9x9 (10. 713)

spokescandies: put together just ahead of the writers’ strike, Stephen Colbert afforded Tucker Carlson the chance to bid his audience farewell  

redundancy: IBM puts a pause on hiring to on-board an AI back-office workforce  

oops all linkdump: veteran blogger Cory Doctorow returns to his roots in a special jubilee edition  

€49 ticket: Germany launches its more fiscally-secure successor to the €9 monthly fare 

pitch decks and powerpoints: slide presentations from the largest corporate frauds and failures—via tmn  

chevron v national resources defense council: the US Supreme Court to re-litigate a 1984 precedent that defers judgement to the competent federal agencies, like the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency 

cherry ice cream smile—i suppose it’s very nice: revisiting the art and influence of Patrick Nagel—see previously  

workforce implications: a company runs an empirical test, replacing its human staff with AI 

hal gurney’s network time fillers: reactions to past strikes by the Writers’ Guide

the egg war of the farallon islands (10. 660)

Regaling us with the strange tales of real and artificial scarcity and runaway inflation for the city of San Francisco flush with money owing to the Gold Rush (see previously) which seems like an apt allegory for modern San Francisco with the boom and bust of the native tech sector and the real estate market, Lit Hub contributor Lizzy Stark—via Strange Company—surveys the shortage of women and perishables through the price of eggs in California territory, the untenable fickleness of domesticated hens and turning to a seabird sanctuary for scavenging that dedicimated the local wild populations of auks, gulls and of pinnipeds from a rocky, treacherous outcropping in the bay. The cost of a dozen eggs in American markets today exacerbated by the tumultuous economy has nothing from back during the frontier days.

general ledger accounting (10. 656)

For the United Kingdom, the fiscal year for corporate taxation runs from 1 April to 31 March, owing to the old ecclesiastical calendar that marked, sensibly, the new year commencing on Lady Day, which is even more enshrined in the reckoning of personal income tax, which was first manifested as a lien on windows, with the Feast of the Annunciation transposed and advanced with the calendar reform of of 1752 (see above, see also), with the new non-public budget and reporting year starting on this day so those intercalary days wouldn’t be a loss on government revenue.

8x8 (10. 655)

lorem ipsum: the Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in the Mac operating system 

duchenne smile: AI bias towards American standards skews cultural norms—see also  

soapbox: in a continuing attack against journalism, Twitter categories National Public Radio as state-affiliated media  

desancimonious: the problem with the governor of Florida eventually solves itself 

carhop: a classic post from Kottke on McDonald’s early years

grift: US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (previously) has been a flagrant recipient of rather lavish kickbacks and gratuities for decades—via Boing Boing  

talk of the town: Japan’s singular buttered toast critic 

illnumerate: George Box’ maxim and the problem with economic modelling

casus belli (10. 624)

In a late night address from the Oval Office on this day in 2003, US president George W Bush, without mentioning the pretext of “weapons of mass destruction” whose rhetoric had already been established in the weeks leading up to this announcement after issuing a forty-eight hour ultimatum, committed America and allied partners to a decade of bloody and violent conflict, dearly bought with the lives of over a quarter-million Iraqi civilians, over five thousand allied combatants at a cost exceeding two-trillion dollars, causing permanent economic and credibility losses with only the military-industrial complex profiting from the violence. The preoccupation and extension of the “War on Terror” moreover significantly contributed to the loss of the fragile uni-polar world order and led to the ascendance of China as a world power and the undelivered democratic reforms of the Russian Federation due to the years of focus spared for this crusade. After the “shock and awe” and following his cabinet’s over-confidence that this adventure would be decisive and over in “five days or five weeks or five months” as defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush would appear in military fatigues (very much the image of his nemesis, Saddam Hussein) less than a scant two months later on the deck of an aircraft carrier to deliver his “Mission Accomplished” speech. The allied Iraqi army was disbanded, fuelling a counter-insurgency that made the ultimate US withdrawal a protracted one, resulting in civil war and a would-be caliphate unleashing more terror and displacement regionally and globally.

8x8 (10. 612)

scheele’s green: more on the poisonous, synthetic shade—via Messy Nessy Chic 

terroir: BBC’s Jancis Robinson’s Wine Course  

family business: a look at the oldest-continuing operating hotel in the world, by shifting definitions (see also)

contagion: banking stocks drop as investors lose confidence after the failure and intervention for Silicon Valley Bank (previously)  

xerox alto: a half-century on (see previously), we are still living with the legacy of one of the first home computers—via Kottke  

ghostwatch: a BBC mockumentary that spooked viewers

$: the first instance of the dollar sign in print—see previously 

arsenic and old lace: an astonishing murder ring of earlier twentieth-century Hungary

