a maximal truth-seeking ai (11. 764)

The social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has introduced a new feature for its chatbot, Grok—for premium subscribers—a text-to-image generator comparable to Bing’s service (which would rather infamous refuse the prompt “please make me a picture with the winner of 2020 US presidential election) or Facebook’s but apparently with the safety protocols turned off. Whilst users can find boilerplate guidelines and guardrails, presented in the first-person, proffering caution when it comes to making deceptive, provocative or plagiarised pictures, a cursory trial yielded some messages surely none would endorse. Though all tinged by that particular, cutting-corners AI patina that’s far from a watermark, a trial yielded far more offensive and topical content ready to be shared.

a sunken dream (11. 763)

Poring through volumes of data taken over the course of four years when the Insight Lander touched down on the surface of the arid Red Planet back in 2018 shows on further analysis of the seismic survey that there are reservoirs of liquid water deep within the rocky outer crust of Mars. Studying the little quakes measured by the probe reveals the signature of significant pockets as it passes through various strata. Whilst there is ice at the poles and evidence of vapour in the thin atmosphere, none in liquid form had heretofore been detected outside of Earth, which too has vast subterranean aquifers. Buried some ten kilometres deep, researchers can extrapolate from Insight’s readings, which were limited to the depths directly beneath it, that there is potential enough water to form a surface ocean extending almost a kilometre down.  This discovery also may hint at possible life on Mars subsurface.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: La Linea (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: a chapel of the Seven Sleepers, Male Fantasies plus never-before-seen photographs of David Bowie

ten years ago: Marie Curie goes to war

eleven years ago: insightful maps plus the etymology of drug names

twelve years ago: a look back at Peenemünde plus a lily in a glass

lethonomia (11. 762)

Incorporating the element of Lethe, the Underworld river of forgetting one’s mortal existence, via Kottke we are introduced to the term for a tendency to not recall names that falls under wider concept of Carl Jung’s lethological and loganamnosis, a compulsion to recall a specific word that’s slipped one’s mind. I can especially relate to the latter tip-of-the-tongue phenomena—a recall not limited to conversation but also research and trying to wrest something from the archives and memory banks, fishing around for a file name or increasingly a descriptor that algorithm might understand and coming up against a slew of dead-ends and googlewhacks (I had to reach to remember that one) but will keep hunting—despite sometimes feeling gaslighted when I can’t find something I know I posted about or photographed—until thoroughly exhausted.

7x7 (11. 761)

popp horlage: the network of pneumatic clocks of fin de siècle Paris 

just get me eight-hundred thousand votes: Elon Musk interviews Trump on X—see more 

home row keys: a documentary on Mavis Beacon  

porte-clés: the French youth craze for key-rings  

josuushi: counting-markers in the Japanese language, nuanced by rank, size and sentience—see previously, see more—via tmn 

homo naledi: chance discovery reveals more branches in our family tree  

death-slot: revisiting broadcast television’s dumping grounds  

spear-fishing: reportedly a group of hackers with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran were able to break in to the Trump campaign’s database 

us patent application 10/953212: a training regimen to harvest hyperspace energy and pass through solid items

synchronoptica

one year ago: a classic from Lynard Skynard (with synchronoptica) plus a tour through the Geratal

seven years ago: classic cartoon What on Earth?! plus diagrams of parliamentary seating

nine years ago: keeping stashed cash safe 

ten years ago: Mexico ends state oil monopoly plus more humanitarian airstrikes

eleven years ago: histomaps plus ages of the US Founding Fathers

the philadelphia experiment (11. 760)

Alleged first trialled on this day in 1943 on the US navy vessel the USS Eldridge at the city’s shipyard and coming to public attention over a decade later with a detailed account by supposed witness, a former merchant marine Carl Meredith Allen, the secretive project involving poorly understood extraterrestrial technology carried out with the intention of cloaking an escort ship. The outcome however was unexpected: while the Eldridge did vanish, it reappeared instantly in the naval docks of Norfolk, Virginia, some four hundred and fifty kilometres away, with the crew (no one else corroborated Allen’s story) sustaining bizarre side-effects from the teleportation, returning to Philadelphia minutes later. The navy disavows any knowledge of such research and the story and conjecture gained currency in the late 1970s with the resurgence in interest of paranormal phenomena like the Bermuda Triangle and Project Montauk. The 1984 film adaptation with Michael Paré added an element of time-travel and was generally not well-received by the fringe scientific community.

synchronoptica

one year ago: deadly and illegal border barriers (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

seven years ago: sabre-rattling, crown shyness plus old neologisms

eight years ago: more links to enjoy

nine years ago: the velocity of money

ten years ago: thoughts on Dune and redundancy

the herculoids (11. 759)

Better known by his stage name of DJ Kool Herc, Clive Campbell of the Bronx is credited with the invention of hip-hop, alternating between two turn-tables to isolate percussive instrumental portions of recordings, switching from one breakbeat to another overlayed with his rhythmic, syncopated announcements and exhortations to his dance troupe of break- boys and girls (further anticipating rap and competitive breakdancing when the house parties were taken to the streets) on this day in 1973, co-hosting an event in their apartment building’s recreation room with his younger sister Cindy to raise some funds (with a small entrance fee) for back-to-school shopping. Herc played staggered copies of James Brown’s funk album Sex Machine and his emceeing indelibly influenced artists like Grandmaster Flash and the Sugarhill Gang who forwarded the genre. His crew were named after the 1967 Hanna-Barbera animated series about space barbarians.

7x7 (11. 758)

pop quiz: extended CVs of classic game show hosts  

pass the mayo: condiment’s dynamic nature could help solve containment challenges for nuclear fusion  

wingnut: a South Berkley salvage store turned museum—via Nag on the Lake’s always excellent Sunday Links  

cocónonós: a Bogota-based fusion band—possibly named after the ill-fated Tiki drink shared with Geordi La Forge and Christy Henshaw on their first date  

bias towards coherence: Trump’s latest on rally attendance and his greatest hits  

the type specimen of humanity: the designated permanent reference for Homo sapiens is Carl Linnaeus  

magick show: Richard Metzger’s latest occult project

 synchronoptica

one year ago: cutting archived content for the sake of SEO (with synchronoptica), a racist brawl in Alabama plus multi-hyphenates

seven years ago: reproductive awareness

eight years ago: ant wars, Martian landscapes, disproportionate and xenophobic calls for burqa bans, a floating home in Canada plus Facebook and clickbait

nine years ago: Liberia and the US 

ten years ago: a party at Neuseenland plus the geopolitics of terrorism

ῑ̓χώρ (11. 757)

Pathologically-speaking, the antiquated term for watery discharge, especially with an offensive odour, was deliberately given in negative connotations by early Christian writers to dispel the last vestiges of pagan veneration for the old gods by turning the ethereal fluid that flows in the veins of the immortals of mythology into something foul and corrupt. Classically ichor was understood to be the blood of the Olympians and—unlike the blood of Christ—was deadly toxic to humans if they came in contact with it. A Cretan myth, later appropriated by the Greeks in the Colossus of Rhodes, told of a giant bronze automaton made by Hephaestus at Zeus’ request to protect Europa and the island from invaders and pirates, this sentinel called Talos circling the shores three times a day, lobbing boulders at approaching ships. The robot was powered by a single circuit vein that ran from its head to its ankle filled with ichor, and was eventually defeated by Jason and the Argonauts with the help of Medea, who told them to unscrew the retaining plug at the base and exsanguinate it. In modern Greek, ichor is also used for the words gravy and naphtha, an older term for petroleum, probably due to the belief it was a by-product of decaying giants.