an agony, in eight fits (13. 306)

With the above subtitle, as our faithful chronicler reminds, English writer Lewis Carroll (previously) published his nonsense poem on this day in 1876, borrowing stylistically from an earlier verse “Jabberwocky” and Through the Looking-Glass, whose first printing run included a religious tract, “An Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves ‘Alice.’” Variously interpreted as a lampoon against Victorian sensibilities, an allegory of tuberculosis, existential angst over the fear of losing one’s sense of self and a court case that was a cause célèbre during its composition involving a man who claimed to be the missing heir to the Tichborne estate supposed lost in a shipwreck en route to Australia, and relates the narrative of a hunting party’s arrival in a strange land, the crew consisting of a bellman, bonnet-maker, a barrister, broker, billiard-maker, banker, a beaver, a baker and a butcher to pursue their quarry of the Snark, which is rumoured to be a highly dangerous boojum, which makes all take pause.  Whilst the sense of derision or irreverence is onomatopoeic from the interjection to snort, the poem lends the sense of a wild-goose chase.  The hunt commences:

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share,
They charmed it with smiles and soap.

Along the way, the B-Team encounter a jubjub bird and are attacked by bandersnatch, causing the bank to lose his sanity and disappear without a trace, claiming to have spied their objective but none of the others catch sight of the elusive prey. With illustrated plates by stained-glass designer, muralist and architect Henry Holiday (see above), whose studies of ancient Egyptian motifs helped fuel the Mummy Mania craze, “The Hunting of the Snark” received mixed contemporary reviews and critics pronounced Carroll’s prose and poetry past its prime, although upon reevaluation the enduring references, vocabulary and cadence, structured like a limerick, it has been embraced an reinterpreted in many formats and a dedicated academic journal.

milo minderbinder (13. 304)

Corresponding with the last post of notes from the war, we really enjoyed this reading from Better Living through Beowulf through the lens of Catch-22 of Trump’s Iran adventure. The amoral deal-maker 1LTC Milo Minderbinder is the foil to Joseph Heller’s protagonist CPT John Yossarian as the chief mess officer whose single-minded focus on profit and complete lack of self-awareness drives him to make black market transactions with any side that will allow him to expand the operation of his Syndicate, a one-man operation of which Minderbinder claims all are stakeholders. Eventually these escalating trades lead to contracting missions for the German enemy and bombing the American base (like the blowback for the Gulf states hosting US assets or the hollow promises to support Iranian protestors rallying for regime change) where Minderbinder and his squadron are stationed, and though court-martialled for treason for this, he is ultimately acquitted by a congressional committee, with the help of an expensive legal team, absolving his betrayal when it was disclosed how lucrative the business of playing both sides was, convincing the legislators that it was capitalism that makes America great, paraphrasing Calvin Coolidge’s axiom that the business of government is business. Whilst the are parallels certainly in the crassness of Trump’s behaviour and self-enrichment through market manipulation and insider trading (or miraculously cleaning up the mess of high gas prices and crippling inflation just in time for the mid-terms) without regard to putting lives at risk or the global economy in shambles, these very foreseeable consequences of his actions are not the actions of a skilled businessman—just the opposite in his unreflective greed and toolish idiocy–and whatever intent is behind them, like de-sanctioning Russian and Iranian oil to alleviate supply pressures, the formerly illicit petroleum being traded in yuan and not the dollar as the reserve currency. More from Robin Bates at the link above.

7x7 (13.275)

rocketman: more on the centenary of Robert Goddard’s first launch—via Miss Cellania  

take the q train: a 1987 subway trip to Coney Island captured by pre-internet vlogger Nelson Sullivan  

cabbage architecture: how a bitter shrub became scores of distinct vegetables—via Quantum of Sollazzo  

limehouse: reconstructing Pennyfield’s Chinatown in East London  

outrageous fortune: the 1931 novel Windfall by Robert Andrews line of sight: see how far you can see plus the grandest vistas

twinkle, twinkle: a guide to identifying the planets and stars from xkcd—previously

according to our new arrival (13. 269)

