television dreams of tomorrow—we’re not the one you’re meant to follow (12. 747)

On this day in 2004, Green Day released their seventh studio album—their first in four years—American Idiot, an overtly political and socially critical record, the tracks, especially the title one, expresses the disillusionment and decent of a generation whose prospects were informed by 9/11 and the resulting forever wars. A telling of the gospel of Jesus of Suburbia, a precarious working-class anti-hero figure, the suite of songs were put together as a concept album for a punk rock opera, taking inspiration from Jesus Christ Superstar, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Charting worldwide, it was also against the media apparatus, which in the band’s view had crossed from journalism to sensationalism and reality TV, glorified violence of combat in Iraq intercut with advertisements. An enduring protest song, lyrics have been subtly updated from redneck to “I’m not a part of the [MAGA/ELON] agenda” and “subliminal mind-Trump America.” Wake me up when September ends.

starquake (12. 115)

On this day in 2004, forty-two thousand years after a powerful explosion occurred on the surface of the magnetar, a class of neutron star with a powerful magnetic field, located in the constellation of Sagittarius, the resultant gamma ray reached Earth, the brightest event known to have been experienced on the planet with an origin outside the universe, the incredibly dense and compact star (only fifteen kilometres in diameter) designated as SGR 1806-20 and discovered in 1979 as a gamma-repeater (see previously) releasing as much energy in a tenth of a second as the Sun will in one hundred and fifty thousand years. The expanding cloud, shock wave of radiation briefly enlarged the ionosphere and it is estimated that a comparable blast within ten light years of Earth would ravage the atmosphere and destroy the ozone layer.

synchronoptica

one year ago: solfège in other languages (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: messianic complexes, one of small character, memories of y2k plus an inverted skyscraper

eight years ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus telegraphing kisses

nine years ago: banana supply chains plus more links to enjoy

ten years ago: tiny houses, Russian metro stations plus stress and motivation

8x8 (12. 112)

carnian pluvial event: that time it rained for two million years  

acme corporation: eight technological failures of 2024  

double-harvest: Christmas tree farmers exploring mycoforestry to raise timber and mushrooms on the same plot of land 

 🐜: how the world of ant geopolitics mirrors that of human colonisation and globalisation  

9.3 m_w: the Boxing Day Tsunami that cost a quarter of a million lives twenty years on

royal warrant: chocolatier to British crown Cadbury is delisted after generations for continued business operations in Russia  

woty: the Fritinancy edition—via Kottke 

wax wings: researchers awaiting telemetry back from the Parker Solar probe (previously) after historic approach to the Sun

synchronoptica

one year ago: DJ Earworm’s annual (with synchronoptica), The Glass Menagerie (1944) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: a banger to time for New Year’s

eight years ago: a charging stretch of road, outer space vodka plus 2016 in review

nine years ago: 3D printing as a cottage industry, Quentin Crisp shares their favourite gangster films, Jesus in Japan, lions and lionesses plus Aleister Crowley’s manor

eleven years ago: Second Christmas plus a tuxedo vest

помаранчева революція (12.022)

Beginning on this day in 2004, the series of protests (see also) lasting two months and one day called the Orange Revolution (Pomarancheva revoliutsiia, the colour of the campaign of Western-oriented Viktor Yushchenko and adopted by his supporters) caused political upheaval and reform and was sparked by the outcome of a presidential run-off perceived to be marred with fraud, corruption and voter intimidation, which favoured Russia-aligned candidate Victor Yanukovich. The Ukrainian Supreme Court was swayed by the acts of non-violent civil disobedience and general disruption, backed by international observers that questioned the election’s validity and annulled the results of the initial second round and ordered new voting, under close scrutiny, which were judged free and fair and ultimately installed Yushchenko in office with a “public inauguration on 23 January 2005.

welcome to the future (11. 917)

The Verge presents a series of interesting articles about the pivotal tech year two decades ago that informs our present with a thoroughgoing survey of Napster and KaaZa and successor music sharing sites and the question of copyright and ownership of one’s media, the launch of the social web, Gmail and one’s permanent digital demesne, podcasts, migration to the cloud and more. The piece on the gap in photos from circa those years was particular resonant and relatable, like this grainy snapshot of the one time I visited Schloß Neuschwanstein in 2004 from among about forty or so bad pictures I could scrounge up.  Whilst there have been innovations and choices in the interim, a lot of this architecture and underpinning infrastructure is locked in and legacy that we are living with today.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Big Foot on film (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: tonal passkeys, the dangers of know thyself, French naming trends, a utopian city plus GIF mashups

