engine, engine forty-nine (13. 014)

Finding some needed solace in the writings of Thomas Pynchon during the rise of MAGAists’ conspiracy theories in the figure of Oepida Maas, a sort of anti-John Galt, Better Living through Beowulf, now has to question like the protagonist of their own sanity whilst weaving together a plot that beggars belief, which seems a bit rudimentary in comparison to Trump’s own arc of narrative. The paranoia of The Crying of Lot 49 has a veneer of truth (see above) and so does the career-trajectory of Trump, framed as agent Krasnov, promulgated as a successful businessman now beholden to organised crime with a litany of knock-on events that lead to our present conundrum, whose nomenclature matches with Genghis Coen, Mike Falloopian, Mucho Maas (the heroine’s DJ husband) and Dr Hilarius with corresponding real-life characters unmatched nearly six decades on with corresponding Dickensian-named figures like heroes Reality Winner and villains Laura Loomer, Elon Musk or Reince Priebus and the White House lawn used as a venue for a wrestling match plus a list of dozens of other things not on ones bingo card for 2025.

7x7 (13. 003)

it cuts up a man’s youth and vigour most horribly: Jane Austen invented the wellness guy  

maplewashing: the deceptive practise of making things seem more Canadian than they actually are narrowly beat out “elbows up” for Canadian English Dictionary’s inaugural Word of the Year  

antipodes: Rothera Antarctic research station gets a new Royal Mail postbox 

genai.mil: Pentagon installs a chatbot on all DOD computers—immediately concludes that Hegseth is a war-criminal—via Super Punch  

dayton accords: a look back at the peace negotiations to end the war in after the collapse of Yugoslavia three decades on  

cut spelng: English orthographer Christopher Upward’s failed proposal for language reform through elimination of redundant letters—see previously, see also 

little wars: HG Wells’ contribution to table top role play games

synchronoptica

one year ago: Vince Collins celebrates the US bicentennial (with synchronopticæ), Intershop (1962) plus assorted links worth revisiting

thirteen years ago: IKEA instructions for that dapper monkey 

sixteen years ago: drug money helped banks weather the Great Recession 

8x8 (12. 990)

boîte aux lettres: a gallery of modernist mailboxes found around France—via Messy Nessy Chic  

áramótaskaupið: two decades of explaining the smells and bells of the holiday season in Iceland  

semiquaver: “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” is a fine carol but lacks punctuation—via Miss Cellania 

k-id: Australia begins to enforce the world’s first social media ban for under sixteen-year-olds  

there is consensus to merge republican makeup into this article: Mar-a-Lago face, a plastic surgery trend among American conservatives has its own Wikipedia entry—via Nag on the Lake 

zipf’s law: a collection of nearly universal facets of human language  

linus and lucy: A Charlie Brown Christmas premiered on this day in 1965—see previously here and here  

intermodal container: the history of compartmentalised freight and how one innovation in transportation can influence another

for full measure, agitate lever (12. 959)

The always interesting Present /&/ Correct (do check out their sundries), directs our an auction catalogue of antique vending and gum-ball machines (see also). Though such coin-op delivery systems, and the logistical network to keep them stocked has been supplanted to some extent in many markets, there still are notable hold-outs and arguably a renaissance of such retail modes in delivery robots and roving cornershops. The modern introduction of automats for bottled beverages, newspapers and convenient snacks that began in the 1880s, proliferating into all sectors, is a revival itself that is rooted in some very ancient engineering with Hero of Alexandria credited with inventing the first vending machine in the second century A.D. with a contraption of weighs and counter-balances that dispensed a measure of wine—or perhaps holy water—in exchange for a coin. The second-wave rediscovery saw its earliest prototypes in selling tobacco and stamps with first recognisable machines for envelopes, postcards and other stationary items.

