First heard on NPR’s news quiz Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, we learned that over the weekend, police in Wisconsin searched a vehicle with an individual with a warrant out for their arrest—after a drug-sniffing dog gave authorities probable cause. Iconically they found various paraphernalia, a loaded gun, an amount of fiat currency and cocaine in a bag labeled ✨Definitely Not a Bag Full of Drugs✨. The driver and passenger were arrested for possession and as a felon with with a firearm. The photograph of confiscated evidence also features a dice bag used for role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, which should definitely not be considered criminal behaviour especially in the home state of Gary Gygax. It does, however, seem like a scoff-law move not to have stashed their everyday-carry in the more iconic (though possibly more obvious) Crown Royal bag.
The Canadian blended whisky introduced on the occasion of the visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1939 as the first reigning monarchs to visit North America, the purple velvet satchel with golden draw-strings has been part of the brand’s identity ever since and is a genuinely useful object to have handy—and I’ll admit to buying some Crown Royal just to have one around in case of need. One can also order personalised bags from the distillery or request a care-package—so packaged—send to troops abroad.
Wednesday, 16 July 2025
police procedural (12. 584)
Thursday, 12 June 2025
11x11 (12. 529)
somewhere beyond the barricade, is there a world you long to see: Reuters’ delivers a deadpan juxtaposition of Trump’s attendance at a showing of Les Misรฉrables just after sending in the US marines to quell demonstrations
๐ฉ: defecation syncope and other perils of pooping
renascidos: a cosplay parenting craze with hyperrealistic dolls has captivated Brazil, prompting some legislation against their appearance in public

artek: the upcoming centenary of Crimea’s famed Soviet youth camp that once hosted Samantha Smith—see also
have you tried clearing your cache: a concept artist with a reputation for the mischievous develops a dating website based on harmonious browsing history
pomp and circumstance: a preview of Trump’s grand military parade to be held this weekend—previously
more cow bell: artist Margareta Sarvana performs the Schalger song Itke en lemmen tรคhden (Nur nicht aus Liebe weinen) on a Swedish variety show in 1973—via Pasa Bon!
the schwatz awakens: a preview trailer of the Space Balls sequel to premier in 2027, when Mel Brooks turns 101
simple article summaries: Wikipedia suspends an experiment that would display AI generated synopses after editor and contributor opposition
i’m michael barbaro, see you tomorrow: California governor Gavin Newson interviewed by the New York Times on Trump’s ICE raids
synchronoptica
one year ago: counting crows (with synchronoptica), a Minoan archaeological discovery, emotion-cancelling technology, Trump’s revenge agenda plus assorted links to revisit
seven years ago: internet freedom index, more movies scripted by AI, Reagan tells Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall (1987) plus a meeting of Dear Leaders
eight years ago: memory holes, courtroom sketch artists, waste-water popsicles, mobility and mobile devices plus a surrogate social network
nine years ago: Citigroup tries to copyright the word Thanks, carbon sequestration plus more on the Trump travel ban
ten years ago: Erasmus and free-will, more links to enjoy plus Jung and Freud
Wednesday, 28 May 2025
voice writers (12. 494)
Having known just a little about the development and integration of closed-captioning technology, we really appreciated this fascinating deep dive from Radio Lab into its history and struggle for equal access that followed, with accommodation, advances in hardware and software, representation and mandates all intertwined and informing one another, concluding with a reflection on how the process is being automated with artificial intelligence and how in training the machine, we ourselves are transformed through the collaboration. Of course the story didn’t end with triumph of accessibility through the above first demonstration, as the advances for the hearing impaired community were not widely accessible: most programming was not captioned and for those that were an expensive decoder was required as a television peripheral. The situation gradually improved and after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, TV sets were required to include closed captioning technology and all broadcasts were mandated to include subtitles. A workforce of thirty thousand transcriptionists were at work to capture all stations’ content and in order to reach all of the growing market with the rise of cable programming, institutions providing the service turn to emerging voice recognition systems. These early versions were too bug-prone to be useful, especially for realtime applications and failed to keep pace with live dialogue, seizing up at the slightest accent. Researchers, however, discovered that they were more responsive and accurate with the voices of the trial participants, and soon one devised helping the computer by reading back the words in a steady, well-enunciated manner that it could manage. A team of voice writers across the States repeated scripted shows and news reports as they were aired and achieved a pretty good level of fidelity by 2003. Even with only their master’s voice, the programme still had its shortcomings and the voice writers developed a code of substitute words to clear up homophones and short prepositions, for example: echoing, “She has tootoo daughters inly college comma tootaloo period” would yield the yield the desired text, “She has two daughters in college, too.” Two decades on, the software has advanced to the point where it can transcribe instantly without the help of an interpreter and is improving with AI refinements.
