artemis ii (13. 315)

Any other day, a crewed mission to lunar orbit would be the only news story, but given the world of American hubris and hegemony, with wars in the Middle and Far East, Trump threatening to withdraw from NATO, the climate catastrophe, etc, etc, the awe-inspiring achievement that the world could collectively take pride in is overshadowed in the headlines. Whilst not landing on the Moon for this iteration, the capsule launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, if all goes according to plan, will take four individuals the farthest anyone has been from Earth, tracing a figure-eight around the Moon and back in a ten day journey, the flyby the first foray beyond low Earth orbit since 1972. The Apollo XIII and X missions entered geostationary orbit around the Moon but Artemis will assume a free return trajectory, similar to Apollo XIII. Among the historical firsts in store for the crew include the first woman, person of colour and in Canadian Space Agency astronaut the first non-US citizen to leave low Earth orbit. The landing mission is currently scheduled for 2028. Watch the countdown live at NPR at the link up top.

9x9 (13. 308)

ruina montium: an striking landscape in Spain created by the ancient Romans fracking for gold—via Miss Cellania  

13 ｘ 7 = 28: Abbot and Costello try to meet their sales quota—via MetaFilter 

i’m your hell, i’m your dream—i’m nothing in between: a linguistic and semantic history of the term bitch 

anatoly kolodkin: US waives sanctions to allow Russian tanker to deliver crude oil to Cuba  

coalition of the willing: recalling the legacy Icelandic PM Davíð Oddsson of committing the nation to the unjustified invasion of Iraq in 2003, juxtaposed with contemporary Spain  

cocktail nation: Spy Vibe’s regular segment on swank vintage soundtracks  

lip-filler accent: influencers inform the way we speak—via Nag on the Lake, see also  

gigo: AI is an accelerant for academic fraud, selling papers and citations to pad one’s portfolio  

unoosa: a profile of the director of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs who alerts the world of impending asteroid impacts

7x7 (13.275)

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

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

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

limehouse: reconstructing Pennyfield’s Chinatown in East London  

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

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

first flight (13. 271)

From property then belonging to Asa Ward before becoming his Aunt Effie’s farmstead in Auburn, Massachusetts, pioneering jet propulsion engineer and physicist Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fuelled rocket on this day in 1926. With a mixture of gasoline and liquid oxygen, the projectile, christened as Nell, only reached an altitude of sixty metres but in less than three seconds and was a solid demonstration of proof of concept. Reserved and painfully shy since, Goddard was criticised by contemporaries as dabbling in an undignified field not worthy of serious scientific investigation, his contributions only posthumously recognised—thanks in large measure to his habit of keeping a daily diary of experiments and imbued early on with a sense of curiosity and awe, first captivated by the electrification of his hometown at the turn of the century and then a transcendent experience, referred to in his journal as his “cherry tree dream” aged seventeen, when perched in the branches to prune some dead limbs in the autumn all of a sudden, imagining his ascent higher and higher above the Earth and intuited the basic principles of combustion and propulsion, coming down from the tree a changed adolescent. That vision never left Goddard, for the rest of his life keeping the anniversary of that event, 19 October 1899, as a private commemoration of his greatest inspiration.

8x8 (13. 255)

should make you think: the Ig Noble commitee and ceremony (see previously) moves to Zürich permanently out of fear for its international laureates coming to the US  

multisource authentication: the madding task of logging on to any platform, ostensibly for security reasons, also is unpaid labour to train AI  

ʰ-bomb: a typographical mystery surrounding one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most celebrated sacred spaces—via MetaFilter  

asterisms: learn about the night sky by creating one’s own constellations with Neal Agarwal (previously)  

saint-michel d’aiguihe: the chapel of St Michael of the Needle built atop a volcanic plug and has a secret reliquary—via Miss Cellania    

diacritics: kernels, ʻokinas and curly quotes 

short imagined monologues: the void would very much like you to stop screaming into it—see also  

rebel alliance: Minnesota’s badge of resistance to ICE terror

circumplanetary disk (13.253)

Although the suggested existence of a ring-planet dates back to nineteen century observation notes by William Herschel, the definitive discovery of Uranius’ coherent orbital debris fields occurred by fortuitous accident on this day in 1977 by astronomers aboard the Gerard P Kuiper Airborne Observatory, a customised Starlifter jet transporter commissioned by NASA as a platform for research in infrared astronomy. Debuted as the civilian version of defence contractor Lockheed-Martin’s C-141, this high-altitude plane could rise above terrestrial interference equipped with a conventional telescope and spectrometry instruments the programme was also witness to the transmutation of elements through stellar fusion by peering out to the centre of the Milky Way, organic compounds in the great void of space as well as studying the mineral makeup of Mercury. Active for twenty years, the project was eventually retired in 1995 and rests in an airplane graveyard outside of Moffett Field outside of Sunnyvale, California.

