squigglevision (12. 707)

Through this interview with the programme’s art director, Annette Cate, we enjoyed this revisit of Dr Katz Professional Therapist and how its pacing and narrative-voice have an outsized legacy for cartoons for adults. Finding a niche for unscripted animated interstitials, collaborators Tom Snyder and former student Loren Bouchard enlisted the vocal talents of Jonathan Katz, Laura Silverman and H Jon Benjamin with celebrity guest stars to re-enact sessions, which eventually developed into its own show in 1995. Snyder’s loop-based technique involved retracing the outline of each cell loosely to make for the vibrating effect—see also—as a way around budgetary constraints and resulting in a signature style (see also), originally gleaned from the limitations of Autodesk Animator made for MS-DOS, which the duo had previously used to make maths edutainment software. Much more from It’s Nice That at the link above.  You know what the music means—our time is up.

7x7 (12. 701)

people are flushing toilets ten times, fifteen times, as opposed to once—john jay: other AI-generated quotes of America’s foundational figures at new Smithsonian exhibit—see also  

coronation street: a recent celebration of the eleven hundredth anniversary of the enthronement of King Æthelstan, the first ruler of united England  

_invalid_username: a short, seemingly intuitive quiz—we failed miserably at—on what constitutes an email address—via Web Curios  

in a galaxy far, far away: the official map of the Star Wars paracosm 

dj earworm: an end of summer mashup  

double, double toil and trouble: Shakespeare added the witches, weird sisters (see also) to Macbeth for the benefit of his patron James I—see previously  

founding fathers: the colourful life US constitutional signatory turned harsh critic of the mythos Gouverneur Morris—via Strange Company

synchronoptica

one year ago: a nuclear war preparedness exercise (with synchronopticæ)

twelve years ago: Iranian president offers a Rosh Hashanah blessing 

thirteen years ago: some castles of Rheinland-Pfalz plus a bleak economic picture

fourteen years ago: revisionism and security theatre persist ahead of the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks 

fifteen years ago: bird-watching plus a trip along the Danube

sixteen years ago: mascot mayhem 

seventeen years ago: a trip to the Wasserkuppe 

8x8 (12. 679)

short imagined monologues: the abandoned new Cracker Barrel logo speaks out  

internet caretaker: Messy Nessy returns from vacation with another roundup of things found on-line—no notes  

 ticker-tape: a 1967 home computer—via Damn Interesting  cybersitter: a look back on the ways of filtering the web

ai upscaling: multimedia artists complain about unbidden tweaks to their signature videos—via the New Shelton wet/dry

dark dwarves: astrophysicists theorise a new class of stars that may never exhaust their fuel  

🖇️: an annotated collection donated to Present /&/ Correct 

divertimento № 198: assorted links amid gustatory delights from the Minnesota State Fair 

the united states is not made up of well-adjusted adults—it’s made up of americans: simulation and simulacrum in the USA—via Miss Cellania

synchronoptica

one year ago: the introduction of Pepsi (with synchronopticæ)

thirteen years ago: the evolution of screen-time plus frozen fireworks

fourteen years ago: reimagining Space Oddity 

seventeen years ago: driving on autopilot 

7x7 (12. 652)

tariff tango: Canada’s claymation response to Trump’s thirty-five percent levy on exports and other affronts 

modulator-demodulator: a tribute to AOL’s decision to discontinue its dial up service and how technologies gradually fade out rather than disappear overnight  

periphrasis: the search for the perfect English infinitive   

a sunday in the park with georges: the symbolism of class and segregation on display in Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières—see previously—via Damn Interesting  

koń jaki jest, każdy widzi: the Polish language’s first encyclopaedia was an eccentric compilation that didn’t have time for the manifestly obvious 

silicon doodles: a gallery of microchip art added by engineers for fun and whimsy—see also  

comprehensive internal review: Trump orders Smithsonian museums to highlight American exceptionalism

