🤬 (13. 956)

This is a fascinating reveal of not necessarily censorship, for which we guess are not degrees other than to prevent immediate harm, spread panic or defame, but rather a not so subtle nudge away from certain verboten phrases—that in retrospect we’ve experienced in passing we realise, not that we would text words but I think it is across the whole suite of Apple autocomplete and have noticed a disconnect when typing in Notes for a blog post—via Nag on the Lake’s latest batch of Sunday Links. Of course this index of prohibitions that will never be suggested but are rather swipeblocked, either through predictive text that never offers the phrase though its the most natural next pairing, offering an implausible one and sometimes even changing words already entered, which covers slurs, public figures, sex and drugs, political slogans and conspiracy, is not published. These protocols, which also are deployed against vulgarities may dissuade to a certain extent, washing our mouths out with soap and being the scold that we all at times deserve—or just engender exasperation, but are no antidote to the algorithms of search engines that feed one more of the same sanewashing and lead down dangerous rabbitholes.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica), about town plus artist Lynd Ward

two years ago: Trump’s transition team plus more links to enjoy 

three years ago: Frankenstein’s monster’s book club plus the Enterprise encounters Daran V

four years ago: Take My Breath Away (1986), The Cher Variety Hour, assorted links to revisit plus an orchestra recreates Berlin’s soundscape

five years ago: the Tree of Ténéré, the history of Sanctuary Cities plus even more links to enjoy

six years ago: a false-friend, more minimalist movie posters, hyper-realistic art, the first internet murder plus an audio recording of a sadly extinct, unique dialect

seven years ago: assorted links worth the revisit

eight years ago: Trump’s Attorney General resigns, Leipzig by street car, East of the Sun, West of the Moon, attempts to suppress the Church Committee on intelligence abuses plus the Beer Hall Coup (1938)

 

 

8x8 (13. 955)

highland refusal: an open letter to the NYT crossword editor about Orkney Scots, the canonical home of Groundskeeper Willie, and the problem of other dialectical misappropriation—via Web Curios  

sweet are the uses of adversity: Trump’s downfall through the lens of Shakespeare’s As You Like It 

stay in your lane: a bizarre 1970 animated short about how daily routines strip us of our individuality  

grands magasins dufayel: monumental Parisian department (the Palace of Novelty, the first offering consumer credit) store hidden in premium office space  

taking it in stride: the mechanics of walking are working against shoe-laces with every step—see also  

pivot table: Maria Tomazou made a “pointless” film in MS Excel—see previously here and here—via Waxy 

the ugly car that sucks has died: Elon Musk, following his half a billion wasted interfering with Texas politics, announced the discontinuation of Cybertruck production—see previously, see also  

banderole: audio, video, disco means I here, I see, I learn in Latin—a nice personal motto (from “mutter”) or slogan (from the Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm for “battle cry”—which comes at the top of a heraldic achievement whilst a motto goes at the bottom)

algorithmic bias (13. 945)

We are reminded of this rather infamous exemplar of stereotypical reinforcement per machine translation by Quantum of Sollazzo. Although, of late, the platform claims to have solved the inherent chauvinism by a disclaimer that addresses the limitations of translating a gendered language, the fact that relatively neutral English output informed by the inclusive Hungarian personal pronoun, ő meaning she or he or they that is often considered redundant except in cases for contrast or emphasis as the actor, without respect to sex, is carried by verb conjugation, and demonstrates that traditional roles still haunt machine translation and the datasets that they draw from.

upstaged (13. 943)

Beating out other contenders like p(doom), the probability that AI will destroy civilisation, ghost jobs, vacancies with no intention to fill them, friendslop and carspreading,
the jury at Collins Dictionary has selected mogging as its Word of the Year to describe the performative act of manifesting dominance through self-evident prowess or good looks and the feelings of inferiority and comparison it can engender in others. Though originally circulated among incel culture, it has shed those more toxic associations as it has come into common parlance, reclaimed by polite society and is believed to be a derivation of AMOG—or “alpha male of the group”—combined with mugging as in mug shot and has come to generally mean the relatable experience of wavering confidence contrasted with our perceived social betters.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: Ford’s political purge of 1975 (with synchronoptica), the Fenton Label Company, The Pleasure Garden (1925) plus all of Star Trek: TNG in three-second bites

