10x10 (12. 306)

i don’t belong here: reactions of first time listeners to Radiohead’s “Creep” 

auragraphs: a look at the psychic paintings of Flora Marian Spore, received visions from departed relatives—see previously  

overton window: why some find humour in embracing fascism—see also, see previously  

all in the wrist: a memorable mnemonic device for learning the carpal bones—see also  

i’m just gonna dance all night: a joyful behind the scenes peek at SNL writers’ room from a decade ago—via MetaFilter

orbital group: astronomers find Saturn has one-hundred twenty eight additional natural satellites

the pen is mightier than the sword: the end of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (previously) after forty-two years—via Miss Cellania

persona non grata: US state department expels the South Africa ambassador, buying into Musk’s false narrative of confiscating land from white plantation owners 

the medium is the message: Alan Turing and other Cambridge academics obsession with ghosts and spiritualism 

hootie & the blowfish: an oddly effective mashup with The Smiths

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronoptica), the first AI lab, Geoguessr savants plus serendipitous directories

seven years ago: The Inland Printer, Trump’s fabricated trade imbalances with China and Canada, the Anthropocene era’s golden spike plus more links to enjoy

eight years ago: embodiment and Singularity, LEGO tape plus Australian war time propaganda

nine years ago: more Liartown, USA, English as the official language plus Sir Thomas Moore

ten years ago: the Comic Code plus further crusading misadventures

u is for upper canada, where the poor slave have found rest after all his wanderings, for it is british ground (12. 302)

This 1846 hand-coloured primer was printed as an abecedary (see previously here and here) for the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Fair, authored and distributed by a pair of activist Quaker sisters, Mary and Hanna Townsend, realising that change could only be affected by including the young before they were inculcated otherwise with racist and oppressive ideas handed down. This volume was conserved and shared by the State of Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the whole alphabet, the rhyming couplets are reflective of the time and a bit paternalistic but worth reading, is showcased courtesy of Kuriositas at the link up top. I is the Infant, from the arms / Of its fond mother torn, / And, at a public auction, sold / With horses, cows and corn.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: a psychoanalytic board game (with synchronoptica), Pi Day plus assorted links to revisit

seven years ago: celebrating the life and achievements of Stephen Hawking, the Norwegian Porridge Feud plus more praise for Professor Hawking

eight years ago: Trump’s rentier economy, more links to enjoy plus the thawing of the tundra

nine years ago: six-plus decades of space exploration, the making of 2001 plus the statues of Dublin

ten years ago: Iceland drops its bid to join the euro-market, even more links to revisit plus the digital attention deficit

7x7 (12. 294)

wikiportraits: a group of photographers offering their services to furnish the free encyclopaedia with better celebrity images  

good enough: the rising phenomena of vibe coding, AI text-to-programming  

any one, any one: how US tariffs might play out—see more

march madness: a bracket face-off of the best literary villains 

stand up to a bully: a profile of Canada’s new prime minister, former governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney   

i’m using an exclamation point so you know i’m friendly and excited: email etiquette   

ask jeeves: the International Butler Academy of Simpelveld in Limburg

synchronoptica

one year ago: Marlo Thomas and Friends’ Free to be You and Me (with synchronoptica) plus a lightly edited royal portrait

seven years ago: propagandist Axis Sally 

eight years ago: toasting the newly discovered TRAPPIST exoplanet system

nine years ago: a moving McDonald’s ad plus odd British toponyms

ten years ago: more protests against refugees in Germany, assorted links to revisit, folk etymologies and false cognates plus recycling e-waste

kayfabe (12. 281)

Recently confirmed by the US senate as Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon (previously), professional wrestling promoter, is expected to receive orders to dismantle the department via executive order. Drafts of the directive attempts to justify its closure, citing that the institution since its establishment in 1979—in itself quite remarkable—has cost over a trillion dollars and netted only nominal improvement in literacy and numeracy and being overtaken by “radicals, zealots and Marxists,” and while federal funds only account for ten percent of the funding for public schools—with most institutions supported by local and state tax though department remittances targeted to aid the most disadvantaged communities and students with disabilities and help level the playing field. The cabinet-level department established by congress, split from the Department of Health and Human Services, under Carter oversees policy on financial aid, educational reform and school accreditation, including diploma mills like Trump University. The title refers to the suspension of disbelief employed in the WWF (World Wrestling Federation) that pugilists maintain in in staged events to maintain rivalries and relationships for the audience and to stay in character. Delays in publishing the order coincided with a pause on levying some tariffs of Mexico after stock market turmoil over the uncertainty.