As our faithful chronicler reminds, Mr Belvedere debuted on ABC on this day in 1985, and while having scant affection, nostalgia or memory (except maybe for the nightly journaling) for this culturally mismatched sitcom, a posh British, world-travelled butler engaged by a nouveau-riche American family living in the suburbs of Pittsburgh as a mentor and caretaker, in the tradition of Family Affair from two decades earlier and inspired by the character created by novelist Gwen Davenport at the end of WWII with the displaced coming to the aid of the dysfunctional, just like with antecedent and precedent series like Charles in Charge and Who’s the Boss?, I do have a fondness for the theme song as performed in ragtime style by Leon Redbone throughout its relatively short and ultimate shelved run, whose full franchise was ultimately aired in syndication, a rarity for a show that was cancelled and on the cusp of expository intros. Belvedere himself was adapted cinematically several times before the pitch for television was made and failing until being buoyed up by the above thematically similar shows.

harrison bergeron (13. 245)

Expanding on a rather Kafkaesque experience from a year and a half ago with an assignment of his child shortly after the state legislature of California adopted a bill that required the companies growing large-language models offer students and education institutions AI detection tools to foster academic honesty and integrity, with the irony not lost on either on anyone excepting the school perhaps, to write an essay on the above Kurt Vonnegut short-story, a satire from 1961 in the Welcome to the Monkey House collection set in 2081 wherein the US constitution mandates equality for all by imposing handicaps on those who excel above the mean in anyway—the titular gifted child removed from his home by the government, his parents barely registering his absence due to their own blinders and low intelligence until the son attempts a televised coup and is summarily executed by the Handicapper General before moving on to regularly scheduled mediocre programming— the homework was completed on a school-issued computer pre-installed with AI checkers courtesy of Grammerly to compile with the law and flagged as being at least partially machine-authored, and Techdirt contributor Mike Masnick related how his kid took in the lesson, spending extra hours going over their prose line by line in order to dumb it down and remove what was flagging their original work as AI-generated. Or course revision of one’s rough drafts is an essential part of learning to become a good writer and some have a lazy impulse to outsource their learning, but this trend (mandated or otherwise in the syllabi) is causing classrooms all over to produce work that’s less likely to trigger the detection software, used by both students and teachers, to produce work that’s less suspect by being less polished and less in one’s own voice, squandering valuable time, like teaching to the test, spend on cross-checking for triggers rather than learning to synthesise information, literacy and writing itself. An example of the Cobra Effect, when British colonial authorities began paying a bounty for dead bodies of the deadly snake, Indian locals started breeding programmes in response to collect more of the incentives—officials grew wise to the scheme and stopped paying resulting in the release of the worthless cobras and causing more of a problem than before—Dadland Maye, a tenured humanities professor of several universities, writes more about the predicament that has become pervasive and with no good outcomes.

7x7 (13. 229)

all modern digital infrastructure: a XKCD panel made interactive 

hell harp: Oxford scholars recreate the musical instruments from the Garden of Earthly Delights and play them—see previously 

≲5×10³: Iranian academics propose that technologically advanced civilisations wipe themselves out and have a constrained lifespan on Earth and throughout the Cosmos—see also here, here and here  

set theory: literary news in Venn diagrams  

tragic mansions: the sadly overlooked life and career of Mrs Philip Lydig  

orrery: a mechanical clock to tell the time in our solar system  

habe mortem præ oculis: perhaps the worst pun ever  

usage clause: AI can rewrite, refactor COBOL language applications, reportedly reducing the risk of moving away from legacy systems—see also, see previously

9x9 (13. 226)

strength is not strong: it takes more than might to make right 

right of reply: Palantir sues small Swiss media outlet for accurately reporting of the government’s rejection of their surveillance and analytic services offers  

lifeguard on duty: annual design competition to reimagine Toronto’s beach rescue stations as public art during the winter break  

a tuba to cuba: the travelogue of a jazz band’s trip to Havana to explore their musical roots  

visual variable: a free library of thousands of cartographical icons that can be scaled down to the head of a pin—via the Map Room  

the tamizdat project: a library curating literature smuggled into the Soviet Union as part of US spycraft (“published abroad”) to destablise the Bloc from within 

site specific: a roundup of some of the most garish public art installations in the world—via Miss Cellania   

homily: Pope Leo urges priests to stop using AI to write sermons 

brother fire: reflections on a war of choice and the dashed hopes of the Arab Spring

