upselling (11. 888)

Although to an extent we get why both websites and increasingly waitstaff, dependent on positive reviews, recommendation, and the former sidelined, scraped, abandoned, bereft of revenue and cajoled into a subscription model, places and spaces one has given a minute of their attention to voluntarily are not enough and demand another minute amongst the vortex of algorithmically curated feeds and forced notifications—and the minute after that, no longer allowed to engage and explore on one’s own terms. Nick Heer presents the very apt allegory of a dining experience ruined by an aggressively intrusive server:

Would you like to see the menu again? Here, try this new thing. Here, try this classic thing we brought back. Here is a different chair. How about we swap the candles on the table for a disco ball? Would you like to hear the specials again? Have you visited our other locations?

Such an encounter is highly relatable and corresponds with newsletters, paywalls, diversions that lock one into walled-gardens and promoted content and detract from the whole venture.

digital divinity (11. 885)

Via Waxy, we enjoyed reading excerpts from this series of articles from the Rĕst ôf Ŵǭrld’s correspondents on how technology intersects with religion and is transforming the way people around the world worship and find communion in an illuminated manuscript that documents how communities are using platforms for outreach and influence as well as revitalise ancient faiths. The accounts are categories by faith and topic, presented in the the Book of Altered Reality, the Books of Apps, the Book of the Unexpected, the Book of AI and the Book of Influence. The virtual shires, electronic tithing and the TikTok monks and nuns seem especially interesting.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: botober (with synchronoptica), the life and times of Claire Rayner plus an introduction to the Holy Roman Empire

seven years ago: a master of disaster, tweets into poetry plus turning leaves

eight years ago: continuing resolution plus a celebration of physical knobs, dials and buttons

nine years ago: Count Lucker—Sea Devil,  assorted links to revisit plus electric cars dominate trade shows

ten years ago: a celebration of grandparents, venerable trees plus slabs of the Berlin Wall

gods and monsters (11. 878)

Having to unfortunately access our dear Blört by proxy (get me to a hotspot, anon, and wishing a belated, incredible twenty-fourth blogoversary), courtesy Web Curios we are directed towards another veteran website (established in 1999), the portal (please mention it by name when praying) not only offers a daily deity, information for various and obscure panthea, a running tally of the most popular divinities but also extensive mythological resources and research material. We enjoyed very much learning of the Greek mountain nymph Chelônê (Χελώνη) who is considered the personification of lateness, for failing to show up at the wedding of Zeus and Hera, an occasion for which the groom dispatched his messenger to summon all animals, men and gods to the event. Secretly disdaining their matrimony and mocked Zeus for his sister-wife, Chelônê chose to sit it out and fearful of attracting the ire of the couple, Chelônê said she never received an invitation. Clearly on the guest list but not bothering to RSVP much less to show up, Hermes took this accusation as personal affront and transformed this attested home-body into the creature that would forever bear her name, tortoise (via the Latin testudo)—an condemned to carry her house on her back since she liked it so, and would never have to leave home again. A variant on the curse—or blessing—comes from a later fable in which Momus, satirist of the gods, questioned the wisdom of giving man the gift of architecture for building shelters for their otherwise vulnerable bodies since they were fixed and had no wheels for escaping troublesome neighbours, and praised the snail’s petition to carry her home—when Zeus was doling out gifts at the dawn of creation—which proved to be no burden at all.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: the Sycamore Gap tree chopped down (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: the anniversary of the premier of Star Trek: TNG, more custom cars from George Barris plus rice paddy landscape art

eight years ago: the Voice of America radio service

nine years ago: passports for the stateless,  a Blood Super Moon plus mushroom season

twelve years ago: illustrating the international date line

cuteness aggression (11. 870)

