we shape our tools and then the tools shape us (11. 708)

Subtitled An Inventory of Effects and co-created by media analyst who coined the phrase referenced Marshall McLuhan in 1967, the collaborative best-seller experimentally formatted had the imprimatur of McLuhan himself to call out how various outlets massaged our senses in order to maintain currency and hold interest—with some anecdotes that it was a typo that stuck—arguing that technologies, from the wheel, to the loom, to the printing press and beyond rather than their content as an extension (and increasingly necessary aid thereto in order to function therein) of our perceptions of the world, informed by the same progress. The recording is not exactly an audio book but rather a montage of main statements punctuated by dissonant sound-effects meant to suggest the fragmentation of the listening experience.

10x10 (11. 707)

the institute for controlled speleogenesis: an fictional organisation designing artificial caves  

indecent proposal: the infamous 1994 advertising campaign, Love Letters from Fiat 

a river runs through it: the consequences of taming—and rewilding—the Los Angeles River (see previously)—via Nag on the Lake  

amazombies: online retail giant’s affiliate programme for customer returns are overtaxing for brick-and-mortar partners  

one hundred days of cultural clarity: an exploration of recent memes and trends  

bootstraps: JD Vance as the toxic byproduct of America’s obsession with rags-to-riches narratives  

polkamania: Weird AI (see below) drops a new new medley of song parodies  

posse: publish (on your) own site, syndicate elsewhere  

fiddler on the forum: male exploitation on the Carol Burnett Show—see also 

nietzsche and the noonday demon: the fictitious French philosopher, Jean-Baptiste Botul, whose writings are often cited

12ᵉ arrondissement (11. 706)

Owing to its historic location on the bank of the Seine and adjacent to Paris but not within the city limits, a large portion of the municipality of Bercy began in the eighteenth century as a entrepôt, a warehousing centre fore receiving all manner of goods destined for consumption by the Parisians but not subject to import levies. The quarter for nearly two hundred years was the heart of the wine trade particularly and a unique commercial culture developed with essentially factory outlet taverns and venues operating along side the merchants, bottlers and distributors. Shifting expectations in the decanting and ouillage (the practise of mixing vintages to top off a bottle) and technological advances sent the bottling and sales back to individual vintners and by the 1960s the importance of the marketplace was in decline, and in the 1980s, the warehouse district was razed to make way for a sports stadium. Much more from Messy Nessy Chic at the link up top.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: the first sixth months of Trump plus Harlem hoarders

eight years ago: driverless cars plus more links to enjoy

who goes nazi? (11. 705)

Prominent American journalist and broadcaster Dorothy Thompson was the first US reporter to be expelled from Germany in 1934, the order delivered by the Gestapo to her lodgings at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin with Thompson given twenty-four hours to leave the country, for her articles and observations critical of the party and its leader, as a Little Man and the embodiment of mediocrity. Continuing her work, Thompson rallied against the regime over the next two decades, trying to warn the world about its mindset and strongly advocated for first Jewish refugees, but recognising the right-wing infiltration of the Zionist movement, then displaced Palestinians, one of her more memorable and influential essays was published in 1941 by Harper’s Magazine, framed as a guessing-game with the objective of trying to spot the fascist at a social gathering, whom despite maintaining they have no truck with such dark ideologies would nonetheless support a mainstream, normalised movement under a different name—or under the same, unabashedly.

…The saturnine man over there talking with a lovely French emigree is already a Nazi.  Mr. C is a brilliant and embittered intellectual.  He was a poor white-trash Southern boy, a scholarship student at two universities where he took all the scholastic honours but was never invited to join a fraternity.  His brilliant gifts won for him successively government positions, partnership in a prominent law firm, and eventually a highly paid job as a Wall Street adviser.  He has always moved among important people and always been socially on the periphery.  His colleagues have admired his brains and exploited them, but they have seldom invited him—or his wife—to dinner. He is a snob, loathing his own snobbery.  He despises the men about him—he despises, for instance, Mr. B—because he knows that what he has had to achieve by relentless work men like B have won by knowing the right people. But his contempt is inextricably mingled with envy.  Even more than he hates the class into which he has insecurely risen, does he hate the people from whom he came. He hates his mother and his father for being his parents. He loathes everything that reminds him of his origins and his humiliations.  He is bitterly anti-Semitic because the social insecurity of the Jews reminds him of his own psychological insecurity. Pity he has utterly erased from his nature, and joy he has never known.  He has an ambition, bitter and burning. It is to rise to such an eminence that no one can ever again humiliate him.  Not to rule but to be the secret ruler, pulling the strings of puppets created by his brains.  Already some of them are talking his language—though they have never met him.

There he sits: he talks awkwardly rather than glibly; he is courteous.  He commands a distant and cold respect.  But he is a very dangerous man.  Were he primitive and brutal he would be a criminal—a murderer.  But he is subtle and cruel.  He would rise high in a Nazi regime. It would need men just like him—intellectual and ruthless.  But Mr. C is not a born Nazi. He is the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery.  He is a sensitive, gifted man who has been humiliated into nihilism.  He would laugh to see heads roll…

…Mrs. E would go Nazi as sure as you are born.  That statement surprises you? Mrs. E seems so sweet, so clinging, so cowed.  She is.  She is a masochist.  She is married to a man who never ceases to humiliate her, to lord it over her, to treat her with less consideration than he does his dogs. He is a prominent scientist, and Mrs. E, who married him very young, has persuaded herself that he is a genius, and that there is something of superior womanliness in her utter lack of pride, in her doglike devotion. She speaks disapprovingly of other “masculine” or insufficiently devoted wives. Her husband, however, is bored to death with her.  He neglects her completely and she is looking for someone else before whom to pour her ecstatic self-abasement.  She will titillate with pleased excitement to the first popular hero who proclaims the basic subordination of women…

Married to Nobel award winning author Sinclair Lewis (It Can’t Happen Here), the 1942 film Woman of the Year, starring Katherine Hepburn (her first with Spencer Tracy and the later musical adaptation featuring Lauren Bacall), was loosely based on Thompson’s life and career.

fashion statement (11. 704)

Whilst strongly disagreeing with the conclusion that Trump’s party has mastered optics and branding, from the wholly unoriginal MAGA hat of Ronald Reagan to the latest donning on gauzy ear bandages—which caught my attention as truly laying bare the GOP identity as a cult, something reminiscent of the off-putting Ellen Jamesians from The World According to Garp who voluntarily cut out their tongues in solidarity—it is true that at least for now with the RNC over and Republicans confident and congratulatory that the Democrats did not deliver the sort of counter-programming that they wanted, with Joe Biden self-isolating with a mild case of COVID and more and more senior party figures publicly urging him to withdraw his candidacy from the ticket. Although I cannot say for certain that replacing Biden would help the Democrats’ chances, and down-ballot contests to retain the nearly evenly divided congress, I am glad that party leaders are forthcoming about their reservations, since public unanimity with private reservations was too much like Trump’s adults in the room. Moreover Democrats are pretty skilled when it comes to meme-making and wearing white during legislative sessions in protest for women's rights has been striking and classy, and aside from all that, the Democrats’ diversity and plurality speaks for itself.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Siege of Chartes (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: the World of Sid and Marty Krofft

nine years ago: The Golden Bough plus hysteria over overdue earthquakes

eleven years ago: augmented realities, the internet’s free trial period is over plus domestic spying in Germany

twelve years ago: departing for Norway 

i stand before you to proclaim tonight, america is a land where dreams can come true for all of us (11. 703)

Our faithful chronicler reminds us that on this day during the DNC in San Francisco, congress woman of New York, representing Queens the real-world setting of All in the Family, Geraldine Ferraro accepted the party’s nomination for vice president as the running mate of Walter Mondale for the 1984 Democratic ticket. Though many pundits saw this as politically risky, Ferraro reaffirmed her campaigning credentials and proved to be a quite formidable debater against Ronald Reagan’s policies, at times overshadowing Mondale and narrowing the incumbent’s considerable lead in the polls to a tie. The race however was beset scrutiny and criticism, which seemingly would have otherwise been more tempered for male candidates with pro-choice platforms, and criticised roundly in the media for announcing that her husband would not be releasing his income tax returns, as was customary but not a required disclosure, saying that doing so could disadvantage her spouse’s real estate business. Dismissing the issue by joking, “so you people married to Italian men—you know what it’s like,” turned out to be a miscalculation and was again attacked as promoting ethnic and gender stereotypes and some outlets suggested connections to the mob. Although eventually eventually both filings were given to the press and Ferraro endured a rather gruelling two-hour cross-examination line by line of the couples’ separate returns, the closed matter had consequences that lingered up until the election. Carrying the vice-presidential debate against George HW Bush—albeit who was judged the winner was split strongly among men and women polled, Second Lady Barbara Bush, referencing the financial disclosures and property portfolio that ran a bit counter to her narrative of as the child of immigrants and self-determination and angry about her husband being upstaged, publicly called Ferraro “that four-million-dollar—I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich,” with the the vice-president’s press secretary reiterating, “She’s too bitchy—arrogant—humility isn’t one of her strong points, and I think that comes through. Though Mrs Bush issued a backhanded apology saying that she did not mean to imply Ferraro was a witch, none was given for the latter appraisal, saying the campaign was being hypersensitive for complaining about it. Mondale-Ferraro lost to Reagan-Bush in the popular vote by nineteen percent and only won the electoral endorsement of Minnesota and Washington, DC in November.

7x7 (11. 702)

drake’s equation: a reevaluation of the cosmic amenities we take for granted suggests that alien life might be exceedingly rare—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links  

now the chips are down: the archive of the BBC’s Computer Literacy Project—see previously—via Web Curios

sunnyside up: a supercut of the best egg scenes in cinema 

duckmaster: a luxury hotel’s waterfowl tradition  

crickets: how the chirping of the insect came to be synonymous with “a conspicuous silence”—via Strange Company 

blue screen of death: transportation, media outlets and health care disrupted by largest IT outage yet, exposing the fragility of our digital infrastructure—essentially what the y2k patch worked against 

star-studded: the shortlist revealed for Royal Greenwich Museum’s astronomy photographer of the year

synchronoptica

one year ago: a banger from Genesis (with synchronoptica), the UK 1881 census plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: a zombie emoji, an engraved dinner knife, a gameified office, the woman’s signature on the US Declaration of Independence plus a stop-motion fairy-tale

nine years ago: Syncro-Vox animation

fourteen years ago: the landscape of Top Secret America plus an inspired preoccupation with rockets

evil malört (11. 701)

Already a somewhat notorious and reviled Swedish-style liqueur called bäsk, bitter and flavoured with wormwood and anise—Sweden being one of the few countries that never banned absinthe—a bartender is leaning into its noxious reputation with the Chicago distillery Jeppson (Bäska droppar is the most popular domestic label, drunk as a digestif), which imported the blend from the home country in the 1920s, first sold door-to-door as a medicine to bypass Prohibition restrictions. Pure described as tasting like “heartbreak and pencil-shavings” and previously offered as a boilermaker and during the emergence of the last brood, with an infusion of seventeen-year cicadas—no one asked for this—the latest concoction calls for a wash of truffle and sesame oil, chilli peppers, briny cuttlefish ink soaked in tobacco—specifically Newports. More about its reception—“grandma’s furniture from when she still smoked”—at the link above.