how could this happen? we started out like romeo and juliet but it ended up in tragedy! (12. 463)

Via ibīdem, here is a slightly baffling online oracle that presents itself as a Magic 8 Ball but purports to answer more than yes or no questions by harnessing the power of the long-running animated television series and triangulating one’s prognostication with a clip and quote from The Simpsons that relates to one’s query. There is of course a huge archive to draw from and the show’s longevity, reaching spanning several generations of living memory and even touching on topics time out of mind, like milkmen, the middle-class—or smoking, making up this bizarre sibyl and corresponding scenes that match to the disembodied arms ashing into a skull. You’ll just have to test it out yourself. Incidentally, the toy—from Circus of Values, makes at least one appearance in the franchise, in an episode called “Bart’s Friend Falls in Love,” Milhouse showing his friend the ball on the school bus, which he quizzes: “Will I pass my English test?” Outlook not so good “Will Milhouse get beaten up today?” All signs point to yes “Will Milhouse and I be friends til we’re old toothless men with hair in our ears?” Don’t count on it “Will Milhouse and I be friends when we’re high school dropouts living off Uncle Sucker?” It looks doubtful “Will Milhouse and I be friends at the end of the day?”—answering a definite No. The same day, they learn a new student has joined their class, Samantha Stanky from Phoenix—she and Milhouse becoming instantly infatuated with one other to Bart’s exclusion. To get his friend back, Bart reveals their relationship to Samanthas’s father, who, to protect his daughter, transfers her to a local convent school, Saint Sebastian’s for Wicked Girls—run by French-Canadian nuns, who turn out to be other than strict and dour, Sœur Sourire singing Domi-nique - nique -inque s’en allait tout simplement, though voiced by Maggie Roswell (Helen Lovejoy, Maude Flanders, Miss Hoover and Luann Van Houten), made up her own lyrics. Feeling guilty for disclosing their secret romance out of jealousy, Bart confesses to Milhouse that he outed them, resulting in a physical altercation that Bart breaks up by throwing the Magic 8 Ball, originally marketed as a paper weight, another skeuomorph from the series, to consult for answers at one’s desk with ten affirmative answers, five neutral and five negative, much like ChatGPT, at Milhouse, smashing it and negating its predictions, leading to reconciliation.

unparalleled misalignments (12. 462)

Evoking a similar feeling to this recent shopping list of anachronisms from xkcd, we enjoyed very much—via Web Curios—this catalogue of non-synonymous phrases whose constituent words are in fact close matches but convey as a whole very different meanings. One can toggle between family friendly and NSFW entries—a nice bit of wordplay, like crossword clues, and basis for a game—many of which were a challenge, a satisfying one at that, to work out, like Travel Expense vs Venture Capital, Lady Luck vs Misfortune, Fever Pitch vs Sick Note or Okay Boomer vs K-Pop.  We think this sort of might be a case of applied collocation, resulting in a paronomasia or a case of double-entendre, but that’s best left to the expert cruciverbalists.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica) plus more on umari

seven years ago: separation of church and state in Bavaria, more links to enjoy, the depiction of California as an island on old maps plus the medical benefits of psychedelics

eight years ago: proxy wars and Kompromat, antique film and television logos plus White House past precedents

nine years ago: from Calais to Cornwall plus photography at speed

twelve years ago: political polarisation

vini, vidi, vici (12. 461)

Authorities in Tokat have confiscated an illegally excavated mosaic unearthed in the Zile district of the north-central city in Türkiye, the motifs suggesting it dates to the Roman Imperial era, embodying a pivotal historical moment when Julius Caesar, fresh from his siege of Alexandria and heady with success, built on that momentum and defeated in the Battle of Zela (Ζῆλα, as it was known in Antiquity) the forces of the Anatolian kingdom of Pontus under the ruler Pharnaces II with such swiftness that the victor proclaimed the title phrase, the words inscribed on a cylindrical column of the city’s castle. The female figure depicted on this decorative fragment is captioned ΤΡΥΦΗ (Tryphé) as the personification of indulgence and debauchery as a symbol of conspicuous consumption—which did not carry positive conotations necessarily among Roman philosophers and the general populace, a bit of a signifier for BRAT for the hedonistic aspect. Much more and more archaeological discoveries from the History Blog at the link up top.

8x8 (12. 460)

anachronymy: a shopping list of items, like pencil lead, that are technically misnomers but accepted by convention—see also  

there were tears brimming on her azure peepers, and tremulous grief twister her kisser: choice lines from pulp fiction detective story author Robert Leslie Bellem—see previously   

you’re all bilingual already even if you didn’t realise it before: polyglot professor addresses a high school assembly in studied Gen Alpha slang 

danglers: many hanging gerunds only do harm with a feat of imagination—see also  

breaking and entering: effraction is an antiquated synonym from the French 

it’s a breakthrough—one of them can speak: a human polyglot communicates with bonobos in their own language  

five corpulent porpoises: vintage pronunciation drills for prospective BBC anchors, including “Penelope Cholmondely rasied her azure eyes from the crabbed scenario” 

 linguistic relativity: studies of comparative conceptual specialities suggest that some cultures do have more words for snow and lava

last call (12. 459)

US president Calvin Coolidge rebuffing the proposal of the prominent prohibitionist to enforce the Volstead Act with the navy, believing the purpose of the armed forces was national defence and not police duty, on this day in 1925, attorney and longtime leader of the Anti-Saloon League, Wayne Bidwell Wheeler experienced his first push-back from the government after being a major advocate securing the passage of the eighteenth amendment to the US constitution, outlawing the manufacture, distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages. Wheeler’s initial refusal to allow for exemptions for beer below a certain threshold of proof had made him seen as unreasonable and uncompromising, making the already untenable problem of ensuring compliance worse and compelled authorities, resources stretched thin, to turn to increasingly violent and draconian measures to curb consumption including poisoning alcohol (see above). His method of activism, familiar though not a term in common parlance today, came to be known as Wheelerism—focusing on a single issue, relying heavily on mass media to persuade politicians that pet programmes held wide-spread public support, aligning with the ends of the Anti-Saloon League and other tee-totalling organisations and employed tactics like threatening to withdraw endorsements and financing opposition candidates. Wheeler’s influence waned afterwards and did not live to see the repeal of Prohibition, dying of kidney disease in Battle Creek, Michigan.

a symphony in the sky (12. 458)

Although I’d not sure that the calls and coos of our feathered friends (see previously) lack for anything, and who am I to say that birds wouldn’t like playing musical instruments—we found this ancient practise of crafting and outfitting pigeon whistles (鴿鈴, geling—also known as pigeon bells) quite fascinating. These tiny bamboo flutes, even the most elaborate ones weighing no more than eight grams so as not to harm the wearer or impede flight, form a wind section on the wing, attached to the tail feathers and emitting harmonising rhythms as they fly. Though there are fewer pigeon fanciers in urban centres like Beijing, the traditions are still maintained and breeders create a signature sound for their flocks. Much more from Present /&/ Correct at the link up top.

synchronoptica

one year ago: progrock supergroup Asia (with synchronoptica), The Swimmer (1968), outsider artist Melvin May plus a declaration of independence

seven years ago: the catalogue of degenerate art, proposed national IDs for access to adult websites plus One Hundred Scenes of Kobe

eight years ago: rescoring Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a celebration of London plus avian predation

ten years ago: assorted links to revisit plus a semi-legendary Confederate gold vault 

eleven years ago: freedom gas and influence peddling

fishing in the night (12. 457)

Roman Mars’ 99% Invisible cross-posting the work of a colleague and regular contributor directs us to a rather fascinating listen that synthesises a multitude of developments in radio and broadcasting that first forecasts how the medium previsions the internet and the miracle of instantaneous, round the world communication taken for granted by our modern perspective and seemingly by many contemporaries as well. The follow-on season focuses on shortwave, ceded to the pioneering amateurs with authorities considering that band to be of minimal utility and wanting safeguard AM and FM frequencies for tactical and commercial purposes with the outbreak of war. With a limited range but higher fidelity, broadcasters built antenna towers for amplitude modulation transmissions, usually reaching perhaps a county-sized audience, however after dark, listening audiences sometimes caught snatches when tuning the dial to programmes from very far afield. A phenomenon well known to the HAM radio community (see above), the signal boost was caused by the ionosphere becoming less charged by sunlight and able to refract and reflect errant signals back to ground-based receivers. Their shortwave leavings, the hobbyists discovered, had an incredible global and antipodal range which spurred the collecting of calling cards. As knowledge spread that programming and news was not restricted nocturnally, many members of the public, equipped only with standard AM receivers and spent many evenings engaged in the title practice, leaving families to bemoan these squandered evenings with their casting for transmissions in their “radio shack.” Once the potential of this belittled band was realised day or night with the potential for a station to bound around the world and picked up by anyone tuned in, however, once again the enthusiast community—as is the case with modern surfing the web—found themselves sidelined and marginalised with more licensing and crackdowns on commandeering the public airwaves when governments reclaimed the bandwidth for propagandising.

turning saints into the sea (12. 456)

Always a treat, we enjoyed this latest mashup from DJ Earworm (previously) that blends rather seamlessly The Killers’ “Mr Brightside” x “Forever Young” by Alphaville x (minimally) Justin Bieber’s “Stay” featuring Kid Laroi. Each of the source tracks are approximately twenty years apart. All three songs thematically similar, the West German synth-pop contribution have heavier undertones disguised by a brighter, triumphant veneer when the label insisted changing the third verse to the sparse ballad from the eponymous first album (also featuring “Big in Japan”) from:

Can you imagine how we won the war?
Little fascist lady she loves you so
Following her leader, she’s getting in tune
The music’s played by the madmen

To lighten it up a bit with:

Can you imagine when this race is won
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders we’re getting in tune…

The band’s name is from the Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 new-wave tech noir Alphaville: une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution about a secret agent posing as a journalist to infiltrate and try to liberate a dystopian community run by a tyrannical artificial intelligence.

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synchronoptica

one year ago: the terminology of literary criticism (with synchronoptica) 

seven years ago: a screenplay by Ulrike Meinhof plus the first duty-free shop

eight years ago: food insecurity, a visit to Bad Bocklet plus more ransonware attacks

ten years ago: the consequences of the TTIP trade deal plus film pioneer Louis Le Prince

eleven years ago: the right to be forgotten plus more spheres of trade