eo 10924 (12. 269)

Established on this day by executive order from John F Kennedy and authorised by the US congress later in September, the Peace Corps is an independent agency of the federal government that trains volunteers and deploys them to local communities around the world to assist developing countries in health and environmental programmes, education, empowering women and the marginalised and making resilient polities that enshrine American values of democracy, free markets and entrepre-neurship, respecting local customs and norms by embedding participants with a command of the prevailing language and living under the same general conditions as their outreach group. Pitched as missionaries of democracy to provide technical advice and assistance, the Corps dispatched some nine hundred volunteers to fifty-two partner countries in its first year, Kennedy committed to its formation in the final days of his presidential campaign—realising the potential to genuinely help people in post-colonial Asia and Africa and counter stereotypes of US imperialism and hegemony—against his opponent Nixon who called the proposal a magnet for draft dodgers and a “cult of escapism.”

7x7 (12. 267)

dromedary: Ze Frank’s True Facts (previously) about the camel 

client state: secretary of defence Hegseth orders Cyber Command to halt Russian contingency planning  

baud: a pair of AIs code-switch once they realise that the humans aren’t part of the conversation  

rosmålning: the decorative doll houses of Amy Balfour—via Messy Nessy Chic 

pulmonic ingressive affirmative: the Gaelic Gasp or how the Irish inhale their yeses  

hydro integrator: Vladimir Lukyanov’s unique water computer designed in the 1920s to improve the durability of reinforced concrete 

musk or us: lessons from the ostracising of apartheid South Africa is a resonant learning moment lesson in how boycotts can overcome evil  

capri candela was some ginchy chick, daddy-o: Wilbur’s Place from Peter Gunn—see also

able was i (12. 262)

Courtesy of our faithful chronicler, we learn that the exiled Napoleon Bonaparte eluded his guards and escaped aboard a Sylphe-class brig of the French navy called the Inconstant, making his way back to the mainland on this day in 1815, having under the terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau been exiled to Elba less than a year before, conveyed there on the HMS Undaunted. Knowing the unpopularity of the King Louis XVIII, realising his family would not be joining him, not receiving the stipend promised and hearing rumours he was to be sent to a more remote location in the Atlantic, Napoleon plotted his return, amassing an army of followers. The banished emperor was not exactly a captive during his time on the Mediterranean island, with it designated as condition of his abdication as la principauté de l’île d’Elbe to be an independent principality “possessed by Bonaparte in complete sovereignty and as personal property”—until his death, at which point it would pass back to the Kingdom of Tuscany. Although eager to leave his villa in Portoferrario, aside from assembling an small army of loyalists, Napoleon during his short time there reformed the island’s legal and educational system, ordered the construction of roads, overhauled the nascent iron mining operations and improved agriculture.

9x9 (12. 257)

johnny 5: artificial intelligence and inkblot tests—see previously  

hop-on, hop-off: a new train route through Central Europe allows passengers to visit cities at their own pace  

boone and wesson: the disturbing trend of aggressive baby names in the US—see also, see previously—via Miss Cellania

sixth-tenths of a letter: the depth of natural history visualised as pages in a book  

ok boomer: Chinese netizens’ approach to uncomfortable questions is reply at random (一都乱会, everything is chaotic, xīqiè dōu shì hǔnluàn de) and defuse intergenerational conflict 

bluelights in the basement: RIP Roberta Flack  

protect & survive: Shades another post-apocalyptic UK mini-series in the vein of Threads and The Day After Tomorrow

express limited: a collection of Showa-era Japanese gate entry tickets, a unique surcharge of the train system 

integrated information theory: Richard Dawkins (previously) chats with AI, asks it is it conscious

wiktok (12.210)

