amidakuji (11. 918)

A way of establishing 1:1 correspondence with any number of random pairings of equal size—for instance assigning roles to actors or chores to a group of helpers—the lottery game of chance, guaranteeing equal chance and distribution is called the above in Japan (阿弥陀籤, after the aspect of the Buddha associated with discernment and perception), in Korean as Sadaritagi (사다리타기, ladder climbing) and in Chinese as Guijiaotu (鬼腳圖, a ghost leg diagram). Participants’ names are listed in the row above with vertical lines dropping down to an assignment directly below. Concealing the names and jobs, the lines are hashed with random horizontal detours that must be taken on to the next column until reaching the bottom. Revealing the lines to the players but still keeping the other names and jobs concealed, they choose their path downward, the permutations in the snaking path ensuring all tasks are taken—unlike with drawing lots, flipping a coin. Aside from practical applications, such lottery elements can be found in the bonus rounds in video games to randomise one’s chances of getting the best prize.

.io (11. 915)

Since 1968, the UK and US have operated a joint military base, Diego Garcia, on the Chagos Islands—with the official demonym of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT, also previously known as the Oil Islands)—and Mauritius (which gained independence from the UK the same year after being ceded as a French colony to Britain under the terms of the 1814 Treaty of Paris) has claimed the archipelago as its own, supported by a ruling of the International Court of Justice to end decolonisation. After more than half a century, the UK conceded and in exchange for a ninety-nine year lease on the military base has handed over sovereignty to Mauritius earlier this month. And while a significant move for justice and reconciliation, these developments—not tracked by the tech world—have an equally sizeable impact on the internet with repatriation, we learn via Web Curious. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which issues top-level country domains will remove the suffix, IO, not allowing any new registration under that code (like with the governing body for emoji no longer accepting submissions for flags) and begin the process of retiring existing ones: github, twitch, et al. At a time when domain names can be a considerable portion of a country’s economy (see also) and how many have hitched their identity to a particular brand and legacy with an expectation of permanence, it’s pretty consequential—and of course not without protocol and precedent, albeit established in times when the online world did not play such an overwhelming part of our lives, geopolitically or otherwise. Granted less than a year earlier, the Soviet Union .su domain was replaced with .ru with understanding it would eventually be shutdown in 1991—but the former’s transformation into an unpoliced space and refuge of the dark web convinced authorities that regulations needed to be in place and enforced regarding transition and closure. The 1992 dissolution of Yugoslavia was arguably a better managed affair, with the ISO and IANA having learned from their previous experience, with .yu splintering into its successors .me and .rs respectively.

𑫀 (11. 914)

Having encountered such revered writing systems previously, we enjoyed this introduction and overview of the small religious community adhered to by members of the Tedim-speaking people called the Zo or Chin, practising a monotheistic faith called Laipianism, an outlier for this indigenous group in a region of Myanmar that primarily follows Christianity or Buddhism. Founded in response to aggressive missionary outreach in colonial southwest Asia, Pau Cin Hau, the charismatic figure who would become the movement’s spiritual leader had a series of dreams around 1900 regaling him with a multitude of symbols for writing his native language which had previously had only an oral tradition—developing with the aid of his dream-guide a logographic syllabary of a thousand characters, simplified into fifty-seven for an alphabetic script. The name of the religion, which still has about five-thousand devotees, reflects the importance of this invention, the lai element meaning literacy, and the dream-guide was revealed to be Pathian—compare to the Pythia—who was the one true and transcend god and discouraged worship of intermediary spirits called metapersons. In written form, Cin was able to propagate the teachings of Pathian—ironically Christian missionaries also published in the script called Zotuallai. While the script is considered sacred and a certain level of deferential diglossia is maintained, the alphabet Cin was given its own Unicode block in 2014 and can be used for everyday communications and texting.

  synchronoptica

one year ago: Pomp and Circumstance (with synchronoptica)

eight years ago: the Remembrancer of the Crown

nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus Picasso’s Guernica

ten years ago: Barbie: Plastic Religion, redesigning Norway’s currency, the civic minimum plus robots and mobility

twelve years ago: heraldic standards, looking at rectangles plus exoplanets and Alpha Centauri

 

dromomania (11. 887)

Returning to his hometown of Waseca, Minnesota from the west, having departed on his journey accompanied by his brother and a mule nearly four years earlier and setting forth eastward, on this day in 1974, having walked just over twenty-three thousand kilometres, Dave Kunst became the first independently verified individual to have circumambulated the globe. Received by Princess Grace in Monaco and by chance meeting fellow adventurer Thor Heyerdahl in a restaurant in Italy, the epic walkers solicited donations to UNICEF along the way. Denied entry into the Soviet Union, about midway through their journey, the team continued through India and Afghanistan, where the two were tragically ambushed by bandits who believed they were carrying the monies pledged to the United Nations’ emergency children’s fund, killing his brother John, but Kunst finished after months recuperation, joined by his older sibling Pete. After the loss of his mule in the Australian Outback, a schoolteacher, who Kunst became enamoured with and eventually married, towed his supplies with her car for a thousand miles at walking pace, Dave keeping up alongside. Kunst’s trip consisted of twenty million steps and went through twenty-one pairs of shoes.

