where we’re going we don’t need stroads (11. 820)

Whilst happy to live in a country that has not privileged cars over pedestrians completely where services are walkable and there’s a robust network of public transportation, there is always room for improvement at the margins—parking lots take up a lot of real estate and can be sweltering heat islands that could surely be put to a better use and there’s signs that some mid-sized cities in Germany are tending towards their American counterparts with the same horrendous corridors of strip malls, gas stations, automobile lots and fast food and plenty of investment in infrastructure has been invested in making the car king. Courtesy of Kottke, we are directed towards this reflection on how the car-centric focus of the US is like an addiction impossible to kick because of all the sunk costs and the ingrained and perpetuating cycle of more roads, more traffic and more destinations. The urban planning for the overwhelming majority of places built up post the introduction of the car is going to take a long process of unbuilding to make them liveable, and this is the American experience with hardly any exception—the article quoting Tennessee Williams’ observation that the country only has three cities: “New York, San Francisco and New Orleans—everywhere else is Cleveland,” which unfortunately rings very true for all that are consigned to be stuck in congestion and forever en route and whose errands and commute affords no chance for serendipity, divergence or nature. The title portmanteau of “street” and “road” was coined in criticism to the spreading failures of American civil engineering.

10⁶⁰⁰ (11. 819)

Via Things Magazine (lots more to explore there), we get the chance to revisit the electromechanical rotor cipher machine, the advanced HX-63 developed by a private Swiss firm, which would prove difficult to crack even by contemporary standards and in 1952 was exponentially more secure than the CIA’s top model. Over the course of a decade, only about a dozen of the units were manufactured and though most clientele remained anonymous, the French defence ministry was one known buyer and a defence contractor found the device in a Cold War communications bunker and restored it to working order. The potential of those above undisclosed purchasers to be forces not aligned with Western interests caused the intelligence agency to intervene and not only eventually stop their sales but also to enter into a partnership with the company to produce a model with a backdoor so the CIA could decrypt any transmission. More from IEEE Spectrum at the link above including a video demonstration of the restored, uncompromised model and more on how the technology works to encode messages.

synchronoptica

one year ago: INTERPOL (1923)—with synchronoptica—plus divination through cheese

seven years ago: an appreciation of composer Edvard Grieg,  a meditation on the dacha plus cabmen’s shelters

eight years ago: restoring the Houses of Parliament, the debut of Star Trek, a Buddha-inspired knitted cap plus the debut of Voyager

nine years ago: a partially submerged art installation in the Thames is a statement on climate change

ten years ago: window displays, NATO talks on the Russian invasion of Ukraine plus a visit to Bad Vilbel

d-minus (11. 818)

Beginning on this day in 1962 and concluding at the month’s end just weeks before the Cuba Missile Crisis, Exercise Spade Fork was part of a US federal emergency preparedness plan to mobilise and reconstitute the government in the aftermath of a nuclear attack (see previously). In this scenario, run parallel to the military exercise codenamed High Heels II, America was hit first with a pre-emptive, decapitation strike targeting the presidential retreat and childhood home of Jacqueline Bouvier, Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island. Comprised of a force of seventeen hundred civil servants, an “Executive Reserve” received specialised training to maintain command and control and manage resources. Subsequent strategic doctrine, however, has superseded such a sequence of events, since taking out another power’s leadership is prone to failure and backfire as the easiest contingency to prepare for and without the central authorities in place, belligerents lose the ability to negotiate and put the decision to retaliate in the hands of rogue elements. Midway into the drill, plans were modified in order to provide cover for the mobilisation of army units to deploy to Mississippi in order to enforce the ruling of desegregation of public schools when the governor refused to honour the court order to integrate the state university.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a banger from The Jam (with synchronoptica), Keith Haring’s computer art plus a musical number about medication from Ginette Garcin

seven years ago: assorted links worth revisiting

eight years ago: Powers of Ten, The Great Fire of 1666, colonising Venus, discarded shopping lists plus a tree house in Stuttgart

nine years ago: more links to enjoy, a more accurate tree census, Aloha attire plus an antonym for omnipresent

ten years ago: the life of Caesar, the new temperance laws plus common misconceptions

doge (11. 817)

Trump has announced that Elon Musk has agreed to head a commission for his potential administration, named the Department of Government Efficiency in reference to Musk’s favoured meme-based cryptocurrency, tasked with reducing US federal spending and the deficit. Musk’s businesses not only benefit from government subsidies and also counts NASA, the Pentagon and several intelligence agencies among his direct clients, which raises the spectre of a conflict of interest in line with Trump’s imperial presidency. Musk was formerly a member of a White House advisory council but resigned in protest in 2017 after the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, although has recently recanted that decision, saying the climate catastrophe was not in need of immediate attention and has softened his opinions of the petroleum industry.

schnelling points (11. 816)

Humans have a seemingly uncanny knack for solving complex coordination problems when communication and prior planning is limited by uncovering the shared cultural or knowledge-based default in a such situation, concerting the intentions and expectations and land on the above foci, named after economist and game-theorist Thomas Schelling. 

Cooperative experiments demonstrate that a team of individuals acting towards shared end will pick the same time and place for a rendezvous. Part of the allure of AI models is that they seem also quite good at coordination problems—from predictive text, to routine emails to proofreading to peer-review, insofar as they have been trained on the social norms that we draw on as well to achieve a common goal. Artificial intelligence has a worse track record when it comes to something genuinely innovative or unprecedented, and moreover may erode the implicit social bargain that underpins cooperative efforts. The routine is also ritual and outsourcing them, like the above onerous tasks, dulls not only the refining practise when it comes to composing an email—which is also the author’s assessment of their audience—but of course lands as disingenuous and meritless when one can’t be bothered to dash off a good reference or buy someone a gift that was not generated by algorithm. What do you think? We’ve always been taking short-cuts but subverting ceremony altogether seems more serious. More from Henry Farrell at the link above.

in my considered judgment, we have comported ourselves in a manner faithful to our history (11. 815)

As the first major celebration of the bicentennial of the American revolution, the contemporary governors of the original Thirteen Colonies were invited to reenact, reconvene the First Continental Congress (see also) in Philadelphia, gathering for an event at the original venue of Carpenters’ Hall on this day on this day in 1974.

Chaired by Virginia governor Mills E Godwin, Junior as presiding officer, delegates re-legislated the several grievances lodged against the Crown, not quite revising history and remaining patriotic but coming to some re-evaluation and different conclusions on oppression and tyranny. The original 1774 summit, whose delegation makeup was more diverse than that of two centuries prior and included women and minorities, adopted among other things the Articles of Association that called for a general boycott of British goods, which was soon escalated by punitive sanctions against the Colonies.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: the first in-flight movie (1925) plus Excalibur found

eight years ago: the flak towers of World War II, weather at Jupiter’s pole, more on Merkel’s hand posture plus Michaelmas

nine years ago: the innovation of the stirrup, a vintage arcade in Saint Petersburg, a Bell logo redesign, emoji urls plus more on stave architecture

ten years ago:  the NATO summit in Wales

9x9 (11. 814)

unpodcasted: one hundred ninety nine ideas about etymologies, idioms and eponyms that Helen Zaltzman has not produced an episode for—yet  

book club: Oprah Winfrey’s upcoming special on Artificial Intelligence with Sam Altman, Bill Gates and other AI-evangelists has critics of the tech sector up in arms  

blue chip index: Intel’s earnings slump could see it removed from the Dow, possibly putting a wrench in plans to increase US domestic manufacturing

sleepy grendel’s mother: Beotrump by Christopher Douglas  

jevons paradox: even if autonomous vehicles worked perfectly, they will still lead to more pollution, congestion and accidents—see previously—via tmn  

oslo—is it even a city: a wonderful bit of anti-advertising for the Norwegian capital plus more news and jokes 

intel inside: Pentium microprocessor as Navajo weaving—via Waxy 

nanowrimo: the organisation behind National Novel Writing Month criticised over labelling aversion to generative texts as classist and ableist 

unblogged: fellow flâneur Diamon Geezer lists a month’s worth of explorations not posted

 synchronoptica

one year ago: The Eye of the Tiger (with synchronoptica),  Kenneth Anger’s first film plus hot labour summer

seven years ago: the Little Ben of Victoria station

eight years ago: a visit to Churfrankenland plus an ant colony thriving in nuclear waste

nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus algorithmic eavesdropping

eleven years ago: Germany votes plus pirate patches

petrolgrad (11. 813)

On his first visit to a signatory member of the International Criminal Court since the issuing of a warrant for his arrest in 2022 for war crimes—specifically the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to be raised by Russian families—Vladimir Putin is flagrantly testing the limits of the infra-national judicial body’s jurisdiction by his welcome in Ulaanbaatar. Although there is no framework to enforce compliance, state parties like Mongolia are expected to uphold the court’s pre-trial rulings and detain those summoned. Kyiv is urging compliance as well as several protests organised locally. Putin’s presence is for among other things to promote the building of a new pipeline to China, called the Power of Siberia 2, to make up for lost sales to Europe following the boycott of Russian oil.