fernsehkrimiserie (11. 919)

Hugely popular and enjoying cult-status outside of West Germany, the crime drama featuring Horst Tappert as Kriminaloberinspekktor Stephan Derrick focussed on solving murder cases in the München area. Airing until 1998 when the principal actor attained the age-limit he’d set for himself announced his retirement, all episodes of the twenty-five season run had the same cast (with prominent guest stars) and were all written and produced by the team of Herbert Reinecker and Helmut Ringelmann. There were fan clubs internationally and as one of the first television programmes from the West broadcast in China, Derrick was reportedly used as part of police training curriculum. Like “Beam me up Scotty,” the tag line associated with show the show, “Harry, hol schon mal den Wagen,” (to his assistant, “Harry, bring the car around,”—to imply we’re done here”) the phrase is never actually said on screen though there are close occasions of it. The title melody for the establishing sequence (see also) is from English-German pop singer Les Humphries.

project skydrop (11. 886)

Corresponding with the previous post, another treasure hunt has just concluded with the discovery of a golden trophy and pot prize of money that grew as hunters joined in, totalling at the end of more than one-hundred-thousand dollars. The radius where the prize was hidden shrank incremental from an area covering Washington, DC to New Hampshire, eventually going down to a square foot. Tension building as the search area got smaller, but not minuscule and still a sizeable amount of forested terrain to explore, the treasure was discovered by a local weatherman who took advantage of meteorological data embedded in a live-feed, and found the trophy through a process of elimination according to where it might be clear or overcast.

sur la trace de la chouette d’or (11. 885)

Via Meta Filter, we learn that the world’s longest ongoing treasure hunt with a single prize is reportedly over with an individual finding the buried owl statuette after thirty-one years of searching (the bronze replica redeemable for one crafted in gold, silver and diamonds and worth an estimated three-hundred thousand euro)—if verified that the treasurer hunter correctly deciphered a series of clues and didn’t happen on it by chance or with a metal-detector. Writing under the pseudonym of Max Valentin, Régis Hauser designed the challenge in 1993, publishing a notebook of secrets, riddles whose solutions gave hints on where to search—launching a line of other treasure hunts through the early 2000s, but this first one defied resolution—the subsequent ones being solved much quicker, leading to a bit of remorse on making this puzzle so complicated and having devoted so much time and effort into crafting it, not living to see it found, having died, aged 62, in 2009. A highly esteemed communications and marketing consultant and early adopter of technological advances, Hauser released additional clues to put treasure hunters on the right trail and steering them away from false leads, like Notre Dame or Mont Saint-Michel. Shortly after On the Trail of the Golden Owl began, Hauser introduced a Minitel (see also) server to field questions about the game, answering thousands of queries from the public and creating a community of loyal enthusiasts (chouetteurs) that sustained the mystery through the decades. The record for the longest ongoing treasure hunt is Byron Preiss’ The Secret, which challenges seekers to find twelve boxes hidden in cities in North America (connected to personnages who played roles in colonial history) dates to 1982 with only three found so far.

as safe as fort knox (11. 866)

With the exception of a brief tour granted to FDR in 1943 and a similar junket in August of 2017 to dispel the same rumours that the vaults had been emptied out, no members of the public had been admitted to the national gold bullion depository until when on this day in 1974 a contingent of journalists and a dozen congressional representatives were guided inspection by members of the American Mint (director Mary Brooks pictured) and the Treasury Department.

