grendel’s mom (12. 864)

We very much appreciated the introduction to artist and wordless novelist Lynd Ward through the lens of his 1939 hand-tinted woodcuts for his graphic novelisation (pioneering the genre) of the classic tale of Beowulf. Also working with the media of lithography and mezzotint, Ward was inspired to take up illustration when a teacher pointed out to him that his surname was “draw” backwards whilst recuperating at sanitarium for tuberculosis patients ay Sault Ste Marie in Ontario and honed his skill as an engraver. Settling in Leipzig with a scholarship, he first encountered picture books that were able to convey a narrative without captions and upon returning to New York City developed his portfolio for commission, first in an adaptation of Japanese folk tales.

A series of three classics brought out by Heritage Press in the late 1930s awarded to Ward also included The Count of Monte Cristo and Les Misérables fully established his credentials, avoided by the mainstream publishers for a time over depictions of racial injustice for earlier illustrations referencing slave trade and lynchings, though Ward’s work never shied away from taboo and subversive themes. Similar to the hortatory opening of Homer’s Iliad “Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage,” the Old English epic poem starts with the invocation Hwæt!—listen to my story.  Although preferring to work in monotone, the contrast of hot and cold colours for the heroic legend really demonstrate Ward’s mettle.

little big town (12. 863)

Though a bit of an inconvenience to have to go into the next bigger Marktstadt outside of the village for any kind of shopping, it always pays off in spades, by sheer dint of concentration of attractions there and spots for a nice wander, even on a foggy day: 

Ostheim vor der Rhön has the Altstadt lining the main road with several mills, manors, breweries and bottlers and fortified church, an organ museum and manufacturer and a castle ruin with tower above—plus a lot more. We had visited the ensemble of Celtic hill graves (Hügelgraben) right down the road from the grocery store several times but hadn’t before now hiked up to the top which hosts a model aircraft runway—opposite the higher summit that has a glider Flügplatz—see also. 

The grove of maples at the top of the hill is known as the Sporkhöhe and has a monument dedicated to silk merchant Kaspar Friedrich Sporck. A native of Ostheim and having learned the art of passementerie—elaborate braidwork trimmings for clothing and furnishings—from his father, made a sizeable fortune in Rouen. Sporck married his business partner Marie Catherine Leprince and remained in France, although visiting his hometown nearly every year, always bringing remittances for support of the poor. 

The couple passing away at an advanced age in the early 1890s, they established a philanthropic foundation (Stiftung) for the town, underwriting an elementary school, the general welfare of the town and a hospital, then hosted in the Gothic Schloß Hanstein, presently the organ museum from above.

8x8 (12. 862)

rat-race: a cartoon about the frenetic pursuit of happiness—at least from a merchant’s perspective 

close encounters: a 1976 meta-analysis of the surnames of UFO abductees—see also  

caleb weatherbee: venerable Farmers’ Almanac to be discontinued after a two hundred eight year run—see also  

endtimers: Artificial General Intelligence and the Singularity just around the corner has many manic street preachers, cult members and historic antecedents 

lost arcade: an archive conserving unreleased and cancelled video games since 1999, including source code and emulators, see also here, here and here—via Web Curios  

mckinsey in a box: pretty convincing AI-generated consultancy slop with an instant Power Point presentation for the business of one’s choosing  

fringe theory: more examples of the conspiratorial narrative trope—see previously—via MetaFilter 

au 8ème jour: a 3-D animated short illustrating the thread of life in a unique stop-motion, felted style

synchronoptica

one year ago: Trump’s transition team (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links to revisit

thirteen years ago: the history of the boardgame Monopoly, transportation infrastructure plus a premium spoon rest

fourteen years ago: the Aeneid as an economic allegory plus contention over a Russian gas pipeline to Western Europe 

fifteen years ago: US-EU trade policy 

rare, obc. (12. 861)

Futility Closet directs our attention to a volume first published in 1974, with multiple reprintings over the decades of some eighty thousand entries of preposterous and over-specialised English nonce words—though uncommonly, sometimes only once (see above) glossed in accessible corpora, that is at least outside the fandom of committed logophilia—compiled single-handedly by one Josefa Heifetz Byrne. The author was also a renowned concert pianist, taking her married name from her husband Robert Byrne, an expert pool player and instructor of billiards as well as a prolific humour columnist and civil engineer.  The book covers some of our old favourites, like ucalegon and anatiferous (an arguably useless word), as well as a treasury of terms new to us like foraminous, full of holes (see previously here and here), the Scots word groak for to look fixed at a party eating in anticipation of receiving food, anemocracy, a metaphorical term for governed by the changing winds and quaquaversal, going off in all directions. Click through at the link up top to check out a copy from the Internet Archive and adopt something you see that needs returning to common-parlance.

$ {time} (12. 860)

Via Web Curios, we are given the opportunity to revisit another AI blindspot in this real-time experiment by Brian Moore that queries an array of large languages models to generate a new analogue clock displaying the current time—with a uniform prompt that is reissued to each LLM by the minute, if numbers or numerals optional.

Not only is this an interesting ranking of capabilities, most seem to be consistently (with some just giving up) wrong with only strong performer being the Kimi chatbot, an open weighted model known for supporting over a hundred-thousand tokens of context—we’ve no idea what that means—from Beijing, one can minute by minute observe the coding challenge and watch how the results accrue or devolve into a jumble. 

Clock the results now and see what recursive improvements are on display.

flow control (12. 859)

Due to the ongoing US government shutdown with thousands of air-traffic controllers compelled to work as emergency essential employees for delayed pay—once appropriations are approved but have already gone seven weeks without a pay cheque, having to pay for transportation, childcare and manage all other household finances without income—the strain the situation is putting on staff, the Federal Aviation Administration is executing a phased plan to reduce scheduled flights at forty metropolitan hubs, the country’s busiest by up to ten percent. Whilst this will alleviate some of the pressure on employees who are calling out over sheer exhaustion and inability to afford to make the commute to the airport, we don’t suspect that this manufactured crisis, following on from several others that the Republicans and administration refuses to own, will cause the Democrats to cave and concede to reopening the government for a short stint of a few weeks until the stalled continuing resolution runs out again on 21 November. It is a pain point and makes for dramatic reporting and the flying public—only about twenty percent of the population—if they do travel, travel during the upcoming holidays, potentially disrupting a percentage of planned vacations and reunions, but Democrats did not fold over the prospect of military service members going unpaid or nutrition supplements running out and certainly won’t for the inconvenience of some when there’s more at stake. Besides the administration found solutions, albeit temporary and of questionable legality for those other problems they caused and expect to get praise for fixing them—only prolonging the shutdown, cobbling together for optics and vital services so the majority of the public remains in splendid isolation and cushioned from the effects of a dysfunctional and indentured federal workforce.

the machine stops (12. 858)

Expanding on the E M Forester dystopian novella, which first revealed its resonance to many during the COVID pandemic and lockdown when most were confined to a hexagonal cell with creature comforts and on-demand entertainment provided much like the main characters, we appreciated the chance to revisit the story and its litany of predictions courtesy of Better Living Through Beowulf. Written as a rebuttal to HG Wells more utopian and slightly paternalistic vision of the future, Forester wants to emphasise the authoritarian nature of rapid technological advance set in a future then very near to its publication. Most of the human population has gone subterranean after extreme climate change and toxic air has made the Earth’s surface uninhabitable. A benevolent omnipotent, super-intelligence caterers to its kept humans’ every need who in physical isolation only engage in the activity of posting on social media, texting and Zoom calls. Travel is permitted but deemed unnecessary and the super-intelligence, simply the Machine, is worshiped as a god—with orthodoxy reenforced by social creditworthiness. When the Machines begins to malfunction, people accept defects and hallucinations as the whims of omniscient providence until the disruptions become intolerable but unfixable as knowledge of how to affect repairs has become lost, if it was ever understood in the first place. After a catastrophic collapse of its circuits, people slowly reemerge and begin to rebuild civilisation.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Germany’s coalition government faces collapse (with synchronopticæ), an archive of military uniforms, America’s first Red Scare plus assorted links worth the revisit

i think i’ll transfer you to the undergrowth department, brackens, small shrubs, that sort of thing…(12. 857)

Via our faithful chronicler, we are reminded that on this day in 1981 after a successful midsummer debut in the UK, Terry Gilliam’s critically acclaimed feature had its North American premiere. The project was born out of frustration in 1979 when the filmmaker could not find backing for his ambitious dystopian black comedy Brazil—that temporarily shelved idea eventually realised as the second instalment of his “Trilogy of Imagination” that began with Time Bandits and ended with The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen. Though violent and bleak at times, Gilliam sought to produce a family movie from the perspective of a child, with the camera angled accordingly for a kid’s point of view, but fearing a young boy wouldn’t be able to sustain the narrative alone, he cast the bandits who pilfered the map of holes in spacetime for looting with actors of a similar height. Produced by George Harrison’s HandMade Films studio, the elevator-pitch whilst playing a round of golf to the esteemed performer who would play Achilles, picture it: “Removing his helmet reveals himself to be none other than Sean Connery or an actor of equal but cheaper stature,” and as a Monty Python fan agreed to do the role. The picture also stars Shelley Duvall, Ian Holm, David Rappaport, Kenny Baker (R2D2), Jack Purvis and troupe alumni John Cleese and Michael Palin.