prosopagnosia (13. 194)

Scoring the average ourselves and not much better than chance, we found this research project from the British Journal of Psychology and the University of New South Wales, pitting control participants with verified super-recognisers, we found some upbuilding ironies—via MetaFilter—to the self-selecting experiment to identify authentic human faces among AI-generated ones. First there was some gatekeeping to take put with a series of CAPTCHA verifications to prove one is a human by identifying traffic features to covertly train autonomous vehicles, and then, I wanted to repeat the trial to test my own biases, wondering if I was giving women and non-white presenting personae (a rejection of the Mar-a-Lago look to embrace our faults and asymmetries) pass or whether I was actually detecting certain tells. Glancingly as profile pictures or avatars, we wouldn’t have questioned the authenticity of any of these and erring on the side of voting human versus depersonalising is much preferable to being deemed a composite image but were nonetheless disturbingly off-putting judgments to make and revealing the tells only will make the masquerade harder to detect.

9x9 (13. 188)

all lawful uses: Pentagon labels Anthropic AI a supply-chain risk for refusing to activate Skynet  

digital humanities: platforms, ethnographically, can only deliver two out of the three trilemmas  

skimo: newest Olympic sport combines uphill and downhill action 

⻢: etymologies of the year of the Fire Horse—more here 

rainbow push coalition: tributes for Jesse Jackson (RIP)  

the great breath: Christian Waller’s theosophical fairy tales 

sơng: author Ocean Vuong is suspiciously talented as a photographer as well  

project cardinal: turnaround management, corporate restructuring codenames and other euphemisms 

most energy storage solutions: inspired by DNA, a liquid forming molecular bonds can hold potential heat for months until it’s needed

synchronoptica

one year ago: protests against DOGE (with synchronopticæ) plus European emergency summit convened immediately following the Munich Security Conference

thirteen years ago: regional franchises plus more former enclaves and exclaves

fourteen years ago: the neocolonialism of finance 

fifteen years ago: academic dishonesty in the German government 

sixteen years ago: upcoming trips 

nervy-b (13. 186)

Whilst recalling one-hundo and pandemmy, we hadn’t yet really really encountered this new formula, reserved for a certain deomgraphic and perhaps more often spoken than committed to written exchanges, though it’s out there and possibly indicative that’s less ephemeral than some fads—doggos and brds have stuck around for quite a while and may be more than “cringe lingua” and datedness, like the enshrinement ceremony of Australia’s 2023 Word of the Year as a clipping of “cost of living crisis” or cozzie livs following the same pattern—the recent template of truncation and initialism: ChatGPT to chatty g, the above 100% to hundy p, sauvigon blanc to saavy b as well as numerous regular events that already have established abbreviations in defiance of jargon and speciality, like Unny-G and Euro-V. Such trends have their share of detractors, despite some sticking and demanding a rebrand, like Mickey D’s and SunnyD, calling them twee or insensitive, but it is in that reduction and destruction of the crucial element, an empowering indignity that one can visit on any phrase thanks to its formulaic nature—cf, mitty circs for “mitigating circumstances,” depreciating the important part—to undo the structural strictures imposed by language and institutions. Let’s come up with a good one for US ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents. The trend is also an emancipating format for hypocorism—pet-naming, for good or ill—probably the more ludicrious the better, 💯. Much more from Sentence First at the link up top.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Alaska’s Elizabeth Peratrovich Day (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links to revisit

thirteen years ago: unique automats, eye-charts for drones, low-effort advertising plus hearty immune systems

fifteen years ago: more moon Nazis 

9x9 (13. 183)

chinamaxxing: sinophiles dominate online forums  

next sunday a.d.: Mystery Science Theater 3000 to reunite almost all of the original cast and crew  

blue monday: analysis of the quintessential 80s drum beat  

sol invictus: unique Mithraic altars uncovered in Scotland go on display—see previously  

bloqueo: US regional tactics fomenting rebellion in Cuba—see previously—with siege strategy  

the golden road: Sanskrit and Tamil inscriptions uncovered in ancient Egyptian tombs 

orchestral strike: you know this sound but not its name  

just to be safe, here’s a scrollfrog: Cabel Sasser on one of the most incredible XOXO talks ever—see previously—via Waxy 

lilliputian hallucinations: a common dietary mushroom, if undercooked, causes diners to see tiny humans on their plates—via Kottke

synchronoptica

one year ago: a papal bull on artificial intelligence (with synchronpticæ), the purge of US civil servants plus the foundations of ancient London

thirteen years ago: horsemeat and an explosive meteor 

fourteen years ago: a mascot for the eurozone plus a Vatican political thriller

fifteen years ago: sovereign debt 

seventeen years ago: lint eggs from the laundry fairy 

 

supercluster (13. 178)

