go tell aunt rhody (13. 694)

We have very much enjoyed this curation and appreciation from The Art Room Plant on author and illustrator Aliki Brandenberg. Graduating from the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, Aliki (usually going by her mononym) had a brief stint as commercial graphic designer and founded her own greeting card company before in 1956 returning to Europe to explore her Greek heritage, meeting Swiss native Franz Brandenberg—eventually marrying—and inspired to write her first children’s book on the legend of William Tell, the expert archer of Switzerland.
Well received, her first publication in 1960 started a long career adapting fables and myths with other works on a broad range of topics from her personal life, dinosaurs to Shakespeare. The pictured illustrations are from My Hands and The Listening Walk with Paul Showers of the “Let’s Read and Find Out” series.  Much more at the link above.

7x7 (13. 675)

giant’s causeway: Curiosity rover discovers valley of honeycomb polygonal rock formations—see also  

ars notoria: a magical medieval text that promised a pathway to instant, universal mastery of the liberal arts 

singing seat: artist Dan Ortiz Leizman transforms Monobloc chairs into stringed instruments 

translator of original ‘minions’ epic poem slams sexless, bloodless film adaptation: most fun movie discourse since Barbenheimer—see more, see also here and here—via Kottke   

it’s giving: a glossary of Gen Z lexical constructs  

mittingsaia: a mysterious illustrated Swiss manuscript from the 1940s in the style of a European travel brochures with undecipherable captions that resemble AI hallucinations  

van allen belt: despite its small size, no bigger than North America, Mercury’s weak magnetic field can trap solar winds

synchronoptica

one year ago: Trump administration obliterates Clean Air Act plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: obligatory voting in Australia (1924), the Likert scale plus more on millenialism

three years ago: more links to enjoy 

four years ago: a banger from Annie Lennox, even more links, more antique abecedaria plus graphic designers Elinor and Joe Selame

five years ago: time crystals, photographer Lora Webb Nichols, Olympic mottoes, assorted links worth the revisit, a world music radio station plus a David Bowie inspired costume

six years ago: more links to enjoy, a Chinese mission to Mars plus an interim emoji release

terra deserta (13. 673)

Mid-grade curious as to why the descriptor wilderness was likewise applied to the deserts spaces of the Bible and to our more conventional understanding of untamed forests, we found this excerpt from a new book by Cal Flyn on the savage landscape rather inexhaustibly fascinating. Though these habitats might seem poles apart—with only spirtual challenges lurking in the former, medieval monks in the Europe after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire solidified parallels between the tribulations of the prophets, the desert mothers and fathers, and the rewilding of vast swaths of land in Provence, Bretagne, Burgundy and Transylvania and other former colonies saw a sharp decline in population and many villages, villas and fortifications abandoned along with fallow fields that allowed the return of the forest primeval. Returning from the brink of extinction, with attendant lore and literature surrounding the liminal woodlands at the edge of cultivation and urbanisation became an allegory for the trepidation of earlier time out of mind, causing a stark rebellion against the encroachment of the undomesticated with commiserate suspicion for its denizens both human and non-human, transmogrifying contemporary fears of famine and pestilence to remote dwellers, bears and werewolves, though counter-narratives also prevailed with the ancient masonry of ruins repurposed as churches and city walls.

décalcomanie (13. 668)

Corresponding with the frequency bias of the previous post as well as being illustrative of way humans use the internet to check spelling and how for a small sample size can create random noise—or possibly an art exhibit, however the methodology might be flawed, this look at the most searched terms by the US was intriguing. Overall, from this study, it seems as if Americans are seeking the definition of societal factors rather than objects or something driven by a particular news story with gaslighting, socialism, equity, fascism, empathy, anxiety, etc. The outlier seems to be Montana’s top query in gouache, which defies explanation—other than maybe the above gallery opening—or, though equally unlikely but aligned with the other results a check on spelling for gauche. Similar to watercolour, the technique and paint produces a heavier and more opaque as it dries and employs a binding agent to remain colourfast on the canvas. The related process of decorative technique of art transfer, decalcomania, usually clipped to decal, came to English from the French décalquer, “to transfer the tracing of” and is in turn derived from the Italian calcare for to “stomp, stamp or trample,” with its etymology ultimately from the Latin calx or heel.

