synchronoptica
one year ago: The Towering Inferno (with synchronopticรฆ), assorted links worth the revisit plus a museum dedicated to depictions of The Last Supper
twelve years ago: seigniorage and inflation
thirteen years ago: trim up the tree with Christmas stuff, US school shootings, lucid dreaming plus O Antiphons
fifteen years ago: the legacy of Cablegate
jabrael shelbys: Afghan morality police arrest a troupe of young men for dressing like characters from Peaky Blinders for “promoting alien culture”
holiday inn: the hidden history behind the 1942 Irving Berlin staple “White Christmas,” composed at the La Quinta hotel
trump derangement syndrome: US president roundly condemned for his disparaging, disgusting remarks on the murder of Rob Reiner and wife Michelle, who photographed him for his Art of the Deal jacket—there is no line for that meathead and his followers
the internet of beings: proprioception and web-enabled organs
do you see what i see: tales of Winter Wonderland disasters
cultural ambassadors: individuals from seventy countries offer their best imitations of US tourists—see also
synchronoptica
one year ago: suggestions for what US president Joe Biden could do with his remaining weeks (with synchronopticรฆ) plus more on vexillology
twelve years ago: a history of coffee bans plus a periodic table of cheese
thirteen years ago: slips and sits plus Bad Neustadt all decked out for the holidays
fourteen years ago: poinsettias plus FACTA coming into force
sixteen years ago: the psychology of secret societies
it cuts up a man’s youth and vigour most horribly: Jane Austen invented the wellness guy
maplewashing: the deceptive practise of making things seem more Canadian than they actually are narrowly beat out “elbows up” for Canadian English Dictionary’s inaugural Word of the Year
antipodes: Rothera Antarctic research station gets a new Royal Mail postbox genai.mil: Pentagon installs a chatbot on all DOD computers—immediately concludes that Hegseth is a war-criminal—via Super Punch
dayton accords: a look back at the peace negotiations to end the war in after the collapse of Yugoslavia three decades on
cut spelng: English orthographer Christopher Upward’s failed proposal for language reform through elimination of redundant letters—see previously, see also
little wars: HG Wells’ contribution to table top role play games
synchronoptica
one year ago: Vince Collins celebrates the US bicentennial (with synchronopticรฆ), Intershop (1962) plus assorted links worth revisiting
thirteen years ago: IKEA instructions for that dapper monkey
sixteen years ago: drug money helped banks weather the Great Recession
Legacy media is such a derisive term for any among the establishment who is outside of the grasp and influence of new arbiters but such laurels still matter, 
and whilst knowing that the honour does not always go to the great and the good but rather to pith and moment and what is most impactful, we are a bit taken aback by TIME magazine’s person of the year (see previously) with an identity parade, a lineup of the usual suspects of billionaires, almost to a person tech bros, recreated of course by AI recreating the iconic photograph 1930 of construction workers of the Empire State Building taking their lunch break on a girder at the hundredth and thirty-fourth floor with no safety gear. Though the publication is owned by Salesforce founder and Oracle executive Marc Benioff, such a high-wire act may deserve a second glance as the vaunted technology does not seem to be delivering (a kind of bad imprint for a glossy cover and perhaps intentionally so), triangulated amongst economic ruin, environmental catastrophe and eschatological crisis and those responsible for it seemingly aloof of their situation and what might come next.
Though each time I picked up on the narrative again, telling myself I don’t have time to listen to a two-and-a-half-hour podcast, I did make it all the way through this dramatic reading of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas from The Allusionist host Helen Zaltzman. 
The novella, divided into five chapters—which Dickens calls staves, reflects and informs the zeitgeist at a time when Victorian England was reevaluating holiday customs and was his fourth attempt at the subject, first a serialisation called “Christmas Festitivies,” then a short story under the title “A Christmas Dinner” that appeared in his illustrated anthology Sketches by Boz and an episode in The Pickwick Papers, “The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton”—a sacristan, a church superintendent charged with care and maintenance of the building and cemetery grounds, misanthropic but after being ransomed by the creatures undergoes a conversion, similar to Scrooge. Capitalising on its success, Dickens wrote another four holiday themed novels (The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain) but none of the franchise as beloved as his 1842 iteration. Familiar adaptations are true to Dickens but I realised I had never listened to original narrative in its entirety, rather excellently delivered (with a few, non-intrusive short asides to gloss antiquated meanings) and really enjoyed the decision to voice the Ghost of Christmas Present aptly as a South Park character. It is a banger of a story and of course you have time to indulge.
Though absent from the traditional pre-ceremony press conference with the prize to accepted on her behalf, awarded in absentia, Nobel peace laureate Marรญa Corina Machado (previously) did make it safely to Oslo thanks to a fraught extraction mission, codenamed with the above for the medallion and Alfred Nobel’s explosive legacy, 
carried out in large part by members of the Grey Bull Rescue Foundation, a group of US military veterans and expatriates that have pulled off hundreds of such operations globally. In hiding for years, the team deemed it was too risky to travel overland for the opposition leader and decided, with only a week to plan and despite the presence of the US navy off the coast and the targeting of supposed drug-trafficking boats entering international waters, to take a sea-route and rendezvous with a larger ship in the Caribbean. Secreted into the United States, a flight originating in Bangor, Maine brought her to the Norwegian capital in time for breakfast with St Lucy.
The latest multi-panel comic of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weinersmith (previously) shows an alternate version of Pinocchio’s transformation by the Blue Fairy through the lens of AI and the inscrutability of what’s going on under the hood, so to speak. “And now by magic, you shall be a real boy,” the fairy announces, in accordance with his maker’s wish. 
Attaining his final form, the former wooden marionette asks, “What was I before?” “A philosophical zombie—you had the outward manner of a conscience being but no internal conscious experience.” Pinocchio takes exception with that characterisation and the Blue Fairy is compelled to change him back into a stochastic parrot, albeit an immortal one. We too wonder why this “real boy” analogy is not more pervasive in the industry—more from Language Log and SMBC at the link above including a performative demonstration of a decision-tree advertised as showings one’s thought process.