8x8 (10. 594)

parasols: brief animations on Marie Paccou’s sun-shades when spun  

the misalignment museum: an art installation dedicated to the future AI apocalypse serves as a warning to the present  

the pez outlaw: one individual’s disruption of the collectors’ market  

banana for scale: a handy converter—via Pasa Bon!  

curious crumbs of history: rating Nation Trust sites by their scones 

future archeologists: Funko Pop! is disposing of hundreds of thousands chibi pop-culture icons  

eliza doolittle: a 1966 chatbot had the same warnings as out modern experiments  

grand canons: stop-motion of everyday objects by Alain Biet

dataviz (10. 570)

Via the always excellent Web Curios, we are directed to Information is Beautiful (previously) with its selection of superlative static and interactive infographics short-listed as the most effective and elegant ways of communicating demographics and trends from a given dataset. We especially liked the decade of changes visualisations that immediately laid bare both precarity and opportunity in the Earth Carillon but we expect you’ll discover your own new favourite way of presenting charts and graphs.

7x7 (10. 561)

posse: Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic turns three  

surprise visit: President Biden makes unannounced appearance in Kyiv, just ahead of the one year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine  

meta verified: other social media networks want to sell you blue checks 

the hawthorne effect: one of the most influential social studies of the past century is also the one of the worst—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links  

architectural follies: a strangely satisfying collection of faux ruins—via Messy Nessy Chic  

msc: key points from the Munich Security Conference  

e pluribus unum: the numismatics of coppers and silver coinage of the American colonies

内卷 (10. 544)

Via Clive Thompson’s latest Linkfest (much more to see there), we are directed to an essay by rëşt ôf wŏrld contributor Yi-Ling Liu on the Chinese terms for burnout and the relentless push to get ahead—or just barely tread water with an assortment of phrases, some familiar and some novel—and how some of those buzzwords have inverted and signal despair rather than aspiration. We’d add the corollary shàng àn (making it ashore—getting a stable government position) to “jumping into the sea” and we’ve heard of the minor revolts of lying flat or letting it rot (with their analogues in the West quiet quitting, work-to-rule, Sciopero Bianco or generally a slowdown action) but the title term neijuan or “involution” was new to us as well. A loanword from an outdated treatise—which may have been a bit of political sublimation and apologetic for colonialism—that conjectures that agrarian societies, pointedly rice-growing ones, fail in achieving technological or political change because of intensive farming and increased pressures, externally and internally, to maintain this high yield with class structures meant to re-enforce that quota. Its original sense has been incrementally extended as a critique of income disparity—number two in the number of billionaires but also home to six hundred million others who subsist off less than $150 per month and of an exhaustive and overly-competitive work culture. The pictured, harried student of Tsing Hua University balancing his laptop on the handle bars of his bicycle has been adopted by the ‘Involuted Generation’ as their king.

((DV)) (10.542)

In an annual tradition tradition, the team at NPR’s Planet Money takes a moment to consider the things they love and dispatch valentines accordingly. While we really enjoyed the opening segment and the affection for venturing down a logistics and supply-chain rabbit hole with ImportYeti, a website that aggregates bills of ladening and customs sea shipment records and yields exacting insights on where component parts and completed goods come from (give it a try with any product marked made in China and drill down on the details), we would be compelled to send our overtures as well to Audio Description (see also)—something we’ve tried and will continue—for film and television programmes—a feature mandated by regulation and very prevalent but that affords all audiences the chance to attend in all circumstances, as if watching in company, closely and turns every episode into a podcast experience and narrated play-by-play.

money to burn (10. 497)

Once seized as the counterfeiting scheme of a mysterious Frenchman, Public Domain Review contributor Dorinda Evans reassesses the hyperrealistic paintings of Victor Dubreuil of US paper currency as a social critique of capitalism and exploitative working practises at a time when few were openly questioning the status quo. These still lives with dollars and trompe l’oeil paintings of legal tender enjoyed some contemporary popularity in addition to scrutiny by the US for the starving artist but most missed the anti-imperialism, anti-kleptocractic allegory of Dubreuil. Find a whole gallery of his works at the link above.

wort des jahres (10. 374)

The Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache in Wiesbaden (previously) has announced its Word of the Year for 2022, Zeitenwende—the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, for among other things real and feared declines in German leadership and influence economically, in industry, armaments and Fußball and for the return to war in Europe, and other terms and neologisms in the running. Rounding out the top ten were: Krieg um Frieden—war for peace, Gaspreisbremse—price controls for utilities, Inflations-schmerz—inflation pains, Klimakleber—for the Last Generation protesters glueing themselves to artwork, Doppel-Wumms—a double-boon for the electro-auto tax credit in the US “Inflation Reduction Act” that skews heavily in favour of American manufacturing at the expense of other markets, neue Normalität, das 9-Euro-Ticket, Glühwein-WM—for the fact that the Qatari World Cup wasn’t held in July but rather during Weihnachtszeit, and lastly Waschlappentipps—that is, government-issued suggestions on energy conservation in the shower.

