durgan script

The always engrossing Language Log of the University of Pennsylvania acquaints us with a endangered and diffuse language—spread across Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Mongolia—in the Sinitic (Chinese) family but written with Cyrillic and uniquely not Sinographic characters (see also). The continuum of Gansu, Mandarin and Dungan (Kansu) is mutually intelligible to a large extent. Tones are marked with the glyphs front yer and back yer (Ь / Ъ) from the Old Church Slavonic (see above and here too) and the current orthography is a compromise dating back to the 1920s when the Soviet Union banned Arabic and Persian-based writing systems, looked on disfavourably from the beginning as merchants along the Silk Road could conduct trade deals in a language that was secret to their neighbours.

the rashomon effect

Via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake, we are introduced to eponymous phenomenon named after the one of the greatest films ever made in Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 masterpiece, based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short story “In a Grove.” The framing narrative has various relatable, archetypal characters whose contradicting testimony speak to the inherent unreliability of eyewitness accounts (see also) and the malleability of memory, clouded by motive, mechanism, interpretation and the act of remembering itself changes a memory. Much more to explore at the link up top.

ripped from the headlines

Via the Awesomer, we are treated to a visual, gradated chronology of the New York Times (previously), publishing the news daily since 1851 in this 2017 short by filmmaker Josh Begley that’s a supercut that cycles through the changing look and layout of the newspaper as printing and photography advance. We agree that this ought to be an annual update and year-in-review to stream past.

journal de bord

Our fellow peripatetic internet caretaker Messy Nessy Chic turns us on to a mysterious notebook of outsider art (Art Brût, see previously here and here) that is the only artefact of the creator and contains all that is known (see also) about Jean Fick (*1876) with a decontexualised autobiography and unclear vocation whether he is the Ambassador of or to God. There’s no indication of what the brilliant colours and patterns might symbolise. Though with no more provenance attached to where or how it was found, the notebook rose to prominence after being featured in a special exhibition by the American Folk Art Museum in 2018. 

« FICK JEAN NEE 23.11.1876 — HOPITAL — SOLDAT. 13.10.1898 — 13.9.1900 — RM 57 — WESE GUERRE 9.14 — 4.8.1.4.1917.7. SANTE BLESSE – INVALIDE FICK J MARIAGE DELESSE MARI. MODES 29.4.1902 HOPITAL NEE 8.9.1874. FICK ALISE 24.2.1903. MARIE. A. 1.2.1904. JEAN. K. 22.05. MAGU. 11.6.10 ». Sur la couverture : « Jean Fick ambassadeur mondieu N.23 ». 

“FICK JEAN BORN 23.11.1876 – HOSPITAL – SOLDIER. 13.10.1898 – 13.9.1900 – RM 57 – WESE WAR 9.14 – 4.8.1.4.1917.7. HEALTH INJURED – INVALID FICK J MARRIAGE ABANDONED HUSBAND  . MODES 29.4.1902 HOSPITAL BORN 8.9.1874. FICK ALISE 24.2.1903. MARRIED. A. 1.2.1904. JEAN. K. 22.05. MAGU. 11.6.10”. On the cover: “Jean Fick my God/world [mondieu] ambassador  N. 23.”

your experiment today is called pod people. it has nothing to do with pods, it has nothing to do with people. it has everything to do with hurting.

First airing on this day in 1991, the third episode of the third season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (see previously) lampoons the 1983 Franco-Spanish sci-fi movie with the original title Los nuevos extraterrestres, which was originally meant to be a horror film with a murderous alien rampage in the tradition of Beowulf but changed course during shooting to capitalise on the success of E.T. (changed to avoid confusion) with a bond forming between one of the aliens and a human kid. The MST3K cast especially enjoy mishearing the performance of “Burning Rubber Tyres”—singing “hear the engines roar now” as “idiot control now.” 

index librorum prohibitorum

Though with the twentieth and last printed edition published in 1948 and Pope Paul’s December 1965 Motu Proprio (see also) reorganising the curia failing to renew or reinstate it as a part of canon law, an official notitiæ from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith effectively abolished the Catholic Church’s list of prohibited books. In circulation and updated since 1571, the Church realised that their censorship and denunciations often carried the opposite effect than the one intended and chose instead to emphasise the moral and persuasive force of the banned books index rather than focus on punitive controls. Among those authors blacklisted include Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, Francis Bacon, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Blaise Pascal and John Milton.

7x7

dit-dot: via Web Curios (a lot more to see at this latest instalment), we’re invited to learn the basics of Morse code (previously) with this well designed, gamifying tutorial 

passeggiando: be a virtual flâneur in these composite Italian cities 

broadcast energy transmitter: delivering renewable energy from where it is plentiful to where it’s need via submarine transnational supergrids 

flock together: a TED Ed presentation on the evolution of feathers  

pyramid power: Duns Scotus and the esoteric history of the dunce cap—via Boing Boing  

essential reading: The Atlantic’s Ed Yong won a Pulitzer Prize for his COVID reporting  

ää: a collection of essays from the Times Literary Supplement on defence of endangered, indigenous languages

the incredibly strange creatures who stopped living and became mixed-up zombies

Airing for the first time on this day in 1997, Mystery Science Theater 3000 lampooned what was billed as the first “monster musical” and universally panned by critics and audiences as one of the worst films ever made. Released in 1964 in “hallucinogenic hypnovision,” three friends visit a seaside fun fair and encounter a group of occultists and mutilated monsters. Under threat of lawsuit by Columbia Pictures due to the title’s passing similarity with Dr Strangelove, it is the second longest-titled horror movie to Roger Corman’s Saga of the Viking Women and their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent.