amidakuji (11. 918)

A way of establishing 1:1 correspondence with any number of random pairings of equal size—for instance assigning roles to actors or chores to a group of helpers—the lottery game of chance, guaranteeing equal chance and distribution is called the above in Japan (阿弥陀籤, after the aspect of the Buddha associated with discernment and perception), in Korean as Sadaritagi (사다리타기, ladder climbing) and in Chinese as Guijiaotu (鬼腳圖, a ghost leg diagram). Participants’ names are listed in the row above with vertical lines dropping down to an assignment directly below. Concealing the names and jobs, the lines are hashed with random horizontal detours that must be taken on to the next column until reaching the bottom. Revealing the lines to the players but still keeping the other names and jobs concealed, they choose their path downward, the permutations in the snaking path ensuring all tasks are taken—unlike with drawing lots, flipping a coin. Aside from practical applications, such lottery elements can be found in the bonus rounds in video games to randomise one’s chances of getting the best prize.

welcome to the future (11. 917)

The Verge presents a series of interesting articles about the pivotal tech year two decades ago that informs our present with a thoroughgoing survey of Napster and KaaZa and successor music sharing sites and the question of copyright and ownership of one’s media, the launch of the social web, Gmail and one’s permanent digital demesne, podcasts, migration to the cloud and more. The piece on the gap in photos from circa those years was particular resonant and relatable, like this grainy snapshot of the one time I visited Schloß Neuschwanstein in 2004 from among about forty or so bad pictures I could scrounge up.  Whilst there have been innovations and choices in the interim, a lot of this architecture and underpinning infrastructure is locked in and legacy that we are living with today.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Big Foot on film (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: tonal passkeys, the dangers of know thyself, French naming trends, a utopian city plus GIF mashups

eight years ago: the immunology of Tasmania Devils

nine years ago: story-telling and maths serving the same human need 

thirteen years ago: coin collecting plus the occupy-movement

express exterior (11. 916)

Wanting to explore liminal spaces but realising many of the routine, obligatory and mundane things we endure can yet be harried and harrowing at times, showering, dressing and breakfast or one’s commute, documentary photographer Sharam Saadat found for recent study, entitled The Whale, a really surreal, captivating and non-negotiable interlude in a carwash in southern England, capturing his subject as they went through the three minute cycle when one can only pass the time—a moment of relief from having to do anything other than pass the time and possibly anticipation. What other time-capsule interims can you think of? More from the Vice interview at the link above and the artist’s website.

.io (11. 915)

Since 1968, the UK and US have operated a joint military base, Diego Garcia, on the Chagos Islands—with the official demonym of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT, also previously known as the Oil Islands)—and Mauritius (which gained independence from the UK the same year after being ceded as a French colony to Britain under the terms of the 1814 Treaty of Paris) has claimed the archipelago as its own, supported by a ruling of the International Court of Justice to end decolonisation. After more than half a century, the UK conceded and in exchange for a ninety-nine year lease on the military base has handed over sovereignty to Mauritius earlier this month. And while a significant move for justice and reconciliation, these developments—not tracked by the tech world—have an equally sizeable impact on the internet with repatriation, we learn via Web Curious. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which issues top-level country domains will remove the suffix, IO, not allowing any new registration under that code (like with the governing body for emoji no longer accepting submissions for flags) and begin the process of retiring existing ones: github, twitch, et al. At a time when domain names can be a considerable portion of a country’s economy (see also) and how many have hitched their identity to a particular brand and legacy with an expectation of permanence, it’s pretty consequential—and of course not without protocol and precedent, albeit established in times when the online world did not play such an overwhelming part of our lives, geopolitically or otherwise. Granted less than a year earlier, the Soviet Union .su domain was replaced with .ru with understanding it would eventually be shutdown in 1991—but the former’s transformation into an unpoliced space and refuge of the dark web convinced authorities that regulations needed to be in place and enforced regarding transition and closure. The 1992 dissolution of Yugoslavia was arguably a better managed affair, with the ISO and IANA having learned from their previous experience, with .yu splintering into its successors .me and .rs respectively.

𑫀 (11. 914)

Having encountered such revered writing systems previously, we enjoyed this introduction and overview of the small religious community adhered to by members of the Tedim-speaking people called the Zo or Chin, practising a monotheistic faith called Laipianism, an outlier for this indigenous group in a region of Myanmar that primarily follows Christianity or Buddhism. Founded in response to aggressive missionary outreach in colonial southwest Asia, Pau Cin Hau, the charismatic figure who would become the movement’s spiritual leader had a series of dreams around 1900 regaling him with a multitude of symbols for writing his native language which had previously had only an oral tradition—developing with the aid of his dream-guide a logographic syllabary of a thousand characters, simplified into fifty-seven for an alphabetic script. The name of the religion, which still has about five-thousand devotees, reflects the importance of this invention, the lai element meaning literacy, and the dream-guide was revealed to be Pathian—compare to the Pythia—who was the one true and transcend god and discouraged worship of intermediary spirits called metapersons. In written form, Cin was able to propagate the teachings of Pathian—ironically Christian missionaries also published in the script called Zotuallai. While the script is considered sacred and a certain level of deferential diglossia is maintained, the alphabet Cin was given its own Unicode block in 2014 and can be used for everyday communications and texting.

  synchronoptica

one year ago: Pomp and Circumstance (with synchronoptica)

eight years ago: the Remembrancer of the Crown

nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus Picasso’s Guernica

ten years ago: Barbie: Plastic Religion, redesigning Norway’s currency, the civic minimum plus robots and mobility

twelve years ago: heraldic standards, looking at rectangles plus exoplanets and Alpha Centauri

 

allium sativum (11. 913)

Via Strange Company’s Weekly Link Dump, we were intrigued by this herbarium of apotropaic plants that goes beyond one’s standard staple of garlic to ward off or disempower malign forces and how these superstitions intersect with traditional healing and culinary arts. For instance, testimony from witch trials during the sixteenth century in the Gulf of Trieste revealed the widespread belief that good witches (called Benandanti—see also) engaged in nightly parasomnic battles with their evil counterparts wielding wands made of rue and fennel. Dill was also held to have disenchanting properties and hedges of hawthorn (Weißdorne) were said to be protective barriers where dark magic could not enter. Much more at the links above.

living museum (11. 912)

Albeit a bit hodgepodge in terms of curation and by dent of prompts and cues (though appreciative of the honesty and transparency regarding how it was acquired), we enjoyed our AI-enabled conversation, via Web Curios (at lot more to explore there), with reanimated artefacts of the British Museum. Whilst not as good as a resident docent, our talk with the mummy of Cleopatra (not the pharaoh but with a history equally intriguing and deserving to be told) was engaging—and surprising to see how quickly the practise is being adopted and embraced—and could fill in some gaps in my knowledge about mythology and the afterlife.  Peruse to see what you can find.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the US House of Representatives without a Speaker (with synchronoptica) plus more unuselessness

seven years ago: de-wilding the Rhein plus the mad genius of the OED

eight years ago: re-christening Boaty McBoatface, incremental architecture, the medical contributions of the Eames duo plus an Art Deco droid

nine years ago: the Plague and the Enlightenment

twelve years ago: a series of tubes, online safety plus bottles of wine as time-capsules

imago mundi (11. 911)

Familiar with the image from our faithful cartographer Keir Clarke, we were pleased to learn about the provenance of the Maps Mania mascot as a series of homages to Abraham Ortelius’ 1570 global atlas, later imposed as an eponymous ovular projection and mapped onto the face of a court jester. The anonymous end result is a bit of an enigma left up to the interpretation of the viewer, the vanity of the belief of having encompassed, understood the world and how much, though charted is still terra incognito—then and now, which the constellation of aphorisms around the Fool’s Cap Map redress.