two years ago: Kamala Harris and her avatar appear on SNL plus the Japanese instrument of surrender (1946) 

three years ago: Snarkmarket Day, assorted links worth the revisit plus the Waxweb

four years ago: another classic from Enya, Saint Hubertus plus assorted links to revisit

five years ago: a classification of creatives, another MST3K classic plus more links to enjoy

six years ago: the November Revolution that led to the formation of the Weimar Republic plus Carrie (1976)

seven years ago: a pervasive number from Rusted Root, more awful library books plus an embarrassment of social media platforms

eight years ago: Nixon’s Silent Majority plus a trip through the Rhön

 

who’s maxxing now? (13. 940)

Rising to the top of its shortlist of contenders, including affordability, data centres, odyssey and unc—a clipping from African American vernacular for uncle and transformed into the new pronouncement of “OK Boomer” or being out of touch—the term for optimisation of a pursuit and all its derivatives was selected as the Dictionary.com Word of the Year. Whilst not a new concept or coinage, Will Smith was “maxin’ and relaxin’” already as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and the idea has been used since the 1940s for game theory, we’ve all seemingly been consigned to slang, willingly or not, that has its origins in the incel community, privileging appearance through looksmaxxing above all else, the affix mainstreamed in its versatility and applicability—speaking more to the drive to keep jonesing for the Jones’, having a certain etymological pedigree but up for infinite personalisation, more freedom from influencers is in on the horizon. Those lethalitymaxxers gooning for the Pentagon can be the first boots on the ground and possibly cause the buzzy trend to fizzle out so we are no longer held captive by it.

ad passim (13. 887)

Realising and fully owning to using internal links to past posts on a topic or similar—with familiarity a driver in what catches our interest and focus, as we are sure for other bloggers—to cite past occurrence, sometimes as a chain of authorship or just earlier mentions and the tangential. At times those see previously tags can add up for certain topics and recently we were reminded of another indexing term at our disposal: passim, from the Latin for “here and there,” “everywhere” for when the subject is addressed throughout the entire corpus and a footnote or endnote to point to general discussion, not contextualised and with frequency and as an acknowledgement that of citing every concordance would be too time consuming. Onerousness aside, I think we will continue referring back to specific posts whilst letting one know it isn’t exhausitive, et pass., & seqq.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ announced as Nobel Peace Prize winners (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: Rocky & Bullwinkel and the Cuba Missile Crisis plus more links to enjoy 

three years ago: Adobe’s animated chameleon dress plus Don’t Look Now (1973)

four years ago: even more links to revisit plus the revival of Brigadoon

five years ago: St Gall, distilling writing down to its punctuation,  a mushroom atlas plus even more links to enjoy

six years ago: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) plus more studies of the human face and emotional expression

seven years ago: consequential pieces of code

eight years ago: airfields from above,  restoring Nightwatch, John Paul II chosen as pope (1978) plus recruiting for jobs in the Iraqi government

 

8x8 (13. 885)

name shame: nominative-antideterminism—see previously here and here  

wiener werkstätte: the greeting card grotesques of Rudolf Kalvach 

three steps off the coast: ten adventures celebrating a decade of travel blogging  

most favoured nation: the Amazon listing policy that locks retailers into their marketplace 

the naked zoo: the 1970 sexploitation film starring Rita Hayworth gets the Poseidon’s Underworld treatment  

voiceless postalveolar fricative: Filipino municipality of Sexmoán changed its name—see also  

pebete: eating through Wikipedia’s list of notable sandwiches—this time with World’s Fair fare of the 1873 Vienna Weltausstellung  

his mayorship: Hitler Mussolini Simeón Flores of Peru’s centre-left Ahora Nación party wins election in Queropalca

synchronoptica

one year ago: Brazilian vernacular graphic design (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: an incredible Trump rally plus a creepy featurette 

three years ago: mortgaged-money to fight inflation, Adelaide Hall plus the Battle of the Sinai (1973)

four years ago: most popular Halloween candy by state according to AI, a UB40 classic from 1988, the cemetery of Old St Pancras plus a menu à la carte

five years ago: assorted links to revisit, more unaired television pilots, Mouldy Old Dough plus dialling up the fright factor with AI

six years ago: more obscure and choice insults, a musical selection from Bronski Beat, more links to enjoy, Jack the Ripper’s From Hell letter, word nuance in cooking plus The Great Dictator (1940)

seven years ago: high-energy cosmic rays

eight years ago: a fun Star Trek musical mashup, more links plus discovering the convenience of public transport

 

latino sine flexione (13. 876)

Though best known for his contribution to mathematical logic and set theory, standardising the axioms deductive structure for natural numbers, Sardinian professor and glottologist (one who studies how languages evolve and change over time) Giuseppe Peano was also an advocate for international auxiliary languages, like Esperanto and Volapük, and even invented one of his own. Recognising that Latin was already esteemed as the lingua franca among certain communities, Peano pared down the declinations and inflections as much as possible to simplify its grammar whilst retaining its familiar vocabulary. Starting in 1903, Latino minimo was a gradual process and whilst disfavoured by purists and others in Interlingua circles promoting their own conlangs, with only Peano and a few colleagues publishing in simplified Latin, as recently as 2017, Latino sine flexione applied for inclusion under the International Organisation for Standardisation to be assigned the language code ISO 639-2. More from Futility Closet at the link up topp.

10x10 (13. 846)

john henry was a steel-driving man: the limits metaphor, transduction and the calcification of man vs machine trope  

baxian: the enduring popularity of the Eight Immortals and other Taoist mythology 

rheinstone cowboy: yodelling and its exports 

vienna model: solutions to the housing crisis across Europe—more here  

fandeliers: McMansion Hell (previously) wonders what’s going on with ceiling fans recently displaying drone-like ambitions 

tears in the rain: debate rages over the ethics of AI agent dungeon 

ticker-tape: a look at Bloomberg trading terminals and antecedent technologies of getting ahead of the markets

figures of tolerable disorder (if not used too often nor too thick): the virtue and vice of the parenthesis—see also here, here and here 

kidnapping of the sun and the moon: Hungarian pop art cartoonist Sándor Reisenbüchler  

from the performative gibberish department: Trump introduces meaningless “morally binding” guardrails for Super Intelligence in the same spirit as Big Tech’s self-regulation

9x9 (13. 836)

cyberselfish: Paulina Borsook’s 2000 book about the libertarian, uncharitable culture of high tech is back in print after a reevaluation of its foresight 

the full english: breaches of British etiquette no one will ever call you out for transgressing—via Nag on the Lake  

el niño: the coming weather pattern, climatologist predict, will be the most powerful in recorded history  

familect: jargon and running-jokes only understood within one’s extended household—what are some of your examples? 

i want an explanation—why is there a child on the bridge: the series finale of the 80s sitcom Webster had a cross-over with Star Trek: TNG—see also   

artist’s bigature: Grace Baldwin’s larger-than-life junk drawer  

deliquesce: of a solid structure or lattice, to melt or dissolve by absorbing moisture from the atmosphere—like exposed salts or wilting mushrooms  

nor’easter: powerful, unseasonably early storm slams eastern seaboard  

symphonie magnétophonique: a profile of Else Marie Pade, the first Danish composer of electronic and concrete music

bro, do you even lase? (13. 832)

Recently gifted a hologram-making kit, our trusty AI wrangler Janelle Shane (previously) has turned their attention to lasers and minerals lately, with super intelligence turning a touch problematic and more prone to making a death ray that will destroy us all. We really enjoyed the gems of science series, the argon ion effects of Clash of the Titans and though we were not familiar with the characters of the Steven Universe universe until now—being named for obscure semi-precious stones—this ranking of heroes from the series in terms of optical amplification proved to be pretty educational and edifying for getting a grasp on concepts like coherence and spectrum. The above verb is a back-formation and the acronym (now mostly an anacronym, see also, like scuba and radar) is from Gordon Gould’s 1959 conference paper for light amplification by stimulation emission of radiation, though in retrospect LOSER, for light oscillation by stimulation emission of radiation, would have been more scientifically accurate.

proud as a peacock (13. 821)

