космос-482 (12. 445)

Launched 31 March 1972, the Soviet Venus probe that failed to escape low Earth orbit is expected to make a crash landing, plunging through the atmosphere today, more than fifty years after the mission was aborted and while debris of this size, five hundred kilograms, deorbits regularly, most space junk of this mass disintegrates before reaching the surface, breaking up into shooting stars—however with a titanium heat shield and built to withstand the rigours of exploring our hot and crushing neighbour, it is likely to survive the journey and land in one piece. While far more likely to hit the ocean, it could smash down on someone’s property (see previously here and here). Shrouded in the secrecy of the Cold War Space Race, it was common practice for the USSR’s space exploration programme to use low Earth orbit as a staging grounds, a sort of parking lot, for missions to other planets, launched well ahead of the ideal path for future rendezvous with their intended targets, and all given the designation of Kosmos so as not to publicise mission goals. A misfire of the booster rockets condemned the vehicle to this decades’ long limbo, retaining the original mission identification, rather than making it the planned Venera 9 atmospheric study.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a collection of abandoned blogs (with synchronoptica) plus the Tea Act of 1773

seven years ago: the FCC complains about the White House Correspondents’ Dinner plus photographer Rodney Lewis Smith

eight years ago: Persian miniatures, Trump fires FBI director James Comey plus artisanal coins

eleven years ago: cracking down on intelligence leaks plus the practise of kintsugi

twelve years ago: plagiarism scandals in German politics

16-bit intel 8088 chip (12. 444)

Whilst there is more perhaps more superficial interoperability in computing today than in years past (see previously), this unlikely but sublime poem by Charles Bukowski, laureate of American lowlife, after receiving a Macintosh and laser printer from his wife for Christmas in 1990 and significantly increasing in already prodigious output in his final years, his experience with lost files and frustrations with manufactured obstacles speak to the same phenomena of walled-gardens, lock-in, portability issues and general enshiffication.

with an Apple Macintosh
you can’t run Radio Shack programs
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file
you have created on an
IBM Personal Computer. both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
the CP/M operating system
but can’t read each other’s
handwriting
for they format (write
on) discs in different
ways.
the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can’t use most programs produced for
the IBM Personal Computer
unless certain
bits and bytes are
altered
but the wind still blows over
Savannah
and in the Spring
the turkey buzzard struts and
flounces before his
hens.

Whilst not pioneering in his adoption or embrace, Bukowski quickly came to assert that, despite technical difficulties recognised as defective by design, he could not write any other way. More from Kottke at the link above.

chrysopoeia (12. 443)

Although the aims of alchemists of transforming base metals into gold has been previously achieved through synthetic transmutation first in 1941 by heavy bombardment of mercury with neutrons—though the resulting isotopes were extremely radioactive and again in 1980 by Glenn Seaborg at Lawrence Livermore labs by surgically removing protons and neutrons from bismuth atoms, these demonstration projects were prohibitively expensive and would need to be scaled up a trillion-fold in order to produce a microscopic speck of the precious metal. We learn, however—via tmn—that researchers working on the ALICE programme at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the acronym somewhat disappointingly only standing for A Large Ion Collider Experiment designed to study conditions immediately after the Big Bang with by creating exotic plasma phases of matter, have recently detected the mass albeit very short-lived conversion of lead into gold as the extremely hot and close-packed conditions cause dissociative reactions that can cause the target element to eject a small number of protons and neutrons, producing gold (the similar densities probably what inspired the study of alchemy in the first place). The above quick-silver and thallium were also temporary by-products of nuclear transmutation. Related to the title term, χρυσοποιία, ἀργυροποιία (argyropeia) refers to artificial silver-making, usually trying with copper.

ballerina cappuccina (12. 442)

