5x5

kankyō ongaku: the ambient music (see also) of Hiroshi Yoshimura 

solstice sun: locate where and when in your locality where the streets align with the sun’s path at dawn and dusk as they do for Stonehenge—see also  

star with royal beauty bright: afterwards, check the skies for the Great Conjunction where Jupiter and Saturn appear as one celestial body  

solarwind: a look into the extensive cyber breach of US government networks and what information may have been compromised  

blob opera: a fun experiment with a musical quartet—via Boing Boing

your daily demon: murmur

Infernal duke and earl with thirty legions under his command, before the rebellion this fifty-fourth spirit had the name Matthias but now presents as a vulture or crowned warrior astride a griffin, and can be compelled to mediumship with the departed by invoking his seal, which looks very much like a host of astrological symbols. A master of philosophy, Murmur rules from today until the twenty-first of December and is paired with the angel Nilhael.

der spion, der aus der kälte kam

As our faithful chronicler informs, this day in 1965 saw the US premiere of the cinematic adaptation of the eponymous debut spy novel of the recently departed John le Carré, whose realistic and unromantic portrayal of espionage was a welcome and resonant counterpoint to the cloak-and-dagger escapism of James Bond. Whereas the station chief of the West Berlin office of MI6 is seemingly facing redundancy after multiple failures and set-backs, the protagonist’s turning is one carefully orchestrated by Control to out suspected double-agents by transforming one of its own. A refutation of whatever idealism that drives the ideological struggle, the character played by Richard Burton deprecates himself and the profession, limning his kind as not some high-minded defenders of the faith but rather as “just a bunch of seedy squalid bastards like me—little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like mons in a cell, weighing right against wrong? Yesterday I would have killed Mundt [suspected double-agent] because I thought him evil and an enemy. But not today—today he is evil and my friend.” The award-winning film further introduced the general public to some of the jargon of the profession, with honeypot, head-hunter and mole to become common-parlance.

adelheid von burgund

Venerated on this day, on the occasion of her death in 999 (*931), the feast of Saint Adelaide (Adélaïde, see more on her namesakes) celebrates her involvement with palace intrigues and the complicated power struggle for Lombardy and Burgundy. A strategic first marriage saw Adelaide wed to Lothar II of Italy, producing a daughter, Emma who went on to become queen of Western France. Quite the soap opera to follow, Lothar was poisoned in 950 by rival for the throne Berengar II while visiting Turin.

Widowed Adelaide intended to rule in her murdered husband’s stead and her subjects seemed amenable to that arrangement but Berengar wanted to assert his legitimacy by arranging Adelaide’s marriage morganatic marriage to his son Aldabert. Adelaide wasn’t having this as it would mean forfeiting her territorial-holdings and so fled to Como to seek refuge in her stronghold there. Captured and imprisoned in Garda, a priest helped her escape to Canossa and sought sanctuary with Otto I, King of East Francia. The two eventually married and having secured dominion over a large swath of land with his wife’s contribution and a decisive victory against Hungarian incursions at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955, extending his control all the way to the Elbe and thus established the Ottonian dynasty of The Holy and Roman Empire of the Germans, crowned emperor and empress (a significant break with tradition in acknowledgement of Adelaide’s standing and respect) by the pope in 962. After her husband died, Adelaide was regent to two generations of Ottos to follow, and once her grandson was able to rule in his own right, she devoted herself to acts of charity, founding and restoring religious communities. Their daughter Matilda was also a regent and first princess-abbess of Quedlinburg, the convent founded by her grandmother, also called Matilda, in 936. Because of her long, colourful court life, Adelaide is designated, among other things, patron and protector of in-laws, exiles, empresses and step-parents.

missing link

Until seeing this apomorphic cladogram, we had forgotten how in cladistic nomenclature the branch that represents the point of departure for chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes, plus the Bonobos) from a common ancestor is labelled panini. Our human ape selves as well as our gorilla and orangutan cousins all sound rather like fancy grilled Italian sandwiches.

the quarries

Via Waxy, we are directed to the first and hopefully, mercifully the last—though we’ve still got a long row to hoe—awards presentation, showcasing the best in quarantine culture, those independent productions that stepped in to fill a chasm that big-budget media was ill-equipped to address except as indulging nostalgia. Leaning into the strictures, limitations and loss, a grateful viewership, albeit not quite people’s choice, found their superlatives in such categories as Best Lip-Sync Performance, Best Inner Monologue (that was published), Best Socially Distanced Concert Series, Best Documentary of a Good Marriage, and Best New National Anthem: “Fetch the Bolt Cutters.”

six wedges

On this evening back in 1979, over a game of Scrabble two newspaper editors, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott—unable to locate all their letter tiles, decided to make up their own game, establishing the basic concept for what would become Trivial Pursuit—the board game commercially released in 1981.

zamenhofa tago

Observed on this day—the birthday of the constructed language’s inventor L. L. Zamenhof in Białystok in 1859 (Old Style, 3 December, †1917)—esperantists from around the world celebrate Zamenhof Day by holding information sessions, workshops and conduct other outreach programmes to promote and raise awareness of Esperanto media (see previously) and the cultural imprint of a universal language.