Via ibฤซdem, here is a slightly baffling online oracle that presents itself as a Magic 8 Ball but purports to answer more than yes or no questions by harnessing the power of the long-running animated television series and triangulating one’s prognostication with a clip and quote from The Simpsons that relates to one’s query. There is of course a huge archive to draw from and the show’s longevity, reaching spanning several generations of living memory and even touching on topics time out of mind, like milkmen, the middle-class—or smoking, making up this bizarre sibyl and corresponding scenes that match to the disembodied arms ashing into a skull. You’ll just have to test it out yourself. Incidentally, the toy—from Circus of Values, makes at least one appearance in the franchise, in an episode called “Bart’s Friend Falls in Love,” Milhouse showing his friend the ball on the school bus, which he quizzes: “Will I pass my English test?” Outlook not so good “Will Milhouse get beaten up today?” All signs point to yes “Will Milhouse and I be friends til we’re old toothless men with hair in our ears?” Don’t count on it “Will Milhouse and I be friends when we’re high school dropouts living off Uncle Sucker?” It looks doubtful “Will Milhouse and I be friends at the end of the day?”—answering a definite No. The same day, they learn a new student has joined their class, Samantha Stanky from Phoenix—she and Milhouse becoming instantly infatuated with one other to Bart’s exclusion. To get his friend back, Bart reveals their relationship to Samanthas’s father, who, to protect his daughter, transfers her to a local convent school, Saint Sebastian’s for Wicked Girls—run by French-Canadian nuns, who turn out to be other than strict and dour, Sลur Sourire singing Domi-nique - nique -inque s’en allait tout simplement, though voiced by Maggie Roswell (Helen Lovejoy, Maude Flanders, Miss Hoover and Luann Van Houten), made up her own lyrics. Feeling guilty for disclosing their secret romance out of jealousy, Bart confesses to Milhouse that he outed them, resulting in a physical altercation that Bart breaks up by throwing the Magic 8 Ball, originally marketed as a paper weight, another skeuomorph from the series, to consult for answers at one’s desk with ten affirmative answers, five neutral and five negative, much like ChatGPT, at Milhouse, smashing it and negating its predictions, leading to reconciliation.
Friday, 16 May 2025
how could this happen? we started out like romeo and juliet but it ended up in tragedy! (12. 463)
catagories: ๐ฎ, The Simpsons
Saturday, 1 March 2025
covenant of the goddess (12. 268)
The cross-traditional Wiccan organisation was founded on this day in 1975 by forty elder witches from fifteen different covens in Oakland, California in order to secure for practitioners and adherents the same rights and legal protections extended to other religious communities. Affiliate congregations, numbering presently over one hundred, focus on education, philanthropy, theology and ritual worship of the Goddess and the Old Gods, operating largely by consensus and with autonomy for separate chapters. In 2007, the group successfully lobbied the US Department of Veterans Affairs to recognise the pentacle as one of its suitable headstone emblems in national cemeteries, though this is probably not the case any longer with the establishment of the White House Faith Office and task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias. High priest and priestesses solemnise lifelong relationships among members in “handfasting” ceremonies, which transcending traditional marriages can include numbers greater than two.
synchronoptica
one year ago: an undiscovered marine ecosystem off the coast of Chile (with synchronoptica), assorted links worth the revisit plus Operation Crossroads
seven years ago: an Italian-designer cargo-droid plus a Brutalist housing estate outside of Amsterdam
eight years ago: more links to enjoy, an extensive logo archive, legalising WiFi squatting, Obama for the president of France plus historic events on this day
nine years ago: the origin and development of the shopping buggy, the predictions of Nostradamus plus a planet populated by robots
ten years ago: the Caliphate and cultural destruction plus the nature of misconceptions
Saturday, 22 February 2025
star turn (12. 253)
Via the always engrossing Things Magazine, we are directed towards the vexing but useful author and astrologer of German extraction employed by MI5’s Special Operations Executive—an agency established by Churchill best known for sabotage and helping the resistance in occupied territories—Louis De Wohl (having changed it from Ludwig von Wohl when he fled Berlin) for psyops purposes during the darkest days of World War II. Despite his reputation as a vain and flamboyant “bumptious seeker after notoriety,” as one of his handlers described him and a real risk to compromising the security service’s mission through his indiscretion and high opinion of himself, officials were persuaded that his horoscopes might be an effective way to influence Hitler and his advisors. Dispatching De Wohl on a US lecture tour in 1941—already a figure of certain renown as a dozen of his early books were adapted as films from the late 1920s to the mid 1930s (mostly crime and romance novels, after his spy career, De Wohl continued writing but mostly hagiographies, following his conversion to Catholicism), Britain wagered that American audiences might be more receptive to and sympathetic for these fringe believes and might bolster public endorsement for joining the war effort. While there was certainly occult elements of the Nazi regime, Hitler’s confidence in and reliance for signs in the stars and cadre of astrologers was an elaborate fabrication, supported by the press to make De Wohl’s predictions seem accurate with supernatural corroboration on the part of the media, even reviving a German defunct horoscope newsletter (edited by De Wohl) and surreptitiously distributed in the country. Not foreseen though the propaganda campaign seemed to be paying off with American attitudes more accepting of such beliefs (see also here and here), the attack on Pearl Harbor rendered the efforts redundant, and recognising the potency of his charisma and power to influence the superstitious, De Wohl was quietly retired to write his stories about the lives of the saints, the extent of the operation not revealed until 2008 in a document release from the National Archives.
Thursday, 30 January 2025
the gourd question (12. 195)
First documented around two thousand years ago in divination manuals, the tradition of playing the race game called huluwen (translated as above but has many regional variations and diverse and contemporary themes, also called “to drive away eight snakes,” “bureaucratic promotion table or “chaos at dragon palace” for example) during family gatherings for the Spring Festival has endured and evolved over the centuries with the gods and political or career ambitions.
Players advance according to a roll of the dice (or a spin of a dreidel-like top) a certain number of spaces landing on an image and then must jump forward or back to an identical square, the first reaching the centre winning. Though the seemingly humble gourd was not always the goal, in Taoism the calabash (ไบๅฝ, also a homophone for “interactive recording,” hence the streaming service) symbolises longevity through medical or miraculous intervention and can also represent a portal to another realm or be interpreted as a scapegoat or pharmakรณs, a object that could absorb bad luck and be cast out—from the same Greek root as drugs, potions and spells.
Sunday, 12 January 2025
twentytwentyfive (12. 169)
Better Living through Beowulf brings us a thoughtful reflection on George Orwell’s prescient 1946 essay called “The Prevention of Literature” that forecasts how authoritarian regimes will turn to AI (not exactly couched in modern parlance but rather as formulaic, mass-produced writing that could outpace any author or newsroom, though his dystopian novel does feature prole porn—we might even be denied that—and other entertainments produced by machine), which envisions journalism being first censored out of existence to be churned out with minimal human input or intervention with prose and poetry to follow—though book bans in the United States (including 1984) seem to rather subvert that sequence, notwithstanding the attacks against what’s labelled as the “legacy media” continuing—already witnessing the change in his own time with modular stories and plots, easily adapted and repackaged for an eager audience and easily made to conform with the worldview that the state seeks to project. Introducing his work with a recollection of attending a meeting of the PEN Club in London that coincided with the three-hundredth anniversary of the publication of Milton’s Areopagitica—in defence of press freedoms—two years prior, Orwell blames the loss of intellectual liberty on the undermining of the increasingly concentrated ownership of the press and monopolies on broadcast media by corporations that refused to support their authors and internecine squabbling amongst academics. Such an atmosphere and compromised readership enables conditions for a totalitarian takeover. Contemporary critics generally agreed with Orwell’s premise, though some though his arguments amounted to “intellectual swashbuckling” and concluded his prophecies doubtful.
Tuesday, 7 January 2025
england’s home of mystery (12. 154)
Sadly demolished in 1905 to make way for offices and flats, we enjoyed this appreciation of the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, originally commissioned by antiquarian and naturalist William Bullock as a museum to house his collection of curiosities acquired by Captain Cook’s exploration (see also) of the South Seas and built in 1812 in the revival architecture style popularised (see also) by reports of Napoleon’s exploits and Admiral Nelson’s defeat of the French navy on the Nile, which after disposing of his ethnographic and natural history collection, transformed the space into a public exhibition hall, with rotating collections including Napoleon’s carriage captured as a war trophy at Waterloo, Egyptian artefacts and The Raft of Medusa. By the end of the nineteenth century, the hall became a venue for magical acts and spiritualism demonstrations, chiefly staged by the duo of Maskelyne and Cooke with a rather remarkable run of thirty-one years—the former, John Nevil, stage magician, card shark, professional sceptic (wanting to expose fraudsters and charlatans) and inventor of a typewriter of proportional character width (kerning was apparently all over the place and probably would have driven me to distraction) and the pay-toilet, hence the euphemism, “spend a penny.” Much more from Feuilleton at the link above including a gallery of show posters.
catagories: ๐, ๐, ๐♀️, ๐ฎ, libraries and museums
Sunday, 5 January 2025
8x8 (12. 147)
black swan event: futurist forecast a host of unpredictable geopolitical scenarios for 2025—via the New Shelton wet/dry
it’s schoolhouse rocky—that chip off the block—of your favourite schoolhouse, schoolhouse rock: a rather incredible thrift store find of Smash Mouth’s Steve Harwell performing some numbers from the educational cartoon series—see previously

to unalive or not unalive: the resurgence of the term was prompted by a way to get around advertiser blacklists with euphemisms—see more
reboot: the Landauer Limit, thermodynamics and more efficient computing—see also
post-scarcity, post-singularity: it’s still easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism—via Duck Soup
the eagle & child: Oracle’s Larry Ellison has purchased the Oxford pub frequented by Tolkien and C S Lewis—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest
the year that was and wasn’t: The Morning News interviews some of their favourite journalists about the most and least important stories and trends of 2024—see also the dumbest timeline
Wednesday, 1 January 2025
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.
Sunday, 29 December 2024
6x6 (12. 121)
glimmer vs trigger: political, cultural and business trends to expect for 2025
geospatial: NATO’s Project HEIST to ensure telecommunications architecture from accident and sabotage or caprice—see also—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links
achive.today: some methods for getting around paywalled articles
elo rating: grandmaster Magnus Carlsen quits World Internation Chess Federation (see previously) over dress code
teotwawki: y2k preparations and people getting ready to bug out—see previously
๐ฟ: an omnibus list of list on movies and television from the past year
Thursday, 28 November 2024
9x9 (12. 036)
to john dillinger and hope he is still alive: William S Burroughs’ Thanksgiving Prayer
sampler-sized: iconic electronic music remixes by year
silent poems: a weird and wondrous, non-WYSIWYG word processor from graphic designer Lavinia Petrache—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest
blacklisted: Musk publishes names of federal workers he wants to eliminate, a terror-inducing tactic that may force them to resign in lieu of being fired
well, please post the rebuttal—then community notes will take care of the rest: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explains to Elon Musk how EV charging works
sortes vergilianae: a particular form of bibliomancy drawing random passages from The Aeneid (see also here and here) and other works by Roman poet Virgil
anacyclosis: the rise and fall of civilisation and the undermining of democracy
the nine lives of dr mabuse: avant garde pop band Propaganda celebrate the filmology of the chaotic villain—see previously
pay no attention to that man behind the curtain: a political reading of Wicked
synchronoptica
one year ago: the Battle of Versailles (1973—with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth the revisit
seven years ago: Tom Baker returns as Dr Who plus Trump celebrates Native American Heritage Month
eight years ago: emoluments and more
eleven years ago: the debut of MST3K (1998) plus Germany’s Goldfinger tax-model
twelve years ago: :D for Dรผsseldorf
Wednesday, 13 November 2024
9x9 (11. 997)
dr tj eckleburg: how The Great Gatsby influenced Robert Moses and transformed New York City
tether: although the material technology is not quite there for a terrestrial one, a lunar space elevator might be feasible
ssccatagapp: Russia moves to ban all content deemed to promote a childless-lifestyle—via tmn

jeu de puce: fleas, chips and other observations on the 9แต รฉdition du Dictionnaire de l’Acadรฉmie franรงaise just published
talking head: Pentagon and US allies in shock over Trump’s intent to nominate a Fox News commentator as secretary of defence
sobriquet: the twenty-eight European cities claiming to be Venice of the North—see also—via Messy Nessy Chic
collectives: a series of aerial photographs of junkyards and graveyards neatly organised by Cรกssio Campos Vasconcellos—via Things Magazine
a remembrance of things past: Proust and The Breakfast Club
synchronoptica
one year ago: a medieval large language model (with synchronoptica), a new family of goblin spiders, a novel way to hack light pollution plus block printing personal narratives
seven years ago: tariffs on Chinese aluminium, revolutionary terrariums plus using AI to minimise road-kill, disruption to migration
eight years ago: RIP Leonard Cohen
nine years ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus emoji syntax across different platforms
ten years ago: more on the spread of Indo-European languages
Monday, 11 November 2024
minority report (11. 991)
With the possibility for insight but far more likely to skew towards red-herrings, misassociation and even dangerous omission, Anthopic’s Claude AI model (see previously) will partner with Palantir and Amazon Web Services to process and analyse classified information for undisclosed US defence and intelligence agencies.

synchronoptica
one year ago: a WWII musical documentary (with synchronoptica), an ancient supermassive black hole discovered plus the diplomatic tactic of constructive ambiguity
seven years ago: Carnival season begins plus the outsized influence of Futurama
nine years ago: the retirement crunch
ten years ago: more on the Fifth Season
eleven years ago: extremophile bacteria that survive in space, a trip to Oppenheim plus more on combatting light pollution
Saturday, 2 November 2024
10x10 (11. 957)
รพjappaรฐ vinnuviku: Iceland’s experiment with a shorted working week
dรฉnouement: examining the kishลtenketsu arc of narrative and its structure in world literature
indirect allorecognition: injured comb jellies will fuse with another to allow one to heal—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest
climate solutions: just a shower thought probably better shared on this website, could we reduce CO₂ concentration by making the atmosphere bigger?
celestial symphony: the icon and ingrained theme from the 1986 Chinese television adaptation of Journey to the West—see previously
oracles of astrampsychus: ancient tools of divantion included drawing lots, bibliomancy and a sort of algorithm—via Strange Company
goonies in space: the latest Star Wars spinoff, Skeleton Crew
denaturalised: Elon Musk could have his US citizenship revoked if it’s confirmed that he lied on his immigration application—via the New Shelton wet/dry
the gaudรญ of mita: Keisuke Oka’s hand-built tower, the Arimaston Building in east Tokyo
sweethearting: AI-powered facial recognition monitors for suspicious friendliness between customers and staff may be the next phase in retail security theatre
Wednesday, 21 August 2024
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
Sunday, 14 July 2024
8x8 (11. 693)
priscila, queen of the rideshare mafia: the tale of a gig-economy pyramid scheme
fรชte nationale: a comprehensive list of what Americans and the French know about each other

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 dรฉjร vu, telepathy and incredulous serendipity
๐: 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
Friday, 5 April 2024
people don’t get better, they just get smarter—when you get smarter you don’t stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it (11. 469)
First published by on this day in 1974 by Double Day, and adapted into a film just two years later—with three cinematic versions and a musical to follow, the debut horror novel by high school teacher and
aspiring author, Stephen King, a moderate commercial success on first printing but became a best-seller upon release as a paperback by Signet Press and establishing not only King’s credentials as a writer but also the appetite for the genre. Set five years in the future in the New England village of Chamberlain, Maine, a sixteen-year old Carietta “Carrie” White is ridiculed by other girls in high school, the the oppressively religious home-life that’s left her sheltered, naive and guilt-ridden, constant bullying and humiliation eventually causing her to unleash her nascent telekinetic powers to destroy the school and the town. Dealing with universal themes of ostracism, vengeance and disaffirmation—society makes monsters and refuses to address their monstrous aspects, instead of the story ending with the federal government declaring a state of emergency for the devastated township and Congress launching the White Commission to study paranormal abilities, King’s original conclusion confirmed the religious mother’s suspicion of demonic possession, growing horns and continuing her destructive rampage—but was convinced to leave the nature of Carrie’s powers more of a mystery.one year ago: assorted links to revisit
two years ago: removing an obstacle to maritime navigation (1958) plus the bridgehead at Mainz
three years ago: more links to enjoy plus First Contact
four years ago: Easter Island, snaking walls, public health turns political plus Fox’ Sunday Night Line-Up
five years ago: more links worth revisiting plus metaphysical tools
Sunday, 24 March 2024
rush week (11. 449)
We thoroughly enjoyed this detailed review of the 1978 ABC made-for-television movie The Initiation of Sarah by Robert Day and starring Kay Lenz, a retreating wallflower (see also) over shadowed by her popular sister (Morgan Brittany) who discovers her latent paranormal powers after being admitted to the sonority on campus with less prestige, ฮฆฮฮ—referred to by the members of ฮฮฮฃ (Alpha-Nus) as “pigs, elephants and dogs”—with the encouragement of house matron, Shelly Winters. Discovering that the hazing ceremony will involve a human sacrifice, Lenz uses her telekinetic abilities to disrupt the initiations for the rival sonority as well as her own. Much more from Poseidon’s Underworld at the link up top.
Wednesday, 6 March 2024
over the psychic radio (11. 403)


one year ago: America’s Frozen Food Day plus assorted links to revisit
two years ago: more links to enjoy plus a LIFE parody in poor taste (1970)
three years ago: your daily demon: Seere, the Zapruder film, a Banksy mural plus more links worth the revisit
four years ago: the Pillar of the Boatmen, the winnowing oar plus negative reviews of the great outdoors
five years ago: hauntology, the Period Table (1869), even more links, the fashions of Edward Gorey plus Soviet home computers
Friday, 9 February 2024
lady wonder (11. 334)

Sunday, 21 January 2024
8x8 (11. 285)
80s chillpill: a nostalgic, slow-dance playlist
topdressing: an appreciation of the world’s “ugliest” utility airplane, the Airtruk, designed for crop-dusting in New Zealand—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest

these children aren’t french—they’re american: a retrospective look at the BBC’s language learning mascot Muzzy
night-climbers: John Bulmer’s photographs of a secretive group that scaled the campus of Cambridge under the cover of darkness—more here
crochet coral: an evolving nature and craft hybrid project to memorialise and raise awareness about our disappearing reef—see previously—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links
money pit: a tour of the world’s abandoned airports
doses & mimosas: a remix by Vintage Culture featuring Zerky