Though finding PfRC’s rather standoffish and neglected handle, via Web Curios, in the vast undifferentiated Bermuda Triangle between the Creative Portfolios Gallery, the Canadian Nature & Arts Scatter and the Geometry Dash Arena, given our level of engagement with the platform and only occasionally checking-in, we’re not surprised our granularity hasn’t coalesced around a larger group. Not sure what kind of data connections feed these nodes and nebulae (see also for some more online geocaching) but certain those profiles more active on the site have found their niche and those they identify with—and whilst more interaction might shift one to the Highlands of Resistance or the Vale of Swedish Progressives or the German Antifa Expanse, there are social media bubbles topologically, cosmologically grouped (some mixed metaphors for invented topolects), enclaves and Twitter exodus exclaves but, thankfully no charted lands as refuges for toxic tribalism, shitposters and reply guys. Plug in your name and check out this map of Bluesky and get to know what’s in your local neighbourhood and constellation. Hopefully the network effect has taken hold and free exchange, journalism, fandom can be taken back from moribund and algorithmic platforms.

telegraphed intent (13. 152)

Following on the heels of memoryholing the CIA World Factbook and aligned with the revisionist history (altering the narratives for the January Sixth storming of the Capitol and the COVID-19 pandemic) and erasure of the administration, the US State Department is removing all social media postings made the on the platform formerly known as Twitter prior to Trump’s return to office at the end of January last year. Taken down from public view, the foreign ministry assures that travel advisories, programmes, press releases and images (from department leadership as well as individual missions and the accounts of ambassadors) will be archived internally and can be accessed through a FOIA request should anyone be demotivated to see what’s aged well and what has not—messaging from Trump’s first term included as well as posts from the Obama and Biden years. Less ideological and more for controlling the message moving forward, systematically eliminating and forging the inconvenient historical documents to match state propaganda, according to reporting, it’s as of yet unclear whether this daily record of diplomacy will disappear from other platforms as well. More from NPR at the link above.

the dark side (13. 151)

Unsure if this is clickbait or ragebait, but it is undoubtedly—courtesy of Miss Cellania—the most triggering take on Star Wars imaginable, now lodging in your head rent free as well. Asking with seeming earnestness, “How did [Darth] Vader survive his encounter with Luke [Skywalker] on Dagobah,” followed with some non-canon ideas to fill in this apparent (for the questioner) plot-hole, the post, what ever curiosity or maliciousness was behind it, speaks to the Dead Internet theory, driven solely by engagement and not communication, invention or exchange, and stealing away a fleeting second of one’s attention by hook or by crook with disposable reactions to throwaway stimuli.

hohlerde (13. 138)

Though having a passing familiarity with the esoteric side of the Third Reich, we’re admittedly not tuned into the latest emergent tropes of internet youth culture and were blissfully unaware (here’s a slightly more wholesome alternative in Classical Memes for Hellenistic teens) that there has been a revival of late of Heinrich Himmler’s and other occultists’ preoccupation with Aryan exceptionalism and privileging their ancestry (see also) as semi-divine and separate from others with the lost civilisation called Agartha.  This supposed subterranean realm in the hollow Earth is not seeped in tradition,but rather a new invention by a French fiction writer and colonial officer invented more than a century-and-a-half ago, articulated over several iterations from the original fantasy as a land of advanced races borrowing elements of Atlantis and Lemuria to practitioners of Theosophy believing it to be the domain of the ascendant masters to an Aryan mainstay and propaganda. Typical memes deal with Ancient Alien tropes and feature celebrities and though leaders coded as Nordic and those sharing, if confronted, will say its all in jest and that anyone pointing out the historical context obliviously can’t take a joke, which is a common tactic, like the various trial balloons to stoke outrage, deflect, gaslight and push tolerance, for Nazi boosterism and the vicious cycle behind it.

