synchronoptica
one year ago: papabili (with synchronopticรฆ) plus assorted links worth revisiting
twelve years ago: US government shut-down show-down over Obama Care
fourteen years ago: salvage thieves plus advances in Chinese aerospace
fifteen years ago: a bumper crop of exoplanets plus planning a trip to Ireland
Incredibly after a run of forty-one years, the Chicago Tribune announced on this day in 1975 that it would be revising its style guide and discontinue the editing standards in place since January of of 1934 of offering simplified, phonetic spellings (see previously) of about eight common words, conceding that the newspaper was not making the grade when it came to came to English language conventions of putting words in print (both in headlines and copy) and wanted to cause no further confusion in the classroom, particularly for young pupils. While holding out that sanity and prescription might one day come to orthography, going forward, the paper agreed to no longer publish thru, tho and thoro for through, though and thorough—as well as rime for rhyme, fantom for phantom, sofomore for sophomore, etc.
synchronoptica
one year ago: sea birds in a hurricane (with synchronopticรฆ) plus a Schoolhouse Rock!-style explainer for Project 2025
twelve years ago: punctuation marks that failed to catch on plus downplaying the climate catastrophe
thirteen years ago: real life raiders of the lost Ark plus the debut of Star Trek: TNG (1987)
fourteen years ago: austerity measures for the German economy plus biometric punch-clocks
fifteen years ago: the reckoning of Iceland’s financial crisis
Without even deference to Star Trek sick bay or Elyseium (where zero-gravity nanobots can somehow fix all ailments and injuries unavailable to the Earth bound poors), huckster Trump‘s latest grift is touting miraculous medbed technology somehow kept from the public by liberal billionaires. If such sci-fi ideas did exist, I should imagine that the president would not look like death warmed over nor would he be willing to share with his base of useful idiots. This scam is brought to the American people who also promoted that COVID was caused by 5G cellular masts and that vaccines, masks and social distancing was counterproductive and is a distraction, like the assault on acetaminophen to blame victims, when what remains of US health care is completely hollowed out by removing more subsidies, restricting access to community and preventative medicine and lack of competent staff with hundreds of thousand dollar visas needed for each foreign nurse and doctor.
synchronoptica
one year ago: ranking the gods (with synchronopticรฆ), Chilean Antarctica plus more brief papacies
fourteen years ago: proprietary geographic protections, illustrating Tarantino plus if the service is free then you are the product
fifteen years ago: more dragnet surveillance from the US plus a trip to Prague
sixteen years ago: an antiquated, nasty habit
synchronoptica
one year ago: hotel darkrooms for hobbyist photographers (with synchronopticรฆ), a very short papacy plus Dawn: A Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic (1976)
fourteen years ago: Das Boot
fifteen years ago: substituting the flag of Chile for the flag of Texas
seventeen years ago: lost and found
Via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake, we discover this sweet short student film from 1965 from Noel Black (Pretty Poison, Kojak, The Electric Grandmother)—a narrative with no dialogue that tells a story of infatuation and rivalry set to a surf-rock sound track by Mike Curb performed by Davie Allen and the Arrows. Considered the first cinematic treatment of the subject, it was filmed in Torrance and Redondo Beach California, it received accolades from several festivals including taking the Palme d’Or in its class at Cannes.
Albeit the scansion can be a bit off at times for human consumption—via Web Curios—this algorithm that pulls headlines, with by-line often, from the Guardian is a fun little experiment (see previously here and here—see also here) which could possibly run through ever permutation well past the heat-death of the Universe and keep on presenting as haikus. 
The traditional Japanese short-form poetry, consisting of seventeen morae (ฮผ, a syllable or sub-unit) presented in a five-seven-five pattern, classically with a kireji (ๅใๅญ, a caesura or cutting word) at the end of the verse and reference to a season:
the first cold shower
even the monkey seems to want
a little coat of straw
English inspired forms are typically a departure, retaining some of the qualities but more focused on the rhythm and structure of the language, having no precise equivalents and usually composed in an exercise of metric-counting rather than juxtaposition and surprise. Still finding like patterns is nonetheless intriguing.
synchronoptica
one year ago: new Nazca lines revealed (with synchronopticรฆ), the study of street art plus assorted links to revisit
thirteen years ago: Icelandic landscapes, the US Food and Drug Administration audits Swiss dairies plus excommunication and indulgence
fourteen years ago: a visit to Darmstadt and Erfurt to see the Pope plus the euro vies with the the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency
fifteen years ago: flea market finds and a visit to Werneck