Thursday, 15 May 2025
8x8 (12. 460)
anachronymy: a shopping list of items, like pencil lead, that are technically misnomers but accepted by convention—see also
there were tears brimming on her azure peepers, and tremulous grief twister her kisser: choice lines from pulp fiction detective story author Robert Leslie Bellem—see previously
you’re all bilingual already even if you didn’t realise it before: polyglot professor addresses a high school assembly in studied Gen Alpha slang
danglers: many hanging gerunds only do harm with a feat of imagination—see also

it’s a breakthrough—one of them can speak: a human polyglot communicates with bonobos in their own language
five corpulent porpoises: vintage pronunciation drills for prospective BBC anchors, including “Penelope Cholmondely rasied her azure eyes from the crabbed scenario”
linguistic relativity: studies of comparative conceptual specialities suggest that some cultures do have more words for snow and lava
Wednesday, 14 May 2025
fishing in the night (12. 457)
Roman Mars’ 99% Invisible cross-posting the work of a colleague and regular contributor directs us to a rather fascinating listen that synthesises a multitude of developments in radio and broadcasting that first forecasts how the medium previsions the internet and the miracle of instantaneous, round the world communication taken for granted by our modern perspective and seemingly by many contemporaries as well. The follow-on season focuses on shortwave, ceded to the pioneering amateurs with authorities considering that band to be of minimal utility and wanting safeguard AM and FM frequencies for tactical and commercial purposes with the outbreak of war. With a limited range but higher fidelity, broadcasters built antenna towers for amplitude modulation transmissions, usually reaching perhaps a county-sized audience, however after dark, listening audiences sometimes caught snatches when tuning the dial to programmes from very far afield. A phenomenon well known to the HAM radio community (see above), the signal boost was caused by the ionosphere becoming less charged by sunlight and able to refract and reflect errant signals back to ground-based receivers. Their shortwave leavings, the hobbyists discovered, had an incredible global and antipodal range which spurred the collecting of calling cards. As knowledge spread that programming and news was not restricted nocturnally, many members of the public, equipped only with standard AM receivers and spent many evenings engaged in the title practice, leaving families to bemoan these squandered evenings with their casting for transmissions in their “radio shack.” Once the potential of this belittled band was realised day or night with the potential for a station to bound around the world and picked up by anyone tuned in, however, once again the enthusiast community—as is the case with modern surfing the web—found themselves sidelined and marginalised with more licensing and crackdowns on commandeering the public airwaves when governments reclaimed the bandwidth for propagandising.
Wednesday, 7 May 2025
spaghetti thriller (12. 437)
The cinephiles of the Flop House with a special guest deliver a very thoroughgoing treatment of the Italian murder-mystery film genre called giallo (the title an alternate native term) popular from the 1960s through the late 1970s—which although declined subsequently with other exploitation movies leaves a lasting legacy and influences in subsequent movements like slasher and supernatural narratives. Derived from a series of crime pulp novels published by the Milano-based Mondadori house who distinguished book themes by their cover colours, in this case yellow—including in their catalogue translated titles from Agatha Christine, whose And Then There Were None (originally called Ten Little Indians or Dieci piccoli indiani) was widely read and considered the template for the genre, laying out the essential elements later adopted by filmmakers of a killer hidden amongst a cast whose identity and motive are not revealed until the end—translated to the screen with psychosexual horror, an atmosphere of suspense, camp, lurid Technicolour, bombastic scoring (see previously here and here) and gratuitous violence. Suspiria is sometimes included for its stylistic similarities but rejected by purist for its supernatural character, though director Dario Argento made other films, with typically baroque and non-revealing titles, like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Four Flies on Grey Velvet, that are considered classic gialli.
Another interesting artefact was the prevalence of J&B scotch whisky in the films across the range of directors as a signifier of sophistication and manliness—Justerini and Brooks Ltd, founded in Bologna in 1749 and receiving a royal warrant to supply wine and spirits to the aristocratic households of London and later purveyors to hotels and restauranteurs. With shifting values, condemned as misogynistic, gialli fell out of favour but their later homage has occasioned a reevaluation of their consistent, if not indirect, message of the victims, almost exclusively women, not being listened to when airing their suspicions and fears. Be sure to listen to the podcast for expert movie recommendations.
