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421 results for “unrealircd”
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#gopher #phloggersGarage
#followAlong-style #emacs #orgmode #slime #McCLIM #clim #lisp #CommonLisp #logos #turtleDrawing #onBackOfEnvelope
gopher://tilde.club/0/~screwtape/turtle-drawing.org
gopher://tilde.club/9/~screwtape/logos.png
#Web proxy:
https://portal.mozz.us/gopher/tilde.club/0/~screwtape/turtle-drawing.org
https://portal.mozz.us/gopher/tilde.club/9/~screwtape/logos.pngGonna use this as the #gameEngine for #springlispgamejam2024 with my teammates inc @rybson .
Comment and criticism solicited. Sorry if the title Picture Of My Turtle Drawing led to unrealised hopes.
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#gopher #phloggersGarage
#followAlong-style #emacs #orgmode #slime #McCLIM #clim #lisp #CommonLisp #logos #turtleDrawing #onBackOfEnvelope
gopher://tilde.club/0/~screwtape/turtle-drawing.org
gopher://tilde.club/9/~screwtape/logos.png
#Web proxy:
https://portal.mozz.us/gopher/tilde.club/0/~screwtape/turtle-drawing.org
https://portal.mozz.us/gopher/tilde.club/9/~screwtape/logos.pngGonna use this as the #gameEngine for #springlispgamejam2024 with my teammates inc @rybson .
Comment and criticism solicited. Sorry if the title Picture Of My Turtle Drawing led to unrealised hopes.
-
#gopher #phloggersGarage
#followAlong-style #emacs #orgmode #slime #McCLIM #clim #lisp #CommonLisp #logos #turtleDrawing #onBackOfEnvelope
gopher://tilde.club/0/~screwtape/turtle-drawing.org
gopher://tilde.club/9/~screwtape/logos.png
#Web proxy:
https://portal.mozz.us/gopher/tilde.club/0/~screwtape/turtle-drawing.org
https://portal.mozz.us/gopher/tilde.club/9/~screwtape/logos.pngGonna use this as the #gameEngine for #springlispgamejam2024 with my teammates inc @rybson .
Comment and criticism solicited. Sorry if the title Picture Of My Turtle Drawing led to unrealised hopes.
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Why would a Govt. delay (further) a £10bn-£20bn compensation payout in the #infectedblood scandal?
Well, victims & their representatives suspect #JeremyHunt has his eyes on that money to allow him the fiscal 'headroom' to offer #taxcuts in March.
While no agreement has been finalised the liability remains unrealised & out of the public accounts....
Could he be so callous, I hear you ask... a Q. that has a very easy answer...
He's a #Tory without a care for anyone but himself!
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#analysis / The Gas in Gaza
[...] The situation in #Palestine is more complex than the location of gas fields, but geopolitics and geology map similar courses. In the #EU, demand for ally-approved gas is higher than ever, perhaps fuelling the audacity to champion Israel’s war crimes whilst decrying Russia’s own. As for the #USA, a network of pipelines is a network of dependents who are less likely to threaten hegemony if their own energy depends on the USA’s 51st state. Through all of these calculations, Palestinians are being murdered—another externality of petrostates which will never be taken into account by our current leaders.
https://www.planetcritical.com/p/everybody-wants-gazas-gas
Background:
The unrealized potential of Palestinian oil and gas reserves https://unctad.org/news/unrealized-potential-palestinian-oil-and-gas-reserves
A recent study by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (#UNCTAD) points out that new discoveries of natural gas in the Levant Basin are in the range of 122 trillion cubic feet, while recoverable oil is estimated at 1.7 billion barrels. These reserves offer an opportunity to distribute and share about $524bn among the different parties in the region. https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2021/6/21/palestines-forgotten-oil-and-gas-resources
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Sticking with Cory's "The Secret IRS Files" thread for a bit...
I've seen a lot of discussion, little of it elucidating, and that from both supporters and negators of this work.
