lacus verbanus (11. 649)

Referred to by its Roman designation for the anchor community opposite Stresa for ages until properly surveyed in the seventeenth century (its true size not really appreciable due to its sinuous nature) Lago Maggiore—literally the greater lake—is second to Lake Garda as Italy‘s largest by area but the longest of the three sub-Alpine lakes, the above Garda and Como being the others.

Developed during Roman times as a maritime link to the Adriatic via the Po, it again saw a trading revival during the Renaissance for transporting marble for the building of cathedrals in Milan and Turin—in the interim ruled as fiefs by the Habsburgs and clashing local rivals. Studying marsh gas, Alessandro Volta discovered and described methane here in 1776.

passo del lucomagno (11. 648)

Crossing the Lepontine Alps between the cantons of Graubunden and Ticino, we made it up the Lukmanier Pass and though navigable for hauling a camper trailer—lorries and buses also use the road—and with far fewer switchbacks than the Gotthard Pass, the hour-long drive was pretty daunting at points with curving inclines and construction but beautiful up the mountain and through the valley and we made it into Italy, taking in views of Lago di Maggiore from the banks on the Swiss side.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links (with synchronoptica) to revisit

five years ago: Mitja and the Microbes plus the world’s first time-free zone

six years ago: the US Nazi party plus the first gay marriage in Britain’s extended royal family

seven years ago: an innovative nest-box, propriety camouflage, alternative keyboard layouts, designing new fulfilment centres plus continuity of government contingency plans

eight years ago: German regionalisms, author Dan Brown sponsors the digitalisation of ancient texts, a snake shedding its skin did not go as planned plus Kill Billy

alpine passes (11. 647)

H and I were headed off for a couple of weeks of vacation in Italy via Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland but were turned back by authorities positioned along the road for the San Bernardino and to go back and take the Gotthard Pass direction Zürich. 

Uncertain and a bit frustrated, we set off but paused to look for better directions and if the famously high passage was suitable for cars towing a camping trailer and a friendly local advised us on the safest route, chancing by on her bicycle and registering that we were lost. We continued through the valley of the canton of Graubunden, passing through every settlement. It wasn’t until en route, still a bit unconvinced, that we realised that our misdirection (of which we garnered a few details from the above informant) was due to a rather catastrophic landslide that necessitated closure of the highway (washing away a section of the Autobahn) and several hundred residents needed to be evacuated, ashamed that I had been cursing AI search results on popular but outdated information when disaster had just struck and was still developing—though I maintain that artificial intelligence still played a major role with suggesting popular searches over timeliness and relevance. 

Climate change is the culprit for these increasingly common disruptions. Given the turning weather and long detour we stayed at a campsite on the way to the Lukmanierpass, safe passage which we later confirmed (the woman who stopped to help was absolutely right), in a beautiful spot by the chief tributary of the Rhein at Rein da Medal, from the Romansch for source.

patience worth (11. 646)

Via Weird Universe, first contacted on this day in 1913 after reluctantly taking up the Ouija board at the insistence of her neighbours, we learn of the correspondence with the above departed soul who lived from the mid- to late-seventeenth century in Dorsetshire (migrating to colonial America only to be killed by Native Americans) and thoroughly ordinary and unambitious (her biography giving those traits special emphasis) Pearl Lenore Curran of Missouri, whose channeling and mediumship eventually produced for this amanuensis several novels and much prose and poetry that was published and well-received. Dictation at first came slowly through the planchette one letter at a time but eventually Worth furnished whole paragraphs telekinetically. There were of course skeptics and accused Curran of the authorship but the phenomena coincided with the infatuation with spiritualism on both sides of the Atlantic.

synchronoptica

one year ago: new London Underground safety posters (with synchronoptica) plus a disappearance in Vatican City

six years ago: Cantril’s Ladder, money-laundering plus Seth Godin’s blog

seven years ago: surveying Mars, lèse-majesté, more on soundscaping, the Deseret syllabary plus Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

eight years ago: the importance of numeracy plus transposed pottery

nine years ago: Arab scholarship links the Ancient and Modern, the right of panorama plus digital displays

happiness hotel (11. 645)

Founded in 1919 as Charlie Chaplin Studios (with a fitting homage to the Little Tramp of Kermit with top hat and cane), the Henson Estate is selling off the storied and iconic lot it has occupied since 2000 as part of a strategy (yet to be disclosed) to consolidate production and Creature Workshop operations. During the central Hollywood’s incarnations over the decades it was not only home to Chaplin’s classics but also the television series The Adventure of Superman and Perry Mason with the in-house recording studio used by Lady Gaga and Daft Punk following “We are the World” before its distinction as Muppet headquarters. Let’s hope the new buyer continues this chain of creativity.

