the thirteenth floor (12. 042)

Although acquainted somewhat with taboo numbers and avoidance of certain addresses, I hadn’t seen it in practice—admittedly applying my own form of lore and arithromania to disbursements when paying bills and try to have a figure four in there albeit mindful that auspicious dates, versions can deceive—and enjoyed this enlightening overview from Language Log in the form of a superstitious elevator panel, removing the fourth storeys as a homophone for death (死, sì, sĭ), or more specifically according to the Eighteen Level of Hell in Chinese mythology, as elaborated in Journey to the West, the association with the Mirror of Retribution, the literal “evil mirror platform” (孽鏡臺)—accounting for further omissions for those wanting to bypass the degrees of purgatory awaiting the ones dodging dharmic-for-karmic justice in this life. Much more at the links above.

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

7x7 (10. 971)

pagerank: Google has lost the quarter-century battle over overindexing versus useful search results—via Waxy  

1 346 000/km²: a tour of what was once the most densely populated area in the world, a largely ungoverned Chinese exclave within the territory of Hong Kong—see previously here and here  

corner suite: a visit to a unique corporate headquarters in Czechia with an office in an elevator—see previously 

lunar codex: an archive and time capsule of human creativity launched to the Moon—see also  

motor overflow: sticking out our tongues during complicated manual tasks reveal truths about our brains’ connections—via Damn Interesting  

gone to pasture: an abandoned luxury development in China overtaken by farmers and livestock—via Messy Nessy Chic

cryogenics: Wordpress offers to archive one’s digital estate for a century

synchronoptica

one year ago: another MST3K classic plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: the chemical element meitnerium, the founding of Greenland, white-winged doves and saguaro cactuses plus introducing Nirvana (1991) 

three years ago: mystic Manly Palmer Hall, Wuppertal’s Schwebebahn, inventor Otis Frank Boykin, liturgical cheese plus Netflix (1997)

five years ago: Trump lashes out against perceived social media bias against him plus Keith Houston on the history of emoji

elevator operator (10. 685)

In the latest from Neal Agarwal, we are taken on quite a captivating journey from the Earth’s surface through the layers of the atmosphere up to the edge of space on a guided lift that features limits and milestones at all altitudes, like this previous tour at all depths.  Congratulations, you are 1% to the Moon.  Scroll up and see what you learn.

8x8

city in a bottle: a bit of micro-coding from Frank Force (previously) decoded—via Waxy    

kr: the Icelandic Graphic Design Association (FÍT, Félag íslenskra teiknara) issues a challenge to come up with a glyph for their króna  

nécessaire: a French borrowing—see also—for kit and carry  

enough: TIME magazine’s cover lists the two-hundred thirteen US cities that have had mass-shootings this year, so far  

social sentinel: a look at the dubious pre-crime predictive software that ill-serves society and the reliance on tech to come to the rescue in general  

party line: last bank of public phones removed from New York City—see also here, here, here and here  

swiss miss: Tina Roth Eisenberg celebrates her seventeenth blogoversary tesserae: MIT Lab develops autonomous modular tiles to create structures and habitats in space

peoplemover

As a space-saving and universally-accessible alternative over stairs, underpasses and elevators to ford an obstacle, usually train-tracks, the system invented by engineer Emil Schmid first transports passengers up vertically, sideways and then down again in one fluid motion. A couple of these engineering marvels (see also) remain in operation at Bahnhöfen in Altbach, near Stuttgart, and in the Rummelsburg district in Berlin. More at Miss Cellania at the link above.

upward mobility

Via Weird Universe we are introduced to this rather intriguing and ingenuous business architectural feature in the June 1948 issue of Popular Science and left wanting to know more. Only a few column inches are dedicated to this structure with a corner office that moves up and down the building’s fourteen storeys (the rest of the staff used paternosters) located in Zlín but we were able to find out a bit more.
The town itself urban utopia (see also) and a manufacturing anchor of the Moravian region in large part due to the shoemaking factory founded by siblings Tomáš, Anna and Antonín Baťa in 1894, the skyscraper was build as the administrative headquarters for their successful footwear brand. The third tallest pre-war building in Europe executed in Constructivist style, it is now known as Building № 21 (Číslo 21) and cherished as a cultural monument, houses offices of the regional government. Going abroad during the World War II, the boss never had a chance to use his mobile office and there’s unconscionably no indication whether this seeming unique idea was ever tried anywhere else or why such an idea was abandoned.

stadtbezirke

Since working in Wiesbaden, I get pangs of guilt for not having visited neighbouring Frankfurt am Main (previously here and here) terribly often—especially given the ease of exploration and ample opportunities, not to mention all the things we haven’t seen. I took a long meandering walk through the city, beginning with the post-industrial wastelands that surrounded the Hauptbahnhof—the Gutleut quarter, the former manufacturing sector of the metropolis, grown around the export hub and marvelled at the Empire Age power plant erected in 1894, burning coal until 1994 when it made the transition to natural gas.
With quite a few detours, I made my way across town to see the Poelzig Building—known as the IG-Farben-Gebaüde. Completed in 1930, the compound was the headquarters of the chemical concern (the synthetic dye industry syndicate—the then one of the largest companies in the world), architect Hans Poelzig’s design embodied the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) movement of the inter-war years.
The mammoth though airy and sparsely modern space was a deemed a fitting showcase for the company that not only pioneered synthetic oils and discovered the first antibiotic, the research of the conglomerate played an indispensable role in pressing Germany and the world to conflict a second time—despite being publicly reviled and scapegoated by elements of the far right. After the surrender of Nazi Germany, the complex became the Supreme Allied Command and until 1952, the High Commissioner for Germany—earning it the informal moniker, the Pentagon of Europe—the US Defence Department completed in 1943.
Afterwards, it hosted the US Army V Corps, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers with the US withdrawing and returning the building to the state in 1995.
The ensemble of buildings became the Westend campus of the University of Frankfurt and houses the departments of philosophy, history, theology, linguistics and North American studies. The nude nymph statue at the reflecting pool was removed, at the request of Mamie Eisenhower, during American occupation, the commanding general’s wife deeming it inappropriate for a military installation. Another feature that the main building is known for are its paternoster lifts—which were formerly accessible to the visiting public but are presently inoperable.

going up

In an age where all career-futures and succession-planning are subject to the whim of progress, it could be forgiven that we’ve made certain apparent redundancies the poster-children of this precarity as a way of inserting our own hopes and insecurities into the discussion.  We discover, however via Messy Nessy Chic, that we’d be somewhat premature to count elevator-operators among the casualties. These profiles of a by-gone era preserved, though an exceedingly rare treat to discover, in New York City’s skyline are really engrossing and speaks to the importance of tradition and the investment in what’s classy—though I could see manual robotic attendants being installed to operate this antique machinery or replaced by volunteer enthusiasts yearning for human-contact as well.  I hope, nevertheless, that such touches are preserved and appreciated.

geosynchronous or keeping up appearances

After the success of the Rosetta mission which saw a space probe land rough-shod on a comet and with planned excursion to forcibly place an asteroid in orbit around the Moon, it seems that the next logical step is to tether an upside-down skyscraper to a captured satellite and have it sweep out an orbit just above the skyline of a terrestrial metropolis.
Maybe these stalactites might counter the race to be the tallest among the stalagmites.  The Analemma Tower, which takes its name from the phenomena responsible for the Sun’s apparent progression across the sky, seems like an unattainable goal, a project that seems very pie-in-the-sky and will never be realised but it’s these sort of radical departures that really drive progress and deliver those long-promised realities like flying-cars and the space-elevator.

jacob’s ladder

Previously on PfRC, we set out to experience what’s called a Paternoster, a cyclical elevator, and upon learning that there were two housed in buildings I knew, spent the lunch-hour investigating. First I tried the Federal Office of Statistics (Statistisches Bundesamt oder Destatis), which I always regarded as a curious institution to begin with.  It’s sort of like the Harper’s Index for the state of Germany—whenever rarefied, detached facts and figures, the numbers of bean-counters, are cited in the news (employment, traffic accidents, annual litres of beer per capita, the price of eggs in China), it’s often given the dateline of Wiesbaden—and I suppose it’s doubly curious that this bureau would hold on to its relic of a Paternoster as I could just imagine the report being compiled in those corridors about how x-number of Germans were maimed by this contraption in the past quarter. The staff at the reception area were bemused with my request and friendly enough but said it was too dangerous and reserved only for employees of the bureau. Maybe in keeping track of statistics, they somehow avoided becoming one. The staff at the reception also recommended that I try another place, an insurance building just two blocks away.  I was skeptical about there being another so close and in such a modern (and squat) building but I asked at the front desk.
Replying that this had been their third inquiry for the day, I was again told that it was too great a liability (being an insurance company) that I could not ride in it but was allowed through the lobby to look. The conveyor-belt of narrow coffin-like wooden compartments going up and down at a really brisk pace was really keen to behold and I wasn’t sure that I would have stepped into this Jacob’s Ladder willingly myself under other circumstances. H, who was unaware that any still remained, had ridden a Paternoster before and admitted it was a little scary but exhilarating. The construction reminded me of the wooden escalator H and I rode on in the original Macy’s department store in New York City. Undeterred if not now a bit obsessed with the idea, I plan to look a bit further afield. Next time I find myself in Frankfurt, I will make it a priority (or make a special trip) to visit the campus of Goethe University, whose iconic administration building (originally the ensemble of the IG Farben company with intervening incarnations as the command-and-control of the Allied powers, the headquarters of the US Army and the seat of US Army Corps of Engineers) where there is a bank of eight functioning Paternosters—beloved by the student-body and probably won’t be gutted any time soon in the name of safety.

personenumlaufaufzüge

Thanks to a report shared by the exceedingly brilliant and adventurous Nag-on-the-Lake on the curious and quirky so-called Paternosters, I was reminded of an item I’d recently heard on the local news that’s unleashed a minor tempest.  I thought the looping passenger lifts, like escalator stairs and properly called cyclic elevators or Personenlaufzüge (people circulating elevator), were called Paternosters because the ride was particularly harrowing and induced one to recite the Lord’s Prayer—which may well be but they are also called such because the mechanism is similar to praying the rosary.

There are still quite a few still in service around Germany (mostly in universities and government office buildings) and the Czech Republic but already prospective passengers of these endearing people-circulators are in need of producing proof that they in fact are competent and licensed to ride in them or otherwise take the stairs. Now Germany wants to dismantle them altogether—out of concern for public safety but I think that they will not go without a fight, especially beloved by those who have to take the plunge or leap of faith daily. I have been moved to find a couple of candidates really nearby—we’ll see how that goes, and I hope that this is something that we both get to experience before they’re all gone.