conte du pourquoi (11. 178)

Generally in the International System of Units, as Futility Closet informs, the abbreviation of metrics are only afforded an uppercase character when the unit of measure is a personal namesake—see also—like the newton, ampere, joule, siemens, volt, hertz and kelvin, but the litre, particularly for jurisdictions with the inheritance of the Imperial System and one still singularly holding-fast, the litre was especially fraught for researchers for its potential to be confused with the digit 1. To avoid this confusion, most scientific and labelling authorities adopted a scripted ℓ as a volumetric symbol, but conventions still held in the US, Canada and Australia. Originally as an April Fools’ Day hoax, Kenneth Woolner of the University of Waterloo created the fictional heir to a sixteenth century wine bottle manufacture concern who purposed an industry standard (famously conventional), Claude Émile Jean-Baptise Litre, to promote the use of an upper-case L. I do hope that Litre had a full, fake biography.  The account was re-printed as fact by an IUPAC journal in 1978 as factual, and though subsequently retracted, the exception is now allowed.

you know dasher and dasher and dancet and vixen, ronner and prxet and donten and blinsen (11. 177)

Via Nag on the Lake’s always excellent Sunday Links, we are once again directed to another seasonal experiment from our trusty AI Wrangler, Janelle Shane (previously) with a collaborative prompt to illustrate Christmas carols. Making an earnest effort to picture each rousing verse, there’s of course some degradation as the advanced chatbot try to interpret the Twelve Days of Christmas and others but considering that the lyrics and imagery for the nonce, fossilised phrases that only occur in these standards, there are surprisingly few though choice digressions. Besides if robots didn’t hallucinate, you wouldn’t get a Santataur from this centaur of a computer-human hybrid composition nor the extended Kringleverse. Much more from AI Weirdness at the link above.

13-1023 tcx (11. 176)

As a counterweight to the aesthetic of maximalism embodied by the popularity of Millennial Pink, Pantone announces Peach Fuzz for the Colour of 2024, with their global team of trend-watchers and chromatists reflecting back on the past quarter of a century of the nomination process, beginning with Cerulean Blue to welcome the dawn of the new millennium and finding a nostalgic nexus for their choice, which represents a calm, tactile and nostalgic hue in the pink and orange combination in very stressful and unstable times.

 

 synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit 

two years ago: the Nobel Banquet, a duet from McCartney and Jackson, 1984 from Julia’s perspective, more Chinese fuzzwords of the year plus the Pantone Colour for the coming year

three years ago: more on the Year in Search, Ubu Roi plus a 2020 recap

four years ago: Alphabets Heaven, the Apostrophe Protection Society, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Latin scripts for Cyrillic languages, RIP Marie Fredriksson plus Cincinnati’s music underground

five years ago: more links to explore, more piñata creations from Roberto Benevidez plus a collection of Industry Musicals

sumer is icumen in (11. 175)

Directed by Robin Hardy and featuring the acting talents of Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee, the British folk horror classic The Wicker Man opened in limited release on this day in 1973 and tells the story of a police sergeant dispatched to a remote Hebridean island to investigate the disappearance of a young missing girl. Conducting his search, the sergeant, a faithful Christian, is rather taken aback to discover that the inhabitants have reverted to a form of Celtic paganism, learning that a few generations ago, a Victorian agronomist had cultivated a strain of fruit trees that could thrive in the harsh Scottish environment and due to the promising bounty had conduced more of the population to embrace traditional ways. Learning that a human sacrifice is in order to propitiate the gods, the police office becomes convinced that the missing girl is being held alive and prepared for the ritual, and taking the ceremonial garb and mask of the procession’s participant from the settlement’s innkeeper where he is staying, seeks to liberate the girl before the act can be executed as penance for the doomed harvest. The rescued girl, however, was never the intended sacrifice, the locals tell him but rather the officer himself as a figure of authority, a willing party, ignorant of their ways and a virgin. Wicker Man was celebrated as part of British heritage during the 2012 opening ceremonies for the London Olympic Games and the title medieval English round, also known as the Summer Canon, was part of the 1972 Munich summer games with a performance of this rota performed by children prancing about the stadium track.

clock-radio (11. 174)

Admitting a certain penchant for multi-function gadgets—like infamously a car vacuum-flash light-tyre pump combo that excelled at none of these tasks—we found this latest post from Fancy Notions to be quite resonant, particularly the German Engineering aspect with the precision of the eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher, calibrated to an ideal weight to crack the shell perfectly without mangling the soft-boiled interior—the steel plunger exerting a force of a little more than half a newton (one kilogram accelerating one meter per second per second). While we have a very serviceable egg-timer that alleviates some of the guess-work, it is a challenge (that I aspire to keep) to run the eggs under cold water long enough to get the exterior to peel away easily.

screen gems (11. 073)

Via Web Curios (lots more to explore there), we are directed to a curated list from the British Film Institute of recommendations from cinephiles and historians of 101 under appreciated masterworks of the medium. Though not entirely unseen with short pieces from John and Faith Hubley and Winsor McCay, there are a lot of neglected international classics—arranged in chronological order from the late nineteenth century to a few years ago—and is certainly a syllabus to assay for the coming year to round out one’s media diet. The pictured reel is a snippet from Gerdy, the Wicked Witch (zločesta vještica) from 1976 by Yugoslavian director Ljubomir Šimunić, a handcrafted Super 8 montage sampling of TV broadcasts with accompanying score by Vangelis’ progrock band Aphrodite’s Child. 

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Year in Search, Germany’s Word of the Year plus more AI film stills

two years ago: US Surgeon General Dr Joycelyn Elders

three years ago: Terms of Endearment (1983), Trump’s stacked Supreme Court rejects efforts to reverse election outcomes plus the eradication of smallpox (1979)

four years ago: the reunification of Little Berlin plus more modernist gingerbread architecture

five years ago: the Mother of All Demos (1968), a bunker for safekeeping of German historic documents plus on this day in seasonal developments

krisenmodus (11. 172)

Echoing last year’s selection from Collins Dictionary of permacrisis, the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (previously) has chosen crisis-mode for the Worte des Jahres for 2023 as a reflection of the ongoing exceptional states of emergency that polarise a seemingly powerless, frightened and overwhelmed public between the extremes of apathy and alarmism. Runners’ up included Lesefähigkeit (reading comprehension) due to a sharp fall in functional literacy perceived to have been made worse by school closures during COVID, KI Boom (Künstlichen Intelligenz, AI), a term for infighting among the ruling government coalition and Teilzeitgesellschaft—part-time society for more of a work-life balance.

x’temmas (11. 171)

Via Strange Company, we are treated to an interesting Q & A on the etymological roots and spelling conventions of the winter holidays Christmas and Hanukkah. The Jewish festival of lights (בחנוכה) has undergone many variations since first transliterated in print in the seventeenth century as has the celebration of the Nativity since first appearing in the written record in the late 900s in Old English as Xpes mæsse with the chi-rho christogram (see previously) several other historical ways of expressing the holiday. More from Grammarphobia at the link up top.