mythical reel pull (13. 227)

Through there’s possibly no longer such a thing as serendipity and salvation in the endless feed with the machine knowing better and better what’s a hook for fleeting attention, there was once a belief in algorithmancy as a form of divination when scrollers were blessed or cursed with a presentation so jarring and out-of-keeping with the content bubble of one’s usual FYP fare. Though these incidents of benighted and inscrutable magic seem to be the antithesis of traditional bibliomancy and other forms of divination with an injection of chaos built into the calculus—some pseudo-random variables or tenuous connection that evades linkage—there is on a certain level the same pretended element of chance as with thumbing through a well-worn tome to land on an inspired or affirmative passage—the rhythm of flipping through a book, bindings and subtle dog ears make the process less random and more resonant in the dissonance. There’s strong appeal sometimes in being told what to do. It has been a minute but we suspect one’s feed has not been completely disenchanted.

the white witch of burley (13. 222)

Courtesy of Weird Universe, we are introduced to the enigmatic figure of Sybil Leek (*1917 - †1982) who made an enduring mark on the quaint New Forest village first with a robust chain of antique shops that dominated the local market, astrologer and then occult practitioner through her latter day cookbook and dietary guide according to one’s zodiacal sign—some people appreciate the nudge. Her eccentricities generated a lot of attention for the village from the 1940s to the early 1960s but not all the publicity was well-received as an early advocate for women’s rights, environmental stewardship and her generally stoic philosophy when it came to embracing what most liberated women (see below) were accused of being, with her landlord ultimately refusing to renew her leases, prompting Leek to emigrate to the United States and settling in Florida, where her penchant for the esoteric had more receptive audience, turning to prediction and her capacity for premonition and mediumship, authoring more books and appearing regularly on the psychic and parapsychology circuit—though astrological readings were still her mainstay. Trained in the dark arts, Leek did not believe in curses and only channeled the benevolent side of her power, she had a genius level IQ and argued that her spiritual practise was not a dramatic thing, as most perceived it—just quiet mediation instead of prayer. More at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit, the Covenant of the Goddess (with synchronopticæ), US Peace Corps founded (1961) plus pastel studies of the planets

twelve years ago: GCHQ’s operation Optic Nerve, Andy Warhol’s album cover art, storing energy in massive marbles plus Agnes of God

fourteen years ago: privacy and social media plus more dragnet surveillance and the US security jabberwocky

fifteen years ago: complimentary vexillology plus spaghetti rice

sixteen years ago: naming storms  

seventeen years ago: the month’s namesake 

wonderful deeds and doings of little giant boab (13. 158)

Via Miss Cellania, were are directed towards the lawyer, diplomatic consul to the Kingdom of Hannover and children’s author Ingersoll Lockwood whose fiction seems to eerily predict the rise of the god emperor and dynastic aspirations—see previously, although it appears that that Bene Gesserit reverend mother, Ghislaine Maxwell, was only interested in producing the Kwisatz Haderach of paedophiles. Establishing a practise in New York City after the conclusion of his foreign posting (appointed by Abraham Lincoln), Lockwood found a second calling as a lecturer and writer, authoring Travels and adventures of Little Barron Trump and his wonderful dog Bulger in 1889, with a sequel, the Marvellous Underground Journey four years later. Received by educators and his target readership with indifference and derivative rather than inspired by the works of Lewis Carroll, the two volumes were all but forgotten until their rediscovery in 2016 and 2017 with the similarities to the once and future president and his issue, Barron (the pseudonym “John Barron” was also used by Drumpf in the 1980s) with the title character, a young German boy called Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Von Troomp, styled as Baron Trump, secreting away from the family estate to strange lands (first to Russia), offending natives and getting into entanglements with local women, escaping back to Trump Castle before he can be missed and repeating the adventures night after night. In 1896, in the run-up to the contested presidential election, Lockwood wrote his third and last novel, one with a decidedly more dystopian theme called 1900; or, the Last President, which we hope is not as prescient, of a near-future NYC torn by riots and protests following the shocking victory of a populist candidate who brings about the collapse of the republic.

synchronoptica

one year ago: futuristic sleepwear (with synchronopticæ), French cocktail hour plus Trump’s return-to-office mandate

twelve years ago: a recipe for kuri squash soup, strategic positive thinking plus an ostentatious bishop

thirteen year ago: the mediatisation of church land in Germany, the sense of smell in fish plus Germany debates fracking

fourteen years ago: the launch of the He-Man franchise 

fifteen years ago: machines talk back 

sixteen years ago: Germany combats tax evasion 

seventeen years ago: neglected social media profiles 

listen to the cassandras (13. 044)

Via Kottke, we are invited to bookend this tumultuous year in geopolitics by taking a look back and a look forward to those who saw all this coming but were dismissed and maligned as scare-mongers by a growing movement of anti-alarmists through the lens of Greek myth appropriate for this tragedy befallen illiberal democracy. Writing for The New Republic, Toby Buckle addresses our collective infuriation by asking the reader to imagine being transported back in time to July of 2015, just after Trump announced his candidacy against Clinton. With the gift of hindsight but the curse of Cassandra—footnotes to Homer, you cannot prove you are from the future and are at a loss to convince anyone to take your warnings seriously. Were you to disclose the horror of the next decade, Trump’s election, the botched job handling the pandemic, the January Sixth insurrection, Trump’s reelection, the MAGA takeover of the Republican party, DOGE, soldiers on the streets, realignment of the world order, mass deportations, deflection, overturning civil and reproductive rights, etc, etc, etc and arriving at the Epstein files and at full-on fascism after eleven months, you would be rightly dismissed as hysterical, delusional to past people and regarded like the prophetess of Troy, given the ability to foresee events by Apollo but condemned never to be believed for not requiting the deity’s advances. Cassandras of course are not all women or the marginalised (though there is a certain element of pathologising misogyny with its anti-alarmist corollary being seen as masculine and reasonable) but comprise a majority of individuals of all sorts of backgrounds, but it’s a pejorative term used to shut down insight—and dialogue—and when used by the press as a scold is essentially a concession to meet the Nazis half-way. Though her story is the more familiar and sadly repeated to no effect one, Cassandra did have one lesser known compatriot, partisan in believing the Trojan horse was bad news in high priest Laocöon (see above), sharing Cassandra’s suspicions and begged his countrymen to light a fire under the horse to prove it’s not a trap. For his meddling, Laocöon was struck blind by Athena, whom was not on the Trojans’ side, and then he and his sons were strangled by a pair of sea-serpents for dramatic effect. The denizens rather took this divine punishment as proof that the priest was wrong to doubt the beneficence of Greeks bearing gifts. “Boy do I hate being always right…” more individual profiles in courage from Buckle at the link up top.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a year’s worth of data-driven observations (with synchronopticæ) plus more on effervescence 

twelve years ago: Norwegian New Year’s greetings 

thirteen years ago: New Year’s greetings 

fourteen years ago: pyrotechnics plus a bleak economic assessment for the coming year

fifteen years ago: lucky charms 

sixteen years ago: 2009 in review

7x7 (12. 878)

breaking rust: Billboard’s top country-genre song is AI generated slop—see previously  

crown jewels: Hapsburg family to display to the public a secret, personal stash of treasures hidden in Canada since WWII  

grist for the mill: all the commercial, off-kilter blogs were private-equitied out of existence—via Kottke  

mecces: visiting a McDonald’s in West Berlin in 1984 

s-money: a 1963 patent to replace US paper currency with square plastic wafers—see previously, see also here and here 

the call of the first æthyr: occult poetry by Aleister Crowley (see previously) delivered in his only known recording  

poice: Sora created videos of fake immigration raids in the US infest Facebook

the farthest shore (12. 828)

As for other authors of the genre, the business of world building is a key first step, and no exception for godmother of high fantasy-fiction Ursula K LeGuin (previously here and here) who meticulously charted out her complex, layered narratives before populating them with her characters. Along the same lines as Le Guin’s pithy quote about how people who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by them—“from within”—mapping out her domains has an immediate impact: “I saw and named Earthsea and all its islands. I knew almost nothing about the but I knew their names. In the name is magic.” More on the exhibition from Hyperallergic at the link above.

10x10 (12. 780)

third amendment rights: ICE officers and associates beg to use the restroom  

dance this mess around: Cardhouse’s 2025 mixtape session—see previously 

anti-deficiency act: an omnibus of reports on the US federal government shutdown, including the threat to withhold back-pay from disloyal workers  

any dream of avarice: a historical comparison of the world’s wealthiest individuals—see also  

angry little clouds: Bob Ross paintings (see previously here and here) to be auctioned off to US support public broadcasters after federal funding cut  

the weight of a city: revisiting the idea of gradually x-raying a spot off-limits with ghostly cosmic particles through imagined and inspired celestial espionage  

permanent polycrisis: Curios Brain’s trends for 2026 of sustained chaos counterbalanced with the end of coincidence 

a good mix of the apocalypse and looney tunes: Thomas Pynchon (previously) has been warning us about American fascism his whole literary career 

r u experienced: a glorious re-upload of Devo’s 1984 cover of the Jimi Hendrix song  

in the land of the dollar bill: Trump threatens to arrest the mayor of Chicago for failing to protect immigration agents and invoke the Insurrection Act as he goes full authoritarian

synchronoptica

one year ago: boating on the Röblinsee (with synchronopticæ)

twelve years ago: fiat currency plus extending the sacrament to divorced Catholics

thirteen years ago: making crespelle 

how could this happen? we started out like romeo and juliet but it ended up in tragedy! (12. 463)

Via ibīdem, 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, Sœur 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.

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

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.

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 (互录, 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 pharmakós, a object that could absorb bad luck and be cast out—from the same Greek root as drugs, potions and spells.

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