obedience to authority (12. 640)

Begun on this day in 1961, the eponymous battery of social psychological experiments were conducted under the supervisor of Yale professor Stanly Milgram (previously) in order to gauge the willingness of test subjects to compile with instructions that conflicted with conscience and empathy. Made to believe that they were facilitators, administering electric shocks to a student to reenforce desired behaviours, the participants demonstrated a concerning eager inclination to better the performance of their assigned learners (a rote memorisation exercise) and deliver electric shocks with increasing intensity in order to marshal their faculties. In reality the punishing discharge was fictitious, delivered via a device labeled Shock Generator, Type ZLB with output from fifteen to four hundred fifty volts, well above the fatal limit, and the students were confederates of the experimenter, but nonetheless illustrating readiness to conform, despite some misgivings and signs of reservation for the distress caused with none of those refusing to give the highest level shock insisting that the experiment be stopped or bothering to check on their students. A test-case for research ethics, most responded after learning of the set-up that they were happy to have contributed and the experiment with variations has been replicated numerous time. Held in the milieu of the trial of Adolf Eichmann for war crimes in Jerusalem and the draft for Vietnam, Milgram wanted to determine if millions of German accomplices were simply following orders in genocide. The unexpected results of the first iteration, wanting to use American students as the control group and considering obedience to an authority figure to be a distinctly Teutonic trait, stopped Milgram from subjecting a group of German students, whom might well have been much more sympathetic to the plight of the “learners” due to recent history, to the same conditions. Ultimately inconclusive, reevaluation of the tests find some heuristic value but a poor lens for understanding the Holocaust and Nazism. 

 synchronoptica

one year ago: retroactive statehood for Ohio (with synchronopticæ) 

twelve years ago: promoting a vegetarian diet plus an exhibition from the Hessen state archives

thirteen years ago: the pictograms of the Mexican Games of 1968 

homoplasy (12. 637)

Having recently pondered the convergent instances of evolution that birthed multiple iterations of the crab and crab-like, we quite enjoyed this corollary from MetaFilter on new findings that show that among mammals, by dent of the food source’s sheer abundance—a ready and steady diet, have developed specialisation for eating ants and termites at least a dozen separate times. Myrmecophagous species have occurred independently, from aardvarks to pangolins to armadillos to echidnas (a monotreme), but the rate and occurrence of this adaptation has happened far more frequently and at a much faster pace than the above carcinisation. Everything becomes anteater.

arguably the most famous and celebrated cnidarian of all time (12. 634)

Outliving her discoverers and with a career spanning the Victorian Era, under the care of a succession of Edinburgh naturalists, the beadlet sea anemone (Actini equina), affectionately known as Granny passed away on this day in 1887 at the advanced age of sixty-seven—though reports of her death were embargoed for the public good until October, with lengthy obituaries first published by The Scotsman and then The New York Times. Receiving many distinguished visitors, as evinced by a guest book with over a thousand entries, Granny, whom was collected as a mature specimen off the shores of North Berwick, is credited with educational reform, igniting popular interest in the sciences outside of professional and specialist circles, and inviting Victorians to bring nature into their homes, with various fashions from houseplants to terraria and aquaria and imparted a sense of curiosity, albeit kept, that advanced understanding and appreciation of marine ecology.

8x8 (12. 627)

the people of 1925: a survey of a century ago through the lives of people we never knew—via Strange Company  

the zendian problems: a detailed cartographic study of an imaginary republic used to train cryptanalysts for a simulated invasion 

американка: recollections of a summer exchange programme of a Russian literature major—via Web Curios  

universal soundtrack: Ze Frank (previously) on crickets, katydids and grasshoppers 

sonderauftrag bayeaux: a fragment of the famed tapestry taken by the Nazi Ahnenerbe Society will be reunited when it goes on display in England  

megastrike: the longest measured lightening bolt stretched near nine-hundred kilometres across Texas and Kansas  

revelations of a wife: the longest novel you’ve never heard of, serialised over four decades with a readership of millions 

indecent exposure: photographs of individuals being cited on Rockaway beach in New York City in 1946

anthropoclastic rock cycle (12. 624)