synchronoptica

one year ago: 1924’s first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade (with synchronopticæ), assorted links to revisit, the fabulous Miss Raquel Welch plus impoundment of appropriated funds

thirteen years ago: Spectropia 

fourteen years ago: Black Friday goes international 

9x9 (12. 669)

de minimis: new US tariff confusion has many European shipping companies suspending deliveries to the United States—see previously  

o tu illustrata: the 1988 David Lynch produced album of Jocelyn Montgomery performing Hildegard von Bingen compositions—see previously here and here  

thank you for your attention to this matter: Gavin Newson can perhaps ape despots so well because they’re not all that different 

optical illusion: if you stare at this circle for long enough, it becomes a red dot 

sometimes easy, sometimes hard: reflecting on the legacy of post-punk hit Deluxe by Harmonia half-a-century on—via Feuilleton  

labirinti di immagini: fifteenth century Italian architect Francesco Segala pioneered the picture maze  

entartete kunst: Trump orders a purge of diversity narratives at the Smithsonian 

uptown top ranking: a reggae one-hit wonder from duo Althea and Donna  

never let a crisis go unexploited: like the Dole fruit company in Hawaii or the supposed car-jacking in DC that led to its takeover, the US will capitalise on the protest of a newborn being removed from her Greenlandic mother for welfare reasons as the excuse to annex it 

synchronoptica

one year ago: a quick weekend get-away (with synchronopticæ) plus the Formosa Straits crisis of 1958

thirteen years ago: travel bumper stickers

seventeen years ago: designed obsolescence  

… (12. 446)

At the end of last month, one of the few remaining telegraph stations in China prepared to shut down, thousands traveled to Hangzhou in far eastern Zhejiang province to pay their respects and dispatch last missives (see previously). We enjoyed the shared memories of workers and patrons as told through the story of one individual who undertook a rather epic journey on a slow train east to send his first and last messages. Writing out their notes by hand, character by character, people sent telegrams to themselves, friends and relatives both yet to be born and departed and operators recalled the echoing cadence of the office and specific numerical sequences used to encode words and phrases. The once vital communications network has all but disappeared, although during the last day of operation, the station, which had in recent years only been sending an average of twenty-five a year, processed nearly six-thousand telegrams. Memories are not so far removed as China has had telegraphy technology since the nineteenth century, it remained popular and the only guaranteed method of reaching someone urgently until peaking in the late 1980s when more than forty million messages were sent annually, individual stations handling on average a hundred thousand each.

desiccant (12. 369)

Via Web Curios, we appreciated learning about the pervasive packets of silica gel we’ve mostly encountered inside bags of doggy treats (not a prize per se and while not necessarily harmful to handle made of the same silicon dioxide that makes up glass for drinkware, wind shields and screens for electronic devices, a less device and porous form of glass but definitely not to be eaten) and sometimes lining the pockets of new clothes and soles of shoes—which although we’ve been rather compliantly socking in linen drawers for sometime now (the pictured sachet of an oxygen scavenger is materially something totally different but also extends the sell-by-date and keeps content fresh) based on something once read about how they can combat dampness and mildew, we realised we knew nothing about the history and growth of the industry that mirrors global trade and just-in-time delivery. The process for the manufacture of the nodules was mature by the 1930s, the beads exhibiting the rather remarkable property of absorbing forty percent of its weight in water vapour but there was not really a market for the pouches of wicking agent until the age of globalisation when everything from garments to crisps to gadgets where subject to a range of environmental factors air and sea and overland before getting to retailers and consumers. Rather than making packaging or shipping containers more robust to withstand these changing conditions, silica gel distributors began offering a less expensive alternative—complete with a protocol of how many packets might be needed depending on a product’s composition and journey—to stave off despoiling moisture. While the material can be recharged, regenerated (see also), stuck in a drawer, they have limited effect. More from Scope of Work at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: 1974’s Eurovision finale (with synchronoptica) plus Annie Lennox’ debut solo album

seven years ago:  assorted links to revisit, a coup in South Korea, the rediscovery of Pompeii plus Florida restricts public beach access

eight years ago: textile artist Dorothy Grebenak, protesting Putin, Sweden’s failure museum, designing Trump’s border wall, animated antiques plus the MAR-A-LAGO act

nine years ago: mapping Mt Fuji plus an exercise in character building

ten years ago: Motor City Mannheim

10x10 (12. 283)

subwoof: opening of Star Trek: The Next Generation but with the theme coming from the ship  

sudoku: unsolvable sliding fourteen-fifteen wooden puzzles 

frame-by-frame: experimenting with 3D printing to achieve a stop-motion animation effect  

anglish: English without the influence of Romance languages  

dead letter office: Denmark’s postal service to end delivery of letters, citing a ninety percent decline in volume  

oddly compelling: underground comics and Kitchen Sink Press 

rebel with a clause: the self-styled den mother of grammarians sets up a table for language advice  

edelweißpiraten: a look at the loosely organised youth group that opposed Nazi Germany—via Strange Company 

