syzygy (12. 167)

Given sufficiently clear and dark skies, one can avail oneself of a rare treat in the heavens tonight when six planets will appear to be in alignment. Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Venus and Saturn all visible, mostly to the unaided eye or with the help of a good pair of binoculars, not actually queued up but along the elliptical disk of the Solar System and happen to be on the same same side of the Sun as us, not in a straight line as in the case of opposition or eclipse but as a great arc as their orbits are only inclined by a few degrees. Time and Date had been a go-to source for me for calculating duration and day-count in between two dates but failed to appreciate that it also features a real-time planetarium based on one’s location as a tool to anticipate the rise of the worlds. If you can’t make this one, you get a second chance on the last day of February with Mercury joining in. Coming from the title from the Greek συζυγία or yoking together, this apparent astronomical union poses no threat to the Earth with a supposed collective gravitational tug (actual oppositions of the inner planets occur about every forty years and have no deleterious effects), as rumoured now and back in March of 1982 when an invisible Pluto made the count that would cause greater incidents of seismic activity or increase pressure on the Sun and result in sunspots and solar flares, with (for those counting) the next such grand lineup, albeit staggered, scheduled for 19 May 2161.

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: Saturday Night Fever (with synchronoptica), a stochastic parrot plus assorted links to revisit

seven years ago: a minister of loneliness plus Project Crested Ice (1968)

eight years ago: Trump’s inaugural speech was not lifted from the Bee-Movie though it seemed plausible, more on the Europe right-wing plus speculation about a 2020 Zuckerberg candidacy

nine years ago: telephone booths as private raves plus more rogue exoplanets discovered

ten years ago: threat-com levels raised plus artist Rob Gonsalves

american carnage 2 (12. 166)

Don’t visit the official White House website. It’s been thoroughly trumpified already…

coming attractions (12. 197)

As a little preview for Tuesday’s apparent planetary alignment in case the weather isn’t cooperating tomorrow, in the predawn western skies of Germany, one can see, so far, Venus (♀—the Morning and the Evening Star due to its proximity to the Sun but at its most elongated orbit currently), Mars (♂—on the wane and appearing dimmer than the gas giant), Jupiter (♃), Uranus (⛢) and Saturn (♄) staggered along the great arc of the elliptical. 

Ideal views are expected to peak on the twenty-first of this month but can be seen for a few preceding days and for a few days afterwards. Consult local guides for the rise and setting of the planets and share what you see of our solar system.

crowd size (12. 196)

Marking the fiftieth US presidential inauguration, the second swearing-in of Ronald Reagan and deputy George H W Bush was, due to inclement weather conditions, a televised ceremony inside the capitol rotunda, organisers compelled to curtail the public event over sub-zero temperatures, cancelling parades and other fanfare. A repeat ceremony was held the next day in the venue of the Capital Centre basket ball stadium in the Maryland suburbs with attendance of the replacement event in the thousands as compared to the ninety-six that had shown up for the first one. High school bands that had travelled to DC to perform were rescheduled for a Memorial Day march held at Disney’s EPCOT theme park attended by Reagan.

synchronoptica

one year ago:Australia in infrared (with synchronoptica) plus epigraphic letters

 

seven years ago: US government shuts down due to a lapse in appropriations, “Things that Weaken the American” plus more nostalgia for the early internet

eight years ago: updating the chain of command portrait wall plus assorted links worth revisiting

nine years ago: the archetypal wild man, space blossoms plus more links to enjoy

ten years ago: unpegging the Swiss franc plus Japanese onomatopoeia

stablecoin (12. 195)

Whilst throughout history, one official currency has worked to solidify trust and confidence during periods of relative peace and a strong central authority, emperors would often mint their own coinage during times of upheaval and civil unrest with fortune and the passage of time being the ultimate arbiter of valuation and propagation. Hours before his inauguration for inexplicably a second term, the family crime syndicate launched $TRUMP, a memecoin that quickly rose to a market cap of some seven billion dollars fuelled by speculative investment. Despite a rudimentary, dodgy landing-page offering the crypto-currency for sale and lack of clarity as to the purpose of the token which almost definitely forebodes the bait-and-switch tactic of most of these operations once the purported value evaporates. A former critic of cryptocurrencies, calling Bitcoin an outright “scam,” Trump has come to embrace them as the tech sector broligarchs embraced his campaign. This pre-market development comes on the eve of the term of the Biden administration, having passed and enacted progressive policies that many millions have hung their hopes and fears to over a chance that we might globally advance the urgent fight to halt the climate catastrophe or that America could model ideals of equity and project democratic respect for national sovereignty but all those positions will be clawed back, with only some vapid and hollow magic beans as a consolation.

i guess it means there’s trouble until the robins come (12. 194)

Via tmn, we appreciated this corresponding pair of brief encounters that reporter Adam Nayman shares on the entertainment beat of departed director that strike one as about as Lynchian as it gets. The first exchange took place in a hotel room during the 2001 Toronto Film Festival with Mulholland Drive on the circuit and the creator holding a succession of interviews with various outlets. Asking an unvarnished question about the director’s intent that went unanswered, David Lynch delivered a quotable coda after the tape recorder had been switched off of “A thing is what it is—and that’s what it wants to be.” Retreating to a corner of the room after his allotted time was over, Nayman repeated it on tape so as not to forget but inadvertently mimicked Lynch’s cadence in doing so. Overhearing him, Lynch shot him a thumbs up. Five years later, Nayman secured a more extensive session with the release of Inland Empire over the phone, asking more seasoned and nuanced questions to draw out better responses. After it concluded, however, Nayman discovered to his horror that only one side of the conversation had been recorded, with a deafening lacuna present where the responses should have been, not dead air exactly but more “like the whirl of an overhead ceiling fan—or the roar of the ocean as heard through the cochlea of a bloody, discarded human ear” or like how a speech coach was hired to help with enunciation for The Man from Another Place for the lines of reverse-speech not knowing the actor playing the role, Michael J Anderson, a computer technician for NASA’s space shuttle mission control before his acting career, already knew how to talk backwards, having used it as a secret language in school—and in a panic called back Mr Lynch’s assistant to puzzle out the technical difficulties or repeat the interview. The assistant said that his schedule was full but placed Nayman on hold for an interminable length of time before finally returning to explain, “David says he’s sorry—he says that you can say that he said whatever you like, however you remember it is fine.” Lynch’s body of work is not just experiences, those films live with one for years and decades. Much more at The Ringer at the link above.

the man from another place (12. 193)

We enjoyed this appreciation of the soundscape of the filmography of transcended director David Lynch compiled by NPR correspondent Hazel Cillis. Covering Lynch’s own composition “In Heaven” from Eraserhead to the orchestral soundtrack to Dune (see previously), all tracks from Toto (the band best known for their hit “Africa”) except Brian Eno’s ambient contribution in the “Prophecy Theme” and all moody and atmospheric numbers in between, the playlist embodies the surreal and mysterious essence of the creator, especially in the use of standards to disabuse the audience from thinking they know what they’re hearing just because it’s familiar.

field recording (12. 192)

For COP16 held in Cali, Colombia back in October 2024, a team of scientist and musicians went an expedition to nature reserves across the country to sample the cries and calls of forty-one species of native birds, moneys and whales and transform the cacophony of animals sounds of one of the most biologically diverse places in the world into a natural version of the stirring national anthem, adapted from a 1850 poem set to music to celebrate the dissolution of Gran Colombia and the emergence of the independent nations of Colombia and Panama, whose lyrics unfortunately don’t reference this abundance of wildlife but do mention centaurs and the Battle of Thermopylae. Read more about its making and the environment of the host country from Smithsonian magazine at the link above.

*    *    *    *    *

synchronoptica

one year ago: Eastern European vintage animation (with synchronoptica) plus the passage of different units of time

seven years ago: surveying 1950s Americans about the Cold War, unfolding tweetstorms, US dispensaries making their own generic versions of drugs plus Brexit commemorate stamps

eight years ago: defeating an internet censorship bill but speech is still under assault, psychic warriors plus legislating and/or

nine years ago: teletext pages plus the carillon of Oslo’s city hall honours recently departed musicians

ten years ago: Marilyn Monroe building drones plus AI card tricks

12x12 (12. 191)

dyson trees: lesser known than his eponymous sphere, a hypothetical genetically engineered plant could be grown inside a comet and provide a self-sustaining habitat for space-faring 

cold case: US retailer regrets installing advertising screens in its frozen food section and is struggling to get out of the contract—see also 

fourth-wall: a filmmakers’ dilemma about the unseen camera’s point-of-view  

decipherment: a solicitation for cursive users to transcribe and classify two centuries of undigitised documents—check the comments section—see previously  

why this is hell, nor am i out of it: Trump, like Satan, doesn’t get away with it 

drawing board: the Nokia Design Archive of prototypes never put in production

twentytwentyfive: George Orwell is to be honoured with a commemorative ￡2 coin for the seventy-ftfth anniversary of his death

erythrosine: US federal drug administration bans Red Dye 3 as food colouring and other business news—see previously  

onite clam discrepancy: personal AI-chatbots yield more problematic advice—see previously 

a stone only rolls downhill: a new music video from OK Go shot on sixty-four phones for sixty-four one take pieces  

the toasters are flying: a history of screen-savers—see previously  

☄️: meteorite strike caught on a doorbell camera in Prince Edward Island

movin’ on up (12. 190)

