats in outlines: the strangely gratifying effect of felines freezing in place 

sorry—not sorry: a study of apologies gleaned from reality television 

scylla and charybdis: the millennia-long aspirations to link Sicily with the mainland may soon come to pass  

pin: an unnerving psychosexual horror Canadian horror film from 1988

9x9 (12. 314)

👀: a “half-swipe” feature that allows recipients to screen messages with them being marked as read is exacerbating dating anxiety amongst teens—via Superpunch 

rabbithole: global styles of curiosity survey as revealed by Wikipedia app usage—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest—are you a hunter, dancer or busybody?   

we have urinated in our beds—there was no chamber pot: a survey of the graffiti of Ancient Rome that’s very much like a contemporary comments section 

quotidiano: Italian news paper prints all-AI edition   

derezz: local club hosts a TRON party during a gaming developers’ conference as a history lesson   

gulf-stream: a mesmerising overview of the world’s ocean currents and eddies   

let your fingers do the walking: the typography of the telephone directory, the Yellow Pages, and its antecedents 

patrimonialism: running a state as one’s family business   

forbidden unlawful representation of roleplaying in education: legislation in Texas would outlaw students presenting as other than human, check out the acronyms of the bill, including fursonæ

synchronoptica

one year ago: the science behind sippy-birds (with synchronoptica), another 3D rendering challenge plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: the allure of old books,  The Gods of Japan (1943), more links to enjoy plus artist Grant Wood

eight years ago: the architecture of choice,  Trump defunds agencies plus Trump’s foreign policy

nine years ago: more on state fossils plus collected quotations

ten years ago: the new EU central bank headquarters, job redundancy, even more links, animals on trial plus local galleries

able was i (12. 262)

Courtesy of our faithful chronicler, we learn that the exiled Napoleon Bonaparte eluded his guards and escaped aboard a Sylphe-class brig of the French navy called the Inconstant, making his way back to the mainland on this day in 1815, having under the terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau been exiled to Elba less than a year before, conveyed there on the HMS Undaunted. Knowing the unpopularity of the King Louis XVIII, realising his family would not be joining him, not receiving the stipend promised and hearing rumours he was to be sent to a more remote location in the Atlantic, Napoleon plotted his return, amassing an army of followers. The banished emperor was not exactly a captive during his time on the Mediterranean island, with it designated as condition of his abdication as la principauté de l’île d’Elbe to be an independent principality “possessed by Bonaparte in complete sovereignty and as personal property”—until his death, at which point it would pass back to the Kingdom of Tuscany. Although eager to leave his villa in Portoferrario, aside from assembling an small army of loyalists, Napoleon during his short time there reformed the island’s legal and educational system, ordered the construction of roads, overhauled the nascent iron mining operations and improved agriculture.

piscina mirabilis (12. 250)

Via Messy Nessy Chic (not attributing the source as it’s Faebook—sorry, no thanks) we are turned toward the “wonderous pool,” an ancient cistern in the Gulf of Naples, given its epithet by the poet Petrarch (previously) during a visit in the fourteenth century. Built under the order of Octavian to provide water to the naval fleet of the port of Misenum (Miseno in Bacoli). Engineered as a cathedral and hewn out of tufa, the monumental reservoir held some twelve million litres of potable water, five Olympic sized swimming pools. Exploration of the underground chambers reveals Tyndall scattering due to the incoming light interacting with the fine suspension of moisture or other filters to propagate blue hues further, ultimately illuminating how the chemical elements express themselves chromatically. Private property but accessible to the public, restoration of the cistern has been carried out from 1926 to the present day.

c the unseen (12. 149)

