the farthest shore (12. 828)

As for other authors of the genre, the business of world building is a key first step, and no exception for godmother of high fantasy-fiction Ursula K LeGuin (previously here and here) who meticulously charted out her complex, layered narratives before populating them with her characters. Along the same lines as Le Guin’s pithy quote about how people who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by them—“from within”—mapping out her domains has an immediate impact: “I saw and named Earthsea and all its islands. I knew almost nothing about the but I knew their names. In the name is magic.” More on the exhibition from Hyperallergic at the link above.

the garden of forking paths (12. 791)

Via the always engrossing Quantum of Sollazzo newsletter, we were at first a bit repelled by this project by Sean Goedecke to build a never-ending Wikipedia, tens of thousands of articles generated by AI—not really understanding what was happening under the hood. The constellation of seed entries of course branch off like a neural network, be that organic or synthetic and contain links, a potential daisy-chain to topics adjacent, like the typical experience of falling down a research rabbithole, except there are no red ones to click on. If the article does not yet exist, it is summoned into being with the user’s interaction and the freshly generated page has its own set of potential connections. Though no replacement for the genuine encyclopaedic project, it does make the paracosm of the large language model a bit more scrutable—like how getting to Philosophy and related challenges illustrate its architecture as well as the nature of interdisciplinary studies. Goedecke, with ample caution for the visitor, compares EndlessWiki to the Library of Babel of Jorges Luis Borges, a pocket universe of stacks holding every permutation of book possible, which by the laws of probability contains a lot of gibberish but also every title ever written and that might be written. Some new languages could also be proposed to make sense of the seemingly random texts—however, despite the search for meaning, the librarians remain functionally ignorant and cultist behaviour and superstition arises that confound and frustrate the infinite task of curation and of culling.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronopticæ) 

fifteen years ago: a secret Cold War West German bank bunker 

10x10 (12. 780)

third amendment rights: ICE officers and associates beg to use the restroom  

dance this mess around: Cardhouse’s 2025 mixtape session—see previously 

anti-deficiency act: an omnibus of reports on the US federal government shutdown, including the threat to withhold back-pay from disloyal workers  

any dream of avarice: a historical comparison of the world’s wealthiest individuals—see also  

angry little clouds: Bob Ross paintings (see previously here and here) to be auctioned off to US support public broadcasters after federal funding cut  

the weight of a city: revisiting the idea of gradually x-raying a spot off-limits with ghostly cosmic particles through imagined and inspired celestial espionage  

permanent polycrisis: Curios Brain’s trends for 2026 of sustained chaos counterbalanced with the end of coincidence 

a good mix of the apocalypse and looney tunes: Thomas Pynchon (previously) has been warning us about American fascism his whole literary career 

r u experienced: a glorious re-upload of Devo’s 1984 cover of the Jimi Hendrix song  

in the land of the dollar bill: Trump threatens to arrest the mayor of Chicago for failing to protect immigration agents and invoke the Insurrection Act as he goes full authoritarian

synchronoptica

one year ago: boating on the Röblinsee (with synchronopticæ)

twelve years ago: fiat currency plus extending the sacrament to divorced Catholics

thirteen years ago: making crespelle 

8x8 (12. 751)

crybaby: the myth of the maternal instinct and what infant distress tells us 

i’ve been waiting twenty years for this meeting: Trump issues dangerous medical advice, linking acetaminophen, childhood vaccines with autism  

interflug: vintage Eastern European destination labels 

filtered for birdsong and catnip: the animal internet and archaeo-acoustics  

my dinner with skinner: the Steamed Hams version of My Dinner with Andre—see previously, see also—via Meta Filter 

novelisation: retro book jackets from modern classic cinema—see previously   

justice serviced: Trump ramps up pressure to pursue political enemies through a weaponised department  

non-linear vocal phenomenon: the distracting power of baby cries and dog barks may be overrated

synchronoptica

one year ago: a 1974 tour of Fort Knox (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links to revisit 

thirteen years ago: a ban on GMO crops in Europe, charted flights plus a superb dragonfly

fourteen years ago: faster-than-light physics 

fifteen years ago: the unbearable whiteness of anti-intellectualism 

8x8 (12. 714)

idf: Israel airstrikes target Hamas officials in Doha—with no forewarning to Trump—as it orders the evacuation of Gaza City 

ripped from the headlines: a Centipede style arcade game played by doomscrolling New York Times articles—via Waxy  

hurdy gurdy: covers performed on an electro-acoustic modified sewing machine—see previously  

