9x9 (10. 745)

speak-easy: the Chicago Sun-Times bought a bar in 1977, staffed with undercover reporters to investigate city government corruption—via Messy Nessy Chic  

mapbacks: Dell pulp mysteries back covers featuring crime scene schematics—via Things Magazine 

team delft: a hydrogen-powered bubble car is setting records  

löwenzahn: the linkages between dandelions and human history—see previously 

global town square: for Silicon Valley capitalists “bringing people together” is value-neutral 

no static at all: automakers removing AM radio, in part because electric engines can interfere with the reception—see more, see previously

a free-speech absolutist: Twitter acquiesced to a selective purdah just prior to the ballot in Türkiye—more here  

hey maga: Randy Rainbow savages Florida governor and presidential hopeful with “Welcome to DeSantis”—a parody of “Welcome to the Sixties” from Hairspray  

upworthy: the downfall of American reporting through clickbait and catchpenny tactics

it won’t be a stylish marriage—i can’t afford a carriage (10. 744)

Via Nag on the Lake, we are directed to demonstration arranged by Bell Labs researchers Carol Lackbaum, Lou Gerstman and John L Kelly Jr that taught a mainframe computer from IBM’s 7000 series to sing in 1961 and the resonance that that experiment has had, still echoed not only in pop culture but also in the legal and creative entanglements of today. Selecting “Daisy Bell” as a trial tune fairly anodyne (penned by Harry Dacre nearly eighty years earlier and safely in the public domain, inspired by an import tariff imposed on his bicycle) but catchy and technically challenging attempt to induce a synthetic song with vocals (here is Alan Turing’s first instrumental demonstration). The following year, Arthur C Clarke was treated to a private audience with the computer at Bell Labs and incorporated the milestone into 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the astronaut needs to deactivate HAL 9000 and as things are going dark for the artificial intelligence, it regresses to its earliest programming (performed by Douglas Rain in the cinematic adaptation) of singing “Daisy Bell.” More at the links above.

rerum novarum (10. 743)

Rejecting both socialism and unchecked capitalism, with support for private property as well upholding labour rights and the formation of unions, Pope Leo XIII (advocate for workers as well as a flask-carrying aficionado and spokesman for Vin Mariani) this day in 1891 issued the above encyclical—from its incipit (On Revolutionary Change in the World) with the subtitle Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour—which is considered a foundation text of Catholic social teaching and the movement for workers’ justice. Seeing socialist regimes as an encroachment on the church’s role of imparting morality, rather than an ideological system administered by the the state, Leo warned that the seizure of individual possessions and transferring ownership to the community failed to redress the plight of the working-classes and moreover mandating a contract between employees and employers, honest work for honest pay and a dignified livelihood that contributes to class harmony as well as enshrining that jobs be free from unsafe and immoral tasks endangering body soul, privileging the poor over those enjoying a large bounty of temporal blessings.

mama šč! (10. 742)

Having enjoyed all the performances from Eurovision Song Contest from Liverpool Saturday—we didn’t stay up late enough for the voting but saw the returns the next day—we appreciated this linguist insight into the penultimate entry from Croatia’s Let 3 (Flight Three, known for their progressive, sometimes subversive performances and lyrics) whose consonant collision can be understood as a reference to the Cyrillic letter щ (pronounced in Russian like the -sh in Welsh-sheep and in Ukrainian like cash-chest—see previously) and has ostensibly an anti-war message, narrowly edging out the other national favourite that had an even clearer rebuke against Vladimir Putin, keeping within Eurovision guidelines against overt politics. The digram means nothing in itself in Croatian, though as band members explain it could signify a moan of pleasure, a blood type or a mediative mantra. More from Language Log (including a video clip of the number) at the link above.

hey erete (10. 741)

Via thm, we enjoyed exploring this list—some familiar, some forgotten and others new to us—of Ancient Greek terms that should be reintroduced into common-parlance and we’d all experience εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia—that is, human flourishing and the highest common good) for re-incorporating these virtues in social-circles. Phronesis (φρόνησῐς) as prudence, the practical application of sound judgment and experience and aidos (Αἰδώς)—the antidote to the more commonplace hubris in this goddess of shame, modesty and humility, this personification of a trait, a daughter of the titan Prometheus and was the last to depart Earth at the end of the Golden Age and the middle way to avoid the extremes of pride and timidity. Case in point, the article also includes the etymology and pathology of particularly vexing ailment called homesickness, diagnosed and coined in the seventeenth century by a Swiss medical student to describe the separation anxieties that mercenary countrymen were experiencing (it becoming so grave that a temporary stay was put on cowbells and other sounds that would remind conscripts in foreign lands of home, triggering the condition) from the Homeric trope for nautical homecoming fraught with challenge and temptation, nostos—νόστος, from the Odyssey, and giving us the condition of nostalgia. Much more at the links above.

ascraeus chasmata (10. 740)

Although less well known than Olympus Mons, the largest known volcano in the Solar System (at least by some measures), there are other enormous shield formations on the Red Planet, including the 18 kilometre high Ascraeus Mons—named in 1973 for the rustic birthplace of Greek poet Hesiod, which has yielded recently some rather amazing imagery of its terrain to Mars Express of “sinuous rilles,” features thought to be collapsed lava tubes. Not only towering by terrestrial standards, the gently sloping flanks cover a huge area, a footprint roughly the size of Romania or the state of Arizona. More from Universe Today at the link above.

be acceptable in thy sight here tonight (10. 739)

Beginning a five-week run at the top of the UK singles charts on this day in 1978, Boney M’s (previously) cover of The Melodians’s song “Rivers of Babylon” with B-side “Brown Girl in the Ring,” composed originally by the Jamaican reggae group, it is taken from Psalms 19 and 137 (one of a handful of best-sellers taken directly from the Bible, along with Pete Seeger’s and the Byrds’ “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and U2’s 40 (“How long must I Sing this Song?”—Expectans expectavi Dominum) as an allegory of oppression against members of the Rastafarian faith, though the Kingston government banned it from the airwaves as potentially subversive anyway. From their third studio album Nightflight to Venus, both—the latter based on a traditional Caribbean nursery rhyme—propelled the eurodisco group to fame worldwide. The below performance is from 1979’s Sopot Festival:

sancta maria ad martyres (10. 738)

Gifted to Pope Boniface IV by Byzantine Emperor Phocas and rededicated as a Christian basilica in honour of St Mary and the Martyrs on this day in 609, the ancient Rome temple, built half a millennia earlier by Hadrian and commissioned to replace an earlier structure that had burnt down during the reign of Marcus Agrippa (hence the inscription, M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT, “son of Lucius made [me] during his third term as consul,” is unique for its rotunda and oculus skylight (telling the time like a sun-dial but with light instead of shadow) and counted among the best preserved works of Roman architecture by dint of its continuous use. Though probably not a shrine sacred to the every deity since it was prescribed that temples should be devoted to a single god or goddess lest a single building be struck by lighting or be otherwise desecrated and probably a popular nickname for the many statues that lined the portico or for the vaulted ceiling that opened up to the heavens. In order to dispel pagan demon worship and sanctify the space, twenty-eight cartloads of remains—said to be Christians put to death during the Diocletian Persecution—were brought up from the catacombs and reinterred in a porphyry tomb beneath the altar and stripped the interior of its decoration, shipping the ornaments off to Constantinople. Used also as a final resting place for members of the House of Savoy, the interior niches have been richly decorated over the centuries and structurally is one of the most architecturally influential buildings, typifying the neo-classic style and echoed in many government buildings and public institutions.