A series of AI-generated memes featuring a cast of surrealist chimeric characters, usually a visual portmanteau of animals with vehicles or fruit with anthropo-morphic features emerged a few months ago and the phenomena is called Italian brainrot (see previously) for the accompanying text-to-speech voiceover in not-quite-nonsense Italian (see also) for rhyming effects to low-effort static images, which nonetheless seemed primed to evoke a feeling of uncanniness. Minted as volatile meme coins, they seem to be employed to underscore aggressively self-aware shitposting as well as the amount of AI slop inundating the internet. The original Tralalero Tralala and Bombardino Crocodilo have been cancelled as Islamophobic but have returned in a more satirical form and all are subject to remix and revision as well as commentary about the impermanence problem of AI image creation when an input is subject to the telephone-game. The trend is also ostensibly in response to mainstream studio entertainment, franchises sorely lacking in originality.  Chimpanzini grappalini

@eliotmediaoficial Todo lo que debes saber de los personajes del brain rot italiano #chismecito #tik_tok #tiktokers #creadores #trends ♬ sonido original - Eliot Store

synchronoptica

one year ago: AI-generated cityscapes (with synchronoptica) plus Swedish PhD traditions

seven years ago: US-Iranian tensions plus US withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal

eight years ago: Belphegor’s Prime, Trump’s interference with the justice system, Banksy’s Brexit mural plus a suitably gilded property

eleven years ago: a hoard of paintings of unknown provenance plus the question of Scottish independence

twelve years ago: Nazi Germany’s capitulation and a fateful date

6x6 (12. 441)

αντίδωρον: brilliant wrapping paper makes presents appear as loaves of bread  

impact statement: for the first time, an AI avatar of a murder victim testifies in court 

heptapods: imagining alien languages reveals insights into the nature of our own ways of communicating—see previously 

picking fights: while Trump declares a ceasefire with the Houthi militant group—which we only know about because of Signalgate—the administration signals it will not get involved over the dispute in Kashmir  

orrery: a centenary of planetariums still inspiring awe—via tmn—see previously  

decomposing: lab-grown mini-brains of a deceased musician create posthumous compositions

origami mouse: a pointing device that folds flat when not in use—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest—along with a few more fun items on arcade classics

ubi et orbi (12. 440)

Admittedly the headline briefly turned me Anglican, and like many who could not countenance the idea of an American pope—especially after the brashness and endorsement of Trump and Vance and the near-schismatic behaviour of the American conservative Church—with its ugly superpower status and general cultural hegemony—reading a bit into the newly elected Pope Leo XIV, walked back my aversion and apprehension somewhat.  Aside from his chosen namesake, as lately created a cardinal by his successor and appointed to the important clerical office of the prefect for the Dicastery of Bishops, charged with selecting new senior advisors after serving as the head of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America and before that general of the Augustinians, Robert Francis Prevost from the South Side of Chicago, son of immigrants of French, Italian and Spanish heritage, spent many of his formative years in Peru, earning robust credentials in seminary as well as an educator. After elevation to cardinal-deacon, the lowest rank whose appointment derives from administrators of the Papal Household and assigned governance of one of the districts of Rome, Prevost was made protector of the chapel Santa Monica delgli Agostiniani just outside of the Holy See, designed by architect Giuseppe Momo, most celebrated for his Scala Momo which visitors descend to the Vatican Museum, as a dormitory for the order and those attached to the mother church. His first messages of peace, love and understanding were reassuring and one has to hope his fellow nationals can’t make too much hay out of this incidental kinship or smuggle in nationalism and authoritarianism under the guise of being a good Christian.

tag der befreiung (12. 439)

Berlin, for the first time since reunification, observed a public holiday for this eightieth anniversary of VE Day with political leaders—pointedly excluding the ambassadors of Russia and Belarus—gathering in the Bundestag to commemorate liberation from Nazi dictatorship. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told guests assembled in the chamber that Germany must never downplay its burden of responsibility for the second world war and the Holocaust as the perpetrators that caused the Shoah and were unwilling or unable to resist the regime orchestrating these crimes against humanity. Steinmeier went on the acknowledge the role of the Red Army, comprised of Russians, Ukrainians and many others, in freeing Europe from the regime—but adds that the “liberators of Auschwitz have become the new aggressors,” rubbishing long-standing regional peace and security which stood as a sign of hope that we had retained some lessons from the past and revising and inverting the historical records—excusing his war of aggression as a fight against neo-Nazism—with imperial ambitions. That war casting a pall over solemnities that were otherwise celebrating the beginning of an unprecedented period of liberty and freedom, many others recognising the dire need for recommitting to the defence of democratic values and harmony.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Hard-Hat Riot of 1970 (with synchronoptica) plus locomotive music

seven years ago: a Prohibition Era Isle of Pleasure charted plus assorted links worth revisiting

eight years ago: HH Holmes’ murder castle, the French far-right, PC clones plus the cartographic trope of the land octopus

ten years ago: a utopian factory town plus an ingestible password 

eleven years ago: a self-massage technique called she-do

7x7 (12. 438)

kanzlermehrheit: Bundestag selects Friedrich Merz chancellor after secure a majority in the second round of voting, averting a constitutional crisis  

rococo and its discontents: McMansion Hell on Trump’s gaudy transformation of the White House—via Kottke 

fuzzy maths: an unsure calculator that produces a range of histograms to assess one’s unknown factors—via Pasa Bon!—from home economics decisions to the Drake equation

reaction time: a car brake engaged by one’s eyebrows  

top billing: the movie poster and album cover art of Dick Ellescas that fuses Art Deco and Mod  

architektonisches gesamtkunstwerk: the Junkerhaus of Lemgo articulated over the decades whilst the jilted artist awaited his betrothed who would never return—via Messy Nessy Chic—more here 

habemus papam: first round of voting fails to produce consensus—plus live chimney cam

spaghetti thriller (12. 437)

The cinephiles of the Flop House with a special guest deliver a very thoroughgoing treatment of the Italian murder-mystery film genre called giallo (the title an alternate native term) popular from the 1960s through the late 1970s—which although declined subsequently with other exploitation movies leaves a lasting legacy and influences in subsequent movements like slasher and supernatural narratives. Derived from a series of crime pulp novels published by the Milano-based Mondadori house who distinguished book themes by their cover colours, in this case yellow—including in their catalogue translated titles from Agatha Christine, whose And Then There Were None (originally called Ten Little Indians or Dieci piccoli indiani) was widely read and considered the template for the genre, laying out the essential elements later adopted by filmmakers of a killer hidden amongst a cast whose identity and motive are not revealed until the end—translated to the screen with psychosexual horror, an atmosphere of suspense, camp, lurid Technicolour, bombastic scoring (see previously here and here) and gratuitous violence. Suspiria is sometimes included for its stylistic similarities but rejected by purist for its supernatural character, though director Dario Argento made other films, with typically baroque and non-revealing titles, like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Four Flies on Grey Velvet, that are considered classic gialli. Another interesting artefact was the prevalence of J&B scotch whisky in the films across the range of directors as a signifier of sophistication and manliness—Justerini and Brooks Ltd, founded in Bologna in 1749 and receiving a royal warrant to supply wine and spirits to the aristocratic households of London and later purveyors to hotels and restauranteurs. With shifting values, condemned as misogynistic, gialli fell out of favour but their later homage has occasioned a reevaluation of their consistent, if not indirect, message of the victims, almost exclusively women, not being listened to when airing their suspicions and fears.  Be sure to listen to the podcast for expert movie recommendations.

paper doll (12. 436)