One of the longest-running sitcoms in television history and the second spin-off of All in the Family—after Maude—Norman Lear’s The Jeffersons follows the lives of the former neighbours of the Bunkers who were able to relocate from Queens to Manhattan (a deluxe apartment in the sky) due to the success of the couple’s dry-cleaning chain. The Jeffersons itself had one short-lived spin-off featuring their housekeeper, Florence, who takes a job as the team chief of a luxury hotel cleaning crew, and has continuity with the hospital drama E/R (the CBS production, lasting only one year, before being picked up by NBC a decade later in 1994 as ER, as developed by writer Michael Crichton, with the same cast of principals of George Clooney and Mary McDonnell). A traditional sitcom, the show occasionally had episodes covering serious subjects, like racism, gun-control, gender-identity and alcoholism and generally high ratings—though suffering from switching time-slots—it was ignominiously cancelled by the during the summer-break of its eleventh season in July 1985 without warning to the cast, Isabel Sanford and Sherman Hemsley, and without a series finale.

fight for the future (12. 189)

On this day in 2012, over one hundred thousand popular (and unpopular, we figured out how to draw the curtains too) sites joined Wikipedia, Google and other prominent social media platforms in solidarity with a twenty-four hour web blackout in protest, formalised and coordinated under the above grassroots aegis, against two bills in the US congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act. Privileging copyright security over online freedom of speech and making hosts, particularly non-domestic ones liable for infringement, the mass movement garnered millions of signatures for a petition as well as millions of constituents contacting their representatives in the American government to express their opposition and ultimately defeated both SOPA and PIPA as senate sponsors withdrew their support.

synchronoptica

one year ago: theosophical Though Forms (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: White House imposes creative input on mission patches

eight years ago: the relics of war plus an atmospheric death ray

nine years ago: the Cosmological Constant plus more links to enjoy

ten years ago: Lovelace and Turing, the Satanic Children’s Big Book of Activities plus German currency harmonisation

9x9 (12. 188)

:): :an emoticon generator to create custom expressions—unless your interface automatically turns them into emoji—via Web Curios 

amicus brief: US supreme court upholds TikTok ban—whose enforcement is punted to Trump—in violation of right to free speech but fact-checking is now censorship 

optics: Trump inaugural to be held inside the capitol rotunda, citing the weather—see Monday’s post  

my dear, clawsette, i love you very much: the 2018 SNL sketch ‘Diner Lobster’ garnered numerous accolades including an award from the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals and inspired many sequels  

artist in residence: the rotating helm of a digital creator’s demesne 

hall of fame: though a bit premature, Bob’s Big Boy’s (a favourite haunt of his) obituary for David Lynch is superlative in detail, a believer in reincarnation, Lynch “life is a short trip. We’ll all meet up again”—via Super Punch  

boosterism: EU orders X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to surrender it recommendation algorithm with a retention directive for purview on future changes  

lol’d into submission: general reaction to the recent shooting death of the pizzagate theorist suggest that there has been a paradigm shift regarding conspiracy 

the war of iron swords: Israeli security council ratifies Gaza ceasefire agreement after a dicey delay with Trump taking credit but not responsibility if the multi-part deal crumbles, like the agreement to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, which cursed his successor 

.---- ----. ----- ....- ..--- —..: a Morse Code clock—with optional sound—via ibīdem

canonicity (12. 187)

Via Web Curios, we are referred to this rather incredible resource from Joi Massat that has compiled dozens of series pitches and show bibles for cartoons including Dungeons & Dragons, He Man and She-Ra, Spongebob, Ren & Stimpy and many other classic Nicktoons. Linked documents include character specifications, episode samples, lore and backstories and as a whole presents a pretty good guide on how to go about packaging and promoting one’s own animated ideas with a nice supplement that outlines the presentation and pick-up process, selling the premise and refining their stories.

little red book (12. 186)

The expected consequence of the looming TikTok ban in the United States was for users to find alternative outlets, but an unexpected one is happening with the influx of Americans, some seven hundred thousand, flocking to a similar social media and e-commerce app called RedNote (小紅書, literally translated as the above, as in Chairman Mao’s collected sayings). Despite the US wanting to ban the former because of national security concerns and worries that the personal data of its citizens could be harvested and shared with the Chinese government, many, out of spite and feeling the charges to be trumped-up and parochial at best, are turning to this networking platform, not subject to the usual firewall placed on the outside world, and interacting and communicating with three hundred million native users and with the surprising outcome of forging new friendships, cultural exchanges and even some language learning. The trend may not last and the platform could become subject to the same suspicions that it could become a tool for espionage and indoctrination by the Chinese government.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a classic from Joni Mitchell (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth the revisit

seven years ago: more links to enjoy, a false alarm in Hawaii, the Matt Drudge breaks the Clinton-Lewinski scandal (1998) plus museum doppelgängers 

eight years ago: gas for Europe and Russian aggression in Ukraine plus global net worth

nine years ago: Medieval Death Trip, boreal rings, degrees of temperature plus microscopic detail

ten years ago: artist Aubrey Beardsley, long receipts plus the magic of the Google Translate app

identified aerial phenomenon (12. 185)

Trying to take a photo of the full Moon the other night that didn’t turn out so well (Moon says “don’t blame me for not looking good in pictures, I’m just too brilliant”), I zoomed in later and saw that I had accidentally captured a passing constellation of Starlink satellites* seen to the right of the lunar body (the other mysterious objects, those green globs at the bottom are the bokeh’d Christmas lights on the neighbours’ house through the hedges). 

Had I not known about the the low orbiting communications satellites and the flare and related effects that they can produce, I would have mistaken them for UFOs and can completely empathise with those who get a little hysterical witnessing the like. *Correction—I think those might be the planets starting to line up, check back on Tuesday.

cultural attache (12. 184)

It was refreshing how in the Roman Empire dictators would prolong their term by declaring a holiday, instead we have a president-elect in the United States as Los Angeles continues to smoulder and burn appoint three special envoys to Hollywood, not to help with repair and recovery from the devastation but rather act as celebrity legates to revitalise a failing industry and bring back its Golden Age. Ceremonial sine cure titles were awarded to actors, known for their MAGA boosterism, to Mel Gibson, Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone (see previously)—assuredly to the disappointment of others to hitched their star to that movement—Trump announced his special ambassadors to “a great but very troubled place” which has “lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries” as his eyes and ears, pledging to get done what they suggest. The equivalent of DOGE for the movies, its unclear how they might brooch this situation and what countries are undermining Tinsel Town and whether it is a problem at all and not another manufactured crisis that’s in their modus operandi to invent and then pretend to solve with a new code of standards to appeal to grievances—if anything the industry is under threat from AI, studio greed and independent cinema.

10x10 (12. 183)

compliments of the season: Poseidon’s Underworld reviews 1973 British anthology series Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries 

hagiography: breathtaking hidden murals in the Cathedral of Angers depicting the life of local saint called Maurille, who fled due to embarrassment for failure to perform a miracle, unveiled for the first time 

wmw: a list of endangered historic and cultural sites for 2025, around the world and beyond 

infinite nonsense honeypot: a lure for AI scrapers  

there is a plot—what would be the point of just a bunch of things: legendary director David Lynch dies, aged 78—see previously

run the bricks: a mother in New Zealand completes a hundred metre sprint barefoot over a track of Legos—setting a Guinness Record—via Metafilter 

but is it like the old playboy magazine—do you have essays there by the modern day equivalent of gore vidal and william f buckley jr: US supreme court justice Samuel Alito asks if people visit PornHub (previously) for the articles—via Super Punch 

cozy rewatch recommendation: the 2003 New Wave film The Dreamers (Innocents) that follows the exploits and adventures of an American university student in Paris during the 1968 riots—via Messy Nessy Chic  

𒀸𒋩𒆕𒀀: a paranoid ruler’s illiteracy and a torched library behind a glimpse of everyday life in the Assyrian Empire 

celebrity is a broad church: BBC1’s 1985 entertainment magazine Friday People

synchronoptica

one year ago: artist Monica Sjöö (with synchronoptica), generational perceptions, an ethnographic study of bathroom graffiti, another banger from ABBA plus words for lighthouse

seven years ago: laser-cut note pads, Madrid reinstates direct rule on Catalonia plus free-floating exoplanets

eight years ago: theatres protest the inauguration of Trump 

nine years ago: a slipper-shaped wedding chapel

ten years ago: misattributed quotations plus McDonald’s new slogan

philadelphi corridor (12. 182)

