monkey puzzle tree

Native to Chile and Argentina and described as a living fossil like the Wollemi pines, the Araucaria araucana, which goes by the above common name (as in it would puzzle a monkey to climb these reptilian and rangy branches) and also known as the piñonero is endangered in its wild habitat but a popular decorative tree with a reputation of being hardy and adaptable to a wide array of climes. The scaly leaves individually have a longevity of about twenty-four years and after maturity at forty years, the trees begin producing seed that are edible like pine nuts. Its Australian relatives, also to include the bunya pines which produce cones as big as soccer balls, share a common ancestry when that continent, Antarctica and South America were joined as Gondwanaland.

the rise and fall of ziggy stardust and the spiders from mars

Released in the UK on this day in 1972, the loosely connected concept album presented as a rock opera relates the arc of narrative in eleven tracks of David Bowie’s titular alter ego sent to Earth to avert an impending apocalyptic event who himself falls short after succumbing to his own inflated ego. Members of the backing band include Trevor Bolder, Mick Ronson and Mick Woodmansey. Ziggy introduces himself in the third song below, Moonage Daydream, as “an exotic hybrid of rock’s past and mankind’s future” among other colourful epithets after the first two numbers present the coming doomsday and characters reacting to unavoidable disaster.

上を向いて歩こう

Starting a three-week run at the top of US singles charts on this day in 1963—as well as attaining an impressive standing in the UK and Australia, Kyu Sakamoto’s “Sukiyaki” (坂本 九 with “Ue o Muite Arukō”) was his breakout hit after leaving a pop-group called the Drifters for a solo career. Translated as “I look up when I walk” (so that the tears in his eyes don’t fall—ostensibly a forlorn lovers’ song but originally inspired out of songwriter Ei Rokusuke’s feelings of dejection over the US-Japan Security Treaty and permanent American presence), it was the first Japanese language song to excel in this way in Western markets and became overall one of the best-selling singles in history. The alternative title is a more familiar menu item to Anglophone ears and does not occur in the actual lyrics and has been compared with re-titling “Moon River” as “Beef Stew.” The Taste of Honey’s 1980 version has the same rhythm and cadence but completely different lyrics which attempt to preserve the spirit of the song.

tragopogon pratensis

Having always assumed that such specimens were just giant dandelions (see previously with another pre-seed example), I was pleased to learn was a related but distinct species that grows across Europe and North America and goes by the common names meadow Salsify, showy Goat’s-Beard (Wiesen Bocksbart auf Deutsche) or Jack-Go-To-Bed-At-Noon (as the yellow flower—see above—only opens in the morning sunshine. The blowball is much larger than that of the dandelion and the leaves are more grass-like rather than serrated.

sallie gardner at a gallop

Using a battery of dozen cameras capturing a single image in rapid succession, shutters activated once an object crossed a trip wire and broke the electromagnet circuit, Eadweard Muybridge (previously) created the first motion picture at the race track of the Palo Alto Stock Farm. The horse belonged to former governor, businessman and philanthropist Leland Stanford and the site of the photo session is now part of the campus of his namesake university who had commissioned Muybridge to document his estate and to prove his theories on equine locomotion—that in fact all four hooves are off the ground at the same time. Projected later with his zoopraxiscope, Muybridge’s technical achievement inspired Thomas Edison to create the kinetoscope, an early type of movie camera.

standing firm

On this day in 1992, whilst attending a spelling bee at the Muñoz Rivera elementary school in Trenton, New Jersey, vice president and former senator from Indiana Dan Quayle (see previously) corrected one pupil’s answer from potato to add an erroneous e at the end. Subject to widespread ridicule for this mistake (part of a long series of gaffes), in his memoirs Quayle blamed written material given to him in advance by the school. During the presidential campaign later that year, the incumbent facing challengers Al Gore and Vice Admiral James Stockdale (RET) for his office, Quayle declaimed to reporters that he believed that homosexuality was a choice, and “the wrong choice.”

7x7

exascale: the world’s super computer might be surpassing benchmarks in secret  

hub and spoke: a suite of interactive maps that lets one scour the globe with creeping data spiders  

viral nightmares: more trials of an AI text to image generator  

witkar: a ride-sharing demonstration projection that ran from 1974 to 1986 in Amsterdam  

the firth of forth: some of the world’s best bridges for driving  

whiskey war: the fifty yearlong territorial dispute between Canada and Denmark over Hans Island has been settled  

zeroth law: an AI ethicist believes Google’s LaMDA has attained sentience

numb & spicy hot pot

Via our peripatetic friends Messy Nessy Chic and Present /&/ Correct, we are introduced to a world of flavours in these Lays potato chips attuned to local tastes and palettes. Whilst not really a crisp person and generally a little repulsed by the anticipation of the diminishing returns and remorse of processed savours, I would stake my snacking reputation, untasted, on some of these combinations, like Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup, Vintage Cheddar & Caramelised Onion, Yogurt & Herbs from Jordan or Seasoned Seaweed plus fifty-five other varieties available in Thailand—each regaled with a haiku.