upselling (11. 888)

Although to an extent we get why both websites and increasingly waitstaff, dependent on positive reviews, recommendation, and the former sidelined, scraped, abandoned, bereft of revenue and cajoled into a subscription model, places and spaces one has given a minute of their attention to voluntarily are not enough and demand another minute amongst the vortex of algorithmically curated feeds and forced notifications—and the minute after that, no longer allowed to engage and explore on one’s own terms. Nick Heer presents the very apt allegory of a dining experience ruined by an aggressively intrusive server:

Would you like to see the menu again? Here, try this new thing. Here, try this classic thing we brought back. Here is a different chair. How about we swap the candles on the table for a disco ball? Would you like to hear the specials again? Have you visited our other locations?

Such an encounter is highly relatable and corresponds with newsletters, paywalls, diversions that lock one into walled-gardens and promoted content and detract from the whole venture.

bop spotter (11. 887)

Via JWZ, we learn of Riley Walz’ project that coopts the rather depressingly insidious programme called Shotspotter (™️ presumably and run by subcontractor touting benefits for public safety and security but failing to deliver) that detects and ranges gunfire by arrays of microphones installed in cities across America—though some police forces have cancelled their subscriptions due to cost and the diminishing returns on investment of random bullets—with a hidden phone attuned to picking up songs from street level perched somewhere high above San Francisco’s Mission District. Shazam is an application that can identify music from a short clip and adds the song to the playlist. When first launched in 2002 in the UK, people would text “2580” on their mobile phones and hold it up to the radio or television to get a piece recognised, getting a text back with the title and artist.

suburban fury (11. 865)

Joining the only other American female would-be presidential (let’s not forget Fanny Kaplan and the long tradition of Russian attempts) assassin with the mutual target being Gerald Ford inside of a month from each attempt, Sara Jame Moore tried to kill the US president on this day in 1975 as he was leaving a San Francisco hotel. Preoccupied with Patricia Hearst (maybe a case of Stockholm Syndrome by-proxy), Moore and volunteered as a bookkeeper and informant for the the organisation founded by William Randolph Hearst to rebuff the claims by the Symbionese Liberation Army that they had kidnapped and inculcated his daughter for his crimes against the poor up until the moment of her plot foiled by the FBI. Picked up by local authorities the day prior on suspicion of having an illegal handgun and a large supply of ammunition, Moore acquired a new revolver and shot at Ford from a distance of twelve metre as he exited the St Francis Hotel and misjudging the sightings on her new and untested weapon missed by a narrow margin. Moore said later that her motive was to incite revolution and bring about positive change in America. Remanded for life in prison and with an interim escape and re-apprehension, Moore was paroled at the end of 2007 and is living in Tennessee, aged 94.

10⁶⁰⁰ (11. 819)

Via Things Magazine (lots more to explore there), we get the chance to revisit the electromechanical rotor cipher machine, the advanced HX-63 developed by a private Swiss firm, which would prove difficult to crack even by contemporary standards and in 1952 was exponentially more secure than the CIA’s top model. Over the course of a decade, only about a dozen of the units were manufactured and though most clientele remained anonymous, the French defence ministry was one known buyer and a defence contractor found the device in a Cold War communications bunker and restored it to working order. The potential of those above undisclosed purchasers to be forces not aligned with Western interests caused the intelligence agency to intervene and not only eventually stop their sales but also to enter into a partnership with the company to produce a model with a backdoor so the CIA could decrypt any transmission. More from IEEE Spectrum at the link above including a video demonstration of the restored, uncompromised model and more on how the technology works to encode messages.

synchronoptica

one year ago: INTERPOL (1923)—with synchronoptica—plus divination through cheese

seven years ago: an appreciation of composer Edvard Grieg,  a meditation on the dacha plus cabmen’s shelters

eight years ago: restoring the Houses of Parliament, the debut of Star Trek, a Buddha-inspired knitted cap plus the debut of Voyager

nine years ago: a partially submerged art installation in the Thames is a statement on climate change

ten years ago: window displays, NATO talks on the Russian invasion of Ukraine plus a visit to Bad Vilbel

trial balloon (11. 778)

Much in the same way as Brexit provisioned and prefigured the politics of MAGA and the election of Trump, the same amplified contagion unchecked

that fuelled violent race riots is subjecting Britain to an experiment by omission and testing the bounds of social media advocacy for by an arbiter of truth who is incautious about dissemination of falsehoods and faces few challenges or repercussions in the echo chamber, star chamber for being critical of a government whose policies he is in disagreement with. With the guardrails removed and no consequences for weighing in on political matters—over that stay of contrition of four years ago during the insurrection went social networks promised to do better about policing dangerous and illegal content, ranging from political violence, interference operations, disenfranchisement to COVID conspiracies—indeed what is to stop influence peddlers and grifters and avowed agents of chaos from forecasting or declaring that the US (or any other polity) is on the brink of civil war? Such outrageous and irresponsible punditry has always existed but now has an insurmountable volume.

eyechat (11. 739)

Via the always marvellous Nag on the Lake, we are directed to the latest project from Neal Agarwal (see previously) that pairs random strangers’ eyes in a video call, with no audio and no chatter, just focused on the narrow slit of one’s face, in order to appreciate the quiet and how much expression, connection happens within this band. I am no sure how matches are made—whether pre-recorded or two people live checking in at the same time but feel confident it’s above-board.

synchronoptica

one year ago: American Graffiti (with synchronoptica) plus backlinks and hat-tips

seven years ago: generative inspirational quotations, mapping the globe’s most spoken languages post a possessed podcast

eight years ago: assorted links to revisit plus a vertical forest in Milan

ten years ago: a deck of cards, Taishō Era art, disobedient objects plus wine maps

fourteen years ago: filming locations in Germany

topographic map non-linear confidentiality algorithm (11. 719)

Lured by the slightly hyperbolic title Every Map of China is Wrong—with one’s mind going elsewhere to Tibet, Taiwan and maritime trade routes at first, via ibīdem, we are directed to a rather fascinating look at geodesic reference points (see also), international standards and those conventions that are the exception. China’s coordinate system is informed by Global Positioning System and the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency surveys but has inserted an obfuscating formula when it comes to matching satellite telemetry with digital maps and is proprietary (in the name of economic and national security, restricted to a handful of domestic companies which foreign interests must partner with) and cannot be aligned because of the randomness of the algorithm. The drift is especially apparent at border regions and for those travelling between Macau, Hong Kong and the mainland, as those special administrative regions are on the international standard. Much more at the links above.

ausspioniern (11. 718)

Via Quantum of Sollazzo, we are referred to a fascinating joint investigation from Bayerischer Rundfunk and Netzpolitik (EN/DE) on how location data (see previously) jeopardises security, with brokers amassing people’s a litany of details about daily routines and selling (or giving them away) on line, making the matter of triangulating anonymised information a rather disturbingly easy process for the team of journalists to prise into the private lives of others and handily identify spies or others affiliated with the intelligence and defence communities by following their trails of digital breadcrumbs from office to home.

no responsive documents (11. 692)

Our friends at Muckrock (previously) have successfully through a FOIA petition to the US National Security Agency to locate a historic lecture delivered by computing pioneer Admiral Grace Hopper, authoring COBOL as a demonstration of a machine independent high-level programming language, at the intelligence agency’s Fort Meade headquarters. The NSA, however, is refusing to release the 1982 recording from its archives, preserved on an AMPEX video tape reel, because it has no equipment capable of making a copy. Although not an unsolvable problem, particularly for one of the most powerful and well-connected spy agencies in the world, and the Freedom of Information Action cannot require the records-holding entity to obtain hardware to access outdated file formats, it does speak to the problems of obsolete technology and our coming digital dark ages.

splogoverse (11. 681)

Having previously tracked how that the zombification of dormant domains followed the cannibalisation of the oldweb and general enshittification as squats for AI-generated slop, we gave a close reading to this account involving the purchase of a long-abandoned URL of a mainly print newsletter that once hosted their contributions in order to spare their by-line from the indignity visited upon many legacy websites, coopted by prolific impostors for name-recognition (like Red Lobster being private-equitied). Like the above cannibalisation—which seems rather tame in comparison—archived content (which may be also hosted in parallel by a successor publisher) is lightly edited and updated to make it appear fresh and relevant, at least to search engines and advertisers. More from Tedium at the link above.

9x9 (11. 613)

brainstorm: an AI researcher creates webpages from search queries—via Web Curios  

resurfacing the past: cataloguing all of the sunken ships of World War II  

like a feather on god’s breath: Hildegard von Bingen continues to fascinate and attract a diverse following—see previously 

leica lux: a new app from the veteran company is a concession that film is dead  

pineapple cheese: a nineteenth century fad in New England—via Strange Company  

unfortunate juxtaposition: an omnibus of headline crash blossoms—see previously  

mycological studies: Ann Wood’s paper mushrooms 

amperima: deep-sea researchers discovery a hot-pink “Barbie Pig” and a unicumber unknown to science in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone 

ddg: DuckDuckGo offers anonymity for AI chat sessions

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: the Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520) plus the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)

three years ago: more links to enjoy plus Brazilian phone booths

four years ago: an airport stretch-limousine, factorial pottery, a parting-shot from Cassini, more links to revisit, justice served plus besmirching a swan

five years ago: Iceland does not want your bottled water, even more links plus a Noah’s Ark theme park flooded

uvb-76 (11. 597)

Courtesy of ibīdem, we are directed to an omnibus post on numbers stations (see previously) featuring the enigmatic beacon designated also with the callsign MDZhB (МДЖБ, referred to as the Buzzer) broadcasting on short-wave radio. Mostly monotonous, there are sporadic interruptions with voice transmission, usually in Russian but sometimes audio-drops of Yosemite Sam and other memes but otherwise in strict messaging formats. This ostensible activation code was replaced with the ominous filler of Swan Lake during a brief period in November of 2010, a well-established preemption when all Hell is breaking loose to the consternation of monitors but regular programming soon resumed. While patently considered as a communications encoded directive for Soviet and Russian field agents, the transmitter does not possess the earmarks of a true numbers station, missives being too random, and is seen as sort of frequency- , domain -holding mechanism to dissuade others for future contingencies, including as some have suggested an automated “dead hand” signal which if broken would trigger a retaliatory response, assuming that command and control had been taken out by a first strike.

i’m feeling lucky (11. 568)

Well before the default search engine began adding AI overviews to its results, users expressed their frustration and rebellion by adding a /r to their query to solicit some community juried results from Redditors less biased towards optimisation and more geared towards what people drove through discussion. Whilst rankings on any platform have never been free from a certain tilt that may create unwanted obstacles—or produce the desired outcome—this sort of copilot mode be default risks the user blaming, shooting the messenger (see previously) for what’s served up through the enhanced algorithm. Although Google chose to showcase its latest AI-focused upgrade on its biggest forum, the alternative filter, emulator of familiar web-caches reaching back a decade before SEO and general bot buttinskis was announced quietly by a liaison on a competing site. Sans ads, knowledge panels and scraping metadata from websites—but with tradeoffs—the parameter and suffix udm=14 brings one back to the unadulterated web to an extent that’s probably more geared to utility rather than simply nostalgia. More from Tedium at the link above and here is a website that automates it for your browser of choice.

rabbithole (11. 545)

Via Mx Tynehorne’s Cabinet of Curiosities (previously), we found ourselves drawn into a web of unsolved, enduring mysteries, fringe and pseudoscience theories, cryptozoology, and urban, internet legends with this extensive and growing list of obscure phenomena from Iceberg Charts. Of course the trajectory from hesitancy, to skepticism to contrarian and conspiratorial thinking can be a slippery slope and most of the cited examples are tempered with a dose of rebuttal and academic remediation and many catalogued are harmless fun. Among the newer links, we found an enticing selection of alternative histories (see previously) plus a new one in the form of the Roman Senate’s capital condemnation of a poet, grammarian and plebeian tribune of the Late Republic called Quintus Valerius Soranus. A contemporary and correspondent of Cicero and credited with the intention of the reading aid in the form of a table of contents, Soranus was put to death by crucifixion under the dictatorship of Sulla for ostensibly, publicly revealing the arcane and sacred name of Rome. Though unclear the manner of the publication, perhaps in a poem’s acrostic—or whether this was a political pretext to rid themselves of a troublesome colleague—such evocatio was considered a grave taboo and never mentioned outside of exclusive, secret ceremonies as divulging the name was calling forth the civic, tutelary deity, which if known by Rome’s enemies could cause the protector god to abandon and defect. No one knows if the city truly had such a classified name or what it was—possibly after the elder goddess called Angeron—and the popular but possibly creatively incorrect that it was what Rome spelt backwards spelt was inspired by a dual temple built by Hadrian to the city and Venus with altars back to back and hence the ROMA-AMOR inversion.

8x8 (11. 514)

flightline: stunning visualisations of air traffic  

splinternet: ByteDance does not plan to divest itself of TikTok following US ultimatum  

megadeath: modelling the destruction caused by a nuclear bomb on a major city  

mtv buzz: a surreal montage of audio and video clips arranged by Mark Pellington (1990)  

celebrity endorsement: musicians, artists and novelist pose with the Sears’ appliances in this 1969 ad campaign for Kenmore—see also  

undiscovery: the Map Men chart phantom islands—including some that have made it into the era of Google Maps—see previously  

22,5 light hours: engineers debug a forty-seven year old computer remotely from twenty-four billion kilometres away to revive the data stream from Voyager I—see previously  

embarking: a luxury airline that caters to canines above their human companions

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: dismantling Soviet-era monuments

three years ago: more links to enjoy plus a special issue of LIFE magazine

four years ago: fantasy urban map generators, more links worth the revisit plus geopolitical optics

five years ago: an elegant and modern personal seal, even more links plus a Victoria houseplant

7x7 (11. 474)

my dad is dracula (and a very good dog): the funny webcomic by Jason Poland—via Miss Cellania  

good night george: a last nostalgic look the Glasgow hotel featured in Trainspotting, Taggart and with other cameos in television and film—via Nag on the Lake  

volcanic vortex rings: Mount Etna is sending out smoke signals, a phenomenon never before documented on film  

penny hike: instructions to create a lodestone for mindful, distraction-free wandering, using AI, to return you to where you started—via Web Curios—it has a certain resonance but I’ll give you a magic pebble to keep in your pocket so you don’t get too lost 

spyware: the secret weapons of Cold War espionage  

carmel-by-the-sea: a historic hotel known as the birthplace of the Apple Macintosh restored  

bug bytes: US government created comic books to fight disinformation and increase media literacy fall rather flat of their goals appealing to old tropes—via Hyperallergic

the usual suspects (11. 452)

After years of obscuring police line-ups in creative and comical (to some) fashions, one department will comply with a request from a toy company to respectfully stop using its image to hide the faces of potential law-breakers in its social media posts. Certain authorities had been in the habit of protecting the identity of suspects for non-violent crimes in case they were exonerated and not to expose them to public shaming—the stocks—but all began to comply once legislation was passed to protect the identities of all until proven guilty. We’re not sure why such a blotter needed to be circulated in the first place, unless looking for more witnesses or issuing an all points bulletin. Mugshots are also removed after a fortnight. In any case, no more minifigs.

synchronoptica

one year ago: The Leopard (1963) plus Everything is a Remix

two years ago: Starlight Express plus Let America Be America Again

three years ago: a cargo freighter blocks the Suez Canal, Moby Dick by Matt Kish, statehood for Washington, DC plus the Tenerife Airport Disaster (1977)

four years ago: the etymology of a snack cracker, Typhoid Mary, vintage bathrooms, an Oscar boycott (1973) plus job losses soar due to the pandemic

five years ago: Japan becomes less vegetarian (1872), driving home through the Rhön plus The Disorder of Things

eo 9835 (11. 439)

Also knowns as the “Loyalty Order” and instituted to combat supposed communist infiltration in the echelons of the federal government, the executive order was issued by US president Harry S Truman on this day, primarily in response to criticism that the Democrat administration had been too lax about suppressing Soviet influence, fuelled by ongoing investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Although Truman hoped that this move might placate his dissenters, it quickly snowballed, leading to the creation of the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organisations and a sweeping FBI inquiry of all three million federal employees—three hundred were ultimately dismissed as security liabilities—warranting further research if the subject was disposed to disloyalty in the form of sabotage, espionage, treason, sedition or advocacy thereof. The order was ultimately revoked in stages by Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter and repealed entirely under Bill Clinton in 1988, eliminating fealty in favour of allegiance, which had become entrenched as discriminatory hiring policies that barred gay individuals from foreign service positions and that required that gay charitable and educational organisations applying for a tax exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service publicly disclaim that homosexuality was a “sickness, disturbance or a diseased pathology.”

7x7 (11. 435)

deadwooding: Banksy acknowledges authorship of a new mural bringing back some greenery to an aggressive prune tree in Finsbury Park  

subspace: an ultra high-definition video of a cat chasing a laser-pointer was beamed over thirty million kilometres to improve future video calls to the Moon and Mars 

running-stitch: beautiful embroidered portraits from Karola Pezarro  

deadspin: more on the internet’s undead, reanimated by private equity and name recognition—see previously, see more  

bunga bunga: Italy’s Foreign Press Association to move into former home of Silvio Berlusconi, who famously disparaged reporters as Communists  

honeytrap: Aphra Behn’s intersecting careers as a professional writer and spy  

sequoiadendron giganteum: imported by the Victorians as status symbols, Giant Redwoods (see also) are thriving in the UK at more than half-a-million and growing

you sad pocketbook of polluted purulence (11. 431)

Via Nag on the Lake’s always excellent Sunday Links, we are directed to a handy password generator created and coded by Ron Hardin that generates randomised phrases in the form of rather arch insults, which satisfies the hallmarks behind this top layer of security by being hard to guess, not readily susceptible to a brute-force attack and deliciously memorable, mostly alliterative, adhering to the techniques of champion memorisers. Especially if it’s work-related, it’s cathartic to hurl such aspersions into the void even if it is only for one’s benefit, aghast and empowerment—and are probably as secure as any alternative. See what scornful phrases you can come up with, you dear old harrowing can of cantankerous claptrap.