the gourd question (12. 195)

First documented around two thousand years ago in divination manuals, the tradition of playing the race game called huluwen (translated as above but has many regional variations and diverse and contemporary themes, also called “to drive away eight snakes,” “bureaucratic promotion table or “chaos at dragon palace” for example) during family gatherings for the Spring Festival has endured and evolved over the centuries with the gods and political or career ambitions. Players advance according to a roll of the dice (or a spin of a dreidel-like top) a certain number of spaces landing on an image and then must jump forward or back to an identical square, the first reaching the centre winning. Though the seemingly humble gourd was not always the goal, in Taoism the calabash (互录, also a homophone for “interactive recording,” hence the streaming service) symbolises longevity through medical or miraculous intervention and can also represent a portal to another realm or be interpreted as a scapegoat or pharmakós, a object that could absorb bad luck and be cast out—from the same Greek root as drugs, potions and spells.

natronlokomotive (12. 194)

From the archives of Amusing Planet, we learn about a variant of “fireless” trains, running off a reservoir compressed air cycling through a reciprocating engine as opposed to steam-power derived from burning coal—cheaper, more energy efficient and safer without the risk of boiler explosion but with a limited range, called soda locomotives. Invented in the early 1880s by engineer and chemist Mortiz Honigmann, the engine was loaded with five tons of caustic soda (sodium hydroxide), generating heat when the substance came in contact with water, enough to propel the car forward with exhaust from the pistons in the closed-system passing again through the soda to perpetuate the cycle. After about four to five hours of use, the chemical reaction ceased being self-sustaining, at which point the boiler jacket would be swapped out for a refresh one at a station, the spent soda “recharged,” re-concentrated by dehydrating it, evaporating the excess water with an injection of ultra hot steam, that sourced from municipal heating surplus. Trialled as street cars for the public transit systems of Berlin and Aachen, they proved reliable and were well-received by passengers due to their silence and lack of smoke and soot. The demonstration project, however, was abandoned due to logistical problems, owning to the weight of the tank and liability for explosion (which fortunately never occurred) and whilst a forgotten juncture in rail and metro development, such an thermo-chemical exchange system has found new applications in recent years as a storage cell for renewable energy.

synchronoptica

one year ago:  a sixty year old chatbot (with synchronoptica), Sierra On-line games plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: an exceptional flaneur, LEGO Day plus an online museum of ephemera

eight years ago: Trump’s national security council, feeding livestock subpar candy plus American Carnage 1.0

nine years ago: underwhelming fossils, Barbie origins, seasonal trappings and stereotypes, UFO cults plus road sign typefaces

ten years ago: the history of US-Mexico relations, the Duma to rule on German reunification plus more links to enjoy

who goes maga? (12. 193)

Thirteen years after the stripping of her press credentials and ejection from Nazi Germany for her frank exposé I Saw Hitler, journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote for Harper’s in 1941 “Who Goes Nazi?”—a parlour game about everyday encounters on who might be susceptive to fascist ideology. Updated aptly by The Sword & the Sandwich—via tmn, we have some modern cocktail party encounters with character profiles prone to turning to a mindset not extricated but rather embraced and exported since Ms Thompson’s byline. Guests Mr Z, Mr P, Ms M and Mr B, like in the original are stock stand-ins for the moguls and movers of the day and one can recognise in these figures the fawning press-corps, influencers, broligarchs, terfs, tradwives and their conversions, epiphanies from the noble and altruistic to dishonest and self-serving and a bit tortured—and then there are the hold-outs. Play it at your next social gathering.

fork in the road (12. 192)

Trump, through the Office of Personnel Management, extended an invitation to the two-million strong US federal workforce for a deferred resignation with retention of pay and benefits, by hitting reply (or reply-all) to the email with the text “resign,” through the end of September, the fiscal year, by next Thursday. The offer for essentially seven months of paid administrative leave is in align with the DOGE agenda to reduce the number of government employees (one virtually unchanged since the 1980s but supplemented through contracted jobs) and push out those disloyal to Trump’s politics. The email goes on to detail the pillars of reform, as outlined in the flurry of executive orders issued on day one of the administration as promoting a return to one’s physical office and ending telework—though many remote workers have no office to return to and there’s an economic argument to be made for home-office since utilities are borne by the employee and not the government—a culture of performance, a more streamlined and flexible manpower—which seems to run counter to the first pillar—and enhanced standards of conduct. For those who wish to remain, OPM extended its gratitude for renewed focused on serving the American people but could not give full assurance regarding the future of their positions or agency, with plans of restructuring, realignment and relocation as well as the reclassification of civil servants to strip some labour protections. The mass-email shares the same subject line as the ultimatum that Musk gave to Twitter staff after buying the social media platform, hoping force out those who didn’t share his mission, vision and goals, and offered a parachute of three months of severance pay—numerous workers quitting in droves and never receiving the promised pay package. Many federal workers, congressional opposition and unions were sceptical of this offer—noting the real estate developer’s penchant to stiff contractors and renege on deals after work was completed and questioning the legality of such a proposition, coming hours after Trump wrested the power of the purse away from congress by ordering the impoundment of grant and loan programmes, domestically and abroad (see above), pending a compliance review. Such a coerced purging of the “deep state” (see below) would potentially gut many agencies which the public depends on for safety and services—“national security” positions are exempt but not well defined.

  synchronoptica

one year ago: Desert Island Discs (with synchronoptica) plus Plato’s Gorgias

seven years ago: reforesting Iceland, artist Alexandra Dillon, illustrator Gary Taxali plus IKEA founder passes away

eight years ago: a US government hiring freeze, ransomware plus purges at the US state department

nine years ago: assorted links to revisit, forty things turning forty plus the human chin

ten years ago: EU disunity plus early photoshopping

10x10 (12. 191)

i saw, i cut, i applied: a retrospective of the textile art of Ayako Miyawaki (宮脇綾子) at the Tokyo Station Gallery 

hadron therapy: researchers at CERN are collaborating with oncologists to develop precision treatment that last a fraction of a second—via the new Shelton wet/dry 

drag and drop: the development of tools that easily move data around with confidence it would not be lost

shǒusuì: an exhibition on community resilience through helps gird one for the trying year ahead 

two-minute warning: the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences (see previously) advance the second hand once again as a warning to world leaders  

oreoboros: a round-up of recently introduced snacks and treats—via MetaFilter 

comparative entomology: an 1879 study in the colour patterns in moths and butterflies 

object impermanence: a glitchy and broken AI knock-off of Minecraft makes for a strangely compelling experience  

experiment advanced superconducting tokamak: an artificial sun burned for nearly eighteen minutes at the EAST plasma physics lab in Hefei—a significant milestone for sustainable fusion reactions—via Boing Boing 

the little loomhouse: the history and evolution of an ensemble of Kentucky cabins to a thriving arts community

be my valentine, charlie brown (12. 190)

Premiering on this day in 1975 on the CBS television network, the thirteenth prime-time animated special based on the Peanuts comic strip, deals with the subject of rejection and heartbreak when Sally first misinterprets Linus’ heart-shaped box of chocolates for his teacher as an overture for her non-requited affection and our protagonist receiving only one treat, a chalky candy heart with the message “FORGET IT KID!” during the class party—the teacher departing early with her boyfriend. A belated greeting arrives from the Little Red Haired Girl and Charlie Brown gets a regifted card from Violet. Optimistic that these pity Valentines might sustain a trend and he’ll get more next year, but Linus warns his friend not to get his hopes up. The score with the opening theme “Heartburn Waltz” was recorded by Vince Guaraldi’s Orchestra. The card which Sally reads and acted out by Snoopy is the entirety (see also) of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese (№ 43), which opens with “How do I love thee? Let me me count the ways.”

synchronoptica

one year ago: USA for Africa’s We are the World (with synchronoptica) plus the zombification of the abandoned internet

seven years ago: pedometers and privacy, Thamesmead Housing Estate plus Aloha Wanderwell

eight years ago: governance per Tweet, assorted links worth revisiting plus Little Englanders

nine years ago: a time-capsule apartment in Chicago, ranking passports plus the game Go

ten years ago: hydrophobic materials plus a superb cartographical collection

deepseek (12. 189)

A scrappy, lean and open-source AI developed on a budget of just six million dollars has punched a hole of over a trillion dollars in global technology markets, raising doubts about the sustainability and infiltration in the boom led by the same cadre of grifters who upsold crypto and NTFs (and still trying to make fetch happen) cum beneficiaries of the tech-feudalism panopticon, bowdlerising and exploiting one’s sentiments and information as much as any accusations lobbed outside, that demonstrates that benchmarks in artificial intelligence utility can be set and surpassed without premium micro-processors (Nvidia chips, considered state-of-the-art, were subject to an export embargo in China since 2022) and without extensive infrastructure for computing power, spurring American companies to invest in server farms and nuclear plants to fuel their resource-hungry models—prompting a sober reevaluation of enthusiasm and underwriting and tuition for training. Liang Wenfeng, entrepreneur and hedge-fund manager, developed the model as a hobby to identify patterns in stock prices, and while remaining focused on research rather than commercial products has released a personal assistant as a free download to showcase its potential and make AI transparent and universally accessible (the algorithms can be adapted by anyone)—and the app is the most popular in its category, really handicapping the present US broligarchy (a real fail-whale) the declared American national emergency over energy.

senate select committee (12. 188)

Created on this day fifty years ago by a vote of eighty-two to four in the US upper house of congress, sponsored and chaired by namesake, Democrat senator Frank Church of Idaho, the bipartisan group charged with investigating various allegations of abuse and overreach of the CIA, the NSA, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service as the opening of a series of such inquiries earning the monicker for 1975 as the “Year of Intelligence,” whose findings resulted in the establishment of a permanent panel on espionage and reconnaissance. Among the more shocking revelations were of the existence of MKULTRA, involving unwitting citizens in mind control experiments, operations that infiltrated political, pacifist and civil-rights organisations, dragnet domestic spying abetted by telecommunication providers and Family Jewels, a covert programme that targeted foreign leaders for assassination, many of these projects uncovered by the press though the government agencies maintained plausible deniability and the the public was unaware of the full scope of them.

Published in six volumes the following April, the recom-mendations led to a presidential executive order banning the killing of foreign leaders (like with pictured dart gun loaded with shellfish toxin, as an untraceable and lethal weapon) issued by Ford and reaffirmed by Carter and Reagan (watch the numbering—they are sequential and skipping a few means it is classified, starting with EO 14147) and the publication of an NSA watch list that included activists, journalists, actor and Church himself. After briefing before congress (testimony was not unauthorised by the Ford administration’s advisors), Senator Church appeared on the news programme Meet the Press (previously)—discussing No Such Agency without mentioning it by name, warned:

In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air… Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.

If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government—no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology…

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.