🏃‍➡️: revisiting an appreciation of how Flash influenced gaming history—via Boing Boing  

cue ro laren drop: a library of audio sweeps, intros, outros and transitions for podcasters—via Web Curios

de minimis exemption (12. 206)

Amid the US announcing an additional ten percent tariff on all Chinese imports—to which China has responded in kind—the American postal service (see previously) will no longer accept parcels and packages from the mainland or Hong Kong. Whilst no official reason was given for the suspension—confoundingly reversed hours later causing turmoil for freight companies, it is presumably to seal a legal loophole that permitted small shipments to be shipped without being subject to duties and customs fees. Retailers, particularly in the fast-fashion industry, have exploited this exemption to—according to certain viewpoints—flood the market with cheap goods. The EU, which has a lower threshold, is planning similar legislation in order to foster a more competitive e-commerce sector.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: Assyrian canine figurines (with synchronoptica), a short-lived tv show plus airspace maps

seven years ago: music for felines, the roots of February plus Germany united longer than it was divided

eight years ago: more Trump Dumps, archiving US government websites plus faux four-leafed clover

nine years ago: assorted links worth revisiting, micro-aggressions, a boutique bookshop plus ergonomic exoskeletons

ten years ago: new world order, solutions for the German housing shortage, the Mandela Effect, Kulturkampf plus the lithium-ion battery

sears, roebuck & co (12. 201)

On this day in 1925, the retailer which had previously focused exclusively on mail-order sales, opened its first brick-and-mortar department store on the massive campus it had acquired and maintained as a city-within-a-city on the westside of Chicago—the complex hosting the company’s warehouses, catalogue printing, prototyping and product-testing laboratories, fashion studios and employee amenities—with its own fire and police departments and on-site private bank.

Despite its remote location on the outskirts of the city, it proved popular with customers, owing the increased car-use and leading to the development of shopping malls and its later reputation as an anchor store—pivoting from traditional urban flagship stores (see previously) and catering to motorists. During the height of its success in the 1960s and 1970, Sears was the largest retailer in the world and moved its headquarters to the Sears Tower in 1973, the world’s tallest building briefly, surpassing New York’s World Trade Centre. Over the next decade, the company began its slow-decline, diversifying its portfolio away from retail into brokerage and real estate, a credit card—Discover—and an online subscription venture with IBM called Prodigy. Divesting itself from ancillary operations and eventually declaring bankruptcy in October of 2018, it was acquired by a private equity firm called Transform Holdco, with the remaining stores leveraged for their property value before being shuttered in 2022.

synchronoptica

one year ago: top-charting seventeenth century ballads (with synchronoptica), The Point (1971) plus a craving for compass liquor

seven years ago: French brutalist apartment blocs, postcards from Mars plus attacking the Deep State

eight years ago: a documentary on the making of Psycho

nine years ago: CS Lewis’ The Abolition of Man, assorted links worth revisiting plus US presidential candidate Ted Cruz

ten years ago: the Lost Generation plus eight or nine wise words about letter-writing

open letter (12. 117)

Though sad to learn of the artist’s passing earlier this month, we very much appreciated learning of the extensive repertoire of Anna Banana (see also) and the movement that the helped pioneer and propel referred to postal or correspondence art focused sending and receiving smaller scale works via post. A spin-off of Fluxus in response to invitations to draw Tommy the Turtle and Petey the Pirate and antecedents that generally commercialised creativity, mail artists eschewed traditional markets and display spaces with their exchange that didn’t necessitate though often elicited reciprocation and expansion on a theme. As with the proliferation of zines, the genre and medium anticipated the loose collective of web communities that riff and remix the creation of others with established norms of attribution and curation. Much more from Hyperallergic at the link above.

