12x12 (11. 294)

brownstone: Gotham Gothic rowhouses as playing cards  

wall of eyes: Radiohead spinoff artist Jonny Greenwood’s latest album 

scrabblegram: a form of constrained writing using all one hundred tiles of the game  

blackula: a look at the brave inversion of exploitation cinema  

research purposes: profiles in the pornographers of Wikimedia who image and caption—see also—human sexuality, via Web Curios  

parks & rec: a map of sites in the US funded by FDR’s New Deal programme—via Waxy 

best laptop 2024: readership, AI and the collapse of media outlets  

nullification: Texas governor, alleging the US federal government has failed to protect the country from an immigrant invasion, hints at secession  

the compaynys of beestys & fowlys: revisiting how animal groupings (see previously on the subject of venery) received such colourful names—via the morning news  

schluckbildchen: sixteenth century edible devotionals  

mixtape: Kim Gordon, formerly of Sonic Youth, raps her grocery list in new song Bye Bye 

ephemerama: a growing archive of modern illustrations from circa 1950 to 1975—via Things Magazine

synchronoptica

one year ago: more trompe l’oeil paintings, assorted links to revisit plus pie-chart studies

two years ago: morphing logos plus more links to enjoy

three years ago: zorbing, the Council of Trent (1545), Australia Day, more links worth the revisit plus Tubman on the twenty

four years ago: modular, prefab kiosks plus the first television demonstration (1926)

five years ago: the longest government shutdown in US history, architect Sir John Soane plus all the world’s writing systems

anapodoton (11. 293)

From the Greek ἀνανταπόδοτος for “I give back,” the ellipsis refers to a rhetorical device by which the gist of a saying is supported by its subordinate clause without mentioning it, like if the mountain won’t come to the prophet, when in Rome, a bird in the hand, if the shoe fits or when the cat’s away. As with the spoonerism I heard once and since incorporated “paying Peter to rob Paul,” I thought the former idiom (fabricated by Francis Bacon) was “Let the mountain come to Mohammed”—an anacoluthon, a disruptive thought expressed in reported speech by my favoured em-dash to mark the divergence—and is entirely missing the intention and making a postproverbial or preverb. The study of such maxims and their variants, dating back to Aristotle’s collections, is called paremiology, classing them into the categories of comparison, interrogation, their above misuse and metaphorical or allusory.

8x8 (11. 285)

80s chillpill: a nostalgic, slow-dance playlist 

topdressing: an appreciation of the world’s “ugliest” utility airplane, the Airtruk, designed for crop-dusting in New Zealand—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest  

future-proof: an advertising campaign from a pen company in the early 1960s strangely forecasts our technological present 

these children aren’t french—they’re american: a retrospective look at the BBC’s language learning mascot Muzzy 

night-climbers: John Bulmer’s photographs of a secretive group that scaled the campus of Cambridge under the cover of darkness—more here  

crochet coral: an evolving nature and craft hybrid project to memorialise and raise awareness about our disappearing reef—see previously—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links 

money pit: a tour of the world’s abandoned airports  

doses & mimosas: a remix by Vintage Culture featuring Zerky

stochastic parrot (11. 284)

Despite having encountered and cited the extremely apt coinage several times in various contexts beforehand, we realised that we never knew the term’s etymology—the leading part’s anyways—as coming from the Ancient Greek for something determined at random or derived from guesswork (στόχος—also a pillar to prop up a fishing net to mend it) from the office of the stokhastes attempting to predict an outcome by divination, later coming to mean a probabilistic conjecture or augury by allocation. Though a good word of caution against mimicry and anthropomorphising, it does perhaps underestimate the faculties and experience of our feathered friends. More from Language Log at the link above.

7x7 (11. 278)

you are not a product: the demise of the social network Ello’s ambitions  

right: US to UK export Word of the Year—see previously  

mystic pizza: a new popular regional style from the US state of Connecticut  

arbustum: ancient Roman wine-growing techniques and forest agriculture may help battle modern climate change  

sora-q: Japanese space agency is poised to land a transforming robot on the Moon  

gloogo: a lexicon of words that don’t exist yet but should (see also) from Burgess Unabridged—the source of the term blurb  