US president Joe Biden and Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani separately announced that Hamas and Israeli, after fifteen months of fighting and incursions into Palestinian, Lebanese and Iranian territory, have reached an agreement for a multiphase ceasefire, committing to end the war with the truce beginning on Sunday. Hostages will be freed and the end to violence will allow a surge of humanitarian aid to reach Gaza. Although basically the same peace plan proposed and endorsed by the UN Security Council last May by the Biden administration, some are crediting the pressure that in-coming president Trump exerted on the Israeli government (envoys from both teams involved in the negotiations) but significantly, the terms of the treaty are expected to be ratified under Biden’s watch—see previously. More importantly, those kidnapped and held will be reunited with their families in exchange for a thousand Palestinian civilians held by Israel and the suffering caused by this long and deadly conflict which has claimed nearly fifty-thousand lives will begin to ease. Still the consequences of all this death and destruction will have lasting effect for a seemingly intractable generational clash that has lasted decades and the killing continues up until the last minute.

trade wars are good—and easy to win (12. 181)

Here’s a compelling argument for Canada, in particular though it could apply to other economies under a capricious threat of tariffs, not to introduce retaliatory measures in kind—NAFTA and its successor under a different name plus America’s most-favoured nation seal of approval was on balance beneficial to corporate barons by enabling chasing cheap labour and off-shore environmental damage and in its latest incarnation enforced a hallmark of the rentier economic model with the proviso that enshrined IP and forbade the circumvention of digital locks and greatly eroded the right to repair for manufacturers and consumers. As with car parts, printer ink, streaming-services and charging plugs, this inability to seek out third-party solutions, this subscription system locks people into leases over ownership and ensures a steady stream of rents rendered and fears of sunk costs for everything invested in activating the extra features. As much as the US is seeking Canadian raw material and natural resources and exploitable manpower elsewhere, for which embargoes would be a pyrrhic victory at best as reliant on exports, any target could instead invoke a regime of jailbreaking, a domestic app store that bypasses American-based fees, kits that would overcome non-original parts, carve-out to warrants (this is not technologically difficult to do) and offer ways to get out of lease contracts and not experiencing reciprocal price-rises, which is a proven accelerant for populism.

the garden of forking paths (12. 180)

Via tmn, we were thoroughly engrossed with this glossary of terms, under development, that account for why knowing things is hard, which emulates the scholarship, didacticism and style of Samuel Johnson’s 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language, and covers an extensive list of rhetorical devices and biases (see previously) that we’ve touched on before—also presenting a wealth of new ones. For instance, there is Brandolini’s Law which governs the burden of proof principle of bullshit asymmetry, recognising that the effort needed to refute misinformation is an order of magnitude than was spent to create it, the autobiographical heuristic, which appends themes in a work to the author’s experience rather than assuming it was something handed down or imagined (see also euhemerism), goropising—citing a discredited hypothesis, after Dutch linguist Johannes Goropius Becanus’ strange thoughts on etymology, and testis unus, testis nullus, that the uncorroborated account of a single person should be treated with scepticism. Much more from Book and Sword at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Unwort of the Year (with synchronoptica) plus Happy Days (1974)

seven years ago: the collectibility of Fiji mermaids

eight years ago: neural networks and arcade games, Flemish proverbs, Dorothy Lange’s photographs of Japanese internment camps plus mapping Trump world

nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus Nitrate Divas

ten years ago: a novel from Jo Walton about a time-travelling Athena plus early wireless telephony

keogram (12. 179)

Via the always data-driven Quantum of Sollazzo newsletter, we are referred to another incredible bit of astronomical imagery from star-gazer Cees Bassa, a professional astronomer working for ASTRON, the Dutch institute for radio astronomy, presenting their all-sky image above the Netherlands, a composition of nighttime photos taken at fifteen second intervals that illustrates the lengthening and shortening of the days, weather and phases of the Moon. Their fourth annual almanac, the title term, from the Inuit word keoeeit (ᑭᐅᐱᑦ) for aurora, originally applied to a method for graphing the intensity of the Northern Lights and is in broader use as a way of documenting the changing night sky in narrow bands for the entire hemisphere. Much more at the links above.

earthstreak (12. 178)

