Receiving its popular-become-historic designation on this day as a result of a poll conducted by the American survey company Gallup in 1942, with—no spoilers—the 1914-1918 global conflict referred to as “The Great War” or the “European War” by the US until they entered it in earnest in 1917, there were plenty of journalistic antecedents for calling the new crisis World War II, imbuing by force of habit, in much the same way we refer to contemporary geopolitical struggles as World War III, both hyperbolically and litotically. US president FDR called it such in press conferences but not particularly liking the term as too neutral and nothing one could get behind, he directed Gallup to ask the public. Roosevelt’s own suggestion was the Survival War, with the War for Civilisation or the War against Enslavement being other contenders—compare with the Soviet name, “The Great Patriotic War.” After fighting had subsided in Europe and the war was ending in the Pacific Theatre, FDR’s predecessor Harry S Truman signed a request in September of 1945 from his Secretary of War to make it official.
Sunday 28 April 2024
Tuesday 23 April 2024
7x7 (11. 509)
betteridge’s law: the legacy of Alfred Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe, and commoditising fascinating factiods to sell newspapers
congestion pricing: overtourism and its consequences
disclose, divest: on the 1968 anniversary of the protest that ousted the university’s president and established the student body senate, activism on Columbia’s campus is again in the national spotlight over Palestinegrace period: America’s addiction to credit cards
zoonosis: concern rises over avian flu as it appears in cows and wild animal communities
nonstop flight: the epic migration of the Bar-tailed Godwit and the engineering of feathers—via the New Shelton wet/dry
catch-and-kill: deal to bury stories unfavourable to Trump by tabloid The National Enquirer was an “agreement between friends”
Sunday 21 April 2024
10x10 (11. 503)
knock, knock, knock—who’s there: the authorship debate between William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson over the joke format
charlotte braun: the untimely demise of the Peanuts’ foil to Charlie Brown
io: Juno space probe reveals a gigantic lava lake on the Jovian satellite’s surface
he mad: Trump has to sit quietly through court proceedings
occult chemistry: a 1908 theosophical text by Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater with diagrams by Curuppumullage Jinarajadasa
captive market: private equity comes after US prison commissaries
democracy dies in darkness: news media and the paywall dilemma
the colour of pomegranates: more on Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov
is this a red flag: the Jane Eyre edition
synchronoptica
one year ago: more efforts to offset Labour Day plus a hitch-hiking companion on a Martian rover
two years ago: another classic from Prince (1985), the burial place of the Red Baron plus Disney and the culture wars
three years ago: the Tomorrow Show with special guest, duplexes in the Rรผhrhgebiet plus a mystery photo
four years ago: the Principality of Hutt, the founding of Rome (753 BC), a curatorial showdown, MS DOS coding, oil prices go negative, Texas exploits a crisis plus the Sabre Dance
five years ago: Easter greetings plus a return visit to the Völkerschlachtdenkmal
Friday 19 April 2024
9x9 (11. 499)
pumping iron: Technogym invites forty artists to reinterpret its exercise bench for Milan Design Week
wikipedia rectangles: a collage of images sourced from the Commons subdivides one’s screen in increasing smaller sections of disparate pictures—via Web Curios
the microcosm of london: an illustrated three-volume set by Rudolph Ackermann showcasing the public spaces of the capital๐: the massive Quilt for Palestine unveiled at the Met
rundown royale: a look at the family tree of Charlemagne, the Father of Europe—via Miss Cellania
ulnar nerve: the etymology of the expression funny bone and variants—including the Swedish terms enkelstรถt/รคnkestรถt
dua lipa stuns as congressional gerrymander: that and other headlines from Super Punch
from our correspondents: World Press Photo contest captures destruction and devastation
the revolution will not be biennalised: the withdrawal of the Israeli pavilion in Venice was performative and opportunistic
catagories: ๐ฎ๐น, ๐, ๐, ๐จ, ๐♀️, ๐, ๐ท, ๐️, libraries and museums, Middle East, networking and blogging, ⓦ
Thursday 18 April 2024
10x10 (11. 496)
the cloud under the seas: the fleet of secret submarine cable repair ships
sarbox: US Supreme Court appears skeptical about charging January Sixth rioters with obstruction of justice as defined by a law made in the aftermath of the Enron accounting scandal
mix-and-match orthography: how Japanese writers navigate a choice between four writing systems (see also)—via Cardhouse
walled gardens have deep roots: the imperative of rewilding (previously) the internet lest the duopolies take over—via Waxybongo bash: Wild Stereo Drums (1961)
embroidered surveillance: cross-stitch works of closed-circuit security camera footage
the questor tapes: a 1974 television sci-fi drama about an android with incomplete programming by Star Trek alumni Gene L Coon, D C Fontana and Gene Roddenberry—via r/Obscure Media
tegelwippen: Dutch towns compete to remove garden paving and embrace weeds—via Miss Cellania
voir dire: jury selection continues for the criminal trial of Donald J Trump—with some potential jurors being unintentionally doxed by the media
atlas 2.0: Boston Dynamics’ new humanoid robot
synchronoptica
one year ago: Atelier Elvira, an unwoke chatbot plus assorted links worth revisiting
two years ago: more gachapons plus an introduction to risography
three years ago: the launch of the Disney Channel (1983), an experimental light house plus Wham in China (1985)
four years ago: more links to enjoy, the International Amateur Radio Union plus The Spirits Book (1897)
five years ago: concrete monoliths moved by hand plus Mueller Report redactions
Tuesday 16 April 2024
hearts and minds (11. 494)
An 1959 early spring testimony before an American senate subcommittee on the effects of “Red China Communes on the United States” by an Asian correspondent for the Miami News intent on self-promotion and advancing a misinformed pet theory firmly solidified the neologism of brainwashing (with derivative terms) as common political parlance. The deposition by the reporter turned propagandist (alleged a covert CIA agent) against the spread of Communism convinced the public and policy-makers that the Chinese (and others) had devised a scientific method for turning people’s love and allegiances, allegedly uncovering the method of “mind-attack” and their word for, “brain-washing.” The original term xวnวo (ๆด่ ฆ, “wash brain”) was employed to describe the coercive persuasion used by the Maoist to integrate more reactionary members of society and was a popular pun, not an official policy or approach, on the Taoist custom of xวxฤซn (ๆดๅฟ , “cleaning the heart and mind”) with both understood to be something more akin to enlightenment, disabusing and not the reprogramming or deprogramming that captured the American public, with the help of the journalist’s tract, other reporting and films and television as well as the Zeitgeist of the Red Scare and sinophobia, fears that loyalties were susceptible to nefarious and scientifically compelling influences that caused collaboration and defection. For all the pseudoscience and propagandising, brainwashing did fill a linguist and psychological lacuna, a gap that was packed with the attendant moral panic and supposed countermeasures with psychological warfare and the rise of home-grown, domestic cults that subsumed what they purported to prevent. More from MIT Technology Review at the link up top. Why don’t you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?
catagories: ๐จ๐ณ.๐ฌ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, ๐️, ๐ง
Monday 15 April 2024
wunderzeichen (11. 490)
We quite enjoyed pursuing this collection of sixteenth century German woodcuts cataloguing ominous signs in the heavens, the unexplained and inexplicable occurring with enough frequency to create a carve-out—and still does—parallel to the nascent publishing industry for special bound editions of pamphlets and broadsheets circulated on the topic, “wonder books” as sort of a personal log to curate, update and hand down of the phenomena, preserving an otherwise ephemeral record of strange occurrences happening too often to otherwise commit to the historical record, sightings and encounters spurred on by sightings and sermonising speculation that was also propelled by the printing-press. Much more from Public Domain Review at the link up top.
Monday 1 April 2024
aprilschertz (11. 462)
Reprinted from an uncredited German magazine in LIFE in 1938 shortly after the day of pranks, the accompanying blurb and recognises the tradition in the foreign press (see also here and here) in this innovation of a beetle that can repair runs in stockings and acknowledges that domestic newspapers have fallen for the hoaxes in the past, with Germany’s news outlets practising more discretion, restraint when it comes to political jokes and sticking with the absurd.
kcang (11. 461)
From midnight on—and no Aprilscherz—having cleared the huddles of passage by the Bundesrat and Bundestag and committee mediation in mid-March, persuaded by cautious agreements that former drugs policies and prohibitions have failed to curb abused, overburdened authorities and the legal system and created a black market, Germany has enacted a national decriminalisation plan for marijuana (Gesetzes zum Umgang mit Konsumcannabis, Abkรผrzung oben), allowing for adults to be in possession of up to twenty-five grams for their own consumption in public as well as fifty additional grams on their premises and up to three plants for cultivation, as well as permits for cannabis clubs with limited membership from 1 July.
