8x8 (13. 740)

and so on and so on and scooby-dooby-dooby: Kermit the Frog joins Dolly Parton for a 1987 appearance on her variety show, performing a duet of “Every Day People”  

young artists after siamesas 1960: US state department orders removal of woke Kehinde Wiley painting (previously) at the Dominican embassy  

pyramid of tirana: a survey of Albania’s built environment spanning sixty years—see previously  

ilulissat icefjord: bracing and heartbreaking timelapse of an iceberg collapsing and rolling over in west-central Greenland—see also 

synodical months: the cultural context of the upcoming August Sturgeon Moon—see previously   

restoration architecture: explore Copenhagen’s urban reform initiatives to conserve its landmarks for sustainable tourism whilst preserving the city’s heritage and character  

free press: Pentagon fires editor-in-chief, dismisses a reporter of independent military newspaper Stars & Stripes following an earlier overhaul to rid the publication of woke distractions 

imagination library: Dolly Parton, giver of books

8x8 (13. 736)

a comparison using like or as: a treasury of simile and metaphor from Ross MacDonald’s private detective Lew Archer 

mario v pareto: a scrolly-telling illustration of efficiency and optimisation—via Quantum of Sollazzo   

siamese wins: Thailand avoided colonisation through diplomacy and cultural synthesis  

world famous gopher hole museum: a visit to an usual tourist attraction in a tiny Albertan hamlet  

biblioclasm: Amazon’s AI book-pulping division has a cartoonish evil logo 

count coudenhove-kalergi: the Austro-Japanese politician and diplomat who championed the movement of European integration and was the inspiration for the character of Victor Laszlo in Casablanca—plus nominated Ode to Joy as the theme for the united continent 

balloon banjo: a 3D printed heuristic tool for experimenting with acoustics  

ounce dice trice: a garland ring of unusual words that ends up where it starts out

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica) plus a cache of vintage picture postcards

two years ago: a quick weekend get-away plus the Formosa Straits crisis of 1958 

three years ago: the US Republican primary debates plus more links to enjoy 

four years ago: even more links plus Ukraine re-establishes itself as an independent state (1991)  

five years ago: assorted links worth the revisit, ant architecture plus Bohemian Rhapsody (1975)

six years ago: cocktails for remote learning, superlative garden photographs plus re-sampling Soviet pop

the power and the glory (13. 727)

Courtesy of Strange Company, we learn about writer Graham Greene’s self-exile to Mexico (see previously here, here and here) and how the author’s visit to a country he held in contempt for research on religious persecution (see above), supposedly, was prompted in part by a libel suit leveraged against him by the legal team of child actor Shirley Temple Black after Greene intimated that her on-screen persona was crafted for the titilation of men of a certain age or certain ecclesiastical occupations, conveniently safe from prosecution outside of the court’s jurisdiction. The objective of gathering materials for a novel, expanded into a travelogue and two books that turn out to be historical fictions, transformed into a multi-year odyssey through Tabasco and Chiapas.

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: Trump’s campaign of retribution goes after former national security advisor John Bolton (with synchronoptica) plus the splintering of the internet

two years ago: GPS epochs plus a potential violation of the Logan Act

 

three years ago: assorted links worth the revisit

four years ago: the state song of Idaho, more links to enjoy plus social media driven overtourism

five years ago: Petra discovered (1812), a Saturnine satellite, even more links plus educational books for precocious witches and warlocks

six years ago: the canine Saint Guinefort,  i lik the bred plus Ray Bradbury (*1920)

house elf (13. 702)

We‘ve heard of several road construction projects diverted or completely derailed in Iceland to avoid encroaching on the dwellings of supernatural beings according to local lore. We learn, however—and not for the first time, fans of the Harry Potter franchise have successfully petitioned to reroute a multimillion pound energy project linking County Wexford in the Republic of Ireland with a pebbly beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales, which would have cut through the shrine to the memory of the fictional familiar Dobby.