Coinciding with tactics being employed by several toy manufacturers to mitigate the worst impacts of the US administration’s ruinous trade war—addressing specifically the comment from Trump that for Christmas that “maybe the children will have two dolls instead of thirty dolls and maybe they’ll cost a couple of dollars more”—including “pricing action” and differing “price points” for consumers, we enjoyed this latest comic from Ruben Bolling that’s an excellent alternative stocking stuffer for MAGA cultists with this printable dress-up Donald, though card-stock and printer cartridges will probably get pretty scarce as well by the time the holidays roll around, so it might be best to make one’s own.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit plus a treasury of unsolved mysteries

seven years ago: a visit to Nordheim vor der Rhön, Go Fact Yourself plus EULA boilerplate

eight years ago: aggressive cuts to funding for the arts,  concept low-cost housing communities plus Trump’s Dark Triad undermining the government

ten years ago: Nazi kidnappings, more links to enjoy, wisdom from Poor Richard’s Almanack plus US resistance to engaging in WWII

eleven years ago: a trip to Hannoversh Münden plus strained US-German relations over survelliance

cog in the wheel (12. 435)

Whilst apologists and Trump’s re-shoring spokesmen declares that new US factory jobs will make up for redundancies manufactured elsewhere (despite the fact that even if heavy industry enthusiastically embraces the chaotic invitation, most labour has been automated and manpower replaced by machines), we were quite enthralled by this resonant 1925 parable endorsed by Lenin and Stalin for the potential for counter-messaging with children’s literature and adopting a method of propaganda reputedly employed by the bourgeoisie. Vintik-Shpintik (The Little Screw, Винтик-шпинтик) by Nikolai Agnivtev was agitprop for young readers, the best seller, quickly adapted into an animated short, relating how a factory is kept chugging along only with the cooperation of its smallest members. Much more from Public Domain Review at the link above.

🍿 (12. 434)

Having expressed concerns about overseas movie production for quite some time and appointing conservative actors Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson as special ambassadors to Hollywood as it burned, charged with bringing the film industry back bigger, better and stronger, over the weekend per social media post Donald Trump directed the Office of the US Trade Representative to levy a one-hundred percent tariff on “any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands,” despite the hegemonic surplus enjoyed by American studios and their exports. Describing the luring away of domestic filmmaking as messaging and propaganda and a threat to national security, it remains unclear how redirecting the flow of commerce could be implemented for international films—more like an applied service that could be taxed, with the authorisation from congress but not tariffed, most bigger budget motion pictures being cosmopolitan in nature and shot on locations around the world, other countries and states outside of California offering tax-incentives to make filming more favourable aside from any creative license or sense of authenticity. Domestic movies, produced anywhere, dominate the US box-office and it’s unclear by even what metrics a tariff would be imposed—American cultural imperialism means that international ventures would have less avenues for reciprocation but could translate into more quotas for US intellectual property, promoting native creative projects and possibly opening the door to incubating other intangibles, undercutting more sectors where American advantages reigns. Following his unilateral takeover the Kennedy Center as artistic director, Trump only wants to control the narrative but is instead inviting others to write the script for him.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a classic from T-Rex (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: the Swiss guard to get 3D printed helmets, a floppy disk musical instrument, an ancient town without street names and numbers, the environmental toll of palm oil plus turnstiles for Venice to control tourist crowds

eight years ago: Trump regime accidentally discloses its agenda, kaiju rap plus WWII propaganda

ten years ago: more terror attacks in Germany plus formulaic writing

eleven years ago: a political rally in a skate park, Russia’s role in the Great Patriotic War plus the Pinocchio clause for thinking machines

the nightly (12. 433)

Via Nag on the Lake and Web Curios, we are directed to an internet radio station fronting a music appreciation society celebrating a selection the vintage, obscure, vaguely gloomy and positively atmospheric songs and film scores, chiefly from the 1930 to the 1970s with some real jewels from Italian and Japanese cinema. Moody but not maudlin, there are over four thousand titles in circulation and growing that are instantly transporting and transfixing, evoking the hard-scrabbling and noir, taking one to those liminal spaces and liminal hours.

kriegsgräberstätte (12. 432)

