synchronoptica
one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronopticรฆ)
fifteen years ago: a secret Cold War West German bank bunker
synchronoptica
one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronopticรฆ)
fifteen years ago: a secret Cold War West German bank bunker
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.
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 ibฤซdem
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 niรฑa, the pinta and the santa marรญa: Trump issues a declaration ahead of the US federal holiday to re-enshrine the myth of Columbus’ discover and the settlers’ conquest
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.
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.
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.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (with synchronopticรฆ) plus a last day on the Havel
sixteen years ago: an awful trollish post on Obama winning the Nobel Peace prize that we’re ashamed we made and feel very differently now
seventeen years ago: fleeing interconnections to a new Dark Age
readme.txt: an experiment to assess whether AI can parse the drastic downfall of the United States and pen near-term speculative fiction that forecasts the next four years based on the daily news cycle—via Web Curios
citation needed: famous cognitive truisms that fail replication
take the a-train: a data-driven tribute to the New York City subway
peso convertible: despite US government shutdown impasse and soaring inflation, the US is bailing out the Argentinian economy
out of all the clergy, why did ice target the hot priest: minister scoured with pepper ball ammunition rebukes US administration’s narrative about lawlessness in Chicago
dead reckoning: quantum sensing of the magnetic field of the Earth’s core could prove to be a more reliable method of aerial navigation in the age of GPS spoofing and jamming, see also—Via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest
rezagado: Trump suggests ejecting Spain from NATO for their failure to show commitment snail’s pace: a sculptural statement on the frenetic everyday
coo-coo-ca-choo: birds across all species seem to understand the universal cry of warning of predatory nesters
babystar: a cautionary influencer tale with echos of The Truman Show