The submarine copper cables connecting the Republic of Ireland to the UK national grid, following a rather massive outcry, was shifted to avoid the memorial—though in the process could possibly have damaged an archaeological site, an actual Bronze Age tomb with grave goods not fully excavated and conserved.

go tell aunt rhody (13. 694)

We have very much enjoyed this curation and appreciation from The Art Room Plant on author and illustrator Aliki Brandenberg. Graduating from the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, Aliki (usually going by her mononym) had a brief stint as commercial graphic designer and founded her own greeting card company before in 1956 returning to Europe to explore her Greek heritage, meeting Swiss native Franz Brandenberg—eventually marrying—and inspired to write her first children’s book on the legend of William Tell, the expert archer of Switzerland.
Well received, her first publication in 1960 started a long career adapting fables and myths with other works on a broad range of topics from her personal life, dinosaurs to Shakespeare. The pictured illustrations are from My Hands and The Listening Walk with Paul Showers of the “Let’s Read and Find Out” series.  Much more at the link above.

there will come soft rains (13. 687)

Notwithstanding a 1997 retcon of the author’s canon that advanced the future time settings by thirty-one years, unconvinced of his prescience, the title of Ray Bradbury’s 1950 short story is taken from a poem by Sarah Teasdale published at the end of World War I and the beginning of the influenza pandemic of 1918, takes place on this day. It chronicles a lone automated home that by chance survived the destruction of Allendale California in a nuclear attack. Daily routines continue with robots attending to household chores and meal preparation, acknowledging their former residents and masters though they mistake their presence for silhouettes burnt on to the walls by the atomic blast. The absent family’s pet dog, starving is blocked from entering the kitchen whilst the systems are whirring away, eventually dying of hunger and exhaustion before being unceremoniously incinerated by the clean-up module. The house recites a selection of the hostess’ favourite poetry, choosing the above. Later an errant wind gust blows a branch through the kitchen windows, causing a fire that the robots are unable to extinguish with the house itself consumed, save for a single wall and an automated clock, registering the date and time.

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: a UFO sighting in Scotland (with synchronoptica), UNESCO status for Neapolitan pizza, battling gerrymandering with gerrymandering plus a celebrity sea anemone 

 

two years ago: Trump refuses to debate Harris plus assorted links to revisit

 

three years ago: more links to enjoy plus Sir Arthur Conan Doyle channels a dead president

 

four years ago: the invention of champagne, the Zone of Avoidance plus even more links worth revisiting

 

five years ago: an ingenious Cold War bugging device, the Lady of Elx, a series of tubes plus con-man affiliates

 

six years ago: the Feast of Saint Sezni, more miniatures from Tatsuya Tanaka plus White House press corps journalist Helen Thomas

la mise en garde (13. 680)

Whilst not given the deserved retrospective treatment as her near namesake and contemporary Leonora Carrington, in her own time Argentine-Italian surrealist (though rejecting the label the label and broader movement personally), designer, illustrator, dresser and author, especially celebrated for her empowering and erotic portrayals of women (herself included), Leonor Fini, had her share of attention from documentarians wanting to know more about her life, influences and works. We appreciated this entree to Fini via the discovery of some of these films, rarely screened or available online, with subtitles, including the feature length profile by Belgian director and screenwriter Chris Vermorcken and the short produced for Swiss broadcaster Radiodiffusion-télévison-française by journalist Yvan Butler, decades after her credentials were established with showings in her native Trieste, Milan, patronised and exhibited by Peggy Guggenheim as well as costuming several theatrical and screen productions. From 1953 onward, Fini held an open polyamorous relationship with Count Stanislao Lepri, Italian consul general to Monaco, and Polish writer Konstanty Jeleński, remaining inseparable for the rest of their lives along with her retinue of no fewer than twenty-three Persian cats. Like Carrington’s, Fini’s art often focused on liminal beings, witches, werewolves and sphinxes.  More from { feuilleton } at the link above. 

emsh (13. 662)

