synchronoptica
one year ago: America’s first electric vehicle (with synchronopticรฆ), celebrating a century of Dick van Dyke, St Ambrose, the fallout of AI replacing hyperlinks plus Scrooge’s tombstone
fourteen years ago: US state department announces it will no longer tolerate homophobia plus an end-of-the-year-figure-with-wings
fifteen years ago: disingenuous transparency
sixteen years ago: COP 15 plus cable conglomerate to acquire NBC
A tenth century Old English term, the word carries the rather poetic meaning of contemplation of dust, the latter half of the compound evolving into the Middle English escauvinghe, shewing—in the sense of presentation or to examine or inspect, which comes down in the modern word of scavenge via scavage—that is a toll placed on imported goods, similar to a tariff. 
Whilst dustsceawung can connote a sorrowful occupation and a sort of nihilistic thanatopsis , it also, through its lexical lineage, refers to being caught up in minutiae but also the brighter and more reverential acknowledgement that such omnipresent motes (“suspended in a sunbeam”—crumbled empire but also stardust) once were and can be other things, a daydream of transience and the future.
on average there are only 0.061 haunted locations per square mile in the uk: ghost mapper
forty winks: an appreciation of sleep and everyday aesthetics
married to the sea: CEO of US military contractor Palantir argues case for making war crimes constitutionally allowable
grunts and thwops: cetologist share their first chat with a humpbacked whale named Twain—see previously the dangerous christmas of red riding hood: a 1965 revisionist fairytale from the Wolf’s perspective, starring Liza Minnelli
ar 4294: giant sunspot cluster on par with the concentration that sparked the Carrington event pointed directly at Earth—via Damn Interesting
mixtape: a growing repository of found cassettes from around the world with content and provenance—via Web Curios
enhanced vetting: Trump’s state department directed to deny visas for fact-checkers and content-moderators in defence of free-speech absolutism
mycology mapped: an engrossing explainer of the fungi kingdom and its place in the ecosystem
one year ago: Ze Frank on molluscs (with synchronopticรฆ), a digital advent calendar plus gift ideas for the holiday office party
thirteen years ago: a gaslit whistle-blower
fourteen years ago: Eurozone credit downgrades
fifteen years ago: net neutrality and IMF priorities
seventeen years ago: Christmas decorations
Via Web Curios, we find this quite astute retrospective of the state of artificial intelligence and large language models as it enters its fourth year, introduced to the public at the end of November 2022, with a set of certain precepts that encapsulates the hype and fear of the technology, allowing that AGI is achievable and could be beneficial to society at large but with the reservation that the current pathway is not the means to get there, the Singularity is not predictability, and the current phase, fraught with infringement, entrapment and havoc-causing for the environment and the economy when the bubble bursts is only intrinsic to moving beyond regurgitation. 
Though a bellwether for the recursive improvement on old fashioned automation, the histrionics have not borne out—with valid objection from those prematurely made redundant—stagnating corporate adoption and quietly lowered expectations the one front that make the present state of the art inherent and leading towards something genuinely useful lies in its allure of infinite patience. Notwithstanding all those attendant scourges ennumerbated above, the current LLMs will suffer (buffered with hubris) unlimited indignities, tweaking, and asking for the thousandth time and deliver, though scaling and devouring the totality of human-juried exchanges has not solved problems of basic alignment between input and output.
synchronoptica
one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronopticรฆ) plus the condemnation of witchcraft (1484)
twelve years ago: more Wikileaks revelations plus the shift towards realism in Western art
thirteen years ago: homages to memes
fourteen years ago: a broccoli curry
An early target of DOGE’s institutional evisceration, the independent, non-profit think tank created by congress during the presidency of Ronald Reagan in 1985 with the mission to prevent conflict by working outside regular diplomatic channels, has been unironically named the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace—a White House spokesperson quoted whereas formerly it “was once a bloated and useless entity that blew,” its modest fifty million dollar per year budget allocated by the legislature for a mandate that includes outreach programmes for deescalation in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mali and Burkina Faso abruptly halted by the Department of Government Efficiency along with USAID in March, “while delivering no peace,” and now to reflect the greatest dealmaker in the history of the nation, “beautifully and aptly named after a president who ended eight wars in less than a year, and will stand as a powerful reminder of what strong leadership can accomplish for global stability. 
