droodles (12. 421)

From the portmanteau of doodle plus riddle, Futility Closet directs our attention to the long history of minimal visual puzzles—first introduced in a therapeutic capacity as an exercise in creative thought—then
syndicated and serialised as above by humorist Roger Price, whom co-developed the concept of Mad Libs and was a regular game-show panellist, in the early to mid-1950s with newspaper feature with simple abstract drawings that did not make sense or register without the caption, relatedly. The craze, leading to its own game show, was fuelled by public calls for submissions, including recognition and honoraria, creating one’s own in the same spirit of drollness. One of the more iconic droodles, “ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch,” was the title and cover art of a 1982 Frank and Moon Unit Zappa album—see also—which is owning to the interjection “gag me with a spoon” from the song “Valley Girl”—which may well have been fabricated. Try making up your own.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus I am the Eggplant

seven years ago: politicians and robot rapport, Hair (1968) plus artist Julije Knifer

eight years ago: a last minute stop gap measure to fund the US government, post-Soviet public spaces, tensions for the Turkish diaspora plus advanced speech synthesis

nine years ago: White House movie screenings 

ten years ago: Used to be a Pizza Hut, more links to enjoy, examining urban blight plus a Balkan micronation

9x9 (12. 412)

crytophasia: eye-witnesses to an accident, twins speaking in unison yield insights about language acquisition   

keep your cool: a 1967 garage rock number appropriate for our times by Terry and the Chain Reaction   

swiss pavilion: the country’s contribution to the Osaka Expo evokes the spirit of the original venue—see previously here and here   

all dams are temporary: an interesting look at the limitations of hydrological regimes   

universi dominici gregis: the faithful and world leaders gather at the Vatican for the pontiff’s funeral   

buying access: Trump offers largest holders of his meme coin exclusive dinner date 

 hilma’s ghost: a monumental glass mosaic installed in New York’s Grand Central Station—in homage to the mystic artist   

on the corner: Myles Davis’ rock and funk, at first panned but now considered a masterpiece 

rampant pedantry: an overview of prescriptivism and hyper-correction

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica), a massive gallery of Star Trek images plus ancient scrolls deciphered with the help of AI

seven years ago: Brutalist Tetris, Macron addresses the US congress, the mythological namesakes of the Chinese lunar programme plus conspicuous consumption and the Diderot effect

eight years ago: Japanese manhole covers, journalism from Wikipedia, more links to enjoy, the Turkish-Syrian border, a Nazi-era bronze back on display plus more persuasive maps

nine years ago: bat nurse, the Sykes-Picot agreement, US tax-havens plus cataclysmic anniversaries (caution flashing image)

ten years ago: American founding fables

hubertusburg (12. 400)

For Easter Sunday, we returned to Wermsdorf and the Rococo palace built at the behest of elector and Polish king Augustus the Strong, the hunting lodge (see previously here and here), known as the Saxon Versailles whose expansive grounds are also reminiscent of Schwetzingen in the Neckartal. 

After the war, the palace was used as a hospital and in 2006, refurbished as specialist clinic with a psychotherapy, neurology and paediatric department and also contains the state archives and a museum hosting revolving exhibits, currently for local son and inmate Karl Hans Joachim Janke, prodigious modeller and illustrator of fantastic aerospace concepts which blur the line between engineering and art brut (see previously).  

Diagnosed with schizophrenia after being discharged from the military, Janke was afforded a meagre pension to operate a workshop crafting toy airplanes but due to wartime rationing for cardboard and other supplies had to discontinue his hobby, remanded to psychiatric care at Hubertusberg after a less than patriotic outburst for the lack of resources for even the smallest of distractions for children. At hospital, Janke never lacked for material and his designs and correspondence were rediscovered in an attic of the castle in 2000, including over three-thousand drawings for innovation aircraft, concepts for harnessing nuclear energy and the Earth’s magnetic field for propulsion.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Nutella introduced (with synchronoptica), the new flag of South Africa (1994) plus Japanese boomerang words

seven years ago: unprepared for the GDPR, assorted links to revisit, a walking tour of Tbilisi plus a suit filed over campaign interference

eight years ago: an abandoned Soviet base in East Germany, Eastern European animation, French political terms, manhole accessories plus Türkiye dedicates a museum victims of a supposed coup

nine years ago: the site of the first nuclear reactor plus a startup generator

eleven years ago: 420 friendly plus Kurt Vonnegut’s commencement speech

glass menagerie (12. 392)

