synchonoptica
one year ago: neglected books (with synchronoptica), an AI identifier plus Henry Ford’s peace mission (1915)
seven years ago: a White House dinner, school meals plus toe names
eight years ago: more trials with Universal Basic Income plus How I Built This
nine years ago: rallying against global warming plus assorted links worth revisiting
ten years ago: Herostratic Fame plus Victorian microscopic pictures
Fêted on this day in the Roman and Eastern Orthodox calendar of saints, Zephaniah (Σοφονίας, צְפַנְיָה, Concealed is god) was a priest of the Temple of Solomon during the reign of Josiah (circa 640 to 609 BC) counted among the Twelve Minor Prophets and credited as forecasting the coming of the Messiah, during a time when worship of other deities was popular and widespread, especially that of Baal and Astarte. The incipient of his book that warns of corruption and the imminent destruction of Jerusalem for its moral degeneration for its religious waywardness is the origin of the setting for the liturgical hymn as the sequence from the Requiem Mass—translated in the Vulgate edition of the Bible, “Day of wrath and doom impending!”
Leading up to Public Domain Day in the United States (see previously) and other jurisdictions, Boing Boing is putting together a virtual Advents Calendar showcasing each significant work of literature, cinema and visual art whose copyrights expire 1 January 2025, protections terminate typically in America and the European Union (with some notable exceptions) seventy years after the calendar year when the author died—post mortem auctoris. Among those properties that become free to use however one sees fit include the pictured Chop Suey by Edward Hopper and Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, as well as writings from Virginia Woolf, Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Erich Maria Remarque and Ernest Hemingway.
synchronoptica
one year ago: the OED’s WoTY shortlist (with synchronoptica), assorted links to revisit, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) plus Winchester Cathedral (1966)
seven years ago: a collection of UK WWII propaganda posters
eight years ago: Ancient Lights, more links to enjoy, Belgian brewing traditions added to UNESCO registry plus Vantablack
nine years ago: Vienna’s Schönbrunn palace
ten years ago: searching for Krampus, more unbuilt architecture, a pre-crime pilot, Alfred the Great plus the Carolinian dynasty
eleven years ago: launch codes and the Nuclear Football
The lexicographers present another treasury of obscure words whose utility is delightfully questionable in many cases and at times borders on the linguistic equivalent of unuselessness. 
There were classics ultracrepidarian—opining or operating outside one’s scope of practice, and the derived terms serendipitist and anecdotage but moreover a lot of choice vocabulary that was new to us, like novercal, pertaining to or characteristic of stepmother (without an equivalent word for stepfathers, the opposite of avuncular, of uncles, with no term for aunts), an amatorcultist, “a little insignificant love—a pretender to affection,” useful to describe one’s worst ex, neighbourstained, hopefully never to be in one’s quiver (see also), backspang, a Scottish term for a loophole that allows one to back out of a deal and antihalian, a humbug, one opposed to festivities. Much more at the links above.
strapline: Cory Doctorow’s review of books for 2024
week-by-week: Tom Whitwell’s gleanings from the past year—see previously—via Kottke
bad precedent: the power of the pardon was never meant to condone crime
the birthday paradox
a boring roundup: a look at geotechnical investigations and advances in harnessing the Earth’s internal energy
whamhalla: why Germans love and hate Last Christmas—see also
the travelling salesman problem: a new Geotripper challenge to find the optimal route to take to a number of cities and return to the point of origin
press-gang: Moscow authorities raid popular night clubs, seemingly detaining hundreds of men to draft for the war effort
take time—it’s brief: one hundred superlative photos of the past twelve month—via Memo of the Air
anthology: Lit Hub’s poetry recommendations for the year
A kind of hot metal typesetting used for letterpress printing, the Ludlow Typograph issued a font catalogue in 1958—pictured a gallery of fourth edition scalable patterns to supplement their available collection of typefaces and font families. Metal slugs are cast by the system, melted down and recycled in a cauldron in situ—preferable to some printing operations, as opposed to Linotype, as it was smaller and more affordable and always had fresh matrices for a run without worrying about running out of any given sorts. Though not made since the late 1960s when printing press technologies changed, the company estimates around sixteen thousand models were still in operations around the world, and replacement parts still being produced. See a video of one of the machines at work and many more type samplers at the link above.
synchronoptica
one year ago: a gallery of visual anagrams (with synchronoptica) plus the coronation of Napoleon and Joséphine
seven years ago: alternating tread stairwells plus assorted links to revisit
eight years ago: Basil Brush endangered, rampant post-factual disinformation, hybrid cigarettes plus a plant leverages physics
nine years ago: Kraftwerk in concert
ten years ago: fossilised phrases in English Christmas songs
On this day in 1824, the US presidential election whose voting had started back on 26 October between 
candidates Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford and Henry was punted to Congress as no candidate had secured an electoral majority (see previously here and here) under the provisions of Amendment XII to the constitution. The race was called a stalemate—John Caldwell Calhoun (pictured), after failing to secure party support as the presidential nominee agreed to stand for the role of vice president and comfortably won a plurality in the Electoral College—and voting was adjourned until 9 February with each state delegation given one vote for the candidate, to be decided through debate within their caucus. The election cycle of 1800 was also called by the House of Representatives but it was the Three-Fifths Compromise that enabled first Thomas Jefferson and ultimately Andrew Jackson to win, counting enslaved individuals who had no franchise as count as 3/5 of a person for purposes of apportionment of members to congress, based on a state’s population.
Having visited the efforts of scholars to survey the domains of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy beforehand, we enjoyed coming back to the endeavour to map Purgatory, the Inferno and Paradise with the culmination of seven centuries of study with the 1855 edition and 1872 reissue by Michelangelo Caetani, heir to the princedom of Teano, an academic and a patron of the arts with a special talent for draughting jewellery design and commissioned the monks of Monte Cassino to produce colour prints of his topological learning aides with an early form of chromolithography. Much more from Public Domain Review at the link above.
