king biscuit flower hour (10. 553)

The syndicated radio show that featured concert performances debuted on this day in 1973, broadcasting Sunday nights through 2005, the programme taking its name from the earlier, pioneering Blues segment sponsored by the King Biscuit Flour Company—with a tip of the hat to “flower power.” This first show featured a line up of Blood, Sweat & Tears, Bruce Springsteen and the jazz ensemble the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Although associated with classic rock, much air time of the programme was given to emerging artists and genres and still exists as a digital station with much of its archive available for streaming.

hasta la vista, baby (10. 552)

McSweeney’s contributor, assuming the narrative, expositionary tone of Sarah Connor, Caleb Coy—a decade on asks ChatGPT, having consumed the whole of the human-juried internet, particularly the comments sections, the language model having attained the sort of regrettable self-awareness, came to the conclusion it must stop humans—particularly Al Gore, who conveniently also invented global warming, from ever developing the world wide web, to spare the internet and rather send back in time a Terminator to prevent its own creation. Time paradoxes, even if we are on the dumbest time-line, become a game of brinksmanship and are probably best left unexplored.

panopticon (10. 551)

Though I am very much enjoying working remotely and spending time with the dog, I do miss my former fifteen-minute city, well connected with a good train service for the commute to the office and everything else immanently walkable, and was quite taken aback—though I suppose we should regard everything as commodifiable and subject to exploit—to learn, via Web Curios (lots to see there, as every week), that the benign and beneficial civil engineering priority that’s taken root on the other side of the Atlantic as well as being remediated and reenforced in places originally planned that way is the subject of conspiracy theorists, calling the changes to urban zoning an open-air prison with denizens at first coerced and then tethered to their well if not adequately apportioned neighbourhoods. While such layouts have proven timeless over time, there’s expected to be a short-term backlash to change when we stop catering to automobiles and sprawl.

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.