Among the few interesting observations is that unrealised wealth gains are difficult to assess (https://joindiaspora.com/posts/20937383#df8c1800ab2701399f60005056264835). This has objection has some merits, and I'd like to draw attention to it.
#TheSecretIRSFiles #IRSFiles #SecretIRSFiles #WealthTax #inequality
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Unverkalt – Héréditaire Review By Thus SpokeReviewing albums explicitly labelled post-metal always seems to bring out my inner pedant. I know all genre labels are kind of meaningless, but post-metal specifically seems to simply be slapped onto anything with fewer riffs than your average atmo-black record, but a lot more cleans. Nonetheless, you know what it sounds like, in essence. If that essence had form, it could be Unverkalt on their third LP Héréditaire. Born in Greece and now split between Greece and Germany, Unverkalt’s self-styled avant-garde approach to post-metal takes its “heaviest and most heartfelt” form on this album, which also marks their signing with Season of Mist. Unknown to me beforehand, promotional references to Cut of Luna and Sylvaine in particular caught my eye, along with the art. I’m glad I picked it up because Unverkalt have something that approaches brilliance at many times. But in embodying the vague yet recognisable subgenre—and sounding good whilst doing it—Héréditaire fails to go further than the safety of the minimum required.
Ignore the artist touchstones in the promo; Unverkalt has little meaningful in common with them: a female lead vocalist is about where that starts and ends. If anything, the aura reflects more Harakiri for the Sky, Heretoir, or maybe Frayle. Lead vocalist Dimitra Kalavrezou sings with a distinctive, somewhat sweet intonation, and screams with articulate fierceness—impressive considering this is her first record providing harsh vocals. Her voice is joined by that of guitarist Eli Mavrychev and—in a late-album highlight—Sakis Tolis (“I, The Deceit”), often layered and intermingled to lend a chorus-of-many-voices air that can be quite powerful. This sense of solidarity and humanity ties into Héréditaire’s overt emotionality—easily its greatest asset—which revolves around mournful yet uplifting themes that rise from softly resonant notes into the (regrettably blurry) weeping of tremolo and chunky riffs. It’s through the continued swell and fade of each composition that we get to see the greats that Unverkalt is capable of.
Even as songs tend to repeat the same pattern, most manage to draw the listener in. Synths (“Oath ov Prometheus”), vaguely MENA-style saxophone (“Ænæ Lithi”), and sprinklings of piano (“Penumbrian Lament”), and humming strings (“Maladie de l’Esprit”)1 float in and out, and I only wish they were used more. Harnessing the drama of surging, urgent riffs (“Die Auslöschung,” “Oath ov Prometheus”) and heartfelt group screams and singing (“Death is Forever,” “A Lullaby for the Descent”), the iterated compositions win you over by sheer force. These plainly beautiful melodies and ardent vocal performances are inextricable, each lending the other a level of strength and gravity neither could claim in isolation. Some songs stand head and shoulders above others in this regard: “Die Auslöschung,” “Death is Forever,” “Maladie de l’Esprit,” and in particular, “I, the Deceit,” where Sakis Tolis brings not only his voice but a distinctly Scandinavian melodeath2 vibe to a song where he and Dimitria also duet in their shared native tongue. That song and many others are also examples of Unverkalt’s strange, quasi-pop-rock leanings that they incorporate through the use of bobbing, understated clean refrains that slingshot back into something heavier or more atmospheric (“Oath ov Prometheus,” “A Lullaby for the Descent,” “Introjects”). This weirdness sharpens Unverkalt’s style and works surprisingly well.
