where is everybody? (12. 342)

Being obsessed with the philosophical and cosmological question of Fermi’s Paradox and having considered the Great Filter beforehand, we enjoyed revisiting the proposal that no one makes it—that is succeeds as a spacefaring civilisation with a constellation of lesser filters setting up intractable hurdles to the accomplishment, progress sabotaged by biological limitations, superstition, self-destructive tendencies of a society, pollution or a misguided Singularity. In that unlikely loneliness, however, there also lies an equally improbable (though less so than intelligent life evolving no where else in the Universe) of a grand conspiracy of those that have made it exercising and enforcing a sort of Prime Directive to cloak their evidence and activities. While that might seem patriarchal (but who knows what challenges and dangers could await) and demotivating in terms of reaching for the stars, humans—on any others on the cusp—might have never had the ambition to invent and explore with gods in the sky.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a Euro Pop playlist (with synchronoptica) 

seven years ago: a yōkai primer, assorted links to revisit, transhumance plus an AI suggests April Fools’ pranks

eight years ago: more links to enjoy plus Mr Roger’s Conflict Series

nine years ago: Easter origins, a venerable guesthouse plus a sinister lullaby

ten years ago: night-vision eye-drops plus even more links

12x12 (12. 179)

contraception begins at erection: Mississippi lawmaker has introduced a bill called ‘contraception begins at erection’ outlawing male masturbation, hoping to bring balance to the reproductive rights’ restriction that focus on women—via the New Shelton wet/dry  

obayashi world: Japan’s most Lynchian filmmaker  

so long and thanks for all the fish: Joan Ocean’s Dolphin Connection—via Web Curios  

crass competing abstrusities: official, sanctioned transcription of US secretary of state Marco Rubio (鲁比奥) changed—possibly as a way to get around the ban the Chinese government itself imposed plus other politicians’ names—see previously  

 

but if you don’t make your product in america—which is your prerogative—then very simply you will have to pay a tariff: though vacillating somewhat on his commitment and working from home, Trump delivers a message to the Davos WEF summit  

she was nasty in tone, not compelling or smart: Bishop Budde won’t apologise for her appeal for mercy and hospitality  

the birthright citizens’ brigade: a list of organisations pushing back against the slide to authoritarianism in the US  

dreiundfünfzig tage: how Hitler dismantled a constitution republic through constitutional means  

xanthelasma: Florida man on diet of beef, cheese and sticks of butter oozes cholesterol from his skin—see also—via Miss Cellania  

a catalyst for curiosity: Wikenigma documents the unexplained—via Kottke—those scientific and academic questions that evade a definitive answer, like the Collatz conjecture 

you remind me of the babe: Robert Eggers to make a sequel for Labyrinth  

unplanned pregnancy: as an encore to freeing all the January Sixth rioters, Trump pardons dozens of anti-abortion protesters, some jailed for violent tactics to block clinic access and intimidating doctors ahead of the Right to Life March

identified aerial phenomenon (12. 185)

Trying to take a photo of the full Moon the other night that didn’t turn out so well (Moon says “don’t blame me for not looking good in pictures, I’m just too brilliant”), I zoomed in later and saw that I had accidentally captured a passing constellation of Starlink satellites* seen to the right of the lunar body (the other mysterious objects, those green globs at the bottom are the bokeh’d Christmas lights on the neighbours’ house through the hedges). 

Had I not known about the the low orbiting communications satellites and the flare and related effects that they can produce, I would have mistaken them for UFOs and can completely empathise with those who get a little hysterical witnessing the like. *Correction—I think those might be the planets starting to line up, check back on Tuesday.

ufo/uap (12. 157)

Released the first week of January in 1950, we are directed to the independent feature by Mikel Conrad and Howard Irving Young, via Miss Cellania, which first addressed the subject of flying saucers but not as heralds of an alien invasion but rather an attempt to limn how the paranormal follows the paranoid. Capitalising on the moniker that captured the public imagination coined by pilot Kenneth Arnold to a reporter in 1947 on seeing a group of silvery discs silently flying in tight formation, the movie plays on the phenomena of repeated, copycat sightings, the narrative focuses on the US intelligence learning of a covert Soviet-lead investigation into appearances of mysterious aircraft sourced to Alaska, commencing a series of spy encounters and eventual counter-espionage, double-agents and stolen technology. The psychology of misapprehension and anxieties is also a major theme but light on acting performance and special effects, stock and B-roll footage of the tundra upstages (much from the director’s acting role in Arctic Manhunt from the previous year) the movie’s impact and legacy. Re-released three years later as a double feature with 1941’s Man Made Monster (the first sci-fi billing—not a willing nepobaby as a decision of the studio—of Creighton Tull Chaney as Lon Chaney, Jr to associate him with his father though already an established actor in the genre) about a nuclear mutant, the film has been largely forgotten, replaced by the abstract tropes of extraterrestrial visitors and kaiju. More from Inverse at the link up top.

groupe d'étude des phénomènes aérospatiaux non-identifiés (12. 156)

The close encounter, described by some sources as the most thoroughly documented and researched sighting of all time, occurred on this day in 1981 in the commune of Trans-en-Provence of the southeastern Var department (see previously), referred by the local authorities to the above unit GEIPAN of the French Space Agency charged with such unidentified phenomena after the sole witness reported it. Farmer Renato Nicolaï was startled by a strange whistling noise and claims to have seen a saucer-shaped object touch down in a nearby field, deploying retractable landing gear, and taking off almost immediately. The investigative group undertook a rather comprehensive battery of tests, finding the ground at the site showed signs of compression, scorching and trace amounts of phosphate and zinc. Yielding no plausible explanation after two years of joint research with the gendarmerie, many in the scientific community were sceptical of GEIPAN’s study as they could have been the result of normal agricultural activities. The team is still active and consists of four employees aided by dozens of volunteers and in general the cases are solved with pretty mundane explanations.

le livre qui dit la verité (12. 078)

According to his own account, courtesy of our faithful chronicler, Claude Vorihon—now known as Raël, fortieth and final prophet and founder of the international movement, first encountered the extraterrestrial guardians referred to as the Elohim (see also) whilst hiking in the ancient crater of an extinct volcano in the Clermont-Ferrand mountains. A space ship appeared and summoned Vorihon to return the next day with a Bible, which he did and over the course of the next year, was taught the aliens’ benevolent role in guiding human history. Although incorporating elements from Judaeo-Christian iconography (like the pictured “wormhole of David”) and Eastern traditions, Raëlianism is atheistic in so far as previous encounters and interventions were misapprehended as miracles and visits from gods. Vorihon was eventually taken to their home world and attended by a bevvy of cyborgs, learned their techniques of sensual mediation and tantric practises to produce a clone, after the philosophy of the quasi-immortal beings who have eschewed procreation in favour of limiting their population to ninety-thousand undying ones refreshed by clonal copies. Tenets of the movement, which numbers a membership of about ninety thousand worldwide (the same number as the individual Eloha) include advocacy for a single government modelled after Plato’s Republic, a technocracy and geniocracy, free love, gender fluidity and malleability, and various ventures such as Clonaid, rejecting the notion of an eternal and transcend soul and stressing that salvation is only secured through technological advances and an enlightened society.

synchronoptica

one year ago: more on the game of Life (with synchronoptica), assorted links to revisit plus Operation Red Dawn

seven years ago: microphotography plus the founding of Lufthansa

eight years ago: a new spider species discovered, the Rex Factor podcast plus Brexit negotiations

nine years ago: looking forward to the next episode of Star Wars plus Project ECHELON

eleven years ago: Germany’s Word of the Year 

cp 1919 (12. 037)

Discovered by post-graduate astrophysics student Jocelyn Bell Burnell using the Interplanetary Scintillation Array of Cambridge Observatory on this day in 1967 whilst searching for radio signals in space, because of its precise regularity, it was dismissed by colleagues as terrestrial interference initially,but combing through reams of data, Bell Burnell correctly pinpointed its origins to celestial coordinates of nineteen′ nineteen′′ right ascension, twenty-one° declination, coming from the constellation Vulpecula—for which it was given the designation LGM-1, little green men, supposing it might be an alien beacon of some kind. The discoverer, however, correctly posited that the source was a rapidly rotating neutron star. Fellow researchers received a Nobel prize in 1974 for their work in radioastronomy but Bell Burnell’s contributions were overlooked (for her part, she maintained that she did not believe that the committee should be in the business of honouring research assistants), and the novel class of star is now recognised as a pulsar, emitting beams of radiation from its poles and have proven to be an indispensable lighthouse in the cosmos for detection and triangulation, a throughline for detecting the first exoplanents and the phenomena of gravitational waves among others. In 1979, for their debut studio album, Unknown Pleasures, Joy Division adapted a ridgeline plot of the stars’s radio emissions’ pulses for the cover art.

i am an authorised representative of the intergalactic mission (12. 030)

Courtesy of our faithful chronicler, a decade ahead of the more infamous Max Headroom Signal hijacking (caution, flashing images), we learn that on this day in 1977 viewers in southern England watching the ITN 5:10 pm news summary got quite a shock when the audio was commandeered by a deep buzzing and a electronically garbled voice addressing the world for some six minutes before returning to regular programming. Claiming to Asteron of the Vrillon race of extraterrestrials, the speaker delivered a message on behalf of the Ashtar Galactic Command (after the name of beings, ascended masters several contactees since the early 1950s claimed to have channelled as mediums):

For many years you have seen us as lights in the skies. We speak to you now in peace and wisdom as we have done to your brothers and sisters all over this, your planet Earth. We come to warn you of the destiny of your race and your world so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course you must take to avoid the disaster which threatens your world, and the beings on our worlds around you.

This is in order that you may share in the great awakening, as the planet passes into the New Age of Aquarius. The New Age can be a time of great peace and evolution for your race, but only if your rulers are made aware of the evil forces that can overshadow their judgments.

Be still now and listen, for your chance may not come again. All your weapons of evil must be removed. The time for conflict is now past and the race of which you are a part may proceed to the higher stages of its evolution if you show yourselves worthy to do this. You have but a short time to learn to live together in peace and goodwill.  Small groups all over the planet are learning this, and exist to pass on the light of the dawning New Age to you all.

You are free to accept or reject their teachings, but only those who learn to live in peace will pass to the higher realms of spiritual evolution. Hear now the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. Be aware also that there are many false prophets and guides at present operating on your world. They will suck your energy from you—the energy you call money and will put it to evil ends and give you worthless dross in return.

Your inner divine self will protect you from this. You must learn to be sensitive to the voice within that can tell you what is truth, and what is confusion, chaos and untruth. Learn to listen to the voice of truth which is within you and you will lead yourselves onto the path of evolution. This is our message to our dear friends. We have watched you growing for many years as you too have watched our lights in your skies.

You know now that we are here, and that there are more beings on and around your Earth than your scientists admit. We are deeply concerned about you and your path towards the light and will do all we can to help you. Have no fear, seek only to know yourselves, and live in harmony with the ways of your planet Earth. We here at the Ashtar Galactic Command thank you for your attention. We are now leaving the planes of your existence. May you be blessed by the supreme love and truth of the cosmos.

The transcript varies slightly according to the recollection of witnesses, and the station afterwards apologised for what was described as a “breakthrough in sound,” the network technically explaining how such a hoax could have occurred though the prank would have demanded not only considerable coordination and expertise to pull off. No one ever came forward and the author of the missive is unknown and is accepted as gospel by some in the ufology community—and in any case not a bad message for humankind. 

8x8 (11. 908)

jianmen underground neutrino observatory: a tour of JUNO, the massive Chinese lab built to study the elusive particle—Damn Interesting’s Curated Links 

xoxo: Cabel Sasser’s talk on rediscovering a forgotten artist—more here from the presenter, see also

post on own site, syndicate elsewhere: more on the POSSE technique for retaining control of one’s work—see previously  

first draft: the Balloon Boy Hoax of 2009 illustrates the problems of for-profit journalism—see also 

saturday night soirées: the house parties of Charles Babbage (previously) boasted an impressive guest list, including Faraday, the Darwins, Dickens and more  

central casting: recalculating the Kevin Bacon Game with eigenvectors to reveal the most well connected film is Pulp Fiction—via Quantum of Sollazzo 

monsters and madonnas: the eerie, erotic photography of William Mortensen—labelled the “Antichrist of Hollywood” in the 1930s for his horror film inspired compositions  

strong thermal emission velocity enhancement: the rare atmospheric phenomenon called Steve (which science made a backronym) that sometimes accompanies geostorms

starlight suppression (11. 864)

As part of a fascinating series called “Who is Government?” (see also), Washington Post columnist Dave Eggers confidently asserts that with the next quarter of a century, humanity will have conclusive evidence of extra-terrestrial life, thanks to the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope—giving a thoroughgoing profile of the astronomy pioneer who is the soon to be launched observatory’s name sake—which features a system of tiny pistons designed to occult the light of a host star, a coronagraph that can dynamically deform the reflecting mirror, that will enable with this shadow-casting technique far better imaging of any exoplanets orbiting it—an alternate yet untenable proposal (among other competitors) would be to use our Sun as a telescope through gravitational lensing (see also here and here) but the focal point is three times the distance that Voyager I has travelled. Aside from the answer to the existential question of are we alone, the essay goes on the explore the importance of tax-payer funded science (with dedicated government workers generally maligned) and return on investment in knowledge—projects that billionaires would never finance as there’s no money to be made in such endeavours. Much more at the links above.

the philadelphia experiment (11. 760)

Alleged first trialled on this day in 1943 on the US navy vessel the USS Eldridge at the city’s shipyard and coming to public attention over a decade later with a detailed account by supposed witness, a former merchant marine Carl Meredith Allen, the secretive project involving poorly understood extraterrestrial technology carried out with the intention of cloaking an escort ship. The outcome however was unexpected: while the Eldridge did vanish, it reappeared instantly in the naval docks of Norfolk, Virginia, some four hundred and fifty kilometres away, with the crew (no one else corroborated Allen’s story) sustaining bizarre side-effects from the teleportation, returning to Philadelphia minutes later. The navy disavows any knowledge of such research and the story and conjecture gained currency in the late 1970s with the resurgence in interest of paranormal phenomena like the Bermuda Triangle and Project Montauk. The 1984 film adaptation with Michael Paré added an element of time-travel and was generally not well-received by the fringe scientific community.

synchronoptica

one year ago: deadly and illegal border barriers (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

seven years ago: sabre-rattling, crown shyness plus old neologisms

eight years ago: more links to enjoy

nine years ago: the velocity of money

ten years ago: thoughts on Dune and redundancy

and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom (11. 729)

In more meme news, the presumptive Democratic nominee made a surprise showing during the conclusion of the San Diego Comic-Con panel on The Simpsons, reciting a slogan from the Treehouse of Horror VII special from 1996, the short Citizen Kang, about the recurring alien characters interfering in the then upcoming contest between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, eventually replacing the candidates with themselves. While unclear if Harris endorsed this message specifically for the weekend’s forum—or if it was an older clip that a group of political science students arranged when tasked with getting a politician to make a statement about America’s two-party system (see above), her appearance nonetheless energised the crowd. A self-described superfan of the long running show—and maybe this fellow GenXer also pretends it ended circa 1997 instead of entering its thirty-sixth season, which is probably the best approach—Harris’ other solid Simpsons association comes from the 2000 episode Bart to the Future, wherein a similarly dressed Lisa succeeds Donald Trump as US president—which seems a bit more prescient than it was, Trump having been a serial candidate before finally securing the Republican party’s nomination in 2016.

orthostat (11. 640)

A welcome distraction, apparently self-propagating like crop-circles, during the height of the pandemic in 2020 has returned, we learn via Damn Interesting, in a mirrored format in a mysterious monolith spotted in the desert of the state of Nevada in the American southwest. Authorities were similarly puzzled after encountering the original and we had forgotten how copies started cropping up shortly thereafter, with ones appearing on the Isle of Wight, Wales, Romania and California. Given the previous viral fascination, we wonder how much we’ve evolved from those apes at the beginning of 2001.

9x9 (11. 636)

who is this imposter: AI ruins classic, static reaction memes with animation  

🥖: the bygone baguette boxes of French Polynesia—via Messy Nessy Chic  

quantum compass: London Underground hosts trials for a subatomic sensor that could supplement satellite navigation  

crystal lake: the preponderance of 1980s horror movies set at summer camp  

ball & chain: Nag on the Lake shares a special memory from Festival Express, the touring show of Monterey Pop, when the musicians came to Toronto

message in a bottle: the dozen times humans have tried to communicate with extra-terrestrial intelligences—see previously here, here and here  

encarta: the short, happy reign of the multimedia CD-ROM as part of Fast Company’s 1994 Week—via Slashdot  

casa bonita: a 1974 amusement park restaurant reopens under new management and with a monumental wait-list 

 surgeon general’s warning: US top doctor urges health notices for social media

synchronoptica

one year ago: an AI’s take on emoji (plus synchronoptica), assorted links worth revisiting, a human computer plus Adsense (2003)

five years ago: Sweden’s alcohol monopoly, the UK Carbon Brief plus more links to enjoy

six years ago: a Banksy gallery opens, first issue magazine covers, the War of 1812, a space slingshot, more links worth the revisit plus Trump and Merkel

seven years ago: the US withdrawal from the Paris Treaty plus even more links

nine years ago: tobacco introduced to the Old World, more links, Hocus Pocus plus the nobiliary particle

the santilli film (11. 541)

First screened to invited members of the press and UFO researchers on this day in 1995, packaged and

produced by various media outlets within months and broadcast world wide with several encores and iterations, the pseudo-documentary by British entrepreneur Ray Santilli, despite its poor quality, grainy black-and-white footage and overall incredulity, became a cultural phenomenon and garnering high-ratings, an amateur video likely subjected to as much public scrutiny and debate since the release of the Zapruder film, according to some monitoring the sensation. Purported to show the postmortem conducted on an extraterrestrial crew member found in the wreckage of the Roswell Incident, a military cameraman leaked the footage from 1947 to the producer and promoter. Ahead of a 2006 feature comedy (of the same name) lampooning the infamous hoax, Santilli recanted, admitting it was a fabrication though maintaining it was a “re-creation” inspired by true events and a lost tape. The home video itself was sold as an NFT in May 2021 with the physical master-copy apparently destroyed.

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus a classic from The Stranglers

two years ago: more on defining the metre plus the 1984 EuroVision winner

three years ago: your daily demon: Buer, malingering on the metric system plus a modest proposal for solving resource scarcity from 1983

four years ago: Lusophone Culture Day, a view of the village, artist Howard Arkley, more on the unwritten rules of English plus a green office block in Düsseldorf

six years ago: the material properties of silk plus self-destructing emails

space cowboy (11. 529)

Before Star Wars or even the failed vision of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune—see also, a writer-director called Tony Foutz, who was also friends to the planned main cast, conceived of a sci-fi, fantasy project called Saturation 70, a retelling of Alice in Wonderland, in which a Victorian child falls through a wormhole and discovers himself in a dystopian Los Angeles after the climate collapse and his befriended by a group of time-travelling aliens to save the Earth from pollution—the extra-terrestrials are outfitted in hazmat suits against the toxic atmosphere, the title referencing the tolerance for carbon monoxide in blood. To star the then five-year-old son of Rolling Stone Brian Jones, country singer Gram Parsons, Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas and Nudie Cohn, much of the principal footage had already been shot before funding fell through and the production called off, many scenes filmed without a permit during a 1969 convention of alien abductees at Giant Rock near Joshua Tree in the Mojave Desert. Douglas Trumbull who created the special effects for 2001 and later The Andromeda Strain was also involved. Aside from a brief showreel and a few stills, the film has been lost and regarded by cinephiles and Parsons’ fans as a rumour, nearly undocumented for nearly four decades, only a gallery showing in 2014 at London’s Horse Hospital but the story is being told in book form, featuring some never before published on-set photographs and scripts. More from Dangerous Minds at the link up above.

7x7 (11. 522)

diddly doodly: a live action, 1950s version of The Simpsons in the works

trylon and perisphere: rides and attractions of the 1939 New York World’s Fair  

so your property has been banksyed—now what: conserving the artist’s murals and the difference between the studio and the street 

unfrosted: Netflix’s Pop-Tarts movie from Jerry Seinfeld  

the aethererius society: the London cab driver who became the voice of the Interplanetary Parliament in 1954  

the complete mashography: DJ Earworm takes on Taylor Swift  

anti-social network: Aaron Sorkin plans a sequel to the Facebook film, blaming the social media giant for the January Sixth Insurrection

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Roddenberry Archive, custom game cartridges plus the fired Florida principal gets to visit the David

two years ago: a Martian probe encounters the wreckage of an earlier mission plus viewing tectonic shifts

three years ago: International Dance Day with Colin’s Bear plus deepfake satellite imagery

four years ago: the evacuation of Saigon, the Golden Hat of Schifferstadt, daily constitutionals, zen toast plus assorted links to revisit

five years ago: the inspiration for Thanos’ power glove plus not taking God’s name in vain

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.

over the psychic radio (11. 403)

Via Messy Nessy Chic, we are introduced to journalist by trade Grant Wallace, feature writer and then war correspondent in the 1890s to the end of World War I for the San Francisco Chronicler and Examiner whom also dabbled extensively as a screenwriter, author, Esperantist and erstwhile occultist—the extent of this preoccupation discovered after his death in 1954 in a cabin he had built in the woods outside of Camel-by-the-Sea. Archive, repository and laboratory for telepathy, or mental radio as Wallace characterised it, he produced hundred of detailed charts and diagrams reminiscent of sixteenth century alchemical illustrations but with a distinctly Art Nouveau flair (see also)—influenced by contemporary Egyptomania—as heuristic models for study on reincarnation and mediumship, with the dead as well as extraterrestrials, transcribing some messages over the course of his mostly secret and solitary research. Much more at the links above.

synchronoptica

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

zoo hypothesis (11. 246)

Via tmn, the supposition of renowned astrophysicist Enrico Fermi (see previously, one of several observations, later expanded and championed by others, why we might appear to be alone in the Universe) that advanced extraterrestrial civilisations are keeping terrestrials in the dark about their existence and holding humans under a technological veil is gaining traction—especially in the light of seven decades on, how many exoplanents we have found that could harbour life. Perhaps, like Star Trek’s Prime Directive, there is a general consensus towards stewardship and insulating primitive cultures so not to influence their beliefs and outlook but it hardly seems like something that would be universally adhered to across the vast distances and time of space—though I guess it would only take one to throw a veil over us and any civilisation capable of exploring the Cosmos could surely do so under cloak, at least to us—but I suppose there could be glimpses and difference factions of aliens that think humans and their ilk would benefit and should be afforded a more inspiring and aspirational view (why let us see the stars at all and keep us happily content with our geocentric point of view). What do you think? I suspect the Great Silence is a combination of factors (see above) with intelligence out there being too alien for our comprehension, maybe that we are kept creatures and possibly too uninteresting to be bothered with.