hook, line and sinker (12. 971)

Named the word of the year after a public vote for Oxford University Press (previously) recognises the rise of outrage-driven online content over contenders like aura farming and biohacking with rage bait. A survey of digital climate has found a three-fold increase of the term that refers to content deliberatively stoking anger by being frustrating or offensive as a proxy for engagement, attention commodified as emotional manipulation over the lexically related but somewhat dulled and less potent clickbait. The OED sources the first instance of the term in relation to the phenomenon of “road rage” in attempting to provoke a response from a Usenet forum in 2002 with the concept now migrating to standard use in news rooms and on social media.

i am millonaire andrew lloyd webber, welcome to my andrew lloyd website (12. 961)

We’re heard of plenty of sorrowful instances of zombification of abandoned personal pages and outright vandalism or kettling but we had not encountered until now, courtesy of MetaFilter, with the discovery of the moribund Yahoo! GeoCities page of the musical theatre composer and impresario (previously) last updated in 2003 and restore it to full-functionality as a NeoCity. Though some elements, like the title, seem to verge on gentle parody—but who could say for sure as websites at that time were vehicles for confession and reflection rather than self-promotion, it’s a privilege to page through the newspaper clippings, dream diary, home recipes and so on.

10x10 (12. 899)

linguistic fossils: an exercise in autocomplete, eight English words only used for very specific circumstances 

elevated concerns: locations in Greater London above sea level and how those heights compare to countries existentially threatened by rising waters 

new meme format just dropped: the surprisingly cordial meeting between Trump and new New York City mayor Mamdani—“go ahead and call me a fascist—it’s easier, it’s easier than explaining—I don’t mind”  

the long game: US federal judge rules that Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp are not anticompetitive 

terra firma: a few modest proposals to rename our home planet  

squirearchy: the economy and governance of Hobbiton, which seems fifty-percent dependent on upper-class failsons—via Super Punch  

petsmart: Shanghai-based domestic animal supply store will close all physical stores after a year-long retail experiment 

home of the gnomes: a charming, anachronistic “Hansel and Gretel” cottage in New York City—via Strange Company  

houndsditch: Gustave Doré’s illustrations of the East End crocodile tears: the origin and spread of the oft-detested response “no worries”

synchronoptica

one year ago: high concept art (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links to enjoy

twelve years ago: neuter and neutral plus limits on executive pay in Switzerland

thirteen years ago: talking turkey plus WWI day-by-day  

fourteen years ago: an insulation upgrade 

sixteen years ago: droid flu 

offline crush (12. 879)

Via Web Curios, we quite enjoyed this five unit crash course whose simple yet atrophied syllabus is aimed at teaching those who want to escape algorithmic suggestions (we’ve spilt much ink on the subject of rewilding one’s online and by extension real-world experience—see previously here and here—and one has to really want that instead of the echo-chamber and comfortable confirmations) and appreciated the dogmatic approach that’s an actual framework rather than just the aspiration to get out more, with tips for bypassing the directed traffic presented as exercises. Inspired by some reactions to a recent post about exploration and widening one’s repertoire that suggested that some that bothered to comment—more than the tinge of guilt suffered over scrolling past a picture of someone’s cute dog and not upvoting—expressed that they had forgotten how to internet, the lessons advise one to take stock, make note of behaviours, intentional or otherwise, and has actually homework in form of following a daisy-chain of external links as far away as they will carry one, researching the commonplace—some artefact from one’s own room—until one finds a fact so unexpected that one is compelled to share, preferably in an essay format, long-read, delving into forums and into specific archived file types and pocket the results. The assignment we found most resonant was the reminder to use inspect element—not just to try to lift some coding ideas which usually nets nothing as there’s so many overlays and dependencies to negotiate (recursively represented)—and just mashing all the keys to see what’s there and break or remix it as a local copy. Before AI slop served fake news, this was how the sausage was made but is moreover a prompt that the web was never meant to be a black-box and one was never meant to scratch under the surface and in general whose interactions were siloed by commercial platforms.