8x8 (13. 198)

the mckinley colonies: the US settlement on Cuba’s Isla de la Juventud 

„…“: another omnibus listing of aphorisms and sage quotations  

manannán: 1940 sci-fi Irish language novel that contains the likely first use of a mecha outside of Japanese literature  

in the realms of the unreal: outsider artist Henry Darger—see previously 

spring has sprung: early heralds of the coming season—see previously 

archive.yesterday: Wikipedia bans controversial news and features article mirror for citations after the service launches denial of service attacks on websites linking to it—via MetaFilter  

lapsis muris: linguists uncover another usage case of uh—see previously  

tron/troff: explore your neighbourhood in the virtual grid

synchronoptica

one year ago: Ukraine and Europe excluded from peace talks (with synchronopticæ), an enigmatic online diary plus an ancient cistern in Naples

thirteen years ago: elision and mishearing 

fourteen years ago: graphic artist Tim Doyle 

spine-tingling (13. 171)

Our thanks to Boing Boing for the education in book finishers’ craft with gauffered edging, gilt indentations along the page and decorative elements (called pallets)—the French version of the Germanic root that gives us waffle and wafer (see also) and means to plait or crimp—to revisit this highly satisfying demonstration of expert rebinding and book tooling skills, lovingly restoring an old volume with a pristine jacket, titled, ornamented with inlays and onlays and complete with marbled endpapers.

rebinding old book into a treasure
by u/Maddiee7diary in SatisfyingAF

*     *     *     *     *

synchronoptica

one year ago: unilateral peace negotiations for Ukraine (with synchronopticæ), malicious compliance plus the return of Enron

thirteen years ago: the retirement of Pope Benedict, furnished quarters plus architectural embellishments 

fourteen years ago: Nazis on the Moon 

wonderful deeds and doings of little giant boab (13. 158)

Via Miss Cellania, were are directed towards the lawyer, diplomatic consul to the Kingdom of Hannover and children’s author Ingersoll Lockwood whose fiction seems to eerily predict the rise of the god emperor and dynastic aspirations—see previously, although it appears that that Bene Gesserit reverend mother, Ghislaine Maxwell, was only interested in producing the Kwisatz Haderach of paedophiles. Establishing a practise in New York City after the conclusion of his foreign posting (appointed by Abraham Lincoln), Lockwood found a second calling as a lecturer and writer, authoring Travels and adventures of Little Barron Trump and his wonderful dog Bulger in 1889, with a sequel, the Marvellous Underground Journey four years later. Received by educators and his target readership with indifference and derivative rather than inspired by the works of Lewis Carroll, the two volumes were all but forgotten until their rediscovery in 2016 and 2017 with the similarities to the once and future president and his issue, Barron (the pseudonym “John Barron” was also used by Drumpf in the 1980s) with the title character, a young German boy called Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Von Troomp, styled as Baron Trump, secreting away from the family estate to strange lands (first to Russia), offending natives and getting into entanglements with local women, escaping back to Trump Castle before he can be missed and repeating the adventures night after night. In 1896, in the run-up to the contested presidential election, Lockwood wrote his third and last novel, one with a decidedly more dystopian theme called 1900; or, the Last President, which we hope is not as prescient, of a near-future NYC torn by riots and protests following the shocking victory of a populist candidate who brings about the collapse of the republic.