The epidemic whipped into the height of frenzy on this day in 1954 following newspaper reporters and appeals for intervention from local authorities, the state governor and ultimately president Eisenhower, the Seattle Windshield Pitting Panic is considered to be a text-book example of mass delusion—sometimes mislabelled as mass hysteria, classed with near contemporary occurrences like Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast—propagated by rumour, mis- and disinformation and mass media when residents of the Washington capital and surrounding communities were invited to closely examine their cars’ windshields and discovered them to be scored with previously unnoticed pits, dents and dings. I recall getting out of a movie once with a lot of car-bombings and in the parking lot of the theatre was inspired to check below the steering column and was petrified to feel a bundle of wires—though quickly calmed down once I realised that I had never before poked around down there. Originally suspected to be a rash of sabotage or vandalism, but the scale and scope quickly lead to other theories arising beyond a conspiracy of hoodlums, sourcing the normal weathering to a range of agents from sand flea eggs hatching, cosmic rays, a nearby large radio transmitter operated by the navy, UFOs, a shift in the Earth’s magnetic field to fallout from nuclear testing. As damage reports preoccupied police, a committee of scientists from the state university was called together to survey cars on campus and compare to reported incidents. Concluding the wear and tear was the result of average road-use, calls to the police abruptly dropped off two days later.

 

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Rennsteiglied (with synchronoptica) plus wondrous woodcuts of astral phenomena

 

seven years ago: Thousand Insects of Japan plus creative anatomies

 

eight years ago: illustrator Boris Artzybasheff

 

nine years ago: more words with no English equivalent 

eleven years ago: Banksy graffiti at the GCHQ plus sea water to fuel

minotaure (12. 374)

The French Surrealist-oriented magazine in print from 1933 to 1939 was originally intended to be a general review of the plastic arts: poetry, architecture, theatre, ethnography, mythology and psychoanalytic studies but the publisher’s association with André Breton and others in the movement, ensuring a steady supply of contributions, shifted the focus. Illustrators and writers included Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Dalí, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy and Frida Kahlo (see above—the pictured cover is by Diego Rivera for the Mexican supplement) and the publication’s high quality and high standards attracted the patronage of several sustaining sponsors. The title character was very much en vogue at the time with Picasso already having established several studies on the theme with the metaphor of the labyrinth representing the mind and the marauding Minotaur analogous to the irrational impulses with vanquishing Theseus a symbol for the greater self-knowledge of the Surrealist and psychoanalysis movement.

synchronoptica

one year ago: invasive species (with synchronoptica), a rare 1995 hybrid eclipse plus making US election day a holiday

seven years ago: Swedish house gymnastics, tokusatsu gifs plus giving a banana a passport

eight years ago: a cradle that mimics a car ride plus the first pizza delivery

nine years ago: Julia Child’s home in Provence, an ode to a departed feline friend plus quotes paired with fine art

ten years ago: a Nazi summer camp, assorted links to revisit plus the first petroleum company

agency for defence against hallucinatory disruptions (12. 364)

Via Web Curios, we are directed towards this AI generated music video from artist called Igorr from the Meat-Dept collective that displays a directorial continuity through storyboarding that we didn’t think was possible with current models—the inability for character permanence or the ability to tweak the outcomes, edited or otherwise. There’s no real narrative quality to the short piece but the underscoring of the percussion track and the unexpected series of strangeness holds one’s attention despite its unsettling visuals and übercanniness. Neurodivergence is virtuosity, particularly in this setting.

*     *     *     *     *

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus The Good Life/Good Neighbours (1975) 

seven years ago: Capella Sansevero, askance satellite views, more on seamstress Agnes Richter plus antique Friendship Books

eight years ago: an open air gallery in Amsterdam, tensions over North Korea, Gibraltar and Brexit plus a march against alternate facts

nine years ago: an MST3K reboot plus mesh churches

ten years ago: more links to enjoy plus Norway mothballs a secret arctic seaport

10x10 (12. 360)

kapmifmif: a study morphological emic distribution classes through a constructed language—see previously   

murder on flight 502: the star-studded 1975 television disaster movie gets the Poseidon’s Underworld treatment 

blanket rate: bad assumptions and arithmetic informs Trump tariff regime, which is tanking markets globally

mira calligraphiae monumenta: paging through a sixteenth century illuminated model book on scribal excellence rebelling against the standardisation of the printing press—with embellishes reminiscent of the Voynich manuscript and Codex Seraphinianus 

clickens: judge chicken portraits on various personality traits and harness the wisdom of the masses—via Kottke   

salmon run: a beautifully crafted early home arcade game speaks to swimming upstream 

sala di consultazione: free access to the Vatican Library’s digital archives 

elbows up: Canada plans retaliation over US punitive duty deal plus GOP senators side with Democrats to rebuke the proposal to levy additional tariffs on its northern neighbour 

real id: US government is beginning to require an internal passport, which is not automatically issued   

mezameta: the role of katakana in loan words, gairaigo, scientific binomials and transcription and the problem with conveying the shifting meaning of woke

synchronoptica 

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica), standard lunar time plus vulgar expressions of indifference

seven years ago: Iran’s faux Western fast foods, bi-lingual Braille plus a North American medicinal plant map

eight years ago: more links to enjoy

nine years ago: vintage Canadian tourist posters plus a Rosary ring

ten years ago: the Anthropocene plus the architecture of folklore

quale and qualia (12. 344)

