synchronoptica
one year ago: ancient piggy-banks (with synchronoptica), St Devota, a past prediction from Star Trek: TNG, a hybrid horseless carriage plus more moons of Jupiter
seven years ago: assorted links to revisit
eight years ago: omnipresent and omnipotent AI, parasitism and toxoplasm gondii plus the White House turns off its switchboard
nine years ago: more links to enjoy
ten years ago: the national assemblies of Europe, the fantastic art of Dan McPharlin plus AI and middle-management
Like the Voight-Kampff test, this standardised benchmark, created by some of the most astute philosophers is an escalating fight to stay ahead of AI to afford proctors a purchase on some sort of vanishing Turing test—especially against a backdrop of artificial intelligence making advances on graduate-level, multidisciplinary questions, raising the prospect that the machines are quickly approaching the limits of humanity’s ability to gauge and compare its progress and ability. 
The resulting quiz, with samples that not only imply to a degree teaching to the test and priming answers that people want to hear, has some three thousand questions, vetted and juried by academic panels, and whilst not timed, is completed in seconds by the world’s most powerful models. The battery of questions have correct answers—and perhaps it might be more interesting to pose the unknown or drill into what they get wrong in over-confident albeit novel ways, mindful of the risk of our own gullibility and misdirection which is certainly baked into solutions—and underscores the problem of jaggedness, inconsistency in AI’s abilities to tackle basic questions and the flowchart of prompts for better or worse outcomes and the difference between acing an exam and being a practising professional doing maths, physics, medicine or governance.
embossed: turn of the century tactile teaching aids for the visually impaired for lessons on nature and geography
lab-leak theory: US Central Intelligence Agency embraces controversial vector for COVID-19 pandemic, discounting zoonosis factors
ghostwatch: the supernatural horror BBC mockumentary broadcast on Halloween (see also) 1992 and never shown again due to the panic it elicited
sb593: Oklahoma legislature introduces bill to “restore moral sanity” and criminalise production, distribution and possession of adult material—see previously
minimoog: a fully-functional analogue synthesiser in LEGO
haptics and macros: an idea to add gait gestures to one’s smart phone—we can hardly do the right kind of fake kick to open the rear hatch on our car
mox nix: language borrowings from German propagated by US and UK soldiers stationed there post WWII
electric garden: a run-down lodge transformed into a living museum mapchat: interact with AI shopkeepers for local businesses—results may vary
wassergรถttin: prehistoric figurine from the Hallstadt culture found in 2022 in Lower Franconia goes on display at the Bavarian State Archaeological Museum in Mรผnchen
walk without rhythm and you won’t attract the worm: graboids—see also—the other in-jokes that Tremors leans into
underrepresentation: as part of order to eliminate DEI programmes, US Food and Drug Administration curbs clinical trials aimed at diverse populations for cancer research
switchmen: the sign language of railroad workers
Literally a “castle of turning” and sometimes referred to as the Walls of Troy referring the pious fiction of 
Geoffrey of Monmouth (previously) to connect the Welsh nation with the refugees of the Iliad through Aeneas, the caerdroia is a turf maze in the tradition of the Cretan Labyrinth, these mysterious and meditative pathways were once common across Wales, owing to the persistence of the medieval myth, but few remain. One modern reconstruction is tended in the Forest of Gwydir, considered to be the largest of its kind at over a mile of twisting, switchback paths, in Snowdonia affords hikers and wanders a chance to explore the beautiful and unique landscape, scars of intensive mining and forestry operations having healed over. More at Atlas Obscura at the link above.
synchronoptica
one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus Paula of Rome
seven years ago: a leaf-retrieving cat, securing votes with hypnotism, Trump and sharks, forest bathing, a Nintendo emulator, the Museum of the Selfie plus post-modern architecture
eight years ago: the highest IQ presidential cabinet, the merging of adaptations plus Trump and Twitter
nine years ago: M*A*S*H* (1970), composite cityscapes plus a comic strip devoted to cheese-fuelled nightmares
ten years ago: Cunningham’s Law
We really enjoyed this appreciation from Open Culture of VH-1’s Pop-Up Video, the sister-network and alternative to MTV launching on New Year’s day 1985, premiering over a decade into the channel’s run in October of 1996, pitched as antidote to shortening attention spans attributed to rise of MTV itself with barely the audience stamina for suffering a four-minute music video. 