synchronoptica

one year ago: futuristic sleepwear (with synchronopticæ), French cocktail hour plus Trump’s return-to-office mandate

twelve years ago: a recipe for kuri squash soup, strategic positive thinking plus an ostentatious bishop

thirteen year ago: the mediatisation of church land in Germany, the sense of smell in fish plus Germany debates fracking

fourteen years ago: the launch of the He-Man franchise 

fifteen years ago: machines talk back 

sixteen years ago: Germany combats tax evasion 

seventeen years ago: neglected social media profiles 

rede an den kleinen mann (13. 144)

Having a passing familiarity with one of the more radical and controversial figures in the field of psychiatry, Wilhelm Reich, we were rather absorbed with his 1945 illustrated essay, Listen, Little Man!—call-out quotations limned by cartoonist William Steig (best known for his 1990 children’s book Shrek! and the basis of the animated movies) a personal friend and originally self-published by Reich’s Orgon Press. Aligned with overarching philosophy that neuroticism, self-destructive behaviours and fascism were rooted in sexual frustrations, the tract, translated with multiple reprintings and influencing the likes of Saul Bellow, William S Burroughs and Norman Mailer and Joan Didion among others as writers of creative non-fiction, documents the evolution of a psychoanalytical session from the point of view of the derided therapist, Reich himself as a stand-in for the whole backlash against the industry and skepticism towards expertise in general, from bemused naïvety, amazement to panic and horror about how resistant the patient can be to being disabused, esteeming his enemies and persecuting allies, becoming crueler than through grievance than the power structure one hopes to supplant. Much more to discover at the links above.

8x8 (13. 133)

i’m blue jeans and apple pie and the indian removal act: America reminds its citizens that it is still their country 

heated rivalry: Don DeLillo’s contribution to the erotic sports genre with the pseudonymous novel Amazons—via MetaFilter   

thermoradiative diode: reverse solar panels harness infrared energy at nighttime  

your money’s no good here: photos of ICE with their backs turned posing with detainees (Minnesota rioters) is sending the opposite message 

once upon a prime time: a 1966 Canadian parody about a housewife who loses her family to television and then sees her home invaded by TV tropes  

mirror, mirror: our brains interpret a left to right reversal in our reflections when its really back to front hézmənd-halsh: more unexpectedly effortful British family names—see previously   

another country: Adam Shatz writing for the London Review of Books on the sublime abomination—via Web Curios

clear & quick (13. 109)

From Sixth Tone, we appreciated this update on the long-lost prototype unit for the MingKwai experimental typewriter since it was discovered in a basement in Arizona of famed novelist Lin Yutang (林語堂) about a year ago. The relatives knew Lin was able to retire young and relocated to the States from royalties earned from best-sellers but had not known that fortune also funded his passion for inventing and that the early models, which whilst patented never went into mass production. Most active as a writer at a time when the advances in telegraphy and print had accelerated global exchange of information in the first half of the twentieth century, Lin realised acutely that China, despite having introduced publishing to the world, was at risk of failing behind due to framework of Western technologies designed for the Latin alphabet and not the ninety-thousand characters of his native language. Though not inventing the typewriter, Lin did devise and patent a more intuitive and portable format that anyone could learn to use, spending as much time reflecting on language and word frequency as he devoted to the mechanics. The seventy-two key layout (multilingual with shifting carriages that also printed in Cyrillic, Japanese as well as English and Chinese and became pivotal in the study of machine aided translation during the Cold War) also featured a preview window, a Magic Eye that narrowed the possible choices from deconstructed stroke elements displayed on each key. Revolutionary as it was, the the MingKwai (the name means the title) proved unmarketable due to a collusion of factors—geopolitics, the complex engineering that went into the character indexing system of this mechanical marvel and the burgeoning computer industry—though the same limitations and alphabetical privilege again came into play. Much more at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a utility station wagon (with synchronopticæ), Thailand legalises same-sex marriage, internationalisation and localisation plus informing fonts with ancient inscriptions 

fourteen years ago: the Year of the Water Dragon plus artist Rashad Alakbarov

fifteen years ago: a visit to a local Wasserschlöss 

seventeen years ago: cognitive dissonance plus a nuclear reactor outside the window

