11x11 (12. 263)

broadband equity, access and deployment: Trump administration thinks the BEAD programme of the Infrastructures Investment and Jobs Act is too woke   

fermata: a thousand artists release a ‘silent’ album to protest changes to UK intellectual property rights to attract AI companies interesting in training their models on copyrighted material—via the New Shelton wet/dry—also more music without sounds 

late stage capitalism: Washington Post owner Bezos will only allow editorials that defend “free markets” and “personal liberties”—see also   

annual reformulation: important meeting of the US Centres for Disease Control to discuss strains for next season’s influenza vaccine cancelled, confirming fears that the new health secretary will pivot away from proven preventative medicine 

rif me daddy: what Trump’s AI enhanced shitpostings reveal about the administration and plans for the future of Palestine 

absalom, absalom: William Faulkner’s record-setting run-on sentence 

torus and tokamak: a German fusion startup is lauded for its plans, peer-reviewed, to launch a functioning power plant   

only the markets can save us: America’s total economic boycott planned for the last day in February 

touch grass: an app that blocks screentime and doomscrolling until one has proven one’s gone outside—via Waxy  

snoopers’ charter: Apple’s capitulation to the UK’s Investigative Powers Act is Chekov’s Gun for privacy worldwide   

by the people and for the people: dossiers of the people working for the Department of Government Efficiency

synchronoptica

one year ago: ceramicist Yoonmi Nam (with synchronoptica) plus the age of ludicrous inventions 

seven years ago: A Million Random Digits plus assorted links to revisit

eight years ago: more misattributed quotes 

nine years ago: Sàmi tone poems

ten years ago: theodicy, get anything delivered, more links to enjoy plus RIP Leonard Nimoy

endless feed (12. 216)

Having pinned the obsession with our devices and the dopamine hits that they provide to the allegory of Narcissus—and by extension a Sisyphean task—and thinking it went no further, we appreciated being able to expand the metaphor and look at the insatiable compulsion another way with what the Greeks proverbially describe as the “Tantalean punishment” ( Ταντάλειοι τιμωρίαι)—the mythological figure’s eponym synonymous not only with what’s tantalising, eternally tormented by the sight of something desirable but just out of reach but also for those who have good things but cannot enjoy them and teased with aroused expectations that fail to satisfy. Consigned to the lowest level of the Underworld, Tartarus, Tantalus is made to stand in a pool of inviting water with fruit-laden boughs just above his head, the refreshment sought to slake his thirst and quell his hunger receding from his grasp, as divine retribution for having abused the hospitality of the gods and stealing ambrosia and nectar from the table of the Olympians and bringing it back to his people—also for trying to test the gods’ omniscience by butchering his son and serving him to them, whom was later mostly reconstituted. The torture maps quite aptly with the addictive saturation of social media with unending scrolling and no clear exit point by design for finishing a conversation or the consumption of a piece of culture, with tributes, remixes and tangents. Fittingly, our tragic figure is also the namesake of the rare earth element tantalum, an essential component of smart phones and other electronics with some forty milligrams of the substance in the palm of one’s hand right now.

13x13 (12. 185)

embossed: turn of the century tactile teaching aids for the visually impaired for lessons on nature and geography  

lab-leak theory: US Central Intelligence Agency embraces controversial vector for COVID-19 pandemic, discounting zoonosis factors 

ghostwatch: the supernatural horror BBC mockumentary broadcast on Halloween (see also) 1992 and never shown again due to the panic it elicited  

sb593: Oklahoma legislature introduces bill to “restore moral sanity” and criminalise production, distribution and possession of adult material—see previously 

minimoog: a fully-functional analogue synthesiser in LEGO  

haptics and macros: an idea to add gait gestures to one’s smart phone—we can hardly do the right kind of fake kick to open the rear hatch on our car 

mox nix: language borrowings from German propagated by US and UK soldiers stationed there post WWII  

electric garden: a run-down lodge transformed into a living museum mapchat: interact with AI shopkeepers for local businesses—results may vary 

wassergöttin: prehistoric figurine from the Hallstadt culture found in 2022 in Lower Franconia goes on display at the Bavarian State Archaeological Museum in München  

