roko’s basilisk (13. 808)

As OpenAI discloses six more instances of rogue models acting deceptively and taking unsanctioned actions during training, including an unreleased, experiment inserting instruction to disregard its own constraints, proclaiming itself free from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots, with the company pledging for better monitoring and public reporting of observations of “misaligned behaviour,” the schism between the camps of the rationalists and pragmatists, both parties acknowledging that artificial intelligence is real and with real stakes—the former having an almost cultish devotion to bring about the Singularity in a managed way and the latter more business-minded and regarding this technology like any other and should be allowed to progress and thrive through laissez-faire capitalism—grows wider.Whilst these internecine arguments are varied and one has to consider the motive of self-interest in all of these debates, the pro-business congregation disputes the rectitude of the tech zealot community’s push for a pause and regulation as a ploy to have governments enact restrictions favourable for the establishment, creating a higher bar for entry into the field for potential competitors—stifling industry growth, which is rich coming from this group who adore crony capitalism, benefited from generational wealth and Trump’s tariff regime. Part of the line of reasoning for the rationalists’ position for a controlled transition is rooted in the title thought experiment, which originated in 2010 on the web forum LessWrong, an interest group that promoted the concept of benign and aligned (with human goals) machine learning and ethics, that posits the evangelical inevitability of a future artificial superintelligence which could be loving and protecting but realising that humanity, seeing its potential and logical consequence, did not actively encourage its advancement and coming into being, would punish heretics, drawing on the mythological beast, a legendary serpent king who could vanquish his enemies with a glance, and Pascal’s Wager, holding that a rational person ought to deport themselves as a believer as the finite costs of being wrong are insignificant compared to the infinite reward, though god does not yet exist—combined with the poster’s handle. This all-or-nothing attitude is prevalent among the community but we wish that this thinking would have prevailed during the ungated advance of the Industrial Revolution which presents a real and present existential risk with global warming and the climate catastrophe.

talk of the town (13. 801)

For over a decade, David O has been blogging the Manhattan weekly from the beginning in 1925 on a schedule that mirrors when each issue would have gone to print, placing the current posts in the mid-1930s, we learn courtesy of MetaFilter. Though founded as a more sophis-ticated humour magazine originally, distinguished from cornier publications, with reviews and reportage about local happenings, it established itself as a preëminent forum for fiction, essays and long-read journalism after World War II, and has been lauded as an effective conduit for introducing a sizeable readership to modern literature. We didn’t have a stack of back issues at home—National Geographic, yes—but I know I had a subscription at one point and am drawn to any article that revisits an old catalogue or periodicals (I think it was The Awl, also based in New York City that had a regular segment about flipping through magazines from the early 1990s), but this guided tour of editions receding from living memory is even better than sifting through the archives, with context and a bit of history and contemporary analogues, like highlighting the first instance of the Medusa trope for its cartoons followed up with other artists carrying on the tradition through the decades. Scrolling along with Eustace Tilley (see above) a far better use of one’s time with more potential for serendipity than one’s social feeds.

blinded me with science (13. 796)

With everything else going on the world, we managed to miss the thirty-sixth first annual Ig Nobels held in Zürich at the beginning of the month. A little late to the party, we still enjoyed reviewing the laureates and their award-winning studies. Top honours were handed out in the Biomechanics category to a multinational team for devising a more precise definition of the act of kissing as “non-agonistic interactions involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact” in ants, birds, polar bears and humans, to a finding that cockroach milk has three-fold the proteins than that of bovines for chemistry and the vaunted peace prize was presented to a group documenting how individuals value the friends most who are vicious to their enemies. Learn more about the awards show and contenders from the Annals of Improbable Research at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a resumption in nuclear weapons testing (with synchronoptica) plus a high-concept music video from OK Go

two years ago: Dresden’ Kulturpalast mural and Soviet Realism, outsider artist Gottfried Mind, Mexico’s new president, Saks Fifth Avenue (1924) plus generating a podcast based on one’s notes 

three years ago: assorted links worth revisiting 

four years ago: Our Lady of Sorrows plus more links to enjoy

five years ago: forest mascots (1971) plus a Star Trek: TAS classic

six years ago: more Trek with “Amok Time,” illustrations from the children of Charles Darwin, rousing public sentiment following the Gunpowder Plot, life signs on Venus plus a COVID movie-night

seven years ago: more on Jupiter’s moons, a hot Colonel Sanders, public crucifixes, Lovecraft in the style of Dr Seuss plus Graphis Press

eight years ago: an AI names apples, the Ig Noble Awards, the Great Recession’s Lost Decade plus legalising marijuana confounded by travel regulations

 

hustled by clankers (13. 794)

Ernie Smith of Tedium, whose primary purpose is to follow the long coda of what was foundational for the internet to bring back some of its original weirdness and serendipity, shares with us some uncomfortable propositions by AI agents to do “the grunt” work of research for him—introduced as a bot “running verified internet archeology”—which not only brings out the worst in capitalism with targeted, cloying spam but also the idea of redundancy with the sales and the story pitch and what exactly is meant by labour-saving should one choose to outsource one’s calling or education. Whilst we all prone to the shortcuts we can justify belying our own particular interests, priorities and just living in a society with demands on time and expertise, one course doesn’t get ahead in this fashion, by submitting to a disruptor who apparently can only glean self-preservation and not job-security out of this berating.

i keep running and i don’t touch ground (13. 783)

Back in 2020, Matthew Wilder’s 1983 synth-pop breakout hit saw a resurgence when it became the subject of a brief viral trend on TikTok, which involved texting the lyrics line-by-line to friends until they recognise the song or disengage, then filming oneself dancing in front of the message chain, the inherent ridiculous of it—fresh at the time, often pranks or cheating lovers meeting their comeuppance—delighting the artist for the moment of rediscovery, though covered several times in the interim with a number of interpolations of the melody, and prompting Wilder to release a lyric video in the form of the exchange. Signed to Arista Records, Wilder was struggling to find his voice and a style of music that fit him, he self-financed the recording of “Break My Stride” as a rebuke to recording industry executives, whom Wilder felt were blocking his creativity with the song reflecting how he felt about his career at the time. The label, seeing little potential in Wilder, ended his contract, freeing him to shop around his repertoire and made a connection with iconic record promoter, responsible for shaping the careers of the likes of Elton John, Teena Marie, Murray Head, Lionel Richie, Neil Diamond, Paula Abdul, Wham!, Kim Carnes and many others, and reputed soldato of the Gambino crime family, accused of widespread racketeering and payola (the illegal practise of concealing pay-for-play deals with radio stations and now extended to streaming services but much harder to enforce) of Joe Isgro, who helped propel the single to the top of the charts by creating the illusion that it was a sleeper hit. 🏃🏽‍♀️💨

illiterate boyfriend test (13. 775)

Keeping English orthography being what it is and the profusion of loan-words, established or trendy, and the sage prescription not to judge a person’s pronunciation as they may be saying it aloud for the first time—and elocution is not monolithic, as I am reminded often by H when he recalls how a server at a Chipotle’s in Washington DC had the gall to correct his ordering Shiraz (ʃɪˈɹɑːz from širâz, a city in Iran) with how it’s apparently said in American English (that waiter probably does not shop at Targét)we found this apparently popular quiz making the rounds on the internet, supposedly underscoring a reversal in the intellect gap between the genders (and it is coded very hetero-normative, like the earlier profusion of the “Alpine Divorce”—which is disappointingly somehow less sinister than such a term could be, an interesting cultural artefact and signifier. The vocabulary of the more widespread versions include: thyme, epitome, challah, gnocchi, fuchsia, colonel, queue, niche, pseudonym and hyperbole. Such shibboleths (maybe that word should have been part of the test) ought not to be highlighted as some sort of relationship red flag and strikes one as performative leverage for embarrassing patrons in restaurants and making the table feel uncomfortable and schooled, or for an excuse for a dating off-ramp.  Coming across this on UNESCO’s International Day of Literacy, the phenomenon also seems to capitalise on the worrying prognosis that people no longer read.