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: wine and quinces (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: drawing logos from memory plus biofuels from moss

eight years ago: turning Twitter into a public utility, ghost signs plus an unpopular file format

nine years ago: the Norman Conquest and the Divine Right of Kings

ten years ago: Roman tax regimes

megaslump (11. 856)

The expanding Batagaika crater is a thermokarst depression in the northeastern Siberia taiga, presently about one kilometre long and growing at an alarming rate, beginning as a small gulley in the 1960s when the permafrost thawed (see previously) after the surrounding forests were cleared and since 1990, swallowing more and more land and becoming known as the Gateway to Hell. On a vicious trajectory, feedback loop, more thawing occurs as the gash gets bigger and the ground is bereft of tree cover and releases more ancient organic stores of carbon that further contribute to the planet’s warming, making more unstable sinkholes.

i got this in the second world war ii (11. 521)

Receiving its popular-become-historic designation on this day as a result of a poll conducted by the American survey company Gallup in 1942, with—no spoilers—the 1914-1918 global conflict referred to as “The Great War” or the “European War” by the US until they entered it in earnest in 1917, there were plenty of journalistic antecedents for calling the new crisis World War II, imbuing by force of habit, in much the same way we refer to contemporary geopolitical struggles as World War III, both hyperbolically and litotically. US president FDR called it such in press conferences but not particularly liking the term as too neutral and nothing one could get behind, he directed Gallup to ask the public. Roosevelt’s own suggestion was the Survival War, with the War for Civilisation or the War against Enslavement being other contenders—compare with the Soviet name, “The Great Patriotic War.” After fighting had subsided in Europe and the war was ending in the Pacific Theatre, FDR’s predecessor Harry S Truman signed a request in September of 1945 from his Secretary of War to make it official.

penumbra (11. 477)

Visible for totality in a narrow corridor of the Pacific Ocean, as North America is watching the skies, when the shadow of the Moon’s ascending node (where the orbit of the satellite intersects the plane of the solar ecliptic from our perspective) obscured the Sun, crossing the international dateline and beginning on the ninth and ending on this day in 1995, this relatively rare hybrid eclipse with phases of the complete and the annular (when the lunar disc does not quite obscure the sun) as it progressed across the globe. Observers in extreme northwestern South American, Central America and the Caribbean were afforded near totality.

boac (11. 459)

The flag carrier of the United Kingdom, Imperial Airways, was founded on this day in 1924 through the nationalisation and merger of four existing operators, Instone, Daimler, Mandley Page Transport and the British Marine Air Navigation Company, Ltd—forming a fleet of thirteen planes for international flights to and from the London hub in Heathrow. Fifty years later and reflagged as British Airways, the national airline was created from the addition of regional carriers before moving back towards privatisation. 

synchronoptica

one year ago: the musical stylings of Pascal Nuzzo plus ASCII art by AI

two years ago: César Chávez Day, Maltese Freedom Day, mass resignations at Hong Kong’s high court plus South Ossetia votes in favour of annexation

three years ago: satanic sneakers, The Matrix (1999), retronyms plus assorted links to revisit

four years ago: museum cosplay, graphic designer Fortunato Depero plus presidential advisor myPillow Guy

five years ago: Urbano Monte’s planosphere,  Sony World Photo awardees plus graphic designer Herman Bayer

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.

joe’s hill (11. 378)

Via tmn circling back to this viral map of the island of Kiritmati and select toponyms of the Republic of Kiribati (Christmas Island, pronounced Kirimass after the Gilbertese phonology, quite a feat of exonymy) piqued our curiosity—especially the debunked detail, rumour that the government of the Micronesian nation was behind the original posting to draw attention which has nevertheless attracted a spike in interest and has helped its campaign to promote sustainable tourism for this paradise existentially threatened by sea-level rise. Just so you know, Paris is a former settlement with a coconut plantation named by priest Emmanuel Rougier who was homesick, also through a lease from the British named the village Londres (London, Ronton). Poland was named in honour of mechanic Stanisław Pełczyński who improved the island’s irrigation systems. The village of Banana, possibly conflated with the reef isle of Banaba, is of unknown etymology, but was designated such in 1962 when four thousand American military personnel were stationed there in support of Operation Dominic, a series of thirty-one multi-pronged nuclear tests carried out in response to the resumption of Soviet trials following the breach of an informal moratorium and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. It is near the international airport. The oldest and largest village of the island chain is Tabwakea, native for sea turtle be bestowed by Captain James Cook. The title refers to the highest point of the atoll, originally la Colline de Joe, a twelve metre elevation named after Joe English of Medford, Massachusetts, one of the supervisors of Rougier’s coconut farm.  Under US dominion as a claim of the Guano Islands Act from 1882, independence was granted in 1979 and ratified in 1983.