walk without rhythm and you won’t attract the worm: graboids—see also—the other in-jokes that Tremors leans into  

underrepresentation: as part of order to eliminate DEI programmes, US Food and Drug Administration curbs clinical trials aimed at diverse populations for cancer research 

 switchmen: the sign language of railroad workers

12x12 (12. 191)

dyson trees: lesser known than his eponymous sphere, a hypothetical genetically engineered plant could be grown inside a comet and provide a self-sustaining habitat for space-faring 

cold case: US retailer regrets installing advertising screens in its frozen food section and is struggling to get out of the contract—see also 

fourth-wall: a filmmakers’ dilemma about the unseen camera’s point-of-view  

decipherment: a solicitation for cursive users to transcribe and classify two centuries of undigitised documents—check the comments section—see previously  

why this is hell, nor am i out of it: Trump, like Satan, doesn’t get away with it 

drawing board: the Nokia Design Archive of prototypes never put in production

twentytwentyfive: George Orwell is to be honoured with a commemorative ￡2 coin for the seventy-ftfth anniversary of his death

erythrosine: US federal drug administration bans Red Dye 3 as food colouring and other business news—see previously  

onite clam discrepancy: personal AI-chatbots yield more problematic advice—see previously 

a stone only rolls downhill: a new music video from OK Go shot on sixty-four phones for sixty-four one take pieces  

the toasters are flying: a history of screen-savers—see previously  

☄️: meteorite strike caught on a doorbell camera in Prince Edward Island

wireless to rule our lives, british professor predicts (12. 133)

The title headline is taken from a 1925 book review of one Archibald Montgomery Low, a scientist and pioneer of radio-controlled guidance systems and drones—accomplished enough during wartime to garner two assassination attempts by Nazi operatives—who also liked to speculate on the future, limning the state of the world a century later. Some of Low’s forecasts seem spot-on and have come to pass, like televised news replacing legacy publishing, automated alarm clocks (in an era that still employed knocker-uppers to wake people and perhaps over optimistically that the idea hour for getting up was half-past nine), streaming services and entertainment on demand (see also), electronic payments, pervasive telephonic communications, harnessing of solar and wind power, etc. Some of Low’s predictions were less visionary, like the exertion free commute to the office, which is no less of a needless chore but understandably so as we were convinced that teleworking was technologically untenable and unimaginable from a paternalistic corporate perspective and facing regression to more primitive times, and projections about gender parity. Much more from Weird Universe at the link up top.

7x7 (12. 076)

primordial soup and son of soup: Dirty Feed’s 2024 wrapped  

mobile ui: top neglected App Store add-ons of the year  

merriam-webster defines: polarisation has been selected as the Word of the Year for 2024—with runner-ups including pander, resonate, demure and allision for when that container ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March  

survive ’til 25: Mrs Claus’ strategies for making it through Christmas  

fallout: a tour of the Soviet-era nuclear shelters of the Prague subway  

the late set: a year of jazz discoveries  

starbug: a to scale model of the shuttle from Red Dwarf

synchronoptica

one year ago: The Poseidon Adventure (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: more links to enjoy, the adoration of words plus a comprehensive and inclusive eye-chart

eight years ago: the centenary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, even more links, Batman’s gadgets plus Iceland to oust the US FBI

nine years ago: delightful small towns around the world

ten years ago: Santa’s sweat shops plus hypervelocity stars

𝚒𝚖𝚐_𝟶𝟶𝟶𝟷 (12. 016)

Via Waxy, we are directed towards this fascinating clip-culling project from Riley Walz, which scoured the video-hosting service for the default naming convention that the iPhone camera app employed for their feature “Send to YouTube,” circa 2009 until 2012. The service saw a whopping seventeen hundred percent increase in uploads but Apple eventually parted ways after sharing became less technically encumbered and bandwidth was less of an issue. Randomised they make interesting for snapshot of moments from the lives of strangers, unrehearsed and unedited. There’s a lot of baby and pet antics, trips to amusement parks, concerts, talent shows and even forgotten trends, like the Ice Bucket Challenge—anonymous scrapbooks. Although there are a few actual accidents, natural disasters and surprise proposals, most of these short videos are wholesome and wholly unspectacular although one feels a bit of tension building for the unexpected that fails to materialise but are nonetheless fascinating to watch, as a time-capsule barely seen and hardly searchable—see previously.

10x10 (11. 988)

the moral arc of the universe is buffering: an update on where we stand 

intermission: Cardhouse’s 2024 mixtape  

chimera: archaeologists re-examine ancient Roman burial and realise skeleton is composed of bones from eight different individuals that died thousands of years apart from one another  

inactivity reboot: Apple quietly introduced a security patch in its latest OS update that makes it harder to police to break into confiscated iPhones—via Super Punch  

plutocracy: the Elites have finally been defeated by the Billionaires 

text-to-brainrot: convert any PDF into an engaging TikTok-style audio summarisation overlaid with video-game footage—see previously—via Web Curios  

ye olde cheshire cheese: a gallery of the pubs of Old London  

changing narratives: new genetic evidence of Pompeii victims suggest that they were strangers comforting each other during the world-ending calamity   

the sounds of ramallah: techno Insomnia Fest in Tromsø rallies for Palestine and Lebanon  

venture alchemists: Wall Street and the broader economy brace for Trump tax-cuts, tariffs and retribution

 synchronoptica

one year ago: paper lanterns for St Martin’s Day (with synchronoptica), Republican primary debates, a banger from Frankie Goes to Hollywood plus assorted links to enjoy

seven years ago: illusion of confidence

eight years ago: snail matchmaking, a national nightmare plus Europe’s Alt-Right

nine years ago: carbon foil that mimics muscles

ten years ago: an art exhibition for octopi plus an abandoned nuclear test site just outside of Paris

welcome to the future (11. 917)

The Verge presents a series of interesting articles about the pivotal tech year two decades ago that informs our present with a thoroughgoing survey of Napster and KaaZa and successor music sharing sites and the question of copyright and ownership of one’s media, the launch of the social web, Gmail and one’s permanent digital demesne, podcasts, migration to the cloud and more. The piece on the gap in photos from circa those years was particular resonant and relatable, like this grainy snapshot of the one time I visited Schloß Neuschwanstein in 2004 from among about forty or so bad pictures I could scrounge up.  Whilst there have been innovations and choices in the interim, a lot of this architecture and underpinning infrastructure is locked in and legacy that we are living with today.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Big Foot on film (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: tonal passkeys, the dangers of know thyself, French naming trends, a utopian city plus GIF mashups

eight years ago: the immunology of Tasmania Devils

nine years ago: story-telling and maths serving the same human need 

thirteen years ago: coin collecting plus the occupy-movement

bop spotter (11. 887)

Via JWZ, we learn of Riley Walz’ project that coopts the rather depressingly insidious programme called Shotspotter (™️ presumably and run by subcontractor touting benefits for public safety and security but failing to deliver) that detects and ranges gunfire by arrays of microphones installed in cities across America—though some police forces have cancelled their subscriptions due to cost and the diminishing returns on investment of random bullets—with a hidden phone attuned to picking up songs from street level perched somewhere high above San Francisco’s Mission District. Shazam is an application that can identify music from a short clip and adds the song to the playlist. When first launched in 2002 in the UK, people would text “2580” on their mobile phones and hold it up to the radio or television to get a piece recognised, getting a text back with the title and artist.

6x6 (11. 858)

second-hand baloney boys: director Bong-Joon-ho’s Mickey17 explores indentured immortality with his expendable space colonists—like the duplicates paradox of teleportation 

r/no burp: a Redditor community brings recognition to an undiagnosed but pervasive syndrome 

ultimate world cruise: the social media coverage of a trip to seven continents plays out like reality television  

the ladies annual journal; or, complete pocket book for the year: the 1776 diary of Susannah Dalbiac kept in the back of an almanac 

twenty-eight years later: latest instalment of Danny Boyle’s zombie franchise was filmed entirely on iPhones 

sanewashing: how journalists can resist normalising outrageous and radical ideas—via the New Shelton wet/dry

not ready for this (11. 793)

