pontifex maximus (12. 401)

After a reign of thirteen years and recently overcoming a serious bout of double-pneumonia, Pope Francis has passed away from a stroke at the age of 88. Having recovered and returning to a full schedule which included a busy Holy Week and a public Easter mass just the day prior, the first leader of the Catholic church from Latin America and first member of the Jesuit order elected to the office, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, taking the regnal name in tribute to Francis of Assisi, throughout his life and career—quickly rising in the ranks though hierarchy did not seem to matter much to him, archbishop of Buenos Aires and created a cardinal and thus papabile by John Paul II in 2001—his pontificate was characterised by personal humility and a focus on mercy, too progressive for some, particularly the conservative and regressive American church with his support of immigrants, environmental stewardship and strong condemnation of nationalist politics and whilst promising failed to deliver for many liberal congregants who welcomed Francis’ message of inclusion for the LGBTQ+ community, the divorced and recalcitrant and expanded roles of women in governance, failing short of doctrinal change. Francis, however, was transformative for the institution, leaving a legacy of like-minded appointees who may one day be able to affect the reforms that he began, eschewing clericalism and authority, saying the Church’s shepherds should “smell of sheep.” Francis willed he be interned in an unadorned grave outside the Vatican proper in the cemetery of Santa Maria Maggiore with a simple headstone bearing only Franciscus. During the sede vacante until the papal conclave, the Irish-American prelate Kevin Farrell, camerlengo, master of the household, will act as regent of the Holy See. The pope chose the motto Miserando atque eligendo, lowly but chosen, from the homilies of the Venerable Bede glossing on St Matthew’s writings on vocation and service.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica), David Lynch’s pavilion for Milan Design Week, Footloose plus Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue

seven years ago: North Korean nuclear capabilities plus a visit to Neustädtles

eight years ago: more links to enjoy, revisiting Paradise Lost plus IKEA’s emergency relationship stations

nine years ago: the Queen’s birthday, dirty money plus the heckler’s veto

eleven years ago: in the flow

9x9 (12. 391)

field of vision: the evolution of eyes branching out as on a tree of life   

land-grant college: the federal-funding based model for American post-secondary education is based on a deliberate post-World War II decision to outsource expertise and experimentation rather than compartmentalise it within government consortia  

habeas corpus: relenting to the idea that some people have no rights is siding with authoritarianism and hoping you aren’t next   

under construction: transform any modern website a late 90s GeoCities masterpiece—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest   

thank you easter bunny—bwak, bwak: more on the controversial, re-constructed, retcon of the holiday mascot 

⌂: the tiny house in the middle of IBM’s eight-bit character set, adopted by PC clones with the 1981 Code Page 437—see previously—and its possible relation to Blissymbolics 

rinki-tink in oz: deportation and administrative oversight in L Frank Baum’s paracosm   

uniwersytet latający: US institutions higher education can defy Trump’s crackdown by outreach and going underground, as Polish universities did under Communism—via Kottke   

recaptcha: corvids demonstrate surprising mental acuity for identifying outlier shapes and geometric regularity—via MetaFilter

synchronoptica

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

seven years ago: US refusing Syrian refugees, American kakistocracy plus some local prehistory

eight years ago: bunking busting bombs, the White House Easter Egg Roll plus a grim future vision of US national parks

nine years ago: animated viruses, solar sails, more chatbot failures plus a walk from Wiesbaden to Mainz

eleven years ago: Ukrainian break-away republics

 

11x11 (11. 625)

indemnity clause: a look at the exactingly detailed Sanborn maps created for US insurance firms in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries 

unseen persia: thousands of historic photographs of Iran during the Qajar dynasty leaked on-line from the archive of the Golestan Palace  

sweet thing: Chaka Khan’s debut Tiny Desk performance  

bahía de cochinos: Russian warships on drill visit Cuba  

doubly-disambiguated bishop non-capture statemale: a vlogger tries to categorise the rarest chess moves  

transponder: wood proves surprisingly durable material in space as agencies plan to launch experimental satellites, like ships on the high seas—via the Linkfest  

