zero-shot text to speech synthesis (10. 455)

Via Waxy, we are introduced frighteningly adept AI protocol from Microsoft called VALL·E that can extrapolate and convincingly simulate, imitate any voice with a sample of just a few seconds of audio. The underpinning code is not being published as an acknowledgement of its potential for misuse but there is a demonstration reel of its abilities that’s pretty amazing and are tuned for diversity, emotional maintenance and environment. Eleven benevolent elephants for your elocution.

a very rich lotterie generall, without any blankes (10. 454)

Officially chartered by Queen Elizabeth I three years prior as the earliest recognised state lottery notwithstanding earlier experiments with drawings and raffles to raise funds, as our faithful chronicler informs, the first drawing for the jackpot occurred on this day in 1569, designed to raise money for the “reparation of the haves and strength of the Realm, and towardes such other publique good workes.” At ten shillings a piece, the four-hundred thousand tickets issued—some three weeks wages for the ordinary subject and pricing most out of the competition—were essential an interest free loan for the government with the grand prize, a combination of fiat tender and valuable fineries such as silver and tapestries, assessed at around £5 000. The winner was also entitled to granted immunity from one arrest—a get out-of-jail free card, provided that the crime was not piracy, murder, felonious or treasonous. State lotteries in England ran through 1826, folding under pressure from parliamentary opposition and public ridicule for dignifying such speculative pursuits.

דצ״ך

A recent observation and question posted to Language Log brings us back to the cinematic experience of Vincent Price in his title role as The Abominable Dr Phibes who fiendish dispatches his victims and exacts revenge inspired by the biblical plagues visited upon Egypt to persuade the Pharaoh to let Moses and his people go. Phibes refers to the series of calamities by the term G’Tach, whose meaning appears illusive but is shown to be an abbreviation (indicated by the " sign), a mnemonic device to recall the order of water turning to blood, frogs, lice, hail, locusts, etc. formed by its initial and broken into three groups. More at the links above.

6x6 (10. 452)

picket lines: Sunak’s cabinet to implement anti-strike laws to enforce basic services during stoppages  

⭕️ 💯: draw a perfect circle   

camera obscura: the fantastic, “historical” photography apparatuses of Mathieu Stern

all maps at once: interesting and interactive cartographical overlays with the open-source viewing standard  

murphy desk: the flow wall workspace designed by Robert van Embricqs 

this is the sound of a gavel: a litany of concessions in exchange for the House Speakership

strange days indeed (10. 451)

Released posthumously as a single with video accompaniment from the album Milk and Honey by Yoko Ono and John Lennon on this day in 1984, the lyrics reference the poem The Green Eye of the Yellow God by J Milton Hayes, There’s a One-Eyed Yellow Idol to the north of Kathmandu, and are an inversion of the adage, “Mother said they’d be days like these.” Most peculiar Mama.

word of the day: gongoozler (10. 450)

Ostensibly from canal workers’ jargon to describe an observer watching the narrowboats ply by—from the Lincolnshire dialectical terms for gaping and staring, and interesting as its etymology is completely removed from gondolier, it’s now used as a gently chiding, reflexive way to describe such practitioners (see also) and their pastime—and by extension, any sort of keen spectating without appreciable contribution.

praça dos três poderes (10. 449)

Despite concession by the defeated far-right former high office holder Jair Bolsonaro and the lapse of more than a week since the election, there are yet grim echoes in the storming of the presidential palace, congress and the supreme court in Brasília of the Washington January Sixth insurrection just over two years ago by thousands of his backers, spurred to action in part by relentless rumour-mongering of voter-fraud, against president Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva. Security forces rebuffed the invasion and called for the extradition of Bolsonaro—who has been granted refuge in Florida.

breaking bread (10. 448)

Published in 1903 with the express purpose of linking bakery and laboratory and advocate for the miller the downstream supply-chain, Owen Simmons, FCS (Fellow of the Chemical Society) ensures that the science that goes into loaves and biscuits is not taken for granted with the rather costly tribute in the form of one of the first photobooks—a deluxe edition that spared no expense in detailing and documenting the fusion of techniques, with exacting instructions, to make the perfect slice. More from Public Domain Review at the link above.