In what’s become an annual treat, Tom Whitwell again shares fifty-two items he has gleaned from the past year. In the compilation, drawn from experiencing editing projects for Fluxx / Medium, Whitwell’s shared new facts learned include that daily over a million images of coffee grinds are uploaded to a fortune reading app (the process of divination called tasseomancy), advice on how to solicit better answers, the MSG hoax, the truth behind the mystery seeds from China hysteria, and a few we’ve previously covered like how cowpox vaccine was transported around the world, traditional Japanese microseasons, how film was formulated to privilege lighter complexions, and how the threshhold effect applies even to a doorway on screen. Many more astonishing correlations at the links above—do let us know your favourites.
Saturday 4 December 2021
Wednesday 1 December 2021
7x7
dress rehearsal: for a quarter of a century, an individual attended his own funeral
dominical letters: how the artificial unit of the week came to govern our lives—see also
carceral publications: a collection of US prison newspapers
yes or no questions: celebrate the conclusion of Futility Closet’s eight plus year run with a final episode of lateral thinking puzzles
hvorugkynsnafnorรฐ: despite progress in the choices for human naming conventions, the Icelandic governing body for horses is still highly gendered
regenerative medicine: researchers develop “xenobots” capable of biological self-replication—via Waxy
amigone: aptly named mortuary services—via Super Punch
Sunday 7 November 2021
four seasons total documentary
Via Miss Cellania, we are treated to a preview of the documentary, premiering in full on the occasion of the press conference’s one year anniversary, about the venue (see previously here and here) booked by the Trump campaign by mistake that became a media sensation from the perspective of the landscapers that ensured the boon and bane of viral fame.
Saturday 6 November 2021
9x9
the audience effect: fellow blogger and internet caretaker Duck Soup passes a million page-views
ะณัะฐัะธัะบะธ ะดะธะทะฐัะฝ: celebrating the works of three pioneering Serbian graphic designers and topographers
mountain view: a prop gravesite used for film and television, interred and disinterred thousands of times, in a very real cemetery
subject matter expert: the street photography of Eric Kogan—via the morning newsutter rubbish: traumatising photographs of the garbage, sometimes neatly knolled, that humans produce
the briefing: a definitive guide to COP 26
greased falcon: a fan-channel dedicated to Star Wars! The Musical (2008)
time in a bottle: hackers are amassing encrypted data in the hopes that within a few years, quantum computers will be able to unlock it—via Slashdot
return to comfort town: more on brilliant housing development in Kyiv inspired by building blocks—see previously
Sunday 26 September 2021
bundestagswahl 2021
Monday 20 September 2021
gwot
With the current climate twenty years on and comparable numbers of lives lost and lives impacted on a daily basis due to the pandemic and our trenchant, asocial behaviour and a resurgent Taliban controlling Afghanistan, it feels a bit hollow marking the anniversaries of the events that unfolded domestically and internationally in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 Attacks. The Bush doctrine, however—first characterised to the press as a “war of terrorism” on 16 September and then presented formally as a global “war on terror” in an address to a joint-session of the US Congress on this day in 2001, labeling “our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them” has an outsized legacy that impacts nearly every aspect of our lives. Despite consternation and criticism with this approach, the policy went forward with consequences around the world. Though his predecessor, US President Barak Obama, avoided the term and declared the conflict over on 23 May 2013, stating the that the US military forces and intelligence agencies could not and would prosecute a war against a tactic, instead styling the commitment as world police as Overseas Contingency Operations and substantively continuing, even expanding America’s role.
Saturday 18 September 2021
avoirdupois
Via Slashdot, as the Independent reports because of Brexit—as if EU standards were the sole compelling reason that the UK was harmonised with the standard that (nearly) the rest of the world uses—that should legislation pass, markets and shops will be able to opt out of metric units and regress to customary measures. Albeit as valuable as the colour of one’s passport, in reality the matter is more complicated and bound in other treaties including with the International Organisation of Legal Metrology, agreeing that only one official system of measurement be used.
amerithrax
Beginning a week after the 9/11 attacks and continuing over the next month, a bioterrorist—likely a scientist at the US government’s biodefense and research labs in Fort Detrick, Maryland—posted letters laced with anthrax spores to several media outlets and the offices of two US senators, killing five individuals, mostly mailroom staff and infecting a further dozen with the bacteria. Compared to the hunt for the Unabomber for its range and time to identify a culprit and motive, the FBI operation named with the above portmanteau pursued a number of false leads, the attacks spawning, several copycat hoaxes. The notes in the envelops which purported to come from a non-existent grade school contained variations on the message:
09-11-01
YOU CANNOT STOP US.
WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX.
YOU DIE NOW.
ARE YOU AFRAID?
DEATH TO AMERICA.
&c.
Al Qaeda and Iraq initially blamed, focus not turning to the possibility that it was a domestic actor within the government until 2006, forensic geneotyping just reaching the sophistication needed to trace the particular bacterial strain back to its source, though the ordered destruction of all anthrax stockpiles limited the chance for future research into the crime. The US mail service is still hyper-vigilant over suspicious packages and prone to false-alarms.
Thursday 16 September 2021
weeklypedia
Whilst admittedly many newsletters become something to ignored, deleted or at best skimmed over, greymail that one forgot one subscribed to, we were intrigued by this tip to receive a weekly run-down of the most edited articles and pages on the platform. From the same team at Hat Note that brought us the innovative experience Listening to Wikipedia, this is an effective way of wrapping up and reviewing the past seven days in news and culture.
Saturday 11 September 2021
the dead internet theory
On this anniversary which has propounded two Forever Wars (one of which capitalised on the 9/11 terror attacks to as a pretext to invade Iraq with the media mostly obliging, a misdirection that prised open for some a credibility chasm), the panopticon of the surveillance state, xenophobia, sectarianism, intolerance, violence, bloodshed all at a very dear price with the most treacherous legacy perhaps being the exportable cult of conspiracy theorists that first emerged as Truthers, then morphed into Birthers, Pizzagate, QAnon and whatever atrocity is next in the line of succession, we are presented a new one positing that the world wide web, acknowledging that the majority of traffic is bot driven, did die the death approximately five years ago and what remains is not all an elaborate hoax but rather a platform almost entirely dominated by artificial intelligence. Weighted interaction, with human engagement or robotic attention-seeking seems to matter little ultimately in a world of detached rankings and recursive references, but what if since 2016, the web and its various walled-gardens was depopulated and replaced with neural network propagandists, influencers and marketers? It’s patently ridiculous and like most “independent research” lurches to the territory of unhinged and offensive but the veiled unreality of it all makes it intriguing and a challenge to disprove, and with no prevailing mainstream narrative to counter the arc of conservation, evidence, it is garnering traction. There’s more than a kernel of truth to the manipulative, unrestrained and inhumanly automated nature of social media and shadow profiles created to supplement the personalities of those who don’t participate sufficiently. Not that the metaverse was ever particularly welcoming, it certainly seems uninviting if made by and for people-pleasing machines.
catagories: ๐, ๐ค, ๐ง , 1993, networking and blogging
Tuesday 7 September 2021
spoiler candidate
Via Super Punch, we are directed to reporting from the Guardian on opposition candidate standing for the Duma from St. Petersburg, Boris Vishnevsky, is facing two other contenders running with not only nearly identical names (they’ve preserved their patronymics), his challengers having changed their names for the ballot, but who have altered their appearance physically and digitally to look like the candidate. It is hoped that these political doppelgรคngers (the real Boris bothered to wear a necktie) will split the vote and allow the incumbent to retain his seat. It’s the next level of misnegation, obfuscation to “Vote No on Yes to the Proposition Rescinding the Ban on Anti-Mask Mandates” and would hate to give America’s GOP this tactic for their arsenal.
Wednesday 1 September 2021
รพorskastrรญรฐin
With precedent disputes just after WWII and reignited after a fashion with Brexit fishing negotiations, the Cod Wars began in earnest on this day in 1958 when Iceland expanded its territorial waters to the edge of maritime claims by the UK and West Germany, with all sides sustaining losses over the next two decades as this protracted conflict continued with boats ramming into one other and the fishing nets of trawlers cut. Although in the aftermath of each skirmish, the International Court of Justice sided with Iceland’s claim, no resolution was reached until 1976 when Iceland threatened to withdraw from NATO if the matter wasn’t settled once and for all, an action that would denied the alliance’s submarines access to a strategic part of the North Sea (see also) at the height of the Cold War, brokering an agreement amenable to all parties. Following on from the truce, the United Nations codified the Law of the Sea and standardised exclusive nautical economic zones.