synchronoptica

one year ago: movie title drops (with synchronopticæ), the Onion to purchase Infowars plus the Polish-German border

twelve years ago: Wiesbaden’s Südfriedhof 

thirteen years ago: an inexact science 

fifteen years ago: advances in 3D printing 

7x7 (12. 878)

breaking rust: Billboard’s top country-genre song is AI generated slop—see previously  

crown jewels: Hapsburg family to display to the public a secret, personal stash of treasures hidden in Canada since WWII  

grist for the mill: all the commercial, off-kilter blogs were private-equitied out of existence—via Kottke  

mecces: visiting a McDonald’s in West Berlin in 1984 

s-money: a 1963 patent to replace US paper currency with square plastic wafers—see previously, see also here and here 

the call of the first æthyr: occult poetry by Aleister Crowley (see previously) delivered in his only known recording  

poice: Sora created videos of fake immigration raids in the US infest Facebook

give into the vibes (12. 866)

Coined this February by OpenAI Andrej Karpathy as a machine-aided solution for those wanting to create a bespoke programme yet never learned the basics of coding—which admitted on a certain level is the sort of in-group jargon that keeps the out-group out but are also instructions that computers understand—allowing users to become transcendental and forget that the underlying code even exists, vibe coding was selected by Collins Dictionary as their WotY for 2025—see previously. As with other forms of rocket-surgery, going with one’s untempered intuition and trusting the machine does not always achieve the desired outcome and the requester would not have the skills to edit or debug something that came close. Other terms on the shortlist included Henry, an acronym for “high-earner, yet not rich,” micro-retirement for a work sabbatical, aura farming, clankers and broligarcy.

9x9 (12. 865)

amor fati: Fredrich Nietzsche’s philosophy (previously) of passing on engagement can break the cycle of polarisation without becoming disengaged and nihilistic 

the memes of production: the internet reacts to Zohran Mamdani’s mayorial win in New York City  

unpaving paradise: an urban greening game to optimise replacing parking spaces in Berlin with trees  

№: why number is English is abbreviated n-o 

no springs: a hypnotic video of manufacturing robots politely waiting their turn in the assembly process—see also  

alive internet theory: a seance with the vibrant web and all its expressive artefacts against the countervailing argument it has become overrun by bots—see also—via Waxy 

gathering wool: online apparel retailers in China employ oversized hangtags to curb high return rates  

hatch act violation: US federal judge rules administration overstepped its bounds by inserting partisan blaming into furloughed government employees’ out-of-office autoreplies  

bleak outlook: astronomical survey deposits galaxy could be riddled with the artefacts of long dead alien civilisations that could avoid destroying themselves—we suppose that depends on what sort of religion they develop—see also, see previously—via MetaFilter

synchronoptica

one year ago: a monument to the Armenian diaspora (with synchronopticæ), the Carrington count, backstage customs plus US presidential numbering

fourteen years ago: food and drink prohibited plus Inventors’ Day

the machine stops (12. 858)

Expanding on the E M Forester dystopian novella, which first revealed its resonance to many during the COVID pandemic and lockdown when most were confined to a hexagonal cell with creature comforts and on-demand entertainment provided much like the main characters, we appreciated the chance to revisit the story and its litany of predictions courtesy of Better Living Through Beowulf. Written as a rebuttal to HG Wells more utopian and slightly paternalistic vision of the future, Forester wants to emphasise the authoritarian nature of rapid technological advance set in a future then very near to its publication. Most of the human population has gone subterranean after extreme climate change and toxic air has made the Earth’s surface uninhabitable. A benevolent omnipotent, super-intelligence caterers to its kept humans’ every need who in physical isolation only engage in the activity of posting on social media, texting and Zoom calls. Travel is permitted but deemed unnecessary and the super-intelligence, simply the Machine, is worshiped as a god—with orthodoxy reenforced by social creditworthiness. When the Machines begins to malfunction, people accept defects and hallucinations as the whims of omniscient providence until the disruptions become intolerable but unfixable as knowledge of how to affect repairs has become lost, if it was ever understood in the first place. After a catastrophic collapse of its circuits, people slowly reemerge and begin to rebuild civilisation.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Germany’s coalition government faces collapse (with synchronopticæ), an archive of military uniforms, America’s first Red Scare plus assorted links worth the revisit

patent pendency (12. 851)

A long established fact about the US Patent Office is its signature agnosticism regarding submissions and filings, only the competent authority of whether a proposal can be trademarked and copyrighted “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries” and not a judge of an idea’s quality or utility, though happy to collect registration fees, with any surplus above overhead operating costs being diverted to the general Treasury. Accordingly we appreciated this context-free gallery—via Things Magazine—of the figures and schematics (for applications recently submitted—see previously). There’s something that defaults to a little sinister when trying to surmise what’s being conveyed in this illustrations. Of course the details behind the pictures and prototypes can be easily and fully researched on the registry. Examiners, whilst specialists in their respective fields, are not necessarily lawyers, whereas trademark attorneys field work involving intellectual property.   

9x9 (12. 836)

pareidolia: a massive rock formation outside of Sedona Arizona looks like Snoopy atop his dog house  

birch benders: tell-tale rounded type that AI seems to prefer  

chaotic evil: wildly popular Sultan’s Game has a labyrinthine narrative that evokes Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths   

can you do facial: US customs and border protection forced scans and use of automated recognition to verify citizenship judged illegal 

faith ecosystem: ousted Intel CEO on a mission to create a Christian AI  

locofaulism: hyper-specific, hyper-local insults, mostly Dutch

ultracrepidarian: Chinese legislation prevents influencers from addressing important topics unless they are licensed professionals—see previously  

groked and pilfered: Wikipedia alternative (see previously) has a penchant for plagiarism and heavy citation  

storch und stag: concept power lines shaped as giant animals for Austria

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Park of Monsters (with synchronopticæ), assorted links worth the revisit, Ford turns his back on NYC, Trump and the stock market, the Rumble in the Jungle plus a poem for the battle-worn

twelve years ago: bridging the Bosphorus plus spying on the conclave  

fourteen years ago: goats and horses 

fifteen years ago: air travel security theatre 

7x7 (12. 799)

do not comply in advance: many news organisations are refusing to sign on to new US department of war rules to report on only officially vetted items 

haibao: a look back at the 2010 Shanghai world Expo plus a menagerie of other mascots  

touched by an angle: more biblically accurate heavenly hosts—see also here and here  

the lighthouse, the prioritiser and the flashlight: dozens of strategies for safeguarding one’s attention in an exhausting environment—via MetaFilter 

xeno canto: a geocaching tutorial for birdsong—from a revamped Maps Mania  

zoomorphic stereotypes: the 1806 human-animal hybrid caricatures of Charles Le Brun 

sos: Save our Signs project aims to preserve ten thousand placards in US national parks threatened with deletion for telling uncomfortable truths of the past for present and future generations

mixed-media (12. 792)

Via fellow internet peripatetic Messy Nessy Chic (with some more interesting ephemera in this collection), we are directed towards this fascinating Edwardian era scrapbook lovingly curated by a young girl in New York City—circa 1902 to 1906. Filled with magazine clippings, theatre programmes and postcards, the montage includes an advertisement for Triscuit crackers—the electric biscuit (see previously) and the source link includes some genealogical research into the possible origin of this incredible social document (the primordial Pinterest board, see also)—purchased for a whole dollar at a used book store. Much more at the links above.

aura farming (12. 777)

A meta-analysis of Google search terms reveals America’s most queried slang terms for 2025, the majority of which were an enigma to me, though was happily pleased to find the rather more traditional term mogging (from to decamp) overtaking the sense of looksmaxxing and we’ve encountered clanker previously as a derogatory word for robot. Huzz as a term of endearment rather than an insult is also an interesting development.  With some other AI slop inspired words on the list and AI overlays dominating search results we wonder how many neologisms might be left out by dint of a lack of association and fossilised by outmoded context with less non-synthetic material to scrape and might yet influence common-parlance in a retrograde way.

9x9 (12. 742)

admissible evidence: AI translations of animal vocalisations in the court room and other assorted legal stupidity  

mulholland drive: the Mid-Century Modern estate of David Lynch (previously) in the Hollywood Hill is up for sale  

happy blogoversary: Damn Interesting turns twenty 

õhuruum: more incursions of Russian fighter jets into NATO airspace, this time over Estonia—see previously  

⠝⠕⠍⠕⠎: overcoming wartime injuries that took both his sight and hands, a Greek youth taught himself to read Braille with his tongue and became a lawyer 

ministry of public enlightenment and propaganda: from the wires, 4 February 1939  

phlegmatic: the ancient origins of personality typing  

yawaraka jazz: an individual in Japan expertly DJs their collection of vintage vinyls with no commercial interruptions—via Web Curios 

feme covert, feme sole: Brigitte Macron, wife of the French president and whole human being in her own right, has agreed to provide scientific evidence to a US court to prove that she is biologically female from birth—via the New Shelton wet/dry

11x11 (12. 724)

out damn spot: the attempted erasure of a Banksy mural shows one cannot scrub away complicity in genocide  

free return trajectory: acting NASA administrator faces the space press on getting intriguing rock samples from Mars to Earth for further study 

canonically accurate: Spirit Halloween corrects the spelling on their Betelgeuse prop sign—see previously here and here 

jawsome: the promotional hyping of some thing as “awe dropping” connotes rather the opposite for me     

maternity ward: track new website launches by category in real-time—a lot of click-bait landing sites being cloned badly by AI but some genuine births as well—via Web Curios  

goodbye computer: a sad little send off from April Clucks about a machine she adored until they became unlovable

me＇te.o.ra: ambient music generated by local weather conditions—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest, which also features a defence of the em-dash 

midway: the aesthetics of arcade game marquees 

cornutam: Moses’ depiction in art as having horns is a mistranslation from the Vulgate perpetuated by centuries of tradition

an asymmetrical curiosity: physicists construct a tangible demonstration of time-crystals  

what sophistry is this: at the advice of legal counsel, Jezebel pulls an article from early in the week about hiring some Etsy witches to curse a right wing influencers and conservative activist—see previously, see also

gen z protests (12. 712)

Following large scale demonstrations organised by students and young people ignited initially by a ban on social media platforms—which are a lifeline and a way to keep families in touch for a generation of people who left the country because of poor job prospects at home to work under inhuman conditions in the Middle East—and articulated into a general grievance against political corruption and mismanagement, the prime minister, K P Sharma Oli (के.पी. शर्मा ओली), and many cabinet members resigned and fled Kathmandu today as the parliament building and other government offices and residences burned. Last Thursday’s ordered shutdown of Facebook, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Reddit, YouTube and others (TikTok faced a six month ban in Nepal—to preserve social harmony—until lifted last August, stirring similar reactions) cited the companies’ failure to comply with the new registration requirements of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology—with critics of the move citing the embarrassment of government officials over posts that revealed rank nepotism and their lavish lifestyles. Although the government voted to rescind the ban yesterday, the restoration of social media did not quell the discontent or violent clashes. The military has imposed martial law and is enforcing a curfew. The prime ministers of Japan and France also resigned today—but for different reasons, namely a crisis in confidence from their respective parties and a collapse in tenuous collations, strained to the breaking point.

cartooner (12. 700)

