8x8 (10. 550)

§230: US Supreme Court reconsidering foundational regulations and their application to algorithmic recommendations  

pole position: researchers propose adding a fourth white light to traffic signals for self-driving vehicles—via Kottke  

the master of the countess of warwick:unveiling the artist responsible for this Tudor-era aesthetic 

ƛcdm: massive blackholes might be the source of the mysterious dark energy that causes the Cosmos to expand 

side hustle: professional comedians are increasingly turning to babysitting to supplement incomes, find source material—via TYWKIWDBI  

leviathan: in search of the giants of the deep 

future tense: the wow list of architectural wonders—including the City—for 2023, via digg 

samuel alito’s mom’s satanic abortion clinic: facility, named in honour of the woman who birthed the justice whose opinion overturned Roe v Wade, is the first based on religious principles

antechamber (10. 549)

The entrance discovered the previous November with little countenance of what lie beneath, on this day in 1923 with twenty invited witnesses, including the expedition sponsor George Herbert, the archaeological team of Howard Carter broke the seal to the inner chamber of the Tomb of Tutankhamun—being the first to see the treasures and golden sarcophagus of the pharaoh in over three millennia. Ten days later to spare his excavators from toil in the heat of the harsh summer and resume work in Autumn, Carter arranged to have the doorway blocked by tonnes of sand and rubble. This reburial corresponded with reporting from The New York Times that some two hundred and fifty American tourist, including a congressional delegation had boarded the ocean liner S S Adriatic, bound for Luxor to visit the tomb.

tonight on amerika (10. 548)

As our faithful chronicler informs, the miniseries starring Mariel Hemingway, Sam Neill and Kris Kristofferson about the US after a bloodless coup engineered by the Soviet Union (set a decade on) was first broadcast on this day in 1987 over the course of a week—see also here and here. Implicated that America and other client states succumbed to Soviet control following an electromagnetic pulse weapon that destroyed the power grid and economic independence by targeting emerging reliance on computers, the show that inspired an even more patriotic novelisation was characterised both as hawkish hysteria and alternately as an indictment of the UN as an instrument of a one world government and damaging to relations recently improved under Glasnost. Highly divisive, Moscow threatened to close network ABC’s Russia news bureau over its airing and in response (and I remember watching this) The Discovery Channel ran sixty-six hours of counter-programming of Soviet television, including live shows.

luftangriffe auf dresden (10. 547)

Beginning late the night before with the RAF and continuing through the next two days with an additional five hundred twenty seven United States Air Force heavy bombers, the joint aerial attack on Dresden (see previously, see also) on this day in 1945 destroyed ninety percent of the city and killed an estimated twenty-five thousand with many thousands more made homeless in a place host to refugees fleeing the advancing Red Army. Regarded as punitive and with little strategic value at this point in the war, over four thousand tonnes of explosives and incendiary devices caused a fire storm that enveloped the city centre. The landmark Baroque Frauenkirche had seemed to miraculously survive the raids but imploded a few days later from heat stress—though long enough to protect the three hundred who sheltered there and was reconstructed and reconsecrated in 2005 using 3D technology and analysing historic photographs and collected rubble.

web mentions (10. 546)

A fun little invitation to explore that I wish that I had built my blog to do—besides the sidebar—is this randomising redirector from the vast archives curated by Joe Jenett, all seemingly well-maintained a showing signs of little link rot if not a bit of abandonment and moving on from this project for the nonce. Give it a click and you might discover this active Weird Wide Webring or might be tasked with cooling off this lion. Let us know what you find.

supporting role (10. 545)

An internal memo at Paramount studios from 1987, just months before the second instalment of the franchise premiered, has recently been making the rounds on the rounds on the internet regarding casting for Star Trek: The Next Generation, which Bob Canada explores in detail. A few of these alternatives and understudies we had heard about—like Yaphet Kotto for Captain Picard or Bunty Bailey for Tasha Yar, but the majority were surprising to us and would have made for a very different reboot and could have possibly been the end of the continuing voyages.

time and relative dimension in space (10. 544)

Via our fellow peripatetic Marco McClean’s Memo of the Air, we are directed a gallery of our favourite Gallifreyan’s preferred mode of conveyance (see previously) and its interior changes over the seasons—due to a broken chameleon circuit, the exterior appearance was fixed on a 1929 Mackenzie Trench style police callbox. The iconic Roundels were always a part of the console room and decor throughout and covered wiring boards.

内卷 (10. 543)

Via Clive Thompson’s latest Linkfest (much more to see there), we are directed to an essay by rëşt ôf wŏrld contributor Yi-Ling Liu on the Chinese terms for burnout and the relentless push to get ahead—or just barely tread water with an assortment of phrases, some familiar and some novel—and how some of those buzzwords have inverted and signal despair rather than aspiration. We’d add the corollary shàng àn (making it ashore—getting a stable government position) to “jumping into the sea” and we’ve heard of the minor revolts of lying flat or letting it rot (with their analogues in the West quiet quitting, work-to-rule, Sciopero Bianco or generally a slowdown action) but the title term neijuan or “involution” was new to us as well. A loanword from an outdated treatise—which may have been a bit of political sublimation and apologetic for colonialism—that conjectures that agrarian societies, pointedly rice-growing ones, fail in achieving technological or political change because of intensive farming and increased pressures, externally and internally, to maintain this high yield with class structures meant to re-enforce that quota. Its original sense has been incrementally extended as a critique of income disparity—number two in the number of billionaires but also home to six hundred million others who subsist off less than $150 per month and of an exhaustive and overly-competitive work culture. The pictured, harried student of Tsing Hua University balancing his laptop on the handle bars of his bicycle has been adopted by the ‘Involuted Generation’ as their king.