synchronoptica

one year ago: a gallery of images that look like AI but are not (with synchronopticæ) plus the proposed state of Absaroka

twelve years ago: ligature letters 

thirteen years ago: auspicious births, WWII week: D-Day, more Wikileaks extradition manoeuvrers plus plumbing and public conveniences 

fourteen years ago: a balance siphon coffee maker 

fifteen years ago: Lutherstädte 

6x6 (12, 643)

levi strauss waltz: fledging Jefferson Airplane’s commercials for blue jeans 

moral high-ground: despite what justice we might entrust to AI, ethics remain a human responsibility  

whittle: a reductive word challenge—via Web Curios  

keygen.exe: the soundtrack of internet piracy  

si te fata ferunt, fer fata, ferere: the inscribed joists of Montaigne’ tower of his favourite classical aphorisms   

the cube: Jim Henson’s experimental 1969 teleplay for NBC

moffett field (12. 587)

Via Kottke, we really enjoyed browsing the Internet Archive’s expansive exhibit of over five thousand historical images of the NASA Ames Research Centre, built at the tip of San Francisco Bay in 1939 and now surrounded by the campuses of tech giants Google, Microsoft and Apple originally as a facility to conduct wind-tunnel tests and gauge the aerodynamic properties of propeller-drive aircraft, its scope broadened quickly after World War II to compass space exploration, rocketry and computer science. Perusing the collection (see also) gives one an appreciation of the eight decades’ worth of missions, discoveries and breakthroughs that came from this nexus of Silicon Valley and makes us more than a little anxious about the future of public, state-sponsored research and long-term repercussions of short-sighted priorities.

synchronoptica

one year ago: American’s AI-military complex (with synchronopticæ) plus an evil cocktail

cyberstress (12. 580)

We quite enjoyed this rather wholesome reminder, via r/ObscureMedia, from 1997 that goes beyond office ergonomics—which is frankly where most concepts of workplace well-being stopped and didn’t progress any further, from this cosmic guide to relax… take breaks… relax… take breaks… Me in 1997 would have been suspicious and very dismissive of such advice but now realise it was way ahead of its time—like an epiphany—and did manage to relieve my tension.

http 208 (12. 538)

Several accelerationist Silicon Valley chief technology officers have been recruited into the US Army Reserve as part time senior commanders, field promoted as colonels, as part of the newly formed Detachment 201 (the hypertext transfer protocol response status code for “Created”—the title refers to that of “Already Reported”—see previously here and here) to help integrate artificial intelligence into military planning and operations. Drawing from the ranks of Meta, OpenAI and Palatir is hardly surprising as the companies have been working with the military on various programmes including the controversial Project Maven to fully integrate AI into intelligence services. Significantly enlistment puts the companies’ under the purview of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and not subject to the scrutiny, jurisdiction and discovery of America’s civil courts of law should something untoward come up. As Eisenhower said, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sough or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplace power exists and will persist.”

voice writers (12. 494)

Having known just a little about the development and integration of closed-captioning technology, we really appreciated this fascinating deep dive from Radio Lab into its history and struggle for equal access that followed, with accommodation, advances in hardware and software, representation and mandates all intertwined and informing one another, concluding with a reflection on how the process is being automated with artificial intelligence and how in training the machine, we ourselves are transformed through the collaboration. Of course the story didn’t end with triumph of accessibility through the above first demonstration, as the advances for the hearing impaired community were not widely accessible: most programming was not captioned and for those that were an expensive decoder was required as a television peripheral. The situation gradually improved and after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, TV sets were required to include closed captioning technology and all broadcasts were mandated to include subtitles. A workforce of thirty thousand transcriptionists were at work to capture all stations’ content and in order to reach all of the growing market with the rise of cable programming, institutions providing the service turn to emerging voice recognition systems. These early versions were too bug-prone to be useful, especially for realtime applications and failed to keep pace with live dialogue, seizing up at the slightest accent. Researchers, however, discovered that they were more responsive and accurate with the voices of the trial participants, and soon one devised helping the computer by reading back the words in a steady, well-enunciated manner that it could manage. A team of voice writers across the States repeated scripted shows and news reports as they were aired and achieved a pretty good level of fidelity by 2003. Even with only their master’s voice, the programme still had its shortcomings and the voice writers developed a code of substitute words to clear up homophones and short prepositions, for example: echoing, “She has tootoo daughters inly college comma tootaloo period” would yield the yield the desired text, “She has two daughters in college, too.” Two decades on, the software has advanced to the point where it can transcribe instantly without the help of an interpreter and is improving with AI refinements.