Deutsche Welle has a pair of interesting profiles of the cities—three actually—that will serve as the 2025 European Cultural Capitals. Once the flagship metropolis of the DDR (see previously), Chemnitz (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt) has mostly dimmed since reunification and attracting negative attention, but under the motto above (“C” for the vehicle registration plate) organisers hope to highlight the city’s long history and rich heritage, including showcasing a selection of the thirty-thousand garages built during the East German era as a backdrop to explore their functions not just for parking but also storage and communal spaces, like the allotments of Gardenstädte. The other municipalities participating is Görz, once the home to an Alpine dynasty under the Hapsburg Empire, now divided into Nova Gorica and Gorizia along the Italian-Slovenia border but for the first time celebrated together as a joint culture capital. The former cosmopolitan and culturally diverse city was annexed by Italy following the dissolution of Austro-Hungary at the end of World War I and the German and Slovene populations were either expelled or assimilated, borders redrawn again in the aftermath of World War II with Yugoslavia’s Tito founding a new district on the divide between East and West. More on the year’s schedule of events and programme at the link up top.

synchronoptica

one year ago: YMCA at number one (with synchronoptica), Epiphany in Greenland plus assorted links to revisit

seven years ago: the animations of Jonathan Stroh, an AI generates plausible Wikipedia categories, designer candies plus more links to enjoy

eight years ago: even more links, more Japanese designer New Year’s cards, an inaugural prop plus The Running Man (1987)

nine year ago: more links worth revisiting, wearable tech plus underwater farming

ten years ago: CNN’s apocalyptical sign off plus a supposed Nazi UFO

squadrisimo (12. 143)

In a speech given on this day in 1925 in the Chamber of Deputies (Camera dei deputat, the lower house of the bicameral Italian parliament), which history sources as the start of his fascist dictatorship, Benito Mussolini took full responsibility for the actions of the paramilitary wing of the party, the Blackshirts—Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale—and challenged his political opponents to try to remove him from office, promising to restore order within forty-eight hours. Originally a loose organisation of disaffected veterans of World War I who employed violence as an intimidation tactic against reformers, progressives and Socialists, membership had grown to over two-hundred thousand by the March on Rome in late October 1922, swearing their allegiance to Commandant-General il Duce. The murder of a Socialist deputy, Giacomo Matteotti, who criticised the 1924 election due to voting irregularities which solidified Mussolini’s control of government, prompted a cover-up pinning the assassination on Matteotti’s own party. Whilst much of the opposition boycotted sessions, hoping to force King Victor Emmanuel to dissolve parliament, the Blackshirts presented Mussolini with the ultimatum to crush their enemies or they would do so without him. Fearing a revolt by the militia, Mussolini dropped all pretence of democracy, dismantling all constitutional and normative checks on power and declaring himself the only competent authority to set the legislative agenda.

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

fruitcake (12. 105)

Language Log featured recently a duo of Christmas confections from Italy and Germany and while the latter in the Stollen might have a more robust etymology, derivative of the verb stellen—to put—and from the Ancient Greek στήλη, stēlē, to support, as in the beams constructed in a mine shaft to prevent a tunnel from collapsing (see also here and here), it is the former in the mildly sweet and far less dense (fluffy as compared to the Stollen’s consistency of a neutron star) the panettone that has a more intriguing composition as a augmentation of a diminutive, big little bread. Fettuccine is the reverse formation in little big slice, and there’s a single-serving variant called a panettoncini, a diminutive of the augmentative of the diminutive. More at the links above.

perpetua et firma libertas (12. 054)

Created by dint of a cartographical error in redrawing the border between the Papal States and the Republic of Florence (heavily in debt, Pope Eugene IV ceded Borgo Sansepolcro in the north to the Grand Duke), unexpectedly creating a terra nullius of around three square kilometres in 1440, by using a creek called rio as the new line of demarcation. The generic name for “river,” negotiators realised that they had picked two different ruscelli about five hundred metres apart, and thinking it was not worth the effort to redraw an already complicated boundary (see also) and with neither party having an objection to a buffer state in between them, the independent Republic of Cospaia came into existence. Without taxes, customs, or a government (to speak of, or the need for one), the tiny repubblica flourished as a free-trade zone between the temporal and secular powers but really became much more than a mapping mistake about a century later with the introduction of tobacco to the Old World and a ban on smoking by the Vatican (Benedict XIII eventually relented in 1724 and stopped excommunicating smokers). Though without much land to spare, Cospaia devoted its entire agricultural efforts to growing the crop, which neighbours permitted as leverage against harbouring fugitives and more serious contraband. As with many microstates, the Republic came to an end with the Napoleonic Wars and was re-annexed by the Papal States in agreement with the Duchy of Tuscany after nearly four centuries in 1826, but as compensation each resident was given a silver sovereign by the pope and a continued monopoly on tobacco production, which expanded to the whole valley. The village is still associated with cigars and cigarettes and is allowed to fly its historic flag.

synchonoptica

one year ago: neglected books (with synchronoptica), an AI identifier plus Henry Ford’s peace mission (1915)

seven years ago: a White House dinner, school meals plus toe names

eight years ago: more trials with Universal Basic Income plus How I Built This

nine years ago: rallying against global warming plus assorted links worth revisiting

ten years ago: Herostratic Fame plus Victorian microscopic pictures

seventh heaven (12. 046)

Having visited the efforts of scholars to survey the domains of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy beforehand, we enjoyed coming back to the endeavour to map Purgatory, the Inferno and Paradise with the culmination of seven centuries of study with the 1855 edition and 1872 reissue by Michelangelo Caetani, heir to the princedom of Teano, an academic and a patron of the arts with a special talent for draughting jewellery design and commissioned the monks of Monte Cassino to produce colour prints of his topological learning aides with an early form of chromolithography. Much more from Public Domain Review at the link above.

8x8 (12. 033)

this is all i’m asking for: Mariah Carey’s ubiquitous Christmas song in the style of classical composers  

anti-slapp legislation: lawmakers rush to protect journalist and protesters from nuisance lawsuits before Trump takes office  

🍭: experimental lickable devices extend augmented reality—see previously  

don’t bring your zombies to work: ULCA student creates an escape room in their dormitory  

the federation of damanhur: a spiritual commune outside of Turin constructed a spectacular network of secret underground temples in the 1970s, uncovered and protected, despite their illegal building, in 1992  

all delicious mac & cheese recipes are alike; each gross mac & cheese recipe is gross in its own way: a dish from Leo Tolstoy—aka, Mac & Peace—via Kottke  

11 bizarre things the US government actually spent money on: Musk’s mandate to increase efficiency does not add up, is sourced from a Readers’ Digest listicle 

anitra’s dance: quilts inspired by the music of Peer Gynt—see previously—via MetaFilter

sancarlone (11. 972)

Fêted on this day, following the sainted Milanese archbishop’s death in 1538, Carlo Borromeo, is celebrated for his reforms and the introduction of seminaries for the education of priests as a force, along with Ignatius Loyola, of the Counter-Reformation. Though we didn’t make it to his home town of Arona to see the colossal bronze created in his likeness during the seventeenth century on a recent visit to Lake Maggiore (at twenty metres tall, the world’s largest statue of the kind second only to the Statue of Liberty and hollow on the inside for visits up to the head), we did see some of his family’s other properties. Carlo’s patronage ranges from the obvious catechists and spiritual directors to the more obscure apple orchards and starch-makers and is invoked against a range of stomach diseases and digestive ailments.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: a German supermarket chain allows customers trade worthless NFTs for coupons (with synchronoptica) plus leap minutes and seconds

seven years ago: electric VM mini-buses

eight years ago: statues celebrating women’s suffrawicker ge in the US Capitol, Türkiye requests rendition of disloyals in Germany, a magazine for discerning sweater-wearers plus self-repairing materials

nine years ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus the wicker peacock chair

ten years ago: DNA is not life’s only blueprint, charivari plus the Fall of Rome

sacro bosco (11. 942)

Mentioned in a recent post, we thoroughly enjoyed this tour of the sixteenth century Park of Monsters in Bomarzo. The mannerist style complex set amongst the wooded hills was commissioned by Duke Pier Francesco Orsini, designed by Pirro Ligorio and Simone Moschino, and is considered to be among the oldest sculpture gardens in the world. Intended to shock visitors, grotesques include many figures from classical mythology (see also) as well as fearsome real creatures represented like bears, lions and Hannibal’s alpine-crossing war elephants. The pictured god of the Underworld, Orcus, punisher of broken oaths in Etruscan and Roman traditions, and bears the inscription “Ogni pensiero vola” (All thoughts fly) on his upper lip—demonstrated by the fact that when one enters this Hell Mouth, the acoustics amplify and project any whisper—and was a favourite dining spot for guests. The gardens fell into disrepair during the nineteenth century and it was due to a painting and short documentary by Salvador Dalí in the 1950s that the park was rediscovered and rehabilitated.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: AI generated people, vanlife, the Genius of Evil plus transforming blighted trees into sculpture

eight years ago: more links to enjoy

nine years ago: heritage railways plus even more links

ten years ago: TTIP

il giardino dei tarocchi (11. 937)

Messy Nessy Chic correspondent Francky Knapp turns our attention to artist Niki de Saint Phalle through her monumental landscaping project, one of her final works, that transformed a an ancient Etruscan quarry (preserving the ruins) into an esoteric park open to the public informed by figures in the tarot deck. The sculpture garden was inspired by de Saint Phalle’s visits to Gaudí’s Parc Güell and Parco dei Mostri (the sixteenth century sacred grove in northern Lazio filled with monstrous figures) and was begun in 1979 and opened in 1998. Mirrors and mosaics adorn the twenty-two greater Mysteries (the major arcana—see previously here and here) in this corner of Tuscany, and much more about the artist can be found at the link above and the garden’s website.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the coat of arms of Bill Clinton (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: the passage of an interstellar comet, Trump in Korea, public sparkling water fountains in Paris plus AI suggests costume ideas

eight years ago: assorted links to revisit 

nine years ago: micromorts plus more links to enjoy

ten years ago: a condensed history of quarantines

the difference engine (11. 904)

Courtesy of ibīdem and following the same steampunk theme, we are directed to a presentation and pitch delivered by Charles Babbage (previously), disgraced and dismissed by his domestic backers to recuperate trust in his project, that addressed the concepts of software and programmable computers back in mid-September of 1840, couched in of course much plainer language as no one had such vocabulary in their quiver beforehand and discovered while researching an alternate history by the co-author of the above speculative work of science fiction. Building off the analogous punch-cards of the Jacquard loom, Babbage seemingly convinced his audience of prestigious and influential figures of the potential of his proposal, but having deposited such a world-changing idea, the outreach proves to be a dud and goes nowhere—with possibly some intrigue and industrial espionage behind this ultimate reception and protectionism over progress. Much more at the links above.

8x8 (11. 884)

glamos: Switzerland and Italy agree to redraw their borders due to melting glaciers 

a purrfect storm: the childless cat lady trope goes back to the origins of female suffrage and political participation—see previously  

main character syndrome: a need for recognition and validation fuelled by technological change drives self-mythologising whether or not there’s an audience—see also  

daily affirmation: fifty years of Saturday Night Live title cards and graphic design  

viscawide-16: a Wiki dedicated to vintage and antique cameras—via Pasa Bon!  

ultraviolence: Trump proposes sanctioning a day of lawlessness, akin to the plot of The Purge or Kristallnacht to end criminal behaviour  

we are the trampions: the annual European street car driver competition—see previously  

industrial age: UK shutters last coal-fired power-plant, ending a one hundred forty two year era

il sorriso di dio (11. 880)

Speaking of brief pontificates, Albino Luciani (who assumed the first regnal double name of John Paul in honour of his predecessors and adopted by his successor) was discovered dead on this day in 1978 on what would have been his thirty-third day in office. Given the above monicker, the smile of God, for his contagious gregariousness his death proved quite a shock and due to very real scandals happening in the Vatican Bank at the time, inconsistencies in the Church’s account—and the fact that it marked the end of the long dynasty of Italian popes—gave rise to unfounded conspiracy theories surrounding the papacy. John Paul was beatified by Pope Francis in September of 2022, after the confirmation of a miraculous recovery through his intercession after the medical and scientific explanations of the Devil’s Advocate were overruled by members of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.

teatro della marionette (11. 834)

