artist sjöö (11. 270)

Courtesy of a retrospective exhibition at Oxford entitled the Great Cosmic Mother, we were pleased to be acquainted with the paintings of radical anarcho-, eco-feminist and founding proponent of the Goddess Movement whose work coincided with the woman’s liberation push of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Monica Sjöö was born in the Västernorrland region on New Year’s Eve 1938 and left home aged sixteen to travel Europe working as an agricultural labourer and find work in modelling, eventually taking up residence in Bristol, where she remained for the rest of her life—very well known beyond all borders, she taught and corresponded with several influential authors, neopagans and artists, including Judy Chicago, Alice Walker, Starhawk and Shekhinah Mountainwater. The show’s name comes from a pamphlet later expanded into a book co-authored with Barbara Mor covering ancient history and the origin of religion and spirituality, positing that women were the first practitioners—a text still part of the syllabus for many courses on women’s studies, mythology and theology. Much more from Hyperallergic at the link up top.

synchronoptica

one year ago: another MST3K classic,  AI designs novelty socks, an Ayn Rand play plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: more links to enjoy, professional salutations plus haunted postcards

three years ago: your daily demon: Vapula, an anatomy lesson, contemporary irregular verb forms, special stamps for the Lunar New Year plus large Cyrillic numbers

four years ago: birb-watching, the League of Nations, the Wollemi pines plus the US congress transmits articles of impeachment for Trump

five years ago: the first orbital docking, a gilded picket fence for Mar-a-Lago, more on Prohibition in the US plus the White House serves fast-food

goodbye grey sky, hello blue (11. 269)

With the basic premise for the series appearing first two years earlier in an unsold pilot that aired in a segment on the anthology show Love, American Style (titled “Love and the Television Set,” and reworked for broadcast as “Love and the Happy Days”), the network’s interest in the project, a sitcom portraying an idealised vision of coming-of-age in the mid-1950s US Midwest that was a nostalgic appeal to the that generation some two decades removed when director George Lucas cast the actor playing teenager Richie Cunningham, Ron Howard, in American Graffiti, and Happy Days debuted on this night in 1974. Whilst moderately well received by audiences during its first two years, waning viewership prompted producers to retool the format and brought the ancillary character of one of Cunningham’s friends, a high school drop-out and greaser Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli (played by Henry Winkler), into one of the main roles. Running for eleven seasons and spawning several spin-offs including Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy and Joannie Love Chachi, the household institution was criticised for its interventions (now regarded as tropes) to revitalise the show, as with the insertion of new characters (lampooned with Poochie on The Simpsons) and franchise attempts above, and for, into its fifth season, idiomatically and literally “jumping the shark” when the Fonz is launched over a live shark on water-skis as an indicator that a story arc has exhausted its core-content and passed its peak by repairing to exaggeration and sensationalism. The series was nonetheless popular for several more years.

remigration (11. 268)

For the thirty-third time, a jury of linguists and journalists from Darmstadt has selected the German Unwort of the Year in a portmanteau for the return of refugees, asylum-seekers and Einwander introduced into common-parlance by members of the Identitarian Movement and other rightwing groups (see previously) a euphemism for forced expulsion and even mass-deportation of those considered to be of a non-native background. The organisation fears that this “un-word” is being harnessed to normalise extremist positions in political discourse. Runners-up that the jury also criticises for its rise in use include “Sozialklimbim”—social climate as a classist dog whistle for the poor and disenfranchised as destined to remain on the margins of society and politics, joining a constellation of disparaging expressions, including a soziale Hängematte, a safety-net viewed as a hammock, Gratismentalität, entitlement-thinking, and “Heizungs-Stasi,” from the perceived dictatorial approach of regulatory framework meant to make heat and homes more energy-efficient.

synchronoptica

one year ago: signature martinis, Land Down Under, the endangered apostrophes of London plus Kurosawa’s Macbeth

two years ago: a history of the crossword puzzle, Un-Word of the Year, Bloody Mary plus assorted links worth revisiting

three years ago: more links to enjoy, Snowflake Bentley, a curation of ignored artefacts plus whaling ship logs

four years ago: more links worth the revisit, the Republic of Vermont plus Swiss land-use

five years ago: the launch of Wikipedia (2001), 1999 in film, seedlings on the Moon, more on Trump’s atrocities plus other smokable plants

fralæggelse (11. 267)