The parent company expressed initial scepticism as then owners Blockbuster rental outlets felt they knew little enthusiasm for foreign films interpreted as viewers not wanting to read on screen dialogue in subtitles. The pilot, featuring Tina Turner’s “Missing You” with other standards on rotation, nonetheless, proved compelling and the show continued, expanding its profile with anecdotes and facts (classified by the above title), of varying relevance, sublimating as dialogue bubbles—all before there were forums for such trivia, requiring a good deal of research and cold-calls to artists, producers and grips involved in production. The meta-commentary was compared to the contemporary phenomenon of MST3K (see previously), as a programme for “TV-people who-are-sick-of-TV.”
Via fellow peripatetic and internet caretaker Messy Nessy Chic, we are directed towards the first officially circulated coin of the United States, known as the Fugio cent, purportedly designed by Benjamin Franklin owning to its similarity to his earlier continental dollar coin, struck as samples for potential currency but never put into circulation. 
Minted in 1787, the obverse features a sundial with the common Latin dictum “I fly”for such installations (see previously) and the English adage to “mind your business,” referring to being attentive to one’s budget and household. The reverse is decorated with thirteen chain links, representing the colonial states (see also) with the third motto of “We are One”—transitioning back to the Latin of “E pluribus unum” of the Great Seal of the US. A horde of several thousand of these pennies was discovered at the Bank of New York in 1926 and given out as souvenirs to clients until the intervention by the American Numismatic Society two decades later, recognising their historical and colletable value and the remaining sixteen-hundred remained together.
Pursuant to an executive order issued on his first day in office calling for a ninety-day pause in foreign development assistance pending a review of alignment with US policies and efficiencies, the Department of State head Marco Rubio notified diplomatic staff worldwide that there will be stoppage to all work, according to a leaked memo, affecting all development aid and military assistance—with certain carve-outs for Israel, Egypt and emergency food programmes. 
Heretofore, America has been the largest donor country of global support (not without serious missteps and certainly not the only country with such largess—see previously, see also), disbursing some sixty-eight billion dollars annually for a range of projects from access to clean water, infrastructure, population health and disease monitoring, educational outreach, disaster relief, sanitation and shelter and defence, and comes at a crucial juncture for Ukraine and during the surge for humanitarian assistance for Gaza after the ceasefire, as well as hunger crises in Africa and elsewhere. The “stop work” order further is not forwarding US geopolitical influence in abandoning its network of international partnership nor serving its commercial interest as the majority of goods and services financed are sourced from US suppliers.
synchronoptica
one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus more lit crit terms
seven years ago: more links to enjoy, the hidden history of saffron cultivation plus early casualties of Trump’s policies
eight years ago: sophisticated gene therapies, alternate truths plus even more links
nine years ago: first flight of the Concorde plus the chemistry of body-wash
ten years ago: NPR’s Invisibilia podcast
On his first domestic trips returning to office and flanked by Melania in another hat and the evangelist from his inaugural, Trump visiting disaster sites in the Carolinas and southern California pledged to overhaul or eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency, claiming that FEMA had become too cumbersome and bureaucratic and telling states to handle such preternatural disasters on their own. 
With MAGA-supporting jurisdictions historically benefiting most from government aid and intervention (not just in the wake of of calamity but in general), such a dismantling seems ill-advised, originating from the Project 2025 manifesto for the concept that existed as ad hoc legislation for over two centuries before being formalised as a cohesive response to overwhelming catastrophes under the Carter administration in 1978 and 1979, by executive orders, first responding to the toxic waste dumped in Love Canal near Niagara Falls and the meltdown of Three Mile Island. Additional federal assistance for disaster recovery and mitigation would be contingent on cooperation on the part of the states and transactional, political rather than channel through experts.
