synchronoptica
one year ago: airport geolocation codes and shared abbreviations (with synchronopticรฆ) plus Musk selling votes
thirteen years ago: a visit to Sigmaringen
fourteen years ago: Eurozone crisis talks plus more on digital rights management
sixteen years ago: diploma mills
seventeen years ago: nostalgia and intellectual property
tor’s cabinet of curiosities: a collection of weird hagiographies
photographie de rue: photography student Lionel Derimais’ impressions of New York City in the winter of 1980
non-generative ai: artist Pablo Delcan responds to human prompts
canary in the coal mine: the collapse of US private equity firms echoes the collapse of the sub-prime real estate market that caused the Great Recession of 2008
to catch a thief: reconstructing the Louvre heist
grattacieli: the medieval skyscrapers of Bologna—see previously
breaker one-niner: the computer industry’s first challenge from the US federal communications commission was over frequency interference for citizens’ band radio—see previously
elevator pitch: podcasters debate listening to episodes at 2x speed
Via the latest link round-up (all on the theme of needlework and knitting) by fellow internet peripatetic Messy Nessy Chic, we are referred to this cosy archive of embroidered kneeling cushionssourced from the pews of various congregations around Cornwall.
We wonder if there’s a scramble as services begin to claim one’s favourite—kneelers a sixteenth century invention as genuflecting was not part of the liturgy, spurred on by the Protestant Reformation and calls for regular and permanent furnishings, until then but until the mid-twentieth century it was common practise in Anglican churches to rent pews to seatholders, raising money for the diocese and as a show of social standing when on one’s knees.
synchronoptica
one year ago: pivotal tech year 2004 (with synchronopticรฆ), a method for guaranteeing equal chance and distribution, a West German crime drama plus a rare Mac Tonight clip emerges
seventeen years ago: returning from a trip to Ireland
Using footage from the previous year of the band promoting their latest album, Speaking in Tongues, the Jonathan Demme directed documentary is considered among the best concert films of all time and was released on this day in 1984. 
Including performances of “Psycho Killer” and “Burning Down the House,” frontman David Byrne enters alone on a bare stage introducing the first number on a portable cassette tape player and joined successively by additional members of the band, session players and backup vocalists with each new track. During “Girlfriend is Better” (whose lyric is the origin of the title) Byrne appears in an oversized suite, informed by Noh theatre, that became an icon of the film and of Byrne himself. With many tributes and homages, the piece is considered a cult classic with frequent screenings with the audience dressed for the occasion.
Unlike another individual who immigrated to avoid the draft with a mild, tangental case of the gold bug, leaving his native Hamburg some fourteen years prior, Bernhardt Otto Holtermann, who thrived in his adopted homeland of New South Wales and left a positive legacy, on this day in 1872, as an independent prospector under contract with the Star of Hope Mining company, discovered the eponymous gold specimen, a contiguous vein of the precious encased in quartz, the largest ever unearthed, the find weighed ninety-three kilograms, over three-thousand troy-ounces. 
Already wealthy from successful ventures in mining and sound investments (a shareholder in a residential hotel) and with a controlling interest in the corporation, Holtermann attempted to purchase his discovery for over the going value but was rebuffed by the company, only to have the nugget smelted for bullion—who disheartened prompted Holtermann to change careers and become a philanthropist and pursue his hobbies. Taking up residence in Sydney and building a mansion with a high turret for taking panoramic photos of the harbour, he followed his passion for photography and helped finance campaign directed at potential migrants (for needed labour and hoping to pass on the entrepreneurship that helped him) with his series of panorama images of the city and environs and became alderman for his ward, residing the second city for the remainder of his days.
For the onset of the spooky season—we’re over midway through without much planning thanks to the horror of the headlines but cosplay, costumed dictators are no match for the truly infernal and menacing—we are referred by { feuilleton } to a playlist of ten pioneering French classics of the genre from the British Film Institute. From the pcitured 1960 masterpiece, whose hurdy-gurdy leitmotif adds an element of absurd menace to the psychological thriller, to Georges Mรฉliรจs’—magician turned cinematographer after seeing what the Lumiรจre brothers could do—silent short work at the very dawn of the media, Le Manoir du diable, considered the first horror movie and innovative for its use of special effects, to the 1929 Luis Buรฑuel surreal work Un chien andalou and back to the 1960s and beyond, there’s sure to be something in the catalogue to frighten and unnerve any viewer.
synchronoptica
one year ago: the Cin script (with synchronopitcรฆ), the British India Ocean Territory and the loss of its top-level domain plus images of passengers going through a car-wash
fourteen years ago: art expositions of the Third Reich
In more than two-thousand seven-hundred rallies across the country—with support from international affiliates—more than seven million protesters took part in the redux demonstrations against the unitary executive of Donald Trump and his blatantly magisterial policies that undermine democracy and the rule of rule and proxy warfare conducted conducted on American streets with assaults against immigrants and unbidden occupation that verges on martial law. 
Since June’s demonstrations, prompted by Trump’s full authoritarian military birthday parade, the organisers have only been able to add to their agenda with retributive arrests against political opposition (in line with Stalinist era tactics and maxim, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”), threats of more violence against Democratic strongholds, 
aggressive gerrymandering, undermining federal services, virtual parliamentary suspension, abandonment of public health, science-based medicine and environmental regulations, the shutdown of the federal government and regime change in Venezuela. The assembly was peaceful and no arrests were made in Washington, DC or New York City as participants were engaged in the highest form of patriotism against their traitorous government.
Via our faithful chronicler, we are reminded that the cinematic adaptation of the Broadway musical by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim premiered on this day in 1961 (on the anniversary of the island’s takeover in 1898, ceded as part of the Treaty of Paris that settled the Spanish-American War) in New York City. The film from Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins and Ernest Lehman (the team also behind The Sound of Music, Hello, Dolly! and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and starring Rita Moreno, Natalie Wood, George Chakiris and 
Richard Beymer was true to book, in turn inspired by the Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, some numbers were re-ordered in appearance from the to better fit the narrative and lyrics changed to avoid censorship—particularly in “Jet Song” and “Gee, Officer Krupke,” “sperm to worm” was changed to “from birth to earth”—and in the brilliantly mixed-metre song “America” (the alteration inspired by a supposed visit to Puerto Rico and the “Habanera,” L’amour est un oiseau rebelle from Carmen) for a message deemed too harsh on fellow citizens and instead emphasises more of the perks of living on the mainland, ignoring the fact that the criticism was directed at their mistreatment and unwelcome. The 2021 Steven Spielberg version includes the revolutionary anthem La Borinqueรฑa and restores some of lines from the original. I’ll give them new washing machine! What have they got there to keep clean?