eight years ago: the immunology of Tasmania Devils

nine years ago: story-telling and maths serving the same human need 

thirteen years ago: coin collecting plus the occupy-movement

8x8 (11. 480)

chambre de bonne: disappearing top-floor tiny apartments of Paris  

semifreddo: the origin of Neapolitan ice cream  

the united states of division: a prescient 2004 release by Prince & The New Power Generation  

court dress: the pink sleeves of the supreme courts of Labrador and Newfoundland are in deference to the former summer robes for sittings in England and Wales—via Super Punch  

geoengineering: Tennessee legislature outlaws (see also) so called chemtrails 

bpm: Chechnya announces ban of music considered too fast or too slow  

backsplash: mosaic of the day  

warehouse-to-loft-conversion: a tribute to the last of New York’s artists’ dwellings—via Messy Nessy Chic

the annoying thing (10. 780)

Originally shared as an MP3 audio recording of a student in Gothenburg called Daniel Malmedahl imitating the sounds of a two-stroke engine revving (Tvåtaktare) in 1997 that was picked up as a signature sound for Formula One Racing in 2001, the concept, with the addition of a CGI character, became a ring-tone licensed and rather aggressively marketed in 2004 and on this day in 2005, just a couple of weeks after being released, its incarnation as a Eurodance, techno song by Axel F became the number one single in the UK and a summer hit (internationally—tube de l’été), beating out the likes of Cold Play in the charts. This enduring cult classic, which is periodically called into service, saw more than a dozen remixes, concert tours, a video game, a documentary plus an unrealised television series and feature film. Deng deng!

wiki commons

The media repository for public-domain and free-use images (see also), text, audio and video that illustrate and inform all projects across the enterprise was launched on this day in 2004, championed by journalist and software developer Erik Möller. Though originally primarily developed as a way to reduce file redundancy across the platform, it has become a reference source and common good for contributors and users alike, garnering many enthuasiasts and even a photo of the year competition. The version of the logo to the side is composed of a mosaic of images to mark the milestone in November of 2006 when the site acquired its one-millionth media file. Currently there are over seventy million.

[the facebook]

With origins in a website called “Facemash” which culled photographs and profiles of students from nine sorority houses on the campus of Harvard University published in the campus’ face books—a callbook or an annual distributed shortly after matriculation to help students get to know one another and presented them to be rated in terms of attractiveness circulated on the schools listservs that nearly got its author expelled violating individual privacy and breaching the network host’s security protocols, Mark Zuckerberg generously offered to digitise the student directory as a universal face book within Harvard. The university agreed and website thefacebook.com was launched on this day in 2004. Though membership was initialled limited to the college, the speed and spread of registration soon saw expansion to other prestigious universities and shortly thereafter most schools in the United States and Canada.

idahot

Originally in deference to a subsection of German Basic Law and penal code § 175 with colloquially homosexuals sometimes referred to as einhundredfunfundsiebsiegers (twice the fun, see previously) and the association reinforced by the decision of the World Health Organisation to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder on this same date in 1990, since 2005 and expanded in 2009, a human rights coalition has commemorated this 17 May as the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia to mobilise and raise awareness of discrimination and repression of individuals in that community.

In solidarity, many national celebrations and legislative reforms are observed and enacted around this day, with Massachusetts holding the first lawful same-sex ceremonies in the United States in 2004, France in 2009 to normalise transgender identification and Taiwan in 2019 to legalise gay marriages.

miscellany

Oxford Words guest blogger Elyse Graham gifts us with a name for the phenomenon that coincided and defined the transition from the early internet into the period called the Web 2.0 when the rise of social media platforms made going online interactive—for virtually all whereas it was the bailiwick of a few companies and caretakers previously—and not just something to be read or watched: folksonomy.
Information theorist Thomas Vander Wal coined the idea in 2004 for the informal systems of curation and classification (a portmanteau of folk and taxonomy) that were being developed through labels and hashtags. Whereas thanks to advances in search engine indexing, visiting websites and bookmarking websites could be an uncategorised activity (Everything is Miscellaneous was a 2007 book on the power of the digital disorder and the lack of an authoritative card catalogue), sharing seems to need a tag of some sort—even if it’s made conspicuous by its absence. Folksonomies have moved beyond being a utilitarian tool for grouping and information retrieval and have taken on a life of their own as stage whispers and theatrical asides, revelling more in their unhelpful, for the nonce specificity rather than defining broader genre and genus.