Though the crew of the Apollo missions who captured Pale Blue Marble and Earthrise might take exception to the accolade of best photo ever, we do think that this image of cities whizzing by taken by veteran astronaut Donald Pettit, on his third tour aboard the International Space Station having spent over five hundred days in orbit, is pretty spectacular. The dazzling nature of the foreground in motion belies other details, like the galactic core on the horizon and the streaks of other satellites and the transition from night to day on the world’s edge. A gifted science communicator making the most of his stints onboard the ISS, Pettit is well equipped with cameras and lenses and has conducted numerous experiments and demonstrations for the curious and enquiring as well as his regiment of assigned tasks and holds the first patent for an object invented in space, the Zero G Cup, a coffee mug that uses the wetting angle, the incline where a liquid and solid meet, to avoid the need of using a straw.

7x7 (12. 177)

alexiomia: from the Greek for no words for appellation, a study of the social anxiety of name-avoidance—via the new Shelton wet/dry  

white knight: Bytedance entertaining contingency plans to allow Elon Musk to purchase TikTok’s US operations ahead of the expected judgment against the platform 

out-of-office reply: a business card whose information only appears in sunlight  

screamboat willie: Disney begins to deal with its loss of IP—apparently a Popeye horror film is in the works too 

tl;dr: AI input and output  

open and shut case: the US Department of Justice election interference report suggest Trump would have been convicted if not re-elected 

 💌: the face of collective grief and the demands of acceptance that are far from passive

synchronoptica

one year ago: AI plagiarism and The Stepford Wives (with synchronoptica), a hands-free rosary plus Queen Margrethe II of Denmark abdicates

seven years ago: the Continental Congress (1784) plus Celtic burial mounds

eight years ago: authoritarians and the press, the former trolley line that ran between the US and Mexico, assorted links worth the revisit, Bart the Genius (1990) plus a secret WWII commando school

nine years ago: the dancing doctor plus genre blindness

ten years ago: more on the refugee situation in Germany plus an animated homage to Davie Bowie’s personae

8x8 (12. 176)

cryptobiosis: a nematode was reanimated when pulled out of the Siberia permafrost after forty-six thousand years 

fresh air, town square: Mastodon is becoming a non-profit organisation—via Waxy  

wrack and ruin: a superlative gallery of abandoned places  

a sprained ankle on a country walk is allowable but you must not go very far beyond this: in praise of Jane Austin 

hollywood hills: architects reckon with the scale of destruction from the Los Angles fires—more here 

luthersadt eisleben: a horde of coins found hidden in a statue’s leg in the reformer’s home church 

the joe rogan experience: Elizabeth Lopatto summarises the three-hour interview with Zuckerberg 

 ™: Sweden’s attempt to copyright Sweden thwarted plus other assorted legal stupidity

*: to undertake without usual protection, preparation or comfort (12. 175)

Though striking as a bit vulgar as an extension of the slang term, the American Dialect Society’s selection of rawdogging (see previously here and here)—from the slang for engaging into intercourse without a condom—is striking for how pervasive the term has become in common parlance, sort of like the time Angela Merkel said shitstorm once at a press conference, how the Trump administration pushed the limits of what could be said on television and necessitated some uncomfortable explanations or how generally such anti-euphemistic (a dysphemism, substituting a derogatory descriptor when a neutral one would do) language can transcend its company and find widespread application, from forgoing luxuries to bare-knuckled navigating through a hardship with no lead-time. Others voted on and ranked by lexicographers, editors and ethnographers included brat, sanewashing, AI slop, to crash out, to reach one’s physical and emotional limits and mog, to assert dominance based on physical appearance, from the initialism for alpha male of group.

dryish january (12. 174)

Having encountered this humour list of alternatives to California sober—no alcohol or other recreational drugs, only weed for the health conscious—for other polities, we quite enjoyed this introduction to the growing lexicon of N/A (non-alcoholic) vocabulary under development that goes past the mocktail or zero-proof as a substitute for the social function of booze and spirits. Particularly intriguing were damp/flexi drinking, an intentional moderation, a less smug way of declaring mindful imbibing, elixirs and infusions, not authoritative definition but concoctions that elicit mystery and lend a certain air to one’s fancy stemware and zebra striping, like practice of bookending one’s evening with non-alcoholic options, enjoying an adult beverage or two in between or alternating. Sure that the language will improve and evolve beyond backronyms, no one should be expected to explain or excuse their choices or succumb to peer-pressure in social settings. More from Punch at the link above.

