Mapped onto all sorts of anti-social behaviour and privations of gluttony, the real and reputed แฝฯฮฟฯฮฌฮณฮฟษฉ, gourmandise of ancient Greek culture with a penchant for relish or horsd’ลuvre as anything that might compliment a staple dish were leveed with a fish addiction, the most desirable morsel of a repast—we learn via Strange Company. There are many accounts of overindulgence by the wealthy and philosophers alike, wishing almost self-destructively for the gullet of cranes and pelicans for devouring the food—the poet Philoxenus of Leucas, for example, an enthusiastic banqueter and seafood lover who caused his own death by gorging on a giant octopus—and the conspicuous consumption was linked in the public’s mind to all sorts of vices, immediate gratification and moral failings, and indeed the spectacle or the rumour of the fish market became a moral panic of the day. More from JSTOR at the link above.
Saturday, 1 February 2025
opsophagos (12. 200)
Sunday, 26 January 2025
humanity’s last exam (12. 186)
Like the Voight-Kampff test, this standardised benchmark, created by some of the most astute philosophers is an escalating fight to stay ahead of AI to afford proctors a purchase on some sort of vanishing Turing test—especially against a backdrop of artificial intelligence making advances on graduate-level, multidisciplinary questions, raising the prospect that the machines are quickly approaching the limits of humanity’s ability to gauge and compare its progress and ability. The resulting quiz, with samples that not only imply to a degree teaching to the test and priming answers that people want to hear, has some three thousand questions, vetted and juried by academic panels, and whilst not timed, is completed in seconds by the world’s most powerful models. The battery of questions have correct answers—and perhaps it might be more interesting to pose the unknown or drill into what they get wrong in over-confident albeit novel ways, mindful of the risk of our own gullibility and misdirection which is certainly baked into solutions—and underscores the problem of jaggedness, inconsistency in AI’s abilities to tackle basic questions and the flowchart of prompts for better or worse outcomes and the difference between acing an exam and being a practising professional doing maths, physics, medicine or governance.
Wednesday, 15 January 2025
the garden of forking paths (12. 180)
Via tmn, we were thoroughly engrossed with this glossary of terms, under development, that account for why knowing things is hard, which emulates the scholarship, didacticism and style of Samuel Johnson’s 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language, and covers an extensive list of rhetorical devices and biases (see previously) that we’ve touched on before—also presenting a wealth of new ones. For instance, there is Brandolini’s Law which governs the burden of proof principle of bullshit asymmetry, recognising that the effort needed to refute misinformation is an order of magnitude than was spent to create it, the autobiographical heuristic, which appends themes in a work to the author’s experience rather than assuming it was something handed down or imagined (see also euhemerism), goropising—citing a discredited hypothesis, after Dutch linguist Johannes Goropius Becanus’ strange thoughts on etymology, and testis unus, testis nullus, that the uncorroborated account of a single person should be treated with scepticism. Much more from Book and Sword at the link above.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Unwort of the Year (with synchronoptica) plus Happy Days (1974)
seven years ago: the collectibility of Fiji mermaids
eight years ago: neural networks and arcade games, Flemish proverbs, Dorothy Lange’s photographs of Japanese internment camps plus mapping Trump world
nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus Nitrate Divas
ten years ago: a novel from Jo Walton about a time-travelling Athena plus early wireless telephony
Wednesday, 8 January 2025
9x9 (12. 155)
pacific palisades: southern California wildfires kept at bay from the Getty compound and vast holdings of antiquities
we still dance on whirling stages in my busby berkeley dreams: the kaleidoscopic visions of the 1930s Hollywood visionary—see previously
snap-back: Europe signals that they will not allow Trump to besmirch their sovereignty
in search of: dark oxygen (see previously) in the world’s deepest mines in South Africa
how nietzche came in from the cold: the unlikely rehabilitation of the philosopher banned in East Germany and silenced in the West over his championing by National Socialism—via the new Shelton wet/dry
fine hypertext products: HTML is a programming language—via Kottke
morning joe: the health benefits of coffee are most evident early in the day