esl (13. 667)

First compiled and distributed by teacher and researcher Michael Philip West in 1953 whilst working in India, the General Service List of essential words for English learners based on a longitudinal survey of frequency and semantics that would facilitate a basic understanding and at the same time, narrowing an educator’s focus. Edified rather than rejected for its shortcomings and inadequacies and the basis for quantitative linguistics and Google N-gram Viewer for modelling a corpus, the list has only undergone two updates, once in 2013 and again in 2023. This exploration of the vocabulary changes from between the first edition and latest revision, seven decades, illustrates how in an anglophone environment it has become even harder to avoid exposure to abstractions whilst what is made, grown, worn and worked has been winnowed away as well as feelings and sensations, shifting from something manifest, embodied and experienced—ache, courage, loyalty, greed, mercy—replaced with clinical, disorder, therapy, treatment as something that is managed, rather than inhabited. It is not as if bargain suddenly became synonymous with budget and moonlight turned to solar, with pollution edging out harvest, but choices were made and some high-minded concepts are tossed out for more functional parlance to preserve the list’s some two-thousand head-word limit. Granted that concrete terms are naturally stickier and easily acquired, we still enjoy a lesson in how to buy a postage stamp or bus fare and are a little sad to live in a world that privileges platforms and institutions above what sustains and enriches us.

musca depicta (13. 665)

Subject to various interpretations by art historians, as Boing Boing informs, the “painted fly” was a somewhat of a viral meme in early Renaissance paintings on Europe. Ranging from an emblem of mastery, an in-joke, a symbol of the worthiness and dignity even in small pests to secularise the subject and conversely a symbol of sin, corruption and mortality—included as a form of apotropaic magic, the detailed fly as a conspicuous element features in over twenty extant works from various artists in the Low Countries, Germany and Italy. The pictured Portrait of a Woman of the Hofer Family by an unknown artist (the identity of the sitter is also lost to time) dates from circa 1470 from the Swabian region and currently resides in London’s National Gallery, acquired by Prince Albert and gifted to Queen Victoria in 1863.  The fad seems to have ended around 1510.

synchronoptica 

one year ago:  asymmetrical appeasement (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: a history of Elvis-officiated weddings

three years ago: sculptor Vinnie Ream plus more links to enjoy

four years ago: Eilean Donan plus the palace of Linlithgow

five years ago: your daily demon, more links, a minor supervillain plus a Yugoslav space opera

six years ago: artist Léon Spilliaert, cartoonist R Sikoryak, even more links plus advances in fusion technology

9x9 (13. 655)

all the queens houses: the eclectic architectural vernacular that makes up the New York City’s most diverse borough  

everything counts in large amounts: the moral imperative to understand big numbers, however unimaginable—via Kottke   

incendie de forêt: over a quarter million residents in France and Spain are evacuated from encroaching wildfires  

question de forme: the geometric animation of René Jodoin—see also, see previously

concurso de belleza: Trump cites his beauty pageant credentials to claim to be the competent authority when Venezuela is ready for elections  

plotlines: charting the journey of the protagonist in select classic novels with period maps—via Language Hat 

devil dog: Poseidon’s Underworld (previously) reviews the 1978 made-for-television star-studded spectacular about a satanic litter  

interstitial: Western science seems to recognise the meridians and subtle body of acupuncture and Ayurvedic traditions with a popular article on human anatomy’s third circulatory system  

cornell, 1965: filmmaker Lawrence Jordan’s 1978 profile of peer and colleague Joseph Cornell of Utopia Parkway, Flushing Queens

geopolitical ontology (13. 651)

Courtesy of Maps Mania, we turn to another gem of a xkcd comic from Randall Munroe (previously)in this cartographic flowchart, decision tree that could, in principle help one determine when an otherwise undated, modern era map was made. We especially liked the junctures “Number of Yemens plus Number of Germanys = ?” and is the town between Albuquerque and El Paso called Hot Springs or Truth or Consequences? The mouseover title is “Does the screeching chill your blood and herald death? If yes, banshee. If no, seagull.” Post-2026, we wonder what markers and borders might be used to pinpoint age. Much more at the links above.

birds v beethoven (13. 650)

Via MetaFilter, we learn that the European Central Bank has issued a jury selected shortlist of new euro notes by ten designers for the public to vote on. Each suite of the paper denominations feature either historical human or avian elements. Some proposals are vertical euros.