Requests to visit Ft Knox are summarily turned down but pressure by the House to conduct an independent audit of US gold reserves in response to the publication of a book, Conspiracy Against the Dollar: The Spirit of the New Imperialism by Peter David Beter, that attacked international monetary reform and cited the usual culprits, global elites, Bolsheviks, the Rockefeller-cartel, Soviet space lasers, important public figures were dead and had been replaced with “robotoids”—and most resoundingly with the public, that most of America’s gold had been trucked away and sold at depressed costs to European speculators—all claims without evidence or merit. Beter’s AM radio show gave him a platform to continue his allegations, making the military installation’s standing policy suspicious and proof that they had something to hide. The delegation was delighted with the tour and mostly cleared up the false speculation—largely imputed to America’s leaving the gold standard three years prior when the reality was that movement of gold had effectively halted (US silver bullion is stored at the military academy of West Point) and most gold is still in New York City—that is, until the rumours started circulating again and Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell visited with treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, proclaiming the nation’s stockpile to be secure. 

synchronoptica

one year ago: David Bowie’s Heroes (with synchronoptica), robinsonades plus urban wildlife photography

seven years ago: shibboleths 

eight years ago: smart carts for airport security, windpipes plus point-of-sales machines

nine years ago: algae-based membranes as liquid containers 

eleven years ago: a census of house plants

suburban fury (11. 865)

Joining the only other American female would-be presidential (let’s not forget Fanny Kaplan and the long tradition of Russian attempts) assassin with the mutual target being Gerald Ford inside of a month from each attempt, Sara Jame Moore tried to kill the US president on this day in 1975 as he was leaving a San Francisco hotel. Preoccupied with Patricia Hearst (maybe a case of Stockholm Syndrome by-proxy), Moore and volunteered as a bookkeeper and informant for the the organisation founded by William Randolph Hearst to rebuff the claims by the Symbionese Liberation Army that they had kidnapped and inculcated his daughter for his crimes against the poor up until the moment of her plot foiled by the FBI. Picked up by local authorities the day prior on suspicion of having an illegal handgun and a large supply of ammunition, Moore acquired a new revolver and shot at Ford from a distance of twelve metre as he exited the St Francis Hotel and misjudging the sightings on her new and untested weapon missed by a narrow margin. Moore said later that her motive was to incite revolution and bring about positive change in America. Remanded for life in prison and with an interim escape and re-apprehension, Moore was paroled at the end of 2007 and is living in Tennessee, aged 94.

10⁶⁰⁰ (11. 819)

Via Things Magazine (lots more to explore there), we get the chance to revisit the electromechanical rotor cipher machine, the advanced HX-63 developed by a private Swiss firm, which would prove difficult to crack even by contemporary standards and in 1952 was exponentially more secure than the CIA’s top model. Over the course of a decade, only about a dozen of the units were manufactured and though most clientele remained anonymous, the French defence ministry was one known buyer and a defence contractor found the device in a Cold War communications bunker and restored it to working order. The potential of those above undisclosed purchasers to be forces not aligned with Western interests caused the intelligence agency to intervene and not only eventually stop their sales but also to enter into a partnership with the company to produce a model with a backdoor so the CIA could decrypt any transmission. More from IEEE Spectrum at the link above including a video demonstration of the restored, uncompromised model and more on how the technology works to encode messages.

synchronoptica

one year ago: INTERPOL (1923)—with synchronoptica—plus divination through cheese

seven years ago: an appreciation of composer Edvard Grieg,  a meditation on the dacha plus cabmen’s shelters

eight years ago: restoring the Houses of Parliament, the debut of Star Trek, a Buddha-inspired knitted cap plus the debut of Voyager

nine years ago: a partially submerged art installation in the Thames is a statement on climate change

ten years ago: window displays, NATO talks on the Russian invasion of Ukraine plus a visit to Bad Vilbel

9x9 (11. 807)

city corridor: Metropolitan Museum of Art to exhibit the built and unbuilt visions of architect Paul Rudolph—see previously  

move over miss marple: German television mystery series imagines what the former Chancellor is doing with her retirement 

batteries not included: peruse the complete catalogues of Radio Shack produced over its six decades of business—plus this theme song 

mizzenmast: experimental solar sail prepares for its first voyage—see previously 

a copy of a copy: AI’s synthetic data is its downfall—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links  

marshmallow test: the heuristic for delayed gratification and executive functions is fraught with bias and harmful assumptions—via Hyperallergic  

preowned platform: IKEA launches a second-hand marketplace to become a circular company within the decade—via Nag on the Lake  

substantially worse than random chance: seemingly counterintuitive probability puzzles are perplexing social media—see previously  

cerceri d’invenzione: the aesthetic and romance of imagining ruins of foregone civilisations

mister boddy (11. 797)