Via { feuilleton }, we are pleased to have had made the acquaintance of visual artist and experimental filmmaker, Ed Emschwiller, a WWII veteran who used his GI bill educational stipend to study at École des Beaux Arts (there meeting his wife and co-creative, scif-fi novelist Carol Fries) and the Art Students League of New York in the late 1940s. Using his veterans’ benefits again, the couple bought a house in Levittown, pursuing their art from a home studio—described as the only beatniks in the, segregated, planned community of Long Island. Often using Carol as a model for his commercial work, Emschwiller (usually signing his painting with the titular abbreviation) created covers for pulp publications including Galaxy, Infinity and Astounding Stories magazines, as well as paperback covers for Philip K Dick and Samuel R Delaney, whom considered his wife a peer. Despite a lucrative career and garnering several Hugo Awards (see previously here and here), in the early 1960s—in part inspired by Andy Warhol and the New American Cinema movement—Emschwiller turned to Factory-style filmmaking in suburbia with multimedia performance vignettes, as well as cinematography for documentaries on diverse subjects from Bob Dylan, voter-registration drives in Mississippi to the New York art scene for diverse commissions from the US Information Agency, NASA and Expo ’67. In the late 1970s, Emschwiller became interested in computer animation, eventually becoming professor and provost of the CalArts of the institutions television workshop and laboratory. More examples of Ed Emschwiller’s work spanning all the stages of his career and incomplete filmography are curated by Dennis Cooper at the link above.

9x9 (13. 655)

all the queens houses: the eclectic architectural vernacular that makes up the New York City’s most diverse borough  

everything counts in large amounts: the moral imperative to understand big numbers, however unimaginable—via Kottke   

incendie de forêt: over a quarter million residents in France and Spain are evacuated from encroaching wildfires  

question de forme: the geometric animation of René Jodoin—see also, see previously

concurso de belleza: Trump cites his beauty pageant credentials to claim to be the competent authority when Venezuela is ready for elections  

plotlines: charting the journey of the protagonist in select classic novels with period maps—via Language Hat 

devil dog: Poseidon’s Underworld (previously) reviews the 1978 made-for-television star-studded spectacular about a satanic litter  

interstitial: Western science seems to recognise the meridians and subtle body of acupuncture and Ayurvedic traditions with a popular article on human anatomy’s third circulatory system  

cornell, 1965: filmmaker Lawrence Jordan’s 1978 profile of peer and colleague Joseph Cornell of Utopia Parkway, Flushing Queens

9x9 (13. 646)

free play: the false nostalgia of the child-rearing in the 1980s 

it ends: capitalising on the popularity of liminal spaces, we discover the next trend, being trapped on an infinite trail  

eco chamber: the personal library of semiotician, philosopher and author Umberto Eco (previously) opens to the public in his Tuscan villa  

from the prepare-for-everything-to-get-very-stupid-and-xenophobic-department: USA to enforce same protectionist, nativist policies exercised in the Tik-Tok ban for open-source AI 

war & cheese: stalled European Union sanctions package for Russia exposes persistent divisions in the Bloc—see also 

the cemeteries are full of indispensable people: the dash to fill an America-shaped void  

hot merfolk summer: besting one’s holiday hashtags aspirations with Miss Margaret Morris’ choreography   

end of the road: uncelebrated termini and the Roman god of boundaries  

unquantified self movement: bucking the trend of maxxing and wellness-optimisation

anemocratic (13. 640)

Writer, journalist, philosopher, world-traveller, war-correspondent and flight-instructor, Guy Murchie, Jr in his 1954 breakthrough book of recollections, drawing from his observations and experiences as an aviator, Song of the Sky, includes a glossary on the names of winds from around the globe, calling his treasury “among the least known and most beautiful words.” Murchie’s appreciation and fondness extends to:

Simoom—the desert, strong, hot and dust-laden gusts of Arabia, Syria and Libya
Siffanto—a blast of heat from the hot heel of Italy
Wisper—a wind whistling through the narrows of the Rhein valley
Haboob—the dusty downdrafts of Sudan and the Upper Nile
Etesian—describing the cool summer afternoons of Greece and the Levant

