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.
Friday 27 October 2023
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 Tirananine-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-shottake 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 ฮณฯฯ ฯฯฯ: 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 also1975: 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 chainnew 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 ago: In 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 policing, The 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 began๐งต: 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 artistindependent 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 ticketbezold-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 itolive 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
Friday 26 May 2023
8x8 (10. 766)
to scale: time: a model in the Mojave Desert that makes commensurate the span of a human life and the age of the Universe—see previously
montreal protocol: humanity’s affirming effort to plug a hole in the ozone layer—previously—was an inadvertent salvation that is still paying off—see previously
qartcode: generate custom scannable re-directs with the little pixelated image of ones choice—via Pasa Bon!talking steel guitar: the musical stylings of Pete Drake and his innovative talk box—see previously
fourteenth amendment: US President Joe Biden’s options to stop the standoff over the debt ceiling
i’m fantastic, made of plastic: the trailer to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie
flow-chart: your guide for turning on the air-conditioning in New England—works a lot of places—see also
time out of mind: a 1979 BBC documentary series on science fiction featuring interviews with iconic authors
Friday 5 May 2023
8x8 (10. 720)
the comisar collection: an incredible auction of television memorabilia, sets and props from Star Trek, Jeopardy!, Cheers and late night talk shows—via Waxy
craptions: bad quality closed-captioning are a disservice to those who rely on them—see alsosonic wonderland: composer and acoustic ecologist R Murray Schafer’s 1967 guide to cleansing one’s auditory palette to better appreciate music
flintknapping and wheelwrighting: take up an endangered craft as your new hobby—via Web Curios
wikiscroll: an educational and edifying (and endless) alternative to anti-social media—via B3ta
far from me: a 2018 tribute to Gordon Lightfoot from John Prine—see also
henry’s law: plans to remove CO₂ from the oceans for the oceans to suck it from the atmosphere to maintain equilibrium are yet to be proven safe or effective—see also
returning champion: the lost tapes have been recovered but the mystery endures over a 1986 game show winning streak—via Strange Company
Monday 1 May 2023
8x8 (10. 711)
time in a bottle: individuals turning turning care and attention into currency
composition as explanation: daily it’s harder to decide if AI is a collaborative tool or a time bomb
zoonomia: researchers sequence the genome of sixty-five hundred species—plus Balto, the heroic sled dog of the 1925 Serum Run
back to the drawing board: researchers at Linkรถping University have engineered a functional wooden resistor—see previously—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Linksoccupancy rate: a tour of the empty City of London
so for you, it’s insects, tap-water and celibacy: examining how bad ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson was for the environment and speculation on who might take up that mantle next
deep dreaming: on chatbot hallucinations and the first usage of the sense in 1540 by the ryght rodolent & rotounde rethorician R Smyth
worth1000: a time capsule camera that composes a detailed written description of ones photos with a ticketed invitation to revisit them at a future date
Saturday 15 April 2023
8x8 (10. 676)
footprint: a sobering visual essay showing the deleterious impacts of cruises from Puget Sound to Alaska—via Things Magazine
kitakyushu kaku-chi: a look into Japan hidden liquor shop drinking culture
the wonderful world of tupperware: a vintage celebration of the storage solution’s storage solution as the company goes insolventbea wolf: a re-telling of the epic poem for both kids and grow-ups
influential flop: deconstructing the Apple Lisa—Locally Integrated Software Architecture
great firewall: the US state of Montana moves to implement a ban on TikTok
subcal: an exploration of the best of Tokyo’s fandom nightlife
greenhouse effect: acknowledging the contributions of the mostly forgotten Eunice Foote, pioneer of climate science
Tuesday 21 March 2023
8x8 (10. 627)
everthing everywhere all at once: chaotic “Foketoken,” informed by “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” was inspiration for the screenwriter
a most maddening canvas: Moby Dick (previously) and AI
ipcc: UN climate committee issues dire warning, with steps to take immediatelyaperiodic monotiles: a non-repeating shape to cover a flat surface has possibly been discovered—see also
sky critters: a 1978 book that proposes UFOs are biological organisms evolving parallel to humans virtually unnoticed
la vรฉitable histoire d’amรฉlie poulain: a short film finally revealing the true story of ostensible 2001 romcom
bardolatry: Google’s AI chatbot released to the public in the UK and US
hotdog hands: outtakes from the Academy Award winning film—via Miss Cellania
Friday 24 February 2023
dataviz (10. 570)
Via the always excellent Web Curios, we are directed to Information is Beautiful (previously) with its selection of superlative static and interactive infographics short-listed as the most effective and elegant ways of communicating demographics and trends from a given dataset. We especially liked the decade of changes visualisations that immediately laid bare both precarity and opportunity in the Earth Carillon but we expect you’ll discover your own new favourite way of presenting charts and graphs.