wi-finder

Via Duck Soup, we discover the really relatable story of a flâneur collecting specimens of service set identifiers (SSIDs, the natural language label of one’s choice) to distinguish their wireless networks. What’s the story behind the name of your home WiFi?
Have you encountered memorable ones in your wanderings? Increasing fascination with the invisible world of call-signs set our walker on the path to more sleuthing, eventually mapping out these locations, categorising them by the nature of the monikers—promotional to passive-aggressive. I wonder how radically the landscape has changed since then and how territories and borders have become unmoored and mutable.

6x6

marenostrum: deconsecrated church in Barcelona houses Catalonia Polytech’s super computer

el helicoide: the dreadful-excellence of Caracas’ space age intelligence services headquarters turned into a sprawling prison complex

ectoplasm: nothing is prepared for the overwhelming slime of the hagfish

love you: we face our first Valentine’s Day bereft of classic Sweethearts candy, the company having folded back in July

accumulus nimbus: a gallery of skies and cloudscapes from arcade games, via Present /&/ Correct

visa-free score: limits of roaming without a passport and other quirks of international travel 

generative adversarial network

We’ve previously explored what we’ve called the electronic brain’s experience of pareidolia and generative adversarial networks synthesising images—things only exist in the mind of a computer—
but we were quite pleased to have our accomplished neural network trainer Janelle Shane (previously) guide us through the methodologies and application of one of the most powerful processors and for sharing some of the chimera conjured up.  Still a bit off-putting but nowhere near as disturbing as some of the nightmares of the early stages of Deep Dreaming, this image is the result of querying bookshop plus radio telescope with a little bit of Boston terrier thrown in. Explore more at AI Weirdness (aka Lewis & Quark) at the link above and learn how to use the application itself here.

logography

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we are referred to a collaboration between the Hochschule Mainz and the Linguistics Department at University of California, Berkley
campus, which represents each of the known world’s historic and extant writing systems, two hundred and ninety-two of them, with a single glyph that opens up an orthographic landscape to explore. Of these scripts, only just over one hundred are easily rendered in computer code—a rather severe imposition to the further study of those that are not, including several syllabaries in current use.

crypt and call-box

From Public Domain Review comes a retrospective look at the life and times of influential early nineteenth century collector and architect Sir John Soane, who build structures sacred and profane and defined the layout of one particular sort of place of worship and wonder—museums and art galleries. Appointed Clerk of Works with responsibility for renovations of Whitehall, Westminster and Saint James’ Place, Soane also went on to design the Bank of England, the Bank of Ireland and the dining rooms of 10 and 11 Downing Street, respectively the official residences of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Soane also designed the mausoleum where the earthly remains of his wife, himself and one son were entombed, which served as further inspiration decades after his departure.
Located in the churchyard of Old Saint Pancras, Giles Gilbert Scott, apprentice architect who would go on to build the iconic Battersea Power Station, whilst studying his father’s construction of St. Pancras Station, was much impressed with Soane’s grave and the younger Scott would return to that rounded, neoclassic capstone when it came to tendering his entry for what would become another ubiquitous and iconic design, the telephone kiosk.

thirty-four days, twenty-one hours, eighteen minutes

NPR correspondent Jessica Taylor presents a thoroughgoing post-mortem for the longest partial government shutdown in US history, which has just been conceded by Trump without funding for his shining beacon of white supremacy. We are happy that the individuals and families who suffered needlessly—and for the imperilled public lands and public safety—that relief is forthcoming. The dedication of the few, labouring without pay, keep catastrophe in abeyance but one does have to wonder about that month of lost time and sunk costs that’s never coming back.
Payments might come out of arrears but security vulnerabilities exposed and exploited because no one was at the helm of certain agencies, research lapsed, loss of morale and cohesion, meals forgone, austere compromises and perhaps one or two incidents of bribery—since a kick-back can seem quite tempting not knowing when pay day comes next—all have lasting consequences that are not easily undone. A three-week respite, as welcome as it is, probably also means that the US government will find itself at the same fiscal impasse again in mid-February—prone to repeat itself until the administrative state force lasting resolution. Acquiescing to the desire of the legislature to reopen the government should moreover be taken with a grain of salt as it coincided with the arrest and indictment of long-time ally and advisor, Roger Stone, noted cartoon arch villain who stroked Trump’s ego for decades and encouraged his serial contention for high office, by furloughed agents of the FBI.

organization 1