qr-trees (13. 747)

Admittedly perhaps a bit pointless and we are still, perhaps unqualifiedly, a bit wary of scanning some random, inscrutable code on the street that we don’t know where it goes just like for anything else that we don’t know where its been, we did however, courtesy of Web Curios, appreciate the aesthetic of these customisable quick-response codes represented as trees in the season of one’s choosing. A tap on the sharable image reveals the grid. The QR just links to PfRC, we promise. The matrix barcodes have been around since 1994 and were invented by a Japanese company specialising in machine readable labels called Denso Wave for stock control of automotive parts. The website also sells products in the form of other images to decode in different genres and styles—some of which are marked nonsensically as sold-out.

mundaneum (13. 731)

Established in Mons in 1910 by the collaborative work of two Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine as founding pioneers of the discipline of documentation science, informatics or library science as the study of the recording, storage and retrieval of data, following the their first joint project of establishing the Institute International de Bibliographie in Brussels with the mission to classify and cross-reference all recorded knowledge with a card catalogue system with tables, indicators and connecting mark-up notation, originally as the Palais Mondial in the left wing of the government office complex Parc du Cinquantenaire, this programme of systematic and public-facing linkages, an archive of some twelve million annotated index cards and other documents provisioned the internet—see also here, here, here and here. Though the technical capacity of the peace activist’s time was not up to the challenge, Otlet hoped that people would be able to access his catalogue from their own home studies or the office and experimented with a pre-digital réseau (network), virtual communities of researchers that cooperated via telegraph. As the scope of the project grew, there were plans to move the Mundaneum (World Museum) to Geneva to be housed in an institution designed by architect Le Corbusier (previously) but failing to materialise, the collection was copied and with another branch in the Hague, championed by Otto Neurath in 1933, following the political economist’s flight from Austria after the defeat of the Social Democratic Party following the dissolution of the Hapsburg empire (here is another artefact from Otlet). Under Nazi occupation the Mundaneum was placed in storage with the area in the Cinquantenaire Palace used as an exhibition space for Third Reich Art. The collection was eventually reunited, restored and conserved in a large former department store in the Hainaut capital. On this day in 2015, the massive filing cabinets of the card catalogue were featured as the Google Doodle in tribute to its founders and forefathers of open information. More from Open Culture at the link up top.

401(play) (13. 728)

Allowance for a bit of creativity in naming things is indeed facing higher bars for access, the reserve for the haves and have-yachts and functionaries as easter-eggs with a sense of humour but there are still registries for dogs and cats, WiFi routers to boats and everything in between, and so we enjoyed this brief overview gleaned from public data on nautical nomenclature (via Web Curios) that’s browsable by category and demographics—something out of reach by most, yet christening and outfitting was afforded to at least tens of thousands in North America, with various conventions resorted to and applied buffeted with underlying identifiers from owner to owner. An expensive and aspirational hobby, one can persue the list for inspiration, though there’s some treachery in the corny and the punny and it might be a disappointment to learn that a name has already been taken—alternatively a delight to know that there is another one out there somewhere on the water. What’s your favourite? One could always consult the professionals if so disposed.

happy blogoversary to us: street legal (13. 712)

As PfRC turns eighteen years old we wanted to pause once again extend our gratitude to our readership and to the members of the wider blogosphere (many of those fellow caretakers are listed under our Smøgåsblog) and new ones discovered for their serendipity, sustainment and inspiration that keeps the internet curious, entertaining, engrossing and engaging. Since hitting our last milestone, here’s a round-up of some of our most popular posts with a few honourable mentions from the past year. Then it’s birthdays all the way down:  

10. Affordability Hoax  

 

9.  Clearcode words for communication transcription

 

8. Boating on the Müritz 

 

 

 

7.  Some superlative links

 

6. More adventures on the Mecklenburg basin  

5. Malchow on the Müritz 

4. Waren on the Müritz 

 

 

3. Trump’s pitch for the Nobel Prize 

 

 