sigils and signs (12. 486)

Having previously looked at other visual language compliers expressed through artistic elements and other than the usual strings of functions and conditions of coding, and very much reenforces overdue acknowledgement that the jargon of computing can act as a gatekeeper and that unnatural language can create an out-group (see also) for whom these incantations seem like wizardry, and given our preoccupation with secret signs, we were very much
intrigued by this mystical platform of magic circles, via Clive Thompson’s latest Linkfest (a lot more to explore there) under development by Denis M Moskowitz. The sampled, quicksort spell is a rendering of the Euclidean algorithm for calculating the greatest common divisor of two numbers—that which divides them both without a remainder—a benchmark test for the logic of a new programming language with an intuitively visual component. Moskowitz has also created a character set of glyphs or monograms after the chaos magic of Austin Osman Spare (previously here and here) whose seals unlock the basic grammar of coding. Much more at the links above.

what is this—a coding bootcamp or a lumberjack convention? (12, 452)

Amidst the deployment of more and more bloated apps and brittle, complicated and dependent code that needs constant maintenance—we enjoyed this sweary, full-throated appreciation of hypertext markup language for its robustness and versatility—with antecedents, via MetaFilter. “It’s been the backbone of the web since Al Gore flipped the switch, and it’ll still be here long after your trendy framework is rotting in a GitHub graveyard.”

synchronoptica

one year ago: a banger from the Rolling Stones (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: creative construction canvases plus assorted links to revisit

eight years ago: Klingon linguistic Easter eggs, more links to enjoy, men’s spaces plus Trump orders DOJ to ratchet up sentencing

ten years ago: even more links plus the Ship of Theseus

eleven years ago: Russia rubbishes the Eurovision

16-bit intel 8088 chip (12. 444)

Whilst there is more perhaps more superficial interoperability in computing today than in years past (see previously), this unlikely but sublime poem by Charles Bukowski, laureate of American lowlife, after receiving a Macintosh and laser printer from his wife for Christmas in 1990 and significantly increasing in already prodigious output in his final years, his experience with lost files and frustrations with manufactured obstacles speak to the same phenomena of walled-gardens, lock-in, portability issues and general enshiffication.

with an Apple Macintosh
you can’t run Radio Shack programs
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file
you have created on an
IBM Personal Computer. both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
the CP/M operating system
but can’t read each other’s
handwriting
for they format (write
on) discs in different
ways.
the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can’t use most programs produced for
the IBM Personal Computer
unless certain
bits and bytes are
altered
but the wind still blows over
Savannah
and in the Spring
the turkey buzzard struts and
flounces before his
hens.

Whilst not pioneering in his adoption or embrace, Bukowski quickly came to assert that, despite technical difficulties recognised as defective by design, he could not write any other way. More from Kottke at the link above.

she put the miss in misdemeanour when she stole the beans from lima (12. 404)

Although a bit too old for the PBS game show continuation of the franchise—though I’d defy anyone to not declare the theme song from house band (“Do it Rockapella!”—inspired by “Been Caught Stealing” by Jane’s Addiction) an absolute banger, I do remember the original educational computer game, Carmen Sandiego, released on this day in 1985 by Brøderbund software (whose catalogue includes Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing). Though upon reevaluation deemed edutainment, Carmen Sandiego and later incarnations were meant to teach geography in response to a significant portion of US children demonstrating a lack of basic knowledge when it came to the globe and atlas and questions were vetted and fact-checked by the National Geographic Society, a major underwriter of both the game and television version from 1991. The objective was for fledgling gumshoes of the ACME detective agency to thwart the organised crime ring of international art thieves headed by the titluar character using geography. The series was rebooted 2021 (see above) and Rockapella reprised their theme, though the production team criminally used another song. She’s a double-dealing diva with a taste for thievery.