Via Waxy and though not quite a surrogate for the curated From the Depths of Wikipedia, this little GitHub app is a nice way to randomise and rewild one’s palette, as opposed to existential doom-scrolling (a programming note…) by inviting one down rabbit holes of the free encyclopaedia and get lost in a daisy-chain of linkages. Click on the logo or refresh for a new article and share what you’ve learned. It seems like I’ve run across a lot of the chance entries beforehand—or at least have a tangential affinity for them having spent a lot of time exploring on the site, a cause certainly worthy of a donation, if you can afford to show your appreciation.

humanity’s last exam (12. 186)

Like the Voight-Kampff test, this standardised benchmark, created by some of the most astute philosophers is an escalating fight to stay ahead of AI to afford proctors a purchase on some sort of vanishing Turing test—especially against a backdrop of artificial intelligence making advances on graduate-level, multidisciplinary questions, raising the prospect that the machines are quickly approaching the limits of humanity’s ability to gauge and compare its progress and ability. The resulting quiz, with samples that not only imply to a degree teaching to the test and priming answers that people want to hear, has some three thousand questions, vetted and juried by academic panels, and whilst not timed, is completed in seconds by the world’s most powerful models. The battery of questions have correct answers—and perhaps it might be more interesting to pose the unknown or drill into what they get wrong in over-confident albeit novel ways, mindful of the risk of our own gullibility and misdirection which is certainly baked into solutions—and underscores the problem of jaggedness, inconsistency in AI’s abilities to tackle basic questions and the flowchart of prompts for better or worse outcomes and the difference between acing an exam and being a practising professional doing maths, physics, medicine or governance.

13x13 (12. 185)

embossed: turn of the century tactile teaching aids for the visually impaired for lessons on nature and geography  

lab-leak theory: US Central Intelligence Agency embraces controversial vector for COVID-19 pandemic, discounting zoonosis factors 

ghostwatch: the supernatural horror BBC mockumentary broadcast on Halloween (see also) 1992 and never shown again due to the panic it elicited  

sb593: Oklahoma legislature introduces bill to “restore moral sanity” and criminalise production, distribution and possession of adult material—see previously 

minimoog: a fully-functional analogue synthesiser in LEGO  

haptics and macros: an idea to add gait gestures to one’s smart phone—we can hardly do the right kind of fake kick to open the rear hatch on our car 

mox nix: language borrowings from German propagated by US and UK soldiers stationed there post WWII  

electric garden: a run-down lodge transformed into a living museum mapchat: interact with AI shopkeepers for local businesses—results may vary 

wassergöttin: prehistoric figurine from the Hallstadt culture found in 2022 in Lower Franconia goes on display at the Bavarian State Archaeological Museum in München  

walk without rhythm and you won’t attract the worm: graboids—see also—the other in-jokes that Tremors leans into  

underrepresentation: as part of order to eliminate DEI programmes, US Food and Drug Administration curbs clinical trials aimed at diverse populations for cancer research 

 switchmen: the sign language of railroad workers

lapidary capitalis (12. 176)

Aptly illustrated with this calligram of the she-wolf who nursed Romulus and Remus—via Pasa Bon!, we are referred to project ARETE (ἀρετή, the concept of excellence in any field—the ‘polity van’ used for sanctioned field trips of my college had the license plate H ARETH, with the proper article and transliteralisation) from the University of Applied Sciences of Potsdam of a visual and interactive study in the network of influences, interventions and inscriptionsthat led to the genesis of Roman Capitalis to Antiqua and Grotesk font families and how manuscripts continued to inform the look of typefaces even after the printing press came into being in the West, injecting a typographical angle into scholarly discourse. Each font sampler has extensive details on its provenance and how it relates to other points of inflection.

crash course (12. 171)

This is ghoulish and possibly what’s in store for the American educational system, its department defunded and tasked with eliminating itself and focused on removing all trace of guilt or bad feelings from school curricula (getting rid of critical race theory—as the MAGA party understands it, see previously here and here)—and other fields of study to preserve the pride of white Christian settlers and their ilk): via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links, we learn that a Utah-based edutainment start-up has summoned up an AI emulation of diarist Anne Frank, murdered at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp aged fifteen in 1945. Not only does the experience to be marketed to young pupils have the uncanniness of a tireless, overly accommodating docent and is unconscionably disrespectful to her memory and other victims, it gets biographical information incorrect and seems with some prodding to twist one of Frank’s more famous quotes, “in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart,” as a directive to deflect blame for the Holocaust on the Nazis. School districts seem quick to adopt these models with no regard for the philosophical implications, educational value (it seems rather antithetical to the entire lesson) or whether or not educators have any input or remedy for what such avatars dispense.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (with synchronoptica), artist Iris Wildros plus an art artefact