𝄐: time spent pausing is a worthwhile pursuit—see also on the fermata

10x10 (11. 276)

durianrider and banana girl: a personal account of joining a fringe diet community and subsequent de-programming  

curricula: an archive of Japanese school books from 1898 

i’m feeling lucky: a mostly facetious collection of laws about discourse from Osmo Antero Wiio that posits that communication usually fail except by accident 

it’s not your imagination: research shows that Google search, overrun by competition for rankings, has gotten worse—along with other indexing engines  

flickr commons: sixteen stories for the image platform’s sixteenth birthday—via Waxy  

pps: Chuck Wendig warns against using AI to enhance one’s creative outlets

chevron v natural defence council: US Supreme Court posed to overturn a forty-year precedence on regulators and agency enforcement—more here   

rewatch: Netflix is airing a bevy of classic films, celebrating their milestone anniversaries 

reference desk: as part of an “inappropriate content review,” a US school district is banning dictionaries and encyclopaedias 

the ouroboros of the passive-income scam: an escape from a get rich quick cult

lighthouse customer (11. 274)

Whilst not exactly synonymous, most alternatives to the designation of lighthouse in other languages come with deference to the Pharos of Alexandria, the hundred metre tall structure, unsurpassed for centuries and advertised as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, as phare, faro, farol, фара and so on, and perhaps not exactly to purpose, we were pleased to learn of the term obeliscolychny as a substitute (we alway try to play by Just a Minute rules, with no repetition, hesitation or deviation*). Coined by the sixteenth century bon vivant and academic François Rabelais (see also here) from the Greek ὀβελισκολύχνιον for a spit used as a lamp-stand, the obscure word is also employed by playwright Alfred Jarre.

remigration (11. 268)

For the thirty-third time, a jury of linguists and journalists from Darmstadt has selected the German Unwort of the Year in a portmanteau for the return of refugees, asylum-seekers and Einwander introduced into common-parlance by members of the Identitarian Movement and other rightwing groups (see previously) a euphemism for forced expulsion and even mass-deportation of those considered to be of a non-native background. The organisation fears that this “un-word” is being harnessed to normalise extremist positions in political discourse. Runners-up that the jury also criticises for its rise in use include “Sozialklimbim”—social climate as a classist dog whistle for the poor and disenfranchised as destined to remain on the margins of society and politics, joining a constellation of disparaging expressions, including a soziale Hängematte, a safety-net viewed as a hammock, Gratismentalität, entitlement-thinking, and “Heizungs-Stasi,” from the perceived dictatorial approach of regulatory framework meant to make heat and homes more energy-efficient.

synchronoptica

one year ago: signature martinis, Land Down Under, the endangered apostrophes of London plus Kurosawa’s Macbeth

two years ago: a history of the crossword puzzle, Un-Word of the Year, Bloody Mary plus assorted links worth revisiting

three years ago: more links to enjoy, Snowflake Bentley, a curation of ignored artefacts plus whaling ship logs

four years ago: more links worth the revisit, the Republic of Vermont plus Swiss land-use

five years ago: the launch of Wikipedia (2001), 1999 in film, seedlings on the Moon, more on Trump’s atrocities plus other smokable plants

stepford authors (11. 265)

We really were in agreement with this comparison of AI plagiarism to the 1975 horror film premising that the human wives of Stepford, Connecticut are having their identities transferred to more able cyborg replicas (to excel at household chores, cooking, sexual acts) without all the shrewish, independent aspects of their personalities that make the slightest bit objectionable to their husbands, having dispatched their biological templates and replacing them. Substituting a human writer with a synthetic one, for the publisher—or any employer for that matter—strikes one as far less bothersome. Meanwhile, the tech giants’ behind large language models arguments for “fair-use,” that machines are digesting and learning from the written word in the same way human readers do and not merely copying them is keeping lawsuits at bay within a legal-framework wholly unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with wholesale violation and lacking attributions—insufficient to even form a rigorous standard to hold the robots to. 

 synchronoptica

one year ago:  the Human Be-In (1967), Davy Jones changes his professional name (1966), ten years of Question Hound plus assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: Davie Bowie’s Low (1977), a short by Gérald Frydman plus training an AI on vintage Batman comics

three years ago: a celebration of donkeys, Trump’s second impeachment, Laocoön, the US Congress’ electronic voting machines, marijuana and the munchies, premium pluralisation plus more on snail compasses

four years ago: forty-five-plus years of Fresh Air, US-Iranian relations, for America, separation of Church and State is becoming blurred plus Germany’s Un-Word of the Year

five years ago: pop-up poetry, view from a bus plus Cherubrashka

nuance (11. 264)

Via Kottke, we discover the Emoji Kitchen by Jennifer Daniels that allows one to combine and remix emoji (see previously here and here) as symbols for different accents, ranges of expressions and moods for angry kisses, pensive cowboys and forlorn robots to capture all the feels as well as some truly surreal abstractions (available directly only for certain platforms), like monkey cactus or monocled dustbin. See what you can come up with.

