Sunday 3 December 2023

woty 2023: people’s choice (11. 159)

Oxford English Dictionary has a shortlist of nominees that were pitted against one another for several brackets including: Swiftie (a Taylor Swift enthusiast) vs De-Influencing, Heat Dome (a high-pressure weather system that traps hot air below it with deadly consequences) vs prompt—as in an improvisational cue for a Language Model), rizz vs Beige Flag (a warning sign that a partner is rather too tame and unoriginal, vis-a-vis the above) and parasocial (characterising a one-sided relationship that a fan has for a celebrity) vs situationship (an undeclared relationship) Check back soon to see if your favourite has won.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit plus The Book of Leaves

two years ago: Drake’s Equation, SMS (1992) plus a collection of airline safety cards

three years ago: your daily demon: Balam, a Roman holiday plus fifty-two gleanings from the year

four years ago: Camelot (1960) plus a Chicken Little opera

five years ago: a deck of Mayan playing cards, healthy brain flora, the cries and criers of Old London plus a deployment to the US-Mexico border

Tuesday 28 November 2023

9x9 (11. 146)

the big easy: Bonapartist diaspora had designs for Napoleon to retire in New Orleans—via Messy Nessy Chicsee also courtesy of Super Punch  

holiday emporium: Kottke’s annual gift guide returns after a hiatus  

triple word score: players and lexicographers are a bit mortified with Scrabble’s new tournament rules  

colophon: the rise and fall of Borders Books 

moonlight towers: during the infancy of electric lighting, there was a predecessor to serial lamps  

pump and dump: insurance companies are exacerbating the climate crisis 

fiat: during the bank strikes of Ireland in the 1970s, pubs stepped in to fill their function—via the new shelton wet/dry  

ai garage sale: haggle with robots for real items—via Waxy  

pas de goulots d’รฉtranglement dans la production: a strange 1940 diagram from linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf presenting French as a factory assembly line

Tuesday 21 November 2023

7x7 (11. 129)

last mile-problem: 2003 ad from a defunct automotive line lampooning the absurdity of cars—especially redesigning cities around them 

broken record: the cover of the UN’s Environmental Programme Emissions Gap Report  

whistle-blower: ufologist who testified before the US Congress urges declassification of documents on alien technology for America to get ahead of the coming, catastrophic leak  

whole heap of zing: new studies may have found the culprit in the phenomenon of the red wine headache  

oculi mundi: a gorgeous and interactive collection of antique and ancient depictions of the world to peruse—via Maps Mania  

keith number: seemingly recreational, rare and hard to find repetitive Fiboncci-like digits whose sum are a whole of its parts 

the marshmallow test: famous experiments in psychology recreated in LEGO

synchronoptica

one year ago: an early exercise craze

two years ago: assorted links worth revisiting

three years ago: the Nurnberg Trials (1945), more links to enjoy, artist Magritte plus cardboard cat shrines

four years ago: more Words of the Year, a Trump appointee turns, Martha Gellhorn plus reforming Ukrainian exonyms

five years ago: the Mayflower Compact, more links to enjoy, a ram registry plus the backstory of an IKEA poster

Saturday 18 November 2023

terraforming (11. 125)

Via Good Internet, we learn that AI-powered robot chemist, analysing Martian meteorites as a proxy for available materials in-situ (see previously) the Red Planet, has devised an efficient method for splitting the abundant reserves of water ice into its components—hydrogen and oxygen not only for air for potential human explorers to breathe but also for fuel—by trialing millions of molecular compounds (metallic ores bonded with those component elements are normally inert) apparently readily present in the Martian terrain to find the best catalyst to set off the reaction with the least need for extra energy to trigger the reaction and least effort of extraction. Though accomplished without human-intervention—drawing on the sum of human learning—the proposal would still need to be vetted by scientists for unintended consequences or biases for Earth gravity and weather. If proven safe and effective, maybe as an encore, the robot chemist could come up with the best way to capture and store carbon back home.