Héréditaire thus brims with feeling, strong melodies, and potential. Undeniably stirring at its best (“Die Auslöschung,” “I, the Deceit,” “Maladie de l’Esprit”), and with little idiosyncrasies of style giving it distinction, as a whole it feels oddly unrealised. One culprit is the shockingly compressed mix, which robs the guitars of their body and drums of their bite. Given the vocal range on display and the elements of instrumental experimentation (horns, piano, etc), this would sound far better with a roomier production. But it’s primarily the overly repetitive structure of the compositions that causes issues. Though the passion of the singing or screaming, and the force of a good melody cause you to briefly forget, every song follows essentially the same trajectory—or rather, the same sequence of things repeats across the album, sometimes spanning between songs. Whispers or quiet singing, a steady beat and post-rock atmosphere, black-adjacent speed and screaming, and a lapse into a swaying tempo. With nine tracks adding up to around 50 minutes, you start to notice.
I don’t want to rag on Héréditarire too much; it’s a good album. The fervency and melancholia of the vocal performances—from Dimitria especially—and melodies show the passion behind the project, and there’s a thread of individuality that could pull them out of obscurity. But for as expressive, intriguing, and compelling as their music often is, Unverkalt’s reluctance—or inability—to step outside of a template holds them down when they could be soaring.
Rating: Good
#2026 #30 #Feb26 #Frayle #GermanMetal #GreekMetal #HarakiriForTheSky #Héréditaire #Heretoir #PostRock #PostBlackMetal #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #SakisTolis #SeasonOfMist #Unverkalt
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Season of Mist
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: February 27th, 2026 -
Unverkalt – Héréditaire Review By Thus SpokeReviewing albums explicitly labelled post-metal always seems to bring out my inner pedant. I know all genre labels are kind of meaningless, but post-metal specifically seems to simply be slapped onto anything with fewer riffs than your average atmo-black record, but a lot more cleans. Nonetheless, you know what it sounds like, in essence. If that essence had form, it could be Unverkalt on their third LP Héréditaire. Born in Greece and now split between Greece and Germany, Unverkalt’s self-styled avant-garde approach to post-metal takes its “heaviest and most heartfelt” form on this album, which also marks their signing with Season of Mist. Unknown to me beforehand, promotional references to Cut of Luna and Sylvaine in particular caught my eye, along with the art. I’m glad I picked it up because Unverkalt have something that approaches brilliance at many times. But in embodying the vague yet recognisable subgenre—and sounding good whilst doing it—Héréditaire fails to go further than the safety of the minimum required.
Ignore the artist touchstones in the promo; Unverkalt has little meaningful in common with them: a female lead vocalist is about where that starts and ends. If anything, the aura reflects more Harakiri for the Sky, Heretoir, or maybe Frayle. Lead vocalist Dimitra Kalavrezou sings with a distinctive, somewhat sweet intonation, and screams with articulate fierceness—impressive considering this is her first record providing harsh vocals. Her voice is joined by that of guitarist Eli Mavrychev and—in a late-album highlight—Sakis Tolis (“I, The Deceit”), often layered and intermingled to lend a chorus-of-many-voices air that can be quite powerful. This sense of solidarity and humanity ties into Héréditaire’s overt emotionality—easily its greatest asset—which revolves around mournful yet uplifting themes that rise from softly resonant notes into the (regrettably blurry) weeping of tremolo and chunky riffs. It’s through the continued swell and fade of each composition that we get to see the greats that Unverkalt is capable of.
Even as songs tend to repeat the same pattern, most manage to draw the listener in. Synths (“Oath ov Prometheus”), vaguely MENA-style saxophone (“Ænæ Lithi”), and sprinklings of piano (“Penumbrian Lament”), and humming strings (“Maladie de l’Esprit”)1 float in and out, and I only wish they were used more. Harnessing the drama of surging, urgent riffs (“Die Auslöschung,” “Oath ov Prometheus”) and heartfelt group screams and singing (“Death is Forever,” “A Lullaby for the Descent”), the iterated compositions win you over by sheer force. These plainly beautiful melodies and ardent vocal performances are inextricable, each lending the other a level of strength and gravity neither could claim in isolation. Some songs stand head and shoulders above others in this regard: “Die Auslöschung,” “Death is Forever,” “Maladie de l’Esprit,” and in particular, “I, the Deceit,” where Sakis Tolis brings not only his voice but a distinctly Scandinavian melodeath2 vibe to a song where he and Dimitria also duet in their shared native tongue. That song and many others are also examples of Unverkalt’s strange, quasi-pop-rock leanings that they incorporate through the use of bobbing, understated clean refrains that slingshot back into something heavier or more atmospheric (“Oath ov Prometheus,” “A Lullaby for the Descent,” “Introjects”). This weirdness sharpens Unverkalt’s style and works surprisingly well.