Having come to a similar epiphany at a point in life I considered fairly late and doubting maturity—but perhaps this sort of realisation needs time to incubate and couched in inexperience—that everyone was their own hero and main character, I found this curated list of introspective descriptors (with an invitation to readers to submit their own) from Marco Giancotti to be quite resonant. Although I don’t normal think to believe that my own subjective experience to be radically different from the next individual nor informed by some prodigious synthesis of sensations and neither compensated by recently coined conscious lacunas like aphantasia, imagination without mental images or internal monologue, the notion that we’re all naked aligned with the Emperor’s New Clothes is a really fascinating and engaging notion to ponder, nomothetic, broad generalisations versus the idiographic and the idiocentric. I like to think of myself capable of imagining in all these avenues and could accept that others do not but there is a measure of scepticism for divergence from the norm. Among the shared experiences that spoke to me, was a short interview with physicist Richard Feynman, as self-diagnosed with a benevolent form of arithromania, about how people count and calculate mentally in various ways. Much more—with growing contributions at Æther Mug at the link above.

america the unbeautiful (12. 316)

Guardian contributor Alexander Hurst, reflecting on a recent roadtrip with a friend from Washington, DC to New Orleans—in part retracing the path of Alexis de Tocqueville—presents a thoughtful travelogue that encapsulates the aesthetics of sprawl and alienation that informed the MAGA mindset—those without an internal moral compass—long before it came home to roost with the return of Trump. “Like fish in water, I wonder if Americans are even aware how they swim in it,” Hurst writes of the inuring indignities of suburban living—sold as a dream still despite the nightmare monotony, congestion and estrangement of off-ramp after off-ramp leading to “rectangle islands of stuff, surrounded by parking lots leading to other little islands.”

synchronoptica

one year ago: Sagrada Família (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: the origins of tempura, email for trees, Google’s Art Palette plus Expo '70

eight years ago: FOIA inspired cocktails plus next generation phreaking

nine years ago: Italy’s answer to absinthe plus the Butcher’s Broom

ten years ago: the Fourth Crusade

liber novus (12. 286)

The manuscript named after its original leather binding, the folio penned by psychiatrist Carl Jung between 1914 and 1930 documents a series of personal observations and self-experimentation following the dissolution of his partnership with his interlocutor Sigmund Freud moreover reflects a psychotic break with reality and the journey of re-establishing an albeit tenuous connection with his soul and psyche. Although considered Jung’s main contribution, expounding such ideas as dream-interpretation, visions, the collective unconscious, common fate and the notions of introversion and extroversion, the work was meant never to be published in the traditional since and locked away in a vault until 2009. And whilst not intended for public consumption and still not available in a comprehensive volume freely accessible, Open Culture presents a variety of sources to learn more about the Red Book, including a relaxing, hour-long paging through the massive personal account with a definitive autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), a certain frisson and auditory-tactile synaesthesia which we’re sure that the author would have appreciated.

fetch happens (12. 274)

Already taking certain cues from the dog when it comes to a vigorous shake of the head and big stretches as a reminder, from the New Shelton wet/dry comes another behaviour that maybe it’s wise to incorporate in that chewing wood may boost memory and brain antioxidants. Previous studies suggest that mastication has a positive influence on blood flow and brain function but new research points to how chewing wood—like a popsicle stick—as opposed to gnawing on piece of gum might stimulate production of glutathione, an important restorative that helps the brain repair oxidative stress, neutralising reactive chemicals. More longitudinal studies are needed to see if the correlation nets improved cognition and overall help.