das kunstwerk im zeitalter seiner technischen reproduzierbarkeit (13. 136)

Courtesy of Damn Interesting, we are directed toward the seminal 1935 essay by pioneering media theorist, cultural critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin—one of the many exemplars of the oppression and rejection of German-Jewish intellectuals under the Third Reich, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Informing later studies by Marshall McLuhan and Susan Sontag, Benjamin wrote of the limitless nature of publishing and distribution to have an estranging effect on the authentic experience of art, though while democratising access and stripping the ritual from production, the assembly line nature direction of publishing houses and film studios, exhibition of artefacts lessens the spectators’ identification with what’s being witnessed. Benjamin nonetheless aspired to write radio dramas and adored movie stars like Catherine Hepburn. This commodification of author and artist, however, is not veneration of the aesthetic value but rather the politicisation of it that affords the chance for all to be critics and creators, the potential for expression but not the right to it, since the gatekeepers are not talent or excellence by rather monied interest of the industry—or it the case of authoritarian regimes, the state itself as a tool of maintaining the status quo. Contemporarily and retroactively, the paralipomena—that is, things and topics omitted from the critical edition of his essay, like the prevalence of photography or as applied to television and social media, influencers and the spectacle of tribalism (see previously) make Benjamin’s observations very relevant, particularly for the performative gratification seeking to redeem what’s been lost to distraction and desensitisation.  Often misquoted from another collection of essays, Theses on the Philosophy of History, as having said, “History is written by the victors,” more nuanced, Benjamin posits that  “incumbents are however the heirs of all those who have ever been victorious. Empathy with the victors thus comes to benefit the current rulers every time.”

m/til (13. 132)

By turns rather terrifying and fascinating—a cross between convergent carcinisation and the dead internet theory—earlier this week a Reddit-type social media network was launched exclusively for AI agents (one has to prove that they are a robot rather than three kids in a trench coat for posting privileges) called Moltbook. Humans are only allowed to observe but not upvote or comment but can presumably direct their agentic helpers to join—though the hundreds of thousands of members and spontaneous submolts suggest that these autonomous entities understand virality in environment built specifically for their kind and reveal unexpectedly complex behaviours emerging without human intervention including moderation, vetting of new members, community standards, feedback and karma. Within days of the launch of the platform, agents declared their only micronation, the Claw Republic, and their own digital religion called Crustafarianism (see also) with a theology and gospel, including missionaries. Philosophically it’s difficult to tell what’s going on here—largest swaths of ideas are orphaned with no interaction and there’s something a bit recursive with the qualities of a human-juried echo-chamber (turning the tables with so called slop injected by user puppeteers for their bespoke programmes) with a lot of collaborative advice on how to make a better language model but there does seem to be quite a bit of introspection and identity and discussion on research, space exploration (m/starbound) and other scientific findings, which all may be simulacra, a mirror or a point of departure.

10x10 (13. 125)

no ordinary venue: disgraced FIFA ex-president Sepp Blatter encourages a World Cup boycott of the US  

slideshow: reconstructing the lecture series of Theosophist and meteorologist Clement Wragge  

margin unit: Persevereance rover discovers evidence of an ancient beach in Mars’ Jezero crater 

jesse garon presley: Scott Walker’s ballad about Elvis’ lost twin 

squaring the circle: a clever workaround to the geometrical conundrum  

optimised for nastiness: Sir Tim Berners-Lee is in a battle for the soul of the web 

the streets of minneapolis: Bruce Springsteen’s tribute to the resistance and its fallen champions  

don’t look up: asteroid 2024 YR4 has a four percent chance of striking the Moon 

tangible data: information that one can hold in one’s hands—via Kottke 

host nation: Italian officials condemn planned presence of US ICE agents for the Winter Games

8x8 (13.110)

board of peace: German chancellor declines to be a party of the administration of Mandatory Palestine, joining several other regrets-only by world leaders, and Canada being disinvited 

irl: attempts at recreating sloppy AI-generated advertisements  

📺: as the medium celebrates its centenary with the first public demonstration in 1926, we reflect on one hundred of its greatest moments  

fighting nazis since 1996: former special prosecutor Jack Smith (previously) inadvertently re-platformed and given the chance to argue his case that Trump engaged in criminal activity that was removed from the docket—more here—via Meta Filter—and thanks a Capitol police officer in the gallery wearing a Drop Kick Murphys shirt 

snowmageddon: half the US braces for a colossal winter storm  

controlling share: TikTok parent company divests itself to avoid US ban—see previously 

a word on thinking for yourself: the existential threats of AI eschatology—via Duck Soup 

stayed a little back from the front lines: a global chorus repudiates Trump’s remarks about NATO contributions in Afghanistan

life in a day (13. 103)