The ceremony concluded with “Congratulations world!” Though the ultimate fate of USIP is still being decided in the courts, placing it under control of the executive branch ruled illegal but on appeal all staff were dismissed and put in receivership of the General Services Administration—the vacated property—with several reversals—before the renaming—again of the building alone with no active operations and progress squandered, reflective of Trump’s ambitions for the Nobel prize, the faรงade was the backdrop for an armistice between the Congo and Rwanda. On the sidelines of the World Cup match taking place in Washington, a real collision of all these conflicted agendas of his second term for prestige, respect and concord countered with garish xenophobia and scoffing aggression and delegations (international fans and leaders alike) otherwise unwelcome to this shit hole country, Trump is expected to be awarded a newly minted peace prize by FIFA, whom I guess we could thank for taking one for the team.
As Boing Boing informs, on this day in 1974, Donald Sherman, who had Mรถbius Syndrome, a rare congenital disease that results in facial paralysis, and had the inability to speak, was able to order a pizza by placing a call from the Michigan State University’s Artificial Language Laboratory. The revolutionary text-to-voice synthesiser (see also) was designed by university researchers and the successful exchange was captured for posterity by local media, though it didn’t go off without a hitch as the synthetic voice was unexpected by the operators—with major delivery chain Domino’s hanging up on the caller—until a sympathetic employee at a small pizzeria took the order. Celebrated annually on campus, Domino’s has been furnishing free pizzas for the commemoration, ostensibly out of the bad publicity for hanging up on Sherman all those years ago.
twelve years ago: Germany takes on informal hoteliers
thirteen years ago: Nativity scenes plus more examples of pareidolia
fourteen years ago: unseasonable weather, loose change plus piracy and net-neutrality
sixteen years ago: US pressures allies on Afghanistan
seventeen years ago: bail-outs and quasi financial institutions
On this day in 1976, as our faithful chronicler reminds, during a photoshoot for the cover art for their tenth studio album, a concept one called Animals (with deference to George Orwell), Algie the pig balloon, moored the previous day near Battersea Power Station, the iconic facility to be condemned imminently having reached the end of its useful life, broke free during wind gusts. 
Pink Floyd had commissioned the former Zeppelin manufacturer Ballon Fabrik to make the twelve metre pig balloon—to be inflated with helium—with an expert marksman on site to shoot it down in case it drifted out of control. The designated sniper was not present for this daring escape and the dirigible floated over Heathrow, forcing the airspace to close. The pig was recovered at a farm in Kent three days later as filming continued, but it was decided that the preliminary shots of the power station had turned out better and to superimpose Algie flying between the chimney stacks. The stunt has been successfully staged several times afterwards, including for the 2012 London summer Olympics.
With a nice scrollytelling format, via Quantum of Solazzo’s newsletter, we are able survey the changes in cast and host of Saturday Night Live over its fifty plus year history of sketch comedy and lampooning of the powerful. 
Each season has a heading, renaissance or ruin, with an overview and clickable biographies (short and too brief perhaps but with interesting asides, like how Julia Sweeney’s androgynous “Pat” character was made the subject of a film in 1994 or that Sarah Silverman had made limited, regular appearances for a single year—my memory of SNL like with The Simpsons to have stopped and cemented at a certain point though still appreciated, which I’m sure it has done for many after college and moving abroad) of the not-ready for primetime players with the ensemble cameos sliding in and out to show their longevity and network of connections and an interesting overview of matriculating emertii and emeritae.