loong (11. 339)

This day marks the transition from the Year of the Water Rabbit to the Wood Dragon, a sixty year cycle of attributes within the twelve year shengxiao, “born resembling,” astrological procession. Also a Poseidon-like deity with each self-respecting body of water ruled by a Dragon King, the one zodiacal sign (reckoned by following the orbit of Jupiter, 歲星, the Year Star, through the sections, houses of the heavens) without a real-world counterpart (temporarily replaced in China by the Giant Panda during the Cultural Revolution but returned shortly due to popular demand) considered an especially auspicious one and has an analogue in the Western sign Scorpio. Though considered lucky for those born during these years, from a prognostic perspective, it is difficult to read except as progress with a price, a time of energy and upheaval tempered to an extent by wood (木, wuxing) having the characteristics of endurance and flexibility.

clip show (11. 111)

The 1976 musical documentary by Susan Wilson that juxtaposed Beatles covers with newsreel combat footage and propaganda vignettes that was roundly rejected by critics and audiences was released on this day in 1976 and pulled from cinemas after less than two weeks of screenings. Shrewdly realising that money was to be made from the soundtrack with new renditions by popular artists, the accompanying film score debuted three weeks earlier and generated far more revenue than the movie, remanded mostly to obscurity outside of a few airings that attracted a cult-like fascination with several charting singles like Rod Stewart’s “Get Back,” Elton John’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” the Bee Gees’ “Carry That Weight,” Helen Reddy doing a version of “Fool on the Hill,” Tina Turner on “Come Together” and introducing Peter Gabriel with “Strawberry Fields Forever.” It was rumoured that Monty Python cartoonist Terry Gilliam was approached to contributed animated interstitials but that was apparently untrue. As singular as this enterprise seems, All This and World War II was inspired by a documentary by Philippe Mora from the previous year called Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? made up of newsreel footage and interspersed with clips from contemporary films and songs as a scrapbook of the Depression Era through the Attack on Pearl Harbour, with musical selections from Cab Calloway, Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Woody Guthrie, Busby Berkley and the Andrews Sisters. More from Open Culture at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit, MacArthur Park, the Feast of St Menas plus Kurt Vonnegut Jr at 100

two years ago: more links to enjoy, 3 quarks daily, superannuated image formats, Bliss symbols, an autumnal walk plus more out of the way wanderings

three years ago: the Trizone anthem, more links worth the revisit plus an observatory receives a new name

four years ago: the Feast of St Martin plus early generative text

five years ago: the Armistice of 1918, more assorted links plus a Bosch-bot

zaglossus attenboroughi (11. 105)

Rediscovered during a lengthy expedition in Indonesia’s Cyclops mountains six decades after its last reported sighting, the long-beaked echidna—named after the famed naturalist, feared extinct (taxidermied specimen pictured), the nocturnal, burrowing creature, a monotreme that lays eggs like the equally unusual duck-billed platypus, is a living fossil (see also) that coexisted with the dinosaurs, branching off from the mainstream emergent mammals over two hundred million years ago. Named for the mythological Ἔχιδνα—She Viper and mother of all monsters—due to their shared reclusive and chimeric nature, the mammal is embedded in local Papuan culture as a conflict resolution mediator, one side of the disputing parties dispatched on an errant quest to the remote and wild mountains to find an echidna and the other to the sea to find a marlin, a task that could take years and removes the conflict from the community and gives an enduring reprieve from fighting.

9x9 (10. 901)

effective altruism: FTX lobbyist tried to purchase the island nation of Nauru as a doomsday bunker and create a genetically enhanced human species  

getting drunk at a disco: 1977 found footage of an evening not necessarily going downhill 

this is not a love poem: a round-up of favourites that are not all lovey-dovey—via tmn  

rambler: a collection of illustrated exteriors of California ranch homes—see also

1975: Kuala Lumpur authorities shut down the Good Vibes festival after headliner Matty Healy criticised Malaysia’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws  

point of no return: time is running out on the Climate Clock  

stooping: trend adopted by Chinese young people involves decorating with cast-off furniture left by the curb 

smokey, this is not ‘nam—this is bowling, there are rules: Big Lebowski (previously) inspired bowling alley via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links (lots more to explore there) 

typoglycemia: bypassing chatbot’s ethical subroutines using word scrambling and transposed letters

operation sober popeye (10. 872)