vomiting camel (10. 366)

Planet Money’s partner podcast The Indicator introduces us to a practise called stock price charting or technical analysis that economic academics have long debunked as a poor predictor of market trends and no heuristic for basing future trades though pattern recognition yet for some traders and for many media outlets that cover the markets, this study with its language of line graphs classed as candlesticks, heads and shoulders, flags, pennants and cup and handle patterns is proving enduring and a guide of first resort. Skeptics dismiss this method as ineffective at best and verging on an obsession for a few adherents. Sort of like Doge Coin be created as a joke which gained purchase of its own, one detractor began to see the titular pattern in stock performance and offered this pareidolia as a critique of this sort of divination but it too took off as a telling up-and-down spike to be on the lookout for and be primed to buy—or sell—or hold. What do you think about reading the economic tea-leaves? Is it no better than one’s astrological chart or is there something to this superstition for a system buoyed up by common belief?

6x6 (10. 357)

yuletide: Spitalfield’s Life welcomes the Festive Season with George Cruikshank’s illustrations—see previously  

isle of vaila: a remote mansion in the Shetlands comes on the market—via Strange Company  

hoops and loopholes: NPR’s Planet Money surveys the US tax code and tax-exemptions  

curds and whey: the ecosystems that make up our cheeses—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links  

sight and sound: a once-a-decade poll of critics and filmmakers rates the top one hundred movies of all time  

the duchy of rutland: a Christmas at Belvoir Castle

8x8 (10. 321)

yotta, yocto: prolific data generation drives the need for uniform names for extremely large and extremely small numbers—see previously—via Marginal Revolution  

quarantine caper: narrow escape from Jingdezhen just before lock-down  

a classic non-equilibrium thermodynamic reaction: a demonstration of a Belousov-Zhabotinsky oscillation in a Petri dish—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links  

don’t copy that floppy: an overview of a few anti-piracy schemes of the late 1970s and early 80s  

jpeg morgan: the rise and fall (and broader fall-out) of crypto bank and exchange FTX 

infantry: Academy Award winning Czechoslovakian animated short Munro (1960) about a four-year old drafted into the army  

fangcang: artist, after being identified as a “close contact” is confined in a remote hospital and transforms room into exhibition space  

euler equations: computers make break-throughs in understanding fluid dynamics

rose island (10. 316)

Via ibīdem, we are directed towards a companion website to complement a documentary which affords us a chance to revisit the Respubliko de la Insulo de la Rozoj, a short-lived micronation just outside of Italian territorial waters off the coast of Rimini, an artificial pylon engineered by the soi sont president Giorgio Rosa, a property developer with ties to the puppet government of the World War II Republic of Salò with hopes of establishing a self-funding enterprise through an independent regime of taxation, philately and sovereign citizenship. Much more to explore at the links above.

6x6 (10. 288)

elektrisk kjøretøy: a retrospective look at how A-ha inspired and informed Norway’s early adoption of electric vehicles—via Things Magazine  

taposiris magna: archaeologists discover a nearly mile long tunnel deep under a temple near Alexandria on the search for Cleopatra’s lost tomb—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links  

market cap: major online retailer first company to lose one trillion dollars in stock value—see also

stenography: more on shorthand (see previously) in ancient Greek and Roman texts  

nit-picking: oldest inscription bearing a full sentence found on a Canaanite comb 

terrain de stationnement: France to require all existing and new parking lots to be covered with solar panels

untenured (10. 241)

Holding office for a tumultuous forty-five days (the shortest of the United Kingdom’s sixty-eight) though spanning two monarchs and some cabinet reshuffling, Liz Truss resigned as prime minister after a week marked by market crashes, an exodus of deputies and general lack of confidence in her leadership abilities built momentum for a general election. This collapsed government that upheld the conservative, Tory party totems of Brexit and austerity speaks to the abject failure of such regressive, nihilist politics that are out-of-step and untethered from the electorate. The party will choose a new prime minister by 28 October but does not preclude a Labour government being established.

7x7 (10. 195)

also sprach zarathustra: Raquel Welch dances to a disco-funk version of the Strauss classic 

information overload: a survey of pictorial statistics’ evolution to the infographic  

great chain of being: Evard d’Espinque illustrates the fifteenth century De Proprietatibus Rerum 

this lady is for turning: after precipitating markets instability and provoking decent from within the party, the Prime Minister and Chancellor walk back unfunded tax cuts for the rich  

fancy dress party: Jane Asher’s book of costumes  

search engine: glean answers to queries from passages in literature, conversation rather than Google Search—via Swiss Miss  

phone a friend: 1-900 hotlines in the United States 

daisy, daisy—give me your answer, do: witnessing a demonstration of the IBM 704 in 1961 inspired Arthur C Clarke