your daily demon: andras

This infernal marquis who controls thirty legions of spirits and rules in the demonic calendar from this day to the third of February presents as an angel with the head of an owl, riding a fierce black wolf and wielding a mighty sword. Andras’ office is to sow discord and strife, and for the first time in our summoning we encounter a stark warning that this spirit will not hesitate to kill those who call on him carelessly.

Possibly inspired (in name, at least as our heroine prayed to a rabbit deity) by the Celtic goddess of war called Andrasta—the very one invoked by Boudica to fight Roman occupation, our Andras is countered by the archangel Ananel. 

 

 

digital demesne

Reminiscent of the extant but sadly now unsupported personal website of Lily Tomlin with seemingly unending links to thoroughly lose oneself in, we quite enjoyed interloping a bit in the vast domain of Arkm’s World, both infinite manor house and grounds—courtesy of Marijn’s Link Roll (previously)—of paths and parlours to haunt and endless shoreline and suites to explore (caution—some flashing lights and video-autoplay), including pages and pages of referrals to kindred NeoCity projects. Which door would you choose?

8x8

testi stampati: the riotous typographical illustratrations of Lorenzo Petrantoni  

painterly realism: Nathan Shipley trained a neural network to turn portraiture into convincingly true-to-life photographs 

civilian climate corps: a vision of how putting people to work on conservation projects can help save both the environment and the economy  

narratology: a purportedly exhaustive list of dramatic situations—see also here and here  

stonx: a long thread explaining the GameStop short-squeeze—via Miss Cellania  

paradoxical undressing: National Geographic forwards a new theory to account for the Dyatlov Pass Incident (previously) of 1959  

butler in a box: before digital assistants there was domestic aid in the late 1980s 

will success spoil rock hunter: Art of the Title looks at the opening montage of the 1957 CinemaScope classic

demophöon

Brought to the stage in München in operatic form on this date in 1811 as the première work of Peter Josef von Lindpainter (*1791 – †1856) the figure associated with Demeter was a popular subject of the prior decades. Seeking her abducted daughter Persephone in the guise of an old woman, calling herself Doso, Demeter wanted to repay the hospitality she received from the by making the titular young prince into an immortal and being nursemaid to Demophöon (given the tough name, meaning “killer of men”), the king’s son by Metanira. To realise her plan to turn him into a god, Demeter anointed the infant with ambrosia and nightly placed him into the palace hearth to burn away his mortal spirit. His mother walked in one evening to witness this ritual and reacted like any mother would to the sight of her baby in the fireplace among the burning logs—which annoyed Demeter who had to abort the immortalisation process over the interruption. Though unscathed but still subject to decrepitude and death, Demophöon acquired immortality of a sorts through a hero cult and enduring fame. As a consolation to the family—having failed in her first act of kindness, Demeter taught his older brother Triptolemus (threefold-warrior) the art of agriculture, which he spread across the Greek world. Lindpainter’s most successful opera, Der Vampyr, was also another popular theme and debuted in Stuttgart two decades later.

the wise wife of keith

Garrotted and burned at the stake for witchcraft on this day in 1591 on the order of James VI and said to haunt the halls of Holyrood as a naked ghost, Agnes Sampson was a healer and midwife and one of the more notable defendants of the well documented North Berwick witch trails.

The Scottish king inspired by his experience in the court of Denmark-Norway, visiting his in-laws on the occasion of marrying Anne of Denmark, and accounts of witch-hunting and practicing the dark arts—convinced during a fraught return voyage that a curse was responsible for the stormy passage. Subsequent arrests and interrogations conducted by the king himself in a specially convened tribunal was covered by a contemporary pamphleteer in the Newes from Scotland, which contained proceedings and quoted Sampson’s litany of confessions, implicating others and admitting with a seemingly taunting air that she had tried to drown the newly-weds and another had fashioned a charm out of a toad to make the king impotent. Reportedly James had been willing to declare Sampson innocent until her final confession which detailed the nuptial night of the James and Anne in Oslo with accuracy only one in communion with the devil could know. The writer with the by-line, James Carmichael, of the reportage later advised James on his other famous book (besides his patronage for the Bible), Dæmonologie.

voice procedure alphabet

In continuing efforts to reduce transmission errors in signalling and optimise efficiency, we are directed towards a new approach to devising a radiotelephony spelling alphabet (see previously here, here and here) by placing each representative letter-phrase in a context that can be summoned up to make sure interlocutors understand one another. Though a draft version, we can already see its potential for reducing—or perhaps reinforcing—confusion.

A: ANGEL (as in guardian)
B: (picnic) BASKET
CHRISTMAS (tree)
(mummy and) DADDY 

With some polishing, we think it could be a viable alternative and did enjoy the observance quite a bit that compared the method to Cockney Rhyming Slang with the example illustrating the convention that the corresponding pet-name is an unvoiced consonance—one’s teeth being ‘Hampsteads’ from Hampstead Heath.

early adopters

We thoroughly enjoyed this review and overview of how new media and technological innovation influenced and informed Eastern Europe through the lens of the last years of the Polish People’s Republic. 

The efforts on the part of the authorities could not outpace and eventually lagged far behind ever more ingenious and widespread means of implementation that circumvented attempts of censorship or suppression (see also), eventually conceding to the inevitable. Considering the role of John Paul II in social and civic reforms, the account of young priests using new media as teaching aids and for screening—cassette cinemas—films that were banned in the theatres and helping to carve out a refuge from the state regime. The image is a still from a 1988 adaptation of Pan Kleks (Mister Inkblot) and his magical academy. More from the Calvert Journal at the link above.

ten and two

Things Magazine directs our attention to directed to a thoroughgoing and informative appreciation of the engineering and triangulation of technology, style and their limitations, constraints that have gone into the Apple Watch, including a lesson of the anatomy of classic

watchmaking (lugs, bezel, face and hands) and a historical inventory of the iconic dials that inform and inspire Apple’s gallery, including the “error-proof” California Dial trialled by Rolex, the evolving chronograph with an array of complications, diving watches and models coordinated with Greenwich Mean Time, introduced by Pan Am realising that their pilots and crew needed to reference multiple time-zones.