writ of mandate (11. 822)

Having often wondered ourselves how specialised jargon in general was some sort of professional wizardry (tech, medicine, economics, the clergy) to make their practise impenetrable or inscrutable for non-experts, via Language Hat, we enjoyed this study that postulates that the embedded, dependent clause-rich sentence structure of legalese—forgoing even the spellbinding elements of legal Latin—is like a magical incantation. This obfuscation by design, parsing thousands of court documents, holds despite even lawyers decrying and disavowing this style and repeated calls for “plain language” laws (decisions don’t have a specific requirement for florid and what’s perceived to be “exacting” and only precedent and simpler worded ones are equally enforceable on appeal) and seem to have a performative aspect—a capacity for proscription rather than just description—that lends a sense of a magic formula above the ken of outsiders. More from The Conversation at the link above.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: the debut of Star Trek: The Animated Series (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: newspapers in movies, Hurricane Irma’s path of destruction, Saturn’s rings, London’s Garden Museum, an illustrated ship’s log plus Ford pardons Nixon

eight years ago: a patriotic art counterfeiter, assorted links worth revisiting, more spirit drawings plus New Amsterdam becomes New York

nine years ago: the curious names of US court justices

ten years ago: Scotland’s independence referendum

7x7 (11. 758)

pop quiz: extended CVs of classic game show hosts  

pass the mayo: condiment’s dynamic nature could help solve containment challenges for nuclear fusion  

wingnut: a South Berkley salvage store turned museum—via Nag on the Lake’s always excellent Sunday Links  

cocónonós: a Bogota-based fusion band—possibly named after the ill-fated Tiki drink shared with Geordi La Forge and Christy Henshaw on their first date  

bias towards coherence: Trump’s latest on rally attendance and his greatest hits  

the type specimen of humanity: the designated permanent reference for Homo sapiens is Carl Linnaeus  

magick show: Richard Metzger’s latest occult project

 synchronoptica

one year ago: cutting archived content for the sake of SEO (with synchronoptica), a racist brawl in Alabama plus multi-hyphenates

seven years ago: reproductive awareness

eight years ago: ant wars, Martian landscapes, disproportionate and xenophobic calls for burqa bans, a floating home in Canada plus Facebook and clickbait

nine years ago: Liberia and the US 

ten years ago: a party at Neuseenland plus the geopolitics of terrorism

9x9 (11. 055)

the witch of positano: a portrait of Bohemian original Vali Myers who inspired Tennessee Williams and danced for Donovan’s signature song, charging one Nubian goat for her performance  

hotel california: legacy luxury in Kabul now jointly run by the Taliban and their quiet dissenters—via Web Curios  

the mysterious land of the grimaults: another look at The Saga of the Viking Women and their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent  

the rest vs the west: proven tech ventures that rival occidental offerings 

my coffee with niles: a meta episode of Frasier remade in the style of one hundred thirty animators and filmmakers  

watermeal: world’s smallest flowering plant could play an outsized role in interplanetary exploration  

don’t crash the pips: the Canadian Broadcasting Company discontinues the long dash time signal—see also  

unauthorised build: this “illegal” LEGO construction bends conventions  

nightclub school: The New Romantics and 80s youth subculture  

synchronoptica

one year ago: another MST3K classic,  the world’s first personal data protection law plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: your daily demon: Focalor, The Style Council plus a psychedelic design collective

three years ago: a fashion show with puppets plus Witchtok community doing the Lord’s Work

four years ago: the introduction of the Ampelmännchen (1961), more links to revisit plus more mushroom finds

five years ago: democracy by lottery, vintage Sainsbury’s packaging plus a music video from Bob Sinclar

señor wences (10. 793)

Never having occurred to us beforehand, we were delighted to learn (among other things) of the unusual etymology of the patently unusual—though at least for us, taken for granted—word ventriloquism, the first recorded use in the debunking volume by Reginald Scot The Discoverie of Witchcraft, published in 1584 from this latest episode of the podcast The History of English: The Spoken History of a Global Language (previously), as a Latinate version of the Greek term for a gastomancer (εγγαστριμυθία). Attempting to dispel the superstitious belief that stomach grumblings (see also) were the voices of the departed relaying messages to the living, interpreted by said ventriloquist (literally belly-speak)—the most famous example being the Pythia or Pythoness, the high priestesses of the Oracle at Delphi, Scot tried to persuade his readers with the more rational explanation of digestion, hunger or indigestion and not to heed these adepts who claimed the ability to interpret these noises, in line with trying to offer mundane reasons for other supernatural occurrences. It wasn’t until the eighteenth century, however, that the term for one sort of trickery began referring to entertainment and the ability to “throw one’s voice.” Much more at the links above. S’alright? S’right.

the sacred chao (10. 557)

Centred on the worship of Eris, the goddess of strife and founded in 1963 after the publication of its gospel Principia Discordia, Discordianism embraces elements of Taoist philosophy and a healthy dose of skepticism and absurdities and whose main tenet proffers that apparent order and disorder are illusions imposed on the Cosmos by the human mind and that neither is privileged nor objective. With a public papacy and an open process for canonisation, Emperor Norton being one of the better known second-class saints, upheld as an exemplary human for being beloved despite or because of his delusions and disregard for common reality, Discordianism has a caste of overseers called episkopses who speak to the goddess and relay messages and an elaborate mythology from Greek traditions and the “original snub” of her being disinvited from the wedding of Peleus and Thetis and so lobbed into the party the Apple of Discord, a golden prize reserved for the fairest (τῇ καλλίστῃ), with the intended recipient a matter of interpretation. Some adherents follow an alternate calendar, aligned with the Gregorian with 2023 CE corresponding with 3189 YOLD (Year of Our Lady of Discord) with today marking holyday Chaoflux (Chaos 50) and in ten days on the 29th of February and usually considered outside of normal time Saint Tib’s Day, with former being (for those who celebrate) observed by being an agent of chaos and persuading friends and loved ones to change plans that they have committed to throughout the day.

the thin white duke (10. 491)

Released on this day in 1976, David Bowie’s tenth studio album was the major vehicle for the above stage persona and enjoys a legacy, building on the commercial success of his previous record Young Americans to allow more creative liberties in the direction he took this next transitional collection of songs, reflecting an interest in the occult and Aleister Crowley and Nietzsche’s Übermensch, as a departure but still among his most significant works—with exploration of new styles fully articulated in his Berlin Trilogy of the following year. Recorded in Los Angeles after completing shooting for The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bowie adapted the arc of narrative in the album from a partly autobiographical collection of short stories called The Return of the Thin White Duke he had written while off camera.

artist spotlight (10. 488)

Via Booooooom, We appreciated the introduction to the portfolio of works by printmaker Sophy Hollington through her linocut reliefs that conjure and confound elements of future-facing visions and the arcane, divinatory and superstitious with magical sigils and cyphers, whose particular visual language is the constrained writing (see also) that is the rigid manner of the medium. Much more, including commercial commissions, at the artist’s website at the link above.

liber null & the psychonaut (10. 196)

Courtesy of Boing Boing, we are given a chance to revisit artist, occultist and acolyte Austin Osman Spare through a campaign to reprint the tarot, cartomancy deck of his design. Spare’s fusion of the mystic and the symbolic prefigure—to some—the surrealist movement, and considered a foundational figure in the realm of Chaos Magic, Spare used magical techniques including automatic drawing and sigilisation as a heuristic to explore how the conscious and unconscious mind inform and influence one another. A growing disdain for Aleister Crowley and his Thelemite followers issuing from what Spare saw as ceremonial and performative magic caused him to split from that side of the occult and focus his studies on psychoanalysis and meditation, triangulating those fields with his particular theories on evolution that freighted much on desire, repression and aspiration. Much more on Spare’s cartomancy and other forms of divination at the links above.