synchronoptica

one year ago: The Mouse and his Child (1977), the first book printed in English (1477) plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: bias in photo developing, the consecration of Old and New St Peter’s plus not all symbols are universal

three years ago: your daily demon: Haagenti, more medieval remixes, a Star Trek TOS fashion show plus the origin of the asterisk

four years ago: the Triadic Ballet reprised, Super Robot manga, separating texting from emails plus the Rabbrexit tapestry

five years ago: exterior walls of Japan plus a 1950s scrapbook of Moscow

Tuesday 14 November 2023

9x9 (11. 120)

temporal excursions: advice for the modern time-travellers thinking about visiting medieval Europe  

once and future: ex-PM David Cameron returns as Sunak’s foreign minister after a cabinet shake-up following the Home Secretary’s incendiary remarks  

ototw: there are over six-thousand ‘on top of the world’ mountains—a peak so high no others in the range can be seen from its summit—we’ve only been to Brocken, I think out of them all  

an aaron spelling production: an appreciation of Arthur Hailey’s Hotel (1983 - 1988) and its parade of guest stars  

the house of tomorrow: Tex Avery’s vision of the smart home seems more user-friendly  

return-to-office: automatic responses from those on a hybrid work-schedule  

carbon-casting: a LEGO-like approach to CO₂ offset and removal at target costs  

brideshead revisited: a new film on the eccentricities of the landed gentry—via Messy Nessy Chic

florantine codex: a sixteenth century ethnography on Mesoamerica and the Aztec culture has been digitalised and made accessible to the public

 synchronoptica

one year ago: The New Musical Express (1952), more Scopitone fun, more on English adjectival order plus assorted links to enjoy

two years ago: the Oort cloud, the Landshut Wedding (1475), more McMansion Hell plus a tale of guided chess

three years ago: the centenary of the BBC, the 2008 G20, paleomixology plus another MST3K classic

four years ago: assorted links to revisit

five years ago: Yale admits women (1968), Nellie Bly’s trip around the world, more on land-use plus social media platforms reimagined on outdated technology

Sunday 5 November 2023

9x9 (11. 097)

falling for fall: an epic attempt to capture the Christian Girl Autumn aesthetic—via the morning news  

paradox: NASA climate group issues a bleak warning on climate change—controversially suggesting that a reduction in aerosol pollution will accelerate warming 

the hunting of the earl of rone: one individual’s quest to catalogue the folkways and traditions of the United Kingdom  

they’re all good dogs: the winners of the annual world canine photography award presented—plus a bonus vocabulary term for one who is favourably disposed to dogs—via Nag on the Lake  

ja-da, ja-da, ja-da, jing jing jing: a soothing 1918 jazz standard covered for decades after  

mechanical turk: exposing autonomous cars’ vast human support network to maintain an illusion of safety, reliability 

roll on: a clever phonophore logo for a transport and logistics company in Hong Kong 

cape canaveral: a 3D animated billboard recounts the chronology of the Kennedy Space Centre 

momiji tunnel: a stunning section of the Eizan railway showcases the turning foliage—via the ever excellent Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links

 synchronoptica

one year ago: the Gun Powder Plot, a Commodore accordion, more McMansion Hell plus a Wikipedia list of common fallacies

two years ago: the Saint Felix Flood (1530) 

three years ago: a tri-lingual dictionary (1499), a flashpoint labour strike (1916), a sรฉance on a wet afternoon plus the Rebel Rabbit GIF

four years ago: more on Guy Fawkes, Voyager 2 leaves the Solar System, ghoulish guacamole plus Facebook’s shift to the right

five years ago: representative Shirley Chisholm, an ancient boardgame, photographer Denise Scott Brown, words for the Winter Blues plus mapping the US mid-terms

Friday 27 October 2023

the black gold tapestry (11. 079)

Via the always excellent Web Curios, we are directed to the outstanding hand embroidered sixty-seven metre (two hundred-twenty foot) chronology—in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry (see previously)—from artist Sandra Sawatzy that documents the saga of the discovery of petroleum products, all edged with dinosaurs, and its attendant societal and environmental change through the millennia to the present. Be sure to visit Sawatzy’s accompanying blog on their creative process, main characters in these global shifts and exhibitions.