We enjoyed this gloss on the rapid descent of Moo Deng (the glossy Thai baby pygmy hippopotamus whose name translates into “Bouncy Pork”—just saying) from adorable celebrity to an object of transgression and focus of violent urges through obliviously trolling and attention seeking but also the psychological coping mechanism of intrusive thoughts to counter a cuteness overload, those fleeting flashes of thoughts of wanting to mash, drop or barbecue something sweet and innocent that we are normally a bit embarrassed and bothered by and would never, never admit to for fear of being called a monster—but of course some are willing to get voice to those involuntary and (usually) never acted on ideas.

hell is other people (11. 859)

With apologies to Sartre, we learn from Web Curios’ lede link that a new social media platform has been launched that’s either a withering piece of metacommentary on personal branding and curation or actual hell. As the main (and only) character, one can create a private place for announcing status updates, “reflect, post, feel heard,” like one’s daily diary except with an infinite host of generative followers, tailored either as fans, foes, trolls, cheerleaders, haters, etc. While having a personal sounding board may be helpful sometimes for those feeling lonely or isolated, it’s too easy to conflate regurgitation with connection and seems to be the realisation of the Dead Internet Theory. This does not seem like a market place of ideas, nor constructive feedback and only contributes to the echo-chamber and tribalism. More at the links above, including this user’s perspective of the experience.

9x9 (11. 814)

unpodcasted: one hundred ninety nine ideas about etymologies, idioms and eponyms that Helen Zaltzman has not produced an episode for—yet  

book club: Oprah Winfrey’s upcoming special on Artificial Intelligence with Sam Altman, Bill Gates and other AI-evangelists has critics of the tech sector up in arms  

blue chip index: Intel’s earnings slump could see it removed from the Dow, possibly putting a wrench in plans to increase US domestic manufacturing

sleepy grendel’s mother: Beotrump by Christopher Douglas  

jevons paradox: even if autonomous vehicles worked perfectly, they will still lead to more pollution, congestion and accidents—see previously—via tmn  

oslo—is it even a city: a wonderful bit of anti-advertising for the Norwegian capital plus more news and jokes 

intel inside: Pentium microprocessor as Navajo weaving—via Waxy 

nanowrimo: the organisation behind National Novel Writing Month criticised over labelling aversion to generative texts as classist and ableist 

unblogged: fellow flâneur Diamon Geezer lists a month’s worth of explorations not posted

 synchronoptica

one year ago: The Eye of the Tiger (with synchronoptica),  Kenneth Anger’s first film plus hot labour summer

seven years ago: the Little Ben of Victoria station

eight years ago: a visit to Churfrankenland plus an ant colony thriving in nuclear waste

nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus algorithmic eavesdropping

eleven years ago: Germany votes plus pirate patches

hao long, hao long will isley seppe raes mai saeed (11. 788)

Via Web Curios and reminiscent of these made-up, misheard lyrical videos (courtesy of Miss Cellania—wish her a happy blogoversary), we are treated to this wonderful TikTok account that that matches a snippet of popular songs to the names of people on LinkedIn. It is a little hard to explain, a sort backmasking effect, but will become readily apparent. This really made me laugh a little too much. Listen to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” first for some epic pulls then try Red Hot Chili Peppers “Otherside” above.

happy blogoversary to us—we are sixteen going on seventeen (11. 765)

As PfRC turns sixteen years old we wanted to once again extend our thanks and gratitude to our readership and to the members of the wider blogosphere (many of those fellow caretakers listed under our Smøgåsblog) and new ones discovered for their serendipity, sustainment and inspiration that keeps the internet curious, entertaining, engrossing and engaging. 

Since hitting our last milestone, here’s a round-up of some of our most popular posts with a few honourable mentions from the past twelve months.  Then it’s birthdays all the way down:

 10. Watercolour estates of rural Manhattan 

 9. The 1939 World’s Fair

 8. A history of book banning

 

7. more on nominative determinism

 

6. a transcendental animation from Jordan Belson

 

5. Attribution etiquette

 

4. A rebellious printing collective

 

3. an assortment of links

 

2. A Tennessee Williams’ classic drama

1. The 1961 biblical epic Barabbas

Honourable mentions go to Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella and a return to the Wine Island of the Main.

Wishing you all the best for the balance of the year and don’t be a stranger!

  synchronoptica

one year ago: our blogging birthday (with synchronoptica), Trump guilty on racketeering charges, the first Bauhaus exhibition plus the Feast of the Assumption

seven years ago: our ninth blogoversary, parked electric vehicles as an extension of the power grid, Bosch-inspired piñatas, the Wow! signal plus Big Ben silenced for repairs

eight years ago: a visit to Goslar

 

nine years ago: assorted links to revisit, AI Singularity plus local, artisanal currency

 

eleven years ago: JFK in Wiesbaden

 

a maximal truth-seeking ai (11. 764)

The social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has introduced a new feature for its chatbot, Grok—for premium subscribers—a text-to-image generator comparable to Bing’s service (which would rather infamous refuse the prompt “please make me a picture with the winner of 2020 US presidential election) or Facebook’s but apparently with the safety protocols turned off. Whilst users can find boilerplate guidelines and guardrails, presented in the first-person, proffering caution when it comes to making deceptive, provocative or plagiarised pictures, a cursory trial yielded some messages surely none would endorse. Though all tinged by that particular, cutting-corners AI patina that’s far from a watermark, a trial yielded far more offensive and topical content ready to be shared.

garm to ongoing matter (11. 754)

Whereas the prerogative of commercial sponsors is the very definition of free speech, Elon Musk—who previously dismissed advertisers leaving the platform back in 2022 when he took over Twitter and significantly changed the tenor of the dialogue—has sued a small cross-industry initiative run under the non-profit organisation called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media by the World Federation of Advertisers, a consortium of about a hundred member companies, including Unilever, Mars, CVS (an American pharmacy chain) and Ørsted (a Danish energy company, out of existence (at least temporarily), citing anti-trust violations by conspiring to impose an embargo and “demonitise certain viewpoints in order to limit consumer choice.” Founded in the aftermath of the tragic 2019 Christchurch Mosque shootings, livestreamed on Facebook and lingered for an uncomfortable amount of time before being taken down, GARM works to promote responsible content moderation to help avoid members’ ads from appearing alongside hate-speech or harmful content. This is not Musk’s first lawsuit against media watchdogs, whose analysis and reporting on content on the platform has led to a mass exodus by users and sponsors and loss of revenue for the company.

synchronoptica

one year ago: language and idiolects (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

seven years ago: a visit to Castle Frankenstein, workplace diversity, the roots of Nintendo plus geopolitical alternatives for a united Europe

eight years ago: lipogrammatical literature plus presidential plushies

ten years ago: embargoes and boycotts

eleven years ago: St Lawrence plus America’s unique global taxation scheme

🥥🌴🇺🇸 (11. 715)

Having missed the reference, we appreciated this—attempted—explainer on the memes again in circulation after Joe Biden’s endorsement of Kamala Harris via Miss Cellania. Adopted by supporters of her bid to express enthusiasm, it originates from a set of remarks given by Harris back in May of 2023 at the swearing-in ceremony for a group of commissioners tasked with improving economic and educational outcomes for Hispanic communities:
“Everything is in context… My mother—would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’ You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

Formerly the gauge of a president’s relatability, likability was whether or not you could enjoy a beer with them (or at least if their taste and style of eating wasn’t off-kilter) but now it seems memeification (see also) speaks to that question and will continue to inform the campaign. More from NPR at the link above including a round up of other viral moments.

“I can imagine what can be, unburdened by what has been.”

10x10 (11. 707)

the institute for controlled speleogenesis: an fictional organisation designing artificial caves  

indecent proposal: the infamous 1994 advertising campaign, Love Letters from Fiat 

a river runs through it: the consequences of taming—and rewilding—the Los Angeles River (see previously)—via Nag on the Lake  

amazombies: online retail giant’s affiliate programme for customer returns are overtaxing for brick-and-mortar partners  

one hundred days of cultural clarity: an exploration of recent memes and trends  

bootstraps: JD Vance as the toxic byproduct of America’s obsession with rags-to-riches narratives  

polkamania: Weird AI (see below) drops a new new medley of song parodies  

posse: publish (on your) own site, syndicate elsewhere  

fiddler on the forum: male exploitation on the Carol Burnett Show—see also 

nietzsche and the noonday demon: the fictitious French philosopher, Jean-Baptiste Botul, whose writings are often cited

splogoverse (11. 681)

Having previously tracked how that the zombification of dormant domains followed the cannibalisation of the oldweb and general enshittification as squats for AI-generated slop, we gave a close reading to this account involving the purchase of a long-abandoned URL of a mainly print newsletter that once hosted their contributions in order to spare their by-line from the indignity visited upon many legacy websites, coopted by prolific impostors for name-recognition (like Red Lobster being private-equitied). Like the above cannibalisation—which seems rather tame in comparison—archived content (which may be also hosted in parallel by a successor publisher) is lightly edited and updated to make it appear fresh and relevant, at least to search engines and advertisers. More from Tedium at the link above.

much sad (11. 584)

Already having to deal with the loss of Grumpy Cat in 2019 and encountering a feline with similar markings, it was a bit mournful to mark the passing of the Shiba Inu named Kabosu—albeit at the ripe and respectable old age of eighteen human years and suffering from various rather chronic ailments (such is the toll of an unnaturally long life)—who was recruited into internet celebrity and launched numerous memes as Doge and a crypto currency that has generated real value for some despite its parody origins.

permalink (11. 573)

Cory Doctorow presents a winsome and circumspect consideration of the recent survey of the internet’s perishable nature and how a figure approaching forty percent of websites, news articles and government websites have no legacy and succumb to linkrot—with reference sites particularly left untethered from their original source material—not withstanding preservation efforts through his personal and persistent practise of keeping a daily journal—an indexed memory of associated thoughts and connections that harkens back to earliest theories of informatics—and making the process public. One’s own record is of course an aid and antidote to the peekaboo when neglect and decay follow creative collaboration and the context, steps and milieu all slip away and a heuristic to gauge the sad truth that institutions and archives are brittle, gearing more towards discovery and derivation rather than rediscovery and reflection. More from Pluralistic at the link up top.

† (11. 550)

Via Web Curios, we are referred to a collection of abandoned blogs, personal projects a decade or more moribund and neglected for various and unknown
reasons, like succumbing to the ease and convenience of social media, loosing focus, growing beyond and dying in some cases surely but all present as an abrupt mystery them that were once obsessively curated and betray a lot of earnestness and energy on all sorts of interests from fashion, to cooking, to travel and more niche pursuits. In part due to the privilege of having such a perfectly (mostly) preserved perspective on these relics that don’t age or crumble, pursuing these posts (yes, with some old school mommy blogs and sites built on Blogspot, click next for serendipity) is indeed not like a wistful walk amongst the tombstones exactly though one appreciates the unfinished business once so carefully tended and the placeholder did strike me as a bit plaintive: “if i hadn’t deleted my old blogs, then they would go here too…” More at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a classic from Duran Duran plus assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: Walter Defends Sarajevo (1972), the first US female presidential candidate plus a classic from Falco

three years ago: your daily demon: Gusion, introducing the Incredible Hulk, nuclear engineering wall charts, Aristotle and Phyllis plus grunge slang

four years ago: the UK invades Iceland, tomatoes legally defined, an AI makes music, Trump and the pandemic plus superblooms

five years ago: a Chinese space camp, chumbox advertisements, Nazi book-burnings (1933) plus the Frankfurt kitchen