 

⢹⣇ (11. 255)

Via the latest instalment of Clive Thompson’s Linkfest, having explored ambigrams in the past, we were quite taken with this compilation of braille transformations collected by Sean M Burke (in Unicode) that convey a certain unexpected poetry and symmetry—like pondering the I-Ching for those unfamiliar, and would be a worthwhile effort to be able to re-orientate and read them for oneself. Much more to explore and contemplate at the links above.

ensh*ttification (11. 250)

As shared by Waxy, the venerable American Dialect Society, founded in 1889, selected as its Word of the Year (technically referred to in the broader sense as a “vocabulary item”) the coinage from Cory Doctorow used to describe, and perfectly encapsulate, how digital platforms degrade and become decrepit, following a tragic bait and switch trajectory of first being good and usefully, then abusing users by commoditising them for the sake of advertisers to finally abuse those sponsors and shunt value for themselves as a brand—to die the death. Among other contenders short-listed were ceasefire for those calling to stop the hostilities in Palestine, context for its invocations from university presidents on free-speech, Kenaissance for the depiction of the heroine’s companion in the Barbie movie, “let someone cook” as an urging to allow an individual to do something they are good at without interference and stochastic parrot for the tendency of language models to generate plausible text without any understanding. The jury also announced categories of most useful, mostly likely to succeed, such as a gendered-x, girl math, boy math and era defined as a personal period of defining style or behaviour. Their euphemism of the year nominees included effective altruism as a movement to benefit all of humanity but as an excuse to spend the money of others, and in the politics category, 🍉 (employed for the similar colours to the flag) was picked as a symbol of solidarity with the people of Gaza with hot labour summer in second place. More at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: close-up photos of the year, the US House of Congress elects a Speaker, a tiny generative remixer, Emperor Norton I plus assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: the Slovak gaming community, the Tokyo metro in real-time, Powers of Ten, St Distaff’s Day, more links to enjoy, Web 3.0 plus Macron’s vulgarities

three years ago: words that are their own opposites plus the introduction of DALL·E

four years ago: here come the seventies, an animated medieval songbook, the tattoos of a Danish king, fancy apple varieties plus covering GITMO

five years ago: more Japanese New Year cards plus more on the Year of the Periodic Table

nominative determinism (11. 245)

In 1985, author John Train compiled a list of remarkable human names, some favourites being (and wondering how such monickers influenced their lives) being the pirate of Falmouth Arystotle Tottle, Betty Burp and Membrane Pickle of the Bureau of Vital Statistics of Florida and Cranberry Turkey Breckenridge, Jr and Mausoleum Jackson of the Division of Vital Records of Virginia, Edward Pine-Coffin of the Poor Relief Commission of Dublin, Fauntleroy Schnauz of the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey, Iccolo Miccolo who played the piccolo for the San Francisco Symphony, Quo Vadis Harris of the New England Journal of Medicine or Tetley Ironside Tetley Jone, tea heir. Find your match at the link up top.

piso mojado (11. 241)

Via Miss Cellania, we not only learn of the existence of a universally understood slipping hazard sign, a wet floor marker in the shape of a banana peel but also there is a whole sub-site devoted to their sightings. We’ve never encountered such a warning (we wonder where they are most common as opposed to the foldable one that props up) and though the trope of the obstacle and the prat fall certainly still are prevalent and comprehensible, it seems a little ironic that the cultivation practises of the fruit has led to the extinction of the variety that was particularly prone to cause tumbling, prompting concern for public safety in the mid-nineteenth century when importation became especially popular in America (leading to the gag) and municipal ordinances (with posted signage) regarding their proper disposal.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Dark Forest of the Internet plus outsourcing one’s outlet

two years ago: assorted links to revisit 

three years ago: Trump harasses election officials plus more facts gleaned from the past year

four years ago: AI generated beetles, an anti-Bob Ross, a book on bricks plus cities coping with sea-level rise

five years ago: preserving the present plus more links to enjoy

and surely ye’ll be your pint-cup and surely i’ll be mine (11. 238)

In light of recent toasting and cheering and an earlier post on translation of popular lyrics, we enjoyed learning about the Japanese verses inserted into the Robert Burns’ poem made into a New Year’s tradition. Initially used for a completely separate purpose, Hotaru no Hikari (The Glow of a Firefly, 蛍の光) set to the tune of the Scottish folk song was used for school matriculations and graduations and played also as outro music at shops and restaurants to signal closing time for customers, a few lines from this other composition in Japanese are added to Auld Lange Syne to ring in the New Year. Much more at Language Log at the link above including various performances of the different versions.

common parlance (11. 236)

