c the unseen (12. 149)

Deutsche Welle has a pair of interesting profiles of the cities—three actually—that will serve as the 2025 European Cultural Capitals. Once the flagship metropolis of the DDR (see previously), Chemnitz (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt) has mostly dimmed since reunification and attracting negative attention, but under the motto above (“C” for the vehicle registration plate) organisers hope to highlight the city’s long history and rich heritage, including showcasing a selection of the thirty-thousand garages built during the East German era as a backdrop to explore their functions not just for parking but also storage and communal spaces, like the allotments of Gardenstädte. The other municipalities participating is Görz, once the home to an Alpine dynasty under the Hapsburg Empire, now divided into Nova Gorica and Gorizia along the Italian-Slovenia border but for the first time celebrated together as a joint culture capital. The former cosmopolitan and culturally diverse city was annexed by Italy following the dissolution of Austro-Hungary at the end of World War I and the German and Slovene populations were either expelled or assimilated, borders redrawn again in the aftermath of World War II with Yugoslavia’s Tito founding a new district on the divide between East and West. More on the year’s schedule of events and programme at the link up top.

synchronoptica

one year ago: YMCA at number one (with synchronoptica), Epiphany in Greenland plus assorted links to revisit

seven years ago: the animations of Jonathan Stroh, an AI generates plausible Wikipedia categories, designer candies plus more links to enjoy

eight years ago: even more links, more Japanese designer New Year’s cards, an inaugural prop plus The Running Man (1987)

nine year ago: more links worth revisiting, wearable tech plus underwater farming

ten years ago: CNN’s apocalyptical sign off plus a supposed Nazi UFO

hearth and home (12. 148)

We’ve received a happy status update regarding this rather spectacular temple to outsider art, Ron’s Place in Birkenhead outside of Liverpool, a flat hidden within an unassuming brick residence holding a scarcely seen gallery of hearths, altars and murals created by renter Ron Gittin, now catalogued and conserved. The landlord a permissive sufferer of such flourishes was however mostly ignorant of the extent of the artist’s embellishments (as well as his friends and family upon his unexpected death in 2019) that celebrated the multi-hyphenate’s interest in Antiquity and repository of his other creative pursuits. Let’s wish all property owners could be so tolerant of their tenants’ eccentricities and had faith for the next occupant’s inheritance. Much more at the links above.

8x8 (12. 147)

black swan event: futurist forecast a host of unpredictable geopolitical scenarios for 2025—via the New Shelton wet/dry  

it’s schoolhouse rocky—that chip off the block—of your favourite schoolhouse, schoolhouse rock: a rather incredible thrift store find of Smash Mouth’s Steve Harwell performing some numbers from the educational cartoon series—see previously  

paraiso de los gatos: the art of Remedios Varo  

to unalive or not unalive: the resurgence of the term was prompted by a way to get around advertiser blacklists with euphemisms—see more  

reboot: the Landauer Limit, thermodynamics and more efficient computing—see also  

post-scarcity, post-singularity: it’s still easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism—via Duck Soup 

the eagle & child: Oracle’s Larry Ellison has purchased the Oxford pub frequented by Tolkien and C S Lewis—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest  

the year that was and wasn’t: The Morning News interviews some of their favourite journalists about the most and least important stories and trends of 2024—see also the dumbest timeline

smaismrmil­mepoeta­leumibu­nenugt­tauiras (12. 146)

Although only privileging our very limited point of view, changes in the skies, even though expected and with rational explanations, like the phases of the Moon, eclipses and occultations, can still inspire strike with awe and reverence and drive us to herald, especially in the waning and vanishing, their return. Clive Thompson directs our attention to one upcoming astronomical event, beginning in March and lasting through November, when the rings of Saturn will disappear.  This temporary loss of the gas giant’s main feature, a constellation of debris, failed moons, captured comets and asteroids, occurs for earthly watchers twice every twenty-nine and a half years as the planet makes its revolution around the sun and its inclination puts our world in the ring plane, too thin to be seen head on. 

Galileo who began making careful observations of the planet in 1610 one day noticed that the “handles” or “ears” had gone away and was deeply unsettled by this sudden change in the eternal heavens, thinking perhaps the Titan had actually devoured his offspring as in myth. Named after the Roman god of wealth and agriculture who sired Jupiter (Zeus)—Saturn’s patronage did not only extend the harvest but also its cyclical nature, identified with Cronos, whom after overthrowing his own father, Uranus, to become king of the gods was prophesied to be unseated himself by his own children and so gobbled them all up to prevent this from coming to pass. His mother Rhea substituted a boulder for her sixth child, Zeus, and hid him away in Crete to stop the madness. The somewhat more benign Father Time is sometimes portrayed with a sickle or scythe, rising from these same mythopoeic origins, but is nonetheless an equally unmoving standard bearer for the unrelenting march of time and witnessing such an exception, especially for the first time and to see them return months later as Galileo did—the title, as was the practise among astronomers at the time, refers to an anagram that he recorded to document a finding before it was ready for publication, Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi (I have observed the most distant planet and it has a triple form) and Huygens in the 1650s, correctly identifying the nature of the unusual tripartite form wrote in a letter to his father “aaaaaaa­ccccc­deeeeeg­hiiiiiii­llllmm­nnnnnnnnn­oooopp­qrrs­tttttuuuu,” deciphered as Annulo cingitur, tenui, plano, nusquam coherente, ad eclipticam inclinato or Saturn “is surrounded by a thin, flat ring nowhere touching and inclined toward the ecliptic plane”—is a reflection not only on aging and dissolution but also on recurrence and renewal. Much more at the links above.

ease on down the road (12. 145)

Having opened the previous October in Baltimore, the musical by Charlie Smalls and William F Brown had its Broadway premier on this day in 1975, the production garnering several Tony awards, including Best Musical of the year and, and launching an international tour, several revivals and a cinematic adaptation in 1978. The retelling of the L Frank Baum franchise (see below also) in the context of contemporary African-American culture and featured an all-Black cast. Among many luminaries, the role of Scarecrow (left in charge of Emerald City when the charlatan Wizard departs with Dorothy, the city only being green as everyone was made to wear tinted glasses) was played by the recently departed actor and choreographer Hinton Battle—the character portrayed by Michael Jackson for the filmed version, who studied ballet under George Balanchine and had several other staged appearances including Dreamgirls, Miss Saigon and Sophisticated Ladies and numerous television credits, counting among them Quantum Leap, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Cat for the pilot of the un-optioned American version of Red Dwarf—a recast re-shoot of the trial episode roundly criticised as ‘White Dwarf’ (Cat would now be female and played by Terry Farrell, known for acting as Jadzia Dax on Star Trek: DS9) for its inclusion, unlike the British sitcom, of all Caucasian actors.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica), Book Review (1946), more on nominative determinism plus more on the Fermi Paradox

 

seven years ago: murder as a deterrent to nuclear war, Mitchiri Neko, municipal free-nets, resurrecting the aurochs plus the firing of FBI director James Comey

 

eight years ago: a cosmic frame of reference, asteroid prospecting plus imaging a black hole

 

nine years ago: the Epic of Gilgamesh plus alphabetising The Wizard of Oz

 

ten years ago: coffee and globalisation plus the cult of St Anne

[citation needed] (12. 144)

Via tmn, we are directed to Molly White’s thoroughgoing examination on the intensifying campaign on the part of a chorus of conservative voices attacking Wikipedia’s right to exist as the pitched-battle against free and open access information. In a Christmas Eve directive issued on X—former known as Twitter—its owner, free speech absolutist and Kekius Maximus instructed his followers to stop donating to “Wokepedia.” Self-selecting and cherry-picked, these shallow and repackaged grievances against the volunteer-based authoritative reference source include mistaking and misrepresenting initiatives to counter misinformation and bolstering the site’s reliability as their latest bugbear of DEI, they characterise Wikipedia as liberal propaganda, infected by the “woke mind virus” as evinced by their treatment of patent conspiracy theories and resistance to recognising Fox News as reliable sources. Restricting availability only to their approved syllabus, this latest assault is just another way, like banning books and pornography in the name of child protection and promoting family values, is designed to keep the proles under control and not enjoy the liberties and prerogatives of the rich and powerful. Needless to say, if you have the means, contribute—especially when other outlets have demonstrated their willingness for obeying in advance.

squadrisimo (12. 143)

In a speech given on this day in 1925 in the Chamber of Deputies (Camera dei deputat, the lower house of the bicameral Italian parliament), which history sources as the start of his fascist dictatorship, Benito Mussolini took full responsibility for the actions of the paramilitary wing of the party, the Blackshirts—Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale—and challenged his political opponents to try to remove him from office, promising to restore order within forty-eight hours. Originally a loose organisation of disaffected veterans of World War I who employed violence as an intimidation tactic against reformers, progressives and Socialists, membership had grown to over two-hundred thousand by the March on Rome in late October 1922, swearing their allegiance to Commandant-General il Duce. The murder of a Socialist deputy, Giacomo Matteotti, who criticised the 1924 election due to voting irregularities which solidified Mussolini’s control of government, prompted a cover-up pinning the assassination on Matteotti’s own party. Whilst much of the opposition boycotted sessions, hoping to force King Victor Emmanuel to dissolve parliament, the Blackshirts presented Mussolini with the ultimatum to crush their enemies or they would do so without him. Fearing a revolt by the militia, Mussolini dropped all pretence of democracy, dismantling all constitutional and normative checks on power and declaring himself the only competent authority to set the legislative agenda.

pomega (12. 142)

Via Clive Thompson’s latest Link Fest, we are introduced to another chaotic twin of π called ϖ—from the above script variant of pi, also called varpi—that represents the transcendental mathematical constant ratio of the perimeter to the diameter of Bernoulli’s lemniscate, analogous to the way pi defines a circle. The foci of the elliptical plane are equidistant in this figure which has applications in orbital mechanics (see previously). The curve having a shape similar to a figure 8 or the infinity symbol, ♾️, is from the Latin for something bedecked with hanging ribbons and occur in nature as often as the perfect circle. Much more from John Carlos Baez at Mathsodon at the link above.