lake of the woods: a retired Minnesotan forester pre-satellite maps planted a forest in the shape of the state
fps: attend a MoMA opening with DOOM: The Gallery Experience—via Waxy
synchronoptica
one year ago: a massive collection of card games (with synchronoptica)
seven years ago: border stories, a reconstructed astrological clock plus photographs of social decay
eight years ago: votive devotionals plus Waiting for Godot chatbots
nine years ago: New Year’s fireworks, assorted links worth revisiting, built environments on Mars plus the ethics of genetic chimeras
ten years ago: the Triadic Ballet, a collection of Do Not Disturb signs, the Restoration of the Icons plus distributed content
Sunday, 5 January 2025
smaismrmilmepoetaleumibunenugttauiras (12. 146)
Although only privileging our very limited point of view, changes in the skies, even though expected and with rational explanations, like the phases of the Moon, eclipses and occultations, can still inspire strike with awe and reverence and drive us to herald, especially in the waning and vanishing, their return. Clive Thompson directs our attention to one upcoming astronomical event, beginning in March and lasting through November, when the rings of Saturn will disappear. This temporary loss of the gas giant’s main feature, a constellation of debris, failed moons, captured comets and asteroids, occurs for earthly watchers twice every twenty-nine and a half years as the planet makes its revolution around the sun and its inclination puts our world in the ring plane, too thin to be seen head on.
Galileo who began making careful observations of the planet in 1610 one day noticed that the “handles” or “ears” had gone away and was deeply unsettled by this sudden change in the eternal heavens, thinking perhaps the Titan had actually devoured his offspring as in myth. Named after the Roman god of wealth and agriculture who sired Jupiter (Zeus)—Saturn’s patronage did not only extend the harvest but also its cyclical nature, identified with Cronos, whom after overthrowing his own father, Uranus, to become king of the gods was prophesied to be unseated himself by his own children and so gobbled them all up to prevent this from coming to pass. His mother Rhea substituted a boulder for her sixth child, Zeus, and hid him away in Crete to stop the madness. The somewhat more benign Father Time is sometimes portrayed with a sickle or scythe, rising from these same mythopoeic origins, but is nonetheless an equally unmoving standard bearer for the unrelenting march of time and witnessing such an exception, especially for the first time and to see them return months later as Galileo did—the title, as was the practise among astronomers at the time, refers to an anagram that he recorded to document a finding before it was ready for publication, Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi (I have observed the most distant planet and it has a triple form) and Huygens in the 1650s, correctly identifying the nature of the unusual tripartite form wrote in a letter to his father “aaaaaaacccccdeeeeeghiiiiiiillllmmnnnnnnnnnooooppqrrstttttuuuu,” deciphered as Annulo cingitur, tenui, plano, nusquam coherente, ad eclipticam inclinato or Saturn “is surrounded by a thin, flat ring nowhere touching and inclined toward the ecliptic plane”—is a reflection not only on aging and dissolution but also on recurrence and renewal. Much more at the links above.
Thursday, 26 December 2024
really want to see you, lord, but it takes so long, my lord (12. 114)
The first chart-topper of a former Beatle, George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” (previously) began a four-week run at number one in the US market on this day in 1970. Originally given to fellow artist under the same label, Billy Preston—session musician who played keyboard for Little Richard, the Everly Brothers, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles whom was recognised in his own right for his funk and gospel compositions (“Will it Go Round in Circles” and the Joe Cocker hit “You Are So Beautiful”)—which Harrison produced for his record Encouraging Words in September of the same year, the song’s author included it on the triple album All Things Must Pass, engineered by Phil Spector (see above) and given the Wall of Sound Treatment (see also) to highlight and enhance Harrison’s signature slide guitar. Intended as a statement against religious sectarianism, the modern and inclusive hymn is a reflection of Harrison’s yearning for a direct and unmediated relationship with God, in line with the teachings of philosopher and teacher Swami Vivekananada who introduced yoga and the Vedas to the western world in the late nineteenth century (see also) with the maxim “If there is a God, we must see him, and if there is a soul, we must perceive it,” echoed with a degree of impatience, later reconciled, in the opening verses.