A couplet of recent postings about synthetic geology caught our eye—first about the accelerated process of material formation reduced to decades instead of the usual millions of years in the cases of slag heap debris fusing into sediment along the English coast and colourful industrial waste prepared with concrete to solidify and stabilise it—allowing for easier disposal without the normal caretaking required for liquid toxic waste and instead leech it out over aeons. We wonder what future archeologists will make of this anthro-littoral strata.

11 x 11 (12. 622)

ped x’ing: an urban hawk takes advantage of a crosswalk signal to shield it from view as it stalks its pigeon bounty—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest  

whispering gallery mode: peacock plumage can be induced to emit lasers—via the New Shelton wet/dry  

pix: US government going after Brazil’s native digital payment platform—calling it an unfair barrier to trade—meanwhile only President Lula da Silva is standing up to Trump’s tariff bullying  

showrunner: Amazon investing in AI start-up Fable that allows subscribers to make their own TV shows  

pro-somnolence: the technique of cognitive shuffling to quiet the mind and get back to sleep 

manifesto antropófago: a 1928 counter-colonialism and counter-appropriation movement venturing out of São Paulo 

the candy factory: the unique artists’ commune in New York City founded by Ann Ballentine—via Messy Nessy Chic  

query-agnostic adversarial triggers: feline-related textual asides cause marked increase in AI error rates  

one year ago, america was a dead country, now it is the hottest country anywhere in the world: Trump escalates trade war with Canada as Carney suggests they may miss the deadline  

living batteries: cable bacteria thriving in muddy harness chemical gradients to create and electrical circuit and get oxygen in an anoxic environment  

starling network: Benn Jordan saved a .PNG image to a bird by turning a drawing into audio which could be mimicked and reproduced, see also—via Waxy

henohenomoheji (12. 600)

Convinced that this subject was one that we had visited before for its relation to emoticons, emoji and ASCII art and surprised to find that we had not, we enjoyed this short introduction to the generic human face made up of hiragana letter forms, seven characters (arranged to spell out the title へのへのもへじ). Originally the doodle was a classroom exercise for school children of the late Edo era, following the turn of the century reform that reduced the syllabary down to forty eight characters from hundreds as a sort of mnemonic device for reenforcing valid glyphs out of the many retired ones, the characters traditionally sung as they were written. The nose, jaw and left cheek would be pronounced moji (文字 in katana) as in the above “picture writing.”

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronopticæ),  the Commodore A1000, dark oxygen, everything is context plus attempts to keep Trump off the ballot and Biden on it

🧶 (12. 593)

On this day in 1961, Lee Harvey Oswald was granted an exit visa to the return to the United States after two years of living and working in Minsk, having defected in October of 1959. Oswald taught himself Russian and had saved up a sizeable portion of his Marine Corps salary after his court-martial and hardship discharge and booked passage to the United Kingdom via ship from New Orleans to Le Havre. Telling customs officials he intended to stay in Southhampton for a week before proceeding to a school in Switzerland.

Hiding his plans to reach the Soviet Union, Oswald flew to Helsinki the same day and took a train to Moscow, where granted a week’s permit to stay and assigned a guide by Intourist, the travel agency and tour operator purportedly run by the KGB. Immediately informing his escort that he wished to become a Soviet subject, Oswald was questioned by various officials as to his motivation whom all found his reasoning suspect and a bit incomprehensible and his application was denied with him being told he would need to leave upon the expiration of his visa. The night before he was due to depart, Oswald—distraught and desperate—gave himself a minor but convincingly bloody knick on the wrist in the hotel bathroom, prompting his Intourist minder to refer him to a psychiatric hospital for observation, overstaying his visa, insisting he wanted to remain in the Soviet Union. Later Oswald formerly declared his desire to renounce his American citizenship to an embassy official at the US mission to the Soviet Union, telling the interviewing consular agent he was earnest and would disclose to the Soviets details on the Marine Corps and his speciality as a radar operator, suggesting he had more intelligence secrets he could reveal. 