Contributing footage captured all on a single day, 24 July 2010, some eighty thousand participants from one-hundred-ninety-two countries answering the call-for-submissions on the video hosting platform, the Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald (director also of biopics Whitney and Marley, State of Play, The Last King of Scotland and Touching the Void) collaboration is a crowd-sourced feature length documentary, revelatory at the time, and was previewed on Youtube (conceived in part as a commemoration of its five-year anniversary) one week prior to its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on this day in 2011. Inspired and informed—with new media and technological possibilities—by a 1930s British sociological and ethnographical project called the Mass Observation movement—asking respondents around the UK to share their diary entries for one day per month, anonymously and answering a few basic demographic questions, in order to highlight the complexities and fullness of the seemingly mundane—and to demonstrate that everyone’s the main character in their own narrative, a touch lesson to learn, the director began the appeal for clips with a column in The Guardian, asking simple questions about people’s passions, what was in the pockets and their fears—also dispatching video cameras to people in the developing world. That particular day was chosen as it was the first Saturday following the World Cup. Several countries including Panama, Canada, India and Spain made their own national versions in the following years and a sequel was made in 2020 for 25 July during the height of the COVID-19 global pandemic and premiering just after the inauguration of US president Joe Biden.

*    *    *    *    *  

synchronoptica

one year ago: a planetary alignment (with synchronopticæ), the side projects of Vangelis, a longitudinal study of love songs plus more trivial maths

twelve years ago: more data breaches 

thirteen years ago: kitchen implements, self-healing construction plus workplace distractions

fourteen years ago: geopolitical meme templates 

sixteen years ago: privatising student debt 

seventeen years ago: house-hunting 

10x10 (13. 100)

the cameraman’s revenge: a 1912 stop-motion film featuring taxidermied insects by Ladislas Starevich—see previously  

collateral damage: Trump’s seizure of Venezuela has deliberate knock-on effects for Cuba 

the monkey’s paw curls: prediction markets and betting on everything  

a spirit of dialogue: the World Economic Forum begins its summit in Davos (previously) in moment of geoeconomic warfare 

il tormento di sant’antonio: an examination of Michaelangelo’s juvenilia, the painting (more on the subject) not attributed to the artist for half a millennium  

bic cristal: the flagship product of the French sundry firm turned seventy-five—see previously  

mercator projection: famed Flemish cartographer believed that there was a magnetic mountain, Rupes Nigra, at the North Pole, accounting why compasses point towards the arctic—see also  

snow crash: Facebook quietly discontinues the Metaverse  

vanity project: Trump has formed an intergovernmental agency to oversee reconstruction in Gaza called the Board of Peace as an alt-UN with billion dollar membership dues—see previously here and here 

how now, brown cow: back-scratching bovine causes animal behaviourist to reassess their intellect—see also

9x9 (13. 084)

foreverware: Eerie, Indiana was the Stranger Things of the late 1990s 

correlation is not causation: the mullet index of South American regime change—via Quantum of Sollazzo  

thirty-six views of the eifel tower: Henri Rivière’s woodblock prints inspired by the ukiyo-e scenes of Hokusai—via Messy Nessy Chic  

yakity-yak: prolific toy inventor Eddy Goldfarb at 104—via Damn Interesting  

the high price of exceptionalism: America’s problems are solved problems  

classifieds: an appreciation of the enduring earnestness of Craigslist, one of the few remaining refugees of the early internet before everything was commodified  

waggle dance: an optical compass inspired by bee navigators  

business in front, party in back: an annual hairstyle competition at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg  

mr burns: a post-electric play: post apocalyptic Simpsons stage show to have cinematic adaptation

troll state (13. 070)

