kild by severall accidents (11. 926)

With casualty data drawn from the London weekly “mortality bill,” reporting on the causes of demise from most of the city’s parishes during 1665, Open Culture directs us to a morbid little diversion in a seventeenth century death roulette, which delivers the croupier (originally meaning rump or one who stands behind the gambler with extra cash reserve to back them up during play but now spins the wheel—that too originally a study in perpetual motion machines from Blaise Pascal) their grim fate. Given the state of medical science, the causes listed are vague at times and ring more like curses than disease but provides an engrossing glimpse at historical demographics and record-keeping (compare to this treasury of antique prescriptions and treatment plans that may or may not have improved one’s condition). Spin at your own peril and probably it is best to remain ignorant of what such terminal ailments like the riſing of the lights (lung disease, using the term for the organ as an ingredient), strangury (the inability to empty one’s bladder despite the urgent need to do so), surfeit (over indulgence), kingſevil (scrofula, an infection of the lymph nodes supposedly cured by the touch of the sovereign), etc. as those were that compiled these list. There was also the Plague and any number of environmental hazards.

technological redundancy (11. 925)

While I used to joke about most of us having jobs because these systems can’t talk to one another—and albeit there have always been keyboard macros and batch scripts and more recently sophisticated programmes, without the fraughtness of AI hallucinations after repetitive, reflex tasks—relatably getting bored at one point and surfing the internet, for more complex, multistep routines, news that Anthropic (makers of large language models Haiku and Claude) has publicly released a tool that can accept any number of procedures to finish tasks by looking at the contents of a screen, moving the mouse, clicking buttons and typing text. Though still being trialled in the wild, automation of menial jobs, quality-control and optimisation—if it proves effective (and more than hype and cheerleading) and relatively reliable could make a significant number of jobs that involve translating and transcription from one platform to another something of the past in terms of human labour.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: Happy Mole Day (with synchronoptica) 

seven years ago: assorted links worth revisiting

eight years ago: a mock crime scene real estate open house, the slowest, punch-cardiest computer in government, social media choking off news sources, more links to enjoy, a Trumpian typeface plus Brexit and Northern Ireland

nine years ago: nine life lessons distilled from years of reading plus history through flour-sack dresses

ten years ago: author Paul Auster

berlin-krise (11. 924)

Instigated by a relatively routine control stop that quickly escalated into an international incident following the construction of the Berlin Wall and increased tension among the occupying forces, culminating with the partition of the city and the Soviets seeking a separate peace with East Germany. Resulting with the standoff between Russian and American tanks eventually withdrawn in stalemate five days later, the crisis was sparked on this evening in 1961 when US Deputy Chief of Mission in West Berlin, Edward Allan Lightner, Jr and his wife were asked to present their identifications at Checkpoint Charlie en route to attend an opera in East Berlin. Refusing to comply (Khrushchev had relented on earlier demands of restricted movement of the Allies) and thought their USAREUR plated vehicle was sufficient proof for passage. In response to this dispute, US president JFK recalled Lucius Clay from retirement as a show of American resolve, dispatching several armoured vehicles to the crossing along with a retinue of troops and a military police escort for the Lightners. A plan by the Americans to bulldoze the inchoate wall was countermanded, but there was a face-off nonetheless, which in addition to the tanks included US soldiers armed with Davy Crockett guns, an over the shoulder personnel launcher for tactical nuclear warheads. Under terms negotiated by spy, diplomat and back-channel contact Georgi Bolshakov, both sides stood down. Bolshakov later helped dispel thoughts that Khrushchev and the USSR conspired in the assassination of Kennedy for the public, his brother RFK and widow.

10x10 (11. 923)

potalapitsi: a 3D resin replica of ancient Wauja cave carvings presented after the original was vandalised is helping keep their tradition and ancestral wisdom alive  

stop the steal: the Trump campaign’s coup endgame—via Kottke  

waymo: robocars circling the block 

pumpkin spice: the untold story of the rebellious photographer that helped found the tradition of craft beer and the seasonal flavour  

👻: guide to converting one’s haunted mansion to an AirBNB  

grab-bag: vintage trick-or-treating paper sacks 

ㅛ: revisiting a demonic number  

charter cities: how wealth redraws geopolitical borders  

because i was not a trade-unionist: the political implication of mass-deportations

hillfort: a preserved early Celtic wooden chamber tomb

 synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: Trump’s possibly fake Renoir, a two party system plus the first and only Space Cat

eight years ago: ICANN meets, turning leaves plus a massive internet outage that could impact the US election

nine years ago: more links to enjoy, time-travel plus even more links

eleven years ago: sacred architecture in France, Chartreuse plus lavender cultivation

winner, winner chicken dinner (11. 922)

Calling the sweepstakes a means to “maximise awareness of our petition to support the Constitution,” the world’s richest man and ardent Trump supporter, Elon Musk, has founded a political action committee (PAC) that is awarding a prize of one-million dollars to a random signatory, pledging to upload the US founding document’s first two amendments, freedom of speech and the right to bear arms, each night until the election. Awardees must also live in crucial swing-districts, like Pennsylvania, which may decide an election essentially in a dead-heat between the two candidates, and be registered to vote—potentially in violation of federal voting laws as coercion with a financial incentive—but no one at the townhall seemed too concerned about statue or norms. Musk, whom holds several multibillion dollar contracts with US government agencies, has had an overture from the campaign to take a grace-and-favour within the administration as a sort of cost-cutting tsar under the executive branch.

iata identifier (11. 921)

Reposting exactly in the spirit of how it was shared—with the spark of enjoy and novelty that goes into a website one will probably only look at once for the scholarship and coincidence yet will remember and think about it for a long time afterwards (the hallmark of a good single-purpose website), we enjoyed via Maps Mania this project charting airport geolocation codes (see previously) that also happen to be filetype extensions. CSO, for instance, is Cochstedt Flughafen in Magdeburg and also a Compiled Shader Object used in graphics rendering assemblies, Cherbourg-Maupertus Aéroport is also a Windows Security Certificate and Ostend-Bruges International is also an Outlook email Offline Storage Table. Is your local airport also a filename?

synchronoptica

one year ago: a camping trip to the Land of a Thousand Lakes (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: the life of Tiresias, Photographic Treatment, bonsai marijuana, protesting the draft plus declassifying the Warren Commission

eight years ago: indented writing, composite air planes in take off, dynamic projection mapping (caution flashing images) plus the CIA’s art collection

nine years ago: white hat hacking plus searching for unicorns

ten years ago: Byzantine Rome plus an extraordinary papal synod  

time to head for, golden lights (11. 920)

Discovered amidst footage for a media event for the grand opening of a McDonald’s in Boca Raton, Florida attended by the fast food franchise’s new crooning mascot (previously) arriving in the JFK limousine—whatever that means, at timestamp 06:08 (the rest of the coverage is interesting and encapsulates the time), you can hear a full-minute rendition of Mac Tonight from actor Doug Jones. A lawsuit brought about by the estate of Bobby Darrin and the alt-right’s unfortunate and revolting adoption of the Moon Man meme contemporarily sort of ruins the chances we’ll see another debut like this one, regardless of the success of the campaign in terms of increased dinner-traffic but a good excuse too to listen to the original.

fernsehkrimiserie (11. 919)

Hugely popular and enjoying cult-status outside of West Germany, the crime drama featuring Horst Tappert as Kriminaloberinspekktor Stephan Derrick focussed on solving murder cases in the München area. Airing until 1998 when the principal actor attained the age-limit he’d set for himself announced his retirement, all episodes of the twenty-five season run had the same cast (with prominent guest stars) and were all written and produced by the team of Herbert Reinecker and Helmut Ringelmann. There were fan clubs internationally and as one of the first television programmes from the West broadcast in China, Derrick was reportedly used as part of police training curriculum. Like “Beam me up Scotty,” the tag line associated with show the show, “Harry, hol schon mal den Wagen,” (to his assistant, “Harry, bring the car around,”—to imply we’re done here”) the phrase is never actually said on screen though there are close occasions of it. The title melody for the establishing sequence (see also) is from English-German pop singer Les Humphries.