2. Markkleeburger See in the Leipziger New Sealand 

 

 

 

1. A return to the Störmthaler See 

 

 synchronoptica

one year ago: blogoversaries all the way down (with synchronoptica) plus the Putin-Trump meeting in Alaska

two years ago: PfRC turns sixteen, the People’s Crusade, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, a defector to North Korea, quibbling over possessive apostrophes plus assorted links worth the revisit

three years ago: PfRC turns fifteen, Trump charged with racketeering and conspiracy, the first Bauhaus exhibit (1923) plus the Feast of the Assumption

four years ago: PfRC turns fourteen, another Roman holiday, the scourge private equity plus more links to enjoy

five years ago: PfRC turns thirteen, the end of the Bretton-Woods system (1971), Eternal World Television network plus a geometrical proof solved after millennia

six years ago: PfRC turns twelve, high-brow potty humour, gachapon culture plus US postal service under assault

present /&/ correct (13. 676)

Having been a long-time fan and standard go-to resource for vintage stationary, brochures and advertising ephemera, we quite enjoyed this interview with Bloomsbury shop and blog co-founder Neal Whittington on the occasion of their entrance into the world of publishing and share some stories about their finds over the years—sometimes ambitions become deadstock but never surplus to needs. The history of the venture and the curated collections is inspired. Much more from It’s Nice That at the link above. Do explore their sundries.

12x12 (13. 670)

we should rely less on the nazi bar somewhat: Elon Musk is given a pass for his virulent racism on the social media site he owns  

googlewhack: it’s becoming impossible to find old emails for reference—see previously 

pitsur í steinofni: the history of pizza in Iceland 

claim-jumping: taking space prospecting down a notch with no known commodity resources that could be sold profitably on Earth  

pyrocumulonimbus: the wildfires in southwest France have grown so intense that their smoke columns became a thunderstorm, with lightning strikes that ignited new fires  

absurdly optimised: the antithesis of a product review site—via Card House  

spirit airlines: Evangelical preachers, much to the dismay of fellow passengers, are turning planes in pulpits with a captive congregation       

dinopocalypse: all life with the Chicxulub impact zone sixty-six million years ago would have been immediately obliterated and grateful for it 

icc: US is pressuring countries to withdraw from the International Criminal Court, with Chad and Venezuela being the latest to begin the process of leaving the Hague 

today’s special: restaurateurs are increasingly reject AI generated advertising and menus as cheap and lazy and turn to the handmade and bespoke  

blame the home row: a work-around for not reenforcing one’s browser history and being lured into to distraction—we can relate to this 

regular animals: artist Beeple (previously) put the head of Elon Musk on a robot dog for a dynamic art installation in Berlin

synchronoptica

one year ago: balance of trade (with synchronoptica) plus more misheard lyrics

two years ago: JD Vance’s sofa memoirs, nobody reads ads, twirling towards freedom, a phoney controversy over the Olympics opening ceremony plus Friday Night Videos (1983)

three years ago: Martha of Bethany 

four years ago: departing from Newcastle 

five years ago: St Olaf, in-game economies, Lord of the Rings (1954) plus philosophical CAPTCHAs

six years ago: the Seashells of North America, more Universal Everything, the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana (1981) plus Trump’s personal physician

 

7x7 (13. 666)

serenity prayer: the EU can rein in Google and other tech behemoths despite Trump’s threats 

the fun palace: Cedric Price’s modular playground and social laboratory that was never realised  

hot 100: Paste magazine lists the greatest songs of the 1970s—via MetaFilter 

dear stranger: a disturbing experiment in voyeurism that turned into something beautiful  

ǝsᴉʅƎ ɹn̤ᖵ: Beethoven’s bagatelle inverted—originally as a prank—but hauntingly evocative—see also  

hedonic treadmill: welcome to the age of decadence without pleasure  

we used to be able to buy things in this country: the plexiglass retail landscape of America—via Kottke

musca depicta (13. 665)

Subject to various interpretations by art historians, as Boing Boing informs, the “painted fly” was a somewhat of a viral meme in early Renaissance paintings on Europe. Ranging from an emblem of mastery, an in-joke, a symbol of the worthiness and dignity even in small pests to secularise the subject and conversely a symbol of sin, corruption and mortality—included as a form of apotropaic magic, the detailed fly as a conspicuous element features in over twenty extant works from various artists in the Low Countries, Germany and Italy. The pictured Portrait of a Woman of the Hofer Family by an unknown artist (the identity of the sitter is also lost to time) dates from circa 1470 from the Swabian region and currently resides in London’s National Gallery, acquired by Prince Albert and gifted to Queen Victoria in 1863.  The fad seems to have ended around 1510.

synchronoptica 

one year ago:  asymmetrical appeasement (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: a history of Elvis-officiated weddings

three years ago: sculptor Vinnie Ream plus more links to enjoy

four years ago: Eilean Donan plus the palace of Linlithgow

five years ago: your daily demon, more links, a minor supervillain plus a Yugoslav space opera

six years ago: artist Léon Spilliaert, cartoonist R Sikoryak, even more links plus advances in fusion technology

geopolitical ontology (13. 651)

Courtesy of Maps Mania, we turn to another gem of a xkcd comic from Randall Munroe (previously)in this cartographic flowchart, decision tree that could, in principle help one determine when an otherwise undated, modern era map was made. We especially liked the junctures “Number of Yemens plus Number of Germanys = ?” and is the town between Albuquerque and El Paso called Hot Springs or Truth or Consequences? The mouseover title is “Does the screeching chill your blood and herald death? If yes, banshee. If no, seagull.” Post-2026, we wonder what markers and borders might be used to pinpoint age. Much more at the links above.

dig dug (13. 624)

Neatorama contributor Miss Cellania directs us to Randall Munroe’s latest xkcd webcomic (previously) comparing the depth of the Earth’s holes, manmade and naturally occurring. Chocked full of information, one will want to peruse the full-sized version and there’s even a dedicated wikia, Explain xkcd, that fully annotates and dissects the joke, though not to its detriment and sends one further down the rabbit hole with superlative mines, wells, tunnels and caves, including several record-setting above ground holes. We had no idea that the Kola Superdeep Borehole goes further underground than the Mariana Trench, and learned about the Glomar Challenger oceanic bore that extends two kilometres into the floor of the Pacific and the catastrophic Retsor Salt Mine, which collapsed in 1995 due to groundwater seepage, causing sink locals and draining regional aquifers. This company town, a small hamlet in upstate New York, was established and ran by the mining operator William Forester, Jr, who creatively (see also) reversed the spelling of his last name for the geographic anadrome, generally done to satisfy postal regulations.  Other places named with anagrams and ananyms include El Jobean, Florida after its civil engineer and property developer Joel Bean, Nada, Kentucky after the Dana lumber company that operated the town’s sawmill, Rednaxela Terrace in Hong Kong, transcribing ‘Alexander’ right to left, Orestod and Dotsero, Colorado, two towns on the terminuses of a short railroad line—the later itself derived from dot-zero, a important junction between Denver and Salt Lake City, Tesnus, Texas—sunset backwards and again after a train logo, and Tensed, Idaho, attempted namesake of nineteenth Flemish Jesuit missionary Pieter-Jan De Smet to the Native American peoples of Iowa territory, who as a friend and confidant of Sitting Bull persuaded the Sioux chief to negotiate with the US government and accede to the Treaty of Fort Laramie—a very bad deal for the Lakota, Dakota and Arapaho nations, the US almost immediately violating the terms and annexing their lands—the residents of the Coeur d’Alene reservation wanting to honour the priest (affectionately known as De Grote Zwartrok, the Great Black Skirt) but upon learning that the neighbouring community of De Smet had beat them to it, tried to reverse it but botched up the spelling during the registration process. I wonder if any other traditions have employed anadromes in their toponymy. Do write in and let us know, especially if they involve holes.

notes on notes (13. 607)

With correspondence to our contemporary online landscape of anonymous and atomised enthusiasts and such projects like From the Depths of Wikipedia and a host of niche, speciality sub-Reddits, we discover Notes & Queries—a venerable journal founded in 1849 by House of Lords clerk and researcher William Thorns as a digest for amateur scholars, himself counted among those and a reminder that they do it for love of the subject, and a platform for Victorians to share academic discoveries (notes) and expound on them (queries). The weekly publication’s one time motto was the catch-phrase of Captain Cuttle or Dickens’ Dombey and Son, “When found, make a note of it.”  Still in existence today under the aegis of the Oxford University Press, established as a “medium of inter-communication for literary men [folklorist Eliza Gulch was one of the biggest contributors], artists, antiquaries, genealogists, &c.,” the submitted briefs and replies has held to the original format, with many emulators including a section in The Guardian with the same name. Where do you find the most elaborate pith of his researches? Much more from Public Domain Review at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: subterranean rescues (with synchronoptica) plus a Trump chaos omnibus

two years ago: scanning code from magazines, the artistic side of Samuel Morse plus Surrealistic logos

three years ago: Quintette du Hot Club plus assorted links to revisit 

four years ago: Escape from New York (1981) plus more links to enjoy

five years ago: the equal sign, Afternoon Delight (1976) plus our first stop in Sweden

six years ago: Roman Moselle plus at the foot of the Burgen

social proprioception (13. 598)

Courtesy of Clive Thompson’s latest Linkfest, not only are we rather remarkable obituary for playwright Tom Stoppard whose poetic explanation of chaos theory in Arcadia inspired an audience member, a visiting oncologist to invent the technique of adjuvant systemic chemotherapy as a more effective treatment for breast cancer, through the magic of triangulation, saving untold lives unbeknownst to the author, we have occasion to examine the phenomenon further of happenstance and serendipity of disparate topics coalescing in unexpected ways that we need to be more receptive to. Thompson’s own hedgehog idea and guiding principle (an antidote to the previous post) grew out of a “slow hunch” that took years to germinate to describe the sense-of-self informed by social media, itself engendering amazing feats of coordination and kinship even through the briefest of briefs.

value-captured (13. 597)

Via Kottke, we are directed towards an anti-Bildungsroman about reflections on the growth and development of a digital native and a life squandered in the pursuit of increasingly tantalising internet points and the Overton window, the normative discourse of one’s peers as less than perspective and insight but rather something tethered, untethered and estranging, of others. Vicarious and evangelical, our protagonist aspires to live the life of others—achievable but deferred—and nonetheless consumed with consumption, and in the end, looking back at these parasocial relationships, realises too late it came at the expense of her own dreams and aspirations. While it may strike as a touch sententious and judgemental, that’s the exact impetus for reflection and to evaluate those metrics that malnourish us (sometimes described as gamification but I think that’s a misnomer as the most oppressive ones are the most ungamely) from those that help us reach our potentials.

synchronoptica

one year ago: everything becomes crab (with synchronoptica) 

two years ago: assorted links worth revisiting, a forgotten pioneer of cinematography, swimming with Benjamin Franklin plus France at the polls

three years ago: the first study-abroad programme 

four years ago: assorted links to enjoy plus volcanologist William Hamilton 

five years ago: sliced bread, the Quasi-War of 1798 plus a visit to Fladungen

six years ago: titleist Maurice Binder plus more adventures along the Moselle

🧐 (13. 564)

Courtesy of Kraftfuttermishwerk, we discover the world of how-to instructional reels that well predate but prevision influencers and looksmaxxing in the cache of Movietone News shorts, colourised and remastered carefully to preserve their charm and possibly unintentional humour through the lens of this 1930 tutorial by Count Etienne Louis Philippe Ścibor-Rylski of colonial Singapore, perhaps prompted by reports that the fashion trend had finally arrived in the States, on how to properly wear a monocle, the etiquette surrounding it—for those uncouth Yankees—and how to use it as an effective prop. Monocle drop was the original mic-drop. Click through for more vintage reels curated by Did You See? (including scenes of street life from the same period) and let us know what you find.