Héréditaire thus brims with feeling, strong melodies, and potential. Undeniably stirring at its best (“Die Auslöschung,” “I, the Deceit,” “Maladie de l’Esprit”), and with little idiosyncrasies of style giving it distinction, as a whole it feels oddly unrealised. One culprit is the shockingly compressed mix, which robs the guitars of their body and drums of their bite. Given the vocal range on display and the elements of instrumental experimentation (horns, piano, etc), this would sound far better with a roomier production. But it’s primarily the overly repetitive structure of the compositions that causes issues. Though the passion of the singing or screaming, and the force of a good melody cause you to briefly forget, every song follows essentially the same trajectory—or rather, the same sequence of things repeats across the album, sometimes spanning between songs. Whispers or quiet singing, a steady beat and post-rock atmosphere, black-adjacent speed and screaming, and a lapse into a swaying tempo. With nine tracks adding up to around 50 minutes, you start to notice.
I don’t want to rag on Héréditarire too much; it’s a good album. The fervency and melancholia of the vocal performances—from Dimitria especially—and melodies show the passion behind the project, and there’s a thread of individuality that could pull them out of obscurity. But for as expressive, intriguing, and compelling as their music often is, Unverkalt’s reluctance—or inability—to step outside of a template holds them down when they could be soaring.
Rating: Good
#2026 #30 #Feb26 #Frayle #GermanMetal #GreekMetal #HarakiriForTheSky #Héréditaire #Heretoir #PostRock #PostBlackMetal #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #SakisTolis #SeasonOfMist #Unverkalt
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Season of Mist
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: February 27th, 2026 -
Unverkalt – Héréditaire Review By Thus SpokeReviewing albums explicitly labelled post-metal always seems to bring out my inner pedant. I know all genre labels are kind of meaningless, but post-metal specifically seems to simply be slapped onto anything with fewer riffs than your average atmo-black record, but a lot more cleans. Nonetheless, you know what it sounds like, in essence. If that essence had form, it could be Unverkalt on their third LP Héréditaire. Born in Greece and now split between Greece and Germany, Unverkalt’s self-styled avant-garde approach to post-metal takes its “heaviest and most heartfelt” form on this album, which also marks their signing with Season of Mist. Unknown to me beforehand, promotional references to Cut of Luna and Sylvaine in particular caught my eye, along with the art. I’m glad I picked it up because Unverkalt have something that approaches brilliance at many times. But in embodying the vague yet recognisable subgenre—and sounding good whilst doing it—Héréditaire fails to go further than the safety of the minimum required.
Ignore the artist touchstones in the promo; Unverkalt has little meaningful in common with them: a female lead vocalist is about where that starts and ends. If anything, the aura reflects more Harakiri for the Sky, Heretoir, or maybe Frayle. Lead vocalist Dimitra Kalavrezou sings with a distinctive, somewhat sweet intonation, and screams with articulate fierceness—impressive considering this is her first record providing harsh vocals. Her voice is joined by that of guitarist Eli Mavrychev and—in a late-album highlight—Sakis Tolis (“I, The Deceit”), often layered and intermingled to lend a chorus-of-many-voices air that can be quite powerful. This sense of solidarity and humanity ties into Héréditaire’s overt emotionality—easily its greatest asset—which revolves around mournful yet uplifting themes that rise from softly resonant notes into the (regrettably blurry) weeping of tremolo and chunky riffs. It’s through the continued swell and fade of each composition that we get to see the greats that Unverkalt is capable of.
Even