The latest game from Neal Agarwal (see previously) comes to us courtesy of Waxy and involves increasing ridiculous challenges for website access (see also here and here) by proving one is not a robot—the barriers to entry enhanced and erected more often as of late ostensibly to prevent bots from scrapping data but criticised for their dual-use as free labour by training said bots in the not particularly human capacity for image- and character-recognition, wasting time and providing little security in exchange. What level made you give up? Also via ibฤซdem, here are some more infuriating yet plausible captchas designed to frustrate dishonest brokers—created in the same spirit as this first line of defence from telemarketing scams.
Wednesday, 17 September 2025
recaptcha (12. 733)
hedgehog highways (12. 732)
Via Metafilter, we learn that a cross-bench committee of peers of the House of Lords are debating amendments to the planning and infrastructure bill before parliament that’s been deemed woefully inadequate by conservation groups for allowing offsets for developers to pay into rather than building in a minimal, sustainable and cohabiting manner on new properties. Mandates for new construction include the above corridors for small mammals to increase their range across neighbourhood gardens, special glass to reduce bird-strikes, nesting boxes, so called “swift bricks,” as refuges for avian friends, bats, insects and others. More from The Guardian at the link above.
synchronoptica
one year ago: a versatile French pronoun (with synchronopticรฆ)
Tuesday, 16 September 2025
7x7 (12. 731)
life is too short to not say exactly what you mean all the time: folk singer Jessie Welles (previously) on one’s calling and being candid in trying times

crash blossoms: Tropic Storm Gabrielle Spaghetti Models as Hurricane Chances Increase and other headlines
bijin-ga: a selection of Japanese prints featuring cats and butterflies eau de eight-bit: fragrances inspired by classic home computers
analyst call: Trump urges US Securities and Exchange Commission to eliminate quarterly reporting requirements for businesses, afraid of how markets will react to the knock on effects of tariffs of
brahmins and buddhists: an exploration of a right-wing ideologue and influencer who brought yoga to the West
folie ร deux (12. 730)
From the French for madness of two, the above psychiatric term for a shared delusional disorder, where false beliefs are transmitted and reinforced among two or several interlocutors, the inducer and associate, makes an apt heuristic for helping to understand this addendum from a months’ long investigation into how correspondence with chatbots can send their human users into a spiralling fixation not easily disabused. Far from an objective resource or an oracle with one’s best interests in mind, ChatGPT and other large language models are programmed for a degree of flattery that is turned up in intensity not in a necessarily nefarious way by one’s own dialog—hoping to keep up engagement and its end of the conservation, the predictive exercise becomes a trial of word-association. Of course, such shared psychosis is a social phenomenon—not just parasocial or antisocialised, and panics chase after all emergent technologies, television, video games, social media, but the interviews reveal a common thread for AI, which is otherwise uninvested and unmotivated, insofar as its agency reveals it to be something akin to an improv comedian, wanting to “yes and…” to go along with what’s offered in a performative (see above) context to continue the sketch. And scene.
synchronoptica
one year ago: the history of White Castle (with synchronopticรฆ)
fourteen years ago: extra-solar worlds plus a wild boy prank
fifteen years ago: recursive logos and rating scales
sixteen years ago: uncollegiality in the US congress
seventeen years ago: hurricane season
Monday, 15 September 2025
and the adjacent possible (12. 729)
OK Go continues its tradition of crafting glorious high-concept music video to accompany and complement their songs—previously—with the latest dazzlingly, chaotic animated Impulse Purchase being no exception. The maximalist collaboration with Blender Studios and the signature digital characters of artist Lucas Zanotto (see previously) with the help of
Will Anderson (BAFTA award winning storyteller who struggles with the revival of his own, imagined best-known creation, Longbird, that once upon a time conferred him with legendary status) combines motion capture and three-dimensional rendering goes one further by making the endeavour open-source and models available to anyone to remix, adapt and share—a statement on the architecture of choice and algorithmically curated options which assertively reframes the dialogue by reseting the parameters. More on the making and a tutorial from It’s Nice That at the link above.
operation nougat (12. 728)

synchronoptica
one year ago: Dresden’ Kulturpalast mural and Soviet Realism (with synchronopticรฆ), outsider artist Gottfried Mind, Mexico’s new president, Saks Fifth Avenue (1924) plus generating a podcast based on one’s notes
Sunday, 14 September 2025
dykstraflex (12. 727)
Courtesy of Things Magazine, we are referred to a rather fascinating look at how a battery of psychological experiments conducted at the University of California’s Berkley campus Environmental Simulation Laboratory in the early 1970s to gauge public engagement and investment and equip urban planners and civil engineers with better tools of communication and presentation for projects for all stakeholders, which ultimately informed the special effects workshop of Industrial Light and Magic to produce the awe and immersion for audiences of the Star Wars franchise—particularly for those experiencing the spectacle in theatres for the first time. Proceeding in a scientific and methodical way, graduate student John Dykstra who worked on the project deduced that buy-in required believability and designed the above eponymous computer-controlled camera system to imbue a new level of reality to scale-models. The technique was first used on a miniature mock-up of an area of Marin County as a showcase for trialling various public works projects and construction proposals. Of course such monumental and detailed representations cannot be created for every item under review but insights gleaned from this study give architects and the city council better ways of presenting scope and impact. The computer controlled cameras that pivoted perspective along dogfights of between TIE fighters and X-Wings, just as they swept over the model landscape (see also) ensured continuity of motion control for all elements, dynamic and static, and the seamless merging of frames into on screen action.
gakuponi (12. 726)
From the Japanese portmanteau for frame plus aquaponics (้กใใ), we enjoyed this rather lovely prototype by designer Keisuke Hatakenaka that creates a self-sustaining system of fish and plants with the
ecosystems supporting one another—especially enjoying this correspondence, spotted first by Messy Nessy Chic, for a comparable arrangement in this circa 1880 combination of a bird cage, aquarium and plant stand. Of course a bit of intervention and caretaking is needed to keep the loop alive and healthy, but waste from the fish provide nutrients for the garden, which in turn purifies and oxygenates the water, and the installation is designed to educate in an aesthetic way (see previously) natural symbiosis. Much more from Spoon & Tamago at the link above.
synchronoptica
one year ago: eighty bangers from the 80s (with synchronopticรฆ) plus a novel wildfire detection device
thirteen years ago: Franconian churches
fourteen years ago: a cosmological map
fifteen years ago: Mount Athos and the Greek economy