6x6

subscribe to our newsletter: having to compete with social media walled-gardens, websites have gotten to be pretty needy, via Nag on the Lake

torch song trilogy: Theresa May Dancing to Stuff, via Everlasting Blört
 
gifaanisqatsi: a rather soothing random mix of animations whose time dilations fit with the 1983 documentary about “worlds out of balance” (previously with GIF), via Things Magazine

got to go where the love is: a number from Van Morrison’s new album

safety matches versus strike anywhere: designer Helen Stickler creates messages of activism out of vintage matchbook covers

sortation: Pirate Party in Iceland proposes to select at random ten individuals to address parliament every month  

disinformed

Actual, malicious hacking is of course not the cultural heir to countless generations of superstition that evolved from mischievous spirits to gremlins and system bugs but the fact that the pedigree isn’t always knowable tends to flatten and conflate matters for everyone. It’s hard to know whether at work we’re not under some general assault or whether it’s just a matter of poor design and systemic overburdening whose annoyance over technical difficulties are little consolation insofar as oneself isn’t the target of an attack. Most routine disruptions are just that but lately things—both during work hours and at home—seemed to have turned a touch personal. We feel we reliably understand our catalogue of repertoire for correspondence and creation but when things start to appear to go missing and unindexed, I at least begin to feel gaslighted.
I began noticing that blog posts that I knew I had composed in the past—sometimes far beyond that relative horizon called “recent”—that I wanted to footnote a current topic with weren’t to be found, search internally and externally. Pictorial searches sometimes seem to net better yields but if I didn’t have faith in the fullness of my recollection and didn’t manage an independent archive myself, I would begin to question whether the missing pages existed in the first place. “I wrote about this topic before but Google says I didn’t.” A few other internet caretakers have also mentioned this in passing and I am reasonably sure that they’re experiencing the same sort of emphasis on currency and novelty that I have been—still one has to wonder how to define sabotage and subterfuge (or innocent incompetence and the over-confidence in our abilities) in a space where gravity and the laws of physics are subject to change. We tend to think of the architecture of basic services to be permanent and self-sustaining but there’s an awful amount of behind-the-scenes maintenance that goes into it and maybe we’ve just become too accustomed to a set of expectations, a frustration that betrays our impatience. When I heard of co-workers bemoaning that they were unable to search our email server exchange for older missives as reference, I was a little baffled and dismissive—that is, until I experienced the same glitch, which isn’t consistent seemingly or long-lived enough to properly investigate and work up any sort of relatable or repeatable remedy. Lack of information is a flavour of disinformation. If this undermining (real or perceived) is the work of an Evil Genius to torment, train or trick, it’s a pretty impressive vulnerability to exploit.

7x7

dance dance revolution: Waxy reminds us of the classic Gif Dance Party and directs us to an updated 3D version

colloquium: trippy 1974 poster from UC Berkley announcing a special lecture on artificial intelligence

redundancies: a hauntingly deserted fully automated warehouse operation in Japan

gustatory perception: a museum in Malmo showcasing the world’s most reviled food items invites a conversation on the nature of revulsion and taste (relatedly)

seven square miles: a bird’s eye view of various vistas around the world from the Atlantic’s Alan Taylor

event horizon: a good primer on the project to use the Earth as a giant telescope to image the super-massive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way

uptown spot: a twerking Boston Dynamics’ robot dog challenges us to a dance-off 

vacancy announcement

Learning that the social media accounts of the newly elected Iraqi prime minister were absolutely inundated with over thirty thousand applications by those who wanted to join the government after taking to the medium to solicit for appointees, we were reminded of the concept of sortation—rule by lottery—we explored last week. Wanting to disburden himself from a fraught political past of sectarian tensions, corruption and nepotism, Adil Abd al-Mahdi was overwhelmed and heartened by the depth and range of independent applicants interested in cabinet positions, willing to work to rebuild the country.

