synchronoptica
one year ago: Unwort of the Year (with synchronoptica) plus Happy Days (1974)
seven years ago: the collectibility of Fiji mermaids
eight years ago: neural networks and arcade games, Flemish proverbs, Dorothy Lange’s photographs of Japanese internment camps plus mapping Trump world
nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus Nitrate Divas
ten years ago: a novel from Jo Walton about a time-travelling Athena plus early wireless telephony
Though the crew of the Apollo missions who captured Pale Blue Marble and Earthrise might take exception to the accolade of best photo ever, we do think that this image of cities whizzing by taken by 
veteran astronaut Donald Pettit, on his third tour aboard the International Space Station having spent over five hundred days in orbit, is pretty spectacular. The dazzling nature of the foreground in motion belies other details, like the galactic core on the horizon and the streaks of other satellites and the transition from night to day on the world’s edge. A gifted science communicator making the most of his stints onboard the ISS, Pettit is well equipped with cameras and lenses and has conducted numerous experiments and demonstrations for the curious and enquiring as well as his regiment of assigned tasks and holds the first patent for an object invented in space, the Zero G Cup, a coffee mug that uses the wetting angle, the incline where a liquid and solid meet, to avoid the need of using a straw.
alexiomia: from the Greek for no words for appellation, a study of the social anxiety of name-avoidance—via the new Shelton wet/dry
white knight: Bytedance entertaining contingency plans to allow Elon Musk to purchase TikTok’s US operations ahead of the expected judgment against the platform
out-of-office reply: a business card whose information only appears in sunlight
screamboat willie: Disney begins to deal with its loss of IP—apparently a Popeye horror film is in the works too
tl;dr: AI input and output
open and shut case: the US Department of Justice election interference report suggest Trump would have been convicted if not re-elected
๐: the face of collective grief and the demands of acceptance that are far from passive
synchronoptica
one year ago: AI plagiarism and The Stepford Wives (with synchronoptica), a hands-free rosary plus Queen Margrethe II of Denmark abdicates
seven years ago: the Continental Congress (1784) plus Celtic burial mounds
eight years ago: authoritarians and the press, the former trolley line that ran between the US and Mexico, assorted links worth the revisit, Bart the Genius (1990) plus a secret WWII commando school
nine years ago: the dancing doctor plus genre blindness
ten years ago: more on the refugee situation in Germany plus an animated homage to Davie Bowie’s personae
cryptobiosis: a nematode was reanimated when pulled out of the Siberia permafrost after forty-six thousand years
fresh air, town square: Mastodon is becoming a non-profit organisation—via Waxy
wrack and ruin: a superlative gallery of abandoned places
a sprained ankle on a country walk is allowable but you must not go very far beyond this: in praise of Jane Austin
hollywood hills: architects reckon with the scale of destruction from the Los Angles fires—more here
luthersadt eisleben: a horde of coins found hidden in a statue’s leg in the reformer’s home church
the joe rogan experience: Elizabeth Lopatto summarises the three-hour interview with Zuckerberg
™: Sweden’s attempt to copyright Sweden thwarted plus other assorted legal stupidity
Though striking as a bit vulgar as an extension of the slang term, the American Dialect Society’s selection of rawdogging (see previously here and here)—from the slang for engaging into intercourse without a 
condom—is striking for how pervasive the term has become in common parlance, sort of like the time Angela Merkel said shitstorm once at a press conference, how the Trump administration pushed the limits of what could be said on television and necessitated some uncomfortable explanations or how generally such anti-euphemistic (a dysphemism, substituting a derogatory descriptor when a neutral one would do) language can transcend its company and find widespread application, from forgoing luxuries to bare-knuckled navigating through a hardship with no lead-time. Others voted on and ranked by lexicographers, editors and ethnographers included brat, sanewashing, AI slop, to crash out, to reach one’s physical and emotional limits and mog, to assert dominance based on physical appearance, from the initialism for alpha male of group.
Having encountered this humour list of alternatives to California sober—no alcohol or other recreational 
drugs, only weed for the health conscious—for other polities, we quite enjoyed this introduction to the growing lexicon of N/A (non-alcoholic) vocabulary under development that goes past the mocktail or zero-proof as a substitute for the social function of booze and spirits. Particularly intriguing were damp/flexi drinking, an intentional moderation, a less smug way of declaring mindful imbibing, elixirs and infusions, not authoritative definition but concoctions that elicit mystery and lend a certain air to one’s fancy stemware and zebra striping, like practice of bookending one’s evening with non-alcoholic options, enjoying an adult beverage or two in between or alternating. Sure that the language will improve and evolve beyond backronyms, no one should be expected to explain or excuse their choices or succumb to peer-pressure in social settings. More from Punch at the link above.
For the thirty-fourth time, the jury has selected its Un-word of the Year (see also below) for this past twelve months, the panel of linguists (for the first two years, the selection was announced by the Gesellschaft fรผr deutsche Sprache along with the Wort des Jahres but an internal row led to the committee to become independent and refuse any state funding) calling out a recently popularised term that denigrates human rights and democratic principles through euphemism or deflection. 
For 2024, with dishonourable mentions going to Heizungsverbot, misleading as implying a heating ban and attempting to discredit environmental protection measures but only effects standards for the construction of new heating systems, the overall winner was the neologism that repackages old, everyday racism biodeutsch, that is—biologically German. Gaining parlance on social media, it is used to classify, evaluate and discriminate against an out-group on supposed biological criteria, originally used ironically from the organic seal for domestic produce but used for some time in this non-satirical and unreflective way. The construct implies a non-existent biological connection to nationality and is meant to exclude those with immigrant roots, real or presumed.
synchronoptica
one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus more emoji remixers
seven years ago: Martin Luther King Day universally celebrated in the US plus the leader of the American Nazi party
eight years ago: bat-friendly tequila, promotion via voice-analysis, modern grotesques, MAGA international plus image compression
nine years ago: Germany’s Unwort of the Year
ten years ago: Switzerland retires some of its civilian defence infrastructure, the origins of bio-feedback plus no crisis unexploited
After newly elected Mexican president Sheinbaum responded to Trump’s musing that the gulf be renamed and suggesting instead that the historically accurate appellation of Mexican America be applied to the northern portion of the continent, a law-maker in Canada also snapped back that the western Pacific states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California petition to become a new eleventh province—not only shielding from retributive tariffs but also with the guarantee of universal healthcare and sensible gun control-measures which the US has failed to provide.
