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.
Sunday 21 July 2024
we shape our tools and then the tools shape us (11. 708)
10x10 (11. 707)
the institute for controlled speleogenesis: an fictional organisation designing artificial caves
indecent proposal: the infamous 1994 advertising campaign, Love Letters from Fiat
a river runs through it: the consequences of taming—and rewilding—the Los Angeles River (see previously)—via Nag on the Lake
amazombies: online retail giant’s affiliate programme for customer returns are overtaxing for brick-and-mortar partners
one hundred days of cultural clarity: an exploration of recent memes and trends
bootstraps: JD Vance as the toxic byproduct of America’s obsession with rags-to-riches narratives
polkamania: Weird AI (see below) drops a new new medley of song parodies
posse: publish (on your) own site, syndicate elsewhere
fiddler on the forum: male exploitation on the Carol Burnett Show—see also
nietzsche and the noonday demon: the fictitious French philosopher, Jean-Baptiste Botul, whose writings are often cited
Wednesday 17 July 2024
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
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“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.
the unchained goddess (11. 698)
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synchronoptica
one year ago: photos of the Anthropocene (with synchronoptica) plus a continued blockade on Ukrainian grain shipments
seven years ago: swimsuit models, Voltaire’s science-fiction, the premiere of SpongeBob plus the Golden Submarine
nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus Merkel’s immigration policies under scrutiny
twelve years ago: climate change and too much water plus a branded look for US Commanders in Chief
fourteen years ago: a trip to the Baltic coast
Friday 12 July 2024
7x7 (11. 684)
fernwood 2 night: Martin Mull (RIP) interviews Tom Waits on first talk show satire
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alberta bound: the Great Canadian Song Map—via Web Curios
tropic of cancer: some of the US falls outside of NATO’s geographic scope—see also
moved permanently: North American telephone area codes that are also HTTP response headers—see previously—via Kottke
shelley’s heart: Charles McCarry’s eerily prescient 1995 political thriller
now benson, i’m going to have to turn you into a dog for a while: Taika Waititi is serialising Terry Gilliams’s 1981 Time Bandits for television
Tuesday 9 July 2024
your good and your evil use the same methods, achieve the same results (11. 674)
Bob Canada presents a highlight reel of some of the more bizarre images that the crew of the Enterprise saw on the ship’s viewscreen during the course of the original run of Star Trek: TOS, with their encounter with Space Lincoln in “The Savage Curtain” (S3:E22) with the super-intelligent rock-like
Exclaiban having created the presidential look-alike (along with a facsimile of the renowned Vulcan philosopher Surak) to better explore the concepts of good and evil, pitting these two upstanding figures against a cast of villains, including Genghis Khan and Klingon warlord Kahless with Kirk and Spock as seconds in the duel. Despite knowing that the great statesman is an artifice of matter-energy conversion, the Captain accords his personal hero with full honours upon boarding the ship.
synchronoptica
one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica)
seven years ago: neutral facial posture plus the fall of Constantinople
eight years ago: Stephen Hawking’s stalker plus a short hiatus
nine years ago: absquatulate, cartoon tropes plus Freedomland, USA
ten years ago: peace vigils in Germany
Saturday 6 July 2024
9x9 (11. 665)
won’t back down: Biden committed to remain his party’s candidate for the US presidential election
wall∙e: facing a labour shortage, Japan railways deploys a colossal humanoid robot to maintain train tracks
conspiracy theory rock: the 1998 Saturday Night Live TV Funhouse cartoon that may or may have not been banned by the network
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shadow secretary: the political upbringing of Sir Keir Starmer
wish you were here: beforehand postcards to prepare prior to departing for vacation—see previously
oberheim ob-1: a short documentary on the revolutionary analogue synthesiser that allowed musicians to record and save patches for playback
a face to a name: researchers create life-like robotic skin to express emotion and self-healing from harvested juvenile foreskin cells
dark brandon: Democrats backing Biden’s decision to run
synchronoptica
one year ago: advice for urban day-trippers in the countryside (with synchronoptica)
eight years ago: gameifying one’s wellbeing
nine years ago: pushing Greece out of the EU plus assorted links to revisit
ten years ago: more dragnet surveillance
eleven years ago: a history of fireworks
Friday 21 June 2024
happiness hotel (11. 645)
Founded in 1919 as Charlie Chaplin Studios (with a fitting homage to the Little Tramp of Kermit with top hat and cane), the Henson Estate is selling off the storied and iconic lot it has occupied since 2000 as part of a strategy (yet to be disclosed) to consolidate production and Creature Workshop operations. During the central Hollywood’s incarnations over the decades it was not only home to Chaplin’s classics but also the television series The Adventure of Superman and Perry Mason with the in-house recording studio used by Lady Gaga and Daft Punk following “We are the World” before its distinction as Muppet headquarters. Let’s hope the new buyer continues this chain of creativity.