The title comes from the uncommon term for being governed by the changing winds. Much more from Futility Closet at the link up top.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Lee Harvey Oswald allowed to return to the US after defecting to the Soviet Union (with sychronoptica), assorted links to enjoy plus St Pier Giorgio 

two years ago: a sign of solidarity with Trump’s failed assassination attempt plus going Nazi

three years ago: the Siege of Chartres (911)

four years ago: a champagne cocktail to commemorate the Moon landing plus exploring Aberdeenshire 

five years ago: exploring Orust and Tjörn 

six years ago: St Wilgefortis 

tell me about a complex man (13. 615)

Instead of the usual fare of the podcast and talk-show publicity circuit, we really appreciated The Daily from The New York Times—introduced with appropriately Homeric epithets—had an enthusiastic panel discussion just ahead of the release of Christopher Nolan’s cinematic adaptation of The Odyssey with scholar and translator Emily Wilson (whose work I’ve been meaning to read for some time now and whose take on the first line of the epic poem, “Sing, o Muse” above inspired the director, with a penchant for complicated and flawed protagonists, to assay the project) and author and classicist Madeline Miller, who wrote Song of Achilles and Circe. It was a fascinating panel discussion about the characters, language, tradition and themes of wandering, homecoming and hospitality of the timeless and endlessly interpreted tale. Through the lens of detractions by purists and pedants and provocateurs, attacks that the authors are well-accustomed (Wilson’s website has three contact forms: Interviews/Speaking Requests, General Inquiries and Misogynistic Trolling) and currently applied to Nolan’s work with casing choices (these same people got very upset about a Black Little Mermaid) they arrive a genuinely insightful look at the narrative, academic honesty and conclude that whatever choices that a version makes (in a long-lineage of adaptations and critiques), omissions, Hollywood-endings that one cannot hurt Homer, that the story is invulnerable.

a syntopicon (13. 581)

Coined especially for the two volume with the Neo-Latin term meaning a collection of topics, the two volume register of one hundred two great ideas of the Western canon, was compiled and catalogued by philosopher and professor Mortimer J Adler, published by Encyclopaedia Brittanica Press in 1954 as an index to accompany the fifty-four library of Great Books of the Western World, covering literature and though from Homer to Freud. I can recall seeing these books near the circulation desk at my alma mater as well as the shelves of the volumes in was made to guide at home, though I don’t think I was tempted to consult it to investigate how the individual works corresponded and overlapped, which is a bit of travesty considering the amount of effort and hours of reading it took to synthesise the writing of some seventy authors and something I will have to peruse. Like a Wikipedia gloss, it is a footnote and a hyperlink, and not just a cross-reference of themes or concordance but rather an instrument of liberal education itself for discovery and research and finding the unity in ideas that sometimes can be muddled and masked by language, examining each entry from multiple different angles, breaking each into several sub-topics. Afterwards, Adler edited the single volume Propædia or “Outline of Knowledge” as an appendix for the venerable encyclopaedia marshalling human knowledge into a logical frame work from 1974 to 2010, when the last print edition was issued.

synchronoptica

one year ago: unblogged Breton (with synchronoptica)

two years ago: Lago Delio 

three years ago: assorted links to revisit plus a registry of Americana

four years ago: more links to enjoy

five years ago: your daily demon, Mario theme inspiration, the year’s midpoint, a banger from Tracy Chapman plus a visit to Oberwaldbehrungen

six years ago: even more links, Airplane! (1980) plus the US Civil Rights Act (1964)

qanoon-e-islam (13. 577)

Among the first attempts by the British to give an ethnographic account of the customs and observations of the denizens of Colonial India, particularly the the Muslim population of the southern portion of the subcontinent and reminiscent of the I-Ching and other auspicious augury, the supposed translation (the original lost to time) published by East India Company surgeon Gerhard Herklots, a hefty and encyclopaedic volume covering all aspects of life in Madras, food, language, clothing, superstition and folklore, contains only a small appendix on setting the optimal itinerary for a journey, direction, date of departure. This guide to propitious days for embarking on trade and travel, however superficially appropriated or re-approrriated (see above), gains a purchase on the thought and tradition underlying it, informed by astronomy, astrology and currying divine protection and intercession. Much more from Public Domain Review at the link above.

