kid icarus (12. 887)

Collaborating with astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy, skydiver and musician Gabriel C Brown captured this incredible image of Brown transiting the Sun with an appreciable measure of luck and timing to triangulate and signal the exact moment for the jump and the shot, a composite mosaic through a telescope’s lens of the Sun roiling surface remotely tracking Brown’s falling silhouette, captured in the course of six passes by the ultralight prop-plane in the skies over Arizona.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Musk as Salacious Crumb (with synchronopticæ), letters to the president, Julian time plus Trump pushes through controversial nominees

twelve years ago: outsourcing espionage plus moving Germany’s spy agency headquarters from Bonn   

thirteen years ago: a survey of customer service 

fourteen years ago: a news roundup 

fifteen years ago: hysteria and security theatre 

building & loan (12. 886)

Whilst calling “affordability” a hoax perpetrated by Democrats and blathering on about how much grocery, energy costs and inflation is down (a sentiment contrary to economic realities and one that the public is not buying), Trump seeming undermined his own argument with a multi-pronged approach to lowering consumer prices first by directing the justice department to investigate price gouging and collusion in the meat-packing industry that has made beef more expensive, reversing tariffs on some staple imports—plus a promise to issue individual stimulus cheques from duties dividends, through revenues won’t satisfy promised payouts, direct payments as opposed to extended subsidies for health insurance coverage premiums to encourage Americans to become entrepreneurs in their wellness and most controversially the introduction of a fifty-year mortgage to make homeownership achievable to more with nominally lower monthly outlays—though over a much long period, deferring outright tenancy and building equity, with more going towards interest rather than the principal.

noahs segel (12. 885)

Though we had been to the slopes of the Ellenbogen mountain before and visited the restaurant at the Thüringer Rhönhaus, we never made it to the summit before to see the viewing platform completed in 2017.  

On the way, however, the foggy and overcast weather did not seem so promising until the last couple of kilometres with climbing elevation the skies gloriously opened up. An extinct volcano, it is one of the highest points in the range and on a clear day, one is awarded with vistas of Bavaria, Hesse and Thüringen near the tri-point where the three states touch. On a clear day, from the observation tower—named Noah’s Sail for its information centre about the local flora and fauna and its profile—one can see the Brocken as well as the neighbouring peaks of the Wasserkuppe and the Milseburg. 

Though H didn’t want to join, I took that slide back down and had a nice sunny walk to the top across the massif before descending afterwards back into the fog bank of lower altitudes.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronopticæ), animated GIFs from Etienne Jacobs plus a survey of international traffic signs and license plates

thirteen years ago: carnival season 

fourteen years ago: modern geoglyphs plus Kissinger and Clinton 

fifteen years ago: security theatre plus adopt a word

sixteen years ago: a mythical member of the German parliament 

seventeen years ago: keeping it local 

et in aradia ego (12. 884)

Though the authenticity and authorship of the received gospel of the witches studied and published US folklorist and journalist Charles Godfrey Leland in 1899 is disputed by later historians and ethnographers, what Leland through his intermediary and research assistant Donna Roma Lister—a widely respected British writer on the occult and accomplished medium in her own right, believed to be genuine religious text of a Tuscan coven has played an unimpeachably large role in informing and influencing contemporary Wiccan and Neopagan movements. Syncretic and secret, the practise and spellcraft continued in parallel to the rituals of Roman Catholicism but hidden in plain sight as sort of a liberation doctrine to subvert and counter the oppression of the Church orthodoxy and social order.
The titular messianic figure, similar to the Italian form of the name Herodias—the wife of Herod Antipas whose real genealogy was buried in the belief of early Christianity, a characterisation of course propagated by witches themselves, that for her complicity in the death of John the Baptist her spirit was condemned to wander the Earth forever and only permitted to rest in treetops between midnight and daybreak, whereas Erodiade was a continuation of the ancient Roman cult of Diana and her nymphs, a daughter sired by prideful angel Lucifer and sent by the goddess to be a teacher unto women and men who would break from the yoke of enslavement—see also—and the real proto-witch. The gospel in fragmented form was completed by Lister’s interviews and channelling to fill in the gaps. Much more, particularly on our collaborator and ghost-writer, from Public Domain Review contributor A D Manns at the link up top.

baud rate (12. 883)

Reading about the last remaining telegraph stations in China closing a few months ago, we were excited for another look at the topic from the angle of the challenges overcome to adapt sinographs to telegraphy and more broadly to mechanical reproduction—ironically having invented the printed word but challenged with technology made for alphabetic encoding and decoding.

To overcome or work within the conventions of Morse code, the four-corner system (四角號碼檢字法) was put in place for characters based on cardinal shapes as an ununqiue identifier but winnowing it down (0000—9999) to a contextual range of possibilities that operators could interpret and pass along. This shape-based method (with help of gun-boat diplomacy and special entrepôts) declined with the reliance on telegrams but has seen a revival in numerical texting shorthand to limit the range of possibilities with natural word order. Much more from Language Log at the link above.

book and backmasking (12 .882)

Calling to mind this wonderfully laugh out loud and still arguably the only legitimate use of LinkedIn that matches the names of CV-holders to pop songs, Futility Closet directs us to an earlier effort scouring the telephone directory of Toronto’s 1977 white-pages choosing entries to approximate the lyrics to nursery rhymes (as published later in anthology of recreational linguistics and onomastics). One example cobbling together of the Roud Folk Song #19626 of disputed historical meaning:

Merrie Merry Quaint Caunt Ririe
Howe Dussiaulme Garden Groh
Witt Silver Belson Cockell Schells
And Pretty Mayes Allin Arro

Whist predating Mary Tudor and Mary Queen of Scots, despite popular associations, scholars believe the English traditional poem is an allegory for Catholicism with pretty maids representing nuns, the sanctus bells and the cockleshells as the pilgrimage badges of the Way of St James. Click through at the link above for more examples plus a 1963 television show that assembled a live studio audience to the tune “Inda Good Old Somerstein.”

synchronoptica

one year ago: the first human-non-human organ transplant (with synchronopticæ) plus polls open for the OED Word of the Year

thirteen years ago: alternate search engines, International Day of Philosophy plus more flea market finds

fourteen years ago: the myth of unlimited growth 

sixteen years ago: a visit to Coburg 

big beautiful bill (12. 881)

Among the tranche of twenty-thousand business records, flight itineraries and emails released by the by the estate of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein includes an exchange between Epstein and his brother Mark—allegedly asking on behalf of former Trump advisor Steven Bannon (previously) present in the room—from March of 2018 that he should question Epstein if Putin has photos of Trump performing an oral sex act on “Bubba”—the nickname for former US president Bill Clinton. Whilst unclear if this was made in jest in reference to the supposed dossier that Russia had on Trump and the pee-tapes (it pains to write such things) that were ultimately dismissed as a Democratic hoax back during Trump’s first term or a serious concern that more incriminating footage could emerge. In hindsight, like the vindication of the Pizzagate conspiracists, that Russia would have compromising material on Trump seems not only likely but an inevitability in the fullness of time. At the same time, Trump has disowned cheerleader Marjorie Taylor Greene as a raving lunatic for her support to release the files by passing the discharge petition. Though disappointed that his participation, orchestration of a massive pedophile ring, rape, trafficking, felonies, economic betrayals and general incompetence could not deprogram his cult following, maybe this might make MAGA turn on him (but who knows since the also donned ear-bandages and diapers in solidarity) out of the menfolk wanting to keep their own secrets safe. If it is true, Clinton needs to take one for the team.

new fav (12. 880)

Courtesy of MetaFilter, we are introduced to the musical stylings of one Ecca Vandal, singer-songwriter hailing from Melbourne of South African snd Tamil extraction, who progressed from gospel music into soul, jazz and 1990s RNB thanks to their siblings’ record collection through their new single “Molly” with the accompanying video. A perfect blending of old and new, there’s alternation between full-on, full-throated punk vocal menace and movements of restraint governed with some glitchy atmospherics that balances out the track.