noahs segel (12. 885)

Though we had been to the slopes of the Ellenbogen mountain before and visited the restaurant at the Thüringer Rhönhaus, we never made it to the summit before to see the viewing platform completed in 2017.  

On the way, however, the foggy and overcast weather did not seem so promising until the last couple of kilometres with climbing elevation the skies gloriously opened up. An extinct volcano, it is one of the highest points in the range and on a clear day, one is awarded with vistas of Bavaria, Hesse and Thüringen near the tri-point where the three states touch. On a clear day, from the observation tower—named Noah’s Sail for its information centre about the local flora and fauna and its profile—one can see the Brocken as well as the neighbouring peaks of the Wasserkuppe and the Milseburg. 

Though H didn’t want to join, I took that slide back down and had a nice sunny walk to the top across the massif before descending afterwards back into the fog bank of lower altitudes.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronopticæ), animated GIFs from Etienne Jacobs plus a survey of international traffic signs and license plates

thirteen years ago: carnival season 

fourteen years ago: modern geoglyphs plus Kissinger and Clinton 

fifteen years ago: security theatre plus adopt a word

sixteen years ago: a mythical member of the German parliament 

seventeen years ago: keeping it local 

et in aradia ego (12. 884)

Though the authenticity and authorship of the received gospel of the witches studied and published US folklorist and journalist Charles Godfrey Leland in 1899 is disputed by later historians and ethnographers, what Leland through his intermediary and research assistant Donna Roma Lister—a widely respected British writer on the occult and accomplished medium in her own right, believed to be genuine religious text of a Tuscan coven has played an unimpeachably large role in informing and influencing contemporary Wiccan and Neopagan movements. Syncretic and secret, the practise and spellcraft continued in parallel to the rituals of Roman Catholicism but hidden in plain sight as sort of a liberation doctrine to subvert and counter the oppression of the Church orthodoxy and social order.
The titular messianic figure, similar to the Italian form of the name Herodias—the wife of Herod Antipas whose real genealogy was buried in the belief of early Christianity, a characterisation of course propagated by witches themselves, that for her complicity in the death of John the Baptist her spirit was condemned to wander the Earth forever and only permitted to rest in treetops between midnight and daybreak, whereas Erodiade was a continuation of the ancient Roman cult of Diana and her nymphs, a daughter sired by prideful angel Lucifer and sent by the goddess to be a teacher unto women and men who would break from the yoke of enslavement—see also—and the real proto-witch. The gospel in fragmented form was completed by Lister’s interviews and channelling to fill in the gaps. Much more, particularly on our collaborator and ghost-writer, from Public Domain Review contributor A D Manns at the link up top.

baud rate (12. 883)

Reading about the last remaining telegraph stations in China closing a few months ago, we were excited for another look at the topic from the angle of the challenges overcome to adapt sinographs to telegraphy and more broadly to mechanical reproduction—ironically having invented the printed word but challenged with technology made for alphabetic encoding and decoding.

To overcome or work within the conventions of Morse code, the four-corner system (四角號碼檢字法) was put in place for characters based on cardinal shapes as an ununqiue identifier but winnowing it down (0000—9999) to a contextual range of possibilities that operators could interpret and pass along. This shape-based method (with help of gun-boat diplomacy and special entrepôts) declined with the reliance on telegrams but has seen a revival in numerical texting shorthand to limit the range of possibilities with natural word order. Much more from Language Log at the link above.

book and backmasking (12 .882)

Calling to mind this wonderfully laugh out loud and still arguably the only legitimate use of LinkedIn that matches the names of CV-holders to pop songs, Futility Closet directs us to an earlier effort scouring the telephone directory of Toronto’s 1977 white-pages choosing entries to approximate the lyrics to nursery rhymes (as published later in anthology of recreational linguistics and onomastics). One example cobbling together of the Roud Folk Song #19626 of disputed historical meaning:

Merrie Merry Quaint Caunt Ririe
Howe Dussiaulme Garden Groh
Witt Silver Belson Cockell Schells
And Pretty Mayes Allin Arro

Whist predating Mary Tudor and Mary Queen of Scots, despite popular associations, scholars believe the English traditional poem is an allegory for Catholicism with pretty maids representing nuns, the sanctus bells and the cockleshells as the pilgrimage badges of the Way of St James. Click through at the link above for more examples plus a 1963 television show that assembled a live studio audience to the tune “Inda Good Old Somerstein.”

synchronoptica

one year ago: the first human-non-human organ transplant (with synchronopticæ) plus polls open for the OED Word of the Year

thirteen years ago: alternate search engines, International Day of Philosophy plus more flea market finds

fourteen years ago: the myth of unlimited growth 

sixteen years ago: a visit to Coburg 

big beautiful bill (12. 881)

Among the tranche of twenty-thousand business records, flight itineraries and emails released by the by the estate of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein includes an exchange between Epstein and his brother Mark—allegedly asking on behalf of former Trump advisor Steven Bannon (previously) present in the room—from March of 2018 that he should question Epstein if Putin has photos of Trump performing an oral sex act on “Bubba”—the nickname for former US president Bill Clinton. Whilst unclear if this was made in jest in reference to the supposed dossier that Russia had on Trump and the pee-tapes (it pains to write such things) that were ultimately dismissed as a Democratic hoax back during Trump’s first term or a serious concern that more incriminating footage could emerge. In hindsight, like the vindication of the Pizzagate conspiracists, that Russia would have compromising material on Trump seems not only likely but an inevitability in the fullness of time. At the same time, Trump has disowned cheerleader Marjorie Taylor Greene as a raving lunatic for her support to release the files by passing the discharge petition. Though disappointed that his participation, orchestration of a massive pedophile ring, rape, trafficking, felonies, economic betrayals and general incompetence could not deprogram his cult following, maybe this might make MAGA turn on him (but who knows since the also donned ear-bandages and diapers in solidarity) out of the menfolk wanting to keep their own secrets safe. If it is true, Clinton needs to take one for the team.

new fav (12. 880)

Courtesy of MetaFilter, we are introduced to the musical stylings of one Ecca Vandal, singer-songwriter hailing from Melbourne of South African snd Tamil extraction, who progressed from gospel music into soul, jazz and 1990s RNB thanks to their siblings’ record collection through their new single “Molly” with the accompanying video. A perfect blending of old and new, there’s alternation between full-on, full-throated punk vocal menace and movements of restraint governed with some glitchy atmospherics that balances out the track.

offline crush (12. 879)

Via Web Curios, we quite enjoyed this five unit crash course whose simple yet atrophied syllabus is aimed at teaching those who want to escape algorithmic suggestions (we’ve spilt much ink on the subject of rewilding one’s online and by extension real-world experience—see previously here and here—and one has to really want that instead of the echo-chamber and comfortable confirmations) and appreciated the dogmatic approach that’s an actual framework rather than just the aspiration to get out more, with tips for bypassing the directed traffic presented as exercises. Inspired by some reactions to a recent post about exploration and widening one’s repertoire that suggested that some that bothered to comment—more than the tinge of guilt suffered over scrolling past a picture of someone’s cute dog and not upvoting—expressed that they had forgotten how to internet, the lessons advise one to take stock, make note of behaviours, intentional or otherwise, and has actually homework in form of following a daisy-chain of external links as far away as they will carry one, researching the commonplace—some artefact from one’s own room—until one finds a fact so unexpected that one is compelled to share, preferably in an essay format, long-read, delving into forums and into specific archived file types and pocket the results. The assignment we found most resonant was the reminder to use inspect element—not just to try to lift some coding ideas which usually nets nothing as there’s so many overlays and dependencies to negotiate (recursively represented)—and just mashing all the keys to see what’s there and break or remix it as a local copy. Before AI slop served fake news, this was how the sausage was made but is moreover a prompt that the web was never meant to be a black-box and one was never meant to scratch under the surface and in general whose interactions were siloed by commercial platforms.

synchronoptica

one year ago: movie title drops (with synchronopticæ), the Onion to purchase Infowars plus the Polish-German border

twelve years ago: Wiesbaden’s Südfriedhof 

thirteen years ago: an inexact science 

fifteen years ago: advances in 3D printing 

7x7 (12. 878)

breaking rust: Billboard’s top country-genre song is AI generated slop—see previously  

crown jewels: Hapsburg family to display to the public a secret, personal stash of treasures hidden in Canada since WWII  

grist for the mill: all the commercial, off-kilter blogs were private-equitied out of existence—via Kottke  

mecces: visiting a McDonald’s in West Berlin in 1984 

s-money: a 1963 patent to replace US paper currency with square plastic wafers—see previously, see also here and here 

the call of the first æthyr: occult poetry by Aleister Crowley (see previously) delivered in his only known recording  

poice: Sora created videos of fake immigration raids in the US infest Facebook