quale and qualia (12. 344)

Having come to a similar epiphany at a point in life I considered fairly late and doubting maturity—but perhaps this sort of realisation needs time to incubate and couched in inexperience—that everyone was their own hero and main character, I found this curated list of introspective descriptors (with an invitation to readers to submit their own) from Marco Giancotti to be quite resonant. Although I don’t normal think to believe that my own subjective experience to be radically different from the next individual nor informed by some prodigious synthesis of sensations and neither compensated by recently coined conscious lacunas like aphantasia, imagination without mental images or internal monologue, the notion that we’re all naked aligned with the Emperor’s New Clothes is a really fascinating and engaging notion to ponder, nomothetic, broad generalisations versus the idiographic and the idiocentric. I like to think of myself capable of imagining in all these avenues and could accept that others do not but there is a measure of scepticism for divergence from the norm. Among the shared experiences that spoke to me, was a short interview with physicist Richard Feynman, as self-diagnosed with a benevolent form of arithromania, about how people count and calculate mentally in various ways. Much more—with growing contributions at Æther Mug at the link above.

where is everybody? (12. 342)

Being obsessed with the philosophical and cosmological question of Fermi’s Paradox and having considered the Great Filter beforehand, we enjoyed revisiting the proposal that no one makes it—that is succeeds as a spacefaring civilisation with a constellation of lesser filters setting up intractable hurdles to the accomplishment, progress sabotaged by biological limitations, superstition, self-destructive tendencies of a society, pollution or a misguided Singularity. In that unlikely loneliness, however, there also lies an equally improbable (though less so than intelligent life evolving no where else in the Universe) of a grand conspiracy of those that have made it exercising and enforcing a sort of Prime Directive to cloak their evidence and activities. While that might seem patriarchal (but who knows what challenges and dangers could await) and demotivating in terms of reaching for the stars, humans—on any others on the cusp—might have never had the ambition to invent and explore with gods in the sky.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a Euro Pop playlist (with synchronoptica) 

seven years ago: a yōkai primer, assorted links to revisit, transhumance plus an AI suggests April Fools’ pranks

eight years ago: more links to enjoy plus Mr Roger’s Conflict Series

nine years ago: Easter origins, a venerable guesthouse plus a sinister lullaby

ten years ago: night-vision eye-drops plus even more links

america the unbeautiful (12. 316)

Guardian contributor Alexander Hurst, reflecting on a recent roadtrip with a friend from Washington, DC to New Orleans—in part retracing the path of Alexis de Tocqueville—presents a thoughtful travelogue that encapsulates the aesthetics of sprawl and alienation that informed the MAGA mindset—those without an internal moral compass—long before it came home to roost with the return of Trump. “Like fish in water, I wonder if Americans are even aware how they swim in it,” Hurst writes of the inuring indignities of suburban living—sold as a dream still despite the nightmare monotony, congestion and estrangement of off-ramp after off-ramp leading to “rectangle islands of stuff, surrounded by parking lots leading to other little islands.”

synchronoptica

one year ago: Sagrada Família (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: the origins of tempura, email for trees, Google’s Art Palette plus Expo '70

eight years ago: FOIA inspired cocktails plus next generation phreaking

nine years ago: Italy’s answer to absinthe plus the Butcher’s Broom

ten years ago: the Fourth Crusade

digital flâneur (12. 310)

We really enjoyed this essay, courtesy of fellow peripatetic Messy Nessy Chic, on how to rewild one’s browsing experience chocked full of helpful navigation analogies of avoiding congestion, breaking out of the walled garden, by taking the side streets and adopting the regular commute of another (we all have these routines and sources we check in with on a daily basis but it might be refreshing and eye opening to realise that there are whole unexplored routes to the same end) to add to serendipity. There are numerous suggestions and resources for taking this internet walk from the Syllabus Project at the link above, including gifting a mixtape to your friends and followers of places you’ve discovered, leaving a trace, taking more than just photos, bringing a satchel along to collect what we’ve encountered and cultivating the practise of derivé to map one’s local IRL wanderings to their online spaces.

10x10 (12. 306)

i don’t belong here: reactions of first time listeners to Radiohead’s “Creep” 

auragraphs: a look at the psychic paintings of Flora Marian Spore, received visions from departed relatives—see previously  

overton window: why some find humour in embracing fascism—see also, see previously  

all in the wrist: a memorable mnemonic device for learning the carpal bones from Michelangelo’s Snowmen—see also  

i’m just gonna dance all night: a joyful behind the scenes peek at SNL writers’ room from a decade ago—via MetaFilter

orbital group: astronomers find Saturn has one-hundred twenty eight additional natural satellites

the pen is mightier than the sword: the end of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (previously) after forty-two years—via Miss Cellania

persona non grata: US state department expels the South Africa ambassador, buying into Musk’s false narrative of confiscating land from white plantation owners 

the medium is the message: Alan Turing and other Cambridge academics obsession with ghosts and spiritualism 

hootie & the blowfish: an oddly effective mashup with The Smiths

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronoptica), the first AI lab, Geoguessr savants plus serendipitous directories

seven years ago: The Inland Printer, Trump’s fabricated trade imbalances with China and Canada, the Anthropocene era’s golden spike plus more links to enjoy

eight years ago: embodiment and Singularity, LEGO tape plus Australian war time propaganda

nine years ago: more Liartown, USA, English as the official language plus Sir Thomas Moore

ten years ago: the Comic Code plus further crusading misadventures

anaññātaññassāmītindriya (12. 285)