don’t cry for me argentina (11. 644)

Originally conceived as a rock opera concept album two years prior to popular and critical acclaim, the collaboration by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber (see previously here and here) was adapted for the stage and debuted on this day in London’s West End on this day in 1978 and relates the life and political career of of the wife and widow of Juan Perón. Rice, interested in philately in his childhood, was somewhat taken by her images on stamps but knew nothing of her significance to the country’s history, social reform and charitable works until intrigued by catching the end of a radio biography and became highly interested on the verge of obsession, research, traveling to Buenos Aires and even naming his first born daughter Eva after her before pitching the idea to Webber, whom at first rejected the idea in favour of producing a musical based on Jeeves, the PG Wodehouse character—a decided flop—before reconsidering Rice’s proposal.

dmz (11. 643)

Unnerved by just concluded two-state visit by the Russian president to strengthen alliances with North Korea and Vietnam and fears that the pact may see flows of munitions not only for Russia to continue to prosecute its invasion and occupation of Ukraine but also concerns that Seoul’s neighbour would be receiving technical assistance in developing its nuclear and aerospace programmes and emboldened border incursions, South Korea is considering augmenting its support to the beleaguered nation with lethal weapons, which it has so far not provided. As counter-programming to the recently held gathering in Switzerland of eighty nations reaffirming their commitment for Ukraine support and condemnation of Putin’s war, the Russian leader re-emphasised that materiel aid for Ukraine makes other countries direct belligerents and reserves the right to do the same against the West and its allies.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the US supreme court sets benchmarks for obscenity (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth revisiting

six years ago: regional linguistic delicacies plus RIP Koko the Gorilla

seven years ago: soylent, structural fungi plus procrastination and motivation

eight years ago: Sigur Rós, neighbourhood archaeology, Wedgwood heels plus more on gun violence in America

nine years ago: Max Richter’s Sleep

8x8 (11. 642)

crazy logic: a rather seamless mashup of Gnarls Barkley, Rockwell, Pink Floyd and Sumpertramp  

ыһыах: the Yakut people of arctic Siberia celebrate New Year on the Summer Solstice  

culicidology: a fascinating two-part discussion of mosquitoes with Alie Ward 

baggage carousel: an animated journey of checked airline luggage 

the phrygian cap: the Paris Games’ mascot with a revolutionary past—via Miss Cellania  

the beige begins early here folks: McMansion Hell (previously) presents another instalment of the American Medieval Revival—via Things Magazine  

re-alignment: just ahead of Solstice celebrations, activists with Just Stop Oil douse the megalithic calendar with orange paint power 

chiroptera: a ballet chroegraphed by Thomas Bangalter, formerly of Daft Punk—via tmn

space crone (11. 641)

Via tmn, we are directed to an attempt to better understand the pioneering science-fiction author Ursula K Le Guin (†, previously)—and more generally all writers through their routines, chapbooks and other faded ephemera—and chancing upon her digital demesne in her websites, one curated by her estate and the other archive-only, as reflection of an author’s public-facing persona, from a time when websites took effort and imagination and no standard templates were available or enforced and provides insights how people want to be remembered extra-cannon. More from Dirt contributor Meghna Rao at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: compilation albums (with synchronoptica), more marketing tie-ins for 2001 plus academic SEO

five years ago: the Munker-White optical illusion

six years ago: the Coconut Song, the EU enacts Article 13, electronic assistants for hotel rooms, the US withdraws from the UN Human Rights Council, Canada legalises recreational marijuana use, unique churches in southern India plus reflections on World Refugee Day

seven years ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus the unwritten rules of the English language

eight years ago: sense of direction and handedness plus conserving the historic record in the digital age

orthostat (11. 640)

A welcome distraction, apparently self-propagating like crop-circles, during the height of the pandemic in 2020 has returned, we learn via Damn Interesting, in a mirrored format in a mysterious monolith spotted in the desert of the state of Nevada in the American southwest. Authorities were similarly puzzled after encountering the original and we had forgotten how copies started cropping up shortly thereafter, with ones appearing on the Isle of Wight, Wales, Romania and California. Given the previous viral fascination, we wonder how much we’ve evolved from those apes at the beginning of 2001.

offcuts (11. 639)