synchronoptica
one year ago: assorted links to revisit plus a park of deplorable political figures
two years ago: more links to enjoy, re-sending the Arecibo Message plus the postcodes of London
three years ago: hellebore, The Abominable Dr Phibes, same-sex marriage in the Netherlands (2001), San Serrife, a space-plane prototype plus Uruguayan graphic design
four years ago: more concatenation, Soviet era animation, house-arrest plus an action play-set
five years ago: Substance, a post-Brexit healing czar plus Canterbury Tales
Monday 18 March 2024
7x7 (11. 435)
deadwooding: Banksy acknowledges authorship of a new mural bringing back some greenery to an aggressive prune tree in Finsbury Park
subspace: an ultra high-definition video of a cat chasing a laser-pointer was beamed over thirty million kilometres to improve future video calls to the Moon and Marsrunning-stitch: beautiful embroidered portraits from Karola Pezarro
deadspin: more on the internet’s undead, reanimated by private equity and name recognition—see previously, see more
bunga bunga: Italy’s Foreign Press Association to move into former home of Silvio Berlusconi, who famously disparaged reporters as Communists
honeytrap: Aphra Behn’s intersecting careers as a professional writer and spy
sequoiadendron giganteum: imported by the Victorians as status symbols, Giant Redwoods (see also) are thriving in the UK at more than half-a-million and growing
Tuesday 12 March 2024
███████ ██ ████████ (11. 417)
In collaboration with the Electronic Free Foundation, Muckrock (previously) has just announced its annual Foilies award winners, recognising the most egregious instances of US government violating the precept of the public record. Ahead of their also recurring Sunshine Week to champion the importance of transparency and access, this tenth iteration really featured some strong resistance to FOIA requests, doubly depressing considering the death of local journalism and advocacy outlets, flouting disclosure requirements of the law. From attempt to tag a cache of email correspondence with the label “NO FOIA” in hopes to keep fraud from the public eye or attempts to reveal corruption and mismanagement met with ingratitude to zealous librarians checking out books themselves to keep them out of circulation while bans for certain literary works were still pending court challenges and politicians trying to keep secret their travel expenses. These achievements, both large and small, have impact, and are not bailiwick of lawyers and reporters, only requiring determination. Learn more at the link above.
Monday 11 March 2024
000_34L82nw britain-royals (11. 415)
Whilst speculation about the whereabouts and fate of Kate Middleton not seen in public since a Christmas engagement has run rampant, with alleged sightings in the unlikeliest of places including the Wonka Experience, a family photograph posted on Mothering Sunday has backfired and done little to quiet the rumours after the wire-services issued a mandatory kill-notice to remove the image released by Kensington Palace due to an editorial issue and possible manipulation. The Princess of Wales later admitted to doing the touch-up work herself and apologised for the lightly edited portrait taken (see also) by the prince for causing such controversy and at a time when all the principal royals are out of the picture and not performing public duties, it only fuels conjecture, sometimes to wild conclusions.
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
Thursday 29 February 2024
6x6 (11. 388)
365,2422: an explanation of leap years and calendar alternatives
ladies’ privilege: leap day customs—via Strange Company29 february: more on the necessity of quadrennial correction—see previously
la bougie du sapeur est sans reproche: the satirical French newspaper published only on leap days, making it the most infrequent publications in print, with its next Sunday supplement not out until 2032
intercalary days: holiday drift and other events that happen every four years
366: a scheduled agenda and play-list list how one might celebrate the day from the last time we had one—be happy that tomorrow is not 30 February
synchronoptica
four years ago: the sacrifice of the village of Elam in Plague Times
eight years ago: a vocabulary lesson, lodges of the Hakka region plus on trial for destruction of precious cultural property
twelve years ago: more quadrennial events
Sunday 25 February 2024
11x11 (11. 380)
sure, write stuff for free—but write it for yourself: maintaining one’s creativity in the bleak media sector brickwalling and the loss of journalistic records
rage-baiting: viral Tik-Tok couple troll influencer culture with such precision most don’t realise it’s satire—via Super Punch
the paint explainer: a primer on the twenty-seven amendments to the US Constitution—via Memo of the Air
dark dimensions: there’s a new theory about where dark matter might be hiding
the sony smartwig: a 2016 patent granted for a connected hairpiece one pairs with their phone for tactile feedbackthe navel on an orange is a mutation that created a conjoined twin: weird information to dispense on a first date—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links
the riker manoeuvre: small towns with monuments to Star Trek characters—via Marginal Revolution
selectric funeral: the Boston Typewriter Orchestra hopes to appear in NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert with this submission
awful yet lawful: US Supreme Court to entertain grievances on social media moderation for deplatforming hateful and dangerous content
multi-level marketing: a supercut of huckster Donald Trump’s merchandising scams