Vis-à-vis a recent post, we learn via Messy Nessy Chic (lots more to explore there) that the 1985 adaptation of the board game Clue (Cluedo) with Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd and Martin Mull was released with three different ending, randomly screened to cinema audiences. The VHS- and Betamax-versions for home consumption had the three variations among the uncountable permutations—Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in the conservatory—with all characters blackmailed and with a motive, and prompting “how it could’ve happened,” “how about this” and “here’s what really happened.” Recently toy company Hasbro has been in talks seeking a new rights deal for another adaptation after a series of failed reboots and remakes.

10x10 (11. 783)

zener cards: the phenomenon of population stereotypes help mentalists seem genuine to their audience—via The New Shelton wet/dry 

null island: the nation of Kiribati (see also, see previously) straddles the four hemispheres  

mycobbuoys: a natural anchored float to help ween aquaculture off of plastics and keep them out of the oceans  

gisnep: a hybrid jumble, Connect-Four and cross-word game—via Neatorama  

vanquish surveillance, not democratise it: California legislators’ deal to have Big Tech sponsor local journalism causes concern it may affirm monopolies rather than break them up  

who’s telling trump he might be seeking one of those black jobs: former US first lady Michelle Obama taunts the GOP candidate for his comments about immigrants taking away supposed targeted employment opportunities 

seven-segment display: the fast technological progression from the incandescent numitrons to the liquid crystal display—see previously  

dishonourable mentions: winners of the annual Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest—see previously  

veni, vidi, vici: discover Roman antiquities in your area—via Satyrs’ Link Roll  

miss cleo knows the truth: confessions of psychic hotline operator—via tmn

synchronoptica

one year ago: a classic from Gary Numan (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: staunch Prohibitionists

eight years ago: cross-species friendships, taxidermied instruments plus healthy microbiomes

nine years ago: the scramble for the poles plus asylum problems in Germany

ten years ago: Pallas’ Cat

ausspioniern (11. 718)

Via Quantum of Sollazzo, we are referred to a fascinating joint investigation from Bayerischer Rundfunk and Netzpolitik (EN/DE) on how location data (see previously) jeopardises security, with brokers amassing people’s a litany of details about daily routines and selling (or giving them away) on line, making the matter of triangulating anonymised information a rather disturbingly easy process for the team of journalists to prise into the private lives of others and handily identify spies or others affiliated with the intelligence and defence communities by following their trails of digital breadcrumbs from office to home.

8x8 (11. 693)

priscila, queen of the rideshare mafia: the tale of a gig-economy pyramid scheme  

fête nationale: a comprehensive list of what Americans and the French know about each other 

80s lifestyle icons: health and fitness guru Richard Simmons and sex therapist Dr Ruth Westheimer pass away  

stillsuits: researchers develop Fremen inspired garments for astronauts that improve comfort, hydration and hygiene  

my israel home: US real estate companies profiting off expanded, illegal settlements in the West Bank—see also 

paranormal phenomenon: Japanese terms for déjà vu, telepathy and incredulous serendipity 

🛒: the trend of grocery store tourism really resonates with us and a cultural experience we always are sure to have—via Nag on the Lake 

kein brot und keine ehre: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s correspondent’s categories of human endeavour

connoquenessing township (11. 689)

During a campaign rally held at a parade ground near Butler, Pennsylvania, a would-be assassin perched on a rooftop outside the heavily secured (the fifty thousand attendees were subject to a screening process for weapons and other prohibited items in a queue that lasted up to five hours prior to the event) venue shot at the dais and grazed candidate Trump’s right ear, killing one by-stander and critically injuring two others. Secret service agents killed the shooter. Trump, discharged from a nearby hospital, proceeded to his next rally in New Jersey and reiterated that the Republican National Convention will begin as scheduled next week, to formally nominate him for the GOP ballot.  Despite Trump’s openness and advocacy for extraordinary measures, the international community is condemning political violence.

