wort des jahres (10. 374)

The Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache in Wiesbaden (previously) has announced its Word of the Year for 2022, Zeitenwende—the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, for among other things real and feared declines in German leadership and influence economically, in industry, armaments and Fußball and for the return to war in Europe, and other terms and neologisms in the running. Rounding out the top ten were: Krieg um Frieden—war for peace, Gaspreisbremse—price controls for utilities, Inflations-schmerz—inflation pains, Klimakleber—for the Last Generation protesters glueing themselves to artwork, Doppel-Wumms—a double-boon for the electro-auto tax credit in the US “Inflation Reduction Act” that skews heavily in favour of American manufacturing at the expense of other markets, neue Normalität, das 9-Euro-Ticket, Glühwein-WM—for the fact that the Qatari World Cup wasn’t held in July but rather during Weihnachtszeit, and lastly Waschlappentipps—that is, government-issued suggestions on energy conservation in the shower.

data dump (10. 373)

Although unashamedly US-centric, the just-published Year in Search retrospective from Google nonetheless yields some insights for this past year and our collective engagement with the news and trends. 

It seems that we were less interested in chasing memes and more focused on the news and an interesting feature (America only apparently) allows one to find popular search terms locally. There are several categories–plants, pets, people–of analytics to parse and contrast and the top ten searches (with apparent recency bias) worldwide were: 

• Wordle
• India vs England
• Ukraine
• Queen Elizabeth
• Ind vs SA
• World Cup
• India vs West Indies
• iPhone 14
• Jeffrey Dahmer
• Indian Premier League

The top news queries were: Ukraine, Queen Elizabeth’s passing, Election Results, Powerball Numbers and Monkeypox. More at the links above.

8x8 (10. 372)

low-poly: needlepoint designs based on vintage video games—see previously 

ghost mall: visiting a virtually abandoned yet very much open for business shopping centre in New Jersey 

zenosyne: from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (previously here and here)—that feeling that time is getting faster  

digichromatography: a survey of the seconds, the raw files, of Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky’s documentation of the Russian Empire is a study in the development of colour photography—see also  

the pandoravirus: the melting Siberian permafrost is reviving long dormant but viable germs  

q-zone: a racing timeline of the most popular social media from 2003 to the present  

살: South Korea will abandon traditional age-reckoning in favour of an international recognised counting method beginning next year 

akka-arrh: Atari reprises a 1982 arcade game that was never released commercially as it proved too challenging for test-audiences

we are programmed to receive (10. 371)

Released by the label Asylum on this day in 1976, the Eagles’ fifth studio album would go on over the years to become one of the highest ranked records of all time, certified twenty-six times Platinum in the US alone and selling over thirty-two million copies worldwide and within the year alone winning several Grammy awards and bested only by Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, the title track as well as “New Kid in Town” and “Life in the Fast Lane” receiving many accolades. The concept album features a throughline of songs, lyrics chiefly written by Don Henley with contributions from Glenn Frey, that explore ideals realised and thwarted and the loss of that sense of naiveté that things balance out in the end. Despite remarkable commercial success, the band’s best selling album remains Their Greatest Hits (1971 – 1975).

zol and gel (10. 370)

Via Waxy, we are directed to the collaborative handiwork of Dylan Black from Maximum Effort, Minimum Reward whose exercise in a reversal of sorts with an OpenAI chat model (previously and trained on such dialogue originally) on inventing a new agglutinative language with grammatical rules and then to translate it back into an actual language is really quite astounding in terms of demonstrating the recursive nature of communication and inflection. Building off a series of a few simple prompts, the artificial intelligence constructs Glorp, the language of slimes—which albeit a little like Huttese and perhaps lacking the sophistication of an evolved language—is nonetheless very impressive. Gloop slog sploma slurpi. See the entire learning process, generated vocabulary and methodology at the link about.

reichsbürger-razzia (10. 369)

Various media outlets (EN/DE) are reporting a nationwide raid—an anti-terrorism operation—of some one hundred and thirty properties across Germany carried out by thousands of police officers has netted twenty five individuals on charges of treason with as many more suspected of colluding to overthrow the government. Two ringleaders identified by prosecutors, in line with privacy rules as Heinrich XIII P R and Rüdiger v P, are among the arrested and are known champions of the Reichsbürger, sovereign citizen movement, a loose coalition of groups that rejects the legitimacy of the Bundesrepublik on the basis of their argument that the constitution in place prior to World War II was never properly nullified and the Basic Law has no authority, now mixed with an unhealthy dose of QAnon ideology. Primarily a tax-avoidance scheme and attended with fantasies in line with those of the Cosplay Caliphate, the organised groups were armed and had a plan, with portfolio and cabinet positions already designated for key members and were apparently already in negotiations with Moscow to establish diplomatic relations.

blue marble (10. 368)

Photographed by one of the crew, likely Harrison Schmitt or Gene Cernan but ever member took turns taking pictures with the Hasselblad camera, of the Apollo XVII mission on its way to the Moon from a distance of just under thirty thousand kilometers on this day in 1972. Backlit and slightly rounded—gibbous and hence the name—from the astronauts’ perspective and after Earthrise only the second whole planet image captured by a human photographer, the Blue Marble is among the most widely reproduced and circulated images in existence, it was received by the public at a moment of increased environmental activism and awareness and helped focus the movement by framing Earth’s uniqueness and vulnerability set against the endless expanse of space. Although recreated by satellite imagining, there have been no crewed excursions since that taken us high enough aloft—yet—to fit the entire planet in the view-finder.

yulehole (10. 367)

Via Language Hat, we are referred to a love letter to obscure and superannuated words—like the above that refers to the slacker notch in one’s belt that might be necessitated by the attendant feasting that goes along with the Festive Season—from Guardian contributor and logophile Paul Anthony Jones who offers a selection of Christmas-related terms like boun—that is, to dress with evergreen boughs, the snowballing effect of rolling across a field to accrue size is a hogamadog (also the name of a nascent snail shell that matures into something substantial), bull week, the period preceding the holiday and a time to sort out the rest of one’s business and particularly the Tudor-era term for a hangover, a barleyhood.