unwort des jahres (12. 173)

For the thirty-fourth time, the jury has selected its Un-word of the Year (see also below) for this past twelve months, the panel of linguists (for the first two years, the selection was announced by the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache along with the Wort des Jahres but an internal row led to the committee to become independent and refuse any state funding) calling out a recently popularised term that denigrates human rights and democratic principles through euphemism or deflection. For 2024, with dishonourable mentions going to Heizungsverbot, misleading as implying a heating ban and attempting to discredit environmental protection measures but only effects standards for the construction of new heating systems, the overall winner was the neologism that repackages old, everyday racism biodeutsch, that is—biologically German. Gaining parlance on social media, it is used to classify, evaluate and discriminate against an out-group on supposed biological criteria, originally used ironically from the organic seal for domestic produce but used for some time in this non-satirical and unreflective way. The construct implies a non-existent biological connection to nationality and is meant to exclude those with immigrant roots, real or presumed.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus more emoji remixers

seven years ago: Martin Luther King Day universally celebrated in the US plus the leader of the American Nazi party

eight years ago: bat-friendly tequila, promotion via voice-analysis, modern grotesques, MAGA international plus image compression

nine years ago: Germany’s Unwort of the Year 

ten years ago: Switzerland retires some of its civilian defence infrastructure, the origins of bio-feedback plus no crisis unexploited

counteroffer (12. 172)

After newly elected Mexican president Sheinbaum responded to Trump’s musing that the gulf be renamed and suggesting instead that the historically accurate appellation of Mexican America be applied to the northern portion of the continent, a law-maker in Canada also snapped back that the western Pacific states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California petition to become a new eleventh province—not only shielding from retributive tariffs but also with the guarantee of universal healthcare and sensible gun control-measures which the US has failed to provide.

his sole objective is to become a trillionaire (12. 171)

Delightfully—but never thinking we might kind of side with the likes of Steve Bannon (previously)—the former advisor and architect of the MAGA movement has taken to labelling apartheid shadow president Space Karen as a truly evil character and racist, albeit mostly due to Musk’s access to and influence over Trump and advocacy for immigration carve-outs that would benefit his own businesses and government contracts, and vowing to personally take down the richest man in the world’s ambitions to enrichment himself further by appealing to Trump’s vanity, a relatively cheap date—also calling for the impeachment of justice Amy Coney Barrett for not blocking Trump’s felony sentencing. Bannon questions the validity of commentary of unelected white South Africans in US policy and sees Musk and his hangers-on (appreciating the monetary support but hopes for silent partners) for their techno-feudal aspirations.

let’s play twister, let’s play risk (12. 170)

Though by far not the last annexation or intervention in the history of American imperium, the current state of affairs has echoes in the major territorial acquisition by the United States: faced with an increasingly polarised world vying for newly accessible sea routes and scarce natural resources, America sets its sites on a strategically located island under the control of the Kingdom of Denmark over reasons of national security and economic interests, with threats of taking it by force after Copenhagen refused the offer. Denmark eventually makes the trade, finalised in 1917, with the Danish West Indies becoming the US Virgin Islands, US president Woodrow Wilson (previously) keen to maintain a foothold in the Caribbean, for fear it be invaded by Germany and used as a base to stop shipping in the then recently opened Panama Canal. A century later, Trump is revisiting the idea with proclamations that, “for purposes of national security and freedom throughout the world, the United States of America feels that ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” not ruling out economic pressure and the use of force to take it militarily. Not discounting the doctrine of settled borders or the incoming president is lobbing threats at fellow members of the NATO alliance, return to an age of empire negates America’s argument for aid to Ukraine—or Taiwan or how its enablers should put their foot down over Israeli incursions in Palestine—and privileges the same pretext of national security (for access to the Black Sea) that Russia used for its invasion over state sovereignty, and boosts the chances of it happening to America itself. This is what one gets for re-electing a not very smart or terribly successful real estate developer. None of the indigenous populations deserve to be made pawns in this redux of the Great Game and would likely not get a voice in the matter, but Russia could take back Alaska, using the same arguments and resort to the fallback of whataboutism, and claim the US is underusing the peninsula’s potential—or for the remnants of the British Empire, like las Islas Malvinas, Diego Garcia or Gibraltar. More from Vox contributor Joshua Keating at the link above.

twentytwentyfive (12. 169)