Also known under the codenames Motorpool and Intermediary-Compatriot and repudiated as an unacceptable tactic in warfare after leaks in the Pentagon Papers and unwelcome press coverage with a US Senate resolution passed on this day in 1973, the military cloud-seeding program carried out from 1967 to 1972 attempted chemical modification of the weather with the aim of extending monsoon seasons and disrupting the North Vietnamese supply-chain along the Ho Chi Minh Trail by soften road surfaces and causing landslides. Operations in secret extended over Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Despite its highly classified nature, the 54th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, the unit chiefly responsible for the tests, publicly and prominently used the slogan “make mud, not war.” The American people deciding that such measures had no place on the battlefield, weather disruption falls presently under the auspices of the Environmental Modification Convention.  

synchronoptica 

one year ago: the Hollywood Bowl (1922), Avogadro’s Number (1811) plus Fischer v Spassky (1972)

two years ago: Fleetwood Mac by Fleetwood Mac (1975) plus a megalithic stone ship in Sweden

three years ago: a visit to the Ehrenburg on the Ehrbach

four years ago: a delayed release of “Space Oddity” (1969), the uncontrolled deorbit of Skylab (1979) plus France approves a digital services tax scheme

five years ago: a collection of samurai clan banners, a disclaimer on social media that comes too late, America’s garbage politicians sit for a family photos plus Trump attends a NATO summit

station to station (10. 856)

After the penultimate show of his Ziggy Star Dust world tour in 1973, David Bowie who was then suffering from a fear of flying took a ship from Yokohama to Vladivostok and then the Trans-Siberian Railway back to England, with various whistle-stops along the whistle stops along the way, including the May Day Victory Parade in Moscow. This week-long trip was documented by Bowie himself, with a 16mm videography entitled “The Long Way Home” and by friend and bandmate Geoff MacCormack (also known by the stage name Warren Peace)—meeting fans, drinking sessions with soldiers and sailors and giving impromptu performances, and is on exhibit at the Wende Museum of the Cold War in Culver City, California with an especially curated soundtrack.

put on your red shoes and dance the blues (10. 758)

The artist’s first song to top the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, the lead single off the fifteenth studio album of the same name (also with the tracks “China Girl” and “Modern Love”) climbed to number one on this day in 1983 and features the instrumental talent of sessions blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan—David Bowie only contributing vocals for the first time in his recording career. The album was first released on 14 April followed a few days later by the music video by David Mallet (previously), filmed in New South Wales, premiering on the UK rock show The Tube with Jools Holland, is a metaphor for the hegemony of Western culture. This release kicked of Bowie’s “Serious Moonlight” world tour.

goodwill sample displays (10. 626)

Reversing his tone from a wide-ranging and contentious press conference delivered five days before that forbid the Federal Bureau of Investigations from turning over its findings to a special congressional committee investigating the Watergate burglary and threatened to re-enter the Vietnam War and eliciting such a negative public response that a law was passed prohibiting the US from engaging in conflict in Indochina without the approval of Congress, Richard Nixon on this day in 1973 distributed fragments of lunar rocks to the fifty states of American and every country of the world collected during the final Apollo mission. Presented on wooden plaques with a miniture flag that went into the orbit around the Moon and back, each gift (see also) included a message of peace, acknowledging that the exploration of our satellite was an international effort and than humankind could surely achieve harmony on Earth.

because it’s there (10. 619)

Entering the lexicon as the standard response for a risky or impossible undertaking, mountain climber George Mallory gave his reply to an interviewer from the New York Times when asked about his participation in the first two unsuccessful expeditions to the summit of Mount Everest (ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ, Chomolunga—सगरमाथा, Sagarmāthā) on this day in 1923—adding his intention to try again the following year. During this climb, Mallory and his partner, Andrew Irvine, disappeared somewhere on the northeastern face near the summit, with their fate unknown until the discovery of their bodies in 1999—there being conjecture that they made it to the top and were on their way down. Edmund Hillary, whom along with Tenzing Norgay (བསྟན་འཛིན་ནོར་རྒྱས), are credited with reaching the peak first, welcomed the news, of a party achieving this goal three decades ahead of them, calling Mallory the pioneer and original enthusiast.

7x7 (10. 606)

the festival of the horse and the boys ploughing match: rambunctious ancient traditions and their modern observance across the British Isles—see previously  

depth: AI generated journal entry prompts cinematic adaptation: a literary guide to tonight’s Academy Awards 

l’hiver en suisse: travel posters by illustrator Emil Cardinaux  

indigenous futurisms: a look at non-Western visions of the future through the lens of unique cosmologies  

acceptance speech: the unexpected and gracious win for Marisa Tomei in 1993 for My Cousin Vinny

stable diffusion: researchers claim an AI can interpret brain-scans and recreate images of what subjects see 

wild isles: BBC criticised not broadcasting final episode of David Attenborough series on habitat loss over apparent fears of right-wing backlash—coupled with another furore over media bias