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.

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.

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  

paraiso de los gatos: the art of Remedios Varo  

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

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.

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  

🍿: an omnibus list of list on movies and television from the past year

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 Düsseldorf

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  

cleromancy: spiritual taverns that combine tarot and I Ching with cocktails are seeing growing popularity in China 

jeu de puce: fleas, chips and other observations on the 9ᵉ édition du Dictionnaire de l’Académie française 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 Cássio 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

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. 

Accredited to scrape data up to secret, the contract is being criticised for being in opposition to Anthropic’s motto of “show, don’t tell” oriented toward safe and ethical use of AI, and comes after a demonstration project by Peter Theil’s analytics platform (named for the magical, scrying palantíri, the far-seeing stones, of The Lord of the Rings used for communication across space and time—or to spread propaganda) for an insurance underwriter which cut down claims processing time from weeks to hours—the company also not disclosed and with no independent assessment of its success rate—and strikes one as something akin to a credit score and equally non-perspicacious. Another way of saving on man hours it takes to conduct this type of undertaking is to throw one’s workload in the garbage.

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

10x10 (11. 957)

þjappað vinnuviku: Iceland’s experiment with a shorted working week  

dénouement: examining the kishōtenketsu 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 gaudí 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

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

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

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. 

 synchronoptica

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

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, ΦΕΔ—referred to by the members of ΑΝΣ (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.

over the psychic radio (11. 403)

Via Messy Nessy Chic, we are introduced to journalist by trade Grant Wallace, feature writer and then war correspondent in the 1890s to the end of World War I for the San Francisco Chronicler and Examiner whom also dabbled extensively as a screenwriter, author, Esperantist and erstwhile occultist—the extent of this preoccupation discovered after his death in 1954 in a cabin he had built in the woods outside of Camel-by-the-Sea. Archive, repository and laboratory for telepathy, or mental radio as Wallace characterised it, he produced hundred of detailed charts and diagrams reminiscent of sixteenth century alchemical illustrations but with a distinctly Art Nouveau flair (see also)—influenced by contemporary Egyptomania—as heuristic models for study on reincarnation and mediumship, with the dead as well as extraterrestrials, transcribing some messages over the course of his mostly secret and solitary research. Much more at the links above.

synchronoptica

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

lady wonder (11. 334)

Born on this day in 1924 and later adopted as a weeks’ old filly by Clarence and Claudia Fonda of Richmond, Virginia, and trained by Mrs Fonda with children’s lettered wooden blocks before graduating to an oversized custom typewriter in hopes of establishing equine-human communication—see also—Lady Wonder was one of a number of famous clairvoyant horses, making several predictions for a massive visiting public over the course of the mare’s long life. The outcome of boxing matches, turns in the stock-market, presidential elections (credited with picking the winner for everyone for nearly three decades except Truman’s victory over Dewey, which pollsters and prognosticators couldn’t have guessed were popular subjects but also participated in police investigations, helping lead authorities to missing persons and solving cold cases. Though some skeptics concluded otherwise, parapsychologist J B Rhine assessed Lady Wonder’s psychic abilities, finding that telepathy and extrasensory perception were the only possible explanations. In 1952, the horse shared a by-line in Life magazine on an article about herself and other gifted animals.

synchronoptica

one year ago: colour-coding the Periodic Table plus an omnibus of Olympic pictographs

 

two years ago: assorted links to revisit, a 1982 hit from Trio plus more of the shorthand of Charles Dickens

three years ago: your daily demon: Andrealphus plus more links to enjoy

four years ago: an ancient game piece plus “splendid isolation”

five years ago: more emoji, the Iranian Revolution, emoji pointillism plus threshold curtains

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  

future-proof: an advertising campaign from a pen company in the early 1960s strangely forecasts our technological present 

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

stochastic parrot (11. 284)

Despite having encountered and cited the extremely apt coinage several times in various contexts beforehand, we realised that we never knew the term’s etymology—the leading part’s anyways—as coming from the Ancient Greek for something determined at random or derived from guesswork (στόχος—also a pillar to prop up a fishing net to mend it) from the office of the stokhastes attempting to predict an outcome by divination, later coming to mean a probabilistic conjecture or augury by allocation. Though a good word of caution against mimicry and anthropomorphising, it does perhaps underestimate the faculties and experience of our feathered friends. More from Language Log at the link above.

ascendant masters (11. 277)

The always excellent Linkfest from Clive Thompson directs us to revisit a 1905 theosophical volume co-authored by Annie Besant, orator, activist for Indian independence and atheist and later adherent of founder Madame Blavatsy, and CW Leadbeater, writer occultist and co-founder of the Liberal Catholic Church, called Thought-Forms, a study of how the human mind “extrudes” these visualisations of experiences, emotions and music into the external world, formed as subtle bodies observed by clairvoyants. Tinted by colour, sympathetic vibrations and the aether as expressions of quality, nature (like the pictured happy thoughts) and directedness, these manifestations are created either by feelings, experience, mediations or in their highest form, music, as in this vision formed from the operas of Charles-François Gounod. Whilst written for a specific, receptive audience, the astral diagrams have broader appeal and were influential to the world of modern, abstract art, particularly Wassily Kandinski, Piet Mondrian, and Hilma af Klint, and inform to an extent the concept of synaesthesia.

synchronoptica 

one year ago:the High Committee of the French Language plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: the musical stylings of Manuel Göttsching plus time flies

three years ago: Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday and Martin Luther King Jr 

four years ago: railbanked railroads, separating entertainment and news plus more links to enjoy

five years ago: more links worth the revisit plus performance of the Diva Dance from Fifth Element

a harry alan towers production (11. 179)

Premiering on this day on Comedy Central in 1993, the 1988 sequel, The Outlaw of Gor, is given the MST3K treatment (previously) and showcases the return of the hero Tarl Cabot to the far-off science-fiction, fantasy realm to suppress the designs of the ambitious and wicked queen and her priest-sorcerer in a role reprised by Jack Palance in a series of ridiculous headgear. Loosely based on the series by writer John Norman, the professor and his colleague are transported back to the realm by the Elders using the Home Stone, this episode was screened at several college campuses before its air-date and featured the last invention exchange with Deep-13, ostensibly to recognise the new host’s technical short-comings. 

synchronoptica

 

one year ago: the Kyoto Protocol plus a plan to drain the Mediterranean to flood the desert

 

two years ago: Apollo 17 (1972), assorted links to revisit, a modern gargoyle plus Lily the Pink (1968)

three years ago: we’ve been zucked, science explainers in crochet form plus more links to enjoy

four years ago: 52 more lessons gleaned plus articles of impeachment drawn up for Trump

five years ago: a decisive Brexit vote, subterranean ecosystems, the art of Geoffroy de Crecy, COP 24 plus the inventor of the View-Master

brothers grimmaverse (11. 141)

Apparently there’s a not so subtle effort on the part of Disney to retroactively canonise their range of intellectual property to make every character a part of the same cinematic, fairy tale paracosm. In the new musical fantasy film Wish (made to celebrate the company’s centenary), the protagonist Princess Asha and her rival King Magnifico (with plenty of other references to Snow White) have a final encounter (spoiler alert, I guess) to stop the corrupt sorcerer ruler in this wish-granting based economy concluding as an origin story with the former becoming the Fairy Godmother to Cinderella and the latter trapped in a mirror dimension for eternity and the servant, council of the wicked and cold-hearted stepmother of Schneewittchen. We wonder what other connections might be forced (to get in on the Pixar Theory where events do seem to occur in a shared univere) down the road and mucking about with the timeline. Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Aldi’s aisle of shame, Casablanca (1942), the first Christmas film (1898) plus a century (+ 1) of Charles Schultz

two years ago: an undeciphered message hiding in plain sight, assorted links to revisit, a flag-pole maker plus When Harry Met Santa

three years ago: another MST3K classic, more links to enjoy, a sketch a day plus an Austrian village with an explicit name

four years ago: calling a contested presidential election (2000), Anarchy in the UK (1976), criticism directed towards the partition of the Ottoman Empire, the aesthetics of vapourwave plus IKEA designs homeware for Martians

five years ago: merit-based immigration, a map of Britain’s fictional places, the Scandinavian “snowflake” pattern, clever Christmas decorations plus more links worth the revisit