The consular agent confiscated his passport but did not revoke Oswald’s citizenship. Hoping to be allowed to pursue his studies in Moscow, Oswald was a bit deflated to be sent to Minsk for a factory job producing consumer and space electronics. The future president of an independent Belarus, Stanislau Shushkevich, a coworker, was assigned to Oswald to help him improve his language skills. Despite government-subsidised housing and a generous supplement that afforded Oswald a conformable lifestyle, he eventually became disillusioned, reporting that the the work was drab and there were no little leisure activities and requested to be repatriated. Acquired dependents while Oswald was awaiting the decision and return of his passport were permitted to join him in Texas one year later.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a sign of solidarity with Trump’s failed assassination attempt (with synchronopticæ) plus going Nazi

fourteen years ago: the job market for recent graduates 

project ester (12. 582)

Named after queen Hadassah of the Hebrew bible who canonically revealed the designs of the Persian vizier to execute the Jews of Persia and urged them to take up arms against their enemies, the conservative think-tank, the Heritage Foundation’s other agenda—aside from Project 2025—ostensibly with the laudatory aim of combating what it classifies as antisemitism, Project Ester was launched a month before the US presidential, coinciding Hamas-led attack on Israel. Like many aspirational goals of the think-tank’s other programme, which seemed naïvely at the time far-fetched and were dismissed as panic mongering or symptomatic of Trump derangement syndrome, their target as outlined in the project’s blueprint—which the administration has brought whole-cloth, has shifted from something that ought to be an uncontroversial and given of dignity and respect shown to fellow humans to something ideological and partisan—only attacking anti-semitism on the left (which in itself seems like an oxymoron)—and using dismantling pro-Palestinian organisations and protest as a vehicle, a national strategy to frame an stance perceived as critical of the government of Israel as supporting a network of terrorism. The chilling effect that this has had for demonstrators, which the project’s architects do not deny was their intent, manifest in cancelling student visas and millions of dollars in US federal grants for colleges and universities not seen to be doing enough to combat anti-Semitic acts. Critical of “legacy” American Jewish institutions as complacent and embraced by evangelical Christians, many in the community Project Ester is claiming to champion have disavowed its tactics, recognising that their real plight is being appropriated to incite moral panic and spread conservative values broadly by targeting students, educators, politicians and other figures and institutions aligned with the purported movement that threatens not only Israeli interests but the US as well.

bears will be boys (12. 563)

Via Waxy, we found this meta-analysis from the Pudding of gendered characters in children’s literature to be quite engrossing and seeing the stereotypes anthropo-morphised reveals deep and engrained associations we find not only in the first characters that many of us were exposed to (see also) but also in myth (think of all the women in Greek legend who get transformed into birds) and in language, pet names for one another and some fossilised but still carrying a lot of cultural currency. Much more on the data and methodology, including some surprising exceptions to the prevailing, at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the 1948 London Games (with synchronopticæ) plus the Thirteen Colonies’ attempt to avoid open conflict with Britain (1775)

thirteen years ago: a classic car show tradition plus Jack of All Trades (1900)

fourteen years ago: German austerity policies plus the loss of a flagship for space exploration

fifteen years ago: getting ready for a trip to the Baltic Sea 

wasserstoff (12. 555)