Tuesday 18 June 2024
9x9 (11. 636)
who is this imposter: AI ruins classic, static reaction memes with animation
๐ฅ: the bygone baguette boxes of French Polynesia—via Messy Nessy Chic
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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
Monday 17 June 2024
r/tragedeigh (11. 635)
A conflicted, guilty pleasure has been lately scrolling through the above subreddit, thinking that oh boy—there are some doozies—and while the community is good about disabusing people of names outside of the Anglophone world, there being two sides to the discussion: traditional names with non-traditional spellings and separately trending baby names, there’s yet a sour taste in one’s mouth over the general content, leafing through elementary school students’ year books and calling out names that one disapproves of. Fresh and unranked boys’ names aside—Crockett, Rake, Wilkes, Dossett, Witten, Hallow and Bazley—these decisions, sins of the proud parents get one identified instantly and it behooves one to remember that these are children we are trolling. When I worked in healthcare I recall a particular patient named Atreu, after the alter-ego of the reader of The NeverEnding Story who was portrayed rather prosaically in the movie adaptation as Bastian, whose improving charts always made me happy and one newborn adorably named Voilร —non-conventional spelling if I remember but that’s a tough one. These tragedians should not be forced to be anonymised—nor should their names be underscored with a red squiggle as a misspelling for capitalising on the vagaries of English orthography but some of these attempts to buck convention by the parents have consequences visited on the next generation.
white ford bronco suv (11. 635)
Their murdered bodies discovered shortly after midnight on the thirteenth, OJ Simpson was identified immediately as a person of interest in the stabbings of Simpson’s girlfriend Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in the courtyards of Brown’s condominium complex in the Brentwood neighbourhood of Los Angeles, in the same community as Simpson’s mansion. Arranged through his attorneys, Simpson had agreed to turn himself into the authorities on this day in 1994 for questioning, but failing to appear as scheduled, Simpson was spotted in the passenger seat of a vehicle traveling the 405 intercity freeway, drove and belonging to a friend and former team-mate. A low-speed police chase ensued, pursuers cautious as reportedly Simpson was threatening to shoot himself, with the spectacle shown live on virtually every television station and tens of thousands of spectators gathering on the shoulders to watch the action. Simpson surrendered from his driveway.
al di meola (11. 634)
From an era when instrumental arrangements not only got music videos, but those performance pieces also received air-play, we quite enjoyed this track from jazz fusion guitarist from New Jersey with Italian root’s 1983 album Scenario, with keyboardist Jan Hammer and drummers Bill Bruford and Phil Collins, which gets exponentially weirder and better as the music progresses. The reoccurring drum sample was later incorporated into Hammer’s theme for the television series Miami Vice.