On the same day as her ascension to the throne in 1972 on the occasion of the death of her father Frederik IX, Queen Margrethe II voluntarily resigned as Danish monarch, the first since 1146 when Erik III Lam abdicated to join a monastery, St Canute’s Abbey due to a debilitating illness, with her son proclaimed as Fredrik X—having announced her decision to a shocked public on New Year’s Eve. Fashion designer, stenographer and illustrator of national editions of the works of JRR Tolkien, Margrethe recently decreed that previous royal titles of prince and princess would cease to exist for members never expected to hold official roles, though courtesy titles would still be granted and has been a big proponent since decades of taking in immigrants of different backgrounds, and making them welcome despite their “dumsmarte bemærkninger” (cocky remarks), which has since been introduced into the lexicon.  Her regnal number is (see also) in deference to the regnant queen of all Scandinavia of the fourteenth century, Margaret, a fearless Lady Sovereign called King Pantsless, though never officially recognised claim closest to uniting the Nordic region.  The new king was coronated by the Danish prime minister with the motto “Forbundne, forpligtet, for Kongeriget Danmark (as is traditional, “United, committed, for the Kingdom”) and is especially interested in issues of climate change and sustainability as well as home-rule for Greenland and other autonomous territories.

hands-free device (11. 266)

Admitted seen to have one dangling from the rear-view mirror myself from time to time (maybe I ought to have hitched it to my last car), we hadn’t heard of this early 1950s, patented accessory (see also) called the Recording Rosary. Though I imagine it could still lead distracted driving—the innovation was for the Glory bead (traditionally made from the jet sourced to saints’ shrines or carved from olive pits from the garden of Gethsemane though substitute materials are sanctioned) to keep track of the decades if the process needed to be interrupted—and question if praying the rosary is something to be done whilst multitasking, the inventor’s intention were in the right place with proceeds going to charity and engaging in the activity during one’s commute or official duties (particularly for soldiers) was hoped to promote world peace. More at Weird Universe at the link up top.

stepford authors (11. 265)

We really were in agreement with this comparison of AI plagiarism to the 1975 horror film premising that the human wives of Stepford, Connecticut are having their identities transferred to more able cyborg replicas (to excel at household chores, cooking, sexual acts) without all the shrewish, independent aspects of their personalities that make the slightest bit objectionable to their husbands, having dispatched their biological templates and replacing them. Substituting a human writer with a synthetic one, for the publisher—or any employer for that matter—strikes one as far less bothersome. Meanwhile, the tech giants’ behind large language models arguments for “fair-use,” that machines are digesting and learning from the written word in the same way human readers do and not merely copying them is keeping lawsuits at bay within a legal-framework wholly unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with wholesale violation and lacking attributions—insufficient to even form a rigorous standard to hold the robots to. 

 synchronoptica

one year ago:  the Human Be-In (1967), Davy Jones changes his professional name (1966), ten years of Question Hound plus assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: Davie Bowie’s Low (1977), a short by Gérald Frydman plus training an AI on vintage Batman comics

three years ago: a celebration of donkeys, Trump’s second impeachment, Laocoön, the US Congress’ electronic voting machines, marijuana and the munchies, premium pluralisation plus more on snail compasses

four years ago: forty-five-plus years of Fresh Air, US-Iranian relations, for America, separation of Church and State is becoming blurred plus Germany’s Un-Word of the Year

five years ago: pop-up poetry, view from a bus plus Cherubrashka

nuance (11. 264)

Via Kottke, we discover the Emoji Kitchen by Jennifer Daniels that allows one to combine and remix emoji (see previously here and here) as symbols for different accents, ranges of expressions and moods for angry kisses, pensive cowboys and forlorn robots to capture all the feels as well as some truly surreal abstractions (available directly only for certain platforms), like monkey cactus or monocled dustbin. See what you can come up with.

 

7x7 (11. 263)

photographie de rue: the images of Eugène Atget capture scenes of Paris unchanged since the turn of the last century  

ma che sera: more musical stylings from Raffaella Carrà with this 1974 TV appearance 

ray fay: the mostly-unreleased 1976 comedic spoof Queen Kong with traditional gender roles reversed  

from-to: reputational-based urban maps that can help you find the analogue East Village of London and other neighbourhoods in different cities 

tv mirror: leafing through the February 1977 includes an interview with Henry Winkler and more on the Dino De Laurentiis remake that condemned the above treatment of the colossus to obscurity 

isdn: a look at the once future-proof telecommunication standard quickly vanishing 

oppidum du mont beauvray: the successive rediscoveries of the ancient capital of the Gallic Aedui tribe, Bibracte

synchronoptica

one year ago: St Mungo plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: snow-plough names plus a very special episode of Bewitched

three years ago: more on sea-shanties, the art of Roger Brown plus COVID ex-votos

four years ago: Knut’s Day plus outcry over plant-based labels

five years ago: criticism over NordStream2,  interpretive GIFs plus more links to enjoy