duces wild (12. 867)

Having gotten his political start as secretary of the labour party in for the city of Trento in Sud Tirol under the Austro-Hungarian empire with an editorial role with the partisan newspaper, L’Avvernire del Lavoratore (The Future of the Worker), Benito Mussolini was eventually deported back to Italy for several incendiary essays but not before having the opportunity to publish several pieces of his own academic and creative writing works around 1910—fancying himself to be quite the well rounded intellectual, with travelogues, literary theory and even a serialised romanzo storico, L’amante del Cardinale. Possibly ghost-written and loosely based on a historic papal affair and scandal from the seventeenth century, the lurid novel was a violent, anti-clerical invective and though tripled circulation for the publication, it was forgotten just as quickly as Mussolini trajectory barrelled towards fascism (compare to the water-colours aspirations of Adolf Hitler) but was compiled and reissued in 1928 in English translation as a sort of curiosity of purple prose—during the interbellum, many in UK and the US extending approval and tacit tolerance for Mussolini’s efforts to modernise and stabilise the country (dissolving and unifying the Papal States, the Pope was confined to the Vatican—see previously here and here) and its north African colonies despite his authoritarian tendencies, but some, particularly in academic circles, were less charitable and recognised the author for what he was. Dorothy Parker (previously) was especially biting with her criticism and saw right through the pretence. More from Print Magazine’s Daily Heller at the link up top.

give into the vibes (12. 866)

Coined this February by OpenAI Andrej Karpathy as a machine-aided solution for those wanting to create a bespoke programme yet never learned the basics of coding—which admitted on a certain level is the sort of in-group jargon that keeps the out-group out but are also instructions that computers understand—allowing users to become transcendental and forget that the underlying code even exists, vibe coding was selected by Collins Dictionary as their WotY for 2025—see previously. As with other forms of rocket-surgery, going with one’s untempered intuition and trusting the machine does not always achieve the desired outcome and the requester would not have the skills to edit or debug something that came close. Other terms on the shortlist included Henry, an acronym for “high-earner, yet not rich,” micro-retirement for a work sabbatical, aura farming, clankers and broligarcy.

9x9 (12. 865)

amor fati: Fredrich Nietzsche’s philosophy (previously) of passing on engagement can break the cycle of polarisation without becoming disengaged and nihilistic 

the memes of production: the internet reacts to Zohran Mamdani’s mayorial win in New York City  

unpaving paradise: an urban greening game to optimise replacing parking spaces in Berlin with trees  

№: why number is English is abbreviated n-o 

no springs: a hypnotic video of manufacturing robots politely waiting their turn in the assembly process—see also  

alive internet theory: a seance with the vibrant web and all its expressive artefacts against the countervailing argument it has become overrun by bots—see also—via Waxy 

gathering wool: online apparel retailers in China employ oversized hangtags to curb high return rates  

hatch act violation: US federal judge rules administration overstepped its bounds by inserting partisan blaming into furloughed government employees’ out-of-office autoreplies  

bleak outlook: astronomical survey deposits galaxy could be riddled with the artefacts of long dead alien civilisations that could avoid destroying themselves—we suppose that depends on what sort of religion they develop—see also, see previously—via MetaFilter

synchronoptica

one year ago: a monument to the Armenian diaspora (with synchronopticæ), the Carrington count, backstage customs plus US presidential numbering

fourteen years ago: food and drink prohibited plus Inventors’ Day

grendel’s mom (12. 864)

We very much appreciated the introduction to artist and wordless novelist Lynd Ward through the lens of his 1939 hand-tinted woodcuts for his graphic novelisation (pioneering the genre) of the classic tale of Beowulf. Also working with the media of lithography and mezzotint, Ward was inspired to take up illustration when a teacher pointed out to him that his surname was “draw” backwards whilst recuperating at sanitarium for tuberculosis patients ay Sault Ste Marie in Ontario and honed his skill as an engraver. Settling in Leipzig with a scholarship, he first encountered picture books that were able to convey a narrative without captions and upon returning to New York City developed his portfolio for commission, first in an adaptation of Japanese folk tales.

