7x7

bit part: a preview of a biopic about Claude Shannon (previously)—the unsung Father of Information Theory

the revolution will not be biennialised: Banksy (previously) makes an appearance at a Venice expo, selling paintings of giant cruise ships moored in the canals

en pointe: the Hong Kong Ballet celebrates its fortieth birthday

😾 😾 😾: Thangrycat is exploiting vulnerabilities in the underpinning architecture of the internet

urban spelunking: when the Jehovah’s Witnesses relocated from Brooklyn Heights to upstate, their vacated properties included a series of underground passageways, via Super Punch

conducive to learning: a collection of striking maps and charts that inspired pupils in the late nineteenth century

walking trot: phones can now determine who is carrying them by knowing their users’ gait and other kinematic factors, via Slashdot

heritage tourism

In what smacks very much as an unholy alliance that turns over a rock to reveal that there’s already a booming genealogical travel industry, one problematic force of the gig-economy that’s turned gentrification into overdrive and percolated a housing crisis in the popular destination of the moment that’s proving very hard to recover from and another DNA analysis service that’s demonstrated some serious problems with confirmation bias and sampling-size form a partnership to make holiday-suggestions based on one’s ancestry—for those wanting to rediscover their roots.
Family histories can of course be fascinating, enlightening and humbling—to help us all realise that each of us has been uprooted and transplanted in one way or another, but this method and the package it promises does not strike me as the advisable way to dig around in the past. It’s a huge dissonance that we’ve cushioned ourselves to such a great extent to maintain our distance from others and avoid interaction or betraying intent, and yet we will invite strangers into our homes and automobiles and hope they’ll judge us well. What do you think? The two companies pledge that data about one’s DNA and travelogue won’t cross but I can’t see how that can be prevented. We’d all like to be able to extemporaneously share our narratives and autobiographies (especially when they reaffirm our uniqueness) and perhaps have a dramatic reunion with long-lost cousins, but I don’t think that journey is one that ought to be short-circuited though marketing gimmicks and cynical ploys for horizontal monopolies on one’s aspirations.

kaiten-zushi

Via Boing Boing, we’re served up a rather delightful little movie from the point of view of a camera mounted on the conveyor belt of a sushi restaurant (回転寿司, literally rotating sushi). Every moment is splendid and captures the joys of dining out with friends, each passing booth telling its own story, some reacting to the camera and other too focused to notice. It’s a sweet one off feat but I wouldn’t want this repeated (the conversations are muffled with a soundtrack) and feel surveilled every time I ate out—especially given my propensity for being clumsy with plates and utensils.  We also appreciated how the source website categorised the video under the label sonder.

Here’s a video of a guy putting a camera on a sushi conveyer belt. It’s wonderful. Every table has a little story! pic.twitter.com/6mwKsTHJ0e

— Drew Coffman (@DrewCoffman) May 17, 2019

alphabet soup or no such agency

Having relocated (see also) from Washington, DC to New York City on this day in 1919, the antecedent to the National Security Agency, a three-person operation called the Cipher Bureau, was ostensibly declared redundant after the conclusion of World War I but continued intelligence activities fronting as a business, the Code Compilation Company, providing encryption services for businesses wanting to protect trade secrets that could negatively impact stock prices and investor confidence.
Under the ægis of a group calling themselves the Black Chamber, comprised of recruits from the similarly disbanded Army cryptographic corps, the Company managed to convince Western Union and other telegraph operators to allow them access to the communication networks and focused on intercepting diplomatic cables exchanged through the many consulates concentrated in the city. After the nature of the operations came to the attention of the upper echelons of the government a decade later, the Secretary of State/Secretary of War Henry Lewis Stimson ordered the Company to be shutdown, with the remark, “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” With the outbreak of World War II and the US entry, the talent pool was conscripted again and underwent several re-organisations and fell under the auspices of different military and civilian activities until finally centralised as the Armed Forces Security Agency, with the responsibility for all cryptographic analysis, recognising the precariousness of the geopolitical situation post-war, on 20 May 1949. Due to conflicts between civilian and military intelligence resources and over-compartmentalisation, President Harry S Truman formally established a civilian equivalent three years later through a then classified directive to share intelligence for their joint mission.

