i look at this slush and i try to remember at one time i made good movies (11. 099)

Including a short before the feature presentation on good hygiene practices and organising one’s shoe-shine paraphernalia and host segments on showers and sabotaging the Satellite of Love, the 1960 Ed Wood (see previously) crime drama The Sinister Urge was subjected to the MST3K treatment on this day in 1994. Law enforcement attempts to stop a ring of pornographers (the “smut picture racket”) connected to a larger crime syndicate including the distribution of snuff films. After raiding an affiliate studio, the investigating officers are petitioned by a local businessman demanding to know why his tax dollars are being wasted in the prosecution of harmless deviancy, prompting the police to prove the more serious conspiracy. Patronising a nearby pizzeria, one of the investigators witnesses an altercation between two lower-level peddlers and gain entry into the overarching network and distribution channels. Interstitial scenes show how arousal can quickly transform into murderous rage. This was the last mainstream walk-on role for Wood, who despite his ostensibly critical take (though perhaps as invective on American puritanical attitudes) the porn industry, only directed, produced and acted in exploitation and adult films, though like in the above treatment only rose to the level of matronly lingerie modelling.

woty (11. 098)

Beating out other shortlisted neologisms in common parlance including nepo baby, deinfluencing, debanking, and canon event—a formative occurrence in an individual’s life and identity, Collins Dictionary announces AI as the Word of the Year for 2023—see previously. The abbreviation for artificial intelligence, it describes the process of modelling human mental functions, especially the multilayered architecture underlying deep learning neural networks and large reinforcement and inference schema that draw from the sum of human knowledge, which has seen an exponential increase in usage in the past twelve months.

9x9 (11. 097)

falling for fall: an epic attempt to capture the Christian Girl Autumn aesthetic—via the morning news  

paradox: NASA climate group issues a bleak warning on climate change—controversially suggesting that a reduction in aerosol pollution will accelerate warming 

the hunting of the earl of rone: one individual’s quest to catalogue the folkways and traditions of the United Kingdom  

they’re all good dogs: the winners of the annual world canine photography award presented—plus a bonus vocabulary term for one who is favourably disposed to dogs—via Nag on the Lake  

ja-da, ja-da, ja-da, jing jing jing: a soothing 1918 jazz standard covered for decades after  

mechanical turk: exposing autonomous cars’ vast human support network to maintain an illusion of safety, reliability 

roll on: a clever phonophore logo for a transport and logistics company in Hong Kong 

cape canaveral: a 3D animated billboard recounts the chronology of the Kennedy Space Centre 

momiji tunnel: a stunning section of the Eizan railway showcases the turning foliage—via the ever excellent Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links

 synchronoptica

one year ago: the Gun Powder Plot, a Commodore accordion, more McMansion Hell plus a Wikipedia list of common fallacies

two years ago: the Saint Felix Flood (1530) 

three years ago: a tri-lingual dictionary (1499), a flashpoint labour strike (1916), a séance on a wet afternoon plus the Rebel Rabbit GIF

four years ago: more on Guy Fawkes, Voyager 2 leaves the Solar System, ghoulish guacamole plus Facebook’s shift to the right

five years ago: representative Shirley Chisholm, an ancient boardgame, photographer Denise Scott Brown, words for the Winter Blues plus mapping the US mid-terms

wait a second (11. 096)

Whilst the leap second (previously), by dint of their frequent insertion, can cause havoc for computer systems, meant to compensate for the drift between the drift between official Earth time and variations in the planet’s orbit around the Sun, the suggestion for their replacement with a higher order of magnitude every half-century by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) by a Leap Minute has been met with opposition. The Russian delegation, according to the Bureau international des poids et mesures, is opposed as its satellite global positioning system, GLONASS, competing with the US-standard GPS won’t be fully synchronised until 2040 as well as the Vatican, which has concerned itself with accuracy in time-keeping since its inception and the advent of the Gregorian Calendar, as well as the technology community, citing the annoyance of these drills (the difference between Atomic Time and Universal Coordinated Time), a longer gap in resetting the clocks could result could result in a lapsed skill set and the subsequent experiential debt could lead to short-sighted problems that contributed to the y2k problem.