Scheduled to be in Bonn for the G7 summit during the week of the fortieth anniversary of V-E Day celebrations, US president Ronald Reagan agreed, as a demonstration of the strength and steadfastness of West German-American relations—feeling he owed Helmut Kohl a photo-opportunity for the public and political backlash the chancellor suffered for conceding to host ballistic weapons—to visit a military cemetery logistically close to the joint airbase of Bitburg. Although planned months in advance, the ceremony intended to commemorate the end of hostilities and the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht to Allied Forces, the event was overshadowed by controversy once discovered that forty-nine of the two thousand German soldiers interred at the site at Kolmeshöhe were members of the Waffen-Schutzstaffel, drawing condemnation from Jewish activists and others worldwide. An impromptu and unscheduled visit to the memorial Bergen-Belsen was added to the itinerary to limit the leaders’ time at the cemetery, a stop which met with resistance by the president’s handlers as it might awaken old memories. The botched execution on both sides strained relations between the White House and the Chancellery, both sides blaming each other and not helped by Reagan’s statement equating those “drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis” suffered “just as surely as the victims of the victims of in the concentration camps.” In response, the Ramones recorded the single “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” in June of that year, the co-starring chimpanzee of “Bedtime for Bonzo” employed as an epithet for the former actor.

synchronoptica

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

eight years ago: a natural battery spanning a Norwegian valley, Valerian and the City of a 1000 Planets plus a clever and effective flyer

nine years ago: on tour in Cornwall 

ten years ago: The Meaning of Liff, more links to enjoy, populuxe design plus assorted trivia that sounds untrue

eleven years ago: fetishising fruit

11x11 (12. 431)

hot, cold, clash and burn: some performances from candidates for the 2025 Dance Your PhD contest with real EuroVision vibes—see previously 

man in motion: a biography of Eadweard Muybridge (previously) as a graphic novel   

pc connection: the raccoon mascot that made the catalogue stand out amongst industry uniformity—via Nag on the Lake   

popemobile: the pontiff’s conveyance used for his 2014 visit to Bethlehem to be converted into a mobile health clinic for Gaza   

oaf of office: arguing that due process is cumbersome, Trump defers to his legal team on whether it his duty to uphold the constitution 

pamflyt compiled of cheese, contayninge the differences, nature, qualities, and goodnes, of the same: an early Renaissance book on the staple food digitised and made available to the public

architecture of choice: AI buttons and the fat-finger economy pushing redesign and showhorning of non-options into everything   

sustained presence: Israel expands operations, evictions in the occupied territory   

papabili: the College of Cardinals’ report and coverage of the upcoming conclave—via Web Curios 

mingkwai: the rediscovery of an incredible antique mechanical typewriter prototype for printing Chinese characters—via Neatorama—with a video demonstration 

marge inalia: alert the grammar police, the Errorist strikes again

synchronoptica

one year ago: Expo '74 (with synchronoptica), the Cabbage Patch Kids’ maternity ward, assorted links worth revisiting plus the Grammies

seven years ago: more links to enjoy, lampooning mid-morning television, doggie bags plus election by Borda count

eight years ago: potential jail time for protesting the US attorney general, the Cornell carillon plays a tribute to the Grateful Dead plus even more links

nine years ago: gorillas sing little tunes as they eat, maps of Middle Earth, a market hall in Rotterdam plus a popular French tonic wine

ten years ago: Hee-Haw and the cancellation of Star Trek plus utopian thinking

fedifragous (12. 430)

Borrowing from the obsolete Latin foedifragus, the rarely used term which has occasion to be brought back into common parlance as the adjectival form for faithless, perfidious or treacherous in the sense of liable to break treaties or contracts or alliances.

pressroom (12. 429)

For the seventy-fifth anniversary of the launch of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (see previously), REM is releasing a remix of its classic track remastered by long time collaborator Garrett “Jacknife” Lee—renowned Irish music producer who has also worked with the Cars, U2, Weezer, Taylor Swift and others as a charity EP to benefit the defunded organisation’s reporting and outreach at a time when the work of public broadcasting is under assault and existential threat—see also. The call to action coinciding with World Press Freedom Day (previously), according to lore and liner notes, the 1981 song from the group that amicably disbanded in 2011 has nothing to do with the outlet—they just liked the title. “Decide yourself if radio’s gonna stay.”  More from Nag on the Lake at the link up top.

taubertal: rundweg (12. 428)

 

Taking a slightly different route through the Tauber valley along the river rather than straight up the wooded promontory where Rothenburg is perched, we passed a collection of small settlements that grew around the many mills including the Topplerschlösschen built by prominent city mayor, Heinrich Toppler (whom orchestrated an alliance with Ulm and two other cities along the Romantikstrasse Nördlingen and Dinkelsbühl and was ultimately executed during a palace intrigue), during the fourteenth century as a summer retreat and to monitor milling enterprises.