7x7

val-eri, val-dera: a fantasy map that put the world’s tallest peaks side by side

downside up: excerpts from a 1984 film that shifts perspectives

still life: a podcast from NPR producer Ian Chillag whose guests are all inanimate objects, via Waxy

postdictive processing: an audio-visual illusion from Caltech researchers

theatrical properties: stories behind an assortment of iconic film props, via Miss Cellania

feet dragging: a look at America’s despicable inaction on climate change

petunias: a range of cocktails inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings 

superlunary

Though the final arbiter of such things will be left in the capable hands if the International Astronomical Union, researchers have already hit upon a perfectly acceptable and sensible term for a natural satellite with its own sub-satellite: a moonmoon.
Despite the lack of such an arrangement present in our solar system, scientists have recently confirmed the existence of exomoons and believe that arrangements where smaller moons orbit larger one could indeed occur. The proposed term is also reviving a very silly meme in circulation last year about how the combination of one’s initials yielded an unfortunately derpy spirit animal name.

linkrot

Via Messy Nessy Chic’s peripatetic exploration, we are treated to a fascinating tour of the physical campus—a former Christian Science church—of the Internet Archive, a project which has curated what’s approaching four hundred billion websites in the past twenty-two years.
With bots scouring the web at all times and collecting presently a half a billion new pages weekly, this operation as well as choosing what to conserve for future generations given limited space and resources is not for the meek and is a good reminder to appreciate your local librarians, especially given that much like in real life, those for profit industries flush with cash and influence lean too heavily on foundations like the Internet Archive and Wikipedia who count on the work of countless volunteers and the donations of those who believe that their pursuits are worthwhile and worth preserving. PfRC apparently made the grade the first time back in 2015. See where your contribution to the on-line world resides on the shelves and stacks and consider making a financial contribution. For all the justified angst over the panopticon of the internet committing everything to one’s permanent record, the fact is that websites and connections wither away and require a substantial amount of upkeep and intervention to conserve the past, particularly when the present acquires a selective memory.

tomorrow is coming together

Via Boing Boing, we are acquainted with the brilliant and inspired handiwork of artist Future Punk who has imagined a suite of retro intros, outros and logos for internet companies had they existed in the late 1970s to early 1980s. The undertaking was inspired by the original promotional films produced by computer pioneers which can be found at the link above.

finger in every pie

Ernie Smith from Tedium has a thoughtful column that argues the case in favour of reducing rather than trying to expand one’s exposure to the unrelenting barrage of information available at one’s finger tips by closing one’s browser tabs.
Like the cult of Inbox Zero or the compulsion to have everything marked as read, it’s an exercise of course emblematic for the search for tranquillity and quiet in whatever context and any given setting and artefacts are bound to change. I really liked how the introduction referenced the concept of tsundoku (積ん読)—letting unread books like good intentions pile up—with a twist on the aggressive panopticon of happenings and updates in tab-sundoku, and I appreciate such mediations, especially when I catch myself getting irritated or anxious or feeling delinquent over things of my own making. Most (if not all) of these sorts of pressures come from within.

i’m feeling lucky

Originally developed as a search algorithm provisionally called “BackRub” that ranked websites by the number of other pages backlinking to them in 1996 as a graduate studies project, Sergey Brin and Larry Page filed the paperwork for incorporation on this day in 1998 for their search engine and web crawler, Google. The name was selected as a misspelling of googol, shorthand for imparting the concept of ten duotrigintillon or a one followed by one hundred zeroes, as an illustration of the vast amounts of data circulating on the internet.
Liberal estimates of the mass of the Universe fall short of that by fully ten powers of ten—or in other words just one ten-billionth of a googol of kilogrammes. Google assigns the number in scientific notation “1e100.net” to its array of servers to identify them across the internet. The corporate headquarters “Googleplex” is a much later backronym, homage referencing the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy super-computer Googleplex Starthinking (same spelling) that can calculate the trajectory of each mote of dust in a blizzard and contemplates the very vectors of atoms since the Big Bang—which is again a bit of over-engineering seeing that the value, a googolplex being ten to the googol power, something physical impossible to express outside of our imagination, and far outstrips the total number of subatomic particles in the Cosmos, reckoned at 10⁸⁰ or thereabouts.

a marketplace of ideas

Via Boing Boing, we learn that after satisfying the compulsion to google himself—egosurfing if you will—that insufferable occupant of the White House decided that he did not like the results that were presented him and has directed his goons to look into whether and how internet search engine results should be regulated by the government.
Although this is just another in a long line of pathetic tantrums that even has the Republicans clutching their pearls, such bluster erodes societal norms and our collective expectation of integrity and reliability in our institutions, whose reputations are already bruised by reflecting our implicit biases, being manipulative, judgmental, prejudiced and for jumping to conclusions. Though parts of the internet are both echo-chamber and excoriating Star Chamber, the raw and unmediated (and admittedly finding the latter can take some extra effort) facts are out in the ether as well.  This latest grandstanding (using platforms to attack platforms) combined with the unrelenting howls of fake news may well be dread to hear for most but have had real and dire consequence and sets the United States on a course to dictatorship, which is depressingly seeming a more likely outcome.

7x7

stellar cartography: Google Maps venture out into our Solar System and chart the planets and natural satellites

circling the drain: research suggests that all the antidepressant medications flushed away are making fish antisocial and withdrawn

musical instrument digital interface: what the virtuosity of plant life can say about consciousness

festtage: a humourous and insightful primer for German Christmas season—for the uninitiated

neutralidade da rede: to imagine the US without protections against blocking and throttling, one need only look to the situation in Portugal

low earth orbit: Russian cosmonaut claims to have sampled extra-terrestrial bacteria from the hull of the International Space Station

in praise of air: a four stanza poem printed on an oversized panel at the University of Sheffield campus purifies the air it extols

crypto-currency

Well before the stellar—and perhaps ultimately not unlike the ascent of Icarus—rise of one form of trusted electronic money that we are presently witnessing, there were quite a few antecedents including the primogenitor, DigiCash, invented by computer scientist and cryptographer David Chaum back in 1989.
Very much ahead of its time, Chaum’s idea evolved from a need he recognised in 1982 to protect the privacy of individuals conducting online transactions and devised a way to digitally commit to a deal by negotiating between public- and private-key security that was selective about the exposure of details and terms. The early form of electronic payments and exchange was wholly anonymous thanks to a system of protocols maintained across a network, much like its descendants. Though Deutsche Bank was one of the currency’s early-adopters, DigiCash went bankrupt in 1998 having come to the market prematurely, before the integration of the internet with electronic transactions which lagged behind. E-commerce is older of course than on-line shopping with clearing houses for bank transfers, automated teller machines and credit card infrastructure but it’s really amazing to think how different our relation to money and trade was back then and how little the underpinnings have changed.

common-carrier or net-fatality

Via Slashdot, we learn that the Federal Communications Commission is not only going to dismantle the framework of net-neutrality that ensures no enterprise is privileged over another on the internet, the windfall legislation for Internet Service Providers and content-clearinghouses also will contain language that prevent state and local governments from enacting protections to replace those slated to be repealed. Because broadband crosses state boundaries, only a federal entity has jurisdiction and feedback from the public and municipalities was rebuffed and summarily dismissed. The extent of the pre-emption authority remains in question and may not only apply to throttling and blocking but perhaps also to locally developed laws that protect users’ privacy and integrity of data, possibly limiting the exposure of corporations to liability and law suits for sloppy handling of our information.

individual results may vary

Via Dave Log v. 3.0, we are introduced to an algorithm that will calculate one’s heritage based on the composition and pattern detected in user-submitted, candid photographs. One is then invited to participate in a more scientific post-script by submitting DNA swabs into the company to discover and embrace the richness of one’s diverse heritage.
Of course, this is far from a ringing endorsement since there’s junk science all around and it’s the conflation of race and ethnicity with genetics that’s been confounding society both before and after we’ve had the background and literacy to couch it in sensibly and remains a stubborn wedge of contention despite attempts to try to reclaim some maturity in discourse. Is it some harmless fun? Or is it one of myriad routes to capturing a target demographic who are swayed by the false importance and false sense of certitude of such things? I was disappointed at the outset to be told be told that I was a whopping eighty-five percent white (whatever that means) myself. Don’t contribute to the dissolution of culture and civilisation and spread stuff like this uncritically. Internet, we are disappoint.