Tuesday 17 October 2023

sun electric (11. 063)

Via Kottke, we are directed to a fascinating technological artefact and possible point of departure, contra-factual in this profile of entrepreneur and inventor George Cove, an early advocate of renewable energy who developed solar panels (and battery storage) not much different from those systems employed today. In 1905. There was a significant interest in this new technology and its potential fuelled by no shortage of media coverage and incremental improvements with attendant cost savings and greater efficiency. Yet the enterprise and Cove’s prospects came to an abrupt halt in 1909 when he was kidnapped and would only be released if he withdrew his patents and shut up shop. Though Cove reportedly refused to give in to these conditions, he was nonetheless released. Whilst some contemporary accounts say that the inventor staged his ransom to generate publicity or was victim of a jilted investor, it seems more likely he was roughed up by a thug sent from nascent Oil, an industry not known to be a friend of the democratising effects that virtually limitless and unfettered energy could provide or willing to pull any punches with the threat of competition. Solar power had no more champions for decades, and although it might be painful and disheartening to contemplate alternate-histories in the face of squandered time, resources and a planet that is burning, the fact that dependence of petroleum wasn’t a foregone outcome of industrialisation and modernity and that energy alternatives always had an uneasy coexistence is something for one’s quiver of hopes and disabusing. More from The Conversation at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: St Andrew of Crete,  assorted links to revisit plus RRR

two years ago: the tragical death of an apple pie

three years ago: the taking of Harper’s Ferry (1859), the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, change what the bunny is holding plus more links to revisit

four years ago: The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago

five years ago: pumpkin spice in everything, early Uber, The Republican Club plus more links to enjoy


Wednesday 20 September 2023

9x9 (11. 010)

: play around for a moment with the Water web toy—via Miss Cellania and the Everlasting Blรถrt  

green new deal: modelled on FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, US president Biden creates a federal jobs training and climate protection force  

won’t someone think of the children: UK passes Online Safety bill—see previously  

piramida: architectural photographer Danica O Kus documents the newly-repurposed monument in the Albanian capital of Tirana

nine-man morris: archeologists discover a board game carved in the ruins of an ancient Polish castle  

qed: a tiny Irish child has a brilliant solution to the trolley problem—see previously  

the mascot of ascot: the magnificent millinery modelled by Gertrude Shilling—via Messy Nessy Chic

once i played a tanpura: electronic music from India from the early 1970s—via Things Magazine  

written on water: physicists using an ionic pen and Brownian motion can draw lines and letters in liquid

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit 

two years ago: the Global War on Terrorism declared (2001), photographer Charles Cylde Ebbets plus more links to enjoy

three years ago: St Eustace plus running out of hurricane names

four years ago: an AI names mushrooms,  exploring a local wayside chapel, more links plus Randy Rainbow for the Emmy

five years ago: retro web bumpers, a then-and-now of New Zealand’s government, modern-day occupations plus the board game Careers

Thursday 14 September 2023

storm daniel (11. 000)

First affecting Greece and Turkey with massive floods before reorganising itself as a low front over the Mediterranean and overwhelming dams and causing a catastrophic breach in the Lebanese port city of Derna, the cyclone forming in the Ionian sea has proved the deadliest and most expensive event of the year, only just now dissipating with tens of thousands of casualties and exponentially more displaced. A quarter of the the ancient city was washed away with entire neighbourhoods unaccounted for, seeming carried to the sea. The unconscionable scale of the disaster is attributed in part of years of neglected infrastructure maintenance under the regime of of Muammar Gaddafi followed by civil war but the extreme weather is also on account of the effects of runaway climate change.

synchronoptica

one year ago: The Waltons (1972), spreading seeds plus an AI illustrated Bible

two years ago: assorted links to revisit plus rice harvest art

three years ago: one of the first laws enshrining freedom of the press (1770), explaining the year 2020 to someone from the past plus music to move by

four years ago: seeing the tarnish of the golden era plus RIP Eddie Money

five years ago: Trump downplays deaths in Hurricane Maria, a new Russian cathedral, Jimmy Carter Says Yes, more on calendar reforms plus Trump’s campaign manager in court

Thursday 24 August 2023

7x7 (10. 962)

miracle house: a singular property that survived the devastating wildfires opened up to the community as a beacon of hope for a destroyed Lahaina neighbourhood 

service manual showcase: a growing curated archive of quirky and niche instruction guides—via Waxy  

book ‘em danno: Trump arrested and released on bail in Fulton County in the US state of Georgia—with a historic mug-shot 

take the d-train: artist Stipan Tadiฤ‡ documented a year long route from the Bronx to Brooklyn and back—via Nag on the Lake 

spaghetti mayhem: Jan Hakon Erichsen has fun with uncooked pasta 

word of the day: Susie Dent’s logophilia  

ฯ…ฮณฯฯŒ ฯ€ฯฯ: emergency responders struggle to contain fires ravishing Greece—the largest in the EU

Sunday 20 August 2023

skolstrejk fรถr klimatet (10. 955)

On this day in 2018, when Europe was suffering from droughts and a heatwave (also inspired by students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida who refused to return after the shootings), ahead of parliamentary elections and the first day of class after summer break, then fifteen-year-old Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg sat on the steps of the Svergies Riksdag calling for a “School-Strike for the Climate.” Alone in her protest, the image was picked up by the Swedish press and garnering criticism from her parents and teachers for her truancy and message, Thunberg returned everyday for three weeks until the 9 September ballot, demanding that the government commit to reducing carbon-emissions aligned with the pledges of the Paris Agreement. Thunberg’s activism inspired the Fridays for Future movement of millions of students globally using the day to rally for environmental causes and has been a necessary gadfly to spur action, calling out greenwashing and repeating that “our house is still on fire.”

Sunday 23 July 2023

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

Monday 17 July 2023

photos of the anthropocene (10. 890)

We found this gallery of images of the permanent scars that human activity has been inflicting on the planet since the early 1950s curated in response to the retroactive inauguration of the new, dread geological epoch. All the photographs in the project portfolio are unbelievable and terrible to contemplate but we were especially taken with this view of potash-extracting operations in the Urals, mining for this vital fertiliser ingredient underground causes this spiralling pattern that resembles a trilobite fossil.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: Handel’s Water Music (1717) plus a visit to Amersfoort, downriver from Amsterdam

two years ago: Emoji Day plus the shores of Lake Vรคnern, Sweden

three years ago: the Feast of the Romanovs and their Domestics, a working couple’s cookbook plus Banksy’s lockdown tags

four years ago: more on Emoji Day plus forward basing of nuclear arsenals

five years ago: Yellow Submarine (1968), a living, incognito Pride flag, more on Trump and Putin, anti-car-sickness glasses plus the British royal family adopts the surname Windsor (1917)

Saturday 15 July 2023

6x6 (10. 884)

purl 2.0: performative social media is symptomatic of influencer culture and won’t get better until we do  

flag of convenience: the secret language of ships  

extended character set: contenders for inclusion on the new Emoji list include a Phoenix and a broken chain 

new normal: a third of the US under a dangerous heatwave  

sag-aftra: members of the Hollywood actors’ guild join the writers’ strike—see previously, see more 

eternal september: the Threads bandwagon, matriculation is “a contradictory mixture of earnest online community building and craven creator-brained growth hacking”

synchronoptica

 one year ago: “Hanoi Jane” (1972) plus Gangam Style (2012)

two years ago: the elder Fuรพark and the runestone of Rรถk plus the Stone Ship of Nรคssja

three years ago: a variant line-rider animation with a synchronised roller coaster, Pollux and Castor plus more official American state junk

four years ago: Trump attacks the Squad, honouring Alan Turing plus finding Bob Ross’ lost landscapes

five years ago: assorted links to revisit, Trump’s Scottish golf course, Nintendo made a sewing machine game plus more Brexit fun—aren’t we having fun yet

Wednesday 12 July 2023

international commission on stratigraphy (10. 875)

Putting the hubris and destructive nature of humanity on the same level as the meteor impact that wiped out the dinosaurs—after a fashion—which began the Cenozoic Era some sixty-six million years ago, a working group of scientists have chosen a representative Gold Spike (see previously) as a marker to symbolise the start of the Anthropocene Epoch in the sinkhole Lake Crawford in Ontario. Though overwhelming evidence abounds of humans’ negative impact on the environment from ocean plastics, the supersaturated, warming atmosphere, mass-extinctions, in particular this body of water that ought to be pristine and far removed (see above) shows exponential increases in impurities the early 1950s on, documenting nuclear tests and fertilisers and mining-runoff polluting waterways. Researchers are gauging Plutonium fallout in the silt and sediment (a faithful though frightening annual record) the lakebed as a sign of the start of the epoch and is expected to mark the beginning of a new, dread and disruptive geological time period.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: Saint Veronica plus assorted links to revisit

two years agoIn the Year 2525

three years ago:  the end of a politically independent judiciary in the US plus a double-duty face mask

four years ago: a creative video for Kate Bush’s Running Up that Hill, protests in Hong Kong plus the pitfalls of self-assessments

five years ago: predictive policingThe Americans and Operation Ghost Stories, generative Tarot cards plus Trump’s plan for stacking judges