7x7 (10. 180)

ron’s house: a bid to save an immersive, eccentrically decorated apartment—via Strange Company’s Weekend Link Dump  

hermetic students of the golden dawn: an honest-to-goodness magic duel between William Butler Yeats and Aleister Crowley—via Boing Boing  

there’s a hole in my head where the rain gets in: medieval wound man, a medical diagram meant to assist surgeons of yore—see also  

it’s been zero days since the last catastrophic hurricane: more stats from Neal Agarwal (previously)  

self-paced: an AI powered language learning tool—via Web Curios  

photosculpture: a century before 3D printers, there was the rotoscoping technique M François Willème  

mid-management mezzanine: a tour of the S.C. Johnson Wax Headquarters building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright

san giuseppe da copertino (10. 145)

Patron of the town in Apulia and we suppose by extension, Apple headquarters in California, as well aviators and astronauts, Joseph of Cupertino, fêted on this day on the occasion of his death in 1663 (*1603), was considered to be rather a dullard but was given to bouts of ecstatic visions and levitation. After years working as a stableboy at a Franciscan friary in his hometown and demonstrating his devotion and work ethic, the brothers who had previously rejected Joseph due to his lack of education admitted him into the Order. After taking his vows, Joseph’s visions increased significantly to the point where his floating (which may have been a demonstration of gymnastic skills rather or ergot-poisoning actual levitation) about during Mass became quite disruptive and lest his miraculous powers be taken for witchcraft, Joseph was confined to a small cell and ordered to avoid the public. Joseph lived a life of quiet aestheticism after briefly being quite a showman and a draw for the next thirty-five years before being readmitted back in as a part of worship services shortly before expiring.

7x7 (10. 055)

zone improvement plan: the Swinging Six ensemble sing the praises of the ZIP code (1967)—see also  

unsealed warrant: FBI recovered multiple boxes of top secret and classified documents from the Trump residence during Monday’s search  

coo-coo for cookie crisp: recreating vintage breakfast cereal with machine learning—see previously  

mulder & scully: full script of an unmade episode of the X-Files—via Super Punch  

that old black magic that you weave so well: Clavis Inferni (The Key of Hell), an illustrated spell book from 1775 

retrofit: more on the noir aesthetic (more here and here) of vintage automobiles converted in electric vehicles 

 like & subscribe: the long and short history of the newsletter—both print and digital

6x6

zhaocai: office cats in China face redundancy with startups closing 

utterly buttery: an etymological lesson and childhood memory on oleomargarine  

frisson: a group of neuroscientists compile an extensive playlist of chill-inducing musical tracks  

blood sugar sex magik: chants delivered by Aleister Crowley (previously) preserved on a wax cylinder 

umwelten: a new volume by Ed Yong explores the “self-centred world” (another Rückwanderer) of human and non-human animals  

barn cats: felines at work at a creamery in Maine

saponification

Accomplished French chemist and professional skeptic whose research and work had a immense influence in several disciplines of science, mathematics and the arts as well as helping to establish the field of gerontology with himself a subject of study, Michel Eugène Chevreul (*1786) passed away on this day in 1889 in Paris, aged 102. Revolutionary work with vegetable oils and animal fats fundamentally changed the manufacture and availability of soap and candles—incidentally leading to an understanding of the pathology and treatment of diabetes. Having first honed his acumen as chemist in a dye and pigment manufacturing plant, Chevreul expounded several volumes regarding the theory of colours and their compliments which particularly informed Impressionist and Pointillist styles, after his career with oleic experimentation, he set his focus on disenchanting, disabusing the public of popular charlatanism and mysticism and raging against seances and table-turning, giving one of the first explanations of the ideomotor effect for mediums and dowsers. Having lived through the French Revolution, Chevreul was one of the seventy-two scientists and engineers commemorated on the first balcony of the Eiffel Tower and was only one of two honorees alive to see the Tricolour raised at the top of the structure.

pontypridd

Born this day in 1800 in Caerphilly, courtesy of Weird Universe, we learn about the singular figure of William Price (†1893), physician, Druid priest, vegetarian, marriage and organised religion contrarian and champagne enthusiast—would that we could stop with those epithets and skip nationalist and anti-vaxxer. Often seen donning an elaborate headdress of fox pelts, long hair and beard and emerald green onesie with incantations—or alternately stalk naked on his daily constitutional through the countryside, Price’s legacy includes the legalisation of cremation in Great Britain, previously against custom, when sadly his infant son, Iesu Grist—Welsh for Jesus Christ Price, died suddenly and Price burned his body on a pyre in accordance with Druidic traditions. Arrested for the unlawful disposal of a corpse, Price was however able to successfully plead his defence in court, leading to the passage of UK Cremation Act of 1902 and the establishment of crematoria throughout the country. Aged eighty-two, Price fathered a second son—also named Jesus (plus a daughter two years later called Penelopen) at which time he made detailed arrangements for the disposition of his estate and death, a funeral pyre a decade later attended by twenty-thousand mourners.

summa theologica

Via the weekly anthology of Web Curios, we get this nice appreciation and reminder that the resources underpinning the Internet are not self-sustaining artefacts but require care and maintenance—even if only for academic pursuits and no aspirations for virality or attempt to monetise or capitalise on the scholarship of its subject matter as the Non-Fungible Testament—in revisiting the venerable repository the Internet Sacred Text Archive, which for twenty-three years has weathered all sort of trends and beaten back the spectre of the Digital Dark Ages to curate and present foundational texts in comparative religious and folklore traditions.

8x8

eye-in-the-sky: a collection of superlative drone photography 

gravitational lensing: tentatively, astronomers find evidence of the first rogue, marauding black hole over a backdrop of nebular clouds 

wheel of fortune: Wordle but with common quotations and idioms—via Memo of the Air

para||el: a short film about divergent realities by Ménilmonde  

building & loan: more on the economics of gift-cards—see also  

staying toasty: bread hats and loafers, see also  

three little words: what3words (see previously) solves some problems for vehicle guidance and navigation, causes others—via Duck Soup  

to open every kind of lock: burglars’ spells and incantations 

scotus: a former law clerk writes the Wikipedia articles on Biden’s prospective nominees to the US Supreme Court in order to insert doubt and skepticism, via Super Punch  

bird’s eye view: a parrot in New Zealand pilfers a family’s Go-Pro and films some nice scenery

traho fatis

The Latin motto—drawn by fate—echoes through this intriguing Renaissance tarot deck called Sola Busca, limned with an anachronistic marshalling of ancient heroes, medieval bestiaries and then contemporary weapons and armour. Housed presently in a museum in Milan and the earliest known deck to illustrate the complete suites of the major and minor arcana—probably engraved in Ferrara in 1491 and later hand-coloured in Venice—the allegory of iconography informs later iterations, including the familiar Smith-Waite design.  Nebuchadnezzar II, Gaius Marius, the uncle of Julius Caesar and several members of the Greek and Roman panthea.  Peruse the entire deck and learn more about the provenance at Public Domain Review at the link above.

7x7

reset: audiences of a hugely popular show in China about a video game programmer stuck in a time loop are upset about its positive ending  

országos kéktúra: Hungary’s national long distance walking route (see also) from Irottkő to the Austrian border 

the book of fate: an 1822 edition that appealed to contemporary British preoccupation with Ancient Egypt and Napoleon  

we only remember ‘long polio’: contemplating the lingering, debilitating effect of severe cases  

boharat cairo: a foundry explores the possibilities of Arabic script expression 

 encanto: we need to talk about Bruno  

where is my mind: an edit of problematic fav Fight Club available for streaming in China follows some different rules

and then there were three

Courtesy of our faithful chronicler, we are reminded that not only on an episode first broadcast on this day in 1966, did Samantha give birth to baby Tabitha, it was the first appearance of the erstwhile foil though sympathetic to her relative’s mixed-marriage, cousin Serena. That same fifth season was when Darrin was replaced without explanation. Based on Elizibeth Montgomery’s own cousin “Panda,” the character was credited as “Pandora Spocks” (as in the baby doctor) in the show’s outro sequence.

week-by-week

In what’s become an annual treat, Tom Whitwell again shares fifty-two items he has gleaned from the past year. In the compilation, drawn from experiencing editing projects for Fluxx / Medium, Whitwell’s shared new facts learned include that daily over a million images of coffee grinds are uploaded to a fortune reading app (the process of divination called tasseomancy), advice on how to solicit better answers, the MSG hoax, the truth behind the mystery seeds from China hysteria, and a few we’ve previously covered like how cowpox vaccine was transported around the world, traditional Japanese microseasons, how film was formulated to privilege lighter complexions, and how the threshhold effect applies even to a doorway on screen. Many more astonishing correlations at the links above—do let us know your favourites.