7x7 (11. 668)

zungenbrecher: revisiting the topic of German tongue-twisters whose recitation challenges are also trending on the socials—via Language Hat  

nuts and bolts: hyperrealistic pencil-drawings of metallic objects by Kohei Ohmori  

heraclea sintica: a near-complete statue of Hermes discovered whilst excavating a Roman sewer in southwest Bulgaria 

murder by contract: Poseidon’s Underworld reviews the 1958, low-budget Vince Edwards vehicle  

ovocipede: a personal mobility vehicle conceived by Salvador Dalí  

game over: a stop-motion animation re-creates classic arcade game play with food and candy  

dawn chorus: explore morning birdsong from around the globe—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links (lots more to see there)

synchronoptica

one year ago: the first summer study abroad programme (plus synchronoptica) 

seven years ago: Trump and the press, more on still-lives plus superlative drone photography

eight years ago: the Iraq Inquiry

nine years ago: the taxonomy of Jorge Luis Borge plus assorted links to revisit

ten years ago: advertising hoardings that serve as shelters plus ISIS’ wanton destruction of cultural treasure

orthostat (11. 640)

A welcome distraction, apparently self-propagating like crop-circles, during the height of the pandemic in 2020 has returned, we learn via Damn Interesting, in a mirrored format in a mysterious monolith spotted in the desert of the state of Nevada in the American southwest. Authorities were similarly puzzled after encountering the original and we had forgotten how copies started cropping up shortly thereafter, with ones appearing on the Isle of Wight, Wales, Romania and California. Given the previous viral fascination, we wonder how much we’ve evolved from those apes at the beginning of 2001.

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.

cain’s jawbone (11. 587)

Writing under the nom-de-plum Torquemada, poet, translator and advocate of cryptic crosswords Edward Powys Mathers’ 1934 premiered his epic murder mystery puzzle book (see also)—the title like his inquisitor pen-name a reference to the biblical story of the first fratricide—which consisted of a hundred pages (out of order) of narrative and to be solved must be rearranged as well as naming the murderers and victims, from a dense account of filled with contemporary references, poetic quotations and other word games. Republished in 2019, offering a cash prize as with the first edition (£25 originally shared among two readers and £1000 for five years ago, incidentally the equivalent of about £15 in 1934), the beguiling and vexing exercise in detective work probably would have remained unsolved had it not coincided with pandemic lockdown and sleuths of all stripes finding themselves with the luxury of time for such commitments. Much more from the Allusionist below.

 

* * * * *

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting, the Group of Seven (1983), John Hubley’s Moonbird plus predicting solar eclipses

two years ago: more links to enjoy plus seemingly anachronistic names

three years ago: even more links to revisit, the Chronicle of Georgia plus a primer in conchology

four years ago: a possible viral force-field, Blessed Margaret Pole, Studio Ghibli plus the original Monolith for 2001

five years ago: a visit to Burg Stolpen

i’m feeling lucky (11. 568)

Well before the default search engine began adding AI overviews to its results, users expressed their frustration and rebellion by adding a /r to their query to solicit some community juried results from Redditors less biased towards optimisation and more geared towards what people drove through discussion. Whilst rankings on any platform have never been free from a certain tilt that may create unwanted obstacles—or produce the desired outcome—this sort of copilot mode be default risks the user blaming, shooting the messenger (see previously) for what’s served up through the enhanced algorithm. Although Google chose to showcase its latest AI-focused upgrade on its biggest forum, the alternative filter, emulator of familiar web-caches reaching back a decade before SEO and general bot buttinskis was announced quietly by a liaison on a competing site. Sans ads, knowledge panels and scraping metadata from websites—but with tradeoffs—the parameter and suffix udm=14 brings one back to the unadulterated web to an extent that’s probably more geared to utility rather than simply nostalgia. More from Tedium at the link above and here is a website that automates it for your browser of choice.