Wednesday 5 July 2023

7x7 (10. 859)

armada model zero: prototype flying, electric car cleared for takeoff 

๊ตญ๋ณด: ancient Corinthian helmet found in Olympia and awarded as a trophy in 1936 among South Korea’s National Treasures  

el niรฑo southern oscillation: combination of global warming and cyclical weather patterns have yielded the hottest day since record-keeping began  

๐Ÿงต: Meta to launch Twitter alternative in twenty-four hours  

cop27: UK to walk-back its climate pledge 

luteciam parisiorum: a virtual tour of Roman Paris  

astral projection: the brain’s precuneus seems to be responsible for grounding and for the sensation of out-of-body experiences

Wednesday 28 June 2023

10x10 (10. 840)

⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️: Neal Fun’s (previously) infuriating password game  

ceiling cat: the European Souther Observatory in the Chilean mountains discovered a feline nebula

bad odds: wagering on climate change to bring the danger and risk to present and personal 

backstage: newsletters (from 1962 to 1980) published for Disneyland crew members, scanned in full—via Super Punch  

homage to magritte: a 1974 tribute in five vignettes to the Surrealist artist 

independent legislature theory: US Supreme Court strikes down suit that would cut checks and balances and judicial review of laws passed 

monkey bars: the first jungle gym (see previously) was built in hopes of teaching children about three-dimensional space and Cartesian coordinates 

magma: mining volcanoes could provide a more ecologically-friendly way to extract metals  

power of ten: NASA’s coding commandments focused on testability, readability and predictability that keeps critical systems safe and running in outer space  

goodnight phone: an interactive web comic for our shared present—via tmn

synchronoptica 

one year ago: assorted links to revisit plus a surprise session of the January Sixth hearings on the US Capitol Insurrections

two years ago: body language, the UN International Criminal Court (1993), Miss Continuous Towel and other spokesmodels plus Pitman shorthand

three years ago: a corporate typeface, a performative masculine simulator game, Martian meteors plus cataloguing one’s possessions

four years ago: the Stonewall Riots (1969), surveying Titan plus bringing back the chestnut tree

five years ago: Paul Simon on Sesame Street, silent cooking videos, assorted links to revisit plus combating fake product reviews

Thursday 8 June 2023

9x9 (10. 794)

all star festival: the 1963 charity concert sponsored by the UN for refugee aid with headliners Ella Fitzgerald, Doris Day and Louis Armstrong  

smoke from a distant fire: New York City’s air quality falls to the most hazardous in the world—see also  

progressive punishment: a speeding driver in the ร…land region gets a six-figure ticket  

bezold-brรผcke shift: the Sun shines green  

better living through chemistry: a glossary of manufactured terminology  

wopr: Nicolas Temese creates dioramas of miniature vintage computers—see previously  

espionage act: Trump summoned to the federal courthouse in Miami on charges of illegally retaining classified files  

cop 28: the warming weather cycle of El Niรฑo is upon us  

wall of sound: the logistics of touring that defies credulity

Tuesday 6 June 2023

7x7 (10. 790)

fowl-mouthed: Apple’s newest IOS to tweak auto-correct feature that turns a common expletive to “ducking” 

supars: librarians in the 1970s foresaw the coming age of inter- connectivity and distributed learning and helped design the tools for it 

olive grove: climate change bringing new crops to Canada’s Pacific Northwest 

pop 101: a guided formulaic approach to composition  

magic kingdom: research finds that fungi sequester a third of carbon emissions—via Slashdot  

fact-checking: the rise, fall and rebirth of Snopes

ski googles: Apple previews new prototype AR/VR headset—to be on the market next year