Birds (plus rivers) and institutional buildings versus Beethoven is a runoff between: 

 €5 the Wallcreeper (Tichodroma muraria) with the European Parliament on the reverse or Greek opera singer with a scene illustrative of the cultural elements on the back
€10 the Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) with the European Commission v the German composer
€20 the Bee-Eater (Meropidae bonaparte) with the ECB (see previously here and here) v Polish-French scientist Marie Curie-Skłodowska
€50 the White Stork Ciconia ciconia with the Court of Justice of the European Union v author Miguel Cervantes 

€100 the Avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta) with the European Council v Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci
€200 the Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus)with the European Court of Auditors v Austrian pacifistic Bertha von Suttner

What’s your favourite? I am team bird but I did like the bridges on the current series.

synchronoptica

one year ago: outsider artist Martin Ramírez (with synchronoptica), an orbital handshake plus superlative hour-glasses

two years ago: St Christopher, how location data compromises security and intelligence, every map of China is inaccurate plus SCOTUS orders Nixon to release the tapes (1974)

three years ago: farewell Twitter plus AI-enhanced spying

four years ago: Stirling Castle plus Smoo Cave 

five years ago: assorted links to revisit, highbrow porn, a party in a box plus a freight yard symphony

six years ago: politician Bela Abzug, Christina the Astonishing plus El Topo (1970)

vocation (13. 629)

One of the first individuals to receive a doctorate in computer science, having previously earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mathematics in 1965, fellow student Irving Tang was awarded his by the University of Wisconsin-Madison on the same day, educator and pioneer Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, a nun of the Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, an order originally from Ireland established to minister to Catholic immigrants in Iowa territory (see previously) wrote her dissertation on “Inductive Inference on Computer-Generated Patters,” focusing on developing algorithms on algebraic expressions. Her graduate studies include contributions to the programming language BASIC and more elective courses at Dartmouth. Committed to realising the potential for computers for the free exchange of knowledge and to promote learning, Keller established the first small college computer science department at the women’s school of Clarke University, endowed by the Sisters of Charity in Dubuque, teaching there for over twenty years, making strides in applications from graphics to home economics.

double-six (13. 626)

Translated as the above, sugoroku (雙六 or 双六) historically referred to two different classes of board game, ban-sugoroku akin to Western backgammon, and e-sugoroku, picture games similar to snakes-and-ladders. With the proliferation and increasing sophistication of wood-block printing, beginning in the Edo period (the late thirteenth century), the former meaning became nearly obsolete, a retronym like “acoustic guitar” or “landline,” with the colourful boards produced under thousands of variants with the same basic rules of play on subjects ranging from religion, career-progression, geopolitics, adult-themes and culture, meant to educate and to a degree inculcate—see also. Via Kottke, we are directed to an appreciation of the format through a recently expanded collection from the Rumsey archives (previously) of nineteenth century tabletop entertainments, which still leave an imprint of society in family game night traditions and mini-games within arcade franchises like Super Mario Brothers.

synchronoptica

one year ago: understanding light pollution (with sychronoptica) plus definitely not a bag full of drugs

two years ago: the asteroid Pallas plus Lonesome (1928)

three years ago: a vintage workwear catalogue,  an experimental overland train plus the Trinity nuclear test (1945)

four years ago: the flag of Estonia plus assorted links to revisit 

five years ago: along the Gota canal plus a hike over an extinct waterfall

six years ago: Disney theme parks reopen during the pandemic plus more links to enjoy

 

 

dig dug (13. 624)