Friday, 13 December 2024
le livre qui dit la veritรฉ (12. 078)
According to his own account, courtesy of our faithful chronicler, Claude Vorihon—now known as Raรซl, fortieth and final prophet and founder of the international movement, first encountered the extraterrestrial guardians referred to as the Elohim (see also) whilst hiking in the ancient crater of an extinct volcano in the Clermont-Ferrand mountains. A space ship appeared and summoned Vorihon to return the next day with a Bible, which he did and over the course of the next year, was taught the aliens’ benevolent role in guiding human history. Although incorporating elements from Judaeo-Christian iconography (like the pictured “wormhole of David”) and Eastern traditions, Raรซlianism is atheistic in so far as previous encounters and interventions were misapprehended as miracles and visits from gods. Vorihon was eventually taken to their home world and attended by a bevvy of cyborgs, learned their techniques of sensual mediation and tantric practises to produce a clone, after the philosophy of the quasi-immortal beings who have eschewed procreation in favour of limiting their population to ninety-thousand undying ones refreshed by clonal copies. Tenets of the movement, which numbers a membership of about ninety thousand worldwide (the same number as the individual Eloha) include advocacy for a single government modelled after Plato’s Republic, a technocracy and geniocracy, free love, gender fluidity and malleability, and various ventures such as Clonaid, rejecting the notion of an eternal and transcend soul and stressing that salvation is only secured through technological advances and an enlightened society.
synchronoptica
one year ago: more on the game of Life (with synchronoptica), assorted links to revisit plus Operation Red Dawn
seven years ago: microphotography plus the founding of Lufthansa
eight years ago: a new spider species discovered, the Rex Factor podcast plus Brexit negotiations
nine years ago: looking forward to the next episode of Star Wars plus Project ECHELON
eleven years ago: Germany’s Word of the Year
Saturday, 7 December 2024
footnote (12. 065)
Once the preserve of daisy-chains of ideas that built off another, the ability of AI to abstract and summarise the answer to a query in the search engine itself (see also), the loss of linkages threatens to flatten out the architecture of learning and the serendipity when one diverges from the affiliated index and embraces the flowchart, algorithmic (albeit cosmetic and reliant for now on those vast, networked underpinnings until, unless it becomes recursive regurgitation). Collin Jennings invites us to consider Alexander Pope’s mock-epic The Dunciad, considered a broadside of word in print by Marshall McLuhan, which lampoons the agents of the goddess of dullness who champion tastelessness and imbecility through publishing and the press presented over four editions as hypertextual with its appendices and commentary that far exceed the lines of verse in subsequent issues. AI doesn’t google like people google, to investigate, check spelling, check or outsource memories, and I certain am not looking for a tee-shirt version of my last search. The linear nature of the printed page and packaged answers—which great writers have always striven to transcend—was a limitation of the medium and its successors did rise above in the internet, collaborative and full of serendipitous deviations but artificial intelligence becomes an inscrutable blackbox not so much in its magic predictions but moreover when one is shielded from the tapestry of associations that inform its results.
A Lumberhouse of books in ev’ry head,
For ever reading, never to be read.
Next o’er his books his eyes began to roll
In pleasing memory of all he stole.
More from Aeon at the link above.
