up, up to the sky (10. 345)

Sharing the anniversary with many other sundry events of pith and circumstance, our faithful chronicler reports that on this day in 1975, the single from Silver Convention hit number one on on the Billboard Hot 100, holding the spot for three weeks before being unseated by CW McCall’s Convoy. Despite the paucity of lyrics (six words, which is an accomplishment in itself) owing to the fact that the German disco group didn’t speak so much English, it’s acknowledged to be the first avian themed song to reach the top of the charts, only followed by Prince’s When Dove Cry in 1984.

7x7 (10. 344)

canopic jars: a mummy called Pachery is the only individual found so far with his internal organs intact—via Messy Nessy Chic    

hardbottom communities: researchers work to preserve Florida’s coral reef    

nightfall: researchers discover two new minerals sourced from a meteorite strike in Somalia    

thirteenth studio album: imaging a fantasy concept record after 1970’s Let It Be for the Beatles    

kraft dinner: a Florida woman is suing Macaroni & Cheese over misleading preparation time    

crown of thorns: some Australian politicians take issue with the ‘endangered’ status for the Great Barrier Reef—see previously    

khufu: an interactive virtual tour of the Pyramids of Giza—via Maps Mania

quantum superimposition (10. 343)

Devised by Erwin Schrödinger with interlocutor Albert Einstein as a thought experiment and refined and published on this day in 1935 in the monthly journal Naturwissenschaften (The Science of Nature), a hypothetical feline is suspended between life and death—both simultaneously—its fate linked to a random and subatomic change that may or may not happen. Motivated to point out the counterintuitive and paradoxical nature of the prevailing theory, called the Copenhagen Interpretation that holds that a quantum system (an atom or a photon that can act both like a particle or like a wave) remains in a state of being added together until it interacts with or is observed by the external world. Although intended as a rebuke of the current understanding of quantum mechanics, others have extended this idea of alive-dead cat as a manifestation of the effects of vanishingly small changes on a macroscopic Cosmos and construe from it the Many-Worlds (alternate realities) interpretation application of the branch of physics. It is a matter of fundamental debate whether measurement or observation causes such a juncture to collapse into one state or another or both continue to exist but are decoherent from each other, splitting into separate universes. A “cat state” has been produced in the laboratory for short periods on collections of electrons and ions as well as in quantum computing.

gaslighting (10. 342)

By dint of search statistics, Merriam-Webster reports that its word of the year is the manipulative, misdirecting term that causes the target to question the surety of their own sanity taken from the title of the George Cukor 1944 classic. Though a perennial favourite of late, look ups are still exponentially high over a range of real and perceived dauntless reasons to doubt credulity. Other terms that caused people to consult the dictionary this past year were oligarch—driven by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and attendant sanctions, codify, as in enshrining laws once taken for settled and loamy—another Wordle-driven hunt (like ‘homer’) though the correct answer was clown.

i am a camera (10. 341)

The title of John van Druten’s theatrical adaptation taken from the first lines Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 Goodbye to Berlin (see previously) that goes on “…with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking” opened on Broadway in the Empire Theatre on this day in 1951. Also made into a film just over a decade before the second stage adaptation (which this play largely informed, though set primarily in Isherwood’s rented room rather than the night club) starring Shelly Winters as Fraulein Sally Bowles,van Druten’s work did not garner universal praise from critics, prompting the famous three word review from New York Times drama desk editor and playwright Walter Kerr: “Me no Leica.” Yes and the Buggles also recorded the song “Into the Lens (I Am a Camera)” in 1980 from the same quote.

mахновщина (10. 340)

Established on this day in 1918 with the capture of Huliaipole, the home town in the region of Zaporizhzhia and later capital city of the stateless, anarchist society that existed under the aegis, protection of the revolutionary forces of Nestor Makhno, Makhnovshchina (Makhno’s Movement) was under the control of free soviet (unaligned with any party and encouraging workers to self-manage through direct democracy) and libertarian communes until the end of August 1921 when leadership was was forced into exile in Romania. Based on the theories of anarcho-communism, the anti-hierarchical network promoted a government based on popular assemblies and committees and a federated alliance within territories outside of the control of Bolsheviks. The banner of the coalition—white Cyrillic text on a black background—reads “Power breeds parasites. Long live the Anarchy!” Власть рождает паразитов. Да здравствует анархия!

8x8 (10. 339)

truly toastmaster: an elaborate and enduring hoax that shows one should not believe everything on the internet—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links  

cabinet of curiosities: the intro, outro and interstitials of the horror anthology hosted by Guillermo del Toro, which has distinct echoes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 

oopsie, i did a misinformation: an exploration on how and why Japan does the internet differently than the rest of the world with case study—via Waxy  

plasmonic photocatalysis: researchers engineer a nanomaterial that could allow for power plants to efficiently isolate hydrogen from ammonia using only light  

el peatonito: a champion of the pedestrian and other Super Citizens 

it’s not delivery, it’s digiorno: an interesting short documentary on the history of frozen pizza—via Hyperallergic’s Required Reading   

teal and prebunking: the shortlisted candidates for Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year  

goncharov: thousands of fan-fic contributors have retcon’d a 1973 Martin Scorsese film starring Robert De Niro that never existed—via Slashdot

li’l folks (10. 338)

Born this day in 1922 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Charles Monroe “Sparky” Schultz, cartoonist and creator of the characters who would become the Peanuts comic strip (his uncle gave him the nickname after the horse Spark Plug in a daily comic called Take Barney Google F’rinstance) is regarded as a universal influence, informing and defining the modern medium as a legitimate means of psychological and sociological exploration and commentary.