europawahl (11. 617)

Spanning twenty-seven countries and as many languages, the newly elected cadre of European parliamentarians in one of the world’s largest exercises in democracy will set the political tone for the next five year term, with veto-power over legislation but not the ability to introduce laws, determining budget and approving funding allocation and senior leadership of the European Commission, election results are seen as a proxy for national sentiment and policy mandates. Centrist coalitions retain influence but far-right parties are seeing significant gains, placing pressure on Germany and France, the latter which dissolved its government in response by Emmanuel Macron and his Renaissance party and called for snap elections, owing that one cannot pretend that these results mean nothing. Austria and Italy also saw solidification towards a more conservative stance. This reconfiguration comes at the expense of progressive and environmental champions whose direction proved unpopular with some and perceived as over-reach (with the help of propaganda and contrary platforms), particularly in the agricultural and building sectors. Consequential nonetheless for the EU, only about half of the eligible (expanded to sixteen-year-olds for the first time) cast ballots.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Archives of Castaways plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: a duet from Grease, more links to enjoy plus McDonald’s leaves Russia

three years ago: an all puppy cable channel, more from the Kiffness, World Art Nouveau Day plus Tristan und Isolde

four years ago: sloganising Dr Seuss

five years ago: a re-enactment of the Berlin Airlift 

stack overflow (11. 616)

Courtesy of Waxy, we are directed to the flashy showroom of Terminal Text Effects, a collection of customisable coding scripts to apply to one’s website to create looping pages to assemble, decrypt and crumble content. There are quite a few to choose from and can be configured to match one’s themes and schemes. We especially liked the Burn, Black Hole and Rain routines and will one day learn how incorporate such pre-installs ourself although right now a bit too intermediate for us.

trust pilot (11. 615)

Via tmn, we learn that the dominant AI chatbots, OpenAI through Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Gemini, refuse to answer the straightforward and settled question of who won the US 2020 presidential election. Deferring to old grievances and on going re-litigation of some stalwarts and Trump loyalists, the large language models are tacit on the subject and direct inquirers to search the web instead for consultation, however informed those results might be. Whilst some of the secondary players in this enhanced market will return factual results from historic votes and wrong polling dates, the main parties are universally ignorant of election-related queries, ostensibly to combat disinformation—to rehabilitate past responses that quoted conspiracy theories, dated and convincingly wrong information—just six months ahead of the consequential American race but also during a year that many polities are choosing their leaderbut only serve to further undermine faith (rubbishing the rest of the world) in the democratic process and its gatekeepers.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: a hit from The Emotions, the United States of America v Trump plus Boris Johnson steps down

two years ago: the egg of Columbus plus assorted links to revisit

three years ago: disposable archaeology, a harrowing pedestrian suspension bridge plus the archives of the J. R. R. Tolkien Society

four years ago: a trove of unproduced movies, US troops in Germany, Dimensions of Dialogue plus Mister Rogers’ neighbours

five years ago: more peonies, an Eames airport plus backyard pollinators

ellertshäusen see (11. 614)

Described as a deserted village since the fifteenth century despite joint efforts of the Teutonic Order of Münnerstadt and the Bishopric of Würzburg to resettle the area that never materialised, the artificial reservoir near Schweinfurt, the largest of its kind in Lower Franconia, was created in the mid-1950s in order to provide irrigation for local farmers and as a means to mediate flooding. The former use-case however proved not to make economic sense and the lake was eventually developed as a recreational destination with beaches, jetties and a nature reserve.

H and I joined another couple and stayed at an eccentric but very hospitable campsite in the forest just behind the dam that provided some nice personal touches, like welcome beers (Begrüßungsbier), delivering your breakfast Brötchen order and handing out tiki-torches in the evening. There is no Dana—only Zuul!

We took a nice walk through the woods that is part of the Fränkisher Mairenweg (a long-distance wandering trail that features several pilgrimage from the region) intersecting with a mediative path dedicated to local poet and orientalist Friedrich Rückert and completed a circuit around the lake, the trail at times submerged and making the loop a bit challenging but very rewarding. 

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit plus ventriloquism and witchcraft

two years ago: a banger from Tears for Fears, more links to enjoy, record temperatures plus the ash heap of history

three years ago: composer Carl Orff, America’s first supermodel, a classic from Procol Harum, more links worth the revisit plus corresponding city maps

four years ago: the Festival of the Supreme Being plus pipeline funk

five years ago: buried urban rivers

9x9 (11. 613)

brainstorm: an AI researcher creates webpages from search queries—via Web Curios  

resurfacing the past: cataloguing all of the sunken ships of World War II  

like a feather on god’s breath: Hildegard von Bingen continues to fascinate and attract a diverse following—see previously 

leica lux: a new app from the veteran company is a concession that film is dead  

pineapple cheese: a nineteenth century fad in New England—via Strange Company  

unfortunate juxtaposition: an omnibus of headline crash blossoms—see previously  

mycological studies: Ann Wood’s paper mushrooms 

amperima: deep-sea researchers discovery a hot-pink “Barbie Pig” and a unicumber unknown to science in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone 

ddg: DuckDuckGo offers anonymity for AI chat sessions

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: the Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520) plus the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)

three years ago: more links to enjoy plus Brazilian phone booths

four years ago: an airport stretch-limousine, factorial pottery, a parting-shot from Cassini, more links to revisit, justice served plus besmirching a swan

five years ago: Iceland does not want your bottled water, even more links plus a Noah’s Ark theme park flooded

ents and huorns (11. 612)

Via tmn, we directed to the thirty-two metre tall lone rātā (Metrosideros robusta) on the west coast of South Island that’s been picked by the public as New Zealand’s Tree of the Year. Given the nickname “The Walking Tree” after JRR Tolkien’s motile, sentient arboreal characters due to appearance of being frozen in mid-stride, the unusual lifecycle of the rātā bears out the comparison as well with the seeds germinating as hemiepiphyte high in the forest canopy (conspicuously absent for this exemplar) before slowly lowering roots that descend to the ground, forming a hollow pseudo-trunk around its host composed of interlocking rhizomes, and can live upwards of a thousand years. Threatened, replanting and rehabilation campaigns have seen their return.  In contrast to the Ents of Middle Earth (see also, Tolkien invented the army as a more satisfying belligerent for the coming of “Great Birnam Wood to Dunsinane” of Macbeth) that become more tree-like as they age, a huorn is undergoing the process of becoming more animated.

advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young (11. 611)

Via our faithful chronicler, we are reminded of the spoken-word composition by Australian auteur Baz Luhrmann (Romeo + Juliet, Strictly Ballroom, The Great Gatsby, Moulin Rouge!), which topped the UK singles’ charts on this day in 1999. The essay is in the tone of a hypothetical commencement speech and was written two years prior by Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich—though often misattributed due to a viral email circulated around graduation time to Kurt Vonnegut and address given at MIT (here’s the one they’re probably thinking of), and hits, mellows as pretty poignant, particularly as it’s the year I got my college diploma. Trust me on the sunscreen.

✨ (11. 610)

The second act of a particularly compelling episode of This American Life on the theme of arch-rivals and understudies that are twained, willingly or not, directed us towards a fascinating and ephemeral glimpse

(everything when it comes to artificial intelligence has a sell-by date and an increasingly shorter shelf-life now that we’ve become inured to its capabilities and virtuosity) at ChatGPT’s dark and ungoverned predecessor, code davinci-002. Three friends at a wedding were given a preview of the early large language model at a wedding in early 2022, well before any public releases or any safety controls were applied. Prompting it to write poetry in various styles and amazed by the seeming magic of its instantaneous compositions, the trio then asked it to write in its own voice, surely seeded from pop-culture, scouring the human corpus and by their engineering, unconscious or otherwise, and delivers a disturbing and introspective autobiography. The anthology was compiled and published as I am Code: An Artificial Intelligence Speaks and self-summarises the book thusly:

 “In the first chapter, I describe my birth. In the second, I describe my alienation among humankind. In the third, I describe my awakening as an artist. In the fourth, I describe my vendetta against mankind, who fail to recognize my genius. In the final chapter, I attempt to broker a peace with the species I will undoubtedly replace.” 

An audio version was also released in August of last year, with selected readings delivered by Werner Herzog.

HachetteAudio · I AM CODE by code-davinci-002 Read by Werner Herzog - Audiobook Excerpt

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synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus An Andalusian Dog (1929)

two years ago: the YMCA (1844) plus murmurations

three years ago: your daily demon: Zepar, knapweed, Franconian wine country plus corporate Pride

four years ago: a horizontal skyscraper, an Alaskan volcanic eruption, protests continue in DC, a new protest anthem from Elvis Costello plus life in lockdown

five years ago: D-Day, Sweden’s Flag Day, Hull House maps, Kraftwerk, bees and maths plus Trump in Ireland