In deference to the silver anniversary of the Peter Benchley and Steven Spielberg and Peter Benchly collaboration—which agreedly holds up and worth a rewatch—Clive Thompson’s Linkfest (lots more great stuff there) directs us to a text-based adventure game inspired by the film authored by programmer and designer Matt Round, that follows the plot pretty faithfully scene by scene but from the point of view of the titular shark with some pretty compelling internal monologue (see also).
Saturday, 12 July 2025
Friday, 9 May 2025
ballerina cappuccina (12. 442)
A series of AI-generated memes featuring a cast of surrealist chimeric characters, usually a visual portmanteau of animals with vehicles or fruit with anthropo-morphic features emerged a few months ago and the phenomena is called Italian brainrot (see previously) for the accompanying text-to-speech voiceover in not-quite-nonsense Italian (see also) for rhyming effects to low-effort static images, which nonetheless seemed primed to evoke a feeling of uncanniness. Minted as volatile meme coins, they seem to be employed to underscore aggressively self-aware shitposting as well as the amount of AI slop inundating the internet. The original Tralalero Tralala and Bombardino Crocodilo have been cancelled as Islamophobic but have returned in a more satirical form and all are subject to remix and revision as well as commentary about the impermanence problem of AI image creation when an input is subject to the telephone-game. The trend is also ostensibly in response to mainstream studio entertainment, franchises sorely lacking in originality. Chimpanzini grappalini
@eliotmediaoficial Todo lo que debes saber de los personajes del brain rot italiano #chismecito #tik_tok #tiktokers #creadores #trends ♬ sonido original - Eliot Store
synchronoptica
one year ago: AI-generated cityscapes (with synchronoptica) plus Swedish PhD traditions
seven years ago: US-Iranian tensions plus US withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal
eight years ago: Belphegor’s Prime, Trump’s interference with the justice system, Banksy’s Brexit mural plus a suitably gilded property
eleven years ago: a hoard of paintings of unknown provenance plus the question of Scottish independence
twelve years ago: Nazi Germany’s capitulation and a fateful date
Friday, 23 February 2024
10x10 (11. 374)
walden 7: photographer Sebastian Weiss captures the epic nature of an outstanding apartment block in Barcelona
shootball: January Sixth themed pinball machines and other Republican swag at the Conservative Political Action Conference—see previously

google blobs: the animated emoji character set that ought to be brought back—via Web Curios
38°n: a news source on North Korea rex melly: the riches of Mansa Musa of the Mail Empire—adjusting for inflation and other factors, possibly the wealthiest person in history
shift to socials: Vice Media is folding, laying off hundreds of journalists—via Waxy—see more
pale usher: introducing a blog mini-series on Moby Dick with a curious etymology
every sperm is sacred: following the ruling in Alabama that grants personhood to frozen embryos—and the subsequent suspension of IVF treatment for fear of legal implications—conservative think tank forming Trump’s policy wants to end recreational sex
batpole: homes with alternate stairwells—see previously
Sunday, 23 July 2023
twilight zone (10. 900)
Via Boing Boing, after going up on his space elevator, Neal Agarwal invites us to scroll down from the ocean’s surface through the pelagic zone through the midnight zone to the dismal seabed and explore with the denizens of the deep, like the cosmopolitan sixgill shark that spend their days at depths of seventeen hundred meters and their nights in swallower waters and the so called headless chicken fish that’s a sea cucumber with wing-like fins that propel them through the dark at nearly three thousand meters below or plunge to the ultra-abyssal hadal zone (the adjectival form of Hades), inaccessible places in the deepest trenches that have had fewer visitors than have been on the Moon.
Saturday, 6 May 2023
10x10 (10. 724)
shark tank: MS Teams has a suite of customisable in app stickers
let him love fellows of a polecat: recalling a scholar’s naรฏve but noble translation attempt of Lorem ipsum—see previously here and here

like family, but with more cheese: more on that pizza commercial produced by AI
brownstone: Ruxandra Duru collects colour swatches of Brooklyn townhouses
some disassembly required: a proposal to construct a Dyson’s Sphere (see previously) around the Earth using Jupiter for raw materials
yeoman’s work: Penny Mordaunt as the unwavering bearer of the Sword of State stole the show—see more here and here
native tongue: research shows nearly half of the world’s linguistic diversity at risk
dark patterns: digital services make it difficult to unsubscribe—via Waxy
Friday, 16 April 2021
9x9
oh, i travel—a sort of licenced troubleshooter: a lexicon of the Bond franchise in all its forms
riptide: an homage to the pre-code (previously) Hollywood actress Norma Shearer
dead pilots’ society: CBS Summer Playhouse and similar vehicles were venues for anthologies of failed television shows—see also
la vie รฉlectrique: Albert Robida’s 1893 vision of the future includes a remote courtship by means of a tรฉlephonoscopethe sensational she-hulk: Marvel comics hand-lettering from Reagan Ray—previously
buzz-saw: the ancient shark-like Helicoprion had spiral tooth-whorls
reinventing the wheel: engineers in Seoul develop transforming, load-bearing tyre using principles of origami—see previously
oh—the pint pot, half-a-pint, gill pot, half-a-gill-quarter-gill, nippikin and the brown bowl: conventional measurements of liquid (see also) anticipated the next in a binary fashion
shaguar: if Austin Powers were to be revived today, he would have been cryogenically frozen in 1991
Sunday, 21 February 2021
7x7
gerontologists hate them: two Florida women disguise themselves as “grannies” hoping to get vaccinated sooner—via the New Shelton/Wet-Dry
the sleeping sharks of isla mujeres: Jaws-inspired speedo-fest that’s a favourite of Quentin Tarantino
orchestral manoeuvres in the dark: thirty-five years on, the soundtrack to Pretty in Pink is timeless
a searchlight productions: find actors, colours, objects in movies—try kitten, fox or cheese, via Waxy
a working-class hero is something to be: an obsessive photographic provenance of every figure featured on the Sgt Pepper’s album cover—see also here and here
it gettu betur each time you watch the clip: gentleman on Icelandic quiz show responds poorly to losing ruling against his answer
covax, co-pay: prices per vaccine paid globally varies widely, often not representative of purchasing-power
Saturday, 10 October 2020
squalene
Tuesday, 25 August 2020
6x6
a jay ward production: rediscover the classic cartoon Hoppity Hooper
distance learning is the art of applying the bride to the child: Dorothy Parker’s (previously) take on remote kindergarten
long in the tooth: a Greenland shark is recognised as world’s oldest veterbrate
type specimen: explore the extensive Letter Form Archive—via Pasa Bon!
nimby, yimby: mapping applications that reveal percentage of golf course and parking lots in your town
casa azul: a virtual exploration of Frida Kahlo’s Blue House—via Messy Nessy Chic plus the edible sunflower and a tiny tug
owls to athens: a look at how our avian friends influenced language and limn thought (see also)
Friday, 14 August 2020
8x8
really simple syndication: Tedium explores early electronic news and digital services (see previously here, here and here)
let’s go out to the lobby: a 1979 drive-in cinema sci-fi concession advertisement
heracleum sosnovsky: creative interventions to control the toxic, invasive import known as “Stalin’s Revenge”
iss: a digital coffee table book documenting life aboard the International Space Station
dead pilots society: a treasury of unproduced television shows—via Miss Cellania’s Links (see also)
eftertrรคda: IKEA reveals its branded line of apparel with a new collection
the audience is listening: the origins of Netflix’s ta-dum sound—via Things Magazine with a special edition on start-up noises
Wednesday, 5 August 2020
6x6
nestbox: Czech firm designs a modular trunk extension to turn any car into a camper
kintsugi court: a rundown basketball blacktop restored with the ancient Japanese art that cherishes the cracked
your 2020 bingo card: researchers discover a population of sharks thriving in an undersea volcano
earth science: a treasury of minerals mapped out—via Maps Mania
green tea ice cream: Linda Diaz’ soulful rendition wins the NPR Tiny Desk competition
cosmic architechtonics: multipart exploration of Eastern Bloc monolithic housing estates
Saturday, 20 June 2020
you’re gonna need a bigger boat
Sunday, 10 May 2020
torch song
Having encountered this neural network-driven jukebox before in several contexts, we were of course quite impressed but at the same time unable to assay the power the algorithms and machine learning so quite appreciated the developers allowing Janelle Shane (previously) to put a quarter in and demonstrate in an accessible what it’s capable of. If you have ever wanted to know what Baby Shark might have sounded like as performed by the Beatles, then you are in luck or sample the below rendition in the voice and style of Ella Fitzgerald. Much more to explore at AI Weirdness at the link above.