*     *     *     *     *

synchronoptica

 

one year ago: the lost mixtape (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: more links to enjoy, David Bowie’s self-portraits plus Plain People on vacation

eight years ago: more bad flags, more terror attacks in Germany, a concept flying car, Trump dismisses the surgeon general plus Billy Butcher on love power ballads

nine years ago: breathing exercises plus pavement level pedestrian signals 

eleven years ago: populist politics plus TTIP and reciprocal tariffs

h⭐️r (12. 403)

Via Waxy, we are treated to a duet from Homestar Runner and Strong Bad celebrating their quarter of a century of dot coms with “Back to a Website” on the origins of the World Wide Web and nostalgia for the days of surfing the internet without a shakedown or mugging for one’s personal information and digital footprints. The original animated web series folded with the discontinuation of support for Adobe Flash but most episodes are archived above through an emulator and the team behind the characters and their expanded universe have collaborated with They Might be Giants and MST3K on different projects, including previous holiday reunions and anniversary specials as well as inspiring and informing other web comics. So does this mean our website is going to have more frequent updates featuring our hilarious adventures? What—no, no—not at all!

9x9 (12. 391)

field of vision: the evolution of eyes branching out as on a tree of life   

land-grant college: the federal-funding based model for American post-secondary education is based on a deliberate post-World War II decision to outsource expertise and experimentation rather than compartmentalise it within government consortia  

habeas corpus: relenting to the idea that some people have no rights is siding with authoritarianism and hoping you aren’t next   

under construction: transform any modern website a late 90s GeoCities masterpiece—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest   

thank you easter bunny—bwak, bwak: more on the controversial, re-constructed, retcon of the holiday mascot 

⌂: the tiny house in the middle of IBM’s eight-bit character set, adopted by PC clones with the 1981 Code Page 437—see previously—and its possible relation to Blissymbolics 

rinki-tink in oz: deportation and administrative oversight in L Frank Baum’s paracosm   

uniwersytet latający: US institutions higher education can defy Trump’s crackdown by outreach and going underground, as Polish universities did under Communism—via Kottke   

recaptcha: corvids demonstrate surprising mental acuity for identifying outlier shapes and geometric regularity—via MetaFilter

synchronoptica

one year ago: St Liduina (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: US refusing Syrian refugees, American kakistocracy plus some local prehistory

eight years ago: bunking busting bombs, the White House Easter Egg Roll plus a grim future vision of US national parks

nine years ago: animated viruses, solar sails, more chatbot failures plus a walk from Wiesbaden to Mainz

eleven years ago: Ukrainian break-away republics

 

digital preservation jumpers (12. 382)

Courtesy of Web Curios (many more delights at the weekly roundup), we are directed towards this wonderful collection of knitwear with pixelated patterns inspired by legacy media formats that celebrates the intersectionality of punchcards and prints, albeit at scale rather than projects that one could undertake oneself. There’s also a sweater featuring the jumping dinosaur that Google displays when off-line. Detailed designs from archivist and creator Leontien Talboom of Cambridge library at the link above—even the floppy disks have the detail of the notch punched that made read-only ones writable and utilise both sides—replaced in the 3½" version with a shutter to prevent over-writing.

synchronoptica

one year ago: resurfacing buried rivers (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: a visit to the University of Heidelberg  

eight years ago: a cantilevered, overhanging pool, Lake Nemi, assorted links to revisit plus a Star Trek podcast

nine years ago: breaking the fourth wall, Jevon’s Paradox plus the Daily Mail to acquire Yahoo!