Tuesday 31 August 2021
6x6
slough off old skins: the rise and demise of an Internet Onion—via Kicks Condor
posture pals: a gallery of awkward, outstanding stances
gravy boat: kitschy vintage table settings
a little pick-me-up: the lovely Flowers for Sick People project by Tucker Nichols—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links
news at eleven: screen grabs of 1990s reporting captions
more like a simile: an experiment searching the web with AI contextualised natural language—via Web Curios
Monday 30 August 2021
live at five
This 1979 industrial (as in in the trade) theme music anthology really revs one up for the network news, coming in strong with the familiar-sounding opening track by Craig Palmer Energy, a masterpiece of the genre. There are multiple volumes of Palmer’s works, both for syndication and for one-off events, though we were unable to find out more about this rather prolific and pervasive composer unfortunately—though not everyone wants a biopic and we can appreciate letting one’s works speak for themselves—that formed the soundscape of televised reporting and sports coverage (see also) in the 1980s. More bracing openings and interstitials coming up in the panel below.
Sunday 22 August 2021
7x7
wait for the beep: a growing collection of found-sounds in the form of answering machine narratives—via Memo of the Air
potatopoty: superlative tubers
yaxety sax: string ensemble performs the 1968 instrumental from Spider Rich and Boots Randolph
the metz address: Philip K. Dick (previously) speaks to an audience in 1977 at a sci-fi convention in France
say taliban, move your minivans: November 2001 Saturday Night Live sketch “Kandahar Dance Party” recirculating to mixed responses
dateline: Merv Griffin’s short-lived 1985 game show Headline Chasers
dear friends of mine, please write a line in this little wash tubbs book of mine—help me keep you in my mind: a comic scrapbook chronicling the Great Depression, via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links (lots more to see there)
Wednesday 11 August 2021
8x8
united states of wildfire: as the climate emergency escalates, more North American residents are moving into the path of destruction unwittingly
fitting in: Ze Frank (previously) reveals that even the coolest, calmest and most collected of us are all trying, coping
d’oyly carte: an islet in the Thames with a derelict mansion built for an opera impresario will be restored to its former glory—via Things Magazinecaped crusaders: Batman’s sidekick Robin finally comes out
constrained systems: a tool-kit of alternative image editing effects—via Waxy
matchi bล:a mesmerising stop-motion study of a magic match stick from Tomohiro Okazaki—via ibฤซdem
bubblegum pop: the Osmonds 1968 song “Groove with what You Got”
ฮฑฯฮฟฮบฮฌฮปฯ ฯฮท: Greek capital, archipelago beset by flames
Saturday 7 August 2021
astrophilately
From the start of the Space Age and ensuing Space Race, adjacent stamp collecting became a serious pursuit with commemorative cover depicting every mission and milestone (see previously) with the bubble inflated to bursting with the scandal surrounding Apollo 15, returned to Earth on this day in 1971 with a payload of four hundred postage stamps sent to the Moon and back.
The astronauts had been compensated, bribed for sneaking the unauthorised souvenirs on board by West Germany dealer Hermann Sieger. The story broke the following year and though the money was returned and most of the remaining covers (the postal term for decorated, signed pre-stamped and cancelled envelops) were retained by the agency, museums or given as gifts, the astronauts were reprimanded for ethics violations and never flew on a mission again, reassigned to other departments within NASA. Such mementos were considered contraband for future missions.Friday 6 August 2021
adoxography
Brilliantly the titular term is derived from the New Latin for paradoxical, in turn from the Ancient Greek obscure (แผ + ฮดฯฮพฮฑ = against expectations), and in rhetoric refers to refined writing on minor, trivial or base subjects or praise of things of dubious value or the exercise thereof beginning with the revival of the art of loquacious, persuasive speech with the pivotal publication of Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly (Moriรฆ Encomium). Surveying the field in classical and contemporary education, a non-exhaustive list unworthy subjects of erudition included ageing, infirmities, promiscuity and pests.
catagories: ๐, ๐ฌ, ๐, networking and blogging
Saturday 31 July 2021
hendiatris
Discouraged from being shown openly and in general taboo in Japanese societies, stigmatised for their associations with organised crime (see also), tattoos—of the commemorative variety especially, were widely on display during the Olympics, the athletes’ bubble meant no mingling with the public. See a whole gallery from the Associated Press’ photo pool, via ibฤซdem. The motto of the Games, Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger) is a famous example of the above Greek figure of speech แผฮฝ ฮดฮนแฝฐ ฯฯฮตแฟฯ, “one through three,” a phrase where three words express one idea. This year the committee added a fourth term, “Communiter,” Latin for Together.