7x7 (13. 229)

all modern digital infrastructure: a XKCD panel made interactive 

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

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

set theory: literary news in Venn diagrams  

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

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

habe mortem præ oculis: perhaps the worst pun ever  

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

10x10 (13. 125)

no ordinary venue: disgraced FIFA ex-president Sepp Blatter encourages a World Cup boycott of the US  

slideshow: reconstructing the lecture series of Theosophist and meteorologist Clement Wragge  

margin unit: Persevereance rover discovers evidence of an ancient beach in Mars’ Jezero crater 

jesse garon presley: Scott Walker’s ballad about Elvis’ lost twin 

squaring the circle: a clever workaround to the geometrical conundrum  

optimised for nastiness: Sir Tim Berners-Lee is in a battle for the soul of the web 

the streets of minneapolis: Bruce Springsteen’s tribute to the resistance and its fallen champions  

don’t look up: asteroid 2024 YR4 has a four percent chance of striking the Moon 

tangible data: information that one can hold in one’s hands—via Kottke 

host nation: Italian officials condemn planned presence of US ICE agents for the Winter Games

sts-51-l (13. 124)

Seventy-three seconds after launch on this day in 1968, space shuttle Challenger broke apart, disintegrating fourteen kilometres over the Atlantic ocean off the coast of Cape Canaveral, killing the seven crew members and marking the first fatalities in US spaceflight on a craft that had left the launch pad—hence the l for lost on the flight designation. Scheduled to deploy a communications satellite and study the approaching Halley’s comet, astronauts included Christa McAuliffe as part of the Teacher in Space project, an outreach programme founded under the Reagan administration in 1984 to inspire STEM studies—cancelled found the death of its first participant.  Because of McAuliffe’s inclusion as a payload specialist, selected out of over eleven-thousand applicants, there was heightened media attention to the orbiter’s tenth and otherwise routine mission and many students in classrooms across America witnessed the disaster live, myself included recalling that TV cart. The cause of the break up was failure in the primary and backup o-ring seals, allowing hot pressurised gases to vent uncontrolled from the booster rockets and caused the craft, climbing at nearly twice the speed of sound to pitch and spin and was torn apart by aerodynamic stress. The launch continued despite warnings from flight engineers that the seal system would breach in the extreme cold—for Florida—weather that morning, possibly to take place before the president’s state of the union address scheduled to be delivered in the evening. A congressional investigation was launched and the shuttle programme suspended until September of 1988 with Discovery. The shuttle programme was retired in 2005 following the loss of Columbia during deorbiting in February 2003 when a piece of insulation foam that had dislodged during the launch struck the tiles that protect the craft from the heat of reentry, which as with the degredation of the o-rings, NASA did not considered to be a potential risk to the astronauts’ safety. The Soviet Union named two craters newly discovered on Venus in honour of the memory McAuliffe and mission specialist Judith Resnik and five other crew members. The second payload specialist Ronald McNair had brought his saxophone with him to record a track for inclusion for the upcoming album Rendez-Vous by John-Michel Jarre.  

7x7 (13. 105)

helix nebula: JWST captures amazing images of the planetary incubator 

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

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

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

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

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

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

9x9 (13. 032)

christmas day storm: heavy rains and landslides batter Los Angeles area  

vertex summary: holiday reception by renowned fiddler in Nova Scotia cancelled due to AI search erroneous labelling the performer a sex-offender—via Super Punch  

soft cell: astronaut Tibor Kapu debuts geometries that can only exist in microgravity aboard the ISS  

high holidays: an assortment of newspaper clippings on confiscated marijuana Christmas trees of yesteryear  

autocoup: a viral fake video of an overthrow in Paris is throwing the government in turmoil  

daemon est deus inversus: the occult imagination of W B Yeats  

winterval: seasonal breaks and the signal most observed public holiday—maybe not the one you’re thinking of—from Quantum of Sollazzo  

neighbourhood watch: AI powered app issues false crime alerts across US, terrorising residents  

spirit of the season: US launches strikes against ISIS militants in Nigeria—accused of persecuting Christians 