hypermarket (11. 095)

Via the always excellent Web Curios, we’re informed of an interesting though limited time campaign (now

expired) run by a German discount grocery chain, which although the cynic in me detects a push to collect more consumer data or at least single out the gullible ones for a more pernicious form of targeted advertising and we happily could not take advantage of as we had nothing to swap, struck us as quite brilliant. Fresh4Trash took place during the month of October and invited shoppers to trade in their worthless NFTs for coupons and vouchers for fresh produce. Although no longer on offer, there is a fun Wall of Lame to explore, a gallery of digital art, tokens and coins redeemed for fruit and veg to explore.  Hopefully this campaign will never be repeated—until the next speculative craze comes along.

synchronoptica

one year ago:  the discovery of King Tut’s tomb (1922) plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: haikus on the Periodic Table plus a competition to replace Laocoön’s lost arm

three years ago: the folk etymologies of the hangover

four years ago: a protest rally and ultimatum in East Berlin,  Pigovian subsidies plus the science of voting

five years ago: back in the scent lab,  a love letter to the US Library of Congress plus more links to enjoy

wax; or, the discovery of television among the bees (11. 094)

Written and directed by David Blair and staring the talents of the filmmaker himself, William S Burroughs and Clyde Tombaugh, the psychedelic collage of found-footage, live-action and digital animation was the first to be available to stream (at two frames per second) over the internet as its hypermedia version, Waxweb, following its cinematic release in 1991. As a statement against Gulf War I and drone combat (see also), the structuralist work edited over a six year period is set in an flight stimulation and weapons research laboratory in Alamagordo in the desert of of the US state of New Mexico were the narrator (Blair) is a computer programmer and hobbyist apiarist, having inherited his hives of “Mesopotamian” bees from his grandfather. Whilst at work designing sighting displays, the protagonist realises that these bees have the ability to insert intrusive thoughts in his mind (a television), luring him into the bees subterranean home under the arid wasteland surrounding the test range and revealing through a series of hallucinations that he must become the become the weapon he is designing and destroy his target in Iraq before he can be released from this madness and reborn.

8x8 (11. 093)

outsider art: revisiting the narrative embroidery of Agnes Richter and other works in the Prinzhorn Collection  

market sundries: the paper bag baron of the East End—via Strange Company  

the crispy r: more on rhoticity and unusual consonant 

pentimenti: conservators reveal a hidden demonic figure in Joshua Reynold’s “The Death of Cardinal Beaufort”—see also 

the statistical breviary: an overview of the history of digital design 

uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinco, cinco, seis: DJ Cummerbund (previously) presents a mashup of the The Offspring and Boney M—with quite a few other musical cameos 

face-hugger: the parasitic crustacean Phronima sedentaria was the inspiration for Ridley Scott’s Alien  

sgraffito: the alleged safe-room where Michelangelo hid from his political enemies, decorated with his anatomical and engineering studies opens to the public

the murmur of the snarkmatrix (11. 092)

In honour of the collective’s twentieth anniversary, Kottke has declared today Snarkmarket Day—actually the quietly influential, occasional blog that’s not been so active in the past few years (I can relate) is pretty thoughtful and reflective and not particularly snarky—and is turning over the reins to members and guest hosts Tim Carmody, Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson for an indulgent cast back to earlier days of the blogosphere and think about how online interactions have changed in the past two decades. Much more at the links above including some pieces I can remember from over the years and a prescient 2010 coinage about generative chat called the “speakularity.”

synchronoptica

one year ago: another classic from Enya, Saint Hubertus plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: a classification of creatives, another MST3K classic plus more links to enjoy

three years ago: the November Revolution that led to the formation of the Weimar Republic plus Carrie (1976)

four years ago: a pervasive number from Rusted Root, more awful library books plus an embarassment of social media platforms

five years ago: Nixon’s Silent Majority plus a trip through the Rhön