conlang: fluency in Esperanto—see previously
122 CE: a colourful gate house installed at Hadrian’s Wall
the electric lucifer: the musical stylings of Bruce Haack
civic duty: a resonant “I Voted” sticker for Ulster County, New York
isochrone: an interactive map illustrates how far one can travel from any European train station in under five hours
la maison sculptรฉe: Jacques Lucas’ hand-sculpted home in Rennes
from zero to five thousand: the exponential growth in the discovery of exoplanets since 1991 until the present
Released on this day in 1991, Take That’s lead single from their debut album Take That & Party proved to be a critical and commercial failure. The accompanying music video that featured the bandmates cavorting about in states of various undress smearing one another with gelatine and custard hardly seemed promising (although garnering some notoriety due to its banning by the BBC from daytime airing) the boy band which would go on to dominate UK charts from their breakout in 1993 through 2011 and beyond.
To commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall eight months prior, Roger Waters of The Who joined The Scorpions, Cyndi Lauper, Sinรฉad O’Connor, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and others and held a concert on this day in 1990 in Potsdamer Platz—attended by some three hundred thousand spectators in person and telecast live around the world.
Premiering on this day in 1717 with great fanfare and accompanying the royal retinue of George I on a barge down the Thames from Whitehall to Chelsea, Georg Friedrich Hรคndel conducted a separate orchestral raft of about fifty musicians and their instruments to play the Water Music, three suites prefaced by an overture in the French style. Crowds lined the banks to join in and the event was reported by the Courant, London’s first daily, and the king was so pleased with performance, he requested no fewer than two encores during the four hour tour. One surmises that such quasi-public fรชtes were to help the aging king retain his relevance in relation to the charasmatic heir, George II.
featherbase: a consortium of ornithologists join their collections and make them freely accessible on-line—via Web Curios
cut-up technique: Artbreeder (previously) creates collages with your help—via Waxy
harry and the hitman: Oklahoma man pleads self-defence, claiming potential assailant had summoned a Bigfoot to kill him
deep scatter library: stellar cartography mapping a billion stars in the Milky Way
culmen > columna > compagna colonnella > coronnel > colonel: explore etymologies with this interactive tool from the creators of Interlinear Books and Language Hat
unsleeved: an exhibit on the art of the record cover and designer Alex Steinweiss
trainspotting: an obsessive database of European rolling stock—also via Web Curios
Released on this day in 2012 as the lead single off South Korea rapper eponymous sixth studio album, “Gangnam Style” (๊ฐ๋จ์คํ์ผ, previously) refers to the class and sophistication associated with the posh district of the city of Seoul—flag pictured. The K-Pop song and video started going viral by the following month, 
charting in more than thirty countries and the most “liked” video on the internet, reaching a billion views by year’s end. Holding the title of most viewed Youtube clip, it was overtaken in July 2017 by Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again.” The refrain “Oppan Gangnam style” (in a lyrical eggcorn admission, I always heard it as Rope ’Em) means Big Brother is tragically hip, insinuating that the genuinely fashionable would never need to proclaim it and is poking fun at posers. During the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the song was temporarily restricted from being play in a gymnasium setting due to its beats per minute exceeding the one-twenty BPM ceiling health authorities introduced to discourage people from becoming too energzed by the music and breath and more intensely. Once it surpassed two billion one hundred forty seven million four hundred eighty three thousand six hundred forty-seven (231-1, a Mersenne prime number whereas Mn = 2n-1) views, Youtube realised it needed to upgrade to sixty-four bit integers to store those counts.
Released in mid-June, the power ballad by Bryan Adams for the soundtrack to the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves topped the charts in the UK on this day in 1991 and remained at number one for an unprecedented sixteen consecutive weeks a record that still stands, and was an enormous success internationally in terms of sales and radio play. At the Academy Awards the following year, it won an Oscar for Best Original Song and, decades later, consistently tallies on soft rock countdowns.
Situated in a natural amphitheare in a shaded canyon just below the Hollywood Hills—a popular picnicking spot called “Daisy Dell” that also saw a number of outdoor performances and pageants, the 
Hollywood Bowl was officially opened on this day in 1922 with a concert by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Alfred Hertz, playing the overture from Richard Wagner’s Rienzi, der letzte der Tribunen (after the Edward Bulwer-Lytton novel of the same name—the author best known for his coinage of stock phrases like “the great unwashed masses,” “dweller on the threshold” and the opening “it was a dark and stormy night”), movements from Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, a selection of Hungarian Dances from Brahms, a suite from Peer Gynt and the overture from William Tell—regular theme tune fare from the perspective of this centenary. The distinctive arched proscenium—later remodelled due to acoustic problems—was first added in 1926.
carina nebula: first five subjects for JWST announced
a pharmacopeia with balneological appendix: a primer and point of departure for the mysterious pre-Renaissance volume, the Voynich Manuscript—see previously putt-putt for the fun of it: a time-capsule of miniature golf courses
trap daddy: spoof Russian history on Chinese Wikipedia introduces us to a catch-phrase for the deception hoax—see also, see previously
jubilee: inflexibility applied to finance and debt contributed to the downfall of the Roman Empire
spatter platters: morbid 1960s teen tragedy songs
hushed-tones: a neural network makes a nature documentary about ants
hudf: JWST takes deepest image of the Cosmos without even trying plus other space news briefs
did someone say beveragino: the rise of the hun culture and naff couture
to california and back again: more on the prolific, pioneering photographer Lora Webb Nichols (previously)—via Messy Nessy Chic
satanic panic: the enigmatic Guidestones monument (previously) in the US state of Georgia was demolished following blast
rats, sinking ship, you know the drill: a tranche of key minister and secretaries leave the Johnson government, demand his resignation
ฮผฮตฮปฮนฯฮถฮฌฮฝฮฑ: entrepreneurs from the island of Crete produce a promotional video to boost candied eggplant sales
shift happens: modifier keys and more on the history and development of keyboards, via Waxy
baade’s window: a selection of superlative photographs of the Milky Way for the Star Festival
Opening on this day in 1979 at the Volkstheater of Rostock, the collaboration between composer Horst Krรผger and author Waldtraut Lewin and featuring the musical talents of local amateur band Badister, Rosa Laub, was the first East German rock opera and played consistently from its premiere on to sold out houses. With book by Lewin, the show tells the story of young adult Karel, new in town, and waiting for his first love is attended by good luck and equipped with a blue motorbike called “Usambara” that can fly—whom eventually meets the titular flower-seller of his dreams.
el vehรญculo compartido: personal aerial shots by photographer Alex Cartagena in pickup truck beds reveal the hidden lives of day labourers off-duty
skate expectations: concrete sculptural parks by Amir Zaki—via Present /&/ Correct
rosรฉwave: a playlist from NPR to invoke relaxed summer afternoon vibes
press key when ready: the 1985 British children’s sci-fi series The Whizz
i am your atypical neighbour: in an exhibit, Her Window, artist Dayu Ouyang broadcasts bold statements from her bedroom’s view
hot slot: the escapingly small feasibility that Jeff Goldblum could have uploaded a computer virus to alien technology and win Independence Day plus other dei ex machinis
friend-shoring: reprioritising globalisation and a metallic NATO to ensure critical rare-earths supply chains are kept viable
a rising tide lifts all boats: laid out in a grid meant to resemble brain coral from above and protected by the sinking atoll, the Maldives is building an ingenious floating city that will rise with the oceans as perhaps a model for other threatened communities
Premiering in Baltimore on this day in 1944 before nation-wide release three days later, Billy Wilder’s (see previously) noir masterwork starred Fred MacMurray as an life insurance salesman and Barbara Stanwyck as a provocative housewife who conspire to murder the latter’s husband for the survivor benefit of his insurance policy, which has a clause that doubles the pay-out for freak accidents. Told in flashback, the score by Miklรณs Rรณszsa has a leitmotif of a running string tremolo to introduce the criminal activities of the partners against the husband.
stare decisis: the phrase “to stand by things decided,” the doctrine of affording preference to precedent is post-Classical Legal Latin
day at the beach: Ludwig Favre immerses himself at Brooklyn’s Coney Island—via Nag on the Lake
kunst und keksdose: the art vintage German biscuit tins tubeway army: Are ‘Friends’ Electric? by Gary Numan climbs to the top of the charts on this day in 1979
merrily, merrily, merrily: distinguishing dreams from waking
full-stop: Gertrude Stein and others on punctuation
hallux: Latin’s lack of distinction for fingers and toes—see also here and here
Apparently to universal acclaim with the vehicle and the venue raising no objection despite the collapse of crypto-currency and that non-fungible token handmaiden are the even better at uncovering the greater fool, established rappers Eminem and Snoop Dogg, in their Bored Ape Yacht Club avatars for the eponymous festival, premiered their new collaboration. What do you think? There are no words for these new heights of what used to be considered selling out and pandering. Reportedly an impersonator called Dupe Shogg showed up at the event unannounced complete with full escourt and entourage and attendees were a bit disappointed it was not the genuine article.
The debut single from by Berton Averre and Doug Fieger from the album Get the Knack was released on 
this day in 1979, quickly climbing to the top of the US charts where it remained for six weeks and achieving Gold status in the fastest time since “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in 1964. Inspiring muse and eventual girlfriend of Fieger, the titular Sharona Alperin was not only the subject of the song but also appears on the single-photo sleeve, recursively holding a copy of the record under her arm. Rhythmically similar to Smokey Robinson’s “Going to a Go-Go,” the number also features a stuttering vocal informed by Roger Daltrey’s “My Generation” for the Who and reportedly was a major influence on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” The song re-entered the charts in 1994 as part of the soundtrack to the film Reality Bites.
zhaocai: office cats in China face redundancy with startups closing
utterly buttery: an etymological lesson and childhood memory on oleomargarine
frisson: a group of neuroscientists compile an extensive playlist of chill-inducing musical tracks
blood sugar sex magik: chants delivered by Aleister Crowley (previously) preserved on a wax cylinder
umwelten: a new volume by Ed Yong explores the “self-centred world” (another Rรผckwanderer) of human and non-human animals
barn cats: felines at work at a creamery in Maine
The free four-day concert hosted in Pilton—the second Glastonbury festival, opened on this day in 1971 with the venue of a special Pyramid Stage, a one-tenth scale model of the one at Giza constructed of sheet metal and positioned over a water source discovered with dousing and was documented by filmmakers Nicolas Roeg and David Puttnam—released the following May. Performances included numbers by Melanie, David Bowie, Traffic, Fairport Convention, Tonto’s Expanding Head Band, Mighty Baby and Hawkwind.
midsommar: ten ways to celebrate the June Solstice—via Strange Company
madagascator projection: another look at mapping and bias—see previously
unai no tomo: an early twentieth century catalogue of Japanese toys
imago and eclosion: good pictures of a newly emerged swallowtail
you spin right round, baby, right round: the only way to play Weezer’s new singles is to become one’s own turn table—via Waxy
perovskites: research into making cheap but brittle photovoltaic technology sturdier to rival modern solar cells