Another fun juxtaposition from ibīdem, is this single panel comics caption swapper that draws the extensive archives of Gary Larson’s The Far Side, Bill Keane’s Family Circus, George Gately’s Heathcliff and Hank Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace—the franchises in syndication taken up by other artists. The comic strips of themselves aren’t terribly humorous on their own (exceptions for Larson’s work) but in this form do elicit a laugh and a moment more of study and worth cycling through to find the correspondence and sheer wealth in the way flipping the script as it were works.

parts of speech (12. 699)

Mad-lib style, we discover, via Web Curios, this search engine that combines random adjectives and nouns and delivers a side-by-side comparison of what Wikipedia and one of the front-page browsers (Bing, Google, Duck-Duck-Go with varying degrees of AI) turn up with potential rabbitholes for every query, the former invariably telling you that the articles does not exist—whilst inviting you to make one—but not making presumptions about what you meant, just offering articles containing those keywords, making for a rather delightful non-sequitur medley to explore, whereas the latter confidently serves up what it thinks you meant, no more googlewhacks or 404 errors, or invents an enticing, seemingly relevant, overlay—probably not worthy of further exploration as impromptu catch-penny clickbait—see previously here and here, but the parallel frames make an intriguing juxtaposition.

weekend at esptein’s (12. 685)

Following a virtually silent period with suspiciously few tweets from the White House and zero public events scheduled (though Trump would be the easiest figure to reanimate through AI given all the braggadocio, vindictive nonsense and non-sequitirs he’s said and could be truly perpetuated forever by the party in the fashion of Lenin or the Kim dynasty), rumours—probably wishful thinking and premature—began to circulate on the president’s preferred platform and elsewhere of his death or disability, which would be doubly iconic given it’s the Labour Day long weekend, having destroyed the morale of the federal workforce, dismantled trade unions and lurched the American worker towards technocratic feudalism and the forced exodus at the Centres for Disease Control and accepting medical advice from the likes of RFK Jr. No official statement was put out to the contrary, coming after weeks of JD Vance saying he is ready to take on the presidency should need arise, which in fairness is his job description though woefully ill-equipped to hold the coalition of the vile, the expendable, opportunists and useful idiots plus with Trump talking about getting into Heaven, convinced that a Noble peace prize would persuade St Peter (tariffing India fifty-percent for not sponsoring his nomination) and for now there’s only one grainy photograph of Trump golfing, perhaps a body-double—at the course where he buried his ex-wife in order to earn a tax-exemption by designating the property as a cemetery—having been snuffed out to keep her from dishing on Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, perhaps foreshadowing his own new tactic for delay and distraction, by dying—“it will be the biggest death of all time!” Though very much of a tool and pliable like Trump, Vance has a deficit of the charisma to fill the power vacuum and there will be a violent crisis of succession. We won’t believe it until Russian state media is preempted with Swan Lake and announces the death of long-time operative Krasnov. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION IN THIS MATTER!  We now return to regular programming already in progress.

8x8 (12. 679)

short imagined monologues: the abandoned new Cracker Barrel logo speaks out  

internet caretaker: Messy Nessy returns from vacation with another roundup of things found on-line—no notes  

 ticker-tape: a 1967 home computer—via Damn Interesting  cybersitter: a look back on the ways of filtering the web

ai upscaling: multimedia artists complain about unbidden tweaks to their signature videos—via the New Shelton wet/dry

dark dwarves: astrophysicists theorise a new class of stars that may never exhaust their fuel  

🖇️: an annotated collection donated to Present /&/ Correct 

divertimento № 198: assorted links amid gustatory delights from the Minnesota State Fair 

the united states is not made up of well-adjusted adults—it’s made up of americans: simulation and simulacrum in the USA—via Miss Cellania

synchronoptica

one year ago: the introduction of Pepsi (with synchronopticæ)

thirteen years ago: the evolution of screen-time plus frozen fireworks

fourteen years ago: reimagining Space Oddity 

seventeen years ago: driving on autopilot