Neatorama contributor Miss Cellania directs us to Randall Munroe’s latest xkcd webcomic (previously) comparing the depth of the Earth’s holes, manmade and naturally occurring. Chocked full of information, one will want to peruse the full-sized version and there’s even a dedicated wikia, Explain xkcd, that fully annotates and dissects the joke, though not to its detriment and sends one further down the rabbit hole with superlative mines, wells, tunnels and caves, including several record-setting above ground holes. We had no idea that the Kola Superdeep Borehole goes further underground than the Mariana Trench, and learned about the Glomar Challenger oceanic bore that extends two kilometres into the floor of the Pacific and the catastrophic Retsor Salt Mine, which collapsed in 1995 due to groundwater seepage, causing sink locals and draining regional aquifers. This company town, a small hamlet in upstate New York, was established and ran by the mining operator William Forester, Jr, who creatively (see also) reversed the spelling of his last name for the geographic anadrome, generally done to satisfy postal regulations.  Other places named with anagrams and ananyms include El Jobean, Florida after its civil engineer and property developer Joel Bean, Nada, Kentucky after the Dana lumber company that operated the town’s sawmill, Rednaxela Terrace in Hong Kong, transcribing ‘Alexander’ right to left, Orestod and Dotsero, Colorado, two towns on the terminuses of a short railroad line—the later itself derived from dot-zero, a important junction between Denver and Salt Lake City, Tesnus, Texas—sunset backwards and again after a train logo, and Tensed, Idaho, attempted namesake of nineteenth Flemish Jesuit missionary Pieter-Jan De Smet to the Native American peoples of Iowa territory, who as a friend and confidant of Sitting Bull persuaded the Sioux chief to negotiate with the US government and accede to the Treaty of Fort Laramie—a very bad deal for the Lakota, Dakota and Arapaho nations, the US almost immediately violating the terms and annexing their lands—the residents of the Coeur d’Alene reservation wanting to honour the priest (affectionately known as De Grote Zwartrok, the Great Black Skirt) but upon learning that the neighbouring community of De Smet had beat them to it, tried to reverse it but botched up the spelling during the registration process. I wonder if any other traditions have employed anadromes in their toponymy. Do write in and let us know, especially if they involve holes.

tell me about a complex man (13. 615)

Instead of the usual fare of the podcast and talk-show publicity circuit, we really appreciated The Daily from The New York Times—introduced with appropriately Homeric epithets—had an enthusiastic panel discussion just ahead of the release of Christopher Nolan’s cinematic adaptation of The Odyssey with scholar and translator Emily Wilson (whose work I’ve been meaning to read for some time now and whose take on the first line of the epic poem, “Sing, o Muse” above inspired the director, with a penchant for complicated and flawed protagonists, to assay the project) and author and classicist Madeline Miller, who wrote Song of Achilles and Circe. It was a fascinating panel discussion about the characters, language, tradition and themes of wandering, homecoming and hospitality of the timeless and endlessly interpreted tale. Through the lens of detractions by purists and pedants and provocateurs, attacks that the authors are well-accustomed (Wilson’s website has three contact forms: Interviews/Speaking Requests, General Inquiries and Misogynistic Trolling) and currently applied to Nolan’s work with casing choices (these same people got very upset about a Black Little Mermaid) they arrive a genuinely insightful look at the narrative, academic honesty and conclude that whatever choices that a version makes (in a long-lineage of adaptations and critiques), omissions, Hollywood-endings that one cannot hurt Homer, that the story is invulnerable.

survey says (13. 614)

Debuting on this day on ABC station affiliates with host British actor and comedian Richard Dawson, Family Feud quickly became one the most popular day time television game shows in America, enduring in syndication until the present.  The format pits two groups of competing, extended families, against each other, asking contestants to guess the most popular results of audience polls. Contractually obligated to make Dawson the MC of the programme, his run lasting until 1985, the show’s producers had originally wanted William Shatner, Star Trek having been discontinued a few years earlier (see previously here and here), to host. Watching the family dynamics of the panelist was always fun and the questions and responses pushed the envelope of what was fit to air with low-brow entendre.