seven years ago: more colour stories, ecological treats plus Dr Seuss’ commercial work

eight years ago: Trump to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, famous songs using borrowed tunes, global Hyper Loops plus American Carnage 1.0

nine years ago: the Mind Expanding programme of Hans-Rucker Co 

ten years ago: Euro/USD parity plus ageing and rejuvenation

pangram (12. 170)

In recreational and trivial mathematics, a pandigital number is value that uses its digits at least once (usually without redundancy), the first of which in base ten radix is 1 023 456 789 (one billion, twenty-three million, four hundred sixty five thousand seven hundred eight nine) and chiefly have applications in fiction and commercial advertising to display a sample credit card or identification document or phone number—reserved in many cases so they are associated with any real individual. The smallest number in Roman numerals is 1444—that is, MCDXLIV. A pandigital number in base thirty-six notation (heexatrigesimal) would use all numbers and all letters—except zero. Despite their non significant nature in terms of maths, they do possess some interesting and unexpected properties, such as the zeroless palindromic pandigital number 12345678987654321 is the square of 111111111—called a repunit—that is a number with only one digit.

syzygy (12. 167)

Given sufficiently clear and dark skies, one can avail oneself of a rare treat in the heavens tonight when six planets will appear to be in alignment. Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Venus and Saturn all visible, mostly to the unaided eye or with the help of a good pair of binoculars, not actually queued up but along the elliptical disk of the Solar System and happen to be on the same same side of the Sun as us, not in a straight line as in the case of opposition or eclipse but as a great arc as their orbits are only inclined by a few degrees. Time and Date had been a go-to source for me for calculating duration and day-count in between two dates but failed to appreciate that it also features a real-time planetarium based on one’s location as a tool to anticipate the rise of the worlds. If you can’t make this one, you get a second chance on the last day of February with Mercury joining in. Coming from the title from the Greek συζυγία or yoking together, this apparent astronomical union poses no threat to the Earth with a supposed collective gravitational tug (actual oppositions of the inner planets occur about every forty years and have no deleterious effects), as rumoured now and back in March of 1982 when an invisible Pluto made the count that would cause greater incidents of seismic activity or increase pressure on the Sun and result in sunspots and solar flares, with (for those counting) the next such grand lineup, albeit staggered, scheduled for 19 May 2161.

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: Saturday Night Fever (with synchronoptica), a stochastic parrot plus assorted links to revisit

seven years ago: a minister of loneliness plus Project Crested Ice (1968)

eight years ago: Trump’s inaugural speech was not lifted from the Bee-Movie though it seemed plausible, more on the Europe right-wing plus speculation about a 2020 Zuckerberg candidacy

nine years ago: telephone booths as private raves plus more rogue exoplanets discovered

ten years ago: threat-com levels raised plus artist Rob Gonsalves

the garden of forking paths (12. 180)

Via tmn, we were thoroughly engrossed with this glossary of terms, under development, that account for why knowing things is hard, which emulates the scholarship, didacticism and style of Samuel Johnson’s 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language, and covers an extensive list of rhetorical devices and biases (see previously) that we’ve touched on before—also presenting a wealth of new ones. For instance, there is Brandolini’s Law which governs the burden of proof principle of bullshit asymmetry, recognising that the effort needed to refute misinformation is an order of magnitude than was spent to create it, the autobiographical heuristic, which appends themes in a work to the author’s experience rather than assuming it was something handed down or imagined (see also euhemerism), goropising—citing a discredited hypothesis, after Dutch linguist Johannes Goropius Becanus’ strange thoughts on etymology, and testis unus, testis nullus, that the uncorroborated account of a single person should be treated with scepticism. Much more from Book and Sword at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Unwort of the Year (with synchronoptica) plus Happy Days (1974)

seven years ago: the collectibility of Fiji mermaids

eight years ago: neural networks and arcade games, Flemish proverbs, Dorothy Lange’s photographs of Japanese internment camps plus mapping Trump world

nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus Nitrate Divas

ten years ago: a novel from Jo Walton about a time-travelling Athena plus early wireless telephony

constitiuent political entity (12. 167)

