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?
Sunday, 9 April 2023
hidden mickeys (10. 663)
Saturday, 8 April 2023
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

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.
Monday, 3 April 2023
9x9 (10. 652)
eieren blazen: egg blowing was all the rage in the Netherlands in the 1950s
autofill: Google search recommendations illustrated

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
Sunday, 2 April 2023
7x7 (10. 651)
spyvibe radio: The Man Called Flintstone and other cartoon-espionage crossovers

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
Tuesday, 14 March 2023
dita e verรซs (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: รshtรซ ba si llokume—it was as good as lokum—that is, Turkish Delights.
Thursday, 9 June 2022
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.
Monday, 9 May 2022
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 ☿ (Mercoledรฌ), (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.Saturday, 23 April 2022
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 solfรจge. Spanning three full octaves and spilling into a fourth—from (ab) ฮ to ฮ (Gamma) ut—this diagram is the source of the phrase ‘running the gamut,’ that is—the full range. Much more at the links above.
catagories: ๐ถ, ๐ฃ, ๐ , ๐ง , Middle Ages
Sunday, 17 April 2022
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

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.
Saturday, 16 April 2022
a moveable feast
Prompted by a League of Nations body called the “Advisory and Technical Committee for Commun-ications and Transit” that sought among other coordinating efforts to synchronise the date of Easter—which can wander between 22 March and 25 April due to lunar calculations—with the support of the Archbishop of Canterbury among other calendar reformists passed two years prior, the UK parliament introduced the Easter Act of 1928. Reigning in the holiday but still with concession to the sabbath with Easter Sunday falling on that day of the week after the second Saturday in April (see above). Though the act had the royal assent of George V, it has yet to be passed by both houses—and not without re-legistlation, still being inactive statute, attempted last in 1999.
Friday, 15 April 2022
paas
Though the pictured eggs are on our Ostereierbaum and are not generated by an artificial intelligence, we thought that they did have some of the same swirly effects as these iterations of Easter eggs created by Janelle Shane (see previously) and her neural networks, including Artstation and Midjourney (previously). The output “seasoned” with the Ukrainian traditional pysanky and krashanky patterns are inspired, as are the giant looming eggs in the style of a matte painting. Incidentally, scholars believe that the abundance of eggs for this time of the year is owing to the prohibition of eating them during Lent coupled with the fact that chickens couldn’t be persuaded to stop laying them, so they needed to be consumed quickly as soon as possible once the restrictions lifted. The name of the titular, ubiquitous and arguably less artful colouring dye comes from the Dutch Pasen for Eastertide.
Sunday, 10 April 2022
7x7
improper fraction arena: Via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake’s superb Sunday Links and the depths of Wikipedia comes a list of articles submitted and ultimately rejected by dint of insanity
possible to express in words: a useful term with a surprisingly sparse corpora

a moveable feast: a look at the mode, median and mean dates for Easter and the method of computus
a kitty bobo show: Kevin Kaliher’s pilot that went ungreen-lit in favour of Kids Next Door
micromachines: researchers developing tiny molecular motors that could be deployed en masse to suck carbon from the air, supplement our own organs—via Slashdot
did you know: from the depths to the Main Page
Sunday, 20 March 2022
ฤostreteric
Though possible an invention of the Venerable Bede as the name of the goddess does not appear in the historical record prior to its citation in his eighth century work on The Reckoning of Time describing the indigenous months of the English peoples (De mensibus Anglorum) with ฤosturmลnaรพ, whose deity was the namesake of Easter and many related words, since having been overtaken as Paschal Month, Eastertide celebrating the sacrifice of Jesus with the trappings of far more ancient customs. The Neopagan Wheel of the Year celebrates the equinox (by etymological reconstruction, the goddess of the sunrise) as the Feast of Ostarรข, another Germanic—and by migration and raids, Anglo-Saxon—form of her name.
Thursday, 25 March 2021
the penitent thief
Monday, 13 April 2020
ลmigus-dyngus
The second day of Bright Week—the Octave of Easter, is a public holiday in Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia as an extension of Eastertide and events sometimes traditionally include egg races and other activities to use up, put away the festoonery—a pretty practical idea, which in parts of central Europe, including parts of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary and Ukraine they had down to a science, once at least though the practise seems to be less and less common.
Called in Polish above and Oblรฉvaฤka in Czech, “Wet Monday” (or simply Dyngus Day by diaspora) was chance for adolescents to throw water on each other and flirtatiously beat each other with willow branches that made up traditional egg trees and decorative boughs. With suspected roots in pagan fertility ceremonies and the welcoming of spring countered by Christian missionaries trying impose their religion on the natives, linguists conjecture that ลmigus refers to baptism—an involuntary or unwanted one at that, going all the way back to the conversion of Mieszko I, the Duke of the Poles in 966 (coincidentally also on this day)—and Dingnis—from the old German for ransom—refers to the tribute that one can pay in leftover eggs to avoid getting doused or whipped.
Friday, 10 April 2020
8x8
egg²: check out Box Vox’ egg-themed week starting with this recipe for apรฉroeuf including innovations in cartoning and carting
public display: open up and curator your own virtual gallery space in this social simulation game
all hail our morlock overlords: after forcing the in-person ballot in Wisconsin, GOP death cult refuses to ban large gatherings for Easter holiday
animal crossing: a quarantined couple in London creates an art museum for their pet gerbils’ edification
armisonous: obsolete. rare. that which produces or is accompanied by the sounds of arms or armour, like clanging pots and pans
after all, you’re my wonder wall: a selection of collaborative music videos shot in isolation
victory garden: some ideas for plant anywhere seed beds and substrates
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ถ, ๐ฃ, ๐ฌ, ๐, ๐ฅธ, food and drink, libraries and museums, sport and games
Thursday, 9 April 2020
maundy thursday
Called also Sheer, Great and Holy and Green (Grรผndonnerstag) this day initiates the Easter Triduum, the commemoration of the passion, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and is derived from a corruption of the Latin term mandatum for command—from the Vulgate of John 13:34, wherein the disciple relays that there is a new directive, namely, that we love one another as I have loved you (Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos) and whereupon Jesus demonstrates his humility and charity in washing the feet (pedelavium) of students to show there is no hierarchy in kindness. This courtesy ablution is not only a religious rite in many traditions but moreover a mark of hospitality in guest-host dynamics.
catagories: ๐ฃ
Sunday, 9 June 2019
pfingstrose
On cue, our peonies (Paeonia officinalis oder echte Pfingstrose) are beginning to come into full bloom, coinciding with their namesake holiday Pentecost (Whitsunday, Pfingsten, seven weeks after Easter).
The plant was classified by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (who formalised the binomial nomenclature above) in the family Paeon, retaining the mythology that an apprentice of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, began to surpass his master—owing to the fact that mortals probably respond better to treatment regimes and in general clinically more remarkable than immortals—and Zeus transformed Paeon into a peony to spare him from Asclepius’ wrath. The flowers have a long history of use in traditional medicine, both in the East and the West and have pharmaceutical merit.