10x10 (13. 846)

john henry was a steel-driving man: the limits metaphor, transduction and the calcification of man vs machine trope  

baxian: the enduring popularity of the Eight Immortals and other Taoist mythology 

rheinstone cowboy: yodelling and its exports 

vienna model: solutions to the housing crisis across Europe—more here  

fandeliers: McMansion Hell (previously) wonders what’s going on with ceiling fans 

tears in the rain: debate rages over the ethics of AI agent dungeon 

ticker-tape: a look at Bloomberg trading terminals and antecedent technologies of getting ahead of the markets

figures of tolerable disorder (if not used too often nor too thick): the virtue and vice of the parenthesis—see also here, here and here 

kidnapping of the sun and the moon: Hungarian pop art cartoonist Sándor Reisenbüchler  

from the performative gibberish department: Trump introduces meaningless “morally binding” guardrails for Super Intelligence in the same spirit as Big Tech’s self-regulation

convenient numbers (13. 845)

Though seemingly never harmonising further in terms of paper-size, machined components, etc, the US alcohol industry did switch to the international standard of preferred metric units on this day in 1976, adopting six bottle styles to replace the thirty-eight existing ones for more efficient manufacture, storage and shipping.  

The fifth (⅕ of an American gallon, which whilst based on the British “wine gallon” confusion arose after the War of Independence when the US did not adopt the larger Imperial Gallon and containers reputed to hold ¼ of a gallon, approximately a litre were deemed short-quarts) was replaced by the seven hundred fifty millilitre bottle, the standard capacity for wine bottles worldwide and informally referred to as a metric fifth (only a one percent less volume), a handle (a half gallon) became one and three-fourths a litre. Saloons were allowed to continue to serve shots and “reputed pints,” and this move towards metrication, the US bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in coordination with the Distilled Spirits council of the United States—the only real push towards standardisation that ever occurred, allowed for a four year transition period in bottle production, adding to the chaos.

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: the US federal government shuts down plus a trip to Haut-Kœnigsbourg and Kaysersberg (with syncronoptica)

two years ago: digital divinity, ghost-writing, ambient music from a surveillance system plus up-selling

three years ago: more sketching prompts for Inktober, advice columnist Claire Rayner plus the Congress of Vienna (1814)

four years ago:  The New People (1969), discovering a devilish beach house, presenting the public face of generative text-to-image technology plus disco Star Wars

 

five years ago: Botober sketch prompts, assorted links to revisit, irregular verbs, CAT scans (1971), synthetic dyes plus Night of the Living Dead (1968)

 

six years ago: more links to enjoy plus an in depth look at Albrecht Dürer’s self-portrait

 

seven years ago: Denmark recognises same-sex marriages (1989) plus Swedish sea-fortresses recommissioned

eight years ago: passive cooling, Bohemian Rhapsody in the style of Gershwin, Trump lampooned in Beirut plus documenting London’s poor

 

day two hundred seven (13. 844)

During a Hispanic Heritage Month ceremony at the White House (I thought they weren’t doing woke any more), acknowledging the departure of the last US troops from Iraq, Trump issues another ultimatum to Iran to either make a deal or be blown up. Baghdad declares a four day national holiday to celebrate its liberation. Meanwhile, announcing cuts to the ranks, secretary of war Hegseth says that American might has crippled the Islamic Republic. The conflict still deadlocked, Tehran receives a counterproposal for reopening the Strait of Hormuz through diplomatic channels. Iran rejects UK narrative linking them to the foiled plot to attack a RAF Fairford, host to American fighter jet. A hijacker attempts to down an Israel bound flight from Dubai. More tankers receive fire in the Persian Gulf. Houthis target a major Saudi petroleum refinery.

*gallery proof (13. 843)

An exceedingly irritating example of formulaic Zwiebelfisch, we turned to a foundry specialising in bastardised web-fonts that insert random typefaces into copy at regular intervals. Particularly unnerving is the Sneaky Bastard preset, departing from the main Times New Roman with every seventh letter in Ariel, scaled slightly to match is size but not in weight or serif-style. I experience this sometimes with a block of copy-pasto in a medium where it’s not always easy or intuitive to flatten out the formatting and will retype it manually in full—or paste it into a format-stripping browser bar—to standardise the text, and though infuriating to see the mismatch in my my email signature or out-of-office auto-reply, I will fix it every time rather than redoing the template—but usually not as an isolate, glaring glyph. Most typographical or scribal errors involve omission or substitution and are usually unintentional and now not indelible after publishing, though for the typewritten page, the strikethrough was a way of correcting a mistake, though evidence of it remained. As digital word-processors improved, the method of marking punctum delens was retained as a decorative choice and often used to blunt and highlight one’s true assessment of things. Before WYSIWYG displays, the ASCII backspace caret notation was used to “erase” intentional typos: “Be nice to this space cadet^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgentleman—he’s visiting from Corporate.”

