hohenwartetalsperre iv (12. 500)

We took a short drive to look at the Hohenwarte dam wall (Staumauer, see previously) and took a nice long walk with the dogs down a trail through an enchanted forest (there were a lot activities set up for kids hidden amongst the trees, like our own Zwergweg) and across the basis by a former cardboard factory. We could see the Pumpspecicherwerk (pumped hydroelectric energy storage plant in the far distance, a gravitational sink that is a source of potential energy, channelling water uphill to a higher holding basis during off-peak hours and releasing it during higher periods of demand to generate electricity in the turbines.

Such a plant also allows excess energy from intermittent sources—like solar and wind—to be saved. The lake and surrounding area were full of recreational opportunities, more wandering and cruises over the length and breath of reservoir.

opus 314 (12. 499)

To mark both the fiftieth year of the European Space Agency and the second centenary of the birth of the composer—as well to redress a glaring omission in the playlist of Voyagers’ Golden Records, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra performed the “Blue Danube” livestreamed for terrestrial audiences and beamed out to the stars from an ESA dish antenna in Cebreros, Spain, part of the array of the deep-space network. The waltz by Johann Strauss II had its association with the wonder and grandeur of the Cosmos cemented by its use in the score of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey—see also—and broadcast at the speed of light, the single will have surpassed the twenty-four billion kilometres transversed by the twin probes launched in 1977, overtaking Mars in just four and half minutes, Jupiter in thirty-seven minutes and Neptune in four hours. ESA director general hopes that this concert will inspire future scientists and explorers and become the anthem of space travel.

synchronoptica

one year ago: outtakes from Dalí Atomicus (with synchronoptica) plus more on numbers stations

seven years ago: brutalist birdhouses  

eight years ago: a visit to Schloss Moritzburg plus bot armies

nine years ago: a trip to Berchtesgaden plus language and colour perception

ten years ago: the lifecycle of ladybugs

so long, elon (12. 498)

Departing from his post adhering to the statutory limits of his appointment as an emergency hire—though departing from the usual politicians’ script of “spending more time with my family” to spend more time with his businesses and showing up for his outprocessing with a sufficiently theatrical black eye, which he blamed on his child X although it could have been any number of agency chiefs, department heads or any conscientious bureaucrat (or Brigitte Macron) that socked him one on his way out, Musk as the destructive and chaotic force behind DOGE fell far short of his stated goal of trillions in savings and eliminating government fraud, waste and abuse. Instead the public reputation of Tesla and Starlink have been battered (as well as demonstrating his personal repugnance) , important public work selectively and irreparably, ruining lives and careers along the way. Realising the Sisyphean task and the fools’ errand, Musk’s ego is also bruised—laid bare by wilful ignorance of what services that the US federal government provides and how those functions hang together and so called inefficiencies are by design to prevent mass surveillance, not a legacy to be fixed by AI. For his exit survey, Musk also punched back in a way albeit it too little and too late given his influence, criticising Trump’s reckless Big Beautiful Bill as ultimately economically damaging.

hohenwartetalsperre iii (12.497)

Early in the day, we took a trip to the larger town of Ranis to stock up on provisions and revisited the fortified castle, with its Ilsenhöse passage leading from the bailey to the old market recently confirmed to have some of the oldest prehistoric evidence for the settlement of Homo sapiens in the region—more than forty-five thousand years ago, particularly rare for an urbanised area.

The eleventh-century castle on a promontory overlooking the town has been in the ownership of the Germany Red Cross since 1994, the dynasty of von Breitenbuch selling the historic site for a nominal fee. Back at the campgrounds, we followed a trail along the water’s edge to a forest path littered with slate—a common architectural element for the region that afforded us some commanding views of the artistic bends in the watercourse.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a US supreme court justice flies provocative flags (with synchronoptica), a WWII battle for an Aleutian island, the anatomy of a limerick plus Trump found guilty of falsifying business records 

seven years ago: all about Ostheim

nine year ago: a wearable, in-ear translator plus giving Tumblr a try

ten years ago: Swiss cheese goes blind plus Alf’s hip-hop album

eleven years ago: mourning a ruined laptop, semi-conducting cement plus getting ready to travel to Lake Como

hohenwartetalsperre ii (12. 496)

While we’ve undoubtedly both been off for Ascension Day (Christi Himmelfahrt, forty days after Easter) and knew about the conflation and coopting of the public holiday as Vatertag, Herrentag or Männertag to disassociate it from religious overtones especially in atheist East Germany with a emphasis on partying and taking a nice long hike with a wagon-load of beer (without the family members in tow), we had never really witnessed the celebrations en mass.

We wanted to go wandering along a narrow footpath above the shoreline to the next village of Linkenmühle, hosting a guesthouse and the only ferry in the state of Thuringia, which we made but the going was a bit uncomfortable with the added traffic of the holiday and inebriated men pulling carts. The gastronomy was very crowded but we enjoyed ourselves and decided to take the highroad back via a logging path over the mountain.

