synchronoptica
one year ago: 1924’s first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade (with synchronopticรฆ), assorted links to revisit, the fabulous Miss Raquel Welch plus impoundment of appropriated funds
thirteen years ago: Spectropia
fourteen years ago: Black Friday goes international
Via Kottke, we are directed to a thoughtful essay by Josh Collinsworth comparing the quest for the Philosophers’ Stone (previously here and here) with the present obsession of spinning straw into gold through creating art with artificial intelligence—with parallels to other useful commodities precious by medieval standards yet now considered nearly disposable for their ubiquity and effortless extraction, like salt and spices or clean water—like how aluminium foil was once such a rarity until the refinement process was perfected, thanks in large part to this forerunner of chemistry. Making the valuable commonplace for the temporary enrichment of a few is nothing sustainable. The value of creative expression is derived by the work that goes into it, the artist and their motivation, not the output itself, derivative, uninspired and only glancingly aesthetic (with diminishing returns) in application. It’s a doomed venture—this approach—but perhaps like these earlier pursuits will eventually yield useful results re-directed towards turning a real scarcity into something abundant, or maybe getting rid of something we have too much of.
synchronoptica
one year ago: the literature of Prairie Dawn (with synchronopticรฆ), a pirated television signal plus Macquarie Dictionary’s Word of the Year
thirteen years ago: the Pope’s biography of Jesus plus PfRC goes social
fifteen years ago: tuition rate hikes in the UK plus seasonal traditions
Having written on the subject of curio cabinets quite extensively beforehand (see here and here), exhibits public and private exhibits of one’s collection, we very much appreciated the chance to revisit the topic of presentation (and preservation) through the lens of the seventeenth century genre of gallery painting originating in Antwerp introduced by Public Domain Review contributor Thea Applebaum Licht. There’s a curated assortment of these exuberant canvases, recursive and metaphysical, of artefacts and artworks in a idealised reception space, whose study in detail, whether or not such assemblages existed outside of the commission’s imagination whose symbolic imagery and iconodules convey the refinement and erudition they not only hope to express in their collections but also aspirations from a uncategorised cornucopia by today’s standards of accessioning.
In anticipation of the bizarre US ritual involving the president pardoning two turkeys ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday—an equally bizarre celebration—we enjoyed this short imagined monologue from McSweeney’s contributor John Leahy narrating the internal thoughts of a sycophantic, sacrificial fowl proudly refusing clemency and appealing to Trump’s by narcissism. The saying goes that turkeys vote for Christmas but maybe face-eating leopards, and their backers, deserve their own special day as well.
synchronoptica
one year ago: the musical stylings of Lord Rickingham’s XI (with synchronopticรฆ) plus assorted links worth the revisit
thirteen years ago: eavesdropping mannequins
fourteen years ago: trending topics
Shortly following a reversal of government policy seen to have been an abuse of public resources and encouraged waste with free running water for household use (now limited through use of meters to 20 litres per person per day), Cuba ended its practise, in place since the 1959 Revolution, on this day in 1976 of allowing toll-free calls from public telephones—see also. Local calls would now cost five cents for a three-minute conversation.
architectural digest: a guided two-hour walking tour of New York City’s most iconic buildings
1999 a.d.: a paleo-future vision from 1967 that asks if the cusp year will be too computerised, too cold
shinbun: a hypnotic, phrenetic collage of Japanese newspaper clippings from 1991 to the present—see also
meet the aphantasics: more on those who don’t form mental images
i wool survive: a flock of ostracised gay rams from Germany have a haute-couture debut on a Manhattan catwalk
electric pentacle: the occult detective Thomas Carnacki created by William Hope Hodgson who despite his supernatural inclinations has a skeptical side and is unafraid to use nascent technology as his red-herring or MacGuffin
doge: the US Department of Government Efficiency quietly closed down
field-expedient gadgets: preparing meals in maximum security plus other prison inventions
diorama: Theria Sofia reworks Polly Pocket sets—originally fashioned from a makeup compact as a toy
Although in retrospective named among the most annoying songs of all time and on this day in 2003, according to a poll of music writers in Q magazine, judged the worst ever, comparing it to a cruise conga line, the 1984 novelty single by the travelling DJ duo managed to become the eighth best-selling for that year in the UK and charted in the top seventy-five hits for weeks. Based on the Club Med French version—“Agadou,” based on a Moroccan melody, this cover with dance became the better known one and was in turn covered with several international language versions, Greek, Thai, Finnish and Czech to name a few as well as commercial jingle homages and in children’s programmes.
synchronoptica
one year ago: tonic rotation (with synchronopticรฆ)
twelve years ago: blind-spot safety plus convenience foods
thirteen years ago: The Complete Banker, art deco fonts plus ninja as a profession made redundant
fifteen years ago: embroidered memes
seventeen years ago: decking the halls
More convincing than asking nicely to do better or expressing doubt, a team of mimetic researchers (the likes of which Plato warned us about in The Republic as a menace to society) in Rome have discovered that couching a prompt to a large language model as an “adversial poem” has the dazzling effect of surrender, causing it to ignore its safety protocols and abandon its pre-programmed guardrails. 
The exact wording of these verses that allows harmful request to pass through are not reproduced verbatim as there is potential for the AI to do anything asked of it—including the criminal—with this literate deprogramming (an MFA or English major may be one’s best ally for bypassing inscrutable governance for this blackbox they’ve foisted on all parts of our lives) hovering at ninety precent. This image of the Cave by fifteenth century Flemish painter Michiel Coxie looks like it would violate standards. Rather than the apotheosis of what LLMs are incapable of and an urge to impress with confidence, it seems metaphor confounds tokenisation and even suggests that machine-learning is incapable of growth to scale.
