implants—those aren’t your memories, they’re someone else’s—they’re tyrell’s niece’s (10. 427)

Courtesy of Super Punch, we learn that the publisher of the 1985 video game for Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum home computing systems loosely based on the 1982 film was unable to obtain a tie-in licensing deal and so declared that it was inspired by the Vangelis soundtrack instead—obliging players to listen to an unskippable opening sequence of two minutes of tinny, MIDI music. Gaming reviews were mostly unfavourable, calling it derivative of the hit adaption of Ghostbusters! from the year before.

colour-by-number (10. 426)

Among the first detailed satellite views of an extraterrestrial planet came in the form of telemetric data from the Mariner IV probe as it passed over the surface of Mars, but absent a technique to quickly encode and render that information as a picture—for a public eager to confirm or be disabused of the prospect of Little Green Men—mission engineers plotted the imaging data on a grid and buying a set of pastels from a nearby arts and crafts shop (told that their desired shaded chalk was for hardware stores), in preternaturally accurate tones of sienna, umber and buff, and filled in the landscape nearly instantaneously from the point of view of the awaiting, at-home audience—something we take for granted today. More to see from Kottke at the link above.

but my friends, they’re waiting in the lobby (10. 425)

Though no one can say quite sure why Dinner for One (previously), an eighteen minute British sketch from Lauri Wylie and starring comedians May Warden and Freddie Fronton recorded in 1962, has been made a Jahreswechsel broadcast and standard New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day television—perhaps owing to one of penultimate lines delivered by manservant James (posing as one of the no-show guests Mister Pommeroy) wishes Miss Sophie a Happy New Year, since New Year’s Eve 1972, it has been continuously aired, first by the Norddeutscher Rundfunk based in Hamburg, since attaining cult status with even Netflix producing a short remake of this obscure tradition with characters from their most popular series and a German film consortium planning a prequel mini-series—possibly a murder-mystery —for the end of 2023.

everything everywhere all at once (10. 424)

Via Miss Cellania, who refrained from posting their year-end list on cinema in hopes of including this annual movie mash-up, we are treated to this three part expertly edited remix of 2022 trailers and teasers set to a driving soundtrack all arranged rather beautifully by Sleepy Skunk which can best the theatre-going experience in some regards, particularly given how few we have ventured out to see this year.

quis? (10. 423)

Via TYWKIWDBI, we are directed towards a trio of general knowledge challenges, including the latest edition (see previously) of King William’s College Winter Break Quiz near the Manx Castletown plus a brief, one page puzzle from the intelligence service GCHQ that seems like one of those Last Starfighter type recruitment initiatives. Set since 1904 and no longer is the former sat formally by pupils since 1999, but is rather sent home for students and their families to ponder over the holidays. More details at the links above.

krig, kriser och klimatdebatten (10. 422)

Annually Språktidningen magazine in collaboration with the Swedish Language Council publishes a list (previously) of a few dozen choice neologisms that help define the year informed by war, crises and climate debates. Among the new terms selected for inclusion for 2022 are jury favourite epadunk—a musical general that references the “epatractors” that rural youths are able to drive on public at age sixteen and the sound systems that they need to devise in order to hear over the loud tractor motors—matfattigdom—that is, food poverty, munkmodell, living an ascetic lifestyle for the sake of the planet, klickkemi or click-chemistry for constructing complex molecules and individualised drug treatments from modular building blocks and some more that have entered common-parlance through the news and current events, like kamikazedrönare, Putinprise, Permakris and smygflation (a portmanteau for stealth inflation).

cccp/cpcp (10. 421)

While recognised as a union of soviet republics since 1919 with a federated, central government based in Moscow, the Soviet Union as it existed (though borders were not static during the seventy-two year period) until its dissolution in 1991 came into being effective this day in 1922 after the signing of the Treaty on the Creation of the Union Soviet Socialist Republics (Декларация и договор об образовании Союза Советских Социалистических Республик), negotiated and approved by delegations from the Russian, Byelorussian, Transcauscasian (containing Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia) and Ukrainian SSRs. The preamble and twenty-six articles outlines the imperative of forging a union as a counterweight to the political ideology of responsible for the Great War through exploitative capitalism, colonialism cultural hegemony with a transnational society based on mutual trust, solidarity and cooperation.

mcmlxxxix (10. 420)

By dint of the limited permutations of the Gregorian, civil calendar, we discover that we can helpfully recycle (see previously) our calendars from 2017 or 1989 for the upcoming 2023. Not to be dismissive of the events bookended six years ago, the political turning points of the latter with the fall of the Berlin Wall, Perestroika, the Velvet Revolution, the uprisings in Romania and China, as well as the gradual dismantling of the apartheid government in South Africa, the return of democratic norms to Brazil and Poland and the first internet service providers seem to bode as auspicious points of correspondence. Having lived through it, may we may live in exciting times.