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: Mimolette (with synchronoptica), a Jaws text-based game, more on the Carnac Stones and other megaliths plus more on optical telegraphy

two years ago: plural forms of compound expressions, assorted links to revisit plus Disco Demolition Night (1979)

three years ago: the Golden Spike of the Anthropocene Era, a crowd-pirated movie plus more links to enjoy

four years ago: St Veronica plus even more links worth the revisit

five years ago: In the Year 2525 

six years ago: Trump ally Roger Stone plus a smart facial covering 

notes on notes (13. 607)

With correspondence to our contemporary online landscape of anonymous and atomised enthusiasts and such projects like From the Depths of Wikipedia and a host of niche, speciality sub-Reddits, we discover Notes & Queries—a venerable journal founded in 1849 by House of Lords clerk and researcher William Thorns as a digest for amateur scholars, himself counted among those and a reminder that they do it for love of the subject, and a platform for Victorians to share academic discoveries (notes) and expound on them (queries). The weekly publication’s one time motto was the catch-phrase of Captain Cuttle or Dickens’ Dombey and Son, “When found, make a note of it.”  Still in existence today under the aegis of the Oxford University Press, established as a “medium of inter-communication for literary men [folklorist Eliza Gulch was one of the biggest contributors], artists, antiquaries, genealogists, &c.,” the submitted briefs and replies has held to the original format, with many emulators including a section in The Guardian with the same name. Where do you find the most elaborate pith of his researches? Much more from Public Domain Review at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: subterranean rescues (with synchronoptica) plus a Trump chaos omnibus

two years ago: scanning code from magazines, the artistic side of Samuel Morse plus Surrealistic logos

three years ago: Quintette du Hot Club plus assorted links to revisit 

four years ago: Escape from New York (1981) plus more links to enjoy

five years ago: the equal sign, Afternoon Delight (1976) plus our first stop in Sweden

six years ago: Roman Moselle plus at the foot of the Burgen

value-captured (13. 597)

Via Kottke, we are directed towards an anti-Bildungsroman about reflections on the growth and development of a digital native and a life squandered in the pursuit of increasingly tantalising internet points and the Overton window, the normative discourse of one’s peers as less than perspective and insight but rather something tethered, untethered and estranging, of others. Vicarious and evangelical, our protagonist aspires to live the life of others—achievable but deferred—and nonetheless consumed with consumption, and in the end, looking back at these parasocial relationships, realises too late it came at the expense of her own dreams and aspirations. While it may strike as a touch sententious and judgemental, that’s the exact impetus for reflection and to evaluate those metrics that malnourish us (sometimes described as gamification but I think that’s a misnomer as the most oppressive ones are the most ungamely) from those that help us reach our potentials.

synchronoptica

one year ago: everything becomes crab (with synchronoptica) 

two years ago: assorted links worth revisiting, a forgotten pioneer of cinematography, swimming with Benjamin Franklin plus France at the polls

three years ago: the first study-abroad programme 

four years ago: assorted links to enjoy plus volcanologist William Hamilton 

five years ago: sliced bread, the Quasi-War of 1798 plus a visit to Fladungen

six years ago: titleist Maurice Binder plus more adventures along the Moselle

a syntopicon (13. 581)

Coined especially for the two volume with the Neo-Latin term meaning a collection of topics, the two volume register of one hundred two great ideas of the Western canon, was compiled and catalogued by philosopher and professor Mortimer J Adler, published by Encyclopaedia Brittanica Press in 1954 as an index to accompany the fifty-four library of Great Books of the Western World, covering literature and though from Homer to Freud. I can recall seeing these books near the circulation desk at my alma mater as well as the shelves of the volumes in was made to guide at home, though I don’t think I was tempted to consult it to investigate how the individual works corresponded and overlapped, which is a bit of travesty considering the amount of effort and hours of reading it took to synthesise the writing of some seventy authors and something I will have to peruse. Like a Wikipedia gloss, it is a footnote and a hyperlink, and not just a cross-reference of themes or concordance but rather an instrument of liberal education itself for discovery and research and finding the unity in ideas that sometimes can be muddled and masked by language, examining each entry from multiple different angles, breaking each into several sub-topics. Afterwards, Adler edited the single volume Propædia or “Outline of Knowledge” as an appendix for the venerable encyclopaedia marshalling human knowledge into a logical frame work from 1974 to 2010, when the last print edition was issued.

