chemin de fer

Messy Nessy Chic captivates our attention with her latest scouting expedition returning with this incredible, extant railway hotel constructed in the 1920s called the Belvédère du Rayon Vert of the French town Cerbère close to the border with Spain.
The art deco gem that once boasted a breath-taking cinema, dining halls and a roof-top tennis court closed down in 1983 but can happily still be engaged on a weekly-basis for those willing to rough it self-catering or toured for an afternoon. Check out the source link above to peruse a gallery of photographs and for more details, including the telephone number to arrange a visit since—in the spirit of being a time-capsule, there’s no website to deliberate over.

blottentot

Informed by the creative dotage of poet Justinus Kerner when he spilt ink in his notebook and was inspired to versify on the intriguing smudges, Hermann Rorschach as a young child was fascinated with this technique and earned the nickname “Klecks”—German for inkblot.
The chain of development of klecksography from poetry to psychological tool to study the subconscious did enjoy an intermediate phase as an international popular pastime, we learn from Atlas Obscura, just a few years after the publication of Kerner’s book of poems with a pamphlet instructing people how to create shadow-pictures or gobolinks for festive occasions and use the resulting image (tellingly, taken as monstrous mostly) as a writing-prompt. Similar to a test in word association or talking therapy but with a visual media, a patient’s interpretation of the stains is a way to access involuntary imagination and probe impulses not yet manifest came about in 1921 when Rorschach was studying Sigmund Freud’s theories on dream symbolism and was reminded of his childhood hobby.

ethernet

Via the intrepid adventurers at Atlas Obscura, we learn that researchers at the University of Zurich have created the largest and most complex virtual universe with the Piz Daint super computer (named after an alpine peak).
The simulation, this meta-cosmos is to be used in conjunction with the Euclid space probe mission, launching in 2020, to scour the skies for signs of dark matter and dark energy. Astrophysicists hope that virtual models seeded with informed guesses as to the composition and arrangement might help them plot out the satellite’s course to maximise the chances of detecting the illusive substance (sort of like using augmented reality as a heuristic tool), which is thought to be the chief component of the Universe and far more prevalent (but weakly interacting) than the matter that we are accustomed to working with.

blind fAIth or rapture-ready

Writing for Æon magazine, contributor Beth Singler of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion explores the alignment problem, which like the zeroth law of Asimov begs what if any morals and norms ought to be imposed on artificial intelligence.
Despite how the technocracy might deride religion and insist that it’s a hindrance to peace and progress (like some interpreting the parable of Eden as justification for abusing the Earth), the optimism, the zealotry, the fire and brimstone and even the language that discussions of the technological and economic singularity are couched in ring very similar to that of the clerics that many try to hold at a distance. What do you think? A synthetic theology and subsequent hope of deliverance and reprieve resulting from an ultra-intelligent machine might be more like contemplating the mind of God than we are ready to admit.

let them eat cake

Via NPR’s The Salt, we learn of a New York City self-taught baker turned social-media vigilante named Kat Thek who has founded a boutique agency called Troll Cakes, where one can not only commission a particularly tone-deaf or mean-spirited comment or critique to be committed to cake-form but the bakery will go one step further on behalf of their customers who were perhaps the target of harassment and do some detective work to determine the identity of the troll and send the cake to them.  The bakery also offers White House specials to give Dear Leader an opportunity to eat his own words—particularly those that have not aged well.