The University of Michigan Lake Superior campus, continuing a longstanding tradition began in 1976, issues its annual listing for the coming year of words and phrased that are overused and have become otherwise hackneyed and deserving of retirement if not out right banning. It’s not prescriptive of course but something to think about in one’s own writing. Terms include hack, impact, slay, cringe-worthy and iconic. Does anyone say these words anymore? What do you think? The jury also nominated the word rizz—the OED’s pick for Word of the Year, which I suppose is still in circulation.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: a vast directory of 1990s design, assorted links to revisit plus an annual list of banished words

two years ago: more links to enjoy plus Eddie Calvert and Orchestra

three years ago: Z Cars (1962), more links worth revisiting plus St Berchtold’s Day

four years ago: more planetary symbols, airport codes, the Acropolis of Athens plus more Happy Hues

five years ago: a Bezold effect illusion, Luna I (1959) plus quilting and circuitry

anlaut, rime, nucleus, coda (11. 226)

Though everyone can intuitively say how many syllables are in a word—until one begins to question oneself like being prejudiced towards a certain pronunciation—and I find myself mostly conscious of them when editing and formatting longer words, particularly German, ones that to be hyphenated to be broken up to fit on one line or not be orphaned on the page—linguists have a challenging time defining what this phonological unit really is and whether it exists at all. Easily enough meted out, with allowances for artistic license, in poetic transcription adhering to a prescribed meter and rhythm and clearly parsed in the dictionary, the practise of actual syllabification is difficult to resolve as the spoken emphasis and stress is often, maybe always at odds with the conventions of orthography.

nyordslistan (11. 225)

In a highly anticipated annual tradition, Sweden’s Institutet för språk och flokminnen, the language council in collaboration with the magazine Språktidningen releases its list of neologisms for 2023—running the gamut of news and culture, the new entries range from AI-klonad (cloned) to barbenheimer with some three dozen others. The register features terms on a variety of topics including deinfluencing, cyberresiliens, situationship, longtermism, snikflation and nepo baby which are mutually intelligible as well as more native coinages like vild graviditet (wild birth referring to a trend of unsupervised pregnancies), tantparkour (aunt parkour, lighter physical training and obstacle courses suited for the elderly), bubbelhoppa (bubble jumping, to consciously change one’s environment to gain other perspectives on news events, politics and society), hyschpengar (hush money, prompted by the trials of Donald Trump and witness intimidation), känslighetsläsare, which looked at first by gaslighting but refers to those employed to proofread texts and highlight gendered or stereotyping language and evighetskemikalie, forever chemicals.

la, a note to follow so (11. 219)

Via the always engrossing Language Hat, we discover that the song that the governess Maria uses to teach the children solfège in The Sound of Music has of course been translated into a number of languages, which does not strike one as the same solmisation that English audiences are accustomed to but preserves the tune and structure of the perhaps fits better to non-Western scales than we can appreciate. Also covering Arabic language renditions (adapted indirectly through manga), the Japanese version approximates the lyrics thus: Do is for “doughnut” ドはドーナツのド / Re is for “lemon” レはレモンのレ / Mi is for “everyone” ミはみんなのミ (or in French, Mi, c'est la moitié d'un tout—Mi, it’s half of a whole) / Fa is for “fight” / So is blue sky ソは青い空 / Ra is for “trumpet” ラはラッパのラ / Si is “happiness” シは幸せよ (or in Italian, Si: se non ti dico no—Yes: if I don’t tell you no) / So let us sing! さぁ歌いましょう. One wonders what is meant by mnemonics and homophony to begin with.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting 

two years ago: TIME magazine’s Machine of the Year (1982) plus more links to enjoy

three years ago: your daily demon: Gemory, the Roman numeral four, the General Knowledge Paper of King’s College plus the interrobang

four years ago: 2019 in review, more links to revisit plus Love Roller-Coaster

five years ago: Breakfast in America, artist Martha Boto, Trump visits Baghdad, a domestic double-agent plus an AI names fireworks

away in a mangər (11. 203)

Having tried a similar experiment ourselves with the less-legible free version, we are happy that the expert—previously—asked an AI image generator to make “a simple Christmas nativity scene with each element clearly labeled for a child who is learning to read.” An attempt was made and certainly the creche iconography is there but one wonders about the myriad shepherd, shopherd, shephep and their flock, the mogheh—Magi, Mogwai—and the new pageant of characters Jeboe and Josy. What’s their story?  Much more at the link above.

 synchronoptica

one year ago:  Bloomberg’s Jealously List, the Polish government-in-exile plus more mudlarking

two years ago: artist Osmar Schindler

three years ago: your daily demon: Orobas, crash blossoms, assorted links to revisit plus The Year Without Santa Claus

four years ago: Stand on Zanzibar 

five years ago: more links to enjoy, a living fossil caught plus more ISOTYPEs