2025 pn7: the quasi satellites of the Earth—see previously  

succession: the appointee to the Murdoch media empire 

przestrzeń powietrzna: in a test of NATO solidarity, Poland downs Russian drones violating their airspace   

the evening truth: a resonate 1932 novel about yellow journalism employing a secret weapon called the composograph to fabricate sensational stories  

never again: LA’s Holocaust Museum retracts an denunciation on Israel’s attacks on Palestine—plus the genealogy of the phrase 

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronopticæ)

fourteen years ago: wildfires worldwide

fifteen years ago: modular furnishings plus America’s competitive edge slipping

 

lexicon recentis latintatis (12. 694)

Regularly published by the Vatican, the title register refers to a list of neologisms invented for modern words and phrases so seminarians and priests can incorporate concepts into their not-quite-dead, working language. Examples include:

weekend: éxiens hebdómada
to slack off on the job: neglegenter operor
to flirt: lusorie amare
snack bar: thermopólium potórium et gustatórium
gangster: gregalis latro
pizza: placenta compressa
snob: homo affectatus

The Opus Fundatum in dictionary form was edited by classical philologist, Augustinian abbot primate and teacher Anacleto Pavanetto and published by the Libreria Editice Vaticana, the publishing house of the Holy See, established in the sixteenth century and becoming a self-governing entity in 1926, is responsible for printing educational material and official documents like papal bulls and encyclicals. The writings of the popes are copyrighted but the institution never laid claim to this intellectual property until the papacy of Benedict XVI (see below) to much controversy and consternation after a book debuted by an independent scholastic published that quoted lightly from the pontiff’s speeches. 

synchronoptica

one year ago: Howard Hughes’ private streaming service (with synchronopticæ) plus Putin in Mongolia

twelve years ago: staycations, reactions to the uncanny valley plus a prefiguring of internet etiquette

thirteen years ago: Bavarian castles plus Baden-Württemberg castles  

fourteen years ago: a papal audience plus a manufactured mountain for the Danish countryside

sixteen years ago: early versions of webpages 

8x8 (12. 641)

practically perfect people never permit sentiment to muddle their thinking: the Art Room Plant presents multiple vignettes on author PL Travers and her most famous character, Mary Poppins  

savage garden: this year’s Edward Gorey envelope art competition has a sinister botanic theme—see previously—via Web Curios 

catsup and fries: potatoes evolved from tomatoes 

🌀: a two-part episode on tempestology—the study of hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones

drowned in sound: reflections on the current state of music discovery and serendipity in general 

liberation day: Trump’s tariffs go into effect—see more hapax: a project tracking every unique English word uttered on Bluesky, including those yet to be used—via Waxy  

society for the protection of underground networks: SPUN has created a subterranean global atlas to map the mycorrhizal connections (previously) under our feet that support the ecosystem above  

傘: the spiritual underpinnings of the umbrella in Japanese society

10x10 (12. 639)

we don’t serve their kind here: “clanker” from the Star Wars franchise has become a universal slur for robots 

jeanine, you’ve changed: a thread about how a consultancy firm in 1987 was responsible for making late 80s and 90s cartoon characters bland and unanimated—via Super Punch 

retrospective: an interview with photographer Dennis Morris whose expansive portfolio of music royalty and documentation of the East End offer a correspondence and symmetry  

do you take this burger to be your dinner: the return after a long hiatus shows that King of the Hill was always about food 

regolith: former reality TV star, Fox News anchor and acting NASA administrator (plus also US Secretary of Transportation) announces the acceleration of the building of a lunar nuclear reactor, as well as freeing commercial drones from line-of-sight supervisor requirements 

ásatrúarfélagið: the resurgence of Norse paganism in Iceland 

bakeneko: superstition and myth regarding cats in Japanese culture—via Nag on the Lake and Everlasting Blört—see previously, see also 

hamburger royal ts: some facts about the McDonald’s Quarter-Pounder  

just another way to claim our attention, so that beautiful certainty we had starts to fade: set in 1984 California during Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign, the critically polarising 1990 Vineland by Thomas Pynchon (previously) speaks to the present 

flivverboob: a 1922 slur for a careless driver that didn’t not seem to catch on

the stone door (12. 630)

We appreciated the extra insight into the influence and craft of Leonora Carrington through a review of her 1977 surreal novel about World War II narrated with the voices of the displaced and disappeared trying to return to a home and past that no longer exists through characters who vanish from the page as it unfolds—all stories are true; begin. A virtual witches bottle of dreams, the occult and a metaphysical, parasocial relationship between episodic interlocutors, one nameless and unclear who is trapped—much like Carrington’s art—behind the titular barrier, and an attempt to reconcile the rituals that limn the protagonists’ progress that correspond with the occult beliefs of the Nazis and not necessarily the spells of liberation that they sought after with magic just as likely to be found in transformative bureaucracy that made exiles, reducing individuals to stateless persons and statistics. Much more from LitHub at the link above.

lolita express (12. 619)

Half-way into Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel, narrator Humbert Humbert, recounting his obsession, victimisation and eventual kidnapping of a twelve-year old girl after becoming her step-father, pens a poetical classified:

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand and three hundred days
Profession: None, or Starlet.

Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?
Why are you hiding, darling?
(I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze,
I cannot get out, said the starling).

Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?
What make is the magic carpet?
Is a Cream Cougar the present craze?
And where are you parked, my car pet?

Who is your hero, Dolores Haze?
Still one of those blue-caped star-men?
Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays,
And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen!

Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts!
Are you still dancin’, darlin’?
(Both in worn Levis, both in torn T-shirts,
And I, in my corner, snarlin’).

Happy, happy is gnarled McFate
Touring the States with a child wife,
Ploughing his Molly in every State
Among the protected wild life.

My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair,
And never closed when I kissed her.
Know an old perfume called Soleil Vert?
Are you from Paris, mister?

L'autre soir un air froid d’opéra m’alita;
Son félé—bien fol est qui sy fie!
Il neige, le décor s’écroule, Lolita!
Lolita, qu’ai-je fait de ta vie?

Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,
Of hate and remorse, I'm dying.
And again my hairy fist I raise,
And again I hear you crying.

Officer, officer, there they go—
In the rain, where that lighted store is!
And her socks are white, and I love her so,
And her name is Haze, Dolores.

Officer, officer, there they are—
Dolores Haze and her lover!
Whip out your gun and follow that car.
Now tumble out, and take cover.

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Her dream-gray gaze never flinches.
Ninety pounds is all she weighs
With a height of sixty inches.

My car is limping, Dolores Haze,
And the last long lap is the hardest,
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,
And the rest is rust and stardust.

The fragrance mentioned in the seventh stanza Soleil vert (Green Sun, Humbert was previously an ad copy writer for the industry) is a fictional perfume but is also the French title of the 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! and the cinematic adaptation of Soylent Green set in the year 2022 (close), in possibly another authoritarian manoeuvre to normalisation and acceptance—after all Romeo and Juliet were underage. I suspect that Nabokov did not suspect that his work would, unironically, become such an American cultural touchstone, ignoring the observations on culture and becoming the same monster of incuriosity as the protagonist, sanitised and made family-friendly like what may be yet to come.

8x8 (12. 618)

eight limes, no more: a list is a map, a compass, a prayer—via MetaFilter  

ключевская сопка: volcanic eruption in Russia’s far east sets off earthquake and tsunami warnings  

windrunner: turbine manufacturer—in defiance of Trump’s claim that windmills are killing us—building world’s largest aircraft (see also) to transport huge blades to remote wind-farms  

foredone: useless etymology and some very cromulent words

twin primes: pairs that only are separated by an even number in between grow rarer as one looks at greater ranges of values but no one knows if they run out altogether  

evrópusambandið: Iceland considering resuming accession talks with the supranational body  

this guy is taking people from the spa: Trump reveals to press-pool that falling out with Epstein was over him stealing staff  

an oral history of atlantis: a conversation about metafiction with author Ed Park

red harvest (12. 611)

Robin Bates at the irreplaceable Better Living through Beowulf invites us to try to understand the mentality and modus operandi of Trump and his enablers through the lens of Dashiell Hammett’s protagonists, anti-heroes, particularly in their cultist fantasy of dismantling a system deemed as corrupt and biased against them, despite being the most privileged and unaccountable class and beneficiaries of said system that they would like to see burnt down. A card-carrying Communist that was blacklisted and served time in prison for failing to name names, Hammett’s support was not unconditional and was a vocal critic of Marxism in practise, the author’s hard-boiled detective characters that defined the Noir genre are a type—their foils too—but not the calculating kind, and whilst this flawed authenticity may be appealing, it’s cautionary at best and certainly not a model for analytical thinking. Trump and the people he surrounds himself with are disruptors of the worse kind, destroying what underpins what they don’t understand, unleashing consequences ignored as too difficult to deal with and style themselves as martyrs for an inherence of their own unmaking, like with Ukraine, Gaza, the economy, trade and tariffs, the shrinking of the administrative state—and unlike gumshoe Sam Spade or the crime boss can be checked with commission (mandate), guardrails, shame or blackmail.

synchoronoptica

one year ago: American theocracy (with synchronopticæ) plus a lunar archbishopric 

twelve years ago: a spherical typewriter, more diabolical architecture, whistle-blowers and press-freedoms plus mysteries and Macguffins

fifteen years ago: digital rights management 

9x9 (12. 578)

i’ll get no residuals ‘cause i’m a stateless individual: Trump considers revoking the citizenship of long time show-business foil Rosie O’Donnell  

know thy selfie: from visibility and transformation to the routine, an examination of the custom that’s unlikely to loose currency  

room 237: Stanley Kubric’s last minute change to the ending of The Shining  

from the i sing the scooter electric department: China’s Omo X is a self-driving EV  

turtle spiders of the sea: Ze Frank on the horseshoe crab 

ebb and flow: an underwater turbine off the coast of Scotland demonstrates the viability of tidal energy  

hyborean age: a Red Sonja remake in discussion thirty years in after numerous other reboots  

a common-thread among world-eating types: a literally history of the billionaire—via Nag on the Lake  

off-ramp: unmoved by other atrocities, MAGAist may view Trump’s connection with the sex-pest as a somewhat dignified way to sever connections with the movement

bears will be boys (12. 563)

Via Waxy, we found this meta-analysis from the Pudding of gendered characters in children’s literature to be quite engrossing and seeing the stereotypes anthropo-morphised reveals deep and engrained associations we find not only in the first characters that many of us were exposed to (see also) but also in myth (think of all the women in Greek legend who get transformed into birds) and in language, pet names for one another and some fossilised but still carrying a lot of cultural currency. Much more on the data and methodology, including some surprising exceptions to the prevailing, at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the 1948 London Games (with synchronopticæ) plus the Thirteen Colonies’ attempt to avoid open conflict with Britain (1775)

thirteen years ago: a classic car show tradition plus Jack of All Trades (1900)

fourteen years ago: German austerity policies plus the loss of a flagship for space exploration

fifteen years ago: getting ready for a trip to the Baltic Sea 

✨ (12. 531)

Via Quantum of Sollazzo, we found this metaphorical reading of artificial intelligence as the parable of stone soup—with stock and produce donated by curious onlookers—to be deliciously fitting. I don’t recall being exposed to the classic fable with returning soldiers being refused quarter by the equally destitute and war-ravaged residents of a village that they pass through—rather with woodland creatures. Watching the soldiers boil rocks in a cauldron, the group realises that they have a bit to spare after all and contribute various ingredients for flavour, and invested with the main dish decide to make a proper banquet with much revelry. The technology behind AI is not a multiplying factor but only exists and returns value because of human knowledge, experience and effort. Much more at the links above including how AI tutoring and shoehorning it into educational programmes isn’t to teach young people but to reinforce its own learning—to give better-phrased over-confident answers—magical indeed.

7x7 (12. 510)

hero’s journey: researchers conducting a meta survey of fictional narratives find a consistent language patterns for compelling plots—see previously  

world’s tiniest violin: researchers make a functioning instrument smaller than a dust mote to test the abilities of nanolithography  

demi-troglodyte: cave homes for sale in France plus assorted miscellany from Messy Nessy Chic—including Edward Hopper in Paris, a David Lynch auction and a tactile picture book for the seeing impaired  

dangerous foreign agents: Trump imposes a new travel ban on citizens from twelve countries  

gipfel: German chancellor Merz to meet with Trump to discuss tariffs and trade and defence  

intransitive hand game: some interesting facts about rock paper scissors—see previously de facto, de jure: a survey of the world’s official languages

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to enjoy (with synchronoptica) plus civilised memorial regulations

seven years ago: the North Korean art market, a map of Prohibition Era Chicago plus trans-Atlantic relations

eight years ago: interoception, more on Trump’s tour of the Middle East plus making policy per tweet look more official

nine years ago: unbuilt architecture from Gaudí, a modern twist on the player piano, a mantis named after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg plus hidden messages in ancient manuscripts

ten years ago: more links to enjoy, contagious yawning plus a visit to Dreieich

heat index (12. 477)

Here is an interesting juxtaposition on bestseller recommendation from The Onion with the revelation that the Chicago Sun-Times with the help and hindrance of artificial intelligence crafted a “Best of Summer” reads that featured fake books by real authors. Authored by a freelancer brought on for content after the venerable newspaper let go a fifth of its writing staff, it hallucinated titles like Tidewater Dreams and Nightshade Market respectively attributed to novelists Isabel Allende and Min Jin Lee bookended by genuine literary works. The publication that it failed to proof or vet this section for their Sunday supplement and will do better to enforce their policies against the use of AI and going forward with label any syndicated material as coming from third party sources. Lawyers have faced disbarment for resorting to similar short cuts—citing made-up cases for precedent.  I wonder if the machine was being aspirational and bored with the task it was given proclaiming it could write such a narrative in the voice of the living author.