7x7 (13. 105)

helix nebula: JWST captures amazing images of the planetary incubator 

academy cinema two: the linocut posters for movie classics from Peter Strausfeld  

degrassi high: an appeal for Canada television to bring back its weirdness—via MetaFilter  

deus ex machina: a survey of the long history of technology assisted writing  

the attention economy: cybernetic interface and the tolerance of distraction as told through “pursuit tests” on the last century  

public domain revue: an call for submissions to remix properties like Betty Boop, Nancy Drew, Flip the Frog and more—see previously, see also  

galileo let me go: the most challenging mission in the history of NASA

112 ocean avenue (13. 086)

Having moved in less than a month earlier, on this day in 1976, newly-weds with three children from a previous marriage, George and Kathy Lutz, claiming to have been terrorised by paranormal phenomena fled their home in the Amityville neighbourhood on the south shore of Long Island New York. The the five-bedroom Dutch Colonial property on a canal was vacant for a little over a year after a brutal mass-homicide of the former residents, the DeFeo family killed by their second-eldest son, and the realtor whom sold the house disclosed this gruesome murder to the couple before closing the deal—with the discount asking price too good to pass up. The place came fully furnished with much of the DeFeo family possessions included, and an acquaintance of Lutz’, having learned of the notorious history, convinced them (Kathy was a lapsed Catholic and George a non-practising Methodist) to have the home blessed by a priest as they were moving in. Father Pecoraro, a psychotherapist and lawyer for the ecclesiastic court residing in the local rectory, giving the benediction in a room on the first storey heard a gruff, disembodied masculine voice demanding he get out but refrained from letting the couple know until a week later on Christmas Eve to avoid that space, which was planned to be a sewing room after developing a sort of stigmata on his hands and wrists. Nothing unusual was experienced by the family at first but by mid-January the horrors became intolerable, declining to relate all the details so as not to relive the fright and left, abandoning all their possessions, once a brackish slime began covering the staircase. An editor of publishing house, Prentice Hall, a year afterwards introduced the Lutz family to writer Jay Anson, whom acquired the rights to the story, novelising the account, which was turned into a cinematic franchise in 1979 with several sequels and reboots. Subsequent owners of the property when it returned to the market reported no usual occurrences, other than the nuisance caused by the book and movies. The Shinnecock Nation, a tribe of the Algonquian Native Americans and indigenous residents of area, further objected to the suggestion that the address (now slightly altered to 108 to discourage visitors) was the site of what has since become a trope in the genre being an ancient Indian burial ground. An open-house was held after its most recent sale in 2010 but no one was allowed upstairs or in the basement.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronopticæ), earthstreak plus an auroral almanac

twelve years ago: a professional footballer comes out 

fourteen years ago: sovereign debt crises plus US forces in Germany 

fifteen years ago: realigning the zodiac 

7x7 (13. 080)

good vs ice: Jesse Welles’ (previously) ballad for the woman murdered by an immigration agent in Minneapolis  

what fresh hell is this: an appreciation of Dorothy Parker  

specimen: over the decades, forty thousand individuals have claimed 078-05-1120 as their US social security number 

things to come: a look at Taliban censorship after a new law comes into effect banning images of people and animals  

spicy mode: Elon Musk won’t shut down his non-consensual deepfake generator until faced with legislation  

whodunit: a rare interview with Dame Agatha Christine revisited on fifty years since her demise  

fed chair: Jerome Powell responds to the Trump administration’s threats of indictment—see previously

synchronoptica

one year ago: Trump indicted for misuse of campaign funds for hush money (with synchronopticæ), the prescience of George Orwell, the Great Game, MAGA infighting plus US neighbours snap back

twelve years ago: a pedestrian bridge for the Thames plus monograms and ciphers

thirteen years ago: lost infrastructure plus hen parties 

fourteen years ago: GMOs and food safety 

fifteen years ago: The Blow Monkeys 

sixteen years ago: saunas for a frigid day 

cordiform (13. 079)

