(12. 793)

synchronoptica

one year ago: university commas (with synchronopticæ), Peabody visual aides, an out-of-season bloom plus Dungeons & Dragons as group therapy

fifteen years ago: tabloid news 

sixteen years ago: the most beautiful object in the world 

mixed-media (12. 792)

Via fellow internet peripatetic Messy Nessy Chic (with some more interesting ephemera in this collection), we are directed towards this fascinating Edwardian era scrapbook lovingly curated by a young girl in New York City—circa 1902 to 1906. Filled with magazine clippings, theatre programmes and postcards, the montage includes an advertisement for Triscuit crackers—the electric biscuit (see previously) and the source link includes some genealogical research into the possible origin of this incredible social document (the primordial Pinterest board, see also)—purchased for a whole dollar at a used book store. Much more at the links above.

the garden of forking paths (12. 791)

Via the always engrossing Quantum of Sollazzo newsletter, we were at first a bit repelled by this project by Sean Goedecke to build a never-ending Wikipedia, tens of thousands of articles generated by AI—not really understanding what was happening under the hood. The constellation of seed entries of course branch off like a neural network, be that organic or synthetic and contain links, a potential daisy-chain to topics adjacent, like the typical experience of falling down a research rabbithole, except there are no red ones to click on. If the article does not yet exist, it is summoned into being with the user’s interaction and the freshly generated page has its own set of potential connections. Though no replacement for the genuine encyclopaedic project, it does make the paracosm of the large language model a bit more scrutable—like how getting to Philosophy and related challenges illustrate its architecture as well as the nature of interdisciplinary studies. Goedecke, with ample caution for the visitor, compares EndlessWiki to the Library of Babel of Jorges Luis Borges, a pocket universe of stacks holding every permutation of book possible, which by the laws of probability contains a lot of gibberish but also every title ever written and that might be written. Some new languages could also be proposed to make sense of the seemingly random texts—however, despite the search for meaning, the librarians remain functionally ignorant and cultist behaviour and superstition arises that confound and frustrate the infinite task of curation and of culling.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronopticæ) 

fifteen years ago: a secret Cold War West German bank bunker 

not-ready-for-primetime players (12. 790)

Although there has already been much celebration marking the long-running topical and comedy sketch show’s fiftieth season, its actual semicentenary anniversary occurred on this day in 1975 when the network aired the first episode of NBC’s Saturday Night Live (to distinguish it from competing time slot Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell—see above). Hosted by comedian George Carlin with Billy Preston (“Will it Go Round in Circles,” “Nothing from Nothing”) and Janis Ian (“At Seventeen,” “Society’s Child,” “Fly Too High”) were the first musical guests. The cast lived in the studio for the first season and had their footing and direction by the fourth episode, introducing regularly occurring segments and characters.

7x7 (12. 789)

snaggletoothed landfill goblins: a journey into the heart of the Pop Mart economy—via Web Curios  

battle-rattle: a Wikipedia-style directory on camouflage—via ibīdem   

urgent fury: revisiting Grenada and arguably the only modern foreign war that the US ever won  

lahaina noon: twice annually objects in the between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn lose their shadows  

my life of the ptsd list: Kathy Griffin—don’t call it a come back—via MetaFilter  

yclept: a gloss on the Old English term that is still in common-parlance—via Strange Company

the niña, the pinta and the santa maría: Trump issues a declaration ahead of the US federal holiday to re-enshrine the myth of Columbus’ discover and the settlers’ conquest   

spreekwoorden (12. 788)

Having a passing familiarity with how the artwork of Pieter Bruegel the Elder could be read as an illustrated catalogue of Flemish proverbs and idioms to puzzle out, we appreciated this bit of art history presented,
via Web Curios, as an interactive canvas to explore each interpretation of the 1559 painting originally titled The Blue Cloak for the striking bit of contrast in the lower middle of the ensemble with the Max Rebo-looking figure representing a cuckold—Zij hangt haar man de blauwe huik, literally another proverb of pulling the wool over his eyes to hide her deception and faithlessness, see above. There are a hundred or so to parse and figure out one’s native equivalent.

♪Ø (12. 787)

Having been previously acquainted with several esoteric programming languages (here, here and here), we enjoyed this introduction to Velato courtesy of Futility Closet. Using MIDI files as source code, compiled by Daniel Temkin (see above) in 2009, the syntax provides a unique challenge with constraints (see also) for achieving the desired output and something melodious. The pictured lines of code produce, “Hello World,” the standard programming benchmark plus sanity check to make sure the logic holds. Hear the programming and find related languages at the link above.

slice of time (12. 786)

Whilst having been demonstrated through several experiments—the central consequence of Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity—as an object accelerates close to the speed of light it experiences time differently and becomes stretched through time dilation, the Doppler effect, spaghettification, etc, one conjecture, independently concluded by physicists James Terrell and Roger Penrose (see previously here and here), evaded observation: that the fast moving object out to appear not elongated nor contracted despite the physical deformation but rather rotated. Utilising a battery of tricks to simulate light speed slowed down to two-metres per second in the laboratory, we learn via Damn Interesting, recording the flashes of a laser reflected off a target wire frame cube with an advanced high-speed camera, researchers at the Technical University of Vienna have reproduced the rotation for the first time. Despite the object approaching head-one, instead of seeing one face of the cube distorted, one sees a corner formed at the convergence at the vertices of two faces. This simulation is akin to photographing a rocket whizzing by at ninety-percent the speed of light with the resulting panoramic image twisted as Penrose predicted. It is a pretty nifty set-up and a way to magnify or minimise the unachievable but seems strange to have arrived at (not discovered) this anticipated effect through brute force of better lenses rather than by reason and the scientific method.