We enjoyed this rather mind-blowing rundown of singular and obscure facts about each of America’s fifty states, trivia that stands out as improbable and due to the absence of citations (helpfully there are timestamps with smooth transitions that index each), though apparently one-hundred percent, unequivocally true, nonetheless compels one down rabbit holes, like for Nebraska’s standout detail (do you know anyone from there? A work colleague introduced herself with “I’ll bet you’ve never met anyone from Nebraska”) in the village of Monowi, supposedly named after an unidentified Native American term of wildflower for their profusion, which is the only incorporated area in the US with one resident, differential privacy enacted for the 2020 census reported that the population had doubled but this was confirmed to be a form of noise, a buffer to protect the privacy of an easily identifiable individual. The sole resident, mayor and chief librarian maintains the five-thousand volume collection of her late husband and it her capacity as the municipal government, has granted herself a liquor license to operate a tavern for passers-through on the premises. What’s your home state’s niche fact? Which one is your favourite? The array of geographical expanses were also interesting and counterintuitive. The video presentation is thirty-minutes and fifty seconds long, referencing the number of the original colonies and the number of states. Let’s hope they give this treatment to the EU next.

8x8 (12. 147)

black swan event: futurist forecast a host of unpredictable geopolitical scenarios for 2025—via the New Shelton wet/dry  

it’s schoolhouse rocky—that chip off the block—of your favourite schoolhouse, schoolhouse rock: a rather incredible thrift store find of Smash Mouth’s Steve Harwell performing some numbers from the educational cartoon series—see previously  

paraiso de los gatos: the art of Remedios Varo  

to unalive or not unalive: the resurgence of the term was prompted by a way to get around advertiser blacklists with euphemisms—see more  

reboot: the Landauer Limit, thermodynamics and more efficient computing—see also  

post-scarcity, post-singularity: it’s still easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism—via Duck Soup 

the eagle & child: Oracle’s Larry Ellison has purchased the Oxford pub frequented by Tolkien and C S Lewis—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest  

the year that was and wasn’t: The Morning News interviews some of their favourite journalists about the most and least important stories and trends of 2024—see also the dumbest timeline

pomega (12. 142)

Via Clive Thompson’s latest Link Fest, we are introduced to another chaotic twin of π called ϖ—from the above script variant of pi, also called varpi—that represents the transcendental mathematical constant ratio of the perimeter to the diameter of Bernoulli’s lemniscate, analogous to the way pi defines a circle. The foci of the elliptical plane are equidistant in this figure which has applications in orbital mechanics (see previously). The curve having a shape similar to a figure 8 or the infinity symbol, ♾️, is from the Latin for something bedecked with hanging ribbons and occur in nature as often as the perfect circle. Much more from John Carlos Baez at Mathsodon at the link above.

𝝎 = 360° sin 𝛗 / day (12. 139)

Devised by observing a lathe demonstrating an unexpected but explainable gyroscopic effect, physicist Léon Foucault first constructed his eponymous pendulum in the basement of his home on this day in 1851, bringing the experiment to the public a month later at the Meridian of the Paris Observatory. Allowing observers to conclude from the change in the plane of oscillation of a heavy weight over time the rotation of the Earth, and showing that at latitudes other than the equator the displacement of each cycle (best viewed on a very big set up) progresses relative to the turning of the Earth throughout the diurnal period. Though a long established fact that the Earth revolved, Foucault’s experiment was proof easily attainable and not necessitating watching for the minute movements of the stars and planets, rather elegantly showing that the Earth moves beneath the fixed and motionless pivot point.   Such demonstrations have become popular installations at universities and museums around the world—see one in action here from a dedicated live webcam.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus Jim Henson’s custom car

seven years ago: Memento Mori, deep dreaming, Communist era interiors plus Trump’s minders

eight years ago: saccadic masking, book-culling algorithms, more links to enjoy plus literary-inspired resolutions

nine years ago: even more links

ten years ago: the last man on the Moon plus food pyramids and fad-diets