8x8 (12. 231)

shiroposuto: the last of Japan’s discrete adult reading material disposal boxes 

reinfection: bovine testing for bird flu virus suggests that the H5N1 is spreading silently—see previously   

with guns as my retirement and war as mistress: more protest anthems from Jessie Welles   

in the meantime, i am seriously considering cultivating stupidity, to the exclusion of everything else, as a way of life: the correspondence of Edward Gorey and Tom Fitzharris   

remember the giver: an assortment of Valentine’s Day letters   

tipping point: how things change slowly—then all at once, as illustrated by Kiki and Bouba   

morbidity and mortality weekly report: US Centres For Disease Control see research and outreach efforts hampered by Trump’s assault on the agency—see previously, see also   

enmusubi: the gathering of eight million gods play matchmaker for human relationships in this seaside prefecture

synchronoptica

one year ago:  1924’s Die Niebelungen (with synchronoptica), the endless news cycle plus assorted links to revisit

seven years ago: photographing a single atom, the illustrations of Giovanni Fontana, retro social media platforms plus street name diplomacy

eight years ago: more links to enjoy plus Germany votes

nine years ago: developing the .jpeg format, contention over US Presidents’ Day plus holograms to discourage non-disabled drivers taking handicapped parking spots

eleven years ago: forensics and biometrics plus pop culture Ottoman miniatures

8x8 (12. 227)

patch barracks: military families boo and heckle defence secretary during a whistle-stop visit in Stuttgart en route to the Munich Security Conference 

stakes, novelty, anger, retention and fear: the SNARF model of viral content 

yrjö kukkapuro: a tribute to the pre-eminent Finnish furniture designer 

crossing a line: Timothy Snyder on hurtling towards authoritarianism—via Kottke  

agnotology: an encore episode on the study of wilful ignorance

måke califørnia great ægain: US imperial aspirations prompt counter offers ranging from the serious to satirical 

ザ: the nuances of definite article in article-less and uninflected Japanese language  

cultural moments: under pressure from anti-DEI diktats, Google removing Black History Month and Pride from its calendars—though the decision will not impact the daily Doodle

💤 (12. 218)

Via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake, we are directed this futuristic pair of pyjamas, a sleep apparel system, a garment sponsored by the government of Japan to improve one’s sleep hygiene in response to numerous studies that show the country’s citizens are among the most sleep-deprived among highly-developed nations—see previously. Meant to promote polyphasic cycles—that is getting in a nap, see also—with a portable, rest-inducing environment. The comfy down mantle with adjustable compression and inflating collar and noise-cancelling headgear are integrated with sensors to triangulate and optimise one’s sleep segments and was inspired by the traditional futon bed. More from Spoon & Tamago at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a clairvoyant horse (with synchronoptica), a quasi-moon, national jukebox plus lessons in logic and rhetoric from Star Trek: TAS

seven years ago: the state of public education in Oklahoma plus WiFi hotspots

eight years ago: chief of public enlightenment plus the degeneration of factory towns

nine years ago: ad blockers, assorted links to revisit plus this day in history

ten years ago: sitting is the new smoking plus the American roadtrip

endless feed (12. 216)

Having pinned the obsession with our devices and the dopamine hits that they provide to the allegory of Narcissus—and by extension a Sisyphean task—and thinking it went no further, we appreciated being able to expand the metaphor and look at the insatiable compulsion another way with what the Greeks proverbially describe as the “Tantalean punishment” ( Ταντάλειοι τιμωρίαι)—the mythological figure’s eponym synonymous not only with what’s tantalising, eternally tormented by the sight of something desirable but just out of reach but also for those who have good things but cannot enjoy them and teased with aroused expectations that fail to satisfy. Consigned to the lowest level of the Underworld, Tartarus, Tantalus is made to stand in a pool of inviting water with fruit-laden boughs just above his head, the refreshment sought to slake his thirst and quell his hunger receding from his grasp, as divine retribution for having abused the hospitality of the gods and stealing ambrosia and nectar from the table of the Olympians and bringing it back to his people—also for trying to test the gods’ omniscience by butchering his son and serving him to them, whom was later mostly reconstituted. The torture maps quite aptly with the addictive saturation of social media with unending scrolling and no clear exit point by design for finishing a conversation or the consumption of a piece of culture, with tributes, remixes and tangents. Fittingly, our tragic figure is also the namesake of the rare earth element tantalum, an essential component of smart phones and other electronics with some forty milligrams of the substance in the palm of one’s hand right now.

