8x8 (10. 820)

north american aerospace defence command: cache of Cold War era briefings and slide show presentations scanned and shared on the Internet Archive—via Super Punch  

yellowhammer: Alabama enshrines an official state cookie  

clipart: AI generated images disrupting the portfolio of stock photos that helped create it 

playlist: fish music may help revitalise coral reefs  

lui, sait juste ken: a clever double-entendre in French ad-copy for the Barbie movie 

the killer rabbit caerbannog: more on the trope of deadly bunnies in medieval manuscripts—see previously  

apple core: computer giant taking on venerable Swiss Fruit Union, other in a trademark dispute—via Slashdot  

sci-fi edition: Poseidon’s Underworld reviews a 1979 issue of Starlog

come up to the lab and see what’s on the slab (10. 819)

Preview performances given at a couple of other venues earlier in the week, the B-movie, schlock horror musical—see previously—by Richard O’Brien opened on this day in 1973 in the experimental space, “upstairs,” at the Royal Court Theatre in Chelsea, under the direction of Jim Sharman, renowned stage producer for his earlier work on Jesus Christ Superstar and Hair. The show ran for seven years, approaching three thousand performances, and the original cast whom crossed over into the 1975 cinematic adaptation included the starring roles of Tim Curry as Dr Frank N Furter, Patricia Quinn as Magenta the Usherette and O’Brien himself as Riff Raff.

synchronoptic 

one year ago: Juneteenth, assorted links worth revisiting, Saints Gervasius and Protasius plus an early home office set-up 

two years ago: rendered realities plus generated fabric patterns

three years ago: ecclesiastical courts, more dazzle camouflage, Trump censored for his social media posts plus a queen bee’s performance
 
 

fortune cookie (10. 818)

Originally launched under the title “Content Targeted Advertising” a few months earlier with the name AdSense used by competing service Applied Semantics, Google’s acquisition rolled out its programme to within network website publishers and content creators on this day in 2003, eventually replacing GoogleAds and DoubleClick. It is the company’s biggest revenue generator and serves advertisements on over thirty-eight million websites in addition to its own search engine.

human computer (10. 817)

Despite a posthumous and four-decade late official acknowledgement by the world records authority, Shakuntala Devi (ಶಕುಂತಲಾ ದೇವಿ), nonetheless a celebrated author, mental calculator, political opponent to Indira Ganhdi in parliamentary elections after her prime-ministership and astrologer—without any formal education (though born into the Brahmin caste her father was a circus performer, a trapeze artist and lion tamer before taking his prodigious daughter on tour), achieved her record setting calculation on this day in 1980 at Imperial College, London, multiplying two randomly-generated thirteen digit numbers in under half-a-minute, rivalling the processing times of contemporary computers. In addition to authoring several books on arithmetic to teach people some of her methods for simplifying and intuiting solutions, including Figuring: The Joy of Numbers, Devi also wrote several cookbooks, crime novels and a rather controversial though suppressed and not widely and first study on homosexuality in India (which possibly delayed recognition by Guinness), written in order to understand her gay husband and to better understand the community.

8x8 (10, 816)

picassa: Google is sunsetting Album Archive—which could possibly affect Blogger blogs—but no one seems to know for sure—see more  

eames institute of infinite curiosity: exhibit honours design duo’s (previously) relationship with Saul Steinberg  

select the photos of clouds that would make me stand out on the lawn and watch for storms—and we definitely need a good storm soon: reCAPTCHAs as written by your father

cronuts: a protest poster with some cannibalistic syncretism and linguistic confusion  

boo berry: a look at the history of America monster breakfast cereals—see previously

eesti nukud: a 1982 stop-motion animation about a baker and a chimneysweep switching roles—with some banging flute rock  

maximalism: a tour of Barbie’s Dream Home—more on the aesthetic here  

bad karma: Reddit communities going dark in protest and forced to reopen—in the funniest possible ways

extended character set (10. 815)

Having previously demonstrated AI’s understanding of ASCII art, Janelle Shane presents the future of emojis, first requesting an expanded menagerie of animojis then a further interaction of frequently used ones, according to the keyboard (I tried with my own results—in the upper left quadrant with this kind of degraded quality but one could still find meaning in a Rorschach test sort of way.

Shane had more success asking to extend the families of smileys, libations and arrows—see also. Give it a try and let us know what you come up with? 

synchronoptic

one year ago: passive and reversible geo-engineering to shade an over-heated planet, Yello (1983), 1980s-style reimagined corporate logos plus peacock butterflies

two years ago: assorted links to revisit plus one dimensional chess 

three years ago: visiting every property on the London version of Monopoly, the Appeal of June 18 (1940) plus more Sesame Street interstitials

sliver bullet (10. 814)

On this day in 1983, husband and wife team of paranormal investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren, performed the exorcism of a “werewolf demon”—Edward, a self-taught demonologist and Lorraine a professed medium and clairvoyant were involved in a number of high profile hauntings and founded the New England Society for Psychic Research, one of the most venerable institutions of its kind, and their cases were the inspiration for the Amityville Horror and Conjuring franchises.During a book-tour of England, they encountered the tragic predicament of Southend-on-Sea community bedevilled by the undiagnosed seizures of one William Ramsey, thought to be a case of lycanthropy for the blackouts and preternatural feats of strength and arranged to have him brought to Connecticut for treatment.

drag race (10. 813)

Spotted earlier and thought even for corporate inclusively and arguably once-a-year rainbow washing it was too good not pass up, especially considering the frothing assault directed towards other companies for their Pride Month campaigns—but learned that this promotion was from last summer. Though apparently more subdued (we can’t recall the furore), it wasn’t received with out controversy from dismissal to outrage and without explicitly addressing the contemporary developments, the outreach was believed to prompted by inviting the governor Greg Abbott to officiate pre-race rituals and waving the the green starter flag for the All-Star Rally at the Texas Motor Speedway just following his announcement directly state agencies to investigate gender-affirming therapies for transgender individuals, a decision which NASCAR later recanted. Still an ongoing and escalating attack, I hope they’re launching a bigger one this year.

synchronoptic 

one year ago: the continuing voyages of Star Trek: The Animated Series, the Watergate Break-In (1972), plus assorted links worth revisiting 

two years ago: Iceland makes it easier to change one’s matronymic, patronymic and gender markers, the introduction of ASCII (1963), Sons of Kemet, plus calendar conventions

three years ago: the East German Uprising of 1953, the US judiciary’s agenda against LGBTQ+ individuals, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1953), plus a Prayer for Relief