It was a steep climb and with a field blackberry (Brombeer) brambles that we needed to carry the dogs over due to the thorns of but worth it for the views and very much to ourselves. We came to an establishment called Ziegenhof—a working goat farm—with caprine-based refreshments, including goat-milk ice cream and a variety of cheeses—on the way back down to the campsite.

Through the night, several party barges were launched—we could hear the music as they passed, familiar Schlager song mostly but a few new to me, like this rendition Wir haben Grund zum Feiern (We have a Reason to Party to the tune of “We Didn’t Start the Fire”—see also) from the dock for a tour of the reservoir.

synchronoptica

one year ago: laundry lessons from Japan (with synchronoptica), assorted links worth the revisit plus a post-war postscript from Thomas Mann

seven years ago: Native Americans granted citizenship 

ten years ago: the founding of Leipzig, more links to enjoy plus acceptable facial hair for Norwegian sailors

twelve years ago: furloughing federal workers  

thirteen years ago: Germans and joy plus counterfeit wine

hohenwartetalsperre i (12.495)

 

Taking advantage of the holiday and Brückentag, H and I (with the dogs) went caravaning, returning to the reservoir created by the damming of the Saale river valley in the 1930s (see previously here and here) to chiefly mitigate flooding and found a campsite centrally located in the eighty-kilometre long lake with five successive cascading basins outside the village of Neumannshof on the water’s edge. 

The village and the municipality of Gössitz lying on a higher plateau of the foothills of the southern Schefergebirges (Slate range) is surrounded by thick woods and the Slavic name means “forest mountain.” Commissioned by optics manufacturer Carl Zeiss of Jena later for its potential for electricity production, the feat of engineering is a major source of hydropower to this day.

voice writers (12. 494)

Having known just a little about the development and integration of closed-captioning technology, we really appreciated this fascinating deep dive from Radio Lab into its history and struggle for equal access that followed, with accommodation, advances in hardware and software, representation and mandates all intertwined and informing one another, concluding with a reflection on how the process is being automated with artificial intelligence and how in training the machine, we ourselves are transformed through the collaboration. Of course the story didn’t end with triumph of accessibility through the above first demonstration, as the advances for the hearing impaired community were not widely accessible: most programming was not captioned and for those that were an expensive decoder was required as a television peripheral. The situation gradually improved and after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, TV sets were required to include closed captioning technology and all broadcasts were mandated to include subtitles. A workforce of thirty thousand transcriptionists were at work to capture all stations’ content and in order to reach all of the growing market with the rise of cable programming, institutions providing the service turn to emerging voice recognition systems. These early versions were too bug-prone to be useful, especially for realtime applications and failed to keep pace with live dialogue, seizing up at the slightest accent. Researchers, however, discovered that they were more responsive and accurate with the voices of the trial participants, and soon one devised helping the computer by reading back the words in a steady, well-enunciated manner that it could manage. A team of voice writers across the States repeated scripted shows and news reports as they were aired and achieved a pretty good level of fidelity by 2003. Even with only their master’s voice, the programme still had its shortcomings and the voice writers developed a code of substitute words to clear up homophones and short prepositions, for example: echoing, “She has tootoo daughters inly college comma tootaloo period” would yield the yield the desired text, “She has two daughters in college, too.” Two decades on, the software has advanced to the point where it can transcribe instantly without the help of an interpreter and is improving with AI refinements.

bottle episode (12. 493)

Traditionally made for bottling Chianti, the style of glass vessel from Tuscany with a rounded body and wrapped tightly in a straw basket—designed for ease of transport (see also), cushioning the wine and stackable with inverted bottles fitted into a row of upright ones—over the centuries became subject to various regulations to discourage counterfeiting and filling used bottles with new wine by fiascaio (fiasco-makers) resulting in substandard containers, hence bare from the shoulders up to show the vintner’s label and seal.  The etymology in English usage for failure or scandal was perhaps transferred via the French faire fiasco from Italian theatre jargon for botching a scene—to “make a bottle—a glassmaker humiliated when an intended more elegant piece didn’t come together and they settled with the simpler but utilitarian form. The sense could also come from card play in which the loser having to buy the next round of drinks. Fiaschi are mainly nowadays for decorative purposes or souvenirs, the Bordeaux-style of bottle (bordolese—see previously) becoming more popular with automation and easier to manufacture.

synchronoptica

one year ago: an epic murder-mystery puzzle book (with synchronoptic) plus US women allowed to wear pants in public

seven years ago: more customary units plus the EU bans plastic drinking straws

ten years ago: the US special envoy to Britain during WWII 

thirteen years ago: American propaganda turns inward

fourteen years ago: extraterrestrial prospecting