you can out-buzzfeed buzzfeed after all: media group in takeover talks with UK’s The Independent—see previously
Friday 23 February 2024
10x10 (11. 374)
walden 7: photographer Sebastian Weiss captures the epic nature of an outstanding apartment block in Barcelona
shootball: January Sixth themed pinball machines and other Republican swag at the Conservative Political Action Conference—see previously
swimming with sharks: an overview of the hidden terror that’s haunted, informed humanity for millenniagoogle blobs: the animated emoji character set that ought to be brought back—via Web Curios
38°n: a news source on North Korea rex melly: the riches of Mansa Musa of the Mail Empire—adjusting for inflation and other factors, possibly the wealthiest person in history
shift to socials: Vice Media is folding, laying off hundreds of journalists—via Waxy—see more
pale usher: introducing a blog mini-series on Moby Dick with a curious etymology
every sperm is sacred: following the ruling in Alabama that grants personhood to frozen embryos—and the subsequent suspension of IVF treatment for fear of legal implications—conservative think tank forming Trump’s policy wants to end recreational sex
batpole: homes with alternate stairwells—see previously
Friday 16 February 2024
forgive me if this sounds pompous, but it’s better to die standing up than live on your knees (11. 354)
Against the backdrop of the Munich Security Conference during which his widow was scheduled to speak, the Russian presidential election less than a month away, Trump’s rubbishing of the NATO alliance, the US withholding foreign aid for Ukraine and the prospect of another term locked, vocal critic of Vladimir Putin and official corruption Alexei Navalny has been found dead in the remote arctic penal colony where he has been transferred recently, detained for the past three years, foregoing exile in Germany. Recuperating from a case of poisoning in 2021 that was blamed on the Kremlin, Navalny choose to return to Russia and register to run for the presidency (having finished in a close second against the incumbent mayor of Moscow in 2013 despite the backing of Putin’s political machine) and accept almost certain arrest in order to continue his oppositional stance. Navalny was serving a nineteen year sentence, charged with the crime of extremism.
Wednesday 14 February 2024
9x9 (11. 351)
planisphere: explore the fifteenth century Mappa Mundi—made by a Venetian cartographer and monk map who never left the lagoon
high rollers: the character and history of burlesque showsrobots.txt: a tiny text file that has been the underpinnings of the internet is unravelling due to AI
a load-bearing day: the confluence of several celebrations, including Ash Wednesday (be furiousing rather than fasting), Valentine’s and the Luni-Solar New Year
my unfortunate incarceration: the abundant prison-tech alliance is a brutal harbinger of what’s to come
bulletisation: the functional literacy crisis in reading comprehension—via the morning news
service sector: some large companies requiring AI-informed personality tests for vacancy applicants
disco vicar: some Anglican churches and cathedrals opening for parties
news deserts: explore local journalism and those newsrooms hanging on—via Maps Mania
news cycle (11. 350)
The US presidential campaign season has been underway for a long, long time already and with ten months to go, we are already feeling the fatigue and feeling a bit overwhelmed keeping up with it all, and it’s remarkable to notice how much is already packed into the events of one day. Whilst arguably from the present perspective of just a few days hence it does not quite rise to the constellation of reporting on the seventh of October 2016 that saw the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, Obama announcing Russian election meddling, a possible case of Kompromat for Trump and the leak of Clinton’s campaign manager’s emails, incredibly the backhanded and cruel exoneration of Joe Biden for retaining classified materials over his perceived failing memory and mental acuity, was overshadowed by Donald Trump, speaking at a campaign rally, nearly simultaneously, dragging out a tied and false accusation of the NATO alliance being full of freeloaders dependent on the US and taking advantage of its largess, not only said that he would not defend a fellow member under attack by Russia, he would moreover encourage the invasion. While some media outlets are refusing to turn their attention from Biden’s gaffes and lapses—pulled selectively and from testimony given during interviews conducted (also on 7 October) just as Hamas began incursions into Israel, and some still take a dismissive tone on Trump’s words, the rest of the world is understandably grim and anxious at the thought of another term.
Tuesday 13 February 2024
9x9 (11.348)
unwanted legacy: Russia puts Estonian prime minister on wanted list for dismantling monuments to Soviet soldiers
banned book rainbow: LeVar Burton hosts a very special episode on books banned by adults who don’t want kids to learn, grow or change—via Kottkeclothesline, skyline: a look at Shanghai’s ubiquitous outdoors drying racks
blinkerwall: ten-thousand year old megastructure in the Baltic could be Europe’s oldest
everynoise: layoffs and downsizing at Spotify spell the end of the serendipitous musical encyclopaedia—see previously
essentially cenobitical: one year in the life of a part time hermit—via the new Shelton wet/dry
running amoc: the trajectory of the climate catastrophe blows past a calamitous tipping-point
clearing the docket: upcoming inflection points in the criminal cases against Trump
portal kombat: French authorities uncover a vast Russian disinformation network designed to overwhelm fact checkers