A series of three classics brought out by Heritage Press in the late 1930s awarded to Ward also included The Count of Monte Cristo and Les Misérables fully established his credentials, avoided by the mainstream publishers for a time over depictions of racial injustice for earlier illustrations referencing slave trade and lynchings, though Ward’s work never shied away from taboo and subversive themes. Similar to the hortatory opening of Homer’s Iliad “Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage,” the Old English epic poem starts with the invocation Hwæt!—listen to my story.  Although preferring to work in monotone, the contrast of hot and cold colours for the heroic legend really demonstrate Ward’s mettle.

little big town (12. 863)

Though a bit of an inconvenience to have to go into the next bigger Marktstadt outside of the village for any kind of shopping, it always pays off in spades, by sheer dint of concentration of attractions there and spots for a nice wander, even on a foggy day: 

Ostheim vor der Rhön has the Altstadt lining the main road with several mills, manors, breweries and bottlers and fortified church, an organ museum and manufacturer and a castle ruin with tower above—plus a lot more. We had visited the ensemble of Celtic hill graves (Hügelgraben) right down the road from the grocery store several times but hadn’t before now hiked up to the top which hosts a model aircraft runway—opposite the higher summit that has a glider Flügplatz—see also. 

The grove of maples at the top of the hill is known as the Sporkhöhe and has a monument dedicated to silk merchant Kaspar Friedrich Sporck. A native of Ostheim and having learned the art of passementerie—elaborate braidwork trimmings for clothing and furnishings—from his father, made a sizeable fortune in Rouen. Sporck married his business partner Marie Catherine Leprince and remained in France, although visiting his hometown nearly every year, always bringing remittances for support of the poor. 

The couple passing away at an advanced age in the early 1890s, they established a philanthropic foundation (Stiftung) for the town, underwriting an elementary school, the general welfare of the town and a hospital, then hosted in the Gothic Schloß Hanstein, presently the organ museum from above.

8x8 (12. 862)

rat-race: a cartoon about the frenetic pursuit of happiness—at least from a merchant’s perspective 

close encounters: a 1976 meta-analysis of the surnames of UFO abductees—see also  

caleb weatherbee: venerable Farmers’ Almanac to be discontinued after a two hundred eight year run—see also  

endtimers: Artificial General Intelligence and the Singularity just around the corner has many manic street preachers, cult members and historic antecedents 

lost arcade: an archive conserving unreleased and cancelled video games since 1999, including source code and emulators, see also here, here and here—via Web Curios  

mckinsey in a box: pretty convincing AI-generated consultancy slop with an instant Power Point presentation for the business of one’s choosing  

fringe theory: more examples of the conspiratorial narrative trope—see previously—via MetaFilter 

au 8ème jour: a 3-D animated short illustrating the thread of life in a unique stop-motion, felted style

synchronoptica

one year ago: Trump’s transition team (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links to revisit

thirteen years ago: the history of the boardgame Monopoly, transportation infrastructure plus a premium spoon rest

fourteen years ago: the Aeneid as an economic allegory plus contention over a Russian gas pipeline to Western Europe 

fifteen years ago: US-EU trade policy 

rare, obc. (12. 861)

Futility Closet directs our attention to a volume first published in 1974, with multiple reprintings over the decades of some eighty thousand entries of preposterous and over-specialised English nonce words—though uncommonly, sometimes only once (see above) glossed in accessible corpora, that is at least outside the fandom of committed logophilia—compiled single-handedly by one Josefa Heifetz Byrne. The author was also a renowned concert pianist, taking her married name from her husband Robert Byrne, an expert pool player and instructor of billiards as well as a prolific humour columnist and civil engineer.  The book covers some of our old favourites, like ucalegon and anatiferous (an arguably useless word), as well as a treasury of terms new to us like foraminous, full of holes (see previously here and here), the Scots word groak for to look fixed at a party eating in anticipation of receiving food, anemocracy, a metaphorical term for governed by the changing winds and quaquaversal, going off in all directions. Click through at the link up top to check out a copy from the Internet Archive and adopt something you see that needs returning to common-parlance.

$ {time} (12. 860)

Via Web Curios, we are given the opportunity to revisit another AI blindspot in this real-time experiment by Brian Moore that queries an array of large languages models to generate a new analogue clock displaying the current time—with a uniform prompt that is reissued to each LLM by the minute, if numbers or numerals optional.

Not only is this an interesting ranking of capabilities, most seem to be consistently (with some just giving up) wrong with only strong performer being the Kimi chatbot, an open weighted model known for supporting over a hundred-thousand tokens of context—we’ve no idea what that means—from Beijing, one can minute by minute observe the coding challenge and watch how the results accrue or devolve into a jumble. 

Clock the results now and see what recursive improvements are on display.