Better Living through Beowulf brings us a thoughtful reflection on George Orwell’s prescient 1946 essay called “The Prevention of Literature” that forecasts how authoritarian regimes will turn to AI (not exactly couched in modern parlance but rather as formulaic, mass-produced writing that could outpace any author or newsroom, though his dystopian novel does feature prole porn—we might even be denied that—and other entertainments produced by machine), which envisions journalism being first censored out of existence to be churned out with minimal human input or intervention with prose and poetry to follow—though book bans in the United States (including 1984) seem to rather subvert that sequence, notwithstanding the attacks against what’s labelled as the “legacy media” continuing—already witnessing the change in his own time with modular stories and plots, easily adapted and repackaged for an eager audience and easily made to conform with the worldview that the state seeks to project. Introducing his work with a recollection of attending a meeting of the PEN Club in London that coincided with the three-hundredth anniversary of the publication of Milton’s Areopagitica—in defence of press freedoms—two years prior, Orwell blames the loss of intellectual liberty on the undermining of the increasingly concentrated ownership of the press and monopolies on broadcast media by corporations that refused to support their authors and internecine squabbling amongst academics. Such an atmosphere and compromised readership enables conditions for a totalitarian takeover. Contemporary critics generally agreed with Orwell’s premise, though some though his arguments amounted to “intellectual swashbuckling” and concluded his prophecies doubtful.

happy ending (12. 168)

The US supreme court having rejected petitions from the president-elect to stop or delay the sentencing until after the inauguration (the justices not accepting the argument of broad immunity from prosecution when discharging duties as the executive), Trump was granted an unconditional discharge to respect the jury’s verdict of guilty on thirty four felony counts of misusing campaign funds for hush-money payments to a porn star and to not interfere with his ability to govern. While serving no jail time or liable to fine, this judgement delivered by a New York state judge is not subject to presidential, federal purview and could only be pardoned by the governor (not likely to happen) and the conviction, symbolic as it is, will remain on Trump’s record. And while he would probably prefer it not be on his Wikipedia page, if capable of the needed level of shame, critical thought or interiority, the sentence does have some potential impacts, by dint of his registration in Florida, he will be able to continue to vote in that state due to reciprocity with New York (see above), under federal law, Trump is not allowed to own a gun, must surrender a DNA sample to a New York database of convicts, possibly jeopardise the liquor licenses for his branded properties and similarly is barred from operating casinos under laws regarding moral turpitude, and while heads of state are allowed to travel without a passport, some countries, including Canada, Mexico, Israel, China, Ukraine, Turkey, India, Japan, Taiwan, South Africa and the UK reserve the right to prohibit visits by felons. The travel restrictions are unlikely of course to be enforced in Trump’s case and he could always ignore regulation or pressure states to change their laws. This does not affect his ability to hold federal office, however.

synchronoptica

one year ago: an epic tattoo homage to Abe Simpson (with sychronoptica), enjunkification and aging out of the internet plus the Phantom Time Theory and the fabricated Middle Ages

seven years ago: a look back at 1968, Trump’s new London embassy plus French terms against creeping Anglicisms

eight years ago: heatmaps of the world’s most popular photo spots plus kompromat on Trump

nine years ago: fans remember the life and times of David Bowie,  Borg ideal beauty plus assorted links worth revisiting

ten years ago: the democratic reforms of 1848, your hit-parade, a motion-detector in search of alien life plus separatist and secession movements in Europe

constitiuent political entity (12. 167)

We enjoyed this rather mind-blowing rundown of singular and obscure facts about each of America’s fifty states, trivia that stands out as improbable and due to the absence of citations (helpfully there are timestamps with smooth transitions that index each), though apparently one-hundred percent, unequivocally true, nonetheless compels one down rabbit holes, like for Nebraska’s standout detail (do you know anyone from there? A work colleague introduced herself with “I’ll bet you’ve never met anyone from Nebraska”) in the village of Monowi, supposedly named after an unidentified Native American term of wildflower for their profusion, which is the only incorporated area in the US with one resident, differential privacy enacted for the 2020 census reported that the population had doubled but this was confirmed to be a form of noise, a buffer to protect the privacy of an easily identifiable individual. The sole resident, mayor and chief librarian maintains the five-thousand volume collection of her late husband and it her capacity as the municipal government, has granted herself a liquor license to operate a tavern for passers-through on the premises. What’s your home state’s niche fact? Which one is your favourite? The array of geographical expanses were also interesting and counterintuitive. The video presentation is thirty-minutes and fifty seconds long, referencing the number of the original colonies and the number of states. Let’s hope they give this treatment to the EU next.