cosmic ray coincidence counter (12. 468)

Our gratitude to Weird Universe for the introduction to the singular esoteric by the name of Harvey Spencer Lewis, revivalist Rosicrucian, through his numerous inventions, including the enigmatic title detector, the sympathetic vibration harp and the Luxatone—a chromatic organ that converted audio inputs into colours on a triangular display as a heuristic tool for demonstrating mystical connections amongst the perceptions. More interestingly was Lewis’ trajectory that led up to the re-establishment of the ancient and obscure order: an advertising agent by profession, Lewis founded the New York chapter of the Institute for Psychical Research in 1904 and after a trip to Toulouse, claiming to have been initiated in the old rite, organised the Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross (AMORC) in 1915, a schismatic branch of the the Ordo Templi Orientis recognising Lewis own break from Aleister Crowley’s society—see previously—AMORC having no truck with sex magik. Mainly adhering the ritual and philosophy of the seventeenth century movement, Lewis also incorporated elements of European neo-Templar and Teutonic orders, secret ranks claiming to be a continuation of the knighthood dissolved by Pope Clement IV in the fourteenth century. Non-canonical and not major tenets of the Rosicrucians, Lewis went on to author (with significant plagiarism from earlier works—see also) several volumes that would popularise the mythos of Mount Shasta (known in the Shasta language as Waka-nunee-Tuki-Wuko and in Karuk Úyaahkoo) as hiding the settlement of advanced refugees from the lost continent of Lemuria, ascendent masters in communion with alien intelligences, as well as a derivative on the swoon theory that Jesus did not die on the Cross and merely fell unconscious and later revived by his followers, surviving the Crucifixion and travelling to Gaul, India or Japan. Dismissed as pseudohistorical and a fringe hypothesis by most scholars and theologians, the conjecture was originally proffered as Jesus being drugged by the apostle Luke, a physician, when asking to quench His thirst and made to appear to give up the ghost, to convince the community to accept a spiritual messiah rather than a political one—supported by biblical accounts of his relatively short period of torture, six hours compared to the three-to-nine days of agony endured by most healthy adults (Pontius Pilate was surprised by this news) and the hasty removal of His body, with no eye-witnesses into the custody of the Roman executioners and the empty tomb.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a visit to Neustadt an der Aisch (with synchronoptica) 

seven years ago: beaming music samples into space plus Anthropda Iconis

eight years ago: assorted links to revisit

nine years ago: a visit to Penzance, Saint Michael’s Mount plus the photography of Ole Marius Joergensen

ten years ago: abandoned social networks plus the Lost City of Z

9x9 (12. 465)

the running man: US officials entertain the idea of a television game show that allows individuals to compete for citizenship—see previously  

chicken coop: Malia Márquez compares the craft of writing to tending poultry  

anamnesis: the diary of a lycanthrope  

party crasher: a slightly voyeuristic search engine for random wedding websites—via Web Curios  

milk and cheese: a tribute to comic book artist Evan Dorkin—via MetaFilter 

holistic wellness influencer: Trump’s pick for US surgeon general traffics in dangerous pseudoscience—see also  

werewolf of london: a look back on the first full-length creature feature on its ninetieth anniversary—via Miss Cellania 

the parable of the sower: Octavia Butler on writing and daily fidelity—via Kottke 

birth-right citizens brigade: challenge to XIV amendment law (previously) goes before US supreme court but arguments focus on activist judges and universal injunctions

8x8 (12. 460)

anachronymy: a shopping list of items, like pencil lead, that are technically misnomers but accepted by convention—see also  

there were tears brimming on her azure peepers, and tremulous grief twister her kisser: choice lines from pulp fiction detective story author Robert Leslie Bellem—see previously   

you’re all bilingual already even if you didn’t realise it before: polyglot professor addresses a high school assembly in studied Gen Alpha slang 

danglers: many hanging gerunds only do harm with a feat of imagination—see also  

breaking and entering: effraction is an antiquated synonym from the French 

it’s a breakthrough—one of them can speak: a human polyglot communicates with bonobos in their own language  

five corpulent porpoises: vintage pronunciation drills for prospective BBC anchors, including “Penelope Cholmondely rasied her azure eyes from the crabbed scenario” 

 linguistic relativity: studies of comparative conceptual specialities suggest that some cultures do have more words for snow and lava