11x11 (12. 214)

traitor tots: Musk’s merry band of pickpockets and the corporate raids behind the Putsch and purge 

temper tantrum: extinction burst behaviour is one accounting of the ascendancy of MAGA intolerance  

fifty-first: Trudeau warns Trump is serious about annexing Canada—insultingly offering it statehood before Puerto Rico and DC 

isolation mode: after three decades, Baltic nations are switching to the EU power grid, getting off the Russian network

nosotromo: the high school play adaptation of Alien   

endless jeopardy!: hourly answers, honours go to the best, most creative questions—via Waxy   

expo 67: revisiting centenary celebrations in Montreal—see previously 

re-apartheid: Trump administration launches volley of complaints against South Africa, cutting of foreign aid and promote the “resettlement of of Afrikaner refugees”   

center for the performing arts: Trump declares himself chairman of the Washington, DC cultural institution and dismissing board members who disagree with his taste 

hr@opm.gov: unencrypted mass email to CIA operatives offering them the chance to resign may have compromised the agents’ identifies with serious counterintelligence concerns   

federal communications commission: Trump threatens to shut down the CBS television network, calls for the firing of journalists critical of the administration and for doxxing one of Musk’s minions

 synchronoptica

one year ago: vintage hotel luggage tags (with synchronoptica) plus a banger from Billy Ocean

eight years ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus augmented metrics

nine years ago: the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s charter, neologisms and nomonyms plus the Lunar New Year

ten years ago: LARPing at large plus more links to enjoy

eleven years ago: targeted political advertisement, Russian ban on genetically modified foods plus sugar-based batteries

opsophagos (12. 200)

Mapped onto all sorts of anti-social behaviour and privations of gluttony, the real and reputed ὀψοφάγοɩ, gourmandise of ancient Greek culture with a penchant for relish or horsd’œuvre as anything that might compliment a staple dish were leveed with a fish addiction, the most desirable morsel of a repast—we learn via Strange Company. There are many accounts of overindulgence by the wealthy and philosophers alike, wishing almost self-destructively for the gullet of cranes and pelicans for devouring the food—the poet Philoxenus of Leucas, for example, an enthusiastic banqueter and seafood lover who caused his own death by gorging on a giant octopus—and the conspicuous consumption was linked in the public’s mind to all sorts of vices, immediate gratification and moral failings, and indeed the spectacle or the rumour of the fish market became a moral panic of the day. More from JSTOR at the link above.

who goes maga? (12. 193)

Thirteen years after the stripping of her press credentials and ejection from Nazi Germany for her frank exposé I Saw Hitler, journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote for Harper’s in 1941 “Who Goes Nazi?”—a parlour game about everyday encounters on who might be susceptive to fascist ideology. Updated aptly by The Sword & the Sandwich—via tmn, we have some modern cocktail party encounters with character profiles prone to turning to a mindset not extricated but rather embraced and exported since Ms Thompson’s byline. Guests Mr Z, Mr P, Ms M and Mr B, like in the original are stock stand-ins for the moguls and movers of the day and one can recognise in these figures the fawning press-corps, influencers, broligarchs, terfs, tradwives and their conversions, epiphanies from the noble and altruistic to dishonest and self-serving and a bit tortured—and then there are the hold-outs. Play it at your next social gathering.

the tegos tapes (12. 168)

Via Clive Thompson’s trusty alternative to doomscrolling, we learn that pioneering electronic composer Vangelis (see previously) has not only several film soundtracks to his credit but also, among many side projects, recorded a box-set of rather exclusive twelve hour tapes for doctors to listen to while performing the arduous task of surgeries to keep focused during the monotony—see also. The limited-run 1998 compilation (only twenty were made for partners in the practise) was thought lost to history, until one dedicated fan hunted down, on a tip, a copy of a textbook on micro-neuosurgerical (by the eponymous physician, a close friend of Vangelis, asking him to make these tracks and undergo a magnetic resonance scan of his brain, the latter request politely declined) in a bookstore in Athens with the accompanying music on videotape. Much more at the links above.

7x7 (12. 177)

alexiomia: from the Greek for no words for appellation, a study of the social anxiety of name-avoidance—via the new Shelton wet/dry  

white knight: Bytedance entertaining contingency plans to allow Elon Musk to purchase TikTok’s US operations ahead of the expected judgment against the platform 

out-of-office reply: a business card whose information only appears in sunlight  

screamboat willie: Disney begins to deal with its loss of IP—apparently a Popeye horror film is in the works too 

tl;dr: AI input and output  

open and shut case: the US Department of Justice election interference report suggest Trump would have been convicted if not re-elected 

 💌: the face of collective grief and the demands of acceptance that are far from passive

synchronoptica

one year ago: AI plagiarism and The Stepford Wives (with synchronoptica), a hands-free rosary plus Queen Margrethe II of Denmark abdicates

seven years ago: the Continental Congress (1784) plus Celtic burial mounds

eight years ago: authoritarians and the press, the former trolley line that ran between the US and Mexico, assorted links worth the revisit, Bart the Genius (1990) plus a secret WWII commando school

nine years ago: the dancing doctor plus genre blindness

ten years ago: more on the refugee situation in Germany plus an animated homage to Davie Bowie’s personae