Too soon old, too late smart.

   “We suggest a way to associate to each Lie (say Lee) algebra of type G2, D4, F4, E6, E7, E8 a family of polarized hyperkahler fourfolds, constructed as parameterizing certain families of cycles of hyperplane sections of certain homogeneous or quasi-homogeneous varieties. These cycles are modeled on the Legendrian varieties studied by Freudenthal in his geometric approach to the celebrated Tits-Freudenthal magic square of Lie algebras…” (via Futility Closet)

Here’s the recording of last night’s 8-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA), ready for you to re-enjoy:

…

Thanks to Hank Sims of Lost Coast Outpost here’s a page with lots of other MOTA shows going back quite a way. And thanks to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, which often provides as much as an hour of each of these shows’ most locally relevant material, going back decades. And consider KNYO, the Little Lion in Fort Bragg, California. Find KNYO’s shiny red donation heart and help out if you can. All of your help, whether in the jar on movie night or through the heart or by check (to KNYO, p.o. box 1651, Fort Bragg, CA 95437) goes directly to pay the station’s real-life expenses: rent, electricity, water, equipment, and music publisher and streaming fees. No-one at KNYO gets a cut of that money, not even the manager. Also the first hour of each MOTA show now is on KAKX Mendocino too, thanks to Marshall Brown who runs the media tech department at the high school there. Another project Marshall Brown makes possible is SnapSessions.

Coming MOTA shows can feature your story or dream or poem or kvetch. Just email it to me. Or include it in a reply to this post. Or send me a link to your writing project and I’ll take it from there and read it on the air. That’s what I’m here for.

Besides all that, here’s a fresh exhibit of not-necessarily-radio-useful but worthwhile items that I set out for you, mostly found in the fine websites listed to your right:

Memento. Otnemem.
https://laughingsquid.com/palidrome-video-crab-canon/

Glass Beams. They seem like people in Mirrormask, one of my favorite movies, a gently edgy modern Wizard of Oz-like story but where the little girl performs in her parents’ traveling circus and the crisis that precipitates her adventure in the Other World is her mother’s medical collapse. Neil Gaiman wrote it. Jim Hensen’s puppet company made the costumes. Look it up, and see it, if you can.*
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2024/04/music-for-sunday-morning.html

A whole evening with Glass Beams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxHnWi7Wk0k

*Here it is: Mirrormask (the full film, 100 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbHgfCwXqVU

Trina Robbins, artist and comic book historian, died Wednesday at 85. “Struggle, Amazon, yes. Struggle in vain. You have failed. Your allies have deserted you. Your world is mine.”
https://13thdimension.com/13-covers-a-trina-robbins-salute/

Closeups of pen tips writing. (via Tacky Raccoons)
https://joannecasey.blogspot.com/2024/03/macro-views-of-various-writing.html

“Don’t talk to her, talk to me, I’m the one you talk to.”
https://www.neatorama.com/2024/04/06/Beware-the-Automated-Guilt-Trip/

The 100 most-spoken languages. (via NagOnTheLake) (Scroll down and down.)
https://www.bookofjoe.com/2024/04/the-100-most-spoken-languages-around-the-world.html

And Tongues, don’t forget. The universal though unintelligible language of glossolalia. (You might have to raise the volume a little.)
https://boingboing.net/2024/04/10/creepy-video-senator-and-extremists-pray-in-tongues-to-resurrect-anti-abortion-law.html

Rerun: Andre Antunes metalizes an anti-abortion wacko preacher lady throwing a tantrum on stage alternately in regular words and tongues. (Warning: put the volume back down where it was, before you play this.)
https://boingboing.net/2022/07/07/heavy-metal-guitar-accompanies-arizona-preacher-speaking-in-tongues-at-a-church-service.html

It’s raining money.
https://catandgirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2024-04-09-cgmoney.gif

Slim Gaillard pleasantly glossolali-izing at 78 rpm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIOuJHwuJgc

The lost and found film technology of Mary Poppins.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2024/04/how-disney-made-mary-poppins-without.html

Dr. Thomas’ Eclectric (sic) Oil. “You may want it.” (As a compulsive internal generator of old-style product ad slogans, my hat is off to that one.)
https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/eclectric_oil

Prompt this A.I. to create a complete finished song from a prompt of your devising, in a genre of your choice.
https://suno.com/

Black MIDI. (via Cliff Pickover)
https://twitter.com/pickover/status/1778878788400468205

The 1959 Frisky. Just this cute little body set on a modern frame with an electric motor, and you could put a sound system in it and project the Jetson’s flying car sound, proportional to speed.
https://www.vintag.es/2024/04/1959-frisky-convertible-special.html

Like this, but in real life. Remind me sometime to tell you the Juanita/Marina Rose Jetson’s-car mouth-sound story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnT1VgeXOF0

This is a real exhibit, a real place, that you can walk around in. It also makes me think of Mirrormask. Not just because of the mirrors. (With video.)
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2024/04/bubble-universe.html

Mirrormask (the full film, 100 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbHgfCwXqVU

The home of Bendito Machine. Scroll down to Bendito Machine VI and press play. And/or scroll down farther for Bendito Machine V, IV, III, II and I.
https://www.benditomachine.com/

Rerun: All fifty 1962 Mars Attacks cards.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/31558613@N00/albums/72157625601126001/

Little robots like this are a staple in modern science fiction space missions, asteroid mining missions and many space repair jobs, working in swarms of hundreds or thousands.
https://newatlas.com/robotics/spacehopper-asteroid-hopping-robot/

Solar sail project.
https://newatlas.com/space/advanced-solar-sail-mission-ready-launch

Auroras, lightning and other natural phenomena seen from orbit.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-earth-is-beautiful.html

As below, so above.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-10/tas-mawson-station-chef-photographs-aurora-australis/103685448

I like to think that if we ever get faster-than-light travel, and we ever reach a planet that not only won’t poison us but has parallel-evolution people somewhat like us (an impossibly remote but nonzero chance), they’ll look and dress like these people, the women will sound like a New Jersey Irish Black Peppermint Patty but also like Enya, and the men will sound like Bob Boler, who’s dead now, but he had a slow, snide, wise, gently-chuckling pipe-organ for a voice. And there’ll be something in the air, a kind of brain fungus molecule, that makes everything show up in black-and-white. Also, speaking of Black, I’d like there to be other kinds of people besides powder-white, of course: Creole, Chinese, Inuit, Braziliard, and so on. And Cordwainer Smith’s animal-derived people, like C’mell. But this general feel:
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2024/04/07/through-abbes-eyes-2/

A minute or so of a park somewhere, then a minute or so of another park, and so on forever (with the location shown low-right). It might be nice to put a big cheap teevee up on a wall, like a window, and just leave this on all the time. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://sites.elliott.computer/one-minute-park/

WONDERMAAAAAARK, by DAVID MAAAAAALKI!
https://wondermark.com/c/1544/

Those egg things are soft and twelve feet tall.
https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/resonating_life_which_continues_to_stand

For men: How to escape from a hotel. “Whether you’re a prisoner looking to make a daring escape or a tourist trying to flee from a hotel, tying bedsheets together is a perfectly viable way to make a makeshift rope. Higher thread count means higher tensile strength, which makes a better rope.” (via NagOnTheLake)
https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/outdoor-survival/escape-building-using-bedsheets/

Spider feat.
https://www.neatorama.com/2024/04/08/Spider-Builds-a-25-meter-Bridge/

What.
https://neal.fun/wonders-of-street-view/?v=zInmGG

Arresting supercut of Blue Eye Samurai anime set to music. There’s also a Spiderverse one.
https://boingboing.net/2024/04/07/check-out-this-gorgeous-blue-eye-samurai-supercut.html

She never spoke Spanish to me.
https://27thstreet.me/2024/04/07/spanish-is-the-loving-tongue/

Austin Lounge Lizards – The Golden Triangle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIVdMHoFTfk

Church fails.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i-wpis9UVQ

Rerun: Bob Larson binds Thor to Mammon and his lesser demons to lift the curse of Nadia. Andre Antunes backs the proceedings on guitar all the way down to the floor. (You might have to click the sound on.)
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4qnZH-Ou7Y/

The Sugarcubes – Cat. (via Miss Cellania)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo2_q-TLHBQ

“Rah-rah Rasputin, big rebel, scared the arson nobility, man of many women, it’s better not to know about him.”
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2024/04/blog-post.html

Trick Russian nautical photography.
https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2024/apr/11/finally-shoot-your-friends-new-humboldt-growhouse/

The babushka lizard (or) Mrs. Gibeech. (via Tacky Raccoons)
https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/pexels-francesco-ungaro-2299536-1024×1536.jpg

Dregs of San Francisco. (via Tacky Raccoons)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC_9N5fNB44

Call of Duty, Humboldt.
https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2024/apr/11/finally-shoot-your-friends-new-humboldt-growhouse/

Return to the Caves of Cheese.
https://boingboing.net/2024/04/08/the-usda-has-1-5-billion-pounds-of-cheese-stashed-in-caves-in-missouri.html

My 15,000 pound horse, etc. (via Kottke)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DZKwCVKneg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr1h2Z11oTI

It’s not like the Austrian self-sharpening razor blades, no, sir.
https://twitter.com/timecaptales/status/1775006496687878584

1918 Indian motorcycle factory.
https://www.vintag.es/2024/04/inside-indian-factory-1918.html

Art. (via This Isn’t Happiness)
https://www.instagram.com/mileshyman/

Croix de vert and Lumineyes. (via This Isn’t Happiness)
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5YV49SOpr4/
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5koppkvy1F/

Art. (via NagOnTheLake) (Scroll down and down.)
https://designyoutrust.com/2024/04/all-of-the-things-that-are-wrong-with-the-society-that-we-live-in-today-illustrated-by-john-holcroft/

Polly Vinylchloryd – (Pink Floyd) Breathe (on Moog theremin).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQJ8ZzNmDXw

Norm MacDonald’s constant shitting on O.J. Simpson, that got him fired from SNL.
https://boingboing.net/2024/04/11/watch-as-norm-macdonald-craps-all-over-oj-simpson-video.html

2024 WNPA world photography award winners. (via Miss Cellania)
https://www.worldnaturephotographyawards.com/winners-2024

How we get art.
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2024/04/11/francisco-fonseca-2/

Water in the desert. (via PerfectForRoquefortCheese)
https://mymodernmet.com/water-seer-wind-powered-clean-water

The Dead Princess. (via b3ta)
https://app.suno.ai/song/523f9ee2-ecae-4f2b-b1be-14350bc7f895/

What. (via Fark)
https://www.heritagedaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ron1.jpg

100 years (1915-2015), 100 movie clips, in 6 minutes. Set to lush heavy music whose name escapes me at the moment, but that would be perfect for a montage of the destruction unleashed on the dock-town in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel where Nemo’s daughter Janni (a Pirate Jenny analog) has had enough of being enslaved and raped and comes back into her power on the return of the Black Ship. It would also work for an extended ending of Lars von Trier’s film Dogville, a similar situation.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2016/04/100-years100-shots.html

The hills are alive. (via Fark)
https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1cuzT6.img

Photos of an unknown family who probably owned a liquor store.
https://tackyraccoons.com/2024/04/10/photos-of-an-unknown-family-who-probably-owned-a-liquor-store/

Highlights of the unveiling of the discovery. Higgs is dead but his boson continues to imbue the cosmos with mass. Maybe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-dNqCbRc_Y

Volcano smoke rings.
https://kottke.org/24/04/mount-etna-volcano-blowing-perfect-smoke-rings

YouTube playlist of sleepytime music from movie soundtracks, meant to autoplay through, though some start off surprisingly loud. Hushabye Mountain, for example.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5gDzN_GNS4y3ojna2b7wElql1VG3wAnb

30,000 years ago. Click on the image to enlarge.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Panneau_des_chevaux-detail%C2%A9_Patrick_Aventurier_-_Grotte_Chauvet_2_Ard%C3%A8che.jpg/2560px-Panneau_des_chevaux-detail%C2%A9_Patrick_Aventurier_-_Grotte_Chauvet_2_Ard%C3%A8che.jpg

Not quite so long ago –more like 2,000 years– Pico and the Paramours, by Keith Haring, rock the house.
https://boingboing.net/2024/04/08/psychedelic-music-depicted-on-ancient-peruvian-rock-art.html

Seeking a dark place for astronomical mischief.
https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2017/02/finding-dark-skies.html

How we get tortilla chips.
https://theawesomer.com/tortilla-chip-factory/736402/

How to play the musical saw. That’s a pretty big one he has. I remember B. Thomas (of KMFB) telling me that big ones are easier to learn on. But they have to be made specially to play music; a regular saw from the hardware store probably won’t work. Lately you can get one shiny-new for around $100, way cheaper than a commercial theremin, which the saw sounds very like. I made a theremin in the electronics lab at the old Mendocino Community school in 1983, from a circuit diagram and the lab’s parts bins, but I could never get it to work right. The pitch control worked but the volume stayed stuck all the way up or all the way down, nothing in between. Then I started making radio transmitters and that was easier. In two years I made lots of equipment for my recording studio and for live radio shows: mixing boards, a rackmount stereo compressor/limiter/expander, a stereo mic preamplifier for ribbon mics, that had tone controls and a a soft limiter in it. Banjo-player/astrologist/tarot-card reader Antonia Lamb’s son James built a wireless rig into his electric guitar where he’d plug the receiver into an amplifier and wander all around the school and out into the football field, playing, blasting music out of the lab. It had built-in noise reduction, 2:1 compression on the guitar end and 1:2 expansion at the amplifier end, so it was as quiet as a guitar cord… Anyway, musical saw:
https://laughingsquid.com/musical-saw-lesson/

Now boarding.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2024/04/08/now-boarding-2/

PHWEEEEEEEEEE!
https://www.shorpy.com/node/27396

Compilation of Magical Cat.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2024/04/claymation-cat-marathon.html

Mr. Squiggle, Episode 3. “Awww, you really are a nice steam shovel, Bill, even if you do call me Rox, thank you.” (25 min.)
https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/mr_squiggle

And all the tricks. Inside info on the way the universe works never made it any less magical for me. There’s a moment in an episode of Penn and Teller, Fool Us, where a man does a seamless trick with coins and cards that’s like what both Penn and Teller have been doing for decades, so they understand it inside and out, but his execution of it still wows them. Penn says appreciatively, “We know how it’s done, but we still don’t know how you did it!”*
https://theawesomer.com/23-famous-magic-trick-secrets-revealed/736525/

*Speaking of which, I was just looking up peripheral info about the show Fool Us (now in its tenth year) and out of the corner of my eye I saw where someone asked, “Is Alyson Hannigan related to Teller?” (Teller is the small man who never speaks in their shows; he can speak but it’s part of the act for him not to.) (Alyson was the show’s MC for years 3 through 9.) It turns out that “nobody really knows whether Teller is Alyson Hannigan’s father; not the Hannigan father, not the Hannigan mother, and not even Alyson.” This one time at band camp…