Though familiar with some of these adjectival forms pertaining or relating to animals—plus a few others not included concerning the generation of geese and more weasel-words, we appreciated this list from Futility Closet, foremost for the spirit in which it was compiled, recognising the humanity in all living creatures and sympathy for them, as well as for adding some new premium vocabulary to our quiver. Pavonine, from the Latin for peafowl, refers to possessing the distinctive colouring (just as something described as hippotigrine can be a zebra-striped pattern) or the iridescence of their feathers—and by extension, can mean something showy, describing the presentation of potential, vying suitors or a fetish of vanity, pride or conspicuous consumption. Procyonine, also derived from the genus and family, means raccoon-like, exhibiting the traits or behaviour of a trash panda. One should not only apply, project our negative, dehumanising habits to noble and dignified creatures, however.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronoptica), the UN General Assembly plus the US meatpacking industry

two years ago: a 1974 tour of Fort Knox plus more links to enjoy  

three years ago: “Heroes” (1977), The Swiss Family Robinson plus superlative urban wildlife photography

four years ago: Trump family facing legal peril over exaggerating the value of their crime syndicate plus an infinite scroll of the updating internet 

five years ago: the unification of Saudi Arabia (1932) plus your daily demon: Phenex

six years ago: the US Subversives Control Act (1950), the Halo Effect and hindsight bias plus an anthology of Korean folktales

seven years ago: the Fatberg commemorated plus variations on the Dr Who theme

eight years ago: the first day of Autumn, numbers stations, a family’s political rebuttal plus a space probe arrives at its target asteroid

 

 

11x11 (13. 790)

hospoda: Czech tavern etiquette and drinking culture  

70up: following the death of Michael Apted, the cast of longest running documentary series is bowing out after the next and final instalment  

god’s own hand: the role of animacy in English genitive formation, X’s Y vs the Y of X  

area marker balls: those giant fishing bobs on power lines  

hexagonal close-packed: researchers form high pressure, high temperature ice, suspected to be present in the core of Uranus and Neptune 

dermatoglyphics: palm-reading and traditional medicine have always had a common intersection 

tacuini ægritudinum: the journey of a mysterious medical manuscript, supposedly from the legendary island of Hy-Brasil, from Baghdad to Ireland—via Strange Company  

short imaged monologues: Anthropic’s Claude responds to call to slow down AI research to prevent us from being wiped out by a paperclip maximiser—more here   

i pledge to the greatest president in the history of the united states that loves us so much he cant’t even breath: Trump urges crowd at the Republican Midterm convention to cheat like hell    

and although death is represented in the form of a human skeleton, yet this is only an emblem for death is not a being but a state: early modern flap books aimed at young readers with a special format for transformations   

between the sheets: a 1930s recipe for a cognac sour sees a resurgence in popularity

synchronoptica

one year ago: animated vignettes from Plantopia (with synchronoptica), assorted links worth revisiting plus a banger from Hozier

two years ago: more links to enjoy, nights on Earth, the Ig Nobel prize, prayers vs spells plus Cloud Appreciation Day 

three years ago: Putin and Kim meet 

four years ago: the Poet Laureate’s tribute to the Queen, the Beatles’ Apple Electronics venture plus even more links worth the revisit

five years ago: your daily demon: Marchosias, more links to enjoy, the first teenage all music and dance show plus the release of Super Mario Brothers (1985)

six years ago: dissecting the original COVID hotspot, more on radio alphabets, The Stand, the stately manor that inspired Wuthering Heights plus St Venerius

😱 (13. 778)