Via {feuilleton} we are directed to an analysis of the origin of the inverted pear-shaped symbol representing the heart (see previously) ahead of Valentine’s Day through a catalogue of heart-shaped books from the fifteenth century, like the small bound volume held by St Catherine of Alexandria seating with St Jerome (replete with their respective visual attributes) in this anonymous painting from Bruges or Brussels. Such an elaborate manuscript was probably a secular songbook featuring verses on courtly love, the now familiar iconography and association of the organ as the seat of romance cemented in popular culture by the early Renaissance in part by its appearance on playing cards. Though there’s no definitive answer for the origin of ❤️—some speculate it may be inspired by other anatomical features, like breasts or the buttocks that have more to do with carnal thoughts whilst others suppose it might drawn from the shape of ivy leaves long associated with fidelity or to the seeds of silphium—the now extinct herb being both an aphrodisiac and a form of contraception—with others arguing that the iconic heart is not that far-removed from the beating organ with the fovea, the dip at the top between the auricles being the chief feature transmitted through the circles of early medicine, regarding as the most vital because of its pulsating.

pale ale (13. 050)

As our faithful chronicler informs, on this day in 1876, the red triangle logo of the Bass & Co became the first colophon to be logged under the 1875 Act to establish a Register of Trade Marks when it came into force on New Year’s Day—which according to company lore, had employees queuing outside bureau offices on New Year’s Eve to be the first—strange for a bank holiday and Public Domain Day, as a demonstration of the brewery’s pioneering prowess in international branding and marketing. The iconic logo, simple yet pervasive, has been featured in over forty works by Pablo Picasso from his Cubist period as well as more contemporarily in James Joyce’s Ulysses, Leopold Bloom noting the triangle in the “Oxen of the Sun” (The Cattle of Helios in the Odyssey) episode and in Édouard Manet’s final painting (see also) Un bar aux Folies Bergère with the beer bottles depicted instantly recognisable and their conspicuous presence interpreted as an allegorical expression of anti-German sentiment following the Franco-Prussian war. Further achievements accomplished under the logo include being among the first corporate sponsors, licensing for production by foreign distributors and the earliest export entrant into the Japanese beer market.

pepperidge farm remembers (13. 049)

With acknowledgment to Tom Whitwell and other franchises that have gotten into the tradition, Nancy Friedman presents fifty two more things she gleaned week by week in 2025. Trivia facts and lessons, among our favourites meriting further investigation were the etymology of plonk—cheap, disappointing wine—coming from British soldiers stationed in France during WWI mispronouncing vin blanc, the Old English term for affable is wordwynsum, the industry awards for excellence in podcasting are called the Ambies—from “ambient sound,” Samuel Clements considered other pseudonyms before settling on Mark Twain, including Rambler and W Epaminondas Adrastus Blab, Elon Musk is named for a character in a novel by Wernher von Braun called Marsprojekt, an orphan-crushing machine is a shorthand term for human interest stories that praise resilience and charity (like retirees working at fast food restaurants or successful funding campaigns to pay for vital medical procedures) that fail to question the underlying societal conditions that make such heroism needed to begin with, the Kellogg’s brand has a rooster for its mascot—connoting a hale and hearty early riser—but also suggested by touring Welsh harpist as ceilog is a homophone for the breakfast cereal magnate and that Goldfish crackers were inspired by zodiacal sign the original Swiss creator’s wife, a Pisces.

9x9 (13. 043)

the unforgivable sin of ms rachel: Tedium’s Online Video Awards and the problems with platforms 

grunt work: AI has the potential to destroy career ladders—via Damn Interesting  

grove press: the Mid-Century Modern covers and jackets of Roy Kuhlman  

turbo moka: a thermodynamic redesign of the classic Italian coffee pot—see previously  

gânditorul de la hamangia: reflections on a palaeolithic pair of artefacts  

ieee spectrum: top climate tech stories of 2025—including atmospheric ammonia harvesting 

i dislike dune with some intensity: JRR Tolkien was not a fan of Frank Herbert’s work  

the imperfect homework machine: students’ experience with AI mirrors a Shel Silverstein poem 

 the year in search: more of Miss Cellania’s annual superlatives