1337: a pretty exhaustive list of English words that can be spelled on a calculator turned upside down  

hollywood canteen: a fond farewell to Janis Page, recently departed at 101  

the brannock device: a better shoe-sizer based on the barley corn  

gallus gallus domesticus: photographer recreates exacting portraits of Edo-era Ito Jakuchu’s studies of chickens—via Nag on the Lake  

geochron: the incredible restoration of 1960s analog, electromechanical world clock and map

give us barabbas (11. 457)

Via Miss Cellania, we are directed to the rather compelling 1961 biblical epic (overshadowed by others in the genre) directed by Richard Fleischer for Dino De Laurentiis’ studio, originally cast for Yul Brynner in the title role, portrayal of the thief chosen by the crowd over Jesus to the be pardoned and released by provincial governor Pontius Pilate, as a Passover custom, went to Anthony Quinn with supporting roles by Arthur Kennedy, Ernest Borgnine and Jack Palance and expands on the life of the reformed recidivist after the Crucifixion (filming timed to take advantage of an actual solar eclipse that took place on 15 February in the year of the debut) who is only mentioned in passing in the gospels. Upon release and returning to his compatriots, still a sceptic, Barabbas is disappointed and frustrated to discover that his girlfriend has become a convert—stoned to death later in Jerusalem for evangelising. Feckless and devastated by the loss following his reprieve, Barabbas returns to his life of crime and when a botched attempt on a caravan goes awry, Barabbas throws himself at the mercy of the authorities and is condemned to toil in the hellish sulphur mines of Sicily for the rest of his existence. Chained to a Christian slave that at first resents Barabbas was spared over Christ but over the years of their sentence—eventually curtailed by an earthquake that causes the tunnels to collapse killing all the slaves except the two companions—became friends and return to Rome, via the gladiatorial route to freedom. With suspected sympathies and guilt by association, Barabbas is imprisoned with other Christians, including Peter the Apostle, rounded-up and incarcerated en masse, accused of having set fire to the city under the rule of Nero and charged with arson, were summarily executed by crucifixion.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the flags of Antarctica plus a special air raid all clear message

two years ago: a NATO expansion (2004) plus omissions in the presidential daily diary

three years ago: assorted links to revisit, Casa Sperimentale plus California cults

four years ago: a record high for the Dow Jones index (1999), Bulgarian postal cancellation stamps,  a GI*Joe reboot plus fashion-enforced social distancing

five years ago: more links to enjoy, satirical job titles that are probably real ones now plus Brexit is going swimmingly

påskhäxa (11. 455)

Via Messy Nessy Chic, we are reminded (see previously) of the Swedish and Finnish legend of the Easter witches who fly off to Blockula (Blåkulla, cognate with Blocksberg or the Brocken in the Harz mountains and host to a similar congress) to meet the Devil on the night between Holy Wednesday (Dymmelonsdag, also known as Spy Wednesday to mark the bargain of Judas and his betrayal of Jesus’ whereabouts) and Maundy Thursday (Skärtorsdagen). Though with dark origins in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the witch mania and hunts in Scandinavia, when implements that witches could use for their magical flight, broomsticks, fence posts, beams and farm animals, were locked away, modern traditions include children dressing as witches, to commemorate the ride and rites, and go door-to-door for Easter treats in exchange for hand-drawn greetings.

dionysian incarnation of the word (11. 450)

First reckoned by Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus (the Humble) in 525 but his Computus for determining the date of Easter not widely adopted until the ninth century, his convention of Anno Domini was conceived as way to number regnal years breaking with the old system of Roman eras that continued the memory of rulers who often subjected Christians to persecution and repression. Reaching back five centuries, cross-referencing traditional dating systems, Olympiad years, biblical accounts and the reign of consulships, prone to inaccuracies and some confusion and fraught with the Roman idea that great figures would live out lives only in whole years, his calculations were confounded and not synchronised with any extant calendar, the logic behind the ultimate decisions made obscure by design, possibly wanting to tamp down on the influence of certain branches of the faith who believed that the end of the world was imminent and the resurrection of the dead would come five hundred years after the birth (conception, incarnation, nativity) of Jesus, the common era beginning with year one on this day five hundred twenty-four years prior, by demonstrating that it had already passed.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a Trump rally in Texas

two years ago: Lady Day plus Ring of Fire (1963)

three years ago: your daily demon: Aguarès, a huge NFT portfolio, St Dismas, Like a Prayer (1989) plus assorted links to revisit

four years ago: more links to enjoy

five years ago: elegant, animated GIFs to teach maths, COBRA started as a pyramid-scheme, an unusual time-piece for Lent in Austria plus more links worth revisiting

11x11 (11. 448)

inauspicious beginnings: a rift opens up in a group of official astrologers employed by the Sri Lankan government to pick ideal dates for new years rituals  

disco arabesquo: record label Habibi Funk aims to introduce Middle Eastern vintage music to wider audiences 

typecraft: a transformative font foundry in India 

the allegory of the cave: on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the film’s premiere, we may be still trapped in the Matrix 

banjaxed and bockety: two curious Irish terms 

der buch der hasengeschichten: Tom Seidmann-Freud’s 1924 collection of hare fables 

working for tips: bizarrely robot baristas will accept gratuities, in a service sector landscape already fraught with insecurity and precarity—via tmn  

the juice is on the loose: a sequel thirty-six years in the making, reuniting the original cast—via Miss Cellania  

international system of typographic picture education: an archive of the pictograms of Gerd Arntz—see previously  

pocket full of kryptonite: the preponderance of alternative rock songs about Superman in the 1990s, 2000s 

prosopometamorphopsia: a new study on generalised social anxiety disorder tries to see from the perspective of those with a rare condition that causes faces to appear distorted, demonic—via the New Shelton wet/dry

8x8 (11. 444)

going in style: fantastic custom sarcophagi from Ghanaian coffin-maker Paa Joe  

tiamat: the misremembered series finale of the Dungeons & Dragons Saturday morning cartoon—see previously  

spoofing: FlightRadar maps GPS jamming—see also

cincyflags: neighbourhood banners for all of Cincinnati’s fifty-two communities—via Pasa Bon! 

mergers and acquisitions: Trump expected to see a windfall from the sale of social media network 

coal holes: cast iron plate covers for the chutes of London—see also  

infantile amnesia: early childhood memories may not be lost and yield insights to brain development—via the New Shelton wet/dry 

regeneration: a look at the jurisdiction practising human composting

synchronoptica

one year ago: sampler silhouettes, punctuation in headlines plus scrimshaw from oceanic plastic trash

two years ago: assorted links worth revisiting

three years ago: AI-generated pick-up lines, a variation of the Medusa myth, the controlled-deorbit of the Mir (2001), lockdown on year on, vintage GIF buttons, pole tossing plus REM’s Out of Time (1991)

four years ago: dissolution of the African Economic Union (1985)

five years ago: the musical stylings of Carsie Blanton, a town’s strong connection to the number eleven, Nick of Time (1989), the tarot of Pamela Colman Smith, Robert Mueller concludes his investigation plus the UK votes

clock-radio (11. 174)

Admitting a certain penchant for multi-function gadgets—like infamously a car vacuum-flash light-tyre pump combo that excelled at none of these tasks—we found this latest post from Fancy Notions to be quite resonant, particularly the German Engineering aspect with the precision of the eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher, calibrated to an ideal weight to crack the shell perfectly without mangling the soft-boiled interior—the steel plunger exerting a force of a little more than half a newton (one kilogram accelerating one meter per second per second). While we have a very serviceable egg-timer that alleviates some of the guess-work, it is a challenge (that I aspire to keep) to run the eggs under cold water long enough to get the exterior to peel away easily.

hidden mickeys (10. 663)