rabbithole (11. 545)

Via Mx Tynehorne’s Cabinet of Curiosities (previously), we found ourselves drawn into a web of unsolved, enduring mysteries, fringe and pseudoscience theories, cryptozoology, and urban, internet legends with this extensive and growing list of obscure phenomena from Iceberg Charts. Of course the trajectory from hesitancy, to skepticism to contrarian and conspiratorial thinking can be a slippery slope and most of the cited examples are tempered with a dose of rebuttal and academic remediation and many catalogued are harmless fun. Among the newer links, we found an enticing selection of alternative histories (see previously) plus a new one in the form of the Roman Senate’s capital condemnation of a poet, grammarian and plebeian tribune of the Late Republic called Quintus Valerius Soranus. A contemporary and correspondent of Cicero and credited with the intention of the reading aid in the form of a table of contents, Soranus was put to death by crucifixion under the dictatorship of Sulla for ostensibly, publicly revealing the arcane and sacred name of Rome. Though unclear the manner of the publication, perhaps in a poem’s acrostic—or whether this was a political pretext to rid themselves of a troublesome colleague—such evocatio was considered a grave taboo and never mentioned outside of exclusive, secret ceremonies as divulging the name was calling forth the civic, tutelary deity, which if known by Rome’s enemies could cause the protector god to abandon and defect. No one knows if the city truly had such a classified name or what it was—possibly after the elder goddess called Angeron—and the popular but possibly creatively incorrect that it was what Rome spelt backwards spelt was inspired by a dual temple built by Hadrian to the city and Venus with altars back to back and hence the ROMA-AMOR inversion.

the usual suspects (11. 452)

After years of obscuring police line-ups in creative and comical (to some) fashions, one department will comply with a request from a toy company to respectfully stop using its image to hide the faces of potential law-breakers in its social media posts. Certain authorities had been in the habit of protecting the identity of suspects for non-violent crimes in case they were exonerated and not to expose them to public shaming—the stocks—but all began to comply once legislation was passed to protect the identities of all until proven guilty. We’re not sure why such a blotter needed to be circulated in the first place, unless looking for more witnesses or issuing an all points bulletin. Mugshots are also removed after a fortnight. In any case, no more minifigs.

synchronoptica

one year ago: The Leopard (1963) plus Everything is a Remix

two years ago: Starlight Express plus Let America Be America Again

three years ago: a cargo freighter blocks the Suez Canal, Moby Dick by Matt Kish, statehood for Washington, DC plus the Tenerife Airport Disaster (1977)

four years ago: the etymology of a snack cracker, Typhoid Mary, vintage bathrooms, an Oscar boycott (1973) plus job losses soar due to the pandemic

five years ago: Japan becomes less vegetarian (1872), driving home through the Rhön plus The Disorder of Things

8x8 (11. 307)

1,44mb: some Japanese ministries are phasing out the requirement of submitting official documents on physical media 

forensic linguistics: language experts and crime-solving 

jurassic lark: Poseidon’s Underworld recaps the 1960 cinematic experience Dinosaurs!  

painting with plasticine: Olive Harbutt, daughter of the medium’s inventor, creates art in this 1958 short  

▧: Letraset fill patterns—see previously 

throwing eggs: popular Chinese card game Guandan may receive sanction for the classroom  

esperantido: linguist Manuel Halvelik created an auxiliary diglossia to make translations sound more archaic 

omnichord: Suzuki brings back the portable music-maker from 1981