In a fascinating panel discussion with the hosts of Tiny Matters, Helen Zaltzman’s latest episode of the Allusionist presents a thoroughgoing historical, linguistic and cultural survey of our concept of phobias, now defined as an anxiety disorder characterised by a persistent and irrational fear of an encounter or a situation.Although first described in detail and subject to clinical diagnosis since the Middle Ages, likely first Persian polymath Abu Zayd al-Balkhi who accurately attributed them to a psychological imbalance that manifests itself with physical symptoms like trembling, fainting or paleness, their debut in common-parlance during the Enlightenment came thanks to the correspondence that American revolutionary, founding father, social justice advocate and physician Benjamin Rush had with Dr Diederik Janssen of the University of Maastricht in 1786, the pair of letters half-humorously (in the same spirit of the fanciful books of venery that gave us collective terms like a murmuration of starlings), half in earnest explores specific phobias and manias that give us the modern, if informal, sense of aversion and affection as suffixes, though without the double-barrelled Greek binomials. Whereas in Rush’s day phobic disorders were used to describe diseases—like hydrophobia, the old name for rabies, for the avoidance that late-stage patience displayed for drinking water, those messages helped inspire others to name dread and panic in a clinical manner with Victorian interest in psychotherapy becoming recognised and wide spread over the ensuing decades, hitting at just the right time. Being able to name something can be a gateway to healing, community and sympathy. The legacy of word play however also gave rise to non-medical and political use as in xenophobia and transphobes, which really have nothing to do with a debilitating fear of anything and are rather euphemistic attempts to categorise unjustified bigotry and discrimination and to trivial uses, both in making light of those with serious conditions in hyperbolic empathy and a profusion of -phobias that cause little to no distress. Do give the show a listen and discover a myriad of others at the website up top.

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.

i palindrome i (13. 774)

Having always been a little obsessed with the topic and enjoying the near-misses and deceptive examples nearly as much, we enjoyed learning that for the August 2010 edition of Word Ways journal (see previously) one contributor, Jef Raskin—an pioneer of computer science who helped create the Macintosh and Lisa, incidentally, and coined the term app originally as an information appliance, distinguished from a general use computer as a device designed to perform a specific electronic task as part of their work on machine-human interface, found themselves less than enchanted with the contorted syntax and characteristic vocabulary of palindromes, inspiring the the invention of the plaindrome. Something following the conventional scansion and stilted language of all but the best, examples include: “An item? No, revolt took Natasha” or “Money-man I, an Adam, not even a doom.” The reader adds the concept of ungrams as a foil to the anagram, with Richard M Nixon / Noxious Charmer and Brooklyn Bridge / Good ride by Lake. One could become addicted to making such misleading epigrams.  An antigram, by comparison, is rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to give the opposite meaning, as in “forty five” transforms into “over fifty” or Satan into Santa.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Our Lady of Meritxell (with synchronoptica), Trumps ousts trans troops from the military plus AI-sparked delusion

two years ago: incantations of Legal Latin, the founding of the Kievan Rus’, more diplomatics, American Beauty (1999) plus another summer compilation from DJ Earworm 

three years ago: Star Trek: the Animated Series 

four years ago: Perry Rhodan (1961), assorted links to revisit plus the death of Queen Elizabeth II

five years ago: your daily demon, the premier of Star Trek (1966), Ford pardons Nixon (1974), books and cheese, an unfortunate juxtaposition plus how language evolves

six years ago: Hopi kachina dolls, a Volvo six-wheeler, more links to enjoy, photographer Manfred Thierry Mugler plus Noncensorship (1922)

the new model army (13. 764)

Though always eager to disclaim its remit as a spoken history of a global language, the latest episode of The History of English presents a rather excellent overview of the English Civil War through the lens of linguistic developments and documentation from the decade of the 1640s, including the early discourse on orthography The English Primrose—1644, subtitled, the easiest and speediest-way, both for the true spelling and reading of English, as also the true-writing thereof ...Planted (with no smal pains) by Richard Hodges, a school-master, which includes the first instances of phonetic notation and expanded punctuation and Joshua Poole’s The English Accidence on inflection and a new way of expressing the future tense. Further we learn through the chronology that the term Tory, a traditionalist and supporter of political conservatism in the contemporary sense was a product of this tumultuous era, Irish guerrillas thwarting parliamentary republicans as royalist were labelled as tóraidhe from the Irish term for pursuer or outlaw. King Charles I pandered to these partisan even though Ireland, struggling for independence and aligned with the Catholic church, was seen as a traditional enemy of the monarchy and the association somehow survived the ensuing centuries. As a counterpoint, the term Whig has a similar rebellious and notably non-English etymology emerging from the same period of crisis as a shortening for the nickname Whiggamore for a Scottish presbyterian, a more liberal faction that opposed absolute monarchy, a robust parliament and religious toleration, and meant one who drives a horse briskly and by extension an outlaw or fanatic. The imposition of Anglican strictures on the Church of Scotland being on the chief causes of Charles’ downfall, the king ultimately surrendered to a group of Scottish sympathisers, hoping for clemency and the chance to return to power, inconceivable that the monarch could face trial and be held accountable for his actions. Though the latter was dissolved as a political party in the 1860s and does not carry the modern resonance that the Tories have, the two, despite their derogatory connotations, were the main caucuses of the House of Commons for two centuries.