synchonoptica

one year ago: the commune of Belz (with synchronoptica) plus the city of Vannes

two years ago: the castles of Bellinzona plus the US supreme court grants presidents blanket immunity for official acts

three years ago: more venerable publications going out of print 

four years ago: and then they came for me (1937) plus Scottish devolution (1999)

five years ago: Julie Moon (1970), children’s author Dodie Smith, assorted links to revisit, a banger from Grandmaster Flash (1982) plus being well-read in Antiquity

six years ago: slavery abolished in the Netherlands and its colonies (1863), police crackdown in Hong Kong, America’s entitled class, US Homeland Security tasked with protecting statues plus the licence plates of Palau

9x9 (13. 570)

general magic: an ambitious project to create the smart phone (see below) in the early 1990s failed over lack of constraint and too much freedom, not lack of vision, talent or technology

odyssey: charting the great journeys of fiction—see also  

humphrey’ executor: US supreme court strikes down federal laws that prevent the president from firing heads of (some) independent agencies—see previously  

don’t swear jerry—and don’t bleed in the sink, i’ve just cleaned it: actor and comedian Penelope Keith has died, aged 89  

🧸: Nuigurumi Jinja (Plushie Shire) dedicated in northern Kyoto for honouring beloved stuffed animals—see also here and here 

keedoozle: the grocery store vending machine of the 1930s 

 île de peliz: the solitary natural islet of Lake Geneva, with room for a plane tree  

hypergraphia: history’s most prolific writers 

how about this: 1960s housewife and the pocket phone of the future

synchronoptica

one year ago:  a walk along the beach at Gârves (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: a visit to the Rocco di Caldè 

three years ago: animatronic Trump, an updated We Didn’t Start the Fire plus US supreme court strikes down affirmative action for college admissions

four years ago: goodwill ambassador Samantha Reed Smith 

five years ago: cartoonist Thornton Hee plus a record-setting Van Gogh auction (1987)

six years ago: Quo Vadis,  the feast of SS Peter and Paul, the debut of the iPhone (2007), a chiptune classic, exotic crisps plus Japanese train station jingles

9x9 (13. 539)

criterion collection: a roundup of dirigible-themed movies, featuring, among others, Fay Wray and Ronald Reagan as secret agent Brass Bancroft  

the camelot of africa: a tour Ethiopia’s Gondar castles 

binomial coefficients: some numbers in Pascal’s triangle make very few cameos and no one is sure why  

lost world: museum docent Louis Gratacap pioneered the genre—see previously  

fast-track enlargement: talks begin for EU accession for Ukraine and Moldova  

ger:gre: Monty Python’s Ancients v Moderns football match  

planetary-mass companion: the famous Pink Planet may be a failed binary star system  

a tisket, a tasket: an update on the headquarters building of Longaberger baskets—see previously  

sac pour mal de l’air: a collection of air sickness bags from a variety of airlines

you made this? (13. 530)

Knowing it was ongoing project, I was not completely surprised to see references to John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows circulating on the internet but we did not realise that the revival was not due to a reissue or a follow up edition by the author but rather an act of wholesale plagiarism. Whilst nonsensically including the entire text of the book and all his neologisms for universally felt emotions that we don’t have the words to express (not the best marketing strategy to sell a book), the slick impostor website, which includes blurbs and a biography and links to purchase the dictionary, absent were any of the illustrations to accompany the definitions, instead replaced with unpolished AI-generated images and a feature to gin up a new sorrow with the help of GPT-4—which seemed pretty off-brand for the writer and the attempt to limn lacunas of human experience. Every submitted sorrow is a bit rubbish and unneeded with fussy and overcomplicated etymologies and pronunciation guides (see also). Andy Baio of Waxy got in touch with Koenig and tracks down the mystery of this unauthorised “tribute” site. Vibe coded, I suspected that this might have been a case of spontaneous generation but arguably more tragic, malicious and pervasive, the bootleg site siphoning off profits from another’s creativity is a marketing agency feeling entitled. There ought to be a word for this sad state.

