synchronoptica
one year ago: an early, dark version of ChatGPT (with synchronoptica), commencement addresses plus an extraordinary tree specimen in New Zealand
seven years ago: guidelines for nurturing democracy, THX’ Deep Note plus shape-shifting ghouls
eight years ago: Putin’s playbook, medieval games and pastimes plus continued tensions between Germany and Tรผrkiye
nine years ago: the Lollards, diplomatics, a new Banksy graffiti plus the US attempt to annex Iceland
In quite the diplomatic flex, Chancellor Friedrich Merz presented Trump with the birth certificate of Friedrich Merz, Trump’s grandfather who was deported to the United States for draft-dodging and desertion, to subtly signal that Trump too has immigrant roots and in a way to defuse some of the past rhetoric of birtherism for his predecessor and current rehashing of travel bans (see below), during their White House meeting. Suffering childish, incoherent drivel from Trump about trade deals with China that 
do not exist, backhanded praise for increased defence spending (“I’m not sure that General MacArthur would have said it’s positive. He made a statement: ‘Never let Germany rearm.’ I always think about that when he says, “Sir, we’re spending more. I say—ooh, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I think it’s a good thing.”) and drawing moral equivalency for Russia and Ukraine (“like children fighting in a park”), Merz pointed out that tomorrow is the anniversary of D-Day, marking America’s entry into the war. “That was not a pleasant day for you? This is not a great day,” Trump countered, to which Merz responded that it was the beginning of his country’s liberation from Nazi dictatorship. That obnoxious punchline lays bare his true vacuousness and shortcomings for dealing with consequences and I think maybe this encounter (see further below) might have given Trump, despite his stultifying lack of self-awareness, a glimpse, however temporary, into his own boorishness and Merz may have made his point.
We enjoyed learning about the career and works of illustrator, textile designer and educator Elena Izcue through her 1930 inclusion of Incan and other pre-Columbian works into the curriculum of Lima’s National School of Fine Arts, much to the displeasure of some of her fellow academics aired with a very public debate—detractors finding nothing redeeming in native culture and a surrogate for a larger question of Peruvian identity. 
In the face of this resistance and aesthetic judgement, Izcue’s insistence and advocacy ultimately led to appreciation and a syllabus that included a set of workbooks she produced drawn from the motifs of Indigenous ceramics and fabrics and archaeological finds. Much more from Public Domain Review at the link up top.
We enjoyed these collected reflections from The Curious Brain on how genuine experiences and inauthenticity has broken trust and belief in what formerly was upheld as evidence but in that betrayal has sparked not regression or aversion necessarily but rather an appreciation for what’s not flawless and frictionless (whether we’ve asked for it or not) and in this post-verification era when seeing is not believing, distancing ourselves with presence and identify and define oneself with showing up and—despite the fraughtness and frailty of memories and expressions otherwise not committed to documentation and curation, made less reliable when seen through a distorting and optimising lens—“I was there.” In this age, authenticity it’s free—it’s currency. It’s status. It’s luxury.
hero’s journey: researchers conducting a meta survey of fictional narratives find a consistent language patterns for compelling plots—see previously
world’s tiniest violin: researchers make a functioning instrument smaller than a dust mote to test the abilities of nanolithography
demi-troglodyte: cave homes for sale in France plus assorted miscellany from Messy Nessy Chic—including Edward Hopper in Paris, a David Lynch auction and a tactile picture book for the seeing impaired
dangerous foreign agents: Trump imposes a new travel ban on citizens from twelve countries
gipfel: German chancellor Merz to meet with Trump to discuss tariffs and trade and defence
intransitive hand game: some interesting facts about rock paper scissors—see previously
de facto, de jure: a survey of the world’s official languages
synchronoptica
one year ago: assorted links to enjoy (with synchronoptica) plus civilised memorial regulations
seven years ago: the North Korean art market, a map of Prohibition Era Chicago plus trans-Atlantic relations
eight years ago: interoception, more on Trump’s tour of the Middle East plus making policy per tweet look more official
nine years ago: unbuilt architecture from Gaudรญ, a modern twist on the player piano, a mantis named after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg plus hidden messages in ancient manuscripts
Though hardly seeming retro to me being raised in an established tradition of a certain vintage of families who left the television on CNN Headline News, C-SPAN and The Weather Channel for ambiance, we got some nostalgic feelings over, via Waxy, the WeatherStar 4000 service developed by Matt Walsh (complete with a compliment of code to make your own project) as an attested weather watcher, cycling through the forecast with various statics from the almanac. 
Giving up-to-date conditions and predictions with appropriate musical accompaniment of pop and smooth jazz, the site emulates the eponymous STAR (Satellite Transponder Addressable Receiver) proprietary technology, compiling data from the National Weather Service and Storm Prediction Centre, initially sold as an add-on for customised meteorological reports before being targeted to local markets—now drawing on NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the acronym pronounced as ‘Noah’) only localised forecasts for the United States are available but an international version exists here.
Some eighteen months in planning—and a strong repudiation of that infamous White House meeting when Trump hurled insults at Zelenskyy and said that his country had no cards left—and with off the shelf hardware and software trained on old Soviet bombers on display in a museum to calibrate and target the semi-autonomous operation, Ukrainian security services carried out a sneak attack deep inside Russian territory, coordinated across five geographic regions, destroying up to a third of long-range air assets, a legacy fleet not quickly rebuilt, if at all. 
This stunning blow, codenamed Spider’s Web, was carried out on Sunday by three dozen basic quadcopters with heavy armament were covertly transported to their deployment sites near multiple area bases in containers disguised as mobile wooden cabins with retractable roofs on flatbed trucks, not an uncommon site and arousing no suspicions. Once in place, operators helped guide the drones through the domestic mobile telephone network, forgoing the need for satellite telemetry and avoid potential signal jamming technologies, from a command base located provocatively near to an FSB field office. The estimated damage to Russia’s missile carriers—which also includes a class of strategic nuclear bombers from the Cold War which cannot be kept in hangars under the terms of the START treaties—runs over seven-billion euro.
This ingenious attack—which has drawn some comparisons to the booby trapped pagers that Israel used against Hezbollah, though Ukraine was far more surgical and had no collateral casualties—and was the biggest surprise victory since the sinking of the Moskva, followed with an encore of the third bombing of the Kerch bridge to Crimea. In the past weeks, Russia has significantly increased deadly strikes on Ukraine and comes just days ahead of planned peace talks in Istanbul. While a symbolic win and a potential set back that may spare some beleaguered communities from bombardment, this operation also illustrates a major shift in war fighting strategies and asymmetric engagement.
Via Nag on the Lake—and reminiscent of the magical realism of the painter Rob Gonsalves though a bit over-articulated by AI—we enjoyed this cut-away image of the foundations of Venice (see previously), the marshy shallows of the lagoon since the fifth century when Romans fled successive waves of Hun and Visigoth forages into nearby cities to an area more easily defendable than the open countryside and learned to build on this sandy and muddy refuge by driving piles of trunks of alder trees into the ground until coming to rest on the more substantial level of compressed clay below the silt. Structural foundations themselves rested on plates of limestone placed on top of the closely spaced piles, the logs eventually petrifying in the brackish waters to a consistency that matches any modern construction material. More from Vintage Everyday at the link above.
synchronoptica
one year ago: a thousand year old gaming collection (with synchronoptica), Taco Bell wall art plus artist Carlo Bossoli
seven years ago: US tariffs on steel and aluminium plus NSA motivational posters
eight years ago: the oligarchs of Antiquity, Melbourne’s Portrait apartment, An Inconvenient Truth revisited, a Tolkien tale of forbidden romance, an AI writes descriptions of works of art plus the invention of Roquefort cheese
nine years ago: what3words, knowing one’s own mind, modern day ukiyo-e, vampiric traits plus Mid-Century Maori
ten years ago: holy avatars plus the philosophy of happiness and thriving