Tuesday, 14 May 2019
no laughing matter
Contributing to the growing list of what can’t be unseen, we are treated—rather subjected to the terrifying perspective of a potential next meal that from beneath and turned around that makes proximity to a Great White Shark an even scarier, layered prospect, owing to the unsettling pareidolic effect of finding anatomy within anatomy.
catagories: ๐ฆ
Sunday, 10 February 2019
7x7
squala mater: a definitive Latin translation of Baby Shark—via Super Punch
sonovox: watch Lucille Ball demonstrate the “voice-box” technique that Peter Frampton popularised

the wandering earth: big budget scifi movie from author Liu Cixin (previously) has excellent New Year’s debut
from snowman to gingerbread man: the surprisingly flat dimensions of Ultima Thule (previously) baffles researchers
gregg-ruled: edition of Alice in Wonderland transcribed in shorthand—with illustrations to help the reader keep his or her place
embroidered stories: an exhibition of samplers (previously) from Scotland
Saturday, 12 January 2019
ohrwurm oder kleiner hai
Though there is not a definitive pedigree for the children’s tune that has gone viral and memetic for all its various tributes and celebrity renditions and it is believed to have been a traditional campfire song, but it’s strange that we’ve been here before—a decade ago—and have conveniently put the experience out of our heads, and was first popularised in 2007 as Little Shark by German artist alemuel. The beat in this slightly darker version (see bottom video, try playing both at the same time) of the earworm of a song is closer to the theme from Jaws and involves a baby shark devouring a swimmer but it’s essentially the same piece (although the reinforcement of gender stereotypes within the pleurotrematic extended family are also kind of disturbing) that reached a critical mass just within the past few months.
catagories: ๐ถ, ๐ฆ, networking and blogging
Sunday, 18 March 2018
the hare of inaba
We find ourselves introduced to a foundational folktale thanks to the stunning illustration by Kureha Rokuro commissioned for a 1943 publication, The Gods of Japan—Nihon no Kamisama, ๆฅๆฌใฎ็ฅใใพ.
The titular hare of the ancient account, a tale in the origin saga of Japan, who tricks snarks—by appealing to their vanity—to line up for roll-call while the hare bounds over them (counting off as he goes, the sharks sure that the membership of their clan outnumbered that of the population of confined hares) as a bridge to get from the isolated island of Oki to the Hakuto coast, home of present day Tottori. The hare boasts that he has deceived the dumb sharks as he nears the end (possibly the entire rabbit tribe had used this bridge to evacuate the island) and the last shark lashes out at him and rips off his pelt. Bereft of his fur and quite uncomfortable, the hare entreats a passing column of eighty brothers on a courtship embassy to compete for the affections of the Princess of Inaba. To a man, they either had no time for the hapless creature or dismissed it with bad advice. One brother, the lowliest of them all and with the most meagre prospects, took the time however to care for the hare and prepared and applied a poultice that soothed his raw skin and restore his fur. In gratitude, the hare reveals his true nature as a god and promises to elevate the youth who helped him with his kindness and ensured that he would be the one to wed the princess.
catagories: ๐ฏ๐ต, ๐, ๐ฆ, myth and monsters
Friday, 26 January 2018
pillow-talk or mack the knife
Until reading the disclosure of a tryst by Trump with a porn star (imagine what it would be like trying to convince ourselves a year ago that we would be confronted with such headlines as these) that Trump is obsessed with sharks and wishes them all to die, we had forgotten that then citizen Trump was steered away from portraying the US president in a bad movie about a plague of the shark variety out of fear that it might reflect badly on his upcoming candidacy to be the actual president.
Saturday, 5 August 2017
heart of sharkness
Though I can imagine dealing with a hailstorm of vicious man-eating sharks might seem presently rather mild and the preferred challenge in comparison to the plagues that Dear Leader is capable of calling down on civil society and the environment, in case you had not heard—as Dave Log informs, the disaster horror comedy movie franchise that has started to attract all sorts of bottom-rung actors who vie for cameo-roles was also courting the likes of Donald Trump to play none other role than president of the United States of America.
Although second choice after Sarah Palin refused the part, Trump was reportedly very keen to be presidential, even if it was in a gory and bad film, with David Hasselhof, and Charo, and several other reality television stars. Trump was rather crestfallen in January of 2015 when his team of handlers asked him not to appear in Sharknado: Oh Hell No! as production might interfere with his actual bid for the presidency they were pushing the serial candidate to announce soon. I wonder what kind of persuasive argument that had to weave in order to get Dear Leader to give up on a sure thing for laborious long-shot. In this instance, I think we can all wish that his baser instincts would have prevailed.
Sunday, 26 February 2017
stokoe notation
With a vocabulary of over two thousand immediately memorable signs, a visit to actor and American sign language consultant Robert DeMayo (via Bored Panda) is sure to teach and boost retention, imparting a bit of knowledge that’s practical in itself but can also give one a fresh perspective and a new way of communicating.