mss (11. 824)

Having a bit of a preoccupation with the discipline of diplomatics, we enjoyed going through this collection of missives from Letters of Note when correspondence becomes self-aware and ashamed, feeling the need to excuse itself for bad penmanship—the motor control and coordination to commit words to a page (undiminished we agree by their appearance however verging on the illegible) an important feedback loop in the exercise that’s not much practised lately, and lamented in this vintage selection. Particularly telling is this letter (not pictured—that’s Franz Kafka) from American poet laureate Louise Bogan addressed to essayist and New Yorker magazine editor William Keepers Maxwell with the post script, “Isn’t my handwriting queer? I lost my old one, typing for years; and this one showed up last winter. Odd!” Much more from Sean Usher at the link above.

dear mister ward (11. 800)

Via the excellent podcast presented by Josie Long on adventures in found sounds Short Cuts (show segment embedded with selected readings at the link), we are directed towards the title project to curate correspondence collected, answered, conserved and later transcribed by the author’s grandmother during her stint at the Complaints Department at pioneering mail-order catalogue company Montgomery Ward, whose returns-policy and philosophy that the customer was always right from 1932 to the beginning of World War II. Customers reliant on such retail services revealed a lot in these letters, which not only provided a glimpse into the lives and preoccupations of rural America during the Depression but many are also quite funny and poignant—especially the ones asking for one of the few items the company did not sell. Much more at the links above.

9x9 (11. 636)

who is this imposter: AI ruins classic, static reaction memes with animation  

🥖: the bygone baguette boxes of French Polynesia—via Messy Nessy Chic  

quantum compass: London Underground hosts trials for a subatomic sensor that could supplement satellite navigation  

crystal lake: the preponderance of 1980s horror movies set at summer camp  

ball & chain: Nag on the Lake shares a special memory from Festival Express, the touring show of Monterey Pop, when the musicians came to Toronto

message in a bottle: the dozen times humans have tried to communicate with extra-terrestrial intelligences—see previously here, here and here  

encarta: the short, happy reign of the multimedia CD-ROM as part of Fast Company’s 1994 Week—via Slashdot  

casa bonita: a 1974 amusement park restaurant reopens under new management and with a monumental wait-list 

 surgeon general’s warning: US top doctor urges health notices for social media

synchronoptica

one year ago: an AI’s take on emoji (plus synchronoptica), assorted links worth revisiting, a human computer plus Adsense (2003)

five years ago: Sweden’s alcohol monopoly, the UK Carbon Brief plus more links to enjoy

six years ago: a Banksy gallery opens, first issue magazine covers, the War of 1812, a space slingshot, more links worth the revisit plus Trump and Merkel

seven years ago: the US withdrawal from the Paris Treaty plus even more links

nine years ago: tobacco introduced to the Old World, more links, Hocus Pocus plus the nobiliary particle

7x7 (11. 603)

green mountain state: Vermont’s Climate Superfund Act, a first, makes oil companies fiscally responsible for the damage caused by emissions 

far side of the moon: Chang'e-6 lands on the lunar surface  

post-script: engineering for slow internet connection in Antarctica—see previously  

i’ve been saying yes to more things lately, just to get myself out there again—but wherever i show up, it’s always—oh sorry, we thought you were the other guy: overheards from the lesser-known dinosaurs’ support group  

may the thirty-fourth: a decade’s worth of memories from China’s early internet vanishes—via tmn  

gmail will break your heart: as the service turns twenty years old, spelunking for long, forgotten cherished missives—via Waxy  

gardi sugdub: Panama is evacuating inhabitants from densely populated islands threatened to be subsumed by rising seas

synchronoptica

one year ago: the goddess Bellona plus book bans (1923)

two years ago: Bergpark Willemshöhe, Beer-Barrel Polka plus AI reimagines corporate logos

three years ago: assorted links to revisit, more early NFTs plus more unit coins

four years ago: Zoot Suit Riots (1943), Trump disperses peaceful protesters, a dystopian television series takes a hiatus because reality plus another sleepy, dusty delta day

five years ago: the myth of ten-thousand steps, more links to enjoy plus a study of restroom graffiti

