day one-hundred ten (13. 531)

After increasingly deadly clashes in the wake of the US-Iranian truce that threatened to sabotage the peace settlement before talks (postponed with the US vice president delaying his departure to Switzerland, despite proclaiming that the sixty-day period for negotiations had started) could even begin, Hezbollah and the IDF declare a ceasefire. The term made increasingly Orwellian in practise, we will see if it plays out like the ceasefire arrangement in Gaza, the opposite of an armistice that’s seen a thousand Palestinian deaths and the population squeezed into a smaller and smaller area as Israel occupation expands. Ukrainian forces launch a retaliatory drone attack on Moscow, the largest yet during the four year conflict, aim to bring the realities of war to the home-front for the Russian people. Trump, messy drama queen that he is, scripts his own Italian soap-opera, claiming that Giorgia Meloni begged him for a picture together on the sidelines of the G7 summit. The prime minister called out his made up story and cancelled a trip to America scheduled for her foreign minister. Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz surges, from a trickle to approaching a quarter of pre-war crossings. The MOU stipulates that Iran will keep the waterway open to all for a thirty-day period in order to clear the backlog of ships stranded, but leaves open the possibility to impose tolls or restrict certain vessels flying under the flag of enemies in the future. Quite a few other significant concessions to Tehran are emerging, amplified by Trump’s attempts to defend his grand deal—claiming without him Israel wouldn’t exist and he saved the world economy from sliding into a depression. The Supreme Leader says the settlement was reached out of desperation and panic in Washington.

you made this? (13. 530)

Knowing it was ongoing project, I was not completely surprised to see references to John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows circulating on the internet but we did not realise that the revival was not due to a reissue or a follow up edition by the author but rather an act of wholesale plagiarism. Whilst nonsensically including the entire text of the book and all his neologisms for universally felt emotions that we don’t have the words to express (not the best marketing strategy to sell a book), the slick impostor website, which includes blurbs and a biography and links to purchase the dictionary, absent were any of the illustrations to accompany the definitions, instead replaced with unpolished AI-generated images and a feature to gin up a new sorrow with the help of GPT-4—which seemed pretty off-brand for the writer and the attempt to limn lacunas of human experience. Every submitted sorrow is a bit rubbish and unneeded with fussy and overcomplicated etymologies and pronunciation guides (see also). Andy Baio of Waxy got in touch with Koenig and tracks down the mystery of this unauthorised “tribute” site. Vibe coded, I suspected that this might have been a case of spontaneous generation but arguably more tragic, malicious and pervasive, the bootleg site siphoning off profits from another’s creativity is a marketing agency feeling entitled. There ought to be a word for this sad state.

i spy with my little eye (13. 529)

The latest from Neal Agarwal (previously), Wiki Spy, invites one to explore nearly forty-thousand images from Wikipedia (see also) as chaotic collages that reshuffle with every visit. Clicking on the picture brings one to the source article, as in off-centre, William Hogarth and his pugnacious pug, Trump, who has his own entry and category in the Commons. Let us know what pops out for you and piques your curiosity.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a visit to Verdun (with synchronoptica)

two years ago: hair shavings as battery components plus more mysterious monoliths 

three years ago: Rocky Horror Picture Show (1973) plus assorted links to revisit 

four years ago: more links to enjoy, Juneteenth, SS Gervasius and Protasius plus designer Lutz Colani

five years ago: rendered realities plus generative textile patterns

six years ago: unclergyable offenses, more dazzle camouflage, Trump censored on social media plus the dance of the queen bee

day one-hundred nine (13. 528)

Israel cuts diplomatic ties with the EU after a report is published equating Israeli settlement policy with apartheid South Africa over its illegal practise of home building in the West Bank and continued demolition in Gaza and Lebanon. Amid dissatisfaction with Trump’s grand deal with Tehran, secretary of war Hegseth threatens renewed strikes if Iran does not uphold its end of the bargain, which seemingly concedes more than it was asking for, leaving room for negotiation on its arsenal of ballistic missiles and nuclear programmes. According to Pakistani intermediaries, the formal signing ceremony in Lucerne is canceled due to Trump’s and Pezeshkian’s digital accord, the Supreme Leader offering he had authorised the agreement despite reservations after assurances that Iran’s interests would be safeguarded, stating that the position of the enemy were not necessarily acceptable. US vice president Vance, whom my or may not travel to Switzerland over the weekend to begin negotiations, states that the sixty-day ceasefire begins now, defending the settlement as in the best interest of the American people, as Trump calls sceptics either jealous or stupid.

convention zone (13. 527)

The latest instalment of a multipart series on the Sun and its inner workings addresses in depth a fact briefly touched on in a recent post regarding the surprisingly glacial speed which a photon escapes the solar core to emerge as light and radiative energy. Whilst many of us may be cognisant of the fact that the beams of light reaching us from the Sun are eight minutes old due to the distance that they have to transverse and how looking up into the night sky is looking into the distant past, the fact that the stellar furnace is so dense that it takes a photon over one hundred thousand years to work its way through the crowd of excited particles to the surface strikes one as a strange contrast. Because protons emanate in all directions through the medium of packed plasma, the straightforward journey is impeded by obstacles at every step, the bumping into a fellow traveller and the redirection over and over again increases the time to make it from the core to the corona by a factor of a trillion, a dampening process calculated in a process called a random walk, that sustains the fusion reaction. This delayed makes the light in the sky prehistoric, older than civilisation.

the commons (13. 526)

Via Waxy, we are directed to this cute little add-on that can turn the footer of one’s website, brushing aside the banner ads, into a little forum where visitors who are there at the same time can walk around and chat with one another, perhaps reading the same article and post and share their opinions about it—or just meet someone with shared interest.

This sweet idea for the comments section and view statistics as a very ephemeral and chance encounter, anonymous and that’s not recorded in anyway is from an aerospace engineer called Cauê and may be expanded in the future, like a little sidescrolling game, where one can walk to the next website on the webring. Much more at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: US bombs Iranian nuclear facilities (with synchronoptica)

two years ago: assorted links to revisit, the Kyffhäuserdenkmal (1896) plus a long-running webcollage

three years ago: machine-generated emoji, more links to enjoy, a short biography of a human computer plus the roll-out of Adsense

four years ago: a space-based marquee to combat global warming, the musical stylings of Yellow, lettering artist Rafael Serra plus peacock butterflies

five years ago: more links to revisit plus one-dimensional chess

six years ago: London’s Monopoly properties, the Appeal of 18 June (1940) plus the pinball number count

day one-hundred eight (13. 525)

As the G7 summit concludes, Trump lashed out at a media reports of the publication of a leaked copy of the MOU furnished by CNN—telling world leaders that Obama bribed his way to secure the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the 2015 plan these governments supported and were not pleased with the unilateral and ultimately violent withdrawal from) in order to deflect from the fourteen-point memo’s commitment for restitution and relief from sanctions, squandering whatever political capital and goodwill he had accrued by retreating from the war he started, spending unaccounted billions and causing the death of thousands to not achieve the objectives cited for the conflict—chiefly preventing Iran from building atomic weapons, which it was not doing in the first place but definitely sees the need for now. Rather than apologising or offering thanks to allies and mediators for their patience and suffering, Trump only strangely A much worse and more brittle settlement than the JCPOA, the White House had pledged to release the details prior to Friday’s signing ceremony at the Bürgenstock Resort above Lake Lucerne—the Qatari-owned property chosen for its remoteness—but we are unlikely now to get much of a preview, if privy to the terms at all, I thought though the leak prompted a partial read-out. Threatening to return to bombing if Tehran backslides, Trump admonished them to “behave,” repeating a line from early failed negotiations headed by the US vice president, “if it works out, I’m going to take the credit—if not, I am blaming JD,” Trump suggests he might he stick around to sign himself with Iranian counterpart Pezeshkian (update: which they did). Meanwhile, Hezbollah and the IDF continue to clash in Beirut (Netanyahu says he has not seen the document and has not asked); the IAEA approaches Kazakstan to potentially store Iran’s supply of enriched uranium as negotiations continue, though Iran now pledges to destroy its stockpiles through dilution—this truce only extends the ceasefire for sixty days—and the first tankers leave Iranian ports, the US blockade suspended.

accessibility settings (13. 524)

Via Boing Boing, we learn that the operating system for iPhones have had a feature for a couple of years now called Vehicle Motion Cues that makes it more comfortable for a car passenger and potentially lessens the effects of motion sickness from staring at one’s phone by taking readings from the device’s gyroscope and accelerometer and placing flecks on the edge of the screen that harmonises with the motions of the automobile. When I am the passenger seat, lately, I am usually too enamoured with the passing scenery to even glance at my phone, but the author, whom road-tested it during an extended excursion—a working-vacation, swears by the magic dots and it could offer some relief (see also) during a bus ride or for a moment’s research and consultation, when I can feel the nausea creeping up trying to focus on one thing for too long.  Motion sickness comes about when our own gyroscope, the inner ear, detects that we are moving but the eyes, fixed on something static, presents a contradiction.