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronopticæ), Wild Strawberries (1957) plus a classic from Goorge Harrison

thirteen years ago: an antique Bible 

fifteen years ago: Boxing Day and Second Christmas 

9x9 (13. 024)

participation, in this context, is a kind of alignment: the Vanity Fair photo shoot of Trump’s cabinet 

escape velocity: a super-massive runaway black hole has been ejected from its home galaxy and is careening through space—via Kottke 

that thoth over there: a guide to the messy divine family of Egyptian mythology  

beyond the last-minute gift guide: the year of Tedium wrapped  

no-one comes to casablanca for the waters—you were misinformed: every drink in the 1942 classic (see previously, oddly no gin)—via MetaFilter  

capital allocation: on the social uselessness of finance, creating winners and losers  

homecoming: a preview of Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey—see also 

intraterrestrials: subsurface microbes have geological lifespans 

unreliable narrator: Epstein and company as Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert—see previously

9x9 (12. 981)

on average there are only 0.061 haunted locations per square mile in the uk: ghost mapper 

forty winks: an appreciation of sleep and everyday aesthetics  

married to the sea: CEO of US military contractor Palantir argues case for making war crimes constitutionally allowable  

grunts and thwops: cetologist share their first chat with a humpbacked whale named Twain—see previously 

the dangerous christmas of red riding hood: a 1965 revisionist fairytale from the Wolf’s perspective, starring Liza Minnelli  

ar 4294: giant sunspot cluster on par with the concentration that sparked the Carrington event pointed directly at Earth—via Damn Interesting  

mixtape: a growing repository of found cassettes from around the world with content and provenance—via Web Curios   

enhanced vetting: Trump’s state department directed to deny visas for fact-checkers and content-moderators in defence of free-speech absolutism  

mycology mapped: an engrossing explainer of the fungi kingdom and its place in the ecosystem 

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: Ze Frank on molluscs (with synchronopticæ), a digital advent calendar plus gift ideas for the holiday office party

thirteen years ago: a gaslit whistle-blower 

fourteen years ago: Eurozone credit downgrades 

fifteen years ago: net neutrality and IMF priorities 

seventeen years ago: Christmas decorations 

kid icarus (12. 887)

Collaborating with astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy, skydiver and musician Gabriel C Brown captured this incredible image of Brown transiting the Sun with an appreciable measure of luck and timing to triangulate and signal the exact moment for the jump and the shot, a composite mosaic through a telescope’s lens of the Sun roiling surface remotely tracking Brown’s falling silhouette, captured in the course of six passes by the ultralight prop-plane in the skies over Arizona.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Musk as Salacious Crumb (with synchronopticæ), letters to the president, Julian time plus Trump pushes through controversial nominees

twelve years ago: outsourcing espionage plus moving Germany’s spy agency headquarters from Bonn   

thirteen years ago: a survey of customer service 

fourteen years ago: a news roundup 

fifteen years ago: hysteria and security theatre 

951 gaspra (12. 834)

Discovered in 1916 by astronomer Grigori Nikolaevich Neujmin, one in a catalogue to his credit of hundreds of minor planets and comets, and named for the Crimean spa town near Yalta that was favoured by Neujmin’s contemporaries like Tolstoy and Gorky, the asteroid was visited by the Galileo space probe on a close fly-by on this day in 1991 en route for its mission to explore the Jovian system (see also), the first time such an object was encountered at close range and studied, the rendezvous a technically challenging one since only its approximate location was known by projecting its orbital path. The irregular shaped silicate-rich asteroid is approximately the size of Guam and has the pictured astronomical symbol, a simplification of the resort town’s coat of arms.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a mascot for the Vatican (with synchronopticæ) plus IKEA acknowledges forced labour in East Germany

thirteen years ago: media ownership under threat

8x8 (12. 813)

vampira: the obscure made-for-television title by George Moorse with a atmospheric score by Tangerine Dream 

concrete progress: a demonstration project for turning the rubble of war torn Ukraine into cement 

overton window: a measured approach to AI—via Kottke—see also  

spoiler-alert: William Castle’s Homicidal, a hammy, gimmicky film capitalising on the success of Psycho, gets reviewed by Poseidon’s Underworld

 
atira asteroids: a constellation of interior-Earth objects in our orbit and hidden by solar glare are uncomfortably close—via Damn Interesting 

it’s awfully strange to make a decision where i’m paying myself—but i was damaged very great and any money i would get i would give to charity: Grifter-in-Chief demands two-hundred and thirty million dollars in restitution from the US department of justice for past convictions  

billionaires’ row: a supertall residential tower on Manhattan’s Park Avenue is riddled with stress-fractures that may lead to its condemnation

the vampyre: Lord Byron’s unremembered manservant who invented the modern form of the genre—via Miss Cellania