6x6

reaction faces: Tadas Maksimovas creates a twelve-barrelled sling shot to pelt people with likes and hearts

line item: the humble receipt gets a rather brilliant redesign to visualise how your grocery bill adds up

novgorod: Sergei Eisenstein (previously) collaborated with Sergei Prokofiev to produce the score for Alexander Nevsky (1938), which remains the cinematic standard

pink pop: a delightful vintage Shiseido cosmetic commercial from 1968

saving face: San Francisco becomes the first municipality to prohibit the use of facial recognition surveillance technology

happy accidents: much needed pick-me-ups from Bob Ross—previously  

privatsphäre

Nearly a year after sweeping privacy and data-retention legislation went into effect in the European Union, one dominant force in shaping the architecture of the on-line world is committing to open a privacy and safety engineering hub in München, to demonstrate the company’s pledge to take security, integrity and demography seriously.
It’s one thing to be exposed to the same commercials ad nauseum but quite a different matter to be denied a job interview or insurance coverage or detoured away from a given destination by dint of the same inscrutable predilections. Failure to comply with current regulations could result in fees upwards of four percent of the internet giant’s global revenue. Let’s hope that this venture helps promote German and EU expectations for privacy and foster a better corporate culture that’s not enabled and entitled to monetise our consent.

chumbox

Exploring further the “rewards” (see here, here and here) we get for actually finishing an article, Vox correspondent Kaitlyn Tiffany wades through the dregs of advertising—dubbed in the industry as chumboxes.
The goal was to chase down the elusive identity of the “vegetable” that an equally dodgily credentialed gut doctor is begging Americans to throw out now, or one of any number of snowclones in the form of body horror, oversized aloe vera, distressed comfort animals, celebrities behaving badly and far off–the-mark “targeted” ads. It’s impossible to track down definitive answers (and not like the answer would be less than enlightening and not very satisfying ultimately) but rather bounces one from spammy website to another, lower-rent one featuring progressively worse advertising marginalia, chumboxes being bait for bigger fishes that in turn lure bigger fishes, a regular pyramid scheme or rather multilevel marketing opportunity is the preferred term nowadays, comprising an unending garbage food-chain. Much more to explore at the link above.

7x7

electronium: a classic electronic music sequencer from pioneer Raymond Scott is reinvented with an artificial intelligence software patch

sacred spaces: Thibaud Poirier photographs modern church interiors

the right to be forgotten: internet giant allows users to control if and for how long it retains one’s data

spoorzone: a self-sustaining bus station in Tilburg

b(7)b: a handy guide to the re-categorised information withholds of the latest version of the Mueller Report released to the public

h. p. loveshack: ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

hic sunt dracones: an interactive map of legends from English Heritage—via Maps Mania  

blind house

We’re directed to an exhibition from artists Paloma Muñoz and Walter Martin whose collaboration has produced a disquieting portrait of human habitation with the windows seamlessly edited away.
This subtle erasure has profound affects on perception and prompts a conversation and reflection on the nature of screen time, how windows are made for looking in as well as looking out and how we’re to understand and uphold our private sphere with so much voluntarily given to public inspection—though what we put on display is not always the invitation to repackage it and sell it back to us at a premium. Continue touring the exhibit at the link above.

8x8

colossus: a robot firefighter worked alongside five hundred heroic first responders to help save Notre Dame

hyperacusis: a look at the rather long history of building acoustics and being driven to distraction

ben day dots: the studio behind the fantastic title sequence of Into the Spider-Verse

poe’s law: an internet adage that it’s become tougher and tougher to distinguish extreme views from parodies thereof

stumped: a look at the observation posts of World War I disguised as trees

the secret-sharer: tech companies contract armies of people to tweak and improve digital assistants

mush, mush: a team of Boston Dynamics Spot Minis working in tandem haul away a big truck

a vast symphony set in stone: tourists and scholars reflect on the cathedrals’ historic (and landmark) role and what it means to them  

the relentless amplification of nothing

The always excellent Things Magazine reflects on internet entropy and the tendency of things to fall into a state of neglect and disrepair often in favour of the sleeker, less labour intensive and attention demanding walled-gardens of social media that has become an exercise in judicious cannibalisation and that blog roll-calls in time become a poignant review of abandoned projects and interests, set aside maybe in some cases just a moment too long to ever get back in the habit.
No one is expected to explain oneself or defend changing circumstance and focus but it is a little sad to realise that voracious, giant platforms are usually the culprits. As much as we might cringe at the idea of social media curating our biographies and autobiographies forever open to public inspection and that in certain contexts nostalgia belies a toxic impulse, it can be on the other hand a moment of elation to go spelunking among the hulks of the moribund past and uncover artefacts that attests to a once vibrant hobby. The author shares some rare nuggets at the link above and we’d like to know if you’ve come across some undisturbed treasures yourself.

♏

Via Kottke, we learn that premium members of an on-line retail giant are pitched a monthly horoscope that pairs one’s sign to recommended products and promotions.
This peculiar merger of astrology with cloying capitalism is moving into its fourth month so there seems to be a serious commitment to the service, penned by an editor who holds a master’s degree in existential phenomenological therapeutic psychology whose by-lines also include a magazine for teenagers and Pokémon, presumably the augmented reality experience. What do you think about that? Is it just in good fun or is it earnest, and is it even possible to be cynical about something that’s not real? Though possibly a late-comer to the booming revival in interest for pseudoscience and guidance no matter what form it comes in, the ploy is symptomatic of a much larger and lucrative trend that Americans are particularly eager to embrace and export.

les géants du numérique

To the consternation of the US and championing an EU-led initiative that failed to pass the supranational parliament last year, France aims to levy a three percent tax on internet behemoths whose profits surpass certain thresholds—seven hundred billion and fifty billion world wide with twenty-five million euro domestically.
The bill, referred to as GAFA for the biggest interlopers—Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple—is expected to pass the Senate with an equally overwhelming margin and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire says France is honoured to take the first crucial step towards data sovereignty, expecting to glean around half a billion euro in tax revenue annually that will be returned to the public coffers. While the tax burden would certainly not be crippling to the captains of industry, there are fears that the scheme could incite a precedent.

falsche flagge

Having become a metonym for actions facilitated or at least capitalised upon by authorities to forward their own interests and selectively deny elements of the opposition—or mere scapegoats (Caper emissarius)—their civil rights, the Reichstag Fire occurred this night in 1933.  Though later investigations and court proceedings suggest that the act was that of a lone arsonist (though pyromaniacal tendencies were never established), Nazi leadership—including the newly named Chancellor Adolf Hitler with just a week to go before a decisive vote that would eventually grant the party and executive plenary powers—that there was a vast conspiracy of Communists working to keep Germany down.
Firefighters extinguished the blaze by 23:30 but the complex was gutted and heavily damaged. Immediate consequences were cemented the very next day, when at the request of Hitler and Hermann Göring, President Paul von Hindenburg signed an incendiary decree into law that suspended the right to appeal unreasonable detention, freedom of the press, public-assembly and the expectation to privacy over the telephone or in the mail. These strictures were in place throughout the Dritte Reich. Parliamentary sessions were held in the Kroll Opera (accounting for the theatrics and stage-craft) adjacent to the ruins of the Reichstag building.

below the belt selfie

Rather than concede to the badgering and blackmail of a supermarket tabloid with close ties to the Trump administration, a titan of industry who surely owns the network infrastructure that the media enterprise uses to manage all its properties, publically accused the publication of extortion, having a established record of threats and intimidation against the press, through their unsubtle intimation to release more compromising photographs of the magnate intercepted during a liaison.
Stopping short of characterising the tranche of threats as politically motivated or with the help of government agencies—and not to excuse unfaithfulness, such a move could be in retribution and in clear violation of plea deal the publisher reached with federal prosecutors last year, when due to reporting by a highly reputable newspaper owned by the billionaire critical of the Trump regime revealed that the tabloid had paid a not insignificant sum of hush-money to a woman that Trump had an affair with in order not too negatively impact Trump’s campaign, not to prosecute the company for skewing the presidential election.  I don’t think that the Trump syndicate is picking the right fight and calling in the thugs cannot be done without drawing attention.

gelöscht

Though the social media giant is begging off the decision saying that the agency does not appreciate the scope of the competition its properties face, the consumer advocacy watchdog, the Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) in Bonn has ruled that Facebook cannot aggregate, bundle user data and cannot seed or otherwise inform the demographic model it maintains on each by profile drawing on information it collects from the boutique outlets it has absorbed. This anti-trust verdict demonstrates how the platform abuses user-data through pooling and will hopeful propagate further through the network’s ecosystem, remedying to an extent the regrettable decision to surrender and suborn some genuinely useful applications to the media empire, and moreover shows that the courts and like organisations are capable of catching up.

6x6

don’t seem to rouse themselves for anything besides the birth and death days of idolised rock stars: a Stasi guide of negative-decadent youth subcultures in East Germany

backboard: neglected community basket ball courts revived and rehabilitated as canvases for monumental paintings

sandbox: the development of electronic music owes a debt to songs aimed at a very young demographic

what pedantry is this: more questions and answers from the Chicago Manual of Style—via Coudal Partners

i’ll be waiting for you on the dark side of the moon: Earthrise from above the lunar far-side from the Longjiang-2 orbiter

tilt-shift: an immersive tour of the North Korean capital

social capital or the dunwich horror

As social media behemoth Facebook is proving that bad behaviour does indeed pay, profits up and still the darling of uninventive advertisers, grifters and undermining elements despite the disdain it has for its critics and its users’ privacy and well-being, more and more studies are demonstrating the positive benefits of cutting the platform out of your routine.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.” It has not been quite a year yet since I was persuaded to deactivate my account—rebuffing the cloying pleas to come back—and there was a time early on that I thought that the platform could have if not reformed and redeemed itself could merely demonstrate that it wasn’t something sinister and merely a wanton utility, an agnostic force majeure like other technological giants, but it’s since squandered that hope and I’ve not regretted the decision. “An isolated person requires correspondence as a means of seeing his ideas as others see them, and thus guarding against the dogmatisms and extravagances of solitary and uncorrected speculation.”

your feedback matters

Tedium treats us into another deep-dive—this time on the ostensibly quaint suggestion box, which for all its simplicity and peril of not heeding what it advice it solicits or fails to manages just to inform and propel the whole reputation-based service economy. The origins of inviting feedback are murky but one of the earliest examples can be sourced to a Shogunate of Edo-Era Japan.
In August 1721, public petition boxes called meyasubako (目安箱) were installed, and the government acted on one popular recommendation and opened up a free hospital the following year for those without means. Development is traced through modern times but one kind of has to balk at what companies demand presently with circumspection since a large part of the utility of the device lie in its honest appeal with the perception of safety and anonymity and with no fear of recrimination—which is largely stripped away with most interactions, either overtly or covertly. What do you think about that? Though our opinions and customer satisfaction is very much sought after and we’re seemingly encouraged to speak up, the voice we’re given is open to act and is an immodest request on the part of the facilitators to push research and marketing off on employees or paying customers.

7x7

sp!n doctor: this is indeed a clever top

take a number: considering queueing theory and misconceptions about waiting one’s turn

bismillah: an homage to “Bohemian Rhapsody” (previously here and here) in dank meme form—stick with it at least until after the first Brian May guitar solo

like some cat from japan: archivists uncover hitherto unknown footage of David Bowie’s first televised appearance as Ziggy Stardust

oppositional research: a desperate Facebook deputises young people as data-dragnets—updated

cornucopia: artist Uli Westphal artfully arranges produce to highlight agricultural diversity

hanziverse: an interactive exploration of Chinese characters, via Maps Mania