Despite abundant supplies of natural resource lithium, Australia—and most of the world—lack another, overlooked key component for the manufacture of battery storage and the transition away from carbon-intensive energy and must import graphite—see previously. Researchers at Charles Sturt University in Victoria, we learn courtesy of the New Shelton wet/dry, however, may have devised a technique for turning hair and wool cast-offs into the conductive crystalline form carbon by heating it under extreme pressure. This breakthrough also heralds opportunities for salons and shepherds who end up disposing of a lot of lower-quality animal fibre.

 synchronoptica

one year ago:  Rocky Horror (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

five years ago: one hundred facts for logophiles, German abbreviations plus plagiarism revealed through punctuation

six years ago: more the US Space Force, a model kit controversy, more on the robot crew member of the ISS plus a collection of beer coasters

seven years ago: the Saturday morning show that possibly inspired MST3K plus the wisdom of Wil Wheaton

eight years ago: gunpowder in the New World

webcollage (11. 638)

Launched on this day in 1999 by Jamie Zawinski (previously), one of the founders of Netscape and Mozilla and advocate for open-source software, the application inserts random noise into image search engines to create a pastiche of pictures—somehow with similar energy—and has been running with surprisingly minimal maintenance (given how much the web has grown since) for a quarter of century, scraping, drawing from various incarnations of internet retrieval tools. It automatically refreshes elements of the composition every minute and is also available as a screen-saver.

kyffhäuserdenkmal (11. 637)

Dedicated on this day in 1896 (on the anniversary of the coronation of the latter) after six years of construction under the direction of architect Bruno Schmitz, the colossal memorial also known as the Barbarossa Monument erected on the ruins of the medieval Kyffhauser Castle is the third commemorative ensemble in Germany (see above—we visited in April of 2010) and one of a number commissioned posthumously in honour of Emperor Wilhelm I of Prussia. 

The foundations of the imperial castle from the first millennium and associated with the reign of Frederick I Barbarossa are well preserved, such as the keep and a well that is the deepest from the Middle Ages. Heralded after his death, the Kaiser was seen as his political and culturally unifying descendant and inheritor of the Barbarossa legend, the trope of the sleeping king, king under the mountain (Bergentrücken—including lore about King David, Arthur and Charlemagne), that Frederick with a retinue of knights is not dead but half in slumber in a secluded cavern in the massif and will return again—occasionally dispatching a scout outside to check to see if ravens are still roosting, their absence being a sign that he is needed. 

During DDR times, Communist residents in the area wanted to blow up this bombastic reminder of the country’s past but its destruction was stopped by Soviet authorities, admonishing them it was time for Germans to live with their history and statues.

9x9 (11. 636)

who is this imposter: AI ruins classic, static reaction memes with animation  

🥖: the bygone baguette boxes of French Polynesia—via Messy Nessy Chic  

quantum compass: London Underground hosts trials for a subatomic sensor that could supplement satellite navigation  

crystal lake: the preponderance of 1980s horror movies set at summer camp  

ball & chain: Nag on the Lake shares a special memory from Festival Express, the touring show of Monterey Pop, when the musicians came to Toronto

message in a bottle: the dozen times humans have tried to communicate with extra-terrestrial intelligences—see previously here, here and here  

encarta: the short, happy reign of the multimedia CD-ROM as part of Fast Company’s 1994 Week—via Slashdot  

casa bonita: a 1974 amusement park restaurant reopens under new management and with a monumental wait-list 

 surgeon general’s warning: US top doctor urges health notices for social media

synchronoptica

one year ago: an AI’s take on emoji (plus synchronoptica), assorted links worth revisiting, a human computer plus Adsense (2003)

five years ago: Sweden’s alcohol monopoly, the UK Carbon Brief plus more links to enjoy

six years ago: a Banksy gallery opens, first issue magazine covers, the War of 1812, a space slingshot, more links worth the revisit plus Trump and Merkel

seven years ago: the US withdrawal from the Paris Treaty plus even more links

nine years ago: tobacco introduced to the Old World, more links, Hocus Pocus plus the nobiliary particle

r/tragedeigh (11. 635)