Having always been fascinated by the depth and breadth of the German language and the seeming disconnect in scientific terminology, as with the above hydrogen (waterstuf in Dutch) or Sauerstoff (zuurstuf) for oxygen. While there is good reason for maintaining plain language in scientific parlance and keeping it accessible for all, there’s also compelling arguments for fossilising something eternal and universal in dead languages, augmented by Latin and Greek roots, hedging the unchanging against the malleability and evolution of a living tongue. We enjoyed this illustration of the matter from science fiction writer of Danish extraction Poul Anderson in his 1989 essay Uncleftish Beholding attempting to relay atomic (and quantum) theory using only Germanic words and berefting English of its other influences. The text begins: “For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life”—going to define uncleft (atomic elements) with firststuffs (those lighter ones created in the cauldrons of stars that fuel stellar fusion) and the heavier ones like ymirstuff (uranium) synthesised from supernova, as well as bulkbits (molecules) and bindings , bindings (compounds) that arise through chemical reactions. There’s an outline of the periodic table drawn the Norse rather than the Greco-Roman pantheon as well as Old English derived terms for isotopes (samesteads) and other nuclear states and particulars. The conlang element of the exercise with similar ones constructed since—the glosses referred to as “Ander-Saxon”—and is a special class of constrained writing, much in the spirit of recognising pantheons and nomenclature outside mainstream Western traditions. Click through at the link for Futility Closet above for much more.

synchronoptica

one year ago: visiting Carmine and Cannobio (with synchronopticæ)

twelve years ago: the EU and Club Med 

fourteen years ago: the problems with packaging 

fifteen years ago: bees and bailouts 

ecstacy garage (12. 532)

We are directed—courtesy of Web Curios (lots more to explore there) to this rather incredible archived catalogue of ephemera (see also) in this collection curated by the Cornell university library of scarce hip-hop party and event fliers, spanning from circa 1977 to 1984. Not only to these handcrafted promotions document the scene with information on performers, venues, admission and dress code, this is also an amazing graphic design resource that bookends a cultural moment. The archive is approaching five hundred items with additional information regarding provenance.

the stand in the schoolhouse door speech (12. 528)

Occurring on this day in 1963, as our faithful chronicler reminds, possibly as a staged event to allow the governor whom promised to his constituents upon his inauguration for “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” to save face, George Wallace (previously) blocked the entry of into the University of Alabama’s Tuscaloosa campus for two matriculating students, Vivian Malone and James Hood—the former the first Black graduate and the latter returning years later in a teaching position after being forced out by racists and both given a death-bed apology by the former governor. The state national guard federalised by executive order (EO 11111, see above) compelled Wallace to step aside and allow the new students to complete their registration, providing “assistance for the removal of unlawful obstructions of justice” across the state and allowed students to enrol in previously all-white schools. The Kennedy administration afforded Wallace this publicity stunt over warnings for repeated counter-demonstrations and violence like that that had occurred in Mississippi with desegregation, and while not able to ultimately quell all riots did focus attention on Wallace and his arguments for states’ rights versus civil rights.

el arte peruano en la escuela (12. 512)

We enjoyed learning about the career and works of illustrator, textile designer and educator Elena Izcue through her 1930 inclusion of Incan and other pre-Columbian works into the curriculum of Lima’s National School of Fine Arts, much to the displeasure of some of her fellow academics aired with a very public debate—detractors finding nothing redeeming in native culture and a surrogate for a larger question of Peruvian identity. In the face of this resistance and aesthetic judgement, Izcue’s insistence and advocacy ultimately led to appreciation and a syllabus that included a set of workbooks she produced drawn from the motifs of Indigenous ceramics and fabrics and archaeological finds. Much more from Public Domain Review at the link up top.

apparent magnitude (12. 492)