one year ago: NASCAR Pride (with synchronoptica) plus the exorcism of a werewolf demon (1983)
five years ago: the founding of independent Iceland (1944) plus proposals for a euro supplementary currency
six years ago: a day-trip to Frankfurt plus a pair of mythological prodigies
seven years ago: denizens of the deep, RIP Helmut Kohl plus Trump’s chief council
nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus social networks in China
Monday 3 June 2024
while bill clinton plays the sax (11. 604)
On this day in 1992, Arkansas governor and presidential candidate William Jefferson Clinton appeared as a guest on The Arsenio Hall Show. Clinton’s future Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown, Hilary Clinton and actor Terri Garr also guested on the programme. After a memorable rendition of Elvis Priestley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” on the saxophone, the host quipped that it was “nice to see Democrats blow something besides an election.” The appearance (more of the segment from C-SPAN) is now seen as pivotal in his campaign and curried popularity among young voters, whom prior to the airing trailed in third place behind George HW Bush and then-undeclared spoiler candidate H Ross Perot, jumping twenty-one points in the polls the next day.
Saturday 1 June 2024
he’s guilty (11. 599)
Via Miss Cellania—somehow we’ve missed this old clip too circulating perennially for about six years and surging in views following verdicts in high-profile cases—we are introduced to the number that Randy Newman composed for the pilot of Cop Rock in 1990, a musical police procedural conceived by Steven Bochco cancelled after eleven episodes were aired, and sung by Carl Anderson, Judas from Jesus Christ Superstar.
Friday 24 May 2024
i haven’t had this many people in my garage since the vice squad raided fang’s going-out-of-marriage party (11. 578)
We enjoyed this fun 1987 VHS guide from legendary comedian Phyllis Diller (see previously) on how to have a successful yard sale—we’ve been thinking of the same but one generally finds centralised Flohmรคrkte over here rather than individual sales at homes and to participate takes some planning, organisation and an entire weekend of committent—and really presents some practical advice on decluttering and culling as well as the importance of presentation and merchandising. More tips from Boing Boing at the link above.
one year ago: the Judgment of Paris (1976) plus assorted links to revisit
two years ago: Mystery Park in Interlaken plus an earlier version of “don’t say gay” legislation overturned
three years ago: St Joanna, more links to enjoy, a classic film montage plus phonetic courtesy characters
four years ago: the Kola Superdeep Bore Hole, Diamond Dogs (1974), obituaries, more links worth the revisit, a walk in the woods, city fonts plus plutodemocracy
five years ago: even more links, Queen Victoria, a Prime Minister steps down, more bad flags plus a unique house in Oklahoma
Sunday 5 May 2024
the santilli film (11. 541)
First screened to invited members of the press and UFO researchers on this day in 1995, packaged and
produced by various media outlets within months and broadcast world wide with several encores and iterations, the pseudo-documentary by British entrepreneur Ray Santilli, despite its poor quality, grainy black-and-white footage and overall incredulity, became a cultural phenomenon and garnering high-ratings, an amateur video likely subjected to as much public scrutiny and debate since the release of the Zapruder film, according to some monitoring the sensation. Purported to show the postmortem conducted on an extraterrestrial crew member found in the wreckage of the Roswell Incident, a military cameraman leaked the footage from 1947 to the producer and promoter. Ahead of a 2006 feature comedy (of the same name) lampooning the infamous hoax, Santilli recanted, admitting it was a fabrication though maintaining it was a “re-creation” inspired by true events and a lost tape. The home video itself was sold as an NFT in May 2021 with the physical master-copy apparently destroyed.
