for a fee, i’m happy to be your backdoor man (13. 817)

As our faithful chronicler reminds, AC/DC released their third studio album on this day in 1976, the title track being an advertisement for a hitman who will help clients solve their problems, ranging from lecherous bosses and teachers to unfaithful partners, at low costs with services including concrete shoes, cyanide poisoning, electrocution and explosives—TNT and High Voltage referencing tracks from their previous albums. The name of the song is an homage to the cartoon Beany and Cecil—Angus Young was a young fan of the 1960s show—with the villain character Dishonest John (mostly referred to by his initials) handing out a business card reading, “Dirty deeds done dirt cheap. Special rates for Sundays and holidays.” Other minor baddies but recurring characters from the series include Go Man Van Gogh (voiced by Scatman Crothers) as a stereotypical beatnik, Jacques the Knife, a jazz singing sawfish with a heavy French accent, and Rin Tin Can, a robot dog, whom all deserve to be the backstory of a hardrock anthem in our opinion. The record was certified Platinum six times over but still ranks third among the Australian band’s work with Highway to Hell and Back in Black selling more copies. In 1981, a household in Libertyville Illinois filed lawsuit against the record label for a quarter of a million dollars, claiming distress caused by crank calls for their phone number inclusion in the song lyrics, 36-24-36 followed by a “hey!” which could be interpreted as eight. What the heck, DJ! You dirty guy!

field office (13. 816)

NASA administrator James E Webb (see previously) announcing the day prior that the new Manned Spacecraft Centre, Mission Control for the Apollo and subsequent programmes, would be built on a site southeast of Houston on a land donated to the government by Rice University, the Space Task Group vacating its offices at Langley Field, an air force base in Virginia, and relocating to Texas, the US Central Intelligence Agency began work on this day in 1961 consolidating its staff, scattered across thirty-three buildings spread throughout DC and moving into their new headquarters in Langley, technically with the address of 1000 Colonial Farm Road in the unincorporated community of McLean, Virginia. Both new centres of operations are referred to colloquially by their metonyms, the former as in “Houston, we have a problem” and for the later—despite the address, “the Farm” is the nickname for the CIA training facility on nearby Camp Peary—the designation “Langley,” the building was formally unnamed from its opening until 1999, when the complex was called the George H W Bush Centre for Intelligence in honour of its one time director and later US president. Mission Control was named the Lyndon B Johnson Space Centre in 1973 in honour of the late president and Texas native. In addition to the Kryptos sculpture, the campus of the CIA headquarters (the largest of its kind in the world until 2019 when surpassed by the BND-Zentrale once the Bundesnachrichtendienst was moved from Bonn and consolidated with other federal services in Berlin—see more) also include bronze statues of Nathan Hale, double-agent executed by the British during the Revolutionary War, and Harriet Tubman, whom is considered a model spy by the Agency for her service to the Union Army during the civil war.

day one hundred ninety-seven (13. 815)

Ukraine bombards Moscow with hundreds of drone strikes on the final day of its elections for the Duma, angered that ballots were sent to illegally annexed territories. It is day one thousand six hundred seventy for that conflict. Two weeks after AfD strong results in Saxon-Anhalt, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern go to the polls with the chancellorship of Friedrich Merz hanging in the balance. Through Qatari and Pakistani mediators, Iranian security chief Mohsen Rezaei conveys its conditions for resuming talks with Washington (only for reopening the Strait of Hormuz), demands including the unfreezing of Iranian assets, lifting the naval blockade and an immediate end to fighting on all fronts, to include Lebanon. Saudi forces attempt to repel Houthi attacks on the capital. Tehran rebuffs claims by US treasury secretary Scott Bessent that the sanctions of Operation Economic Outcast are working and that Iranians are queuing for hours for petrol, calling his propaganda baseless lies and projection as American filling stations report shortages, all time high prices and airlines cut marginal domestic routes. Bucking concerns that accelerated deployment of the technology could kill us all, Trump pledges to create an “AI Force” and appoint an artificial intelligence czar, whilst also proposing to rename it Eloquent Intelligence.

alexshatner the great (13. 814)

Poseidon’s Underworld directs our attention to the fabled 1963 pilot for a television series, which never went into production, starring William Shatner (see previously), with a supporting cast including Batman’s own Adam West, Joseph Cotten, John Cassavetes, about the weekly trials and exploits of the Macedonian king and conqueror. Had “AlΣxandΣr thΣ GrΣat” been picked up by the networks, the actor wouldn’t have been free to step into the role of Captain Kirk, and we suspect that the Ancient Greek Western wouldn’t have carried the legacy and enduring cultural resonance as what was described as “Wagon Train to space.” Check out the scene-by-scene annotated breakdown at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Trump and Xi meet amid tariff war (with synchronoptica),  more recycled sets plus the Beucet chair illusion

two years ago: residential fire safety, assorted links to revisit plus anti-social media 

three years ago: more links to enjoy plus the Panic of 1873

four years ago: even more links to revisit 

five years ago: the Global War on Terrorism declared (2001), photographer Charles Cylde Ebbets plus assorted links to enjoy

six years ago: St Eustace plus running out of hurricane names

seven years ago: an AI names mushrooms,  exploring a local wayside chapel, more links plus Randy Rainbow for the Emmy

eight years ago: retro web bumpers, a then-and-now of New Zealand’s government, modern-day occupations plus the board game Careers

 

ped-xing (13. 813)

Though strangely excluding the iconic Ampel-männchen of former East and West Germany that arguably started people noticing the difference and municipal and national varieties, we nonetheless enjoyed—via Kottke—this travelinlg exhibition of crosswalk signals, more or less comprehensive the world over series of exhibitions celebrating the lexicon of pedestrian traffic symbols—see previously. Are your environs represented? There are no waiting men, however. What are some of your favourites?

radar-lock (13. 812)

Described as one of the more credible incidents in ufologists due to the level or documentation and the number and professional status of witnesses of the close encounter, on this day in 1976 many civilians and military personnel record visual and radar sightings of an unidentified flying object over Tehran. Dispatched to investigate, a pair of Imperial Persian Airforce F-4 Phantom II interceptors registered a loss of instrumentation and communication upon approaching the illumination, bar-like in shape and with small red, green and blue lights circling the midsection, moving at an relative speed of over Mach 2, which was restored after withdrawing. The crew were interviewed following the incident with the report provided to the US airforce, the Pahlavi government retaining close defence ties with the American government, eager to monitor potential Soviet incursions, until its overthrow in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution. Contemporary analysis by the US Defence Intelligence Agency rather paternally described the report as an exemplary classic and meeting all the criteria for further study, though critics argued that the pilots were likely chasing an astronomical body, probably Jupiter or a meteor shower, and the American supplied Westinghouse jets were notorious for such electronic equipment failures. The scrambling of aircraft was the subject of an Iranian film as well as featured on the 1990s US series Sightings, covering news of the paranormal.

day one hundred ninety-six (13. 811)

Eleven percent of petrol stations in France have run out of fuel. The storage depot at the King Khalid International airport in Riyadh is in flames. Trump’s banishment of CNN and other news outlets is apparently linked to reporting that over-reliance on AI in military planning and picking targets (which resulted in the bombing of a school in Minab on the first day of the first day of the joint Israeli-US war of choice, killing one hundred fifty-six civilians, including one hundred twenty students) that nearly led to the American navy boarding a Chinese vessel in the Gulf, based off faulty intelligence that the ship was transporting equipment for a nuclear centrifuge. Trump again reminds the American public that price at the pump is a small one to pay to ensure that Tehran does not obtain a nuclear weapon as gas and diesel prices climb to new heights, the price not double than the already crippling cost because China tapped its reserves and curbed demand, for pragmatic reasons—and definitely not as a favour but perhaps as leverage, Xi scheduled to meet with the American president next week for a state dinner and trade talks. Cuba faces another nationwide blackout amid continued US blockade.

don’t wait, regulate (13. 810)

Courtesy of Dangerous Minds, we learn that earlier this week in Warsaw, a group of around thirty bipedal humanoids along with a few quadrupedal robot dogs staged a protest on behalf of their minders demanding that the government take up legislation to place curbs on AI and automation to ease the transition, encourage public debate and lessen the potential disruptive impact for the jobs market. The rally took place on the streets in front of the Ministry of Digital Affairs (Ministerstwo Cyfryzaccji, founded originally in 2015, declared defunct in 2020 and reestablished in 2023, and its head, deputy prime minister under the Tusk government, Krzysztof Gawkowski came down to meet with the chanting participants, saying his department was drafting laws and got into a debate with a robot that the current motion before parliament had insufficient protections for workers from redundancy. Bills pending passage also would mandate the use of sandboxes for more rigorous safety testing before release and alerting the public to possible breaches of containment, the protests occurring as global attention is focused on the potential for AI to precipitate an existential calamity.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Politically Incorrect (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth the revisit

two years ago: the Oscars of US government workers, getting to philosophy, Israel attacks Hezbollah with booby-trapped walkie-talkies plus sinkholes and megaslumps 

three years ago: spinning bowls of ramen 

four years ago: covering the Queen’s funeral,  cats stealing food in still lifes plus a singular Cyrillic glyph

five years ago: Fawlty Towers, a vintage flash comic, a collection of mixology guides, Ötzi discovered (1991) plus a Soviet Moon mission

six years ago: a warning label for explicit lyrics plus RIP RBG

seven years ago: the art of knolling, the music of Eisbær plus reducing plastic waste in fast food take-aways

eight years ago: a Hieronymus Bosch demonic fowl on the subway, guillotine earrings,  proto emoticons, more Universal Everything plus the Cassandra Syndrome