top of the deck (11. 136)

Fellow peripatetic and committed flaneur Diamond Geezer is celebrating the milestone of his ten-thousand post, mini-essays since starting blogging back in 2002. We especially appreciate the data analysis that’s typical of his content, showing trends and distribution over the years, unlike my deportment, counting the quick missives and links (increasingly dead ones) and the tendency lately to fudge the dates, use placeholders and shift things around a bit so PfRC doesn’t seem so neglected. Crunch the number, so to speak, he compiled a rather resonant and relatable list of common tropes (not labels) characteristic to his blog: 

• I went for a walk

• I went on a journey
• I went sightseeing
• I went somewhere seemingly mundane
• I visited disjoint linked locations
• I spotted something unusual
• I invented a silly challenge
• I attended an event
• I see TfL have done something
• I wouldn't have done it like that
• I disapproved of some marketing
• I considered the human condition
• I dug into some data
• I made some lists
• I scoured a map
• I made a quiz
• I looked back in my diary
• I was inspired by today's date
• I reacted to the news
• I am being sarcastic

The blogosphere congratulates Diamond Geezer on this achievement and speaking on behalf of quite a few of us, we are grateful to the Blogger platform for its consistency and dependability over the years.

al 288-1 (11. 135)

Found on this day in 1974 in the Awash Valley near Hardar, Ethiopia by a team of paleoanthropologists led by Donald Johnson, the collection of fossilised bones making up about forty percent of a female Australoptithecus is commonly known as Lucy—after the Beatles’ song played repeatedly during the excavation—or by her Amharic designation ድንቅ ነሽ (Dink’inesh, you are marvellous). Hers and early less complete finds suggested that hominid bipedalism preceded and informed the increase in cranial capacity and intelligence. Falling on the anniversary of the initial publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859, the three-million year old specimen, diminutive by today’s standards, quickly became a celebrity, captivating public interest in evolution, missing-links with the account of her discovery and reconstruction.

tŷ unnos (11. 134)

Via Strange Company, we learn of the old Welsh folk tradition—that has parallels in Türkiye and France—of the “one-night house,” the custom of recognising the right of freehold for an individual, usually a group effort, who could arrange to have a dwelling built on common land overnight, which extended if the squatter had a fire burning in the hearth by the following morning, one could claim the property by the length and breadth of an axe-throw from each of the four corners of the house. Pressured by the loss of available, affordable property near established settlements by the land enclosures which began in the seventeenth century, it became a right of passage for young tenants after to marriage to try to set up their own homesteads, though under the law, there was no status to confer a title to the property. And while many cottages were supposedly originally built as tai unnos (the plural form), no wholly genuine examples remain, the structures later expanded and reinforced with more durable materials collected nearby. The in-situ building concept and the use of architectural vernacular has been taken up by modern proponents for modular housing constructed of locally-sourced timber and stone.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit, a West Wing holiday episode plus geographic panhandles

two years ago: Jean Genie (1972), Word of the Year: NFT, a Strauss waltz, Black Beauty (1877) plus Germany’s new coalition government

three years ago: more links to enjoy, datamoshing, That Was the Week that Was, Words of the Year, the debut of MST3K plus more on turkey pardons

four years ago: build your own llama bookshelf plus an all-terrain Cyber Truck

five years ago: the Singapore Graphic Archive

kid, have you rehabilitated yourself (11. 133)

Courtesy of Open Culture, we are treated to an animated version of Arlo Guthrie’s counter-culture Thanksgiving tradition—the talking blues spoken-word track for his eponymous 1967 album, a lightly embellished account of the artist’s arrest for littering, illegal dumping, a run-in with the law that jeopardised his suitability for the draft for the Vietnam War, the record protesting US involvement in the conflict. Alice Brock, the titular hostess, bailed Guthrie and his co-accomplice out of jail. Despite violent content and outdated, objectionable language bordering on slurs, no radio station observing the tradition of airing it on the holiday, no fine has ever been issued by the American Federal Communications Commission and with subsequent performances, the artist has changed a few lyrics and lines and inserted some topical asides. The arresting authority, William J “Officer Obei” Obanhein, whom became a life-long friend with Guthrie after the song was released, was a model for Norman Rockwell (previously) appearing as a police figure in his depiction of the inauguration of John F Kennedy and schools de-segregation but not, despite popular and fitting misconceptions, The Runaway, which featured another state trooper at Joe’s Diner in a neighbouring village.

q* (11. 132)

Though unable to independently verify the existence of the supposed memo circulated to the staff and board of OpenAI, sources suggest that the catalyst for the abrupt ousting and re-hiring of founder and CEO Sam Altman was a potential breakthrough towards artificial general intelligence, gauged not by simply stringing words together in a convincing way but rather by solving maths problems, albeit rudimentary ones but exercises that are transparent and comprehensible enough for human minds to know that the answer was correct and not merely persuasive and betraying a real understanding of the task the computer was given. The organisation has been forthcoming with the research project (pronounced Q-Star) and its aims to apply it to scientific application (fields where only one, non-trivial answers exist) but reports suggest that the board was harbouring reservations about releasing the new application. The next day the board fired Altman.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Festival of the Five Grains plus Bohemian Rhapsody (1975)

two years ago: artist Agnolo Cosimo

three years ago: your daily demon: Crocel, St Felicity of Rome, the invention of acting (534 BCE) plus Project Cybersyn

four years ago: a foundation document for press freedom, The Bounty Hunter’s Tale, Simpsons’ memes of the 2019 box office plus Disney streaming options

five years ago: assorted links to revisit, the eight-hour work day plus the premiere of Dr Who (1963)

freiwirtschaft (11. 131)

Proposed by German-Argentine economist and proponent of market socialism Johann Silvio Gesell—detailed though eventually acquitted by authorities impressed with his argument in his own defence for his part in the in the short-lived, experimental Bavarian Soviet Republic, Freigeld (that is money free from the temptation for hoarding it without the incentive of interest) that decayed and depreciated over time, thus rather than a store of wealth made “worse as a commodity if we wish to make it better as a medium of exchange.” Considering himself a world-citizen and constantly relocating, Gessel arrived in Buenos Aires to open a franchise of a family member’s business coinciding with the 1890 economic depression and the experience informed his thoughts on property and welfare and sought to balance self-interest and liquidity. Like a form of negative interest or demurrage (the cost of holding money subject to a periodic tax), Gessel’s proposed currency would have a limited purchase—before expiry—of a constant value, subject to neither inflation nor deflation, freely exchangeable among other currencies and bear a grid on the obverse of fifty-two spots for monetary authority issued stamps for which the holder must affix one per week for the note to hold its value, the bill losing value as long as it was retained and not spent at the holder’s expense. The experiment was trialled (with certificates and scrip) to some acclaim and continues for a certain extent with limited-time-offers, coupons and local complementary currency.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a proposal for a broadcast energy transmitter, assorted links to revisit plus the Beatles’ White Album

two years ago: Angela Merkel becomes chancellor (2005) plus a Harry Belafonte classic carol

three years ago: more on script and spelling reform, the Battle of Ballon (845), more on Angela Merkel, the resignation of Margaret Thatcher, the BBC motion graphics archive plus the Feast of St Cecilia

four years ago: Our Sandman plus more public testimony over the Trump impeachment inquiry

five years ago: Plato’s Stepchildren plus a Thanksgiving greeting

we already feel (11. 130)

The latest Linkfest introduces us to the previously unpublished early music of Carola Baer, a UK-extract relocated to San Francisco in 1990. Homesick and isolated, Baer recorded an album over the course of several months on cassette and gave it the studio treatment, photocopying a cover for The Story of Valerie. Never releasing it, Baer lost the only copy—for it only to turn up in a rummage bin of a charity shop in Oregon twenty six years, and with the finder’s help, Baer was not only reunited with this personal artefact, it was also given a limited release with five hundred vinyl pressings. Much more at the links above.

7x7 (11. 129)

last mile-problem: 2003 ad from a defunct automotive line lampooning the absurdity of cars—especially redesigning cities around them 

broken record: the cover of the UN’s Environmental Programme Emissions Gap Report  

whistle-blower: ufologist who testified before the US Congress urges declassification of documents on alien technology for America to get ahead of the coming, catastrophic leak  

whole heap of zing: new studies may have found the culprit in the phenomenon of the red wine headache  

oculi mundi: a gorgeous and interactive collection of antique and ancient depictions of the world to peruse—via Maps Mania  

keith number: seemingly recreational, rare and hard to find repetitive Fiboncci-like digits whose sum are a whole of its parts 

the marshmallow test: famous experiments in psychology recreated in LEGO

synchronoptica

one year ago: an early exercise craze

two years ago: assorted links worth revisiting

three years ago: the Nurnberg Trials (1945), more links to enjoy, artist Magritte plus cardboard cat shrines

four years ago: more Words of the Year, a Trump appointee turns, Martha Gellhorn plus reforming Ukrainian exonyms

five years ago: the Mayflower Compact, more links to enjoy, a ram registry plus the backstory of an IKEA poster