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

9x9 (11. 499)

pumping iron: Technogym invites forty artists to reinterpret its exercise bench for Milan Design Week  

wikipedia rectangles: a collage of images sourced from the Commons subdivides one’s screen in increasing smaller sections of disparate pictures—via Web Curios  

the microcosm of london: an illustrated three-volume set by Rudolph Ackermann showcasing the public spaces of the capital 

🍉: the massive Quilt for Palestine unveiled at the Met 

rundown royale: a look at the family tree of Charlemagne, the Father of Europe—via Miss Cellania 

ulnar nerve: the etymology of the expression funny bone and variants—including the Swedish terms enkelstöt/änkestöt  

dua lipa stuns as congressional gerrymander: that and other headlines from Super Punch  

from our correspondents: World Press Photo contest captures destruction and devastation 

the revolution will not be biennalised: the withdrawal of the Israeli pavilion in Venice was performative and opportunistic

10x10 (11. 496)

the cloud under the seas: the fleet of secret submarine cable repair ships 

sarbox: US Supreme Court appears skeptical about charging January Sixth rioters with obstruction of justice as defined by a law made in the aftermath of the Enron accounting scandal  

mix-and-match orthography: how Japanese writers navigate a choice between four writing systems (see also)—via Cardhouse  

walled gardens have deep roots: the imperative of rewilding (previously) the internet lest the duopolies take over—via Waxy 

bongo bash: Wild Stereo Drums (1961)  

embroidered surveillance: cross-stitch works of closed-circuit security camera footage  

the questor tapes: a 1974 television sci-fi drama about an android with incomplete programming by Star Trek alumni Gene L Coon, D C Fontana and Gene Roddenberry—via r/Obscure Media  

tegelwippen: Dutch towns compete to remove garden paving and embrace weeds—via Miss Cellania  

voir dire: jury selection continues for the criminal trial of Donald J Trump—with some potential jurors being unintentionally doxed by the media 

 atlas 2.0: Boston Dynamics’ new humanoid robot

synchronoptica

one year ago: Atelier Elvira, an unwoke chatbot plus assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: more gachapons plus an introduction to risography

three years ago: the launch of the Disney Channel (1983), an experimental light house plus Wham in China (1985)

four years ago: more links to enjoy, the International Amateur Radio Union plus The Spirits Book (1897)

five years ago: concrete monoliths moved by hand plus Mueller Report redactions

i’m feeling lucky (11. 451)

A couplet of essays illustrate the insatiable drive for the tech industry to foist AI enhancements to a suite of baseline products (an inuring narrative that we’ve encountered before from guilds to shingles, to telephone directories, to 800 numbers, to websites, to encryption, to block-chain) with a trial of ‘search generative experience’ by default, making chatbot recommendations scraped from the web rather than (ir)relevant links. An experiment for now, it is indicative of the direction behemoths would take user queries—even at the risk of not just being seen as promoting content that no one is looking for but also as the creator of said bad results, redefining what a search-engine does with a curatorial capacity. The counterpoint is somewhat of an apology for the trajectory of seemingly better performance, promising utility, with the wholesale intrusion, offering that AI does not comprehend what “to google” is and cannot differentiate between requests for research and requests for navigation, unwilling to accept a point of departure and what’s easy to know but increasingly harder find. Although championing what is juried by humans (both noting how it is informed our non-synthetic archives), neither developmental observation bodes well for curiosity.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit, the Book of Mormon (1820) plus the musical stylings of Takeshi Terauchi

two years ago: more links to enjoy plus some local street art

three years ago: Balance (1989), the Fiat factory test track plus the Hapsburgs attempt to retake the throne (1921)

four years ago: the GOP Death Cult, fomites plus the Schengen Area (1995)

five years ago: more shadowology, The Handmaid’s Tale as a graphic novel, the Frauenhofer Institute (1949), a FOIA primer plus property development naming reforms

truth windows (11. 441)

Courtesy of fellow internet peripatetic Messy Nessy Chic’s latest link curation (which also includes segments on the Satanic Panic and the colourful churches of Kerala worth a look as well), we were really enamoured with the the idea of keeping unfinished a small section of wall, as is traditional particularly in strawbale homes, for perspective, grounding and gratitude of what our sheltering places are constructed of—the alcove often serving as an ersatz altar. As we were moving in and had the interior of the house redone and modern, up-to-code insulation installed, we were surprised to see under the drop-ceilings in the oldest part of the house twigs and branches—certainly sourced from the woods behind us—and was a little sad to see them unceremoniously removed and replaced.  Maybe just retain a small first storey skylight in a nice antique frame.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit 

two years ago: more links to enjoy

three years ago: St Dareca plus even more links worth revisiting

four years ago: a big bomb detonated (1970), a gallery of conversation pits plus America’s Stonehenge (1980)

five years ago: a proposal to standardise toponymy, illustrator Rachel Eleanor, a submerged restaurant in Norway, replacing politicians with AI, more links plus a vintage Lada advert

stumbleupon (11. 425)

Though our favourite sites always deliver and never disappoint and there are aggregators like the Ooh! Directory and other webrings, true serendipity is an increasingly rare commodity on the internet. Granted this came as an appeal to narcissism—trying it out for this site and some PfRC adjacent friends of the blog—we were intrigued with this little fortuity engine, via Web Curios, in the form of a Google Chrome extension called Browser Buddy. Whilst a bit apprehensive about such add-ons as an invitation to scrap one’s data or target ads, it appears to be a non-intrusive co-pilot that pops up in a corner and offers a list of sites hosted on similar platforms with the same energy. A few recent discoveries to follow are sourced from these suggestions. Venturing outside of one’s zone without a map or agenda is still the best way to rewild one’s interests, however, even if it does take effort and often nets little on each excursion.