6x6

la collina dei conigli: rescued veteran laboratory rats experience the outdoors for the first time

synchronicity: Krista and Tatiana Hogan are twins joined at the head and share a unique brain configuration that allows each to experience the other’s perceptions and possibly thoughts
animoji sounds: a Finnish comedian and voice-actor named Rudi Rok gives the animated menagerie their roar

pylos combat agate: a tiny decorative seal from a Mycenaean tomb is changing conceptions about ancient artistic skills

se possible: Cards Against Humanity has purchased land abutting the US-Mexico border and hired a law firm specialising in eminent do
main to make building that wall as difficult as possible

sonata primeval: the sound poetry of avant-garde exile Kurt Schwitters that Brian Eno sampled from for his 1977 album Before and After Science

man bites dog

Whilst the biggest social media news of the day is one platform’s decision to abandon a rule that ostensibly required users to put thought into their rants as they had to conform to character limitations—sort of like a telegram with a cost associated for a lack of brevity and conciseness (notwithstanding ways to circumvent this), another overlooked experiment was taking place. With the proliferation of fake news seemingly impervious to any countermeasures and talk of more regulation abuzz, the other social media titan (apt as they represent the second generation in this theogony) chose to combat spurious reporting by promoting commentary, no matter what the source, that characterized the cited article as phony. How do you feel about this? Do both deliberations fail to curb disinformation and rather accomplish the opposite? The trial-run did not discern between known yellow journalism and trusted news sources and effectively sowed distrust for legitimate media for many.

shake ‘n bake (and I helped)

While I’d not want to risk alienating potential future sponsors, the profusion of mail-order meal services out there sort of baffles me—and I suppose in good faith I couldn’t accept their support since there’s no way such jostling and shuttling about staple ingredients repackaged could be ecologically excused—and I wonder what the allure is exactly. I remember reading once, and subsequently encountering many retellings in marketing contexts, how cake mixes and the like began to call for a superfluous egg because the extra effort lent a sense of legitimacy and accomplishment and appealed to bakers more so than the variety that did not.
Maybe the dining experience and our relationship with handed-down recipes are like that. I guess in that sense buying the experience, the virtual and vicarious reality, is what’s on offer and for myself, I’ll resort to processed foods, like boil-in-bag curries that allow me the pleasure of cooking rice to go with it or load-baring pizzas that I can flavor to taste, but I think I’ll not need a courier and a subscription.

major arcana

Despite the banal and unsurprising nature of the cards we are dealt by our daily social media digest, it’s still nonetheless exciting to forecast one’s fortune and fate. One clever illustrator from Italy named Jacopo Rosati, we were introduced to by Dangerous Minds, obliges with a collection of tarot cards that make up a narrative of the typical user experience.

netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz

Though the defamation case is stalled in the courts, the charges against a social media giant for libelling an individual as the face of terrorism and rampant, uncontrolled immigration illustrated that the legal framework of Germany was insufficient to hold such influential entities to account and informed what’s colloquially known as the “Facebook Law.”
Though highly valued and defended, Germany’s Grundgesetz does not privilege freedom of expression above human dignity and acting as a vehicle for the spread and incitement of hatred carries a heavy fine and networks have until the new year to ensure that they have controls in place to be and remain in compliance. Despite fears of censorship and the potential for differences in interpretation, it seems to me a good policy to adopt as these platforms become de facto surrogates for journalism and reliable reporting and one which might save us from ourselves and be restorative for our esteem in so far as it lends more mediacy to the moment.