Tuesday, 3 December 2024
creative commons (12. 051)
Leading up to Public Domain Day in the United States (see previously) and other jurisdictions, Boing Boing is putting together a virtual Advents Calendar showcasing each significant work of literature, cinema and visual art whose copyrights expire 1 January 2025, protections terminate typically in America and the European Union (with some notable exceptions) seventy years after the calendar year when the author died—post mortem auctoris. Among those properties that become free to use however one sees fit include the pictured Chop Suey by Edward Hopper and Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, as well as writings from Virginia Woolf, Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Erich Maria Remarque and Ernest Hemingway.
synchronoptica
one year ago: the OED’s WoTY shortlist (with synchronoptica), assorted links to revisit, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) plus Winchester Cathedral (1966)
seven years ago: a collection of UK WWII propaganda posters
eight years ago: Ancient Lights, more links to enjoy, Belgian brewing traditions added to UNESCO registry plus Vantablack
nine years ago: Vienna’s Schรถnbrunn palace
ten years ago: searching for Krampus, more unbuilt architecture, a pre-crime pilot, Alfred the Great plus the Carolinian dynasty
eleven years ago: launch codes and the Nuclear Football
Tuesday, 26 November 2024
disenshittify or die (12. 031)
Albeit coming up to speed to an extent but recognising the continuing diatribe, Macquaire Dictionary has selected enshittification as its World of the Year for 2024, defining the term as the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking. Derived terms (none yet honoured in other authoritative lexicons) include enshittocene and the great enshittening, although all seem to do a disservice in deflecting from the bait-and-switch tactic sold under duress as the only sustainable business model, immediate rather than informed. Honourable mentions include brainrot, social battery for the stamina that one has for engagements and rawdogging, an unfortunate, awkwardly glossed and prevalent alternative to self-denial and asceticism.
Wednesday, 23 October 2024
rota fortuna (11. 927)
Though limited in recognition to his home diocese of Pavia (Ticinum, the capital of the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths, officially Regnum Italiae, after Theodoric the Great killed Odoacer following the deposition of Romulus Augustulus—the final Western emperor and entombed alongside fellow philosopher Augustine of Hippo), Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius is fêted on this day, according to tradition on the occasion of his martyrdom in 544 AD, ostensibly put to death by bludgeoning for treason for his outreach to the court of Constantinople in attempts to harmonise their divert practises with the traditions of the Roman See (the Great Schism did not happen for another five hundred years) but likely for being critical of the extravagances and corruption of both. A senator, consul and advisor to Theodoric, Boethius came to age during the fall of the Western empire and well educated, fluent in both Greek and Latin, sought to reconcile the teaching of Plato and Aristotle with Christian theology, translating the entirety of the classics along with a great volume of glosses, commentaries and original scholarship, keeping the great thinkers . Imprisoned for a decade awaiting his sentence—also on the order of the king, Boethius completed his final and best known work, The Consolation of Philosophy, written in the style of Platonic dialogue and premised on the condemned’s fall from grace and questioning how injustice can prevail in a world governed by God, the author’s interlocutor is Philosophy represented by a wise and beautiful woman. In response, Lady Philosophy says that fate is a capricious thing and the only force not reduced to dust by this Wheel of Fortune (conceptualised as the cycle of history, both personal and on the macroscopic scale), a trope informing thought through the Middle Ages to the modern day.
