🍜 (11. 009)

In the recently established tradition of Rotating Sandwiches (previously here and here), we discover RamenHaus, the home of spinning bowls of noodles by Ole Reißmann, documented, enjoyed and animated—nothing more, nothing less. We can appreciate this sort of truth in advertising.

synchronoptica

one year ago: covering the Queen’s funeral,  cats stealing food in still lifes plus a singular Cyrillic glyph

two years ago: Fawlty Towers, a vintage flash comic, a collection of mixology guides, Ötzi discovered (1991) plus a Soviet Moon mission

three years ago: a warning label for explicit lyrics plus RIP RBG

four years ago: the art of knolling, the music of Eisbær plus reducing plastic waste in fast food take-aways

five years ago: a Hieronymus Bosch demonic fowl on the subway, guillotine earrings,  proto emoticons, more Universal Everything plus the Cassandra Syndrome

faithless electors (11. 008)

Limning an outcome quite possibly even more fraught than the mandate of a decisive Trump victory in 2024 in terms of undermining the credulity in American democracy, we learn about the mechanism called a contingent election activated—and already clearly in the ballot calculus unpalatable to a broad majority of the public—when no candidate can claim the threshold (two hundred-seventy out of five hundred thirty-eight) of Electoral College appointees—either through numerical losses or contested results. Congress, with each state delegation voting together—one could only imagine how a consensus is reached, votes for the president with senators individually casting their ballots for vice-president, reflecting a convention when there was not always a party ticket and those officers were often antagonistic rather than aligned. Historically these special elections have been invoked three times in the early nineteenth century—once for a tie, once for a ballot split between four candidates and once—for the office of vice president where electors refused to endorse the nominee against the popular and electoral results and force the House to decide. Though a century after the fact in the case of the last such special election, inauguration and congressional term dates were shifted in 1933 to avoid giving outgoing members this franchise and rather leaving in to the incoming legislative.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a photo from Voyager I that puts everything in perspective, St Joseph of Cupertino, photographer Harold Feinstein plus triangulating Instagram

two years ago: your daily demon: Stolas,  anthrax in the mail, arcade animations, more on Wikipedia edit-wars plus post-Brexit UK planning to return to Imperial Measurements

three years ago: vaporware and its antecedents, “producing geese,” “without worries,” the Interkosmos Group plus AI tries to create a universal and enduring warning for the ages

four years ago: US congress debates abolishing the Electoral College, taboos surrounding talking about death, Germany Calling! plus flight-shaming and train-bragging

five years ago: keep-sakes,  assorted links to revisit plus a hydrogen powered locomotive

7x7 (11. 007)

spiral town: AI artistry with geometric patterned medieval villages captivate the internet—via Waxy 

the fabric of civilisation: the fascinating history of sericulture—see previously here and here  

🫠: an informal survey reveals men think about Ancient Rome daily, sometimes to the surprise of their partners 

magic screen: a look at the creative crew behind Pee-wee’s Playhouse 

lennon 2499: hunting down the artist’s famous wristwatch—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links (lots more to check out there)  

hal mooney and his orchestra: ballet standards as lounge music  

everyday yōkai: AI generated Japanese folklore figures hiding in plain sight—see previously

begleiten wir die orion und ihre besatzung bei ihrem patouillendienst am rande der unendlichkeit (11. 006)

Debuting on this day in 1966 on the West German public-service broadcaster ARD, nearly parallel to Gene Roddenbury’s Star Trek, Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion was the country’s first televised science fiction series set in not too distance future of a united, space-faring Earth following the voyages of a starship commander and crew who patrol the galaxy monitoring for threats. >Pointedly notorious for their defiance of superiors, the complement includes a officer of the GSD (Galakistcher Sicherheits-dienst) military intelligence service assigned to keep the Orion under check—and while the crew do not trust Lt Tamara Jagellovsk, over the arc of the seven episodes of the first and only season of the show, they ultimately develop feelings of respect for her—which is reciprocated by her omitting certain liberties taken in her mission reports to higher headquarters. Cyborgs (Roboter) are also prominently featured as guards and domestics but their use is shown to be problematic and prone to malfunction. Other fictional technologies include the Astroscheibe, which serves the same function as the view screen on the bridge of the Enterprise, Lichtweferbatterie—-photon-torpedos, Überlichtantrieb—Warp Drive, and while no transporter capabilities exist (famously improvised as a way to cut out the expense of depicting launch and landing scenes), the Orion often docks at deep-sea bases, modern and beautiful cities built underwater. The main antagonists were an extraterrestrial species referred to as Frogs. Despite the series’ short run, it quickly achieved cult-status with re-runs and novelisations continuing the story and limning out the characters. The entire run is available online with subtitles.

heaven, sir—and hell, too—it’s the same place, you see (11. 005)

Punctuated with highly humorous dialogue yet dealing with serious subjects of class, spirituality and redemption, the premier play of of Sutton Vane (who turned to acting and writing as therapy after his experiences in the trenches during World War I left him shell-shocked) opened on this day in 1923 and was an instant success, resounding for audiences and critics alike. The stage piece relates the story of a group of seven passengers who are the sole compliment of a huge ocean liner with no crew save for a steward who attends them and who eventually helps them reconcile to the fact their destination is the afterlife and prepare them for judgment by the Examiner. Immediately moved to a larger venue due to its popularity and optioned by Broadway pre-production, adapted as a cinematic release three times and saw numerous revivals—including a season directed by Otto Preminger and starring Vincent Price, despite their difference, the passengers slowly realise that their lives were intertwined and alternately aid and antagonise one another under the watch of the Charon-like barman. The full radio play in three acts is below:

synchronoptica

one year ago: the debut of M*A*S*H* (1972), assorted links to revisit, Emperor Norton I plus a consequential forgery

two years ago: The Persuaders!,  rewilding one’s attention plus more links to enjoy

three years ago: Hildegard von Bingen, tour guides, words with only plural forms, the musical stylings of Ady Zehnpfennig, the illustrations of Rex Whistler plus the microscopic world announced

four years ago: The Handmaid’s Tale, previously unreleased pictures of David Bowie, spoon-hanging plus more language hapaxes

five years ago: the space shuttle Enterprise (1976)

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