display font (13. 761)

Though the lapidary angle is a bit of a red herring—still a useful heuristic as the idea occurred to the author whilst strolling through a cemetery, a profound and timeless repository of typefaces and fashion conserved and preserved better than the ephemera of an age, wondering at the lack of a certain kind of popular letterform ornament and how the inscriptions on the gravestones might look in that style—we enjoyed very much learning about Tuscan Letters, courtesy of Language Hat. Properly a special subcategory of what’s called a reverse-contrast or reverse-stress typeface or custom lettering (called Italienne auf Deutsch), where horizontal lines are more prominent over the usual balance or emphasis with vertical strokes for text that stands out—due to printing slugs mimicking script as written by right-handed scribes with a quill making the up-down marks relatively heavier, no one is certain how the toponym figures into typography—some theorising it was an invention of Victorian font foundries to evoke the cultured language and literature (see previously) of that region and lend an element of classicism despite no examples of the ornate, steroidal serifs that we recognise and associate with circuses and side-shows and the Wild West. Click through for a gallery of historic billboards and signage, with local vernacular, of the decorative family of fonts.

synchronoptica

one year ago: courts challenge legality of Trump’s tariff scheme (with synchronoptica), redevelopment plans for Gaza plus the geometrical property of rupertness

two years ago: union label plus assorted links worth the revisit 

three years ago: anthropomorphised food mascots plus twenty-plus years of badgers

four years ago: a misquoted rebuttal, a banger from Madonna plus more links to enjoy

five years ago: your daily demon plus the Battle of Actium (31 BCE)

six years ago: even more links, vaccine development efforts at cross-purposes, Stuttgart’s transit map plus scandal for the Scots language version of Wikipedia 

day one hundred seventy-seven (13. 756)

The US initiates fresh airstrikes on Iranian missile launchers positioned on the strait island of Larak, claiming to observe the Revolutionary Guard preparing to fire rockets carrying sea mines (an inefficient means to deploy them—Trump offers an AI-generated video of Kharg Island being “blown to smithereens!!”—into the Hormuz. The IRGC attacks US assets based in Jordan. The Supreme Leader urges Muslim nations to unite against their common enemies, America and Israel, vowing to avenge his father’s death. The US company Educational Testing Service confirms that it has suspended certifying its Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) in Iran as part of the latest sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Trump demands that all Canadian concerns doing business with the US relocate to America immediately. Iceland narrowly rejects resuming the accession process to join the European Union.

10x10 (13. 753)

cycle of cathay: a look at the etymology of the antiquated exonym 

landslide: over three thousand dead and missing in the aftermath of Himalayan flood catastrophe  

not the droids you’re looking for: a group of kids swede a brilliant remake Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope 

modern toss: the sweary comic workplace comic by Mick Bunnage and Jon Link honoured with an anniversary exhibition—via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake  

non-zero probability: idiomatic extensions of Black Swan Events  

pennywise: an homage to the gleeful villains of Tim Curry (RIP)  

game, set, match: a gallery of tennis-related art ahead of the US Open 

ice stupas: locals in the northern Indian desert valley are engineering artificial glaciers as a reservoir to safeguard water 

skålspænder: a Viking woman’s grave uncovered in Jutland with surviving remnants of her clothing  

nusantara: defining the maritime region of South East Asia by mapping its borders to the Java-based thalassocracy

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica), the origins of Fanta plus Trump’s lack of public appearances 

two years ago: the K-Pop Fab Four plus weird academic book jackets 

three years ago: artist Victor Ekpuk plus Higher Love (1986)

four years ago: a stylistic departure for the Byrds, Canada and the UK’s Manhattan Project plus more links to enjoy

five years ago: a news music anthology, even more links to check out, Hey Jude (1968) plus very strong animadversions

six years ago: the Moscow-Washington hotline (1963) plus lockdown fantasy levels