one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus a classic from The Stranglers
two years ago: more on defining the metre plus the 1984 EuroVision winner
three years ago: your daily demon: Buer, malingering on the metric system plus a modest proposal for solving resource scarcity from 1983
four years ago: Lusophone Culture Day, a view of the village, artist Howard Arkley, more on the unwritten rules of English plus a green office block in Dรผsseldorf
six years ago: the material properties of silk plus self-destructing emails
Wednesday 1 May 2024
7x7 (11. 527)
the function of colour: more scans from a beautiful 1930 volume on design in schools and workshops
wck: resuming their mission of feeding people in Palestine, Josรฉ Andrรฉs’ cookbook is nominated for a prestigious gastronomical award
aim high in creation: a survey of North Korea’s popular culture
barnard 33: JWST captures a sharp image of the iconic Horsehead Nebula of Orion
dead reckoning: the history of the Etak Navigator and other cartographical innovations
architectural renderings: the Art Deco illustrations of Charles Perry Weimer—via Messy Nessy Chic
Monday 29 April 2024
kenshล seikatsu (11. 523)
Listening to a re-run of This American Life on human spectacle introduced with widespread delusion of being an unwitting main character in a simulation, articulated by The Truman Show, the first segment “I am the Eggplant,” about an individual conscripted into a very public psychiatric experiment—that because of its vintage, really went from one extreme of the panopticon to the a much darker, tortured place with several addenda. The Nippon Network’s reality game show Susunu! Denpa Shลnen (้ฒใฌ!้ปๆณขๅฐๅนด—Do Not Proceed, Crazy Youth!) that aired from 1998 to 2002 was wildly popular and known for putting participants in rather extreme and absurd situations, and among the best known long-running contests (unbeknownst to the player) was called Prize Life, that recruited, abducted a young, aspiring comic called Tomoaki Hamatsu, nicknamed Nasubi (ใชใใณ, eggplant) owing to his long face, after winning a drawing for a “show business related job” who as his reward was challenged to live in an apartment with no possessions (including clothing, which was censored for the audience with a strategically placed digital ๐, hardly compelled to be modest since he did not know he was being live-streamed the entire time—wondering if that’s the origin of the emoji’s double-meaning) or food and no contact with the outside world (see also) for fifteen and could subsist only from his “winnings” by from mail-in sweepstakes from magazines. These prizes turned out to be rather useless but after fifteen months in isolation (moved from an apartment in Japan to an identical one in Korea by the producers to keep the location hidden from the paparazzi) his winnings finally amounted to enough a million ¥ , to be declared victorious. Reality television has been a mainstay of entertainment for the past twenty years but the disorientation, disappointment and the glib cruelty made me draw comparisons to Squid Game. A feature documentary is about to be released on Nasubi and his ordeal but you should listen to the interview and thematically related acts first.
Friday 26 April 2024
8x8 (11. 514)
flightline: stunning visualisations of air traffic
splinternet: ByteDance does not plan to divest itself of TikTok following US ultimatum
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mtv buzz: a surreal montage of audio and video clips arranged by Mark Pellington (1990)
celebrity endorsement: musicians, artists and novelist pose with the Sears’ appliances in this 1969 ad campaign for Kenmore—see also
undiscovery: the Map Men chart phantom islands—including some that have made it into the era of Google Maps—see previously
22,5 light hours: engineers debug a forty-seven year old computer remotely from twenty-four billion kilometres away to revive the data stream from Voyager I—see previously
embarking: a luxury airline that caters to canines above their human companions
one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting
two years ago: dismantling Soviet-era monuments
three years ago: more links to enjoy plus a special issue of LIFE magazine
four years ago: fantasy urban map generators, more links worth the revisit plus geopolitical optics
five years ago: an elegant and modern personal seal, even more links plus a Victoria houseplant
Sunday 21 April 2024
cartoon all-stars to the rescue (11. 506)
Airing the Saturday following the observance of 420 during the height of America’s War on Drugs and not too many years removed from Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign and other relentless public service announcements—via learn via our faithful chronicler—that the McDonald’s charity arm financed the production of a crossover simulcast featuring the Muppet Babies, Alf, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Looney Tunes and DuckTales, the Smurfs, Garfield, Alvin and the Chipmunks and others was broadcast on this day in 1990—probably giving rise to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Space Jam, despite unpopular reception. In the style of A Christmas Carol (this sort of nostalgia is a toxic impulse and this is what it gives you) the popular cartoon characters stage an intervention for an adolescent marijuana-user to forewarn him of the consequences of his actions if he does not amend his wayward ways (compare to this 1974 rather psychedelic remediation targeted to an earlier generation that grew up with a lot of this content and franchises). The special was also screened in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil.