letters of note (12. 008)

Capitalising on a trend in the publishing industry of epistolary collections—Stoo Hample’s 1966 “Children’s Letters to God” being the originator with a sequel and many homages—and hoping to rehabilitate the president’s public image, the United States Information Agency (see previously) produced this rather imaginative, endearing little segment (hopefully with in-house animation) drawing from young people’s letters to the commander-in-chief—via Fancy Notions—narrated by Dick Van Dyke in 1972—in the midst of the Watergate scandal and less than a year and a half before Nixon’s impeachment trial and ultimate resignation.

salacious crumb (12. 007)

On Life Day no less, we get the perfect allegory for Elon Musk’s parasitic and co-morbid relationship with Donald Trump, a cantankerous, destructive, nit-picking lizard-monkey to his host, a minor boss in the Hutt family crime syndicate, with further news of Musk outsourcing decisions to popular vote on his social media platform, a self-selecting “wretched hive of scum and villainy—we must be cautious”—although Nazi bar is a more succinct way of putting it, as well as using his promised position within the coming administration to badger and berate foreign governments (the latest target is Italy’s judiciary after attacking the UK’s migrant policy months earlier) whom feel more obliged to respond rather than ignoring the trolls. Vox populi, vox Dei is something not best left up to American public, as evidenced by last week’s election and we wonder how long this symbiotic arrangement can last, given both have huge egos, easily bruised.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus Osama bin Laden on TikTok

seven years ago: a virtual cocktail, a record-setting auction for an alleged Da Vinci plus a kitty takes over Times Square

eight years ago: more links to enjoy plus Google’s Quick Draw

nine years ago: optimal seating arrangements plus solidarity with France

ten years ago: lore and language 

📍(12. 006)

Having been astonished by the savant-like abilities of some individuals to pinpoint places in the world from random Google Street View imagery, we could appreciate this rather comprehensive, forensic-level geography aid, via ibīdem, which while probably made with improving one’s Geoguessr challenges in mind (we weren’t any good at that but did look for little clues that might match the continent or familiar registration plates—previously here, here and here) but could have a host of other applications. One can sort (among other filters) by bollards, pedestrian crossings and stop signs, which are pretty interesting to compare.

bleuje (12. 005)

Our thanks to Web Curios (a lot more to explore there) for giving us the proper provenance and credit for a cache of mesmerising animated GIFs that we had saved our our sandbox with a direct link to the artist’s gallery and other projects including coding, simulations, previous collaborations and more visualisations. By Etienne Jacob, these moving, looping studies in maths and geometry are certain to soothe and inspire.

9x9 (12. 004)

if you really care about women having autonomy, you should stop questioning our decision to elect a guy who wants to take it away: sure, I voted for someone whose policies might kill you, but now’s the time to put aside our differences  

with some account of the judicial “congress”: John Davenport’s 1869 collected essays on Aphrodisiacs and Anti-Aphrodisiacs  

operation bear claw: four Los Angeles residents charged with insurance fraud for dressing in a costume and damaging luxury cars  

goldeneye: a tour of Ian Fleming’s estate in Jamaica where the author wrote all the Bond novels  

blue days, all of them gone—nothing but blue skies from now on: the alternative social network’s growth is attributed to privileging user choice over algorithmic engagement  

ai granny: telecom O2 has created a scambait protocol to keep fraudsters on the line as long as possible and away from potential human victims 

feat. rowlf as king herod: Muppet Christ Superstar—see also  

lysistrata: as Trump’s next term approaches, more women are seeking to disassociate themselves from the men in their lives, withhold sex  

subway therapy: the exhibition inviting New Yorkers to share their thoughts on the presidential election returns after eight years

synchronoptica

one year ago: The Sound of Music (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: The Book of Life: The Spiritual and Physical Constitution of Man

eight years ago: the lost art of correspondence plus WoTY: post-truth

ten years ago: lucid dreams plus a selection of random t-shirts

eleven years ago: the Asylothek, retro Christmas cards plus more fallout from US dragnet espionage tactics

peoples’ choice (12. 003)

Polls open now through 28.November, the OED presents its shortlist of nominees for the Word of the Year for 2024, with only one actual neologism in romantasy (see previously, albeit the portmanteau for the literary genre dates back to 2008 when the German arm of publisher Random House tried to categorise its translations of English romance romances with an element of fantasy). Other contenders include brainrot, a term first used by Henry David Thoreau in his 1842 Walden; or, Life in the Woods, and dynamic pricing, a calque of the Swedish coinage of economist Gunnar Myrdal in 1927 as dynamiska prisbildning which has also seen a revival this past year with heightened public awareness of surges, gouging and exploitation in retail spaces and for gig-workers. More older words with new meanings are lore, slop and demure. Which one is your pick?

xenograft (12. 002)

Tragically on this day 1984 Baby Fae, the first infant recipient of a non-human organ transplant from a baboon donor, died a month after her birth, though having lived by several weeks any other trial preceding hers and surviving the rare and fatal congenital disease, hypoplastic left heart syndrome that would have left her circulatory system untenable outside the womb. The radical operation, as no suitable human heart was available, became the subject of ethical debate, though demonstrating a proof of concept, which the administering surgeon built upon to safe further lives with this experimentation, albeit informed consent on the part of Baby Fae’s parents was questionable. Baby Fae’s death was attributed to rejection by her Type-O blood to the new heart culled from the female baboon population of type AB. Several pop culture encomia came afterwards with for instance from the Paul Simon Graceland album lyric, “Medicine is magical and magic is art / Thinking of the Boy in the Bubble / And the baby with the baboon heart.”

 synchronotpica

one year ago: the musical stylings of King Solomon (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: assorted links to revisit plus the Day of the Imprisoned Writer

eight years ago: a retractable pedestrian bridge, recreating snapshots over the decades, more tributes to Leonard Cohen plus an unusual museum collection

nine years ago: a history of safe-spaces, English is weird, collectors’ items plus Je suis Charlie

ten years ago: the Rosetta mission to probe a comet, the Frisian language, sight and colour in Nature plus obscure units of time

oder-neisse line (12. 001)

Pending since 1945—though the matter had been de facto settled between the communist governments of East Germany and Poland as the line of demarcation of the Soviet zone of occupation since 1950, West Germany, regarded as the only legal successor state to the Reich did not recognise the DDR’s diplomatic self-determination and insisted that the border treaty could only be ratified by a future reunited Germany—the agreement was signed by German and Polish foreign ministers on this day in 1990, as a stipulation to the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany as a pre-condition for full sovereignty. The treaty reaffirmed the boundaries of the Zgorzelec agreement of 1950 and pledged mutual respect for each others territorial integrity.