projekt panropa (10. 378)

Having previously been acquainted with the monumental madness by Bauhaus, utopian architect Hermann Sörgel and his plans to dam and drain the sea to make one vast arable expanse from southern Europe through north Africa, we were quite pleased to come across this illustrated 1929 pamphlet “Lowering the Mediterranean / Irrigating the Sahara,” (Mittelmeer-Senkung. Sahara-Bewässerung) which in all fairness didn’t call for its total emptying, just enough to harness it for hydroelectric power and diminution enough to rename it after his project and promote a nascent transatlanticism to counter a perceived ascendant Asia. Of course, this titanic engineering project never left the drawing board but it nonetheless gives pause to contemplate the ideas that we do end up running with and how those inform our accomplished present trajectories. More at the links above.

unfccc (10. 377)

Adopted on this day twenty-five years ago with a nearly eight year period for signatory states to curb greenhouse emissions, the Kyoto Protocol—an extension of the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change, which first acknowledges anthropogenic climate change and sets forth a legally-binding plan to mitigate the seven most damaging industrial and agricultural gases and reduce concentrations down to a level that would no longer interfere with natural, prevailing weather systems. Further recognising that individual parties have different capabilities in the front of combating climate change, the treaty informs a common goal but with graduated responsibilities. The protocol was superseded by the Paris Agreement in 2015 after years of annual renegotiations and richer companies resorting to carbon-offsets (see also) rather than genuine progress.

7x7 (10. 376)

symphony № 9 boogie: a one hundred and seventy piece orchestra plays Beethoven on the Matryomin—a theremin inside a Russian nesting doll 

psychopomp: Santa Claus has origins as a magic-mushroom dispensing Sami shaman—see previously

 

your yolo years: Pinterest Predicts for 2023 with their not-yet-trending report—via The Curious Brain 

747: after fifty-four years, the final production model of the Boeing aircraft leaves the factory  

cancel couture: at just under a thousand dollars and designed to filter out noise and air pollution, the Dyson Zone is perfect for the misanthrope on your Christmas list 

dumpster fire: marginal Democrat now declared independent as trash receptacles—via The Everlasting Blört 

dearmoon: billionaire selects eight artists for first voyage around Earth’s satellite aboard private orbiter

fantasy films (10. 375)

Via Web Curios, we are directed to curated selection of more AI film stills—projects where cinema buffs working with Midjourney and Stable Diffusion labs ask their collaborators to especially conjure up The Little Mermaid but directed by Michael Mann. This montage takes us behind the scenes as well as imagining Star Wars, the Star Killer Dynasty through the filters of Fritz Lang and Stanley Kubrick. Much more, including the expanded concept treatments, at the links above.

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).