Monday, 5 May 2025
the nightly (12. 433)
Via Nag on the Lake and Web Curios, we are directed to an internet radio station fronting a music appreciation society celebrating a selection the vintage, obscure, vaguely gloomy and positively atmospheric songs and film scores, chiefly from the 1930 to the 1970s with some real jewels from Italian and Japanese cinema. Moody but not maudlin, there are over four thousand titles in circulation and growing that are instantly transporting and transfixing, evoking the hard-scrabbling and noir, taking one to those liminal spaces and liminal hours.
Monday, 28 April 2025
10x10 (12. 420)
america’s war: a special report from the Verge for the fiftieth anniversary of the Fall of Saigon
leaflet: an Art Nouveau study of botanical forms and their application in decor—see previously
mangajin: an appreciation of the month English-language publication for students of Japanese language and culture—full archives from the entire run from 1988 to 1997 here
do: inspirational words from artist Sol LeWitt to fellow creative pioneer Eva Hesse
chisanbop: the Korean technique of fingermath
i have to push the pram a lot: Monty Python and the Holy Grail at fifty
animal spirits: what felines, bovines, porcines, etc on the label say about wine quality
you wouldn’t right-click a car: US anti-piracy campaign filled with hypocrisy, including a stolen font—see also
bus error collective: a WSIWYG primer on oscilloscope music—via Waxy
worst one-hundred days: assessments of Trump first months in office for his second term—more here and here
synchronptica
one year ago: Pennsylvania 6-5000 (with synchronoptica) plus naming world wars
seven years ago: a corollary to the Bechdel test plus a visit to Stockheim
eight years ago: archaeology with trace DNA, Islamic gateways plus responding to nuclear extortion
nine years ago: crowd control robots, language acquisition plus a hand-held DNA sequencer
ten years ago: visiting FDR’s Georgia retreat, ribald limericks, assorted links to revisit plus pontoon bridges to alleviate traffic congestion
Friday, 4 April 2025
8x8 (12. 365)
museum of now: This American Life invites us to sit with and reflect on the artefacts of day and hour
rift valley: a Trump appointed special envoy to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tiffany’s father-in-law, seeking to make a deal on mineral resources in hopes of securing peace with Rwandan rebels
fay wray: a swarm of drones recreate the iconic scene of King Kong scaling the Empire State building
toast malone: a short clip of the singer performing Circles, animated on one hundred thirty-three slices of bread
altair 8800: a retrospective of Microsoft at fifty
the bronx is up and the battery’s down: new NYC subway map is an homage to an early digrammatic version
blanket non-fraternisation policy: US bans government personnel stationed in China from forming relationships with locals
national endowment for the humanities: US museums, libraries and archives see their grants terminated—see previously
Monday, 31 March 2025
meet me by the fountain (12. 352)
First spotted by Nag on the Lake, we really enjoyed this expanded preview of a documentary about a group of eight people who built a secret apartment inside a mall in Providence, Rhode Island and were residents there for nearly four years from 99% Invisible after having watched the colossal structure slowly come together—with cautious optimism that this development might revitalise the state capital’s downtown but encountered increasing horror as construction began to swallow up everything around it, including the home of the plan’s future leader. They found a neglected entryway that led to a hidden cavity within the building and slowly, at first as an art project, began smuggling in furniture and materials to convert the space and felt vindicated for using this empty and forgotten room just as the developers had left no inch unclaimed as Providence Place was coming together. The remainder of the episode is devoted to an equally fascinating discussion on the origin of the mall, with Victor Gruen (previously here and here) wanting to recreate the community feeling of Vienna’s Altstadt for American suburbia and keep shoppers engaged and captive, a surrogate downtown with all the amenities, ample parking and perfect weather, the rise and decline and near demise of the consumer institution and pastime, its causes and while it’s not quite dead.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Imperial Airways (with synchronoptica) plus more on leap-seconds
seven years ago: artist Kvฤta Pacovskรก
eight years ago: reusable booster rockets plus the vice president requires a chaperone
nine years ago: a collection of Ouija boards plus vanishing languages reincarnated as music
ten years ago: medieval machines of war plus ancient automata
Thursday, 27 March 2025
9x9 (12. 340)
us agency for global media: Voice of America director files lawsuit over ordered closure—a federal judge issues a temporary stay
pecksniffian paragraph: Trump as a Dickens’ stock character over his sermonising on transgender military service members
entomological adultery: the 1912 Cameraman’s Revenge painstakingly animated by Wลadysลaw Starevicz
the memes have entered the chat: the internet responds to Signalgate (aka whiskeyleaks)
arts dรฉcoratifs: rediscovering Betty Joel, Britain’s forgotten maven of Art Deco design—part of a centenary celebration of the movement—see previously
the population of an old pear tree: an 1870 work by Belgian author Ernest van Bruyssel celebrating biodiversity and insect life
import/export: ahead of the planned tariff action for 2 April “Day of Liberty” Trump announces twenty-five percent duties on foreign cars and components, triggering retaliation
are you sure ms kerger—because he is red: NPR and PBS testify before congress with its federal funding at stake—see previously
synchronoptica
one year ago: anatomised police lineups (with synchronoptica), assorted links to revisit, a classic from U2 plus a Nordic Easter witch
seven years ago: the dynamic Cosmos, more links to enjoy plus Everything’s Coming Up Simpsons
eight years ago: backmasking and the Satanic panic, the show with the mouse plus the Bombay Sapphire distillery
nine years ago: Easter greetings, revisiting the Leipzig Panometer plus a canting dialect
ten years ago: Holy Blood, Holy Grail, even more links, poet Paul Verlaine plus affecting a holiday accent
Saturday, 22 March 2025
joak (12. 330)
On this day in 1925, after a concerted government effort to subsidise the nascent technology following the successful, pioneering launch of KDKA in 1920 out of Pittsburgh, radio broadcasting began with the announcement of the above call letters for station identification from a studio Tokyo, a simulcast with transmitters in Osaka and Nagoya. The inaugural programme featured a live performance by the naval band and a recording of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio. Early broadcast included educational lessons, coverage of baseball games and radio calisthenics—see previously.
Friday, 7 March 2025
10x10 (12. 283)
subwoof: opening of Star Trek: The Next Generation but with the theme coming from the ship
sudoku: unsolvable sliding fourteen-fifteen wooden puzzles
frame-by-frame: experimenting with 3D printing to achieve a stop-motion animation effect
anglish: English without the influence of Romance languages
dead letter office: Denmark’s postal service to end delivery of letters, citing a ninety percent decline in volume
oddly compelling: underground comics and Kitchen Sink Press
rebel with a clause: the self-styled den mother of grammarians sets up a table for language advice
edelweiรpiraten: a look at the loosely organised youth group that opposed Nazi Germany—via Strange Company
๐➡️: revisiting an appreciation of how Flash influenced gaming history—via Boing Boing
cue ro laren drop: a library of audio sweeps, intros, outros and transitions for podcasters—via Web Curios
Wednesday, 5 March 2025
the man in black (12. 279)
Courtesy of our faithful chronicler, we learn that on this day in 1953, whilst stationed in West Germany Air Force staff sergeant Johnny Cash in Landsberg am Lech (which also hosted the detention facility where Hitler was incarcerated following the abortive Beer-Hall Putsch in 1921 and on the 1933 anniversary of the National Socialist party’s ascendancy in the Reichstag) was likely the among the first to learn about the death of revolutionary leader Joseph Stalin outside of the Soviet inner political circle. The General Secretary of the Communist Party had suffered a stroke a few days earlier and succumbed whilst recuperating in his dacha after extensive medical intervention (probably of a brain haemorrhage) and not announced to the public immediately and possibly disclosed due to this interception. Monitoring coded radio communiques, Cash broke the news through his chain of command to Eisenhower after the message was deciphered. Aside from this important intercept that penetrated the highest echelons of the regime, the balance of Cash’s three year tour was isolating and uneventful, leading to a formation of a band called the Landsberg Barbarians (a play on Bavarians) that played during off duty hours in local venues and saw the inspiration and development of such signature songs as “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Hey Porter.”
Friday, 28 February 2025
foley artist (12. 265)
Via Web Curios, we are directed to a creative individual from the Sunday Sites social and coding club who spent an afternoon recording various audio samples, footfalls, creaking hinges, thumps, ticking and general din and dropped them in, mostly unheard, into a programme with an embedded player for each to produce a wall of sounds, landscaped according to the visitor’s choices. With some tweaking, replaying on a loop that gets richer and fuller the more one adds, one can create a unique sculpture from these isolated fragments in concert.
synchronoptica
one year ago: predictions for 2024 (with synchronoptica)
seven years ago: a robotic crew member aboard the ISS plus Three Thousand Years of Art
eight years ago: a monumental civil engineering plan for Amsterdam plus outtakes from DJ Moby
nine years ago: more probable time travellers plus eradicating all mosquitos
ten years ago: a table-top photo studio, knitted fashions plus a disgraced anchorman
Wednesday, 12 February 2025
8x8 (12. 227)
patch barracks: military families boo and heckle defence secretary during a whistle-stop visit in Stuttgart en route to the Munich Security Conference

yrjรถ kukkapuro: a tribute to the pre-eminent Finnish furniture designer
crossing a line: Timothy Snyder on hurtling towards authoritarianism—via Kottke
agnotology: an encore episode on the study of wilful ignorance
mรฅke califรธrnia great รฆgain: US imperial aspirations prompt counter offers ranging from the serious to satirical
ใถ: the nuances of definite article in article-less and uninflected Japanese language
cultural moments: under pressure from anti-DEI diktats, Google removing Black History Month and Pride from its calendars—though the decision will not impact the daily Doodle
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
we have this unelected fourth, unconstitutional branch of government (12. 225)
Journalists from the Associated Press were barred from attending an Oval Office event, a signing ceremony for yet another executive order—newsworthy for its magnitude and ineptitude—with Elon Musk in attendance to announce agency heads were to undertake preparations, working with DOGE to drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce after “billions and billions of dollars” in fraud, waste and abuse had been uncovered, for not referring as the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in its syndicated articles, and reporters would continue to be excluded from the White House press pool until such time as wire service aligns its language with that of Trump’s. An EO banning the use of paper straws in federal facilities was also signed. Several news organisations have rallied to the AP’s defence, saying that the president cannot dictate reporting or editing decisions. This follows other attacks against the press, including suits for supposed libel and deplatforming and banishing several outlets from the Pentagon, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN and NPR as well as threatening the same group’s broadcasting licenses over newsroom and network diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives characterised as promotion “invidious forms of discrimination” that will not be tolerated.
Monday, 3 February 2025
8x8 (12. 204)
de sneeuwpoopen van 1511: some historical, lost sculptures of snow and ice
mad man across the water: grim-triggers, bluffs and other tactics in game theory
mspaint: famously chonky pixel-editor with its own special aesthetic is getting an AI-infusion for some reason
letters from an american: Heather Cox’ somewhat becalming analysis of the DOGE Putsch
waterblasies: poaching and the illegal trade in southern African ornamental succulents
pulling back the curtain: DeepSeek’s open-source code may be the biggest step towards democratising the web since its inception
juice now worth the squeeze: pause on tariffs includes US concession to staunch the flow of guns to Mexico—see previously, see more
the air is on fire: revisiting David Lynch’s snowmen
Sunday, 19 January 2025
field recording (12. 192)
For COP16 held in Cali, Colombia back in October 2024, a team of scientist and musicians went an expedition to nature reserves across the country to sample the cries and calls of forty-one species of native birds, moneys and whales and transform the cacophony of animals sounds of one of the most biologically diverse places in the world into a natural version of the stirring national anthem, adapted from a 1850 poem set to music to celebrate the dissolution of Gran Colombia and the emergence of the independent nations of Colombia and Panama, whose lyrics unfortunately don’t reference this abundance of wildlife but do mention centaurs and the Battle of Thermopylae. Read more about its making and the environment of the host country from Smithsonian magazine at the link above.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Eastern European vintage animation (with synchronoptica) plus the passage of different units of time
seven years ago: surveying 1950s Americans about the Cold War, unfolding tweetstorms, US dispensaries making their own generic versions of drugs plus Brexit commemorate stamps
eight years ago: defeating an internet censorship bill but speech is still under assault, psychic warriors plus legislating and/or
nine years ago: teletext pages plus the carillon of Oslo’s city hall honours recently departed musicians
ten years ago: Marilyn Monroe building drones plus AI card tricks
Monday, 13 January 2025
8x8 (12. 176)
cryptobiosis: a nematode was reanimated when pulled out of the Siberia permafrost after forty-six thousand years
fresh air, town square: Mastodon is becoming a non-profit organisation—via Waxy

a sprained ankle on a country walk is allowable but you must not go very far beyond this: in praise of Jane Austin
hollywood hills: architects reckon with the scale of destruction from the Los Angles fires—more here
luthersadt eisleben: a horde of coins found hidden in a statue’s leg in the reformer’s home church
the joe rogan experience: Elizabeth Lopatto summarises the three-hour interview with Zuckerberg
™: Sweden’s attempt to copyright Sweden thwarted plus other assorted legal stupidity