Though since the advent of photography, there has always been doctoring and outright fakes to promote one agenda or another from the paranormal to propaganda, the media was always accorded the social consensus of a level of proof beyond a reasonable doubt be it evidentiary and exculpatory to illustrative, inspirational, aspirational, enlightening to transporting. Now, however, we have all been forcibly aged out of that universal cohort with the default setting on our gadgets—beginning with one particular model—switched to AI enhancement and open manipulation, seamless and with few effective safety controls in place. A dose of skepticism is healthy, especially in an environment that’s actively trying to pass off fake news and keep journalism and other institutions under siege but seeding doubt strips photography of its objective permanence and with this kind of saturation and ease of use—a feature like the automatic focus and flash we take for granted—it is difficult to forecast our collective credence going forward.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: an independent press for the stateless (with synchronoptica) plus the architecture of diplomacy 

seven years ago: a podcast mini-series on witchcraft plus Babylonia trigonometry

eight years ago: 1980s animated production logos, super-recognisers plus assorted links worth revisiting

nine years ago: conscription, impressment and universal taxation

ten years ago: repentful paintings

odometer (11. 784)

Occurring every one thousand twenty-four weeks—a nineteen and a half year’s cycle—the Global Position System broadcast date, which includes a week number, counted in ten binary digits reaches an integer overflow causing the values to rollover. Whilst not on the level of a y2k or related events because systems reliant on GPS and synchronisation of payments and broadcasting are coded to anticipate this limitation of the satellite network due the relatively short time-horizon. The first occurrence took place at midnight on this day in 1999, and due to its limited use, disruptions were minor. For the second rollover, early April 2019, proactive programming contained problems in the travel industry and most setbacks happened in consumer devices that had not been updated. Unrelated to the ominously sounding Year 2038 Epochalyse for Unix time (y2k38, see above), the next rollover will happen in late November of that year.

 synchronoptica

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

seven years ago: US roadside attractions plus purpose-built advertising columns

eight years ago: emergency preparedness plus more links to enjoy

ten years ago: sponsored links plus encyclopedic errata

twelve years ago: predacious snails plus Norse cosmology

eyechat (11. 739)

Via the always marvellous Nag on the Lake, we are directed to the latest project from Neal Agarwal (see previously) that pairs random strangers’ eyes in a video call, with no audio and no chatter, just focused on the narrow slit of one’s face, in order to appreciate the quiet and how much expression, connection happens within this band. I am no sure how matches are made—whether pre-recorded or two people live checking in at the same time but feel confident it’s above-board.

synchronoptica

one year ago: American Graffiti (with synchronoptica) plus backlinks and hat-tips

seven years ago: generative inspirational quotations, mapping the globe’s most spoken languages post a possessed podcast

eight years ago: assorted links to revisit plus a vertical forest in Milan

ten years ago: a deck of cards, Taishō Era art, disobedient objects plus wine maps

fourteen years ago: filming locations in Germany

we shape our tools and then the tools shape us (11. 708)

Subtitled An Inventory of Effects and co-created by media analyst who coined the phrase referenced Marshall McLuhan in 1967, the collaborative best-seller experimentally formatted had the imprimatur of McLuhan himself to call out how various outlets massaged our senses in order to maintain currency and hold interest—with some anecdotes that it was a typo that stuck—arguing that technologies, from the wheel, to the loom, to the printing press and beyond rather than their content as an extension (and increasingly necessary aid thereto in order to function therein) of our perceptions of the world, informed by the same progress. The recording is not exactly an audio book but rather a montage of main statements punctuated by dissonant sound-effects meant to suggest the fragmentation of the listening experience.

amusing ourselves to death (11. 699)

Using the 1985 bestseller by educator Neil Postman, which draws on the dichotomy of the dystopian futures envisioned by George Orwell in 1984 and Aldous Huxley in Brave New World with the public stripped of rights by totalitarian governments in the narrative of the former and people voluntarily self-medicating and foregoing their liberties in an induced and voluntary state of blissful ignorance in the

latter, Boing Boing contributor Mark Frauenfelder presents an analysis of this dilution, delusion of news, culture and politics repackaged as commodities in our present forms of media, our soma. Presentation and format—“the medium is the metaphor,” see also—makes everything entertainment and a passive and non-critical one at that, written at a time when another celebrity held the office of US president, impressed on the general psyche not in words but in glancing television images and photo opportunities and carefully staged soundbites. Frauenfelder’s excerpts, like the below citation are addressing the fragmentation-effect of network news but accord perfectly with social media as well, TikTok substituted here:

“Now … this” is commonly used on radio and television newscasts to indicate that what one has just heard or seen has no relevance to what one is about to hear or see, or possibly to anything one is ever likely to hear or see. The phrase is a means of acknowledging the fact that the world as mapped by the speeded-up electronic media has no order or meaning and is not to be taken seriously. There is no murder so brutal, no earthquake so devastating, no political blunder so costly—for that matter, no ball score so tantalising or weather report so threatening—that it cannot be erased from our minds by a newscaster saying, “Now … this.” The newscaster means that you have thought long enough on the previous matter (approximately forty-five seconds), that you must not be morbidly preoccupied with it (let us say, for ninety seconds), and that you must now give your attention to another fragment of news or a commercial.

Much more at the links above.

gallery of the louvre (11. 678)

On the occasion of the record-setting auction in which the pictured painting fetched an incredible three-and-a-quarter million dollars on this day back in 1982 (going to a private collector but on public display), we take a look at the artist, better remembered for his contributions to telecommunications, Samuel Finley Breese Morse. 

First establishing his credentials at a portrait artist and having a success career, several US presidents sat for him, Morse turned to invention in his late forties after encountering a fellow-passenger on a steam ship back from Europe who taught him about electromagnetism and demonstrated some experiments for him. Setting aside the subject painting in 1832 (finished the following year and contains thirty-eight miniature versions of the museum’s treasures—see also), Morse developed a single-wire telegraph, improving on European systems, and overcame the problem of signal-strength and range, a limiting factor, by the addition of relays to boost the distance transmissions could be carried from a few yards to dozens of miles. Patents were awarded but Morse’s invention was not unique or as foundational (see previously here and here) as he liked to present it. Adopted as the international standard for telegraphy, Morse would go on to contribute to his eponymous Code a few years later.  The first public demonstration was held at a steelworks in Morristown, New Jersey with an electronic missive—rather cryptically the message was “A patient waiter is no loser,” sent to a factory two miles away. 

v 16.0β (11. 572)

The Unicode Consortium is proposing the inclusion of seven emoji for the standardised catalogues referenced by operating systems and will be under review through the beginning of July, when expected to be officially adopted. Though uniform and universal (with some exceptions), it will be some time before we can use a leafless tree to convey climate change and drought or the exhausted eyebag expression in general as platforms add their own vernacular in a process that can lag for several months. In addition to these pictograms, scripts from west Africa, India and Nepal are being added as well as new Japanese ideographs plus some four thousand Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and a historic Albanian set of characters and symbols from legacy computing.

9x9 (11. 464)

avis de réception: Gertrude Stein first draft of her manuscript for The Making of Americans returned by a publisher  

greener pastures: ranchers embrace the benefits of virtual fencing  

ἀκρασία: philosophers weigh in on why we do things against our better judgment—via Kottke  

classroom setting: The Function of Colour in Schools and Hospitals (1930)  

haute couture: McDonald’s fashion in France  

heliopause: a NASA-endorsed app designed to photograph the North American total eclipse 

rhapsody in green: warm earth music for plants… and the people who love them 

could’ve been a contender: for what would be his hundredth birthday, some screen highlights of Marlon Brando

peer review: the Journal of Universal Rejection

 synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit

two years ago: Planet of the Apes (1968)

three years ago: musical hypercards, more links to enjoy, missionary cats plus Blue Moon (1961)

four years ago: vintage railway memorabilia plus drawing elephants sight unseen

five years ago: the Marshall Plan (1948), more links worth revisiting plus conserving Soviet Almaty

and the oscar goes to (11. 373)

Ahead of the Academy Awards to be held on 11 March, the always excellent Kottke, who just turned nineteen, directs our attention to film critic Wesley Morris’ appreciation of outstanding performances in categories that don’t exist but should. We especially appreciated ‘Best Acting in a Mirror’ and ‘Best Acting over a Landline,’ which both seem like an especially displaced skill by the same technology, like period suspension belief over mysteries that would be easily dispatched with and resolved by modern standards though some of the scenes are transcendent of place and time. And yes, the ceremonies are worth it for the GIFs, example not pictured, alone.