Saturday, 19 October 2024
๐ซ (11. 914)
Having encountered such revered writing systems previously, we enjoyed this introduction and overview of the small religious community adhered to by members of the Tedim-speaking people called the Zo or Chin, practising a monotheistic faith called Laipianism, an outlier for this indigenous group in a region of Myanmar that primarily follows Christianity or Buddhism. Founded in response to aggressive missionary outreach in colonial southwest Asia, Pau Cin Hau, the charismatic figure who would become the movement’s spiritual leader had a series of dreams around 1900 regaling him with a multitude of symbols for writing his native language which had previously had only an oral tradition—developing with the aid of his dream-guide a logographic syllabary of a thousand characters, simplified into fifty-seven for an alphabetic script. The name of the religion, which still has about five-thousand devotees, reflects the importance of this invention, the lai element meaning literacy, and the dream-guide was revealed to be Pathian—compare to the Pythia—who was the one true and transcend god and discouraged worship of intermediary spirits called metapersons. In written form, Cin was able to propagate the teachings of Pathian—ironically Christian missionaries also published in the script called Zotuallai. While the script is considered sacred and a certain level of deferential diglossia is maintained, the alphabet Cin was given its own Unicode block in 2014 and can be used for everyday communications and texting.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Pomp and Circumstance (with synchronoptica)
eight years ago: the Remembrancer of the Crown
nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus Picasso’s Guernica
ten years ago: Barbie: Plastic Religion, redesigning Norway’s currency, the civic minimum plus robots and mobility
twelve years ago: heraldic standards, looking at rectangles plus exoplanets and Alpha Centauri
Friday, 20 September 2024
6x6 (11. 858)
second-hand baloney boys: director Bong-Joon-ho’s Mickey17 explores indentured immortality with his expendable space colonists—like the duplicates paradox of teleportation
r/no burp: a Redditor community brings recognition to an undiagnosed but pervasive syndrome
ultimate world cruise: the social media coverage of a trip to seven continents plays out like reality television
the ladies annual journal; or, complete pocket book for the year: the 1776 diary of Susannah Dalbiac kept in the back of an almanac
twenty-eight years later: latest instalment of Danny Boyle’s zombie franchise was filmed entirely on iPhones
sanewashing: how journalists can resist normalising outrageous and radical ideas—via the New Shelton wet/dry
Thursday, 19 September 2024
getting to philosophy (11. 854)
Reminiscent of other connections and daisy chains discovered in the linkages in the growing universe of articles, following the first hyperlink in the main text of a Wikipedia entry (in English at least) and repeating the process for subsequent pages will bring one ultimately to the article on the love of wisdom and the process of critical inquiry, some ninety-seven percent of the time, with the small remainder consisting of orphaned topics or a self-referencing tautologies. This phenomenon may be due to the recommended style of contributing and editing and points to a certain hierarchy of taxia. Because of the changing nature of online encyclopaedia, the number of steps it takes to arrive a philosophy can vary from day to day, sixteen paces from apple juice to the discipline and it would be interesting to see the outliers that take the most jumps. More from Open Culture at the link above.
Saturday, 7 September 2024
8x8 (11. 821)
i voted: the state of Michigan let the internet choose the redesign of its election sticker given out at the ballot box and it’s a werewolf clawing off its own shirt
selective foresight: the “marshmallow longterism” of conservatives—see also
turn on subtitles: animated videos using only the closed captioning feature
psycho a capella: Korean ensemble MayTree shows off their vocal abilities with an excerpt from the film’s tense main theme—via Everlasting Blรถrt
backchannel: YouTube removes Tenet Media content following US justice department indictment linking them to Russian election interference
slipstream: the amazing achievements of cyclist Josรฉ Meiffret
eidophone: voices made visible by Welsh singer and scientist Margaret Watts Hughes
the kamala and tim show: the Democratic ticket is bringing 80s sitcom energy—via Kottke
Sunday, 18 August 2024
the question (11. 777)
Handling our Sunday matinee programming, Fancy Notion has selected an existential short from the animation studio of Halas & Batchelor (see previously) that ponders the meaning of life through our hopeful and introspective protagonist who finds confusion and frustration when consulting dogmatists in the fields of religion, politics, the humanities about life’s big questions but finally finds a solution with another fellow peripatetic. The venerable collaboration lasting from 1945 to 1986 was responsible for the instructional colour stop-motion feature Handling Ships for the Admiralty as a training aid for new navigators, a number of World War II productions intended to raise morale and encourage thrift, like Dustbin Parade to promote recycling and Filling the Gap about planting a victory garden as well as anti-fascist propaganda films. During the 1960s and 1970s, the duo created cartoon series for American television networks including Saturday morning staples like Popeye the Sailor, The Jackson 5ive, The Osmonds as well as the music video for Autobahn by Kraftwerk.