8x8 (11.542)

komoot: one testimonial for the international route-finding applicant to which we can personally endorse for its hiking trails recommendation and active community of contributors 

zillow gone wild: absurdist real estate listings go mainstream

dodecahedron: more on the mysterious Roman artefact puzzling archaeologists—see previously  

eidophone: a Welsh singer in 1885, wanting to give flower, fern and tree a voice, pioneered the discipline of cymatics 

democracy dies in darkness: amid faltering peace-talk, Israel shutters al Jazeera bureau in Israel  

live people ignore the strange and unusual. i myself am strange and unusual: a trove of behind the scenes stills from the 1988 production of Beetlejuice—see previously 

finsta: photo-dumps circa 2006 are the new chaotic and authentic social media trend—via tmn  

trudge: an arduous animated journey of many flights by Stephan Schabenbeck through the lens of taking relatable longer than expected excursions

anemoia (11. 535)

Derived from an Ancient Greek portmanteau of wind and mind in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, the titular coinage refers to the wistful nostalgia for a time and place one has never known, and via ibīdem we are directed towards a reflection that we’ve often pondered perfunctorily with the gratitude that we didn’t grow up in the lens of social media where every embarrassing moment could be captured and preserved for posterity and really captures a generational disjunction, perhaps unique, and being expressed through infatuation with the vintage, the retro and sometimes regressive as those experiences liminal and just out of reach can be romanticised and recalled or imagined better and more interconnected than they really were, just like other appeals to a Golden Age. The crux of the thesis hinges on one particular high school graduation home video from 1999 and the reactions it has drawn from an anxious and aching audience of Gen Z’ers (and others truly nostalgic and older cohorts dismissive of the novelty of coming of age) for a time when one was present and not curating, documenting or checking their status for a sinewy broader group of acquaintances, and commodified by constant connectivity. Isolation transfixed as escapism is a trade-off, however unwilling, for convenience and instant gratification. More on the appeal for sentiment and sympathy from Freya India at the link above.

7x7 (11. 522)

diddly doodly: a live action, 1950s version of The Simpsons in the works

trylon and perisphere: rides and attractions of the 1939 New York World’s Fair  

so your property has been banksyed—now what: conserving the artist’s murals and the difference between the studio and the street 

unfrosted: Netflix’s Pop-Tarts movie from Jerry Seinfeld  

the aethererius society: the London cab driver who became the voice of the Interplanetary Parliament in 1954  

the complete mashography: DJ Earworm takes on Taylor Swift  

anti-social network: Aaron Sorkin plans a sequel to the Facebook film, blaming the social media giant for the January Sixth Insurrection

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Roddenberry Archive, custom game cartridges plus the fired Florida principal gets to visit the David

two years ago: a Martian probe encounters the wreckage of an earlier mission plus viewing tectonic shifts

three years ago: International Dance Day with Colin’s Bear plus deepfake satellite imagery

four years ago: the evacuation of Saigon, the Golden Hat of Schifferstadt, daily constitutionals, zen toast plus assorted links to revisit

five years ago: the inspiration for Thanos’ power glove plus not taking God’s name in vain

8x8 (11. 514)

flightline: stunning visualisations of air traffic  

splinternet: ByteDance does not plan to divest itself of TikTok following US ultimatum  

megadeath: modelling the destruction caused by a nuclear bomb on a major city  

mtv buzz: a surreal montage of audio and video clips arranged by Mark Pellington (1990)  

celebrity endorsement: musicians, artists and novelist pose with the Sears’ appliances in this 1969 ad campaign for Kenmore—see also  

undiscovery: the Map Men chart phantom islands—including some that have made it into the era of Google Maps—see previously  

22,5 light hours: engineers debug a forty-seven year old computer remotely from twenty-four billion kilometres away to revive the data stream from Voyager I—see previously  

embarking: a luxury airline that caters to canines above their human companions

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: dismantling Soviet-era monuments

three years ago: more links to enjoy plus a special issue of LIFE magazine

four years ago: fantasy urban map generators, more links worth the revisit plus geopolitical optics

five years ago: an elegant and modern personal seal, even more links plus a Victoria houseplant