eleven years ago: a pioneering teutholog

8x8 (12. 365)

museum of now: This American Life invites us to sit with and reflect on the artefacts of day and hour 

rift valley: a Trump appointed special envoy to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tiffany’s father-in-law, seeking to make a deal on mineral resources in hopes of securing peace with Rwandan rebels 

fay wray: a swarm of drones recreate the iconic scene of King Kong scaling the Empire State building  

toast malone: a short clip of the singer performing Circles, animated on one hundred thirty-three slices of bread  

altair 8800: a retrospective of Microsoft at fifty 

the bronx is up and the battery’s down: new NYC subway map is an homage to an early digrammatic version  

blanket non-fraternisation policy: US bans government personnel stationed in China from forming relationships with locals 

national endowment for the humanities: US museums, libraries and archives see their grants terminated—see previously

8x8 (12. 331)

fork in the road: AI misapprehension of a machine translated simple yes/no survey from Spanish rendered ‘i griega’ (upsilon) as a y-junction and all affirmative responses as the utensil   

hunter-gatherer: the handbag theory of human advancement—via Strange Company   

signature authority: after declaring his predecessor’s pardons invalid over the use of autopen, Trump faces scrutiny over unsigned deportation orders 

certificato di buona salute: pope discharged from hospital and sent home after five dicey weeks   

spring issue: the fourth instalment of the achingly beautiful HTML Review—see previously—is out, via MetaFilter   

vexatious lawsuits: mob boss Trump partially reverses executive order rescinding law firm’s contracts and security clearances for millions in pro bono services, prompting mass resignations 

schlachthof: ancient butchery for mammoths discovered in Austria   

cousin german: a comparison between English and Lower Saxon

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting, Cityspeak in Bladerunner plus The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound

seven years ago: the Ecosia web browser, an ancient passing red dwarf plus Cambridge Analytica

eight years ago: Trumpland, Trump’s triumphs, recreating the bedroom from 2001 plus more on concrete poetry

nine years ago: the christening of Boaty McBoatface, humorist Richard Littler plus a tubular tree house

ten years ago: God Bless You Mr Rosewater plus the crusades and the reconquista

7x7 (12. 294)

wikiportraits: a group of photographers offering their services to furnish the free encyclopaedia with better celebrity images  

good enough: the rising phenomena of vibe coding, AI text-to-programming  

any one, any one: how US tariffs might play out—see more

march madness: a bracket face-off of the best literary villains 

stand up to a bully: a profile of Canada’s new prime minister, former governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney   

i’m using an exclamation point so you know i’m friendly and excited: email etiquette   

ask jeeves: the International Butler Academy of Simpelveld in Limburg

synchronoptica

one year ago: Marlo Thomas and Friends’ Free to be You and Me (with synchronoptica) plus a lightly edited royal portrait

seven years ago: propagandist Axis Sally 

eight years ago: toasting the newly discovered TRAPPIST exoplanet system

nine years ago: a moving McDonald’s ad plus odd British toponyms

ten years ago: more protests against refugees in Germany, assorted links to revisit, folk etymologies and false cognates plus recycling e-waste

homebrew computer club (12. 278)

Meeting for the first time in the garage of founder and organiser Gordon French in Menlo Park California on this day in 1975, this informal association of electronic and programming enthusiasts was chartered as a forum for hobbyists to exchange ideas and create DIY personal computing devices to make the emerging technologies more accessible to everyone. Present for this inaugural gathering, Steve Wozniak (previously here and here) credited the demonstration and reverse-engineering of an Altair 8800 microcomputer as inspiration for designing the Apple I. Running regular meetings through 1986, Steve Jobs, John Draper (former phone phreak), Paul Terrell (proprietor of Byte Shop, the first hardware retail outlet), Jerry Lawson (creator of the first cartridge-based video game system, the Fairchild Channel F) and Liza Loop (who saw the potential to supplement classroom and distance learning and opened the first public-access computer labs) were also members.