synchronoptica
one year ago: a prayer app (with synchronoptica) plus a pioneering mushroomer
seven years ago: a look into the far distance future, removing racist statues plus feeding an army
eight years ago: a century of Russian history in photographs, assorted links to revisit plus the making of Cabaret
nine years ago: more links to enjoy
ten years ago: subterranean warehouses, the body-politic of Rome plus German intelligence agencies eavesdropping
Monday, 5 August 2024
8x8 (11. 746)
divi recap: the obfuscating vocabulary of finance and corporate take-overs
ch₄: methane removal may prove as the most effective way to curb the climate collapse
anima and archetype: an overview of the thought of Carl Jung—see previously
mamala: Maya Rudolf returning to the cast and reprising her role as Kamala Harris for the fiftieth season of Saturday Night Live—via Miss Cellania
v. to remove monks from: demonachise and other infrequently used words
wall flowers: increased appreciation of complex and nuanced botanical behaviour leads a new branch of plant philosophy
rewiring: if billionaires truly wanted to save the planet, they’d buy heat-pumps for every home—via Kottke
big brother and the holding company: the spiteful origins of Berkshire Hathaway and corporate hard-pivots
Tuesday, 30 July 2024
7x7 (11. 732)
autotopia 2000: a consumerist satire from animation team Halas and Batchelor, best-known for their adaptation of Animal Farm
broligarchs: the Trump-Vance tax proposal that is courting the support of Silicon Valley billionaires
supermarket sweep: a monograph on graphic designer Ted Eron, who was responsible for the aesthetics of the food aisle
kamal holding vinyls: Ms Harris will display your favourite album covers—via kraftfuttermischwerk
run: an appreciation of the consequential and formative programming language BASIC—see previously—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links
i’m a little teapot, short and stout: the analogy from Betrand Russell that shifts the philosophical burden of proof to the party making unfalsiable claims
goalball: a team of animators illustrate explainers for Paralympic events
synchronoptica
one year ago: Christian comics (with synchronoptica), assorted links worth revisiting plus Molson Ice Rocks for Canada
seven years ago: Ottoman bird palaces plus superstitious etiquette
eight years ago: the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary and other mythical beasts plus custom automatons
nine years ago: Esperanto enthusiasts plus a helpful cheese chart
ten years ago: William Barker’s Schwa
Sunday, 21 July 2024
we shape our tools and then the tools shape us (11. 708)
Subtitled An Inventory of Effects and co-created by media analyst who coined the phrase referenced Marshall McLuhan in 1967, the collaborative best-seller experimentally formatted had the imprimatur of McLuhan himself to call out how various outlets massaged our senses in order to maintain currency and hold interest—with some anecdotes that it was a typo that stuck—arguing that technologies, from the wheel, to the loom, to the printing press and beyond rather than their content as an extension (and increasingly necessary aid thereto in order to function therein) of our perceptions of the world, informed by the same progress. The recording is not exactly an audio book but rather a montage of main statements punctuated by dissonant sound-effects meant to suggest the fragmentation of the listening experience.
10x10 (11. 707)
the institute for controlled speleogenesis: an fictional organisation designing artificial caves
indecent proposal: the infamous 1994 advertising campaign, Love Letters from Fiat
a river runs through it: the consequences of taming—and rewilding—the Los Angeles River (see previously)—via Nag on the Lake
amazombies: online retail giant’s affiliate programme for customer returns are overtaxing for brick-and-mortar partners
one hundred days of cultural clarity: an exploration of recent memes and trends
bootstraps: JD Vance as the toxic byproduct of America’s obsession with rags-to-riches narratives
polkamania: Weird AI (see below) drops a new new medley of song parodies
posse: publish (on your) own site, syndicate elsewhere
fiddler on the forum: male exploitation on the Carol Burnett Show—see also
nietzsche and the noonday demon: the fictitious French philosopher, Jean-Baptiste Botul, whose writings are often cited