8x8 (11. 570)

nicht abgeholtes gepäck: the main station in Freiburg has a mystery vending machine where one can buy unclaimed items left in delivery lockers—see previously 

the ahramat branch: a long ago dried up arm of the Nile may explain some of the mystery behind the building of the Pyramids of Giza 

takenoko: a public service announcement for when the bamboo shoots sprout, one of Japan’s traditional seventy-two microseasons—see previously 

endless shrimp: the American seafood chain was private-equitied into bankruptcy and not by dent of its generous promotions—more here

first draft: in a since deleted post, Trump advocates for a “united Reich” in a video featuring hypothetical newspaper headlines following his reelection  

on the town: the story behind the ten-year-old who in 1947 spent a week in San Francisco with twenty dollars 

we call it maize: an interesting hypothesis that ancient Incan stonework and other architectural elements may be an homage to corn kernels  

out-of-order: broken and unused vending machines from around Japan—via Cardhouse—see also

synchronoptica

one year ago: Croatia Diplomacy Day, a classic from David Bowie, an evergreen piece on American gun-violence plus assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: Ok Computer, a rainbow fifty pence coin for Pride, more feathered friends plus Amelia Earhart crosses the Atlantic

three years ago: your daily demon: Beleth, Elton John in the Soviet Union plus trace a raindrop from river down to the sea

four years ago: vintage Las Vegas logos, an avant-garde art show (1951) plus The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

five years ago: the White Night Riots (1979), regional airline logos, OK Cola, African air-carriers, one hundred and twenty years of photography plus a camera on a sushi conveyor belt

8x8 (11. 411)

🚫: the origins of the circle-and-slash prohibition symbol, its adoption as an ISO standard coinciding with 1984’s Ghost Busters  

return to sender: as part of the Prize Papers Project, a pristine Faroese hand-knitted sweater was discovered in an impounded parcel from 1807 

electronic labyrinth: the 1967 student film from George Lucas that would be later reworked into the feature  

snowdrops: Robert Marsham’s Indications of Spring (1789)  

clairaudient: more on Rosemary Brown with other classical compositions from beyond the grave  

if it doesn’t exist on the internet, it doesn’t exist: as of the beginning of the year, the venerable repository, the Ubuweb whose founder Kenneth Goldsmith is famous for the axiom, of the avant-garde has gone into archive-mode—via Web Curios 

sella rotalis: Paul de Livron crafts beautiful wooden wheelchairs, including one for the Pope

belinda new: exploring the typography of Oscar nominated films

reply-all (11. 202)

On this day in 1989, US vice-president James Danforth Quayle dispatched some thirty-thousand auto-pen (a machines usually reserved for authorising signatures or autographs and not without controversy) Christmas missives to family, friends and backers with the word “beacon” misspelt as “beakon.” Quite notably, Quayle’s team did not apparently use this as a learning opportunity to prevent later grammatical gaffes.

9x9 (11. 052)

bennu: scientist reveal recovered sample of primordial dust from an asteroid (see previously) may help us better understand the formation of the Solar System 

mansions, pensions: revisiting the dwellings of Leonora Carrington (previously) and how they informed her art  

upscale: Adobe to introduce an AI-powered extension to improve the quality, loopiness of legacy, low-resolution GIFs 

pimeyes: the reverse image search technology that can retrace one’s digital detritus  

decide which elvis is king: the consequential public debate over a commemorative US postage stamp  

the golden horseshoe: UK’s Natural History Museum unveils the winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition—via Nag on the Lake 

beasts: Nigel Kneale’s 1976 horror anthology has a book companion to the series  

tower to cockpit: listen live to airport radio transmissions around the world—via the new shelton wet/dry  

panspermia: a thought-provoking conjecture about alien life emerging with the Big Bang

vereinte dienstleistungswerkschaft (10. 623)

Established on this day in 2001 as a merger of the congresses of five individual trade unions—with a membership of around two million workers, including postal, banking, insurance, health, education, public service, media and transportation sector employees, Verdi represents the professional interests of its members and successfully lobbies—through political clout, collective bargaining and strike actions—for better compensation and improved working conditions.