A conflicted, guilty pleasure has been lately scrolling through the above subreddit, thinking that oh boy—there are some doozies—and while the community is good about disabusing people of names outside of the Anglophone world, there being two sides to the discussion: traditional names with non-traditional spellings and separately trending baby names, there’s yet a sour taste in one’s mouth over the general content, leafing through elementary school students’ year books and calling out names that one disapproves of. Fresh and unranked boys’ names aside—Crockett, Rake, Wilkes, Dossett, Witten, Hallow and Bazley—these decisions, sins of the proud parents get one identified instantly and it behooves one to remember that these are children we are trolling. When I worked in healthcare I recall a particular patient named Atreu, after the alter-ego of the reader of The NeverEnding Story who was portrayed rather prosaically in the movie adaptation as Bastian, whose improving charts always made me happy and one newborn adorably named Voilà—non-conventional spelling if I remember but that’s a tough one. These tragedians should not be forced to be anonymised—nor should their names be underscored with a red squiggle as a misspelling for capitalising on the vagaries of English orthography but some of these attempts to buck convention by the parents have consequences visited on the next generation.

white ford bronco suv (11. 635)

Their murdered bodies discovered shortly after midnight on the thirteenth, OJ Simpson was identified immediately as a person of interest in the stabbings of Simpson’s girlfriend Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in the courtyards of Brown’s condominium complex in the Brentwood neighbourhood of Los Angeles, in the same community as Simpson’s mansion. Arranged through his attorneys, Simpson had agreed to turn himself into the authorities on this day in 1994 for questioning, but failing to appear as scheduled, Simpson was spotted in the passenger seat of a vehicle traveling the 405 intercity freeway, drove and belonging to a friend and former team-mate. A low-speed police chase ensued, pursuers cautious as reportedly Simpson was threatening to shoot himself, with the spectacle shown live on virtually every television station and tens of thousands of spectators gathering on the shoulders to watch the action. Simpson surrendered from his driveway.

al di meola (11. 634)

From an era when instrumental arrangements not only got music videos, but those performance pieces also received air-play, we quite enjoyed this track from jazz fusion guitarist from New Jersey with Italian root’s 1983 album Scenario, with keyboardist Jan Hammer and drummers Bill Bruford and Phil Collins, which gets exponentially weirder and better as the music progresses. The reoccurring drum sample was later incorporated into Hammer’s theme for the television series Miami Vice.

*    *    *    *    *

 synchronoptica

one year ago: NASCAR Pride (with synchronoptica) plus the exorcism of a werewolf demon (1983)

five years ago: the founding of independent Iceland (1944) plus proposals for a euro supplementary currency

six years ago: a day-trip to Frankfurt plus a pair of mythological prodigies

seven years ago: denizens of the deep, RIP Helmut Kohl plus Trump’s chief council

nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus social networks in China

then they showed me a world where i could be so dependable, oh, clinical, oh, intellectual, cynical (11. 633)

Rising to number six on the US Billboard Hot 100 on this day in 1979 (the seventh spot in the UK charts), the lead single from Breakfast in America (see previously) was a deeply personal reflection by Supertramp’s singer-songwriter Charles “Roger” Pomfrit Hodgson, honoured with the Ivor Novello prize the following year for best song, both musically and lyrically, about his decade away from home as an adolescent at boarding school and an indictment on the priorities of the educational system for eroding individuality. The critically acclaimed song’s instrumentals feature castanets, saxophone and the tackle sound-effect from a Mattel electronic football game. The version by German techno band Scooter—as Ramp! (The Logical Song)—from 2001 peaked at second place in the United Kingdom, topping the charts in Norway, Ireland and Australia.

*    *    *    *    *

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting, Screaming Lord Sutch, chicken orbs plus the exorcism of a werewolf demon (1983)

two years ago: Ziggy Stardust, the monkey puzzle tree plus Bloomsday

three years ago: your daily demon: Bathin, Psycho (1960), more links to enjoy, a summit in Switzerland plus a guide to hurricane name enunciation

four years ago: the sacking of Cambridge (1381), trends in house numbers, renaming US army bases, the first woman in space plus CPT Picard Day

five years ago: microplastics in our bodies, a field of poppies plus graphic designer Otto Aicher

six years ago: purging the Deep State, a visit to Burg Sonnenberg plus black hole solar systems

seven years ago: the Dunning-Kruger effect, IKEA cookery plus experiments in human-dolphin communication

eight years ago: denying a platform to dissenters, Funeral Parade of Roses (1969), coats-of-arms for same-sex couples plus Frankenstein and the year without a summer

8x8 (11. 632)

anabolics: the mainstreaming of casual steroid use  

cover model: the identity of the individual on the iconic Duran Duran album revealed four decades on—via Miss Cellania  

rank and file: a woodland-themed chessboard that rolls up into a log 

the imitation game: researchers claim that GPT-4 has passed the Turing Test—see previously 

london underground: spelunking through the strata of the ancient city  

non-playable character: determinism versus emergence and the question of free will  

ticino: a cache of five-thousand photographs spanning from 1900 to 1930 taken by a poor seed-peddler captures life in a remote, Italian-speaking Swiss canton  

food that makes you gay: stereotypes and gender in what we eat—via Web Curios

roll subsidence mode (11. 631)

Jargony reporting on some scary turbulence and skilled piloting that led to subsequent recovery, a yaw and tumble sustaining a Dutch roll, resulted in some discussion on etymology and more broadly the label with possibly pejorative connotations, as in going Dutch or Dutch treat rooted in the general enmity of the English for the Netherlands dating to the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries over maritime trade and overseas colonies. Whereas the righting manoeuvre, borrowed from term originally applied to an ice skating move (twentse schoorijders), may have been the optimal correction for the aircraft as well as for the skater, phrases like Dutch courage implies something less than authentic. More at Language Log at the link up top.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a small piece of the US in the UK, assorted links worth revisiting plus Rembrandt’s Danaë

two years ago: potatoe, more on Eadweard Muybridge, a false dandelion plus Sukiyaki

three years ago: another MST3K classic, a mysterious notebook of Outsider Art, a chronology of the New York Times, the Rashomon effect plus the Durgan script

four years ago: the Magna Carta (1215)

five years ago: a pristine Peel Trident plus anatomical maps

holy mackerel (11. 630)

Just prior to the appearance of His Holiness at the G7 summit to express his thoughts on AI—as an ethical authority that world-leaders seemed prepared to listen to, NATO, the climate catastrophe and Ukraine and Gaza, in a rather remarkable feat of scheduling the Pope held an audience, conclave with one hundred international comedians, greeting luminaries like Chris Rock, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Whoopi Goldberg, Conan O’Brien, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Tig Notaro and the butt of jokes himself, Francis expounded on how laughing at God was not a blasphemous act and encouraged those gifted with transcend humour to continue to lampoon and satirise our dumb world, particularly in the face of such gloomy news.

juuniküüditamine (11. 629)

Commemorated on this day by the Baltic countries as a memorial to mass deportations of tens of thousands of individuals in 1941 from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and the western territories of modern-day Moldova, Romania, Ukraine and Belarus, the eviction orders were executed covertly by the USSR Interior People’s Commissariat with the aim of removing “socially foreign elements” and resettling them in the interior of the Soviet Union. Occupied and annexed a year earlier following the Molotov-Ribbetrop Pact which defined Nazi Germany’s and Soviet Red Army’s spheres of influence, targeted nationalities were displaced under pro-Soviet puppet-governments and the colonisation proceeded. The relocation occurring just before the Nazi incursion into Soviet territory, deportees were characterised as counter-revolutionaries but not collaborators and their removal, rather than strengthening their newly expanded front buffered with ethic Russian in-migration, was seen to remove dissidents and create cheap labour in interior gulags. A programme of limited repatriation was begun under Khrushchev as part of De-Stanlinisation reforms but an estimated sixty percent or more had perished during exile and none deemed nationalists or non-white were allowed to return with those who were facing discrimination by the newly aligned majority.

ms paint anything (11. 628)

Via Web Curios, whilst much kinder to the canines—though transposing their colours for some reason—and generally a bit unsettling in that spirit of AI body horror that we’ve seemed to have moved beyond expectation-wise even though we were only entrenched in it just bare months ago and only for a very brief time, we still had fun playing with this synthetic artist that runs your images through a poorly-executed standard Windows raster graphics editor, glitchy and hallucinating using the limited palette, brush styles and arguably ham-fisted fill-tools (a sort of constrained painting) in its quiver. Give it a try but be aware your ugly mugs are put in a public gallery for all to see.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the art movement the New Objectivity

two years ago: assorted links to revisit

three years ago: another MST3K classic, more links to enjoy plus the Vatican’s catalogue of banned books

four years ago: a preview of OpenAI’s capabilities, ghost towns along the former inter-German border plus poppies in bloom

five years ago: encoding data in DNA

via fittizia (11. 627)

While we’ve encountered before other outreach efforts to provide the unhoused with proper, proxy addresses for purposes of applying for jobs, assistance and bank accounts, we did not know about the Italian civil registry, first developed following the Risorgimento (see previously), to tie people to their newly unified territories for purposes of tax-collection and funding and parliamentary representation based on per capita. During the post-war period, the fictitious streets remained as a way for refugees and people who travelled and with no fixed address to sign up for municipal services and currently is mostly used by the homeless as their official, though virtual domicile. All large Italian cities have such invisible streets to make those in precarious situations once again seen, many being named in honour of their most famous residents, but some communities, already under financial strain, are avoiding building (the opposite of a trap-street and not on any map) vie fittizie for fear of attracting individuals needing social assistance. More from Atlas Obscura at the link above.

7x7 (11. 626)

senza vergogna: some notes for Martha-Ann Alito on her anti-Pride flag (see previously)  

factory floor: inside Andy Warhol’s studio—via Messy Nessy Chic  

prospecting: Norwegian mining firms discovers Europe’s largest cache of rare-earth metals  

adaptive force controlled shaving demonstration: a robot barber in Shanghai  

daily bread: an overview of the staple foodstuff’s contribution to civilisation  

hydrant directory: colour palettes of New York’s suppression points—via Pasa Bon!  

gruppo dei sette: following EU elections, the G7 forum begins in Puglia

synchronoptica

one year ago: a top album by Alanis Morissette plus an early world-traveller

two years ago: a chronic case of the hiccups, a hit by Paul McCartney plus international crisps flavours

three years ago: the G7, Shangri La the musical, St Anthony plus two very prolific travelogues

four years ago: illustrator Wilbur Husley, assorted links to revisit, the Pentagon Papers (1971) plus a banger from Mungo Jerry

five years ago: the elusive American Middle-Class plus x before x-rays

11x11 (11. 625)

indemnity clause: a look at the exactingly detailed Sanborn maps created for US insurance firms in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries 

unseen persia: thousands of historic photographs of Iran during the Qajar dynasty leaked on-line from the archive of the Golestan Palace  

sweet thing: Chaka Khan’s debut Tiny Desk performance  

bahía de cochinos: Russian warships on drill visit Cuba  

doubly-disambiguated bishop non-capture statemale: a vlogger tries to categorise the rarest chess moves  

transponder: wood proves surprisingly durable material in space as agencies plan to launch experimental satellites, like ships on the high seas—via the Linkfest  

1337: a pretty exhaustive list of English words that can be spelled on a calculator turned upside down  

hollywood canteen: a fond farewell to Janis Page, recently departed at 101  

the brannock device: a better shoe-sizer based on the barley corn  

gallus gallus domesticus: photographer recreates exacting portraits of Edo-era Ito Jakuchu’s studies of chickens—via Nag on the Lake  

geochron: the incredible restoration of 1960s analog, electromechanical world clock and map

come retribution (11. 624)

Tonally quite different from his campaign announcement and really removed from his past platforms, the latest episode of This American Life takes its title from a litany of promises made during Donald Trump’s inaugural 2024 rally, the venue Waco, Texas, darkly proclaiming vengeance for those who crossed him: “In 2016, I declared, I am your voice. Today I add, ‘I am your warrior. I am your justice.’ And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, ‘I am your retribution—’” former advisor Steve Bannon further embellishing the speech by couching it in a supposed US civil war plot to kidnap and ransom Lincoln in order to pressure the Union to concede to to the Confederacy—foiled, again supposedly, by weak encryption that the North was able to easily decipher. Contributors go on during the broadcast to interview those who are definitely on Trump’s hit-list, including former staffer and White House (who infamously never gave a press conference) Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham who left during the storming of the US capitol and wrong a tell-all book about her time in the administration and LTC (ret.) Alexander Vindman, director for European affairs of the National Security Council whose testimony on Trump’s “perfect call” led to the first impeachment to try to understand what forms that revenge might take, their contingency plans and what it means for those yet to be targeted.

dis-disgruntled (11. 623)

Via Slashdot we learn that the investment holding company Softbank, after a three year study into the feasibility of “emotion cancelling” technology, it has introduced a trial of AI-powered voice-conversion routines into its call-centre operations in aims to reduce the psychological stress incurred by those phone-bank employees worn down by hostile clients, transforming angry tones into more pleasant and calming ones. What do you think? This one-sided conversation wouldn’t seem to de-escalate matters—like a troll that didn’t realise they were muted rather than blocked and I have wanted to disengage from plenty of calls and do funny voices in my head sometimes to take the edge off and things rarely get confrontational—but the software supposedly maintains a restrained level of dissatisfaction and urgency to ensure that the operator takes the cues. The system will also terminate calls that go on for too long or become overly abusive.