iţkuîl (11. 004)

Via Futility Closet we learn about the experimental constructed language proposed by linguist John Quijada in 2004 not for common-parlance but rather as an auxiliary language and a systematic approach to reduce the ambiguities of everyday speech and present, convey a logical set of instructions, mark-up protocols for situations calling for precise and succinct statements—for instance, politics, science and philosophy. Highly inflected and suggesting mental processing at a gallop or at least forethought prior to speaking: the two-unit sentence “tram-mļöi hhâsmařpţuktôx” means in English “On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point.” The pictured script (boustrophedonic if the samples went on to the next line), illustrating in three word-units the possibility of semantic sense rather than organic development, warns to “Be careful, your fork is actually a fennec.” Since 2006, the inventor Quijada has released several progressive rock compositions in Ithkuil, though music seems to us the most forgiving means of expression and relying on entendre and allegory.

webring (11. 003)

Via the always worthwhile Web Curios weekly roundup, we are directed toward this curation of the Small Web in this directory-assistance project from search-engine Kagi that brings back the serendipity of twenty years ago of advancing to the next blog post—see previously here and here. One could really spend hours of exploration here.  Open-source (so one can replicate the feed and make one’s own) and taking nominations, it’s a better way to get back to the roots of the larger project of the internet and getting to know one’s neighbours.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: the Mexican War of Independence, The Hounds of Love (1985) plus assorted links to revisit 

two years ago: the founding of Harvard, a wild orchid plus a Wikipedia digest

three years ago: narrative yoga not just for kids, a comparison of sci-fi worms plus the beginnings of Big Data

four years ago: fleeing East Germany by balloon (1979),  the Montreal Convention to eliminate CFCs (1987), RIP Ric Osasek plus more Brexit omnishambles

five years ago: culling social studies curriculum, the untrodden path plus repurposing an Italian protest anthem

9x9 (11. 002)

you deserve to sit: a comedian’s silly song about their favourite inactivity  

😸: visit a random feline friend featured on Wikipedia—via Pasa Bon!  

& let it stonde .1. nyght or .2.: a medieval recipe for mead  

montage: the animated collages of Alice Issac  

shrinkflation: a French supermarket chain displaying advisory labels to alert consumers 

word alienation and semantic satiation: one of the laureates of the thirty-third Ig Noble Awards—see also here and here  

consult our extensive archives: veteran broadcaster—and BBC’s first podcaster, Melvyn Bragg celebrates one thousand episodes  

pagliacci: a pizza chef turns melodramatic over a cursed request

synchronoptica 

one year ago: Our Lady of Sorrows plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: forest mascots (1971) plus a Star Trek: TAS classic

three years ago: more Trek with “Amok Time,” illustrations from the children of Charles Darwin, rousing public sentiment following the Gunpowder Plot, life signs on Venus plus a COVID movie-night

four years ago: more on Jupiter’s moons, a hot Colonel Sanders, public crucifixes, Lovecraft in the style of Dr Seuss plus Graphis Press

five years ago: an AI names apples, the Ig Noble Awards, the Great Recession’s Lost Decade plus legalising marijuana confounded by travel regulations

motion to vacate (11. 001)

In the face of another US government shutdown over perceived cultural agendas, vacant military leadership roles by a single senator opposed to the armed forces providing reproductive care to service members and diminished deadlines over internecine posturing with bald majority of only a few party members, the beleaguered Speaker of the House whose appointment was conditional and easily unseated is making further concessions and pandering to the malcontents by pursuing an impeachment inquiry into the Biden administration, couching his justification in the belief that the president mislead the public about his family’s foreign business relations, with tinny and circumstantial echoes of the self-dealing of the Trump crime family syndicate. 

Conservative elements in the Republican Party want to oust McCarthy as leader for negotiating with Biden over the debt ceiling standoff and now the same group a threatening to force a government shutdown, unless a formal impeachment inquiry is launched—the GOP having wanted to eject Biden on any pretext since the election with the attack on the Capitol and the false narrative accompanying the vote, spurious lawsuits, the withdrawal from Afghanistan—which his predecessor also instigated, Biden’s handling of the immigration crisis but are now turning to old developments over unsubstantiated allegations that the president’s son used his father’s influence and position to secure wealth for himself (Trump was impeached the first time for badgering the Ukrainian president for dirt on Biden and his son, threatening to withhold military aid if Zelenskyy could not produce) to build a case, brought unilaterally by the Speaker himself since there are not the votes in support to bring the motion to the chamber.

storm daniel (11. 000)