Realising I had taken for granted knowing what the unit of measurement was, or what exactly it was gauging, we appreciated this introduction and overview of the decibel—via Quantum of Sollazzo. Sort of like the distinction between mass and weight, sound intensity is measured in terms of pressures in pascals as the deviation from the ambient caused by an acoustic wave through a given medium, and the decibel as a way of expressing the ratio between two values logarithmically—with the silent partner being the threshold of human hearing. Originally stemming from a technique to measure and compare signal loss over telegraph lines and later telephone circuits, first expressed as loss per miles of standard cable, the new definition developed by Bell Labs was received favourably by operators and long-distance providers, named in honour of the communications pioneer Alexander Graham Bell. Still used chiefly to calibrate signal strength and fidelity as power passes through different exchanges across a network (mathematically, it is easier to process and account for the changes in transmission media and resistance by their additive properties rather than cumulatively by logarithms, which is incidentally the reason why older hardware and appliances last longer being over-engineered by dint of material and electrical tolerances calculated with a slide-rule and rounding up adding up to machines built to a more robust standard than for their planned lifecycle. Because humans perceive an increase in loudness exponentially rather than linearly (per studies in psychophysics known the Weber-Fechner laws that demonstrate gradual increases are likely to go unnoticed by the senses, the contrasted stimuli also seen to carry an effect in registering numbers and statics, in placebos—titration of all types through interoception and voting), the dB scale became a useful measure, as with the Richter scale for earthquakes and the Fujita scale for tornados, for when a in situ judgment might fail.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronoptica) plus the discovery of Troy

seven years ago: mythemes, a global weather service, the GDPR goes into effect, drowning does not always look like drowning, the founding of St Petersburg, ancient and modern trade routes plus a walk along the former inter-German border

nine years ago: the classified section, petty commodification, French-Canadien curses plus pizza as alimony

ten years ago: more links to enjoy, a supernatural dating society, the upcoming G-7 plus a new city in Mongolia

in a word (12. 488)

Courtesy of Futility Closet, we enjoyed this moment of logophilia with an selection of obscure words from the personal collection of Eric Albert, frequent contributor to Butler University’s journal of recreational linguistics, Word Ways, specialising in research and demonstrations on palindromes, tautonyms (reduplication like aye-aye or namby-pamby), anagrams, pangrams and lipograms. We especially liked supermuscan defined as having the qualities greater than which is typical of a fly; alkahest, a universal solvent—chiefly in the alchemical sense; titivil—a demon who collects dropped or mumbled parts of the mass and bears them off to hell as evidence against the offender—see previously; brotus, any extra measure given without charge, as in a baker’s dozen; ecdysiast, one who rhythmically disrobes as in a strip-tease artist; holmgang, a duel fought on an island; velleity—the lowest degree of desire, a slight wish; microlipet, one bothered by trifles; palinode, retracting or recanting something formerly praised; supellectile, pertaining to furniture; and poliad, a nymph that lives in the city. Some in the catalogue were familiar to us but there’s a surplus of choice news terms to be found clicking through. Let us know your new favourites.

9x9 (12. 483)

leaderboard: an exclusive look at the $TRUMP memecoin banquet   

leap together: Kermit the Frog delivers a commencement speech at Jim Henson’s alma mater 

biosignature: potential signs of alien life on exoplanet K2-18β raises the question of when evidence becomes definitive 

industrial light and magic: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, founded by Star Wars franchise creator and slated to open next summer, made redundant fourteen percent of staff

mr tompkins in wonderland: after attending a lecture on relativity, a bank clerk discovers the ability to perceive quantum phenomena and the foreshortening of spacetime   

liquidity squeeze: collaborative scholarship and the fake Roman financial panic of 33 AD—via Strange Company 

yeah—it has been hard, mainly because of the numbers: a vintage 2005 spoof on every television news spot on the economy

matriculation: graduates answer questions posed by their past selves insider trading: US attorney general divested herself of between one and five million dollars worth of shares ahead of Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement

synchronoptica

one year ago: Phyllis Diller’s garage sale guide (with synchronoptica), an alternative space shuttle design, AI can’t do minor edits plus assorted links worth the revisit

seven years ago: more removing science from the classroom, a cosmic interloper, eyeball worlds, wine windows plus the Dear Leaders fail to meet

eight years ago: corporate welfare 

nine years ago: transparent wood plus a visit to Weimar

thirteen years ago: the chemistry of wine

11x11 (12. 481)

ν octantis: astronomers discover a tight binary star system with a lone exoplanet wedged in the middle  

{sum free sets}: Cambridge graduate student proves an conjecture of Paul Erdős on the limits of the additive property—via Damn Interesting 

gorgoneion: the backstory of Medusa 

market instability: complaining that negotiations have stalled, Trump threatens to impose a fifty-percent tariff on EU exports to the US 

ambigram: more invertible messages—made by impossible letters (see previously here and here) 

the old, old, very old man: the sudden death of super-centenarian Tom Parr in 1635 illuminates our long quest for longevity—see also 

marked decline: the precipitous drop in the use of semicolons—with a quiz to celebrate its proper placement  

urban renewal: arborists are planting giant sequoia (previously) in blighted Detroit neighbourhoods—via Kottke  

pandemonium: when the pantheon of gods and goddesses came into the world, they already had company with a multiplicity of daemons acting through human agents 

exchange programme: US Department of Homeland Security revokes Harvard’s ability to enrol foreign students  

brown dwarf: in the distant past, Jupiter was nearly twice its present size with a much stronger magnetic field, revealed by the orbital dynamics of its constellation of satellites—see previously

interdisciplinary (12. 475)

On the corner of Broadway and West 112th Street, above the iconic neon-lit Tom’s Diner used as the establishing exterior shot for the sitcom Seinfeld and in the Susan Vega song, NASA research facility, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has occupied the six upper storeys of Armstrong Hall since 1966. Affiliated with Columbia University’s Earth institute, from whom it leases the laboratory space, GISS has embarked on a broad programme of astrophysics and climate dynamics and advanced public understanding of phenomena like El Niño and first synergised ideas such as plate tectonics, quasars and black holes—introducing the terminology to common parlance. The institute also issued a vocal warning regarding global warming’s trajectory and involved with numerous solar system exploration missions dating from Mariner, Pioneer and Voyager to the present. This impressive list of accomplishments and continuing projects, both theoretical and applied, however, is failing to secure the lab’s legacy for the the Trump administration, which has cut overall science funding by half and is sceptical of climate change, and through the auspices of DOGE and the Government Services Administration is terminating the lease effective at the end of the month (or at least pretending to in the name of efficiency as the contract cannot be broken early and the building will sit empty until it expires) and is directing the staff of one hundred thirty to work from home until they can be dismissed or placed within another part of the agency. More from the Guardian at the link above.

heidelberger spargelessen (12. 474)

The culmination of tense relations between traditional collegiate fraternities and members of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (with its student league, NSDStB), the series of public demonstrations began on this day in 1935 at the University of Heidelberg directed against the leadership of Adolf Hitler. While many student groups had expressed views aligned with Nazi ideals and outlook, many university associations were targeted as elitist and counter-revolutionary, their self-administration and hierarchy (see also) as contrary to the Führer principle of Gleichschaltung. The rally began when members of the Corps Saxo-Borussia gathered at a local student pub, Seppl, to heckle a radio re-broadcast of Hitler’s “Friedensrede” (Peace Speech, stating that they only sought to build up marine forces to the level of thirty-five percent of that of British naval tonnage). Though excused for their riotous behaviour after an apology, the same fraternity, emboldened by being let off easy and press coverage, the same fraternity provoked patrons further with harsher criticisms during an asparagus dinner at the guesthouse Hirschgasse (a popular hangout), and saw their organisation immediately banned with members subject to expulsion and senior leaders arrested. Portrayed as reactionary and bourgeois, fraternities were dissolved later in the summer and reformation outlawed.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: countries shifting to fare-free mass transit, inherited learning, graphic designer Reagan Ray, artist Josef Albers plus the movie posters of Bill Gold

eight years ago: DC’s boundary stones, drone photography, superlative new species plus scientist Clair Cameron Patterson

nine years ago: a class-action lawsuit against the Devil, Venice of the North, shock graphics for cigarette packs plus a visit to Glastonbury

ten years ago: more links to enjoy