someone like you (13. 515)

Published posthumously as a collection of YA short fiction from the author’s adult corpus among The Umbrella Man and Other Stories, problematic fav Roald Dahl in The Great Automatic Grammatizator (1954) deals with a mechanically-minded engineer (named Adolphe Knipe, almost certainly a lightly-veiled reference to Dahl’s own US publisher, Alfred A Knopf, who reasons that the rules of language are fixed by certain mathematical principles, like the advances in calculators he has recently delivered on commission for his employer, and applies this exploit by creating a mammoth machine able to create a best-seller (see also) in fifteen minutes. Ending on a cautionary note, writers from around the world are left with no choice but to license their authorship, and by extension, human creativity, to the machine, spurned by the industry that rejected his moonlighting endeavours and taking his revenge by making all writing mediocre and formulaic at best, acknowledging that quantity bested quality in the final reckoning.

11x11 (13. 450)

o’dark ocho: an interesting linguistic coincidence  

wildlife gusher: a mysterious structure found in the middle of nowhere—click through to read some delightful and illuminating explanations, via Miss Cellania  

thomas jerome newton: a rereading of the novel The Man Who Fell to Earth in preparation for a rewatch of the David Bowie film  

富くじ: Present /&/ Correct’s collection of Mid-Century Japanese lottery tickets—see also 

spook hotel: the de facto capitol of US administered Venezuela  

kleptocracy: Trump drops his ten billion dollar lawsuit agains his internal revenue service and department of commerce in exchange for a two billion dollar slush fund to award loyalists and exempt himself and associates from future tax audits—via Kottke  

œnology methodology: the study and enjoyment of wine—see previously  

special envoy: Trump sends governor of Louisiana to Greenland to make “friends”  

night nurse: the forgotten author Dora Macy behind the Barbara Stanwyck classic  

public health emergency of international concern: World Health Organisation declares west Africa outbreak of ebola viral haemorrhage fever highly dangerous with the US CDC still not allowed to communicate with the UN body  

cowcumbers: the courgette was previously called so as they were only considered fit for bovines

the navy vs the night monsters (13. 446)

Produced by Jack Broder and Roger Corman (see previously here and here and here) and starring Mamie Van Doren, Billy Gray and Anthony Eisley, the B-movie on the trailing end of a spate of films about botanical beasts premiered in theatres on this day in 1966. The plot involves an expedition returning from the Antarctic with samples of ancient flora, stopping off a remote US navy weather station in the South Pacific for refuelling—the thawing cargo awakens as nocturnal, motile trees that decimate the crew of the station.spewing acid on their victims. Once communications to the outside world is reestablished, the handful of survivors are rescued when napalm is dropped on the island. Whilst not faring well with contemporary audience nor upon reevaluation, not amounting to anything like a cult classic, cast and crew in part were persuaded to take part in the project on the credentials of the author of the sci-fi novel that the movie was based on—albeit it loosely and considerably padded post-production to get it to ninety-minutes in length—and almost quit en masse upon learning the title and that the US military would be the calvary. Adapted from the 1959 The Monster at the Earth’s End by prolific writer Murray Leinster, reviving the trope of what’s frozen at the South Pole is best left frozen there, Leinster’s catalogue of plot devices and imagination mark the first instance of the use, with enduring influence, of several standards of the genre: first contact (over which the writer’s estate tried to sue Star Trek), universal translators, parallel universes and timelines, a networked computer that would provide a media for communication, commerce and entertainment—the terminal called a logic and servers called tanks—orbiting space stations, tractor beams, terraforming, panspermia as well as the television series Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants.