begleiten wir die orion und ihre besatzung bei ihrem patouillendienst am rande der unendlichkeit (11. 006)

Debuting on this day in 1966 on the West German public-service broadcaster ARD, nearly parallel to Gene Roddenbury’s Star Trek, Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion was the country’s first televised science fiction series set in not too distance future of a united, space-faring Earth following the voyages of a starship commander and crew who patrol the galaxy monitoring for threats. >Pointedly notorious for their defiance of superiors, the complement includes a officer of the GSD (Galakistcher Sicherheits-dienst) military intelligence service assigned to keep the Orion under check—and while the crew do not trust Lt Tamara Jagellovsk, over the arc of the seven episodes of the first and only season of the show, they ultimately develop feelings of respect for her—which is reciprocated by her omitting certain liberties taken in her mission reports to higher headquarters. Cyborgs (Roboter) are also prominently featured as guards and domestics but their use is shown to be problematic and prone to malfunction. Other fictional technologies include the Astroscheibe, which serves the same function as the view screen on the bridge of the Enterprise, Lichtweferbatterie—-photon-torpedos, Überlichtantrieb—Warp Drive, and while no transporter capabilities exist (famously improvised as a way to cut out the expense of depicting launch and landing scenes), the Orion often docks at deep-sea bases, modern and beautiful cities built underwater. The main antagonists were an extraterrestrial species referred to as Frogs. Despite the series’ short run, it quickly achieved cult-status with re-runs and novelisations continuing the story and limning out the characters. The entire run is available online with subtitles.

it creeps and leaps, and glides and slides across the floor (10. 998)

Released in US theatres on this day in 1958 and billed as a double feature with the less memorable I Married a Monster from Outer Space, the science fiction horror film introducing Steve McQueen in his first leading role is premised on an amoeba like alien that arrives in a small Pennsylvania community via meteorite, growing larger as it incorporates living matter. Unable to kill the creature, they discover that chill paralyses it and rendering locomotion with pseudopodia impossible and the frozen Blob is airlifted to the North Pole—with the ominous pronouncement that they can stop the terror but not kill it, “as long as the Arctic stays cold.”

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Chaos Computer Club (1981), medieval dog names plus the beach photos of Philip Barlow

two years ago: the Battle of Marathon, a sudden revelation plus more nearby abandoned places

three years ago: doom loops, traffic planning and civil engineering, Lascaux Cave rediscovered, flights to nowhere plus the invention of the written word

four years ago: Bonanza (1959) plus the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (1990)

8x8 (10. 977)

diyarbakır: archeologists discover a massive subterranean city under the Roman garrison at Zerzevan 

aaro: the Pentagon launches a website to explore declassified information on unidentified anomalous phenomena, via Slashdot—also watch this instead 

space for kitchen aerobics: the latest oversized monstrosity from McMansion Hell—previously

the parable of the pig: philosopher Pyrrho’s hog as a model of tranquillity in a ship on a stormy sea—from Futility Closet happily back after a hiatus  

queso de cabrales: a hunk of artisanal cheese from Asturias fetches a record-setting price—via Strange Company 

a directory of wonderful things: an expert curated selection of weird and delightful corners of the internet  

chatgop: a conservative media outlet may have interviewed an AI generated Donald Trump 

colossus of constantine: plans to restore the monumental statue of the Roman emperor built as a triumph for his victory in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge

8x8 (10. 951)

egress: the oldest door in Britain, a side-entrance to Westminister Abbey—via Strange Company  

hold on to my fur: another collaboration with the Kiffness—this time with a talkative orange cat from China  

isokon estate: Lawn Road Flats housed those displaced by WWII and its share of espionage  

i want to believe: vintage UFO photos taken by Eduard Albert “Billy” Meier in Switzerland in the mid-70s made iconic when featured on the X-Files up for auction—via Things Magazine 

meow-practise: a limited-run series in the tradition of American day-time soap opera classics like General Hospital and All My Children but with a feline twist   

countdown: both Russia and India have Moon missions next week with the goal of being the first to reach the lunar south pole—via Super Punch  

no dark sarcasm in the classroom: impressively, researchers recreate Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” by analysing listeners’ brain scans but we wonder—like in the above duet—there isn’t an element of backmasking and suggestion—via Kottke  

ingress: the oldest known cat door at Exeter Cathedra

synchroptica

one year ago: the daguerrotype process is gifted to the world (1839) 

two years ago: the Ninety-Five Theses as an email, the Treaty of Rawalpindi (1919) plus the Lithuanian sun goddess

three years ago: the launch of Sputnik 2 (1960) plus the album cover art of Milton Glaser

four years ago: more Brexit omnishambles plus the Pan-European Picnic of 1989

five years ago: assorted links to revisit

33 spaceships for another planet (10. 931)

Via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake, we thoroughly enjoyed contemplating these otherworldly compositions by Karla Knight that use schemata and alien glyphs to craft evoking something ancient and pictogrammatic. Check out Knight’s whole portfolio here and explore how her work is a study in evolving diagrams and flow-charts.  

synchronoptica

one year ago: Nixon resigns (1974) plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: your daily demon: Berlith plus another MST3K classic to enjoy

three years ago: motivational sessions for the long-distance runner, Xanadu (1980) plus a selection of LEGO user-interfaces

four years ago: Abbey Road (1969) plus more on the very American problem of gun violence

five years ago: more McMansion Hell,  a World War I Allied advance, Trump brand asbestos plus more links worth the revisit

akte x (10. 926)

Our gratitude to the always interesting Maps Mania for referring us to the Anomaly Observatory has been documenting paranormal activity focused mainly on Berlin and environs since 2008 but monitoring the unexplained—from the mundane to the phenomenal—which deviates dangerously from the norm. Like with this instance with the map centred on this location on the Museuminsel recounting how one night last December a torrent of water washing away hundreds of exotic fish causing huge and disruptive flood appeared, nearly eliding over the fact that the source was the sudden and catastrophic explosion of a hotel aquarium, it is difficult to tell if it’s an earnest investigation or a facetious commentary on such endeavours but regardless wonderful weird and dedicated to urban mythos. More to explore at the links above.

synchronopitica

one year ago: Que Sera, Sera,  The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967), assembling the globe by various demographic factors plus more city map generators

two years ago: assorted links to revisit,  identifying the location of a sketch by Leonardo plus a Beatles single with an equally good b-side (1966)

three years ago: America tries to ban TikTok, the invention of telegraphy was first dismissed as a gimmick, more links to enjoy, an alternate ending to The Giving Tree plus the Portsmouth Sinfonia

four years ago: air traffic controls in the US strike (1981), the craze of purikura plus a look at the hodiernal verb tense

five years ago: a preview of Star Trek: Picard, a planned remake of 9-to-5 plus more links worth revisiting

9x9 (10. 853)

lost animals: a short story by Geoff Manaugh who exorcises haunted houses with mundane equipment  

clippit: discontinued Microsoft Office Assistant resurrected as a ChatGPT add-on—see previously  

space10: IKEA reimagines a line of flatware encouraging the use of abundant, locally sourced materials—see also 

all-domain anomaly resolution office: newspapers of record passed on the bombshell story of US government programme to reverse-engineer captured extraterrestrial technology—via Slashdot 

i do not want my name to be a thing: John Hancock explains his outsized signature on the Declaration of Independence—see also 

duty to bargain: Google joins Meta in pulling its headline aggregators from Canada over the so called “link tax” 

not to put too fine a point on it: the origins of a selection of hackneyed idioms 

the ganzfeld procedure: a cheap, easy and effective sensory-deprivation technique

short fiction: six-word sci-fi prompts

unified floating object (10. 798)

From Hyōryū-ki-shu’s “Archives of Castaways” of the late Edo period when the island nation’s isolationist policies and suspicions of foreigners was still prevailing, we learn about the strange, illustrated account of a fishing crew salvaging a mysterious saucer-shaped utsuro-bune (虚舟, a hollow vessel) off the eastern coast of Japan in 1803. 

Bringing this boat ashore for investigation, they discovered strikingly beautiful young woman with red and white hair and speaking no known language inside, clutching a wooden box she refused to release. Pictures show her unusual dress and equipage as well as alien symbols. Speculating on the nature of this visitor and close encounter at the time (an ever since), villagers from Jōshū thought this woman might be a Russian or Bengali princess fleeing an unhappy marriage, guarding either her dowery or husband’s severed head in the box and pragmatically, not wanting to draw unwanted attention from the lord of the prefecture rather than out of fear or xenophobia, and decided to send her back to where she came from in her well but bafflingly provisioned and seaworthy boat. More at the links above.

9x9 (10. 752)

x-date: unless a compromise is found to work with the statutory debt ceiling, the US could default on paying its bills and unleash chaos in global financial markets 

the house of mouse: Disney is cancelling plans for a billion dollar Florida annex—and shuttering its immersive Star Wars experience resort hotel—in an ongoing feud with the state’s arch-conservative governor  

garbage patch kids: creepy dolls being washed ashore are auctioned off to benefit marine habitats—see also 

superimposition: researchers at the Zurich Institute of Technology create the world’s largest ‘Schrödinger’s Cat” 

the great silence: we are probably not alone in the Universe but we might as well be—see previously  

random access memory: previously unreleased tracks from retired duo Daft Punk  

interior design: browser-based application to create and share voxel rooms, via Waxy—see previously  

byte-dance: American state of Montana passes a ban of the social media platform TikTok over conflated fears of violations of users privacy  

seat at the table: G7 summit hosted in Hiroshima—with nuclear deterrence on the agenda

8x8 (10. 730)

grift for the mill: New York congressional representative George Santos (previously) surrenders to federal authorities for arraignment on thirteen counts of criminal deceit and defrauding donors 

choose or loose: following the shuttering of Buzzfeed and the uncertain future of Vice, Paramount shuts down MTV News, cutting a quarter of its global workforce—see more, see also

in-go-nom-pa-shi: a Plains Indian Sign Talk primer—via Nag on the Lake 

i want to believe: UFO-hunters’ grassroots surveillance network project to scan the skies 

past-exonerative tense: copaganda and other choice of tone that normalise police violence—see also  

królewiec: Poland renames the Russian exclave with a native endonym, in what is deemed a hostile act by Moscow  

content farms: AI chatbots being used to generate dozens of breaking news sites to draw advertisers—via the new shelton wet/dry  

townhall: CNN takes a big risk in giving Trump a platform with a live studio audience—see previously

9x9 (10. 652)

eieren blazen: egg blowing was all the rage in the Netherlands in the 1950s  

autofill: Google search recommendations illustrated  

sim card: a mobile phone museum, with a special exhibit of the ugliest—via Messy Nessy Chic  

horsell common and the heat ray: the 1978 War of the World’s concept album featuring Yes and Richard Burton  

vexing vexillogy: CGP Grey grades US state flags—see previously 

airspace: Alex Murrell on the ‘Age of Average’—via Kottke—see also  

if the engine jumps the track: another in a series of derailments—thankfully this time with no fatalities—yields some amazing photographs but a few beer or two, via Super Punch 

katkhakali: the dance of the ‘speaking hands’ about the myth of Kali and Travancore, a 1981 Soyuzmultfilm short  

peepshi: a complete guide to deconstructing Easter candies for festive onigiri

8x8 (10. 627)

everthing everywhere all at once: chaotic “Foketoken,” informed by “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” was inspiration for the screenwriter  

a most maddening canvas: Moby Dick (previously) and AI  

ipcc: UN climate committee issues dire warning, with steps to take immediately  

aperiodic monotiles: a non-repeating shape to cover a flat surface has possibly been discovered—see also  

sky critters: a 1978 book that proposes UFOs are biological organisms evolving parallel to humans virtually unnoticed  

la véitable histoire d’amélie poulain: a short film finally revealing the true story of ostensible 2001 romcom  

bardolatry: Google’s AI chatbot released to the public in the UK and US 

hotdog hands: outtakes from the Academy Award winning film—via Miss Cellania

the duchess and the dirt water fox are calling (10. 362)

Originally telecast on this day in 1992 with the MST3K treatment—having previously attained somewhat of a cult following by its inclusion in Elvira’s Movie Macabre in 1984, the 1965 scif-fi movie from the Woolner Brothers (also with the credits Hercules Unchained, Hercules and the Captive Women, Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman and Hillbillies in a Haunted House) follows the plot of a mysterious agent, Dr Kolos, of the Intergalactic Council tasked with replacing prominent human scientists with android doppelgängers in order to take over the Earth. The alien plan is foiled by intervention from the US National Intelligence Service.

al taglio (10. 356)

Via Web Curios, we appreciated the referral to Planet Pizza, a Pioneer or Voyager space probe style project to impart to extraterrestrials not only the the basic concepts of maths, space-time coordinates of our Solar System, chemistry and the nature of the sender (and recipient) but also—as an express end in itself—wonderfully detailed and over-thought set of instructions on how to make said sender’s universally enjoyed dish, which is a bit defining and representative of all humanity in its variety and variation as well.

the helen of troy (10. 353)

Closing this day in 1972 after just seven performances to relentlessly panned reviews and confused audiences, the futuristic rock musical by George W George and Peter Hall—featuring a cast that included Raul Julia and Irene Cara—this flop tells the story of outcasts living on an asteroid (Ithaca) set a millennium from the present time. The protagonist (Julia) pilots a clam-shell shaped garbage scow christened with the title name collecting space junk but that was the only clear aspect of the convoluted narrative, the synopsis contained in the programme not helping to clarify what was going on. Listen to an original cast demo tape here of one of the fourteen musical numbers of the two act play.

lingua cosma (10. 215)

Though somewhat unclear whether mathematician Hans Freudenthal intended his constructed language to be practically applicable or just a thought-experiment and heuristic for thinking about how we might hurdle a potential language-barrier, his Lincos (a portmanteau of the above, see previously) was designed to be decipherable by any extraterrestrial life form—free of terrestrial syntax or context—and conducive to radio transmissions as part of the SETI program, it was meant to primarily convey propositional logic and universal constants. This narrow-band of communication—a bridge, however did not dissuade senior lecturer in Digital Media Studies at the University of Roehampton Richard Carter from anthologizing this alien-icebreaker in a collection of poems called Signals, which of course limn our limits of expression amongst ourselves as much as to other galactic denizens. Much more to explore at the links above.

barbarella psychedella (10. 211)

Directed by Roger Valim and based on the comic series (fumetti) of Jean-Claude Forest with filming beginning just after the release of producer Dino De Laurentiis’ adaptation of Diabolik, which features many of the same acting talents, opened in New York on this day in 1968, followed by debuts in France and Italy later in the month. After several casting revisions over first choices Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, our titular protagonist portrayed by Jane Fonda is dispatched by the Earth’s president to intercept mad scientist Durand Durand who has created a weapon of mass destruction.  Although a highly-sexualised character, Barbarella comes from a society that has moved beyond physical contact.

other galactic funk (10. 186)

On this day in 1977, Domenico Monardo—known professionally as Meco (see previously)—saw his the lead single from his album of space disco that included elements of the soundtrack arranged as instrumental dance music raise to the top of the US billboard charts and hold the number one place for a fortnight, the record and the single “Star Wars Theme / Cantina Band” both certified as platinum. John Williams’ originally version was in the top ten at the same concurrently but was never as popular as Meco’s—the two artist crossing again a few months later with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with the former coming out on top.

fiftyshapes ltd (10. 130)

Incorporated on this day in 1967, the Beatles’ Apple Electronics venture was headed by a television repair technician named Yannis Alexis Madras, whom had been discovered by John Lennon two years prior after seeing a selection of his Nothing Boxes (plastic housing with blinking lights) at a London Gallery. Given the moniker “Magic Alex,” he reputedly pitched a series of increasingly fantastical (but ones we’d like to see) inventions including a seventy-two track tape machine, an air-buffer to prevent car accidents, replacing Ringo’s drums with a sonic force field, a wallpaper sound-system, invisibility paint and an artificial sun—none of which unfortunately materialised. 

Later that same year, Madras tried to help broker a deal for the band to purchase a Greek island but that deal fell through as well. Though the majority of Madras’ inventions were dismissed as impossible (perhaps rather inexplicably, he was nonetheless entrusted him with the design of their new recording studio once they left Abbey Road), one of his proposals for a scrambling device that would prevent fans from recording their songs from the radio was better received. Parting ways in 1969—ostensibly jealous over the influence that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had over Lennon after they were all in India together, Madras took up a career in security and anti-terrorism, offering custom bullet-proof vehicles, bug-detectors, etc—his clients primarily exiled heads-of-state living in London, Crown Prince Juan Carlos, the Shah of Iran and fellow countryman Constantine II.

sternstaub (10. 116)

Having sold over two billion novellas (Heftroman) worldwide since the publication of its first edition (under the title Unternehmen Stardust) on this day in 1961 and issued weekly with new chapters ever since, the Perry Rhodan franchise is patently the most successful one in the arena of science fiction, originally conceived by authors K H Scheer and Walter Ernsting, expanded into radio dramas, video games and comic books—plus a failed cinematic adaptation considered so poorly done that fandom disavows it. Set a decade in the future (1971) during the first lunar mission, US Space Force Major Rhodan and his crew discover an abandoned extraterrestrial vessel and appropriating alien technology, artificial intelligence (positronic brains) and hyper drives, swiftly are able to unite the people of Earth and make humans a galactic presence. With increasingly complex arcs of narrative undertaken by a team of writers, action takes place in a multiverse of exotic aliens, cosmocrats and god-like beings. By coincidence, another beloved science-fiction franchise had its US premiere on the same day in 1966.