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronopticæ) plus the Berlin Crisis of 1961

fourteen years ago: exploring the past with the Retronaut

project west ford (12. 812)

Though we’ve wrote quite a few times on the rather audious joint US Airforce-Massachusetts Institute of Technology mission (see previously here and here) to ensure the continuity of communications in the era before satellites in case of Soviet sabotage on underseas cables by seeding the upper atmosphere with a half a million copper dipoles to create an artificial ionosphere, the natural but unpredictable one being the primary sounding board for international correspondence via shortwave, we think the story bares repeating on the anniversary not of the deployment of the payload of “Westford needles” but rather on date that the first abortive experiment failed in 1961. After the initial set-back, it’s amazing that there was another trial.  Hundreds of thousands of tiny copper pins, thinner than a human hair (scaled to amplify target signals) in orbit would, as the theory went, would form a ring to collective provide passive support to a parabolic transmission dish located on the grounds of MIT’s multidisciplinary observatory. Carried aloft in tandem with the launch of a MiDAS 4 satellite the diodes failed to disperse. A second attempt in May the following year was successful. Though unknown at the time how quickly the needles would deorbit and that the debris field was temporary and diminishingly small, the secret experiment enraged the international community and although the fears of the a catastrophic grounding were unfounded, Project West Ford did prompt an inclusion of a consultation provision in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

synchronoptica

one year ago: airport geolocation codes and shared abbreviations (with synchronopticæ) plus Musk selling votes

thirteen years ago: a visit to Sigmaringen

fourteen years ago: Eurozone crisis talks plus more on digital rights management

sixteen years ago: diploma mills 

seventeen years ago: nostalgia and intellectual property 

 

10x10 (12. 801)

press credentials: all major US media outlets surrender their badges granting them access to the Pentagon rather than consent to only reporting on approved releases—see previously  

pomalo: embracing the unhurried lifestyle of the Dalmatian coast 

🚀: a huge archive of international space agency logos and patches, including private and fictional ones—via Kottke 

my my my my michell: a tribute to Joe Don Baker 

dear new york: an installation featuring the city’s denizens in Grand Central Station  

doxxing and the doxxed: a roundup of hateful boosterism from American Republican youth organisations  

un embarras du choix: perhaps options and avenues are a poor surrogate for being free 

farshoring: Luxembourg’s role as a space hub allows prospectors to claim asteroids—though profits may never pan out  

κόπος: Greek parliament passes thirteen-hour work days amidst strikes and labour shortages  

reframing: an exhibit inspired by WEB Du Bois’ infographic “data portraits”

8x8 (12. 714)

idf: Israel airstrikes target Hamas officials in Doha—with no forewarning to Trump—as it orders the evacuation of Gaza City 

ripped from the headlines: a Centipede style arcade game played by doomscrolling New York Times articles—via Waxy  

hurdy gurdy: covers performed on an electro-acoustic modified sewing machine—see previously  

2025 pn7: the quasi satellites of the Earth—see previously  

succession: the appointee to the Murdoch media empire 

przestrzeń powietrzna: in a test of NATO solidarity, Poland downs Russian drones violating their airspace   

the evening truth: a resonate 1932 novel about yellow journalism employing a secret weapon called the composograph to fabricate sensational stories  

never again: LA’s Holocaust Museum retracts an denunciation on Israel’s attacks on Palestine—plus the genealogy of the phrase 

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronopticæ)

fourteen years ago: wildfires worldwide

fifteen years ago: modular furnishings plus America’s competitive edge slipping

 

8x8 (12. 679)

short imagined monologues: the abandoned new Cracker Barrel logo speaks out  

internet caretaker: Messy Nessy returns from vacation with another roundup of things found on-line—no notes  

 ticker-tape: a 1967 home computer—via Damn Interesting  cybersitter: a look back on the ways of filtering the web

ai upscaling: multimedia artists complain about unbidden tweaks to their signature videos—via the New Shelton wet/dry

dark dwarves: astrophysicists theorise a new class of stars that may never exhaust their fuel  

🖇️: an annotated collection donated to Present /&/ Correct 

divertimento № 198: assorted links amid gustatory delights from the Minnesota State Fair 

the united states is not made up of well-adjusted adults—it’s made up of americans: simulation and simulacrum in the USA—via Miss Cellania

synchronoptica

one year ago: the introduction of Pepsi (with synchronopticæ)

thirteen years ago: the evolution of screen-time plus frozen fireworks

fourteen years ago: reimagining Space Oddity 

seventeen years ago: driving on autopilot