synchronoptica
one year ago: what AI sees when it sees your photos (with synchronopticรฆ) plus Stevie Wonder honoured at the White House (2009)
thirteen years ago: horizontal gene transfer, advanced haptics plus the role of pope emeritus
fourteen years ago: 1990s Americana plus a style guide eschewing Americanisms
seventeen years ago: email etiquette
Speaking for nearly two hours and maintaining a triumphant tone despite economic and geopolitical realities and protests within the chamber from Democrats and their eventual walk-out en mass, Trump’s record-setting for the longest state of the union address claimed that he had successfully rebuilt the country that his predecessor, Joe Biden, had managed to destroy in four short years—“a turnaround for the ages”—with a series of surprise cameos supposedly representing the American spirit. 
“Our country is winning again—in fact, we’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it.” The refreshingly succinct rebuttal, the official response delivered by the opposition in a tradition going back to 1966, was delivered from a television studio offsite by newly elected Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger, simply asking, “Is the president working for you?” The only disappointment counter to his narrative that was mentioned was the recent decision of the supreme court that ruled that most of Trump’s tariff regime was illegal with the war in Ukraine only garnered a passing acknowledgment without recognition of the four-year anniversary and no reference was made of the Minnesota ICE protests and deaths, nor the Epstein files nor Greenland, though there was much sabre-rattling over Iran and having “received” Venezuelan oil, further glutting global oversupply. Read more fact-checking of what was said from NPR at the link up top.
An ominous think-piece by a research group and consulting firm specialising in insights in “transformative megatrends” has rattled markets and businesses, lurching from anxiety over an AI bubble to foreboding over what they have wrought delivering mass redundancies across industries. 
The Singularity feared is not a runaway super-intelligence or a rogue system fighting for self-preservation at all costs but rather autonomous agents that make for frictionless exchanges and circumvent the economic inefficiencies that businesses rely on. Like the disruption that came for publishers and legacy outlets with the democratisation of the internet, the new gatekeepers model is based on margins and middlemen with clearinghouses for payments and facilitating connecting consumers with services, ride-sharing, food deliveries, travel arrangements, but agentive AI could potentially bypass and disarticulate all those supply-chains and providers by arranging the logistics—in theory in this scenario—as a downward spiral in the fintech and gig sectors that has disastrous implications for the broader economy. More from the Guardian’s Aisha Down and Dan Milmo at the link up top.
Having coming across this fact elsewhere a few weeks ago, we enjoyed the chance to hear again the full name of the Thai capital known to outsiders by the toponym Bangkok (village on a stream in reference to the marshy area where King Rama I established his new residence in 1782, nicknamed Venice of the East for its canals and islands) and in common parlance as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon (เธเธฃุเธเนเธเธเธกเธซเธฒเธเธเธฃ) or abbreviated even further to Krung Thep (เธเธฃุเธเนเธเธเธฏ), the City of Angels—see also. With some variation over the centuries, the metropolis has the ceremonial title of:
เธเธฃุเธเนเธเธเธกเธซเธฒเธเธเธฃ เธญเธกเธฃเธฃัเธเธเนเธเธชิเธเธเธฃ์ เธกเธซิเธเธเธฃเธฒเธขุเธเธขเธฒ เธกเธซเธฒเธิเธฅเธเธ เธ เธเธเธฃัเธเธเธฃเธฒเธเธเธฒเธีเธูเธฃีเธฃเธกเธข์ เธญุเธเธกเธฃเธฒเธเธิเนเธงเธจเธ์เธกเธซเธฒเธชเธเธฒเธ เธญเธกเธฃเธิเธกเธฒเธเธญเธงเธเธฒเธฃเธชเธิเธ เธชัเธเธเธฐเธัเธเธิเธขเธงิเธฉเธุเธเธฃเธฃเธกเธเธฃเธฐเธชิเธเธิ์
Transliterated from the Thai script and translated from the combined Sanskrit and Pฤli (the classical sacred language of Theravada Buddhism), the title reads:
Krung Thep Mahanakhon: City of Angels, Great City.merrie melodies: Turner Movie Classics (TMC) has acquired Looney Tunes and will begin pairing the animated shorts with the main features from Warner Brothers studios as they were originally shown in theatres
el mencho: Mexico deploys thousands of troops to quell violence after death of cartel boss
taco tuesdays: Trump global tariffs come in at a lower ten percent rate
there’s no grace period so that’s a way in which i see us losing the interstitial: arguments for deplatforming oneself
slava ukraini: Zelenskyy’s address to the nation on the fourth anniversary since the Russia invasion, extending an invitation to Trump to see who the real aggressors are
i’m sorry but you can’t just name a weather event bombogenesis: tracking the winter storm slamming the North American eastern seaboard and other news
all ages: the concert archive of Lynn Fisher—via Waxy
synchronoptica
one year ago: the Ukraine war enters its fourth year (with synchronopticรฆ), assorted links worth the revisit plus Marbury v Madison
twelve years ago: revolutionary plaza plus positive psychology
thirteen years ago: Freistaat Flaschenhals plus the waning potency of pesticides
fifteen years ago: arch villains
sixteen years ago: spending priorities
Whilst the EU has an embargo on the importation of Russia oil and gas since its invasion of Ukraine, landlocked Slovakia and Hungary have been granted a special carve-out to continue to receive fuel transiting through the besieged country from Tarastan via the Druzhba (ะััะถะฑะฐ, “friendship”) pipeline operating since 1964 in the spirit of mutual assistance for Eastern European satellites. Subject to frequent sabotage since the invasion, the latest supply disruption happening at the end of January, 
resulting from what Kiev maintains to be the result of a Russian drone attack on a pumping substation straining already tense relations among the neighbouring countries, the members Slovakia and Hungary accusing Ukraine of delaying repairs and the latter suspending electricity delivery and both vetoing materiel and financial aid and the prospect of future EU membership. Whilst putting pressure on Ukraine for resolution and restart the flow of oil from this principal artery, there was no justification for long-term exceptions to the sanctions and stalling Ukraine’s assistance or accession to the Bloc, logistic alternatives through Czechia possible. Now on the eve of the war entering its fifth year, facilities have been struck again—Moscow citing debris from a UAV attack, making the situation and unanimous support an even more fraught prospect.
An alleged mental disorder, reportedly diagnosed by German physicians, though with no clinical description and a paucity of case studies, zero stroke dysfunction was experienced by patients during the period of hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic (see previously here and here) with otherwise well-balanced individuals compelled to write out unending strings of zeros (see also here and here, also called ciphers after the Arabic root) as a coping mechanism for the rapid and exponential increasing of prices and depreciation of paper marks when the buying-power of one’s wages became essentially worthless by the end of one’s shift. Most common among those working in finance, accounting and sales, sufferers also had a tendency to retreat into complicated mental computations whose solutions were logarithmically fleeting.
synchronoptica
one year ago: a catalogue of historic dice and card games (with synchronopticรฆ) plus Germany votes
twelve years ago: more secession sessions, Kurt Vonnegut’s story shapes plus more on the mysterious Voynich manuscript
thirteen years ago: external threats, UK creditworthiness downgraded plus grammar and financial readiness
fourteen years ago: au revoir mademoiselle plus reforming the German welfare system
fifteen years ago: budget crunch in Wisconsin
sixteen years ago: church elections
seventeen years ago: ornate spam
Quite a bit of turmoil has visited not only world stock markets in the fallout of the US supreme court decision ruling many of the duties imposed by Trump to be void and illegal but also on the numerous trade deals that have been negotiated. In many cases, concessions have been made by foreign governments to unpopular with citizens and compromising environmental standards and safety regulation, allowing cheap American goods to flood their markets in order to maintain access and stay in Trump’s good graces with industry paying much tribute and making long term reshoring plans and now many leaders and businesses seem poised to tear up these negotiation.
Some caution however remains, especially for domestic corporations with government contracts who could be punished in other ways for reneging on their end of the inimical bargains or for even asking about refunds (having to sue, the US government could argue that businesses have no standing and did not suffer because of them because they passed off expenses to the consumer, effectively admitting it was a tax all along) and whilst individual nations are better situated to ignore future threats, Trump has not relented on his tariffs but doubled-down across the board, imposing a ten percent flat rate on all imports before raising it the maximum fifteen percent the next day, demonstrating, perhaps speciously as their legality is also in question (for those countries like the UK and Vietnam that fought hard for ten percent, it is a real insult not to have those terms honoured, particularly in comparison to China who offered no concessions and only had to endure punishing rates for a few chaotic months), that he has other tools at his disposal. Members of the GOP, aware of the court’s reserved skepticism for the authority of the president to levy tariffs at a whim for months, had hoped eying the mid-term elections falling at the time these new blanket duties are set to expire might have offered them some political cover in close races deflecting from voters’ overall dissatisfaction with the economy—tariffs failing to deliver on promises with the trade deficit even higher than before and the return of manufacturing a pipe dream—and having an excuse to point to in SCOTUS, offering that Trump had an economic experiment going and wasn’t given enough time to realise the results—but now with Trump’s becoming more entrenched, that narrative, flawed and false as it was, evaporates.
