Via Just a Car Guy (to demonstrate he is Trainspotting Spice—smashing—How about Sporty-but-interested-in-other-things Spice? And then there’s the little ginger one, full of useless information about manta rays… We can relate) we are treated to the highlights from an excellent New York photography retrospective featuring some superlative street scenes, images of Keith Haring, Peggy Guggenheim and the pictured Georgia O’Keeffe with a tumbler of wine and slice of cheese whilst being chauffeured in the American southwest. The latter two were captured by the world-class visual documentarian Tony Vaccaro (see previously), a scout during World War II in the European theatre and remaining to document post-war life before returning to the United States to work primarily as a celebrity and fashion photographer.
Friday, 25 April 2025
untitled (12. 410)
Thursday, 10 April 2025
life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all (12. 379)
First published by Charles Scribner’s Sons on this day in 1925, the Jazz Age novel by writer F Scott Fitzgerald, although well-received initially by critics, many felt it fell short of his earlier works, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and the Damned and was commercially a disappointment, and the fact it is one of the most widely-read texts by American high school students and that there was occasion to mark the anniversary would have elicited surprise for the author, whom also considered considered his literary career to be a failure. Reevaluation over the ensuing decades count it among the masterpieces of the early twentieth century, attracting scholarly attention over his questions of social class, environmental conservation, gender, race and disillusionment with the American Dream, aspirations and refinements that speak across the years. The story about careless people is in part based on lived experience with Fitzgerald’s infatuation with a socialite out of his league, raucous parties and a sensationalised true crime story involving a love-triangle in New Jersey. Completing the manuscript whilst staying in the French Riviera, Fitzgerald shopped around for publishers, reworking the draft several times and with working-titles Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires, On the Road to West Egg, Under the Red, White and Blue and The Gold-Hatted Gatsby before reluctantly settling on the alliterative one in deference to Alai-Fournier’s singular tragic character Le Grand Meaulnes (often rendered for English readers as The Wanderer). The dust jacket artwork for the first edition is Spanish painter Francisco Cugat’s Celestial Eyes, an abstract representation of a flapper suspended above a fun-fair evoking New York’s Coney Island, the commission being presented to Fitzgerald before the novel was finished and becoming a motif in the story, prompting him to finalise the book before it went to another author’s work, maintaining an unusual correspondence between artist and author, whose original painting was rediscovered in the bin of the publishing house’s archives decades later like so many unsold volumes of The Great Gatsby’s first run.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Dune: The Musical (with synchronoptica)
seven years ago: spirit animals and animal spirits, double-storey letters, floating dorms in Denmark plus assorted links to enjoy
eight years ago: sacrificial soda plus disinformation mills
nine years ago: a Canadian foothold in the Caribbean plus money laundering and the Panama Papers
ten years ago: more links to revisit plus an appreciation of Designing Women
Friday, 4 April 2025
8x8 (12. 365)
museum of now: This American Life invites us to sit with and reflect on the artefacts of day and hour
rift valley: a Trump appointed special envoy to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tiffany’s father-in-law, seeking to make a deal on mineral resources in hopes of securing peace with Rwandan rebels
fay wray: a swarm of drones recreate the iconic scene of King Kong scaling the Empire State building
toast malone: a short clip of the singer performing Circles, animated on one hundred thirty-three slices of bread
altair 8800: a retrospective of Microsoft at fifty
the bronx is up and the battery’s down: new NYC subway map is an homage to an early digrammatic version
blanket non-fraternisation policy: US bans government personnel stationed in China from forming relationships with locals
national endowment for the humanities: US museums, libraries and archives see their grants terminated—see previously
Monday, 24 March 2025
6x6 (12. 335)
reading between the lines: Trump regime shutters access to border-straddling opera and library, the Haskell House, which served as neutral territory for family reunions and marriages during his first term’s travel ban

kennedy center honors: Conan O’Brien awarded the Mark Twain prize for American humour, embracing the irony and tension of the moment
backstroke of the west: an incomprehensible translation and re-translation of a Star Wars bootleg DVD
free spaced repetition scheduler: geography with positive reinforcement—via Maps Mania
opsec: Trump administration inadvertently shared its plans to to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen with a journalist from The Atlantic
Wednesday, 12 March 2025
9x9 (12. 297)
ei-ei-o: a comparison onomatopoetic words for animal sounds across different languages—via Waxy
acrostic: textile company’s branding has the aesthetics of concrete poetry
destiny narrative: an omnibus post on the horrors and avoidability of war
analog society: a British group performs live mash-up of notionally similar songs
tectonic independence: why Greenland is an island and Australia a continent—see also
360: Manhattan’s only revolving restaurant to reopen
telephone game: Russia demands details from US before agreeing to any ceasefire agreement in Ukraine
cross-walk: mimes direct traffic in Bogotรก
an old error has more friends than a new truth: proverbs and idioms from around the world
synchronoptica
one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica) plus more FOIA follies
seven years ago: raising awareness for prosthetic limbs, Japan’s residential towers plus more links to enjoy
eight years ago: provisions requiring employees submit to DNA screenings
nine years ago: what if the Singularity already happened, the doorway effect plus colourful ancient statuary
ten years ago: Disney reboots, even more links plus more made-up jobs
Wednesday, 19 February 2025
congestion pricing is dead—manhattan and all of new york is saved—long live the king (12. 244)
Again for saying the quiet part out loud, Trump is being ravished on social media and the press after liken himself to a monarch as he issued an executive order to revoke the recently enacted surcharge to encourage and support public transportation in New York City and has received considerable backlash from state officials who realise that the schemes have worked for other large metropolitan areas. This magisterial declaration is happening at the same time that Trump ordered federal prosecutors to drop the corruption investigation against disgraced mayor Eric Adams, a move which led to a succession of resignations by attorneys who could not abide by this curtailment of justice. Adams had been currying favour from Trump since the election in hopes of securing a pardon but in falling short of unconditional clemency (a royal prerogative it seems to me and wondering if such power has a place within a constitutional democracy) Trump is ostensibly exerting pressure on the mayor, since he could
countermand that order to the justice department and pursue charges, to make sure that the city cooperates with immigration raids and municipal authorities don’t pushback on agents entering schools and churches. The GOP is leaning into Trump’s coronation and Democrats for their part are giving a history lesson on the American War of Independence.
Saturday, 18 January 2025
movin’ on up (12. 190)
One of the longest-running sitcoms in television history and the second spin-off of All in the Family—after Maude—Norman Lear’s The Jeffersons follows the lives of the former neighbours of the Bunkers who were able to relocate from Queens to Manhattan (a deluxe apartment in the sky) due to the success of the couple’s dry-cleaning chain. The Jeffersons itself had one short-lived spin-off featuring their housekeeper, Florence, who takes a job as the team chief of a luxury hotel cleaning crew, and has continuity with the hospital drama E/R (the CBS production, lasting only one year, before being picked up by NBC a decade later in 1994 as ER, as developed by writer Michael Crichton, with the same cast of principals of George Clooney and Mary McDonnell). A traditional sitcom, the show occasionally had episodes covering serious subjects, like racism, gun-control, gender-identity and alcoholism and generally high ratings—though suffering from switching time-slots—it was ignominiously cancelled by the during the summer-break of its eleventh season in July 1985 without warning to the cast, Isabel Sanford and Sherman Hemsley, and without a series finale.
Sunday, 12 January 2025
happy ending (12. 168)
The US supreme court having rejected petitions from the president-elect to stop or delay the sentencing until after the inauguration (the justices not accepting the argument of broad immunity from prosecution when discharging duties as the executive), Trump was granted an unconditional discharge to respect the jury’s verdict of guilty on thirty four felony counts of misusing campaign funds for hush-money payments to a porn star and to not interfere with his ability to govern. While serving no jail time or liable to fine, this judgement delivered by a New York state judge is not subject to presidential, federal purview and could only be pardoned by the governor (not likely to happen) and the conviction, symbolic as it is, will remain on Trump’s record. And while he would probably prefer it not be on his Wikipedia page, if capable of the needed level of shame, critical thought or interiority, the sentence does have some potential impacts, by dint of his registration in Florida, he will be able to continue to vote in that state due to reciprocity with New York (see above), under federal law, Trump is not allowed to own a gun, must surrender a DNA sample to a New York database of convicts, possibly jeopardise the liquor licenses for his branded properties and similarly is barred from operating casinos under laws regarding moral turpitude, and while heads of state are allowed to travel without a passport, some countries, including Canada, Mexico, Israel, China, Ukraine, Turkey, India, Japan, Taiwan, South Africa and the UK reserve the right to prohibit visits by felons. The travel restrictions are unlikely of course to be enforced in Trump’s case and he could always ignore regulation or pressure states to change their laws. This does not affect his ability to hold federal office, however.
synchronoptica
one year ago: an epic tattoo homage to Abe Simpson (with sychronoptica), enjunkification and aging out of the internet plus the Phantom Time Theory and the fabricated Middle Ages
seven years ago: a look back at 1968, Trump’s new London embassy plus French terms against creeping Anglicisms
eight years ago: heatmaps of the world’s most popular photo spots plus kompromat on Trump
nine years ago: fans remember the life and times of David Bowie, Borg ideal beauty plus assorted links worth revisiting
ten years ago: the democratic reforms of 1848, your hit-parade, a motion-detector in search of alien life plus separatist and secession movements in Europe
Sunday, 5 January 2025
ease on down the road (12. 145)

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica), Book Review (1946), more on nominative determinism plus more on the Fermi Paradox
Wednesday, 1 January 2025
10x10 (12. 135)
year of the snek: designer Japanese greeting cards for 2025—see previously from Spoon & Tamago
world record for tiny window inchoateness: Kate Wagner’s McMansion Hell takes on Neuschwanstein
cloisonnรฉ garnet: an elaborate seventh century brooch discovered near Rostock
dropped: the 2025 edition of Lake Superior State University’s banished words list, including cringe and skibidi
back to basics: scientific research confirms that exercise is the most potent medical intervention—for one’s New Year’s resolutions
dumpster fire: an ominous start for 2025
classical conditioning: the unscientific and unethical Little Albert Experiment that led to stricter standards in psychological testing
choicest swears: excellence in strong language and two other New Year’s traditions
monuments men: Italy’s cultural heritage protection squad saves artefacts from a clandestine dig in Naples
new year, new neighbourhood: the transformation of New York City’s Times Square
Monday, 30 December 2024
pray, observe the magnanimity (12. 126)
Following a soft-opening on this day in 1879 at the in hopes to forestall another episode of “copyright piracy,” Gilbert and Sullivan held the official premiere of their comic opera on New Year’s Eve at Fifth Avenue Theatre of New York City. The perfunctory but well attended and critically acclaimed performance was staged by a touring company in order to secure a British copyright in Paignton near Torquay, and with American law at the time respecting no foreign intellectual property rights, the collaborators with a US premiere hoped to avoid an encore of the previous year’s debut of HMS Pinafore, successful in London but rapidly taken up by American acting troupes with some one hundred and fifty unauthorised productions that took license with the libretto and netted no royalties for the authors. Publication of the score was also delayed until their reputation and credentials could be cemented, the show opening in London the following April. Both transatlantic runs were very well received and the narrative of an apprentice being released from his indenturehood with a sort of rumspringa from the impressment he was accustomed to (pirate tropes were quite in fashion at the time) and the piece endures as the duo’s most performed and referenced works.
Wednesday, 25 December 2024
the genovese syndrome (12. 109)
On this day in 1974, ten years after the violent murder of resident Kitty Genovese outside the same apartment building in the Kew Gardens neighbourhood of Queens for which no one intervened or called the police in what was dubbed the bystander effect and was cited as a textbook case for decades—partially due to this second tragic death—until upon reevaluation it was revealed that the number of witnesses and their actions had been respectively over- and under-reported, fashion model (her profession was later retracted in articles but no correction was given) Sandra Zahler was beaten to death. Upon questioning by detectives a day and a half later once the bludgeoned body was discovered found that neighbours had heard screams and indications of a struggle but no witnesses—many of whom were present in 1964—came forward, either citing the holiday or expecting others to have heard the commotion and alerted authorities. Eventually the building’s elevator operator corroborated police suspicions for Zahler’s estranged boyfriend.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Godwin’s Law (with synchronoptica), a visit to a basalt factory plus The Sting (1973)
seven years ago: more holiday greetings
ten years ago: another Yule Log
eleven years ago: endangered specie
twelve years ago: luck-bringers
Monday, 9 December 2024
american minerva (12. 071)
Originally founded on this day by lexicographer and text-book publisher Noah Webster under the above name with the extended subtitle Patroness of Peace, Commerce and the Liberal Arts, the daily was NewYork City’s first in circulation. Undergoing a series of rebrandings in its first few years of publication, it finally settled The Commercial Advertiser in 1803. Politically the paper was generally leaning towards support of the nationalist, conservative Federalist Party. A century later in 1904 it was again renamed The New York Globe, defunct with its consolidation in 1923 with the New York Sun, ending its run.
Thursday, 5 December 2024
9x9 (12. 057)
globetrotter—more like globetriggered: a wrap of 2024 in therapy
new doge, old tricks: Musk and Ramaswamy present their plan to rapture three-quarters of the government workforce but it’s going to be a challenge to achieve real cost-cutting or improved efficiency
vote de censure: French government collapses after legislature moves to eject controversial prime minister Michel Barnier—see previously
field of vision: the challenges of bringing the Vera Ruben perched high in the Andes on online includes unidentified intelligence agencies screening images before they are released to the public
my empathy is out of network: Americas respond to the assassination of a major medical insurance CEO
ekistical portrait: Rob Stephenson is documenting all the three hundred and fifty neighbourhoods of New York City’s five boroughs—via Kottke
what just happened: South Korea’s declaration of marshal law, parliament’s rejection and the ongoing political crisis
stonks: Bitcoin just hit $100 000 a piece
hot topic: the year in Wikipedia, recent celebrity deaths topped the list again
synchronoptica
one year ago: the Michelob Music Hour (with synchronoptica) plus modern art presented as a fun-fair
seven years ago: noisy GIFs, assorted links worth the revisit plus 52 more things
eight years ago: the origins of Play-Doh
nine years ago: red cup controversy, a trip to Rosenau plus our faithful chronicler
ten years ago: troublesome ideas in the marketplace plus an A-ha! reunion concert
Wednesday, 27 November 2024
grand marshal (12. 032)

one year ago: home taping is killing music (with synchronoptica)
Saturday, 16 November 2024
9x9 (12. 004)
if you really care about women having autonomy, you should stop questioning our decision to elect a guy who wants to take it away: sure, I voted for someone whose policies might kill you, but now’s the time to put aside our differences
with some account of the judicial “congress”: John Davenport’s 1869 collected essays on Aphrodisiacs and Anti-Aphrodisiacs
operation bear claw: four Los Angeles residents charged with insurance fraud for dressing in a costume and damaging luxury cars
goldeneye: a tour of Ian Fleming’s estate in Jamaica where the author wrote all the Bond novels
blue days, all of them gone—nothing but blue skies from now on: the alternative social network’s growth is attributed to privileging user choice over algorithmic engagement
ai granny: telecom O2 has created a scambait protocol to keep fraudsters on the line as long as possible and away from potential human victims
feat. rowlf as king herod: Muppet Christ Superstar—see also
lysistrata: as Trump’s next term approaches, more women are seeking to disassociate themselves from the men in their lives, withhold sex
subway therapy: the exhibition inviting New Yorkers to share their thoughts on the presidential election returns after eight years
synchronoptica
one year ago: The Sound of Music (with synchronoptica)
seven years ago: The Book of Life: The Spiritual and Physical Constitution of Man
eight years ago: the lost art of correspondence plus WoTY: post-truth
ten years ago: lucid dreams plus a selection of random t-shirts
eleven years ago: the Asylothek, retro Christmas cards plus more fallout from US dragnet espionage tactics
Wednesday, 13 November 2024
9x9 (11. 997)
dr tj eckleburg: how The Great Gatsby influenced Robert Moses and transformed New York City
tether: although the material technology is not quite there for a terrestrial one, a lunar space elevator might be feasible
ssccatagapp: Russia moves to ban all content deemed to promote a childless-lifestyle—via tmn

jeu de puce: fleas, chips and other observations on the 9แต รฉdition du Dictionnaire de l’Acadรฉmie franรงaise just published
talking head: Pentagon and US allies in shock over Trump’s intent to nominate a Fox News commentator as secretary of defence
sobriquet: the twenty-eight European cities claiming to be Venice of the North—see also—via Messy Nessy Chic
collectives: a series of aerial photographs of junkyards and graveyards neatly organised by Cรกssio Campos Vasconcellos—via Things Magazine
a remembrance of things past: Proust and The Breakfast Club
synchronoptica
one year ago: a medieval large language model (with synchronoptica), a new family of goblin spiders, a novel way to hack light pollution plus block printing personal narratives
seven years ago: tariffs on Chinese aluminium, revolutionary terrariums plus using AI to minimise road-kill, disruption to migration
eight years ago: RIP Leonard Cohen
nine years ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus emoji syntax across different platforms
ten years ago: more on the spread of Indo-European languages
Saturday, 9 November 2024
curtain call (11. 986)
Whilst familiar with some of these traditions and prohibitions, like the ghost lights that even burned in theatres when everything was shut down during COVID, we didn’t know the possible origins of the taboos, like not mentioning the Scottish play, and enjoyed reading this overview of backstage customs and lore.
Although sounding superstitious, whistling in a theatre was discouraged as sailors were often employed as stage crew for their skill with ropes and knots and brought with them their jargon of command whistles and an actor would not want to countermand or confuse an order, lest a prop be dropped on their head. First performed during a time when most theatrical companies had a set repertoire, rather than courting bad luck, the suggestion of Macbeth was an admission that perhaps a season’s run with flagging audiences could be turned around with the staging of a really popular piece. Wishing one to “break a leg” has a myriad of possible roots, from understudies politely wishing an accident would befall their respective principals so that they could assume the role, to cross a threshold—“the leg line” of a concealing stage curtain and take a bow before the audience to the most likely etymological source, both Wanderwรถrte and retronym and a bit of mishearing, with the entertainment industry directly borrowing from the idiomatic wish amongst Luftwaffe pilots during the first and second World War Hals- und Beinbruch, “may you break your neck and leg,” as a corruption of the Yiddish phrase: ืืฆืืื ืืื ืืจืื—that is hatsloke un brokhe, “success and blessings.” Professional dancers, on the other hand, exclaim “Merde!” to one another, harking back to times when horse-drawn carriages would bring spectators and a lot of dung in the streets of a venue would mean a solid box-office.Sunday, 3 November 2024
top of the rock (11. 960)
In a surprise cameo appearance, Kamala Harris appeared as dressing room mirror reflection of the comedian, Maya Rudolf, who reprised her role on Saturday Night Live after Harris became the candidate for a mutual pep-talk. After a day spent campaigning in the battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina, Harris took an unannounced detour to New York City, her plan to be in the show’s cold open kept a secret until after the motorcade arrived at the studios in Rockefeller Plaza—a kilometre away from Trump’s past venue. “I’m going to vote for us!” Rudolph proclaimed at the end of the sketch—to which Harris countered, “Any chance you’re registered in Pennsylvania?”
synchronoptica
one year ago: an occasional blog at twenty (with synchronoptica) assorted links worth the revisit plus a psychedelic collage by William S Burroughs (1991)
seven years ago: Germany’s Facebook Law, Dalรญ’s The Wines of Gala plus internet tarot
eight years ago: exoskeletons plus assorted things entering their fourth decade
nine years ago: November holidays and observances
eleven years ago: a visit to Delitzsch
Wednesday, 30 October 2024
extra, extra (11. 944)
Headlines covering a statement delivered the evening before by US president Gerald Ford pledging to veto any federal aid for New York City to save it from bankruptcy, The Daily News, as we are informed by our faithful chronicler, lead with the front page story on this day in 1975 for its morning edition. Though Ford never said this line (the paper is known for its pithy and blunt copy), the sentiment was there and made a lasting impression among business and political leaders, demanding that the city make austere cuts to social programmes, raising transit fares and abolishing rent-controls in exchange for nationalising municipal debt. Two months later, Ford relented and gave New York loans, to be repaid with interest. Like Marie Antoinette (who never said “Let them eat cake”), Ford was haunted by this infamous misquotation (and unlike the Trump campaign that actually has said all the taunts, slurs and insults imaginable but will hopefully met the same indecorous fate) with career-ending consequences one year later, New Yorkers remembering, when the state pivoted narrowly to elect Jimmy Carter.