Via New Shelton wet/dry, we found this critique from the political and literary forum the Boston Review to be quite resonant as we here at PfRC essentially at our core blog when we learn a new word for a phenomenon or behaviour—way to name something that we didn’t know had a name or could draw a distinction that we weren’t aware of beforehand—or make connections, especially etymologically—be it on the topic of language, history, culture or current events. Pedantry is our mainstay. We’ve devoted a lot of posts to the untranslatable and the hyperspecific ways that language can impart feelings and states of being—see previously here, here and here—but we appreciated the counterpoint presented in the subject book review: the telling comes at the expense of showing, communicating through narrative or poetry rather than a borrowed short-hand explored through a treasury of terms from classical Indian literature. The title refers to the Pali concept for the mental faculty of coming to know, which is undoubtably a premium word but emotion and incident do not map neatly onto a linguistic framework and if not creating new experiences with words, one can bereft with neologisms that destroy them.

9x9 (12. 257)

johnny 5: artificial intelligence and inkblot tests—see previously  

hop-on, hop-off: a new train route through Central Europe allows passengers to visit cities at their own pace  

boone and wesson: the disturbing trend of aggressive baby names in the US—see also, see previously—via Miss Cellania

sixth-tenths of a letter: the depth of natural history visualised as pages in a book  

ok boomer: Chinese netizens’ approach to uncomfortable questions is reply at random (一都乱会, everything is chaotic, xīqiè dōu shì hǔnluàn de) and defuse intergenerational conflict 

bluelights in the basement: RIP Roberta Flack  

protect & survive: Shades another post-apocalyptic UK mini-series in the vein of Threads and The Day After Tomorrow

express limited: a collection of Showa-era Japanese gate entry tickets, a unique surcharge of the train system 

integrated information theory: Richard Dawkins (previously) chats with AI, asks it is it conscious

antiqua et nova (12. 234)

With the above incipit, we learn that back in mid-January, Francis issued a papal bull—as Web Curios informs—on artificial intelligence, which is absolutely by far one of the most circumspect, heavily footnoted, thoughtful considerations of the implications of the technology touching on ethics, labour and the economy, culture, the arts, theology and human identity. In begins with a detailed history, going back to the summer workshop hosted on the campus of Dartmouth university in 1956 which first explored the concept, drawing a distinction between narrow AI and general intelligence and the ability to think and reason, not necessarily condemning the increasingly sophisticated models as trickery or mere pablum—or mankind fetishising the divinity it deserves—but rather as something potentially complementary for human dignity and vocation if harnessed in the right manner. Far from condemning technological advancement—though wary of the tac taken—or privileging, imbuing the human condition with something vague and inviolable, there is an interesting philosophical departure on the mind-body problem and how intelligence, which is not only found in functionality and solution-finding, but requires incarnation, embodiment, to engage in its environment and filtering all the noise not as hallucinations but as input and impulse—lest it remain just a ghost in the machine. The entire essay is worth reading and making the effort to parse the pope’s position, which seems on the whole a positive one that acknowledges AI’s potential to enhance decision making and a force to elevate all of us but cautions not to conflate true wisdom, measured by one’s capacity for charity and empathy, both transcendent and imminent by our own interiority.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Beautiful Blue Danube (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: assorted links to revisit, the animation of Pablo Lozano, renaming historic artwork to give the models a backstory plus Canadian Flag Day

eight years ago: food artist Dan Bannino 

nine years ago: moustachioed sea birds, soup and sandwiches plus brutalist Paris

eleven years ago: policing the police state plus to google in different languages

endless feed (12. 216)

Having pinned the obsession with our devices and the dopamine hits that they provide to the allegory of Narcissus—and by extension a Sisyphean task—and thinking it went no further, we appreciated being able to expand the metaphor and look at the insatiable compulsion another way with what the Greeks proverbially describe as the “Tantalean punishment” ( Ταντάλειοι τιμωρίαι)—the mythological figure’s eponym synonymous not only with what’s tantalising, eternally tormented by the sight of something desirable but just out of reach but also for those who have good things but cannot enjoy them and teased with aroused expectations that fail to satisfy. Consigned to the lowest level of the Underworld, Tartarus, Tantalus is made to stand in a pool of inviting water with fruit-laden boughs just above his head, the refreshment sought to slake his thirst and quell his hunger receding from his grasp, as divine retribution for having abused the hospitality of the gods and stealing ambrosia and nectar from the table of the Olympians and bringing it back to his people—also for trying to test the gods’ omniscience by butchering his son and serving him to them, whom was later mostly reconstituted. The torture maps quite aptly with the addictive saturation of social media with unending scrolling and no clear exit point by design for finishing a conversation or the consumption of a piece of culture, with tributes, remixes and tangents. Fittingly, our tragic figure is also the namesake of the rare earth element tantalum, an essential component of smart phones and other electronics with some forty milligrams of the substance in the palm of one’s hand right now.

opsophagos (12. 200)

Mapped onto all sorts of anti-social behaviour and privations of gluttony, the real and reputed ὀψοφάγοɩ, gourmandise of ancient Greek culture with a penchant for relish or horsd’œuvre 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

le livre qui dit la verité (12. 078)

According to his own account, courtesy of our faithful chronicler, Claude Vorihon—now known as Raël, 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, Raëlianism 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 

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.

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 Schönbrunn 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 

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.

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.