First affecting Greece and Turkey with massive floods before reorganising itself as a low front over the Mediterranean and overwhelming dams and causing a catastrophic breach in the Lebanese port city of Derna, the cyclone forming in the Ionian sea has proved the deadliest and most expensive event of the year, only just now dissipating with tens of thousands of casualties and exponentially more displaced. A quarter of the the ancient city was washed away with entire neighbourhoods unaccounted for, seeming carried to the sea. The unconscionable scale of the disaster is attributed in part of years of neglected infrastructure maintenance under the regime of of Muammar Gaddafi followed by civil war but the extreme weather is also on account of the effects of runaway climate change.

synchronoptica

one year ago: The Waltons (1972), spreading seeds plus an AI illustrated Bible

two years ago: assorted links to revisit plus rice harvest art

three years ago: one of the first laws enshrining freedom of the press (1770), explaining the year 2020 to someone from the past plus music to move by

four years ago: seeing the tarnish of the golden era plus RIP Eddie Money

five years ago: Trump downplays deaths in Hurricane Maria, a new Russian cathedral, Jimmy Carter Says Yes, more on calendar reforms plus Trump’s campaign manager in court

sacred stuggle (11. 000)

Arriving his private armoured train over the sliver of a shared border between Russian and North Korea, Kim Jong Un (whom rarely leaves the country) with Vladimir Putin at the Vostochy cosmodrome to tour the facilities and discuss a weapons deal, occasioned by Russia running a deficit on munition shells due to the protracted invasion of Ukraine and turning to the heavily stockpiled peninsula dating from the Cold War, reportedly offering in exchange to the isolated and destitute nation food aid and expertise in developing reconnaissance satellites in furtherance of the developing atomic weapons programme. Though once opposed to allowing unstable neighbours going nuclear and participating in sanctions against North Korea for its pursuit, Russia now seems willing—as with its cache of drones from Iran, to take these risks including the possibility of selling on technologies to arms-dealers even less allied and a bipolar geopolitical landscape with the West on one side and Russia’s sphere of tenuous influence. Kim reaffirmed his support for “to defend its state sovereignty and protect its security” echoing rhetoric used to justify invading Ukraine and Putin graciously accepted his counterpart’s invitation for a state visit.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: the Poet Laureate’s tribute to the Queen, the Beatles’ Apple Electronics venture plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: your daily demon: Marchosias, more links to enjoy, the first teenage all music and dance show plus the release of Super Mario Brothers (1985)

three years ago: dissecting the original COVID hotspot, more on radio alphabets, The Stand, the stately manor that inspired Wuthering Heights plus St Venerius

four years ago: more links to enjoy

five years ago: willpower and endurance, more on the monomyth plus an ad-filled rocking chair

it creeps and leaps, and glides and slides across the floor (10. 999)

Released in US theatres on this day in 1958 and billed as a double feature with the less memorable I Married a Monster from Outer Space, the science fiction horror film introducing Steve McQueen in his first leading role is premised on an amoeba like alien that arrives in a small Pennsylvania community via meteorite, growing larger as it incorporates living matter. Unable to kill the creature, they discover that chill paralyses it and rendering locomotion with pseudopodia impossible and the frozen Blob is airlifted to the North Pole—with the ominous pronouncement that they can stop the terror but not kill it, “as long as the Arctic stays cold.”

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Chaos Computer Club (1981), medieval dog names plus the beach photos of Philip Barlow

two years ago: the Battle of Marathon, a sudden revelation plus more nearby abandoned places

three years ago: doom loops, traffic planning and civil engineering, Lascaux Cave rediscovered, flights to nowhere plus the invention of the written word

four years ago: Bonanza (1959) plus the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (1990)

galvanic response (10. 998)

Via the New Shelton wet/dry, we learn that from 1950 to 1973 the Canadian civil service, to include the Mounties and the armed forces, amid the general moral panic applied to different lifestyles and the notion (reenforced by social pressures to hide one’s identity) that gay men were susceptible to honey-pot operations and recruitment by Marxist espionage utilised a device called the “fruit machine”—a pejorative yet re-appropriated term—to screen out homosexual candidates and eliminate government workers (see also). Test subjects were sat in a dentist’s chair and made to view a series of pictures, ostensibly to rate stressors, but from the pedestrian to the pornographic gauged pupillary (eye dilation) to other involuntary responses as a proxy for erotic thoughts with a deeply flawed set of assumptions that potentially (funding was withdrawn in the late 1960s but the technique was still employed) cost up to nine-thousand individuals their careers.