From subtle homages, hidden tracks and hidden levels to surprise features and the first known such subversive addition—in a text-editor in 1968 that completed the maxim “Make love—not war” when the first half of the chant was keyed in—which gives a credit, an attribution to an otherwise anonymous programmer, Tedium presents an omnibus edition of easter eggs in software applications. Comparing the moment of serendipity that the discovery presents both for the finder and the culprit coder to the burst of joy—fleeting or enduring and inspired that—that one gets with the unexpected virtuosity of a human-AI collaboration, everything about the usually interfaced being terribly planned and predictable, albeit one of the many present detractions from its use as a tool as something more convincing rather than reliable, introduces an interesting sidebar about the fate of such surreptitious gems once machines take over programming and entertainment. There’s also a link to the Easter Egg Archive listing hidden surprises in other media including films, television and home appliances. My favourite sort of easter eggs come in the form of a visual reference hiding in plain sight from the Disney tradition, and the reminder that She-Ra: Princess of Power—and more recently Adventure Time—has a cameo-character appearing in the background of one scene per episode. In the case of the Etherian series, the figure was called Loo-Kee, a chipmunk type creature, who (and happily have no memory of this) would reappear before the closing credits and ask the audience if they had found him before relating the moral of their just concluded narrative. What are some of your favourites?

10x10 (10. 662)

never fearing guns or numbers like a tiger to its meat, the stranger then attacked the pirate fleet: a space-age sea-shanty by Duane Elms of Carmen Miranda’s Ghost, courtesy of Shadow Manor 

sorcerer’s apprentice: angry to have been out-manoeuvred by Disney’s lawyers, Florida governor declares all-out war against the theme park 

sea life: a 1923 chessboard designed by Max Esser for Meißen—via ibīdem 

shelling out: a gallery of vintage Easter confections family album: being first on the scene to document shipwrecks is a generational business  

the tiffany network: an all-star roll for the 1978 fiftieth anniversary of the Columbia Broadcasting System  

blogoversary: a belated congratulations to Map Room as it reaches the milestone of twenty years of blogging  

late-stage sea-monkeys: targeted ads are generally promoting the worst possible version of a product  

bohemian grove: the secretive club back in the headlines after revelations of US Supreme Court Justice Thomas’ gifts included a trip to the exclusive retreat 

falmouth: the annual, international festival of maritime music returns in June

the egg war of the farallon islands (10. 660)

Regaling us with the strange tales of real and artificial scarcity and runaway inflation for the city of San Francisco flush with money owing to the Gold Rush (see previously) which seems like an apt allegory for modern San Francisco with the boom and bust of the native tech sector and the real estate market, Lit Hub contributor Lizzy Stark—via Strange Company—surveys the shortage of women and perishables through the price of eggs in California territory, the untenable fickleness of domesticated hens and turning to a seabird sanctuary for scavenging that dedicimated the local wild populations of auks, gulls and of pinnipeds from a rocky, treacherous outcropping in the bay. The cost of a dozen eggs in American markets today exacerbated by the tumultuous economy has nothing from back during the frontier days.

9x9 (10. 652)

eieren blazen: egg blowing was all the rage in the Netherlands in the 1950s  

autofill: Google search recommendations illustrated  

sim card: a mobile phone museum, with a special exhibit of the ugliest—via Messy Nessy Chic  

horsell common and the heat ray: the 1978 War of the World’s concept album featuring Yes and Richard Burton  

vexing vexillogy: CGP Grey grades US state flags—see previously 

airspace: Alex Murrell on the ‘Age of Average’—via Kottke—see also  

if the engine jumps the track: another in a series of derailments—thankfully this time with no fatalities—yields some amazing photographs but a few beer or two, via Super Punch 

katkhakali: the dance of the ‘speaking hands’ about the myth of Kali and Travancore, a 1981 Soyuzmultfilm short  

peepshi: a complete guide to deconstructing Easter candies for festive onigiri

7x7 (10. 651)

spyvibe radio: The Man Called Flintstone and other cartoon-espionage crossovers  

hosanna, hin-nam: Palm Sunday from the donkey’s perspective—see previously  

made to order: a huge font specimen of a wide range of borders—see previously 

a1: a centenary of road numbering for the Ministry of Transportation 

rather fetching: canine portraits at London’s Wallace Collection  

sparkie williams: a very talkative budgie and other loquacious birds  

rabbit hole: new Kiefer Sutherland secret agent film channels vintage intelligence dramas

dita e verës (10. 610)

Translating to summer’s day in Albanian, the springtime rite with pre-Christian origins is observed on this day and corresponds to the beginning of the New Year on the Old Calendar, aligning with the seasonal shift from winter. Celebrations are marked with family reunions, intensive spring-cleaning, reverence for the life returning, and jumping over, through bonfires for a ritual purification to drive away the darkness and referred to as shedding the fleas—recalling an expedient method of delousing as well as with the Verore, a red and white bracelet worn to mark the occasion and the preparation of sugar cookies called ballokume—named for a review by one Ottoman rulers that: Është ba si llokume—it was as good as lokum—that is, Turkish Delights.

uovo di colombo

An example of hindsight bias and apocryphally attributed to the Italian navigator—though there’s no evidence that this exchange occurred, the Egg of Columbus is an expression that reduces the extraordinary to the inevitable after the fact but counters that assessment by showing that the solution was not an obvious one. Told by fellow explorers, reportedly, that discovering an oceanic trade route to the Indies was no great accomplishment and ships would have eventually gotten there without him, Columbus challenges his critics to balance an egg on its tip. Once his interlocutors fail to do so, Christopher bluntly demonstrates how its done by tapping the egg until it flattens just enough. The inelegant solution appears in literary references by Mary Shelley in her Frankenstein as well as in War and Peace by Tolstoy and in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is also cited as a heuristic device by Charles Darwin and Nikola Tesla.

orbital resonance

Though the Octave of Easter refers to a specific eight-day celebration in connect to the Paschaltide, our

word week itself (via the German Woche) derives from the same root as octave and that one out-of-cycle unit of time—that is, seemingly the sequence repeated for countless generations not determined by the motion of the Heavens or our perception of them but nonetheless in most Western and Eastern traditions named for the astronomical objects visible to the unaided eye. The ordering does not accord with the classical model of the Cosmos—the “Chaldean order” that describes the apparent overtaking and retrograde motion relative to the Earth—nor hierarchy of the pantheon, however, but rather the seven strings of the Mesopotamian lyre with which the celestial spheres were thought to harmonise: (4) Sunday ☉, (1) Monday ☽, (5) Tuesday ♂ (Mardi in French), (2) Wednesday ☿ (Mercoledì), (6) Thursday ♃ (Donnerstag), (3) Friday ♀ (Venres) and (7) Saturday ♄. Vexed somewhat by the onerous and complicated Roman subdivision of the days and the planetary officer appointed to each hours, the order of the weekdays seemingly recapitulates musical theory and progression through the major scale. More at the links above and in this video adaptation below from Sara de Rose.

digital mnemonics

With early antecedents in committing the pillars of Buddhism to heart or for a manual reckoning of the date of Easter for any year—the Venerable Bede’s ‘loquela digitorum’ of the eighth century—contributing correspondent for Public Domain Review Kensy Cooperrider guides on a comprehensive survey of the ways that people used the topologies of the hand and fingers as a mnemonic device (see also) as a way to recall processes and protocols, notation and geography. The illustration of the oversized Guidonian Hand (named after ninth century music theorist Guido d’Arezzo) was a choral aid to facilitate learning of sight-singing—or rather how to read a musical score, the first documented use of solfège. Spanning three full octaves and spilling into a fourth—from (ab) Α to Γ (Gamma) ut—this diagram is the source of the phrase ‘running the gamut,’ that is—the full range. Much more at the links above.

8x8

trebizond: explore this detailed map of Eurasia in the year 1444—via the always interesting Nag on the Lake  

gotham nocture: a Batman gothic opera  in pre-production

arrowdreams: an anthology of Canadian speculative histories—via Strange Company  

passion project: former store worker curating every last Gap in-store playlist  

out of black ponds, water lilies: an Easter Sunday poem from Better Living through Beowulf  

crisis on infinite earths: Marvel’s inspired splintered dimensions and alternate timelines  

neoliberal pieties: the organised religion of social media is vulnerable to same corruptions and is no substitute for a public good  

latent diffusion: an AI generates maps (plus other artifice) from a text-prompt, via Maps Mania

cadbury

We quite enjoyed this extensive and on-point thread of the fabulous Miss Dolly Parton wardrobed like Easter eggs—or more specifically like chocolate confectionery eggs—see also. Let us know your favourite and do show off your similarly coordinated Sunday finest.