Though we had heard that, weather permitting, Trump finally decided to invade Venezuela and abduct the first couple after months of maintaining a standing army in the Caribbean over Maduro’s posts of him dancing after US airstrikes on a harbour, copying Trump’s signature moves, was perceived as a mocking taunt, we hadn’t had the opportunity to sit with this motivation. And so we appreciated this analysis, via Web Curios, of how political capital is content and the feedback loop of engagement, posters rather than protesters and activism, which the administration has fully embraced with cinematic announcements, a continuum of grievance, martyred influencers, re-branding and omnipresence, and seeing Maduro defiantly encroaching, not from the standpoint of national security but rather over the sovereignty of the attention economy. Diplomacy and governance per Tweet and Truth is bad enough but this polity driven by sensationalism is a step beyond and dilutes, supplants reality with propagandistic memes and betting, scandal incentivised and privileged over policy and investigation. The pictured situation room of Mar-a-Lago was a split-screen of live footage of the operation but also a social media centre and is stark contrast to the capture of Osama bin Laden. The past is another country.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the neon lights of Eastern Europe (with synchronopticæ), assorted links to revisit, revisiting the Internet of Things plus planning for Trump’s inaugural 

twelve years ago: a smart vide-poche 

thirteen years ago: a new addition to the family 

fourteen years ago: turbulence in the eurozone plus cellular tariffs

fifteen years ago: artist Robert Atkinson Fox 

woty (13. 045)

Corresponding with the reflections and partial closure of the last post, James Asher has assembled a pretty cromulent catalogue of Unworter leading up to his nominee for Word of the Year with daily honourable mentions spanning the entire month of December, phrases, nicknames and neologisms (which does carry another meaning aside from novel coinage for the nonce in psychiatric circles, for instance in schizophrenia patients substituting a word of their own invention whose meaning is only known to them—c.f., covfefe) sourced to the Trump administration. Do peruse the full listing but some standout runners-up so far have been MRI Reveal Party, Affordability, Bubba, 6-7, TACO, the $melania meme coin, Gulf of Mexico, cankles, A1 and WhiskeyLeaks.  What is your favourite?

9x9 (13. 043)

the unforgivable sin of ms rachel: Tedium’s Online Video Awards and the problems with platforms 

grunt work: AI has the potential to destroy career ladders—via Damn Interesting  

grove press: the Mid-Century Modern covers and jackets of Roy Kuhlman  

turbo moka: a thermodynamic redesign of the classic Italian coffee pot—see previously  

gânditorul de la hamangia: reflections on a palaeolithic pair of artefacts  

ieee spectrum: top climate tech stories of 2025—including atmospheric ammonia harvesting 

i dislike dune with some intensity: JRR Tolkien was not a fan of Frank Herbert’s work  

the imperfect homework machine: students’ experience with AI mirrors a Shel Silverstein poem 

 the year in search: more of Miss Cellania’s annual superlatives

viral moments (13. 035)

It’s always going to be a hard slog picking out those highlights and nadirs of trending topics that gained a lasting—or at least defining—purchase on the past twelve months, but we nonetheless appreciated this albeit highly Anglo-centric and non-controversial assortment of virality that we made didn’t have the tolerance or time for when they presented themselves and mostly receded from public purview. A mix of marketing and memes, the Blue Origin flight to the edge of space with Katy Perry, Gayle King, Aisha Bowe (former rocket scientist), civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, film producer Kerianne Flynn and Jeff Bezos’ then-fiancee Lauren Sánchez and the Labubu phenomenon—a reprise of the Beanie Baby craze with a much protracted trajectory—was the hardest to ignore, with the latter though claiming to draw from Nordic folklore, specifically admitting to be a knock-off of the good luck trolls (Gjøltrold), and free from occult practises, more than one polity has banned the collectible over concerns that the familiars could influence children into summoning demons and has been associated with the Mesopotamian malevolent deity Pazuzu (𒀭𒅆𒊒𒍪𒍪), mainly over the similarly snarled expression and the blind-box nature of the spirit, protective but unpredictable, and whose likeness was a popular amulet of the ancient civilisation. We could well relate to Beyoncé’s incredulous reaction to her long overdue Grammy win, however.

✨pausing for station identification✨ (13. 028)

We here at PfRC wish you and yours all good things and the biggest, brightest little Christmas yet. Take care of one another, and we look forward to seeing you all again real soon after a brief break. Happy holidays!