synchronoptica

one year ago: unblogged Breton (with synchronoptica)

two years ago: Lago Delio 

three years ago: assorted links to revisit plus a registry of Americana

four years ago: more links to enjoy

five years ago: your daily demon, Mario theme inspiration, the year’s midpoint, a banger from Tracy Chapman plus a visit to Oberwaldbehrungen

six years ago: even more links, Airplane! (1980) plus the US Civil Rights Act (1964)

deep blue something (13. 574)

Via Quantum of Sollazzo and deliciously reminiscent of the harried and hued colour profiles appearing in the Paris Review and the Awl right before folding, we are directed to this delightful project chasing down the paper trail of pigments, one colour per day with its chemistry, provenance and poison. There are over two-hundred fifty already indexed, like the pale jade glaze originally from ancient Chinese ceramic-making techniques, this greenwear copied by Korean and Japanese artisans (the greyish shade comes from oxidising iron during the firing of kilns, Fe₂O₃→FeO, and the Western namesake is from a character in a popular seventeenth century French pastoral novel, L’Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé, who dressed in light green garb—no relation to the Celadons Ovid’s Metamorphoses or International Klein Blue, a synthetic ultramarine with connections to the Nouveau réalisme movement and among the first pigments to be successfully patented. Each entry has adjacent palettes and new specimens are posted Sundays. I feel like this is site I will return to often.

drawn & quarterly (13. 567)

As an encore to his ambitious 2020 treatment of the US constitution, as a demonstration of the power of comics and cartoons to help make the unreadable more approachable and engaging, through a host of classic characters and styles, artist R Sikoryak publishes his Declaration / Emancipation Illustrated just in time for America’s semiquincentennial, addressing the country’s two foundational documents in the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Emancipation Proclamation (1863). More from Print magazine at the link above, including an interview with the author.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Château de Suscinio (with synchronoptica) plus an ensemble of monumental burial mounds

two years ago: a visit to the Borromean islands 

three years ago: assorted links to enjoy plus Dark Side of the Moon x Wizard of Oz

four years ago: more links worth the revisit plus bombshell testimony for January Sixth hearing

five years ago: the Body Language Academy, the International Criminal Court (1993), more pageantry from Weird Universe plus practical stenography

six years ago: Goldman Sans, a masculinity simulator, Martian meteors plus a complete catalogue of one’s stuff

8x8 (13. 550)

add to dictionary: a remembrance of the departed Tony Krueger, the software engineer that introduced red squiggles to word-processing to indicate a potential error  

seen by the machine: AI scores one’s relative importance by billions of datapoints called “the weights”—please consider the environmental impact before googling oneself—via MetaFilter 

drain the swamp: a meme roundup on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool  

cancon: musical acts propelled to stardom over minimum requirements for domestic content on Canadian airwaves—via Miss Cellania and Nag on the Lake  

reading the room: a moment of silence observed before interviews with filmmakers to take in the room tone as a supercut from Criterion  

a la carte: US history told in early restaurant menus—see previously  

able mabel: a robotic maid from 1966  

usa a-ok: more than amplifying random statistical noise, an interesting look at Americans’ misspellings mapped

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Carnac Stones (with synchronoptica) plus a trip to Belz

two years ago: exploring Maccagno  

three years ago: artist and freedom fighter Willem Arondéus, a revolt and march toward Moscow plus the last Emperor

four years ago: Germany legalises abortion plus a work cruise on the Rhein

five years ago: artist Robert Rotar, the goddess of luck, the bells of Bad Hersfeld, assorted links to revisit plus Cubist cars

six years ago: an orchestra for houseplants,  the Battle of Bamber Bridge (1943), tourists not welcome plus the Pontiac Ghost Car