Having recently returned from a trip to Lago Maggiore and visiting the island adjacent to Isola Bella—though not having ventured there ourselves—we enjoyed this dispatch on one of the lesser known treasures of Palazzo Borromeo in its nineteenth century puppet theatre (see also), resuming a tradition of entertainmentsthat waned with the death of prince and patron Viraliano VI in 1690, with an exquisite ensemble of wooden actors, elaborate sets and staging from the ridiculous to sublime with witty and sophisticated scripts in the home’s library. The playhouse has undergone periods of neglect and upheaval, including when it was commandeered as a guardhouse by Mussolini during the Stresa Conference (the 1935 one between delegates from the UK and France that re-affirmed the Treaty of Locarno to prevent future wars and not the cheese summit) but the historic collection was always loving conserved by the family. Much more at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: The Blob (with synchronoptica)

six years ago: open tabs, assorted links worth revisiting plus flying-screen choreography

seven years ago: mushrooms at the museum, more links to enjoy, updating the leader board plus Germany votes

eight years ago: a dark matter galaxy plus fantasy sub-cultures

nine years ago: an usually named concert coordinator plus untamed water

eleven years ago: nouns that exist only in their plural form

big chris, little chris (11. 717)

Venerated on this day in German-speaking dioceses (the following day on the General Roman Calendar of the Saints) on the occasion of his martyrdom in 251 in Anatolia, the Canaanite of legendary stature, imposing and standing at five cubits (2,3 metres), called Reprobus (reprobate and also by some accounts and portrayals, dog-headed due to a misunderstanding of the Latin demonym Cananeus for suggesting cynocephaly) was determined to be in service to the greatest king of all, and upon seeing his ruler blessing

himself with the sacrament of the sign of the cross at the mention of Satan and reasoning that the devil able to inspire such trepidation must certainly be more powerful abandoned his post and sought out this master to service. Falling in with a gang of robbers claiming to be in league with the devil, the giant of a man was again disappointed by seeing the leader avoiding Christian iconography and sought out the faith under the guidance of a hermit he had encountered. Responding with prayer and fasting when asked how to best serve Christ, Reprobus answered that would be unable to comply with either of those tasks. The hermit reasoned due his size and strength he could please Christ by helping people ford a treacherous river. One day after many successful and easy crossings, a young boy sought passage with the burden becoming almost too much to bear and the river difficult to trudge across, the rapids becoming leaden around his legs. After the arduous journey, the passenger revealed himself to be Christ his king, whom was well served by this work. The ferryman henceforth was known as Christopher (Χριστόφορος, the Christ-bearer), ultimately beheaded in Lycia for his evangelising and refusing to sacrifice to the local pagan gods. Patron saint of Baden, Mecklenburg and Braunschweig, Rab in Croatia, Vilnius, Riga and St Kitts, Christopher is also the protector of athletes, mariners and travellers, as well as invoked as an intercessor against sudden death (owing to the dangerous river-crossing) an toothaches. This spurious association comes from a donation of a supposed relic in the form of a giant moral to a group of friars in the Piedmontese town of Vercelli in the late Middle Ages. Described by one of the numerous pilgrims seeking relief over centuries, the silver and gold reliquary as dena molaris pugno major (a tooth bigger than a fist), the inheriting order of the Barnabites had the attraction examined scientifically in the late eighteenth century and was determined to have belonged to a hippopotamus. The object was summarily deaccessioned and forbidden to be treated with idolatry. The community apparently keeps the tooth out of public view as a curiosity in their monastery.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the death of Twitter (with synchronoptica) plus AI and dragnet surveillance

seven years ago: a Tagalong word for overwhelming cuteness plus an act to prevent pernicious political activities

eight years ago: acts of terrorism across Europe, visiting Château d’Oléron, a coup in Turkey, presidential commercial interests, colouring black and white photos per algorithm, lanterns of the dead plus punditry in America

nine years ago: a Venus flytrap, assorted links worth revisiting plus Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Cologne

eleven years ago: the frequency illusion

cascata della froda (11. 662)

Returning to the Castelvecca area, we took a nice stroll the the forest to see the waterfalls cascading from the top of Monte Cuvignone from a height of a hundred meters and carving out a space suggesting an amphitheater above the collecting pools.  

Along the trail through Montegrino-Valtravaglia, part of the fiefdom of il Quattro Valli, there is evidence of past use for aquaculture and raising trout with characteristic enclosures as well as the remains of an ancient stone quarry where petroglyphs have been recently discovered and are under study.