magic kingdom (13. 842)

Beginning his work with Disney as a tweener—an animator who specialises in the intermediary, in between frames bookended by keyframes and thus responsible for the illusion of movement—helping bring features like Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmatians to life, Roland “Rolly” Fargo Crump is most celebrated for his chance reassignment to the Imagineering Department after Disney himself noticed some of the strange little mobiles and pinwheels Crump had crafted during his free time, we learn courtesy of Dangerous Minds. At the workshop, Crump was responsible for some of Disneyland’s most iconic attractions and shops including the Haunted Mansion, the Enchanted Tiki Room and It’s a Small World ride with the host of animatronic children. Staying with company until 1996. During his long tenure with the studio, Crump also in the 1960s designed a series of satirical, beatnik psychedelic posters for Los Angeles and West Coast bands and venues. More examples at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a visit to Colmar (with synchronoptica)

two years ago: papabili plus assorted links worth revisiting 

three years ago: more links to enjoy 

four years ago: ethernet, Business!, assorted links to revisit, more on the Scunthorpe problem plus Putin addresses the nation

five years ago:  a very distasteful sitcom plus revisiting the Colossus of Rügen

six years ago: memorialising the shame of Canada’s residential school policy,  International Translation Day, passive voice and reflexive forms, digital world address maps, deconstructing American exceptionalism plus more botanical epithets

seven years ago: a farewell to Bauhaus, a remedial lesson on separating one’s trash plus the World Clock of Berlin’s Alexanderplatz (1969)

eight years ago: a recipe for mushrooms, BBC Radio 4 (1967), a Chinatown edition of Monopoly plus Leoind and Friends cover Earth, Wind and Fire

 

golden heart (13. 841)

Always fascinated with how emoji vary across platforms and can convey different intentions for the sender and receiver, we appreciated learning, courtesy of MetaFilter that the 💛 renders as offal pink with some stubble in Google’s Noto character set. As nonsensical and a bit vulgar, in the juvenile manner like typing 55378008 and turning it upside down, as it seems, rather than some dumb tech bro easter egg, it can be traced back, with perhaps overzealous AI fidelity, to the original Unicode shading for the glyph, which was in turn based on heraldic hatching (Hachure) for Or—having previously established that the arcane and exacting language charges and emblems to ensure uniformity without having to devote the same time and effort in copying a design, nor wasted tincture for the colour. Developed out of an earlier method called tricking for indicating the colours to be used for coats-of-arms with abbreviations—Or with A for aurum, Argent (silver, white) with a small a, green by vert with a small v for viridis—during the Renaissance a system of standardised dots and lines etched into the template and preserved as a linguistic fossil in Unicode charts in monochromatic equivalents before RBG displays were wide spread, yellow being a field of hashmarks, red represented longitudinal parallels, &c.

day two hundred six (13. 840)

US troops completes its withdrawal of troops from Iraq after two decades. Frustrated that the White House press pool isn’t covering his daily activities non-stop, the American president has launched Trump TV, whilst tax-payer funded propaganda spots are aired on commercial networks, justified as public service announcements. Hegseth announces a further twenty percent reduction in generals and admirals. US tariffs on Canadian exports go into effect. Settlers attack villagers, burn homes in the occupied West Bank and IDF planes continue the bombardment of souther Lebanon. US fuel economy standards are considerably relaxed, in hopes of making new automobiles cheaper, more expensive to operate.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Chicago Tribute switches to standard spellings (with synchronoptica) plus more adventures in the Alsace

two years ago: sea birds in a hurricane plus a Schoolhouse Rock!-style explainer for Project 2025  

three years ago: another fiscal cliff edge for the US 

four years ago: the Mayak disaster (1957) 

five years ago: assorted links to revisit

six years ago: Star Trek tarot,  the Feast of the Archangels, the cartoons of R Cobb plus more links to revisit

seven years ago: more Theremin maestros plus more Middle English vulgarities

eight years ago: the Munich Agreement (1938) plus the Suprematism movement

 

day two hundred five (13. 839)

Iran denies a role in the apparent plot to bomb an airbase in England. Indirect talks between Washington and Tehran continue in New York via Qatari mediators with both sides rejecting reports of compromise—Iran not pausing its nuclear programme and the US not offering sanction relief. The Supreme Leader issues a statement reasserting that Iran is the sole custodian of the Strait of Hormuz. A comprehensive framework for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon stalls at the American department of state, whilst US senator Bernie Sanders calls for an end of military aid to Israel following the state banned Arab parties from elections, disenfranchising Palestinians and leaving them not representation in the Knesset. Netanyahu holds secret meetings with the United Arab Emirates. Russia strikes Ukraine Academy of Sciences as ten-thousand North Korean troops prepare to mobilise. Ebola cases surpass eight thousand in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Europe braces for the next energy shock as fuel prices continue to climb and the US diesel export ban looms. OpenAI scraps the release of its latest frontier model over safety concerns.