The towers and steeples of the city were visible on the horizon during the walk and grew as we approached the double stone bridge. The skyline, the most developed and articulated one which is breathtaking and must have been nothing sort of transfixing for medieval people seeing it for the first time, had earned Rothenburg the title of the “Franconian Jerusalem” since the age of the Crusades. Back in the city, we visited the spacious Burggarten and walked along the medieval walls back down to the Tauber valley, with a view of Detwang in the middle distance.

 synchronoptica 

one year ago: foreign movie titles in Norway (with synchronoptica), an AI beauty contest from 1964, steaming footage from the International Space Station, wistful nostalgia for a a time and place one has never known plus a banger from Robert Palmer

seven years ago: transit fare-strikes plus the Swiss cheese cartel

eight years ago: an executive order to protect bigotry, crossing paracosms plus the unacknowledged privilege of not having to sit to pee

nine years ago: US-EU trade accords plus bursts of activity

twelve years ago: the European Space Agency explores Jupiter’s moons

taubertal: rothenburg ob der tauber (12. 427)

 

Well preserved and one of only four cities in Germany with intact medieval defensive walls, and recognised as a free and immediate Reichstadt—Heinrich V appointed a nephew of the Hohenstaufen branch after the original dynasty died out in the twelfth century as a successor to the counts’ property—Rothenburg ob der Tauber was threatened with destruction during the Thirty Years’ War, the Catholic League field marshal Johann t’Sercalaes, County of Tilly, fresh from a string of victories, wanting to quarter forty-thousand troops there, much to the the resistance of the populace, prepared for a siege rather than takeover in pitched battle. The popular though certainly apocryphal legend of the Meistertrunk gives the account that Tilly would spare the city and its governing council if any one of them could drink a flagon (roughly a gallon, three and a half litres) of wine in a single sitting. Burgermeister Georg Nusch was up to the task—which is heroic enough but does not seem like an impossible ask and the fact that there was no contemporaneous chronicle suggests rather the city lost its strategical importance due to a bout of plague which led to the preservation of its seventeenth century state. Nonetheless the feat is commemorated hourly with a clockwork recreation from the Ratstrinkstube near city hall. Romanced by landscape painters from the nineteenth century onwards, Rothenburg gained special significance in ideological terms as representative of Heimat with many field trips there organised through the Kraft durch Freude programme.

 

The city was destroyed by one-third, sparing the oldest parts, during an Allied bombardment campaign but rebuilt true to form—see also—the cityscape was also used in the film Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang and the inspiration for fictional hometown of the animated feature Pinocchio, with the Plönlein, the small square at the intersection of two streets at a fountain, being one of the more photogenic spots. On the way back out, through the former Jewish quarter and back over the hill, we learnt that the future pontiff Francis had stayed here for several months in 1986 whilst learning German at the local Goethe Institute chapter.

*     *     *     *     *

synchronoptica

one year ago: the beautifully dissociative nature of the Japanese language (with synchronoptica), Saturation 70 plus the US National Day Reason

seven years ago: commemorating the Berlin Airlift, humorist Grant Snider plus animated sketching lessons

eight years ago: the origins of the .mp3 format, disaster capitalism, the matte paintings of Star Wars plus the geographic centre of the EU shifts

nine years ago: an animated filmography plus food colouring’s unqualified reputation

ten years ago: an avatar-making app, Fearbook! plus divided America/divided Germany