national jukebox (11. 336)

Via Web Curious (a lot more to explore there), we enjoyed poking around the playlists of this project from the US Library of Congress that streams over ten thousand historic recordings and growing produced by the Victor Talking Machine Company (the ascribing labels, OKeh Records, Columbia, RCA, now subsidiaries of Sony Music Entertainment—but the clearinghouse granted a free license to the library to make them publicly available…) from 1901 to 1925. We especially liked the recommendation algorithm and a feature that’s grouped what was recorded on a particular day of the year. Look around and see what old-timely tunes you can discover.

zoozve (11. 335)

This is an excellent constellation about how our Cosmos is appearing much harder to classify than at first glance, language and definitions and the predictability and reproducibility of familiar models—even in our own backyard—which Kottke invites us to contemplate in a podcast from Radiolab about a mystery on a child’s poster of the Solar System.  Better than a just-so story, it reminds us of the fictive hamlet of Agloe, New York, sort of a trap-street, that became a real settlement then vanished again. The companion satellite labelled for Mercury (a moonless planet as we learn in school) seemed to be sloppy work coming from NASA (the poster’s publishers)—or a bit whimsy—but meriting further investigation yielded some dead ends, googlewhacks or less, but eventually led to the discoverer of the quasi-moon, with the designation for the year of its finding 2002 VE₆₈, the captured asteroid and the first found of its kind (see also) since renamed. Much more at the link up top.

lady wonder (11. 334)

Born on this day in 1924 and later adopted as a weeks’ old filly by Clarence and Claudia Fonda of Richmond, Virginia, and trained by Mrs Fonda with children’s lettered wooden blocks before graduating to an oversized custom typewriter in hopes of establishing equine-human communication—see also—Lady Wonder was one of a number of famous clairvoyant horses, making several predictions for a massive visiting public over the course of the mare’s long life. The outcome of boxing matches, turns in the stock-market, presidential elections (credited with picking the winner for everyone for nearly three decades except Truman’s victory over Dewey, which pollsters and prognosticators couldn’t have guessed were popular subjects but also participated in police investigations, helping lead authorities to missing persons and solving cold cases. Though some skeptics concluded otherwise, parapsychologist J B Rhine assessed Lady Wonder’s psychic abilities, finding that telepathy and extrasensory perception were the only possible explanations. In 1952, the horse shared a by-line in Life magazine on an article about herself and other gifted animals.

synchronoptica

one year ago: colour-coding the Periodic Table plus an omnibus of Olympic pictographs

 

two years ago: assorted links to revisit, a 1982 hit from Trio plus more of the shorthand of Charles Dickens

three years ago: your daily demon: Andrealphus plus more links to enjoy

four years ago: an ancient game piece plus “splendid isolation”

five years ago: more emoji, the Iranian Revolution, emoji pointillism plus threshold curtains

the tough get rough (11. 333)

Starting a four-week run on the top of the UK singles charts on this day in 1986, the Billy Ocean song was the theme of The Jewel of the Nile, the Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner vehicle and sequel to 1984’s Romancing the Stone. A global hit, it was eventually unseated by Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know,” the accompanying video was initially refused by Top of the Pops for the cast’s lip-syncing, not being members of the Musicians Union, with Danny DeVito’s miming as a saxophonist, like the August rendition of “You Can Call Me Al,” considered a violation of the guild’s rules for non-member performers.

dew drop inn (11. 332)

We quite enjoyed this collection of vintage hotel and luggage tags from all around the world through this curation of some choice Japanese accommodations put together by Present /&/ Correct. The scans are small and the ryokan (旅館, a traditional Japanese inn, often associated with hot spring resorts and baths) section seems most complete—I hope that this project wasn’t just abandoned as too ambitious, there being a lot of place-holders, though optimistically those marked as Up are up—with floor plans, maps and other ephemera associated with the lodgings. India, Singapore, the UK and Norway are represented also.

synchronoptica

one year ago: stochastic parrots, unsanctioned matrimony (1973) plus more AI Valentines

two years ago: Mother Josephine plus Right Said Fred (1989)

three years ago: The Birth of a Nation plus Trump quits the Screen Actors’ Guild

four years ago: a daytrip to the mountains plus an evergreen flower

five years ago: German consumer advocacy watchdog sics Facebook, places in painting plus incriminating photos

dark arts (11. 331)

Whilst most town councils either rescinded the ordinance or made the application process for an exception to policy a routine and perfunctory one, the legislation of the Hypnotism Act of 1952 is still on the books in some jurisdictions and subject to a blanket ban, prohibiting public performance of mesmerism or inducing a trance-state due to perceived dangers of making an audience, singly or en masse susceptible to suggestion. Proving ruinous to a scheduled comedy routine, an entertainer (without apparently having to resort to putting local authorities under) successfully appealed for the municipality to rescind the law and grant a license (the exemption not needed under the statue to practise hypnosis for clinical and therapeutic purposes) to go ahead. Though public attitudes have changed significantly for the latter with the method widely accepted in medical settings, the former stage acts is notably low and venues risk-adverse and putting responsibility on the performer.

whole earth catalogue (11. 330)

Via Boing Boing, we are referred to a NASA project, “Eyes on Exoplanets,” that gives facts and figures on all the presently (at the time of posting) five thousand five hundred seventy-two confirmed discoveries of alien worlds complete with a hypothetical artist’s rendering of what the distant destination might look like.  Spread across four thousand solar systems (plus wandering rogue ones) and with ten-thousand more candidates identified,  especially interesting are those classified as Super Earths and the Ice Giants. Much more to explore at the link above.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit plus camouflage sweaters

two years ago: Facebook threatens to pull out of the EU plus bonfire of the vanities

three years ago: Martian New Year, East/West German broadcast propaganda plus a funerary train in Greater London

four years ago: a phantom island plus more links to enjoy

five years ago: a look at 1960s Space Age fashion, more links worth revisiting, phonosematics plus a Beethoven Line Rider doodle

saint mél (11. 329)

Son of Saint Patrick’s sister Darerca and eventually accompanying his uncle to Ireland for missionary work, this itinerate bishop with no fixed see during his ministry, this patron of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, supported himself through manual labour and subsistence farming, residing with his aunt called Lupait during a portion of his ministry. In order to quell rumours and preserve the good reputation of their evangelising work, Patrick went to investigate himself, with both aunt and nephew producing miracles (carrying burning coals and fishing a fish from a field) to prove the innocent and chaste nature of their relationship, and the two went to live apart—following the patriarch’s suggestion, who also raised the great hill called Bri Leith between their respective new settlements in Mél’s home parish and Druimheo, further east where Lupait relocated, they separated. Invoked by those falsely accused of incest, the feast of Saint Mél, venerated either today or on the seventh, has become a local holiday of singlehood (there being quite a few other saints devoted to the unpaired but all with the designs of marrying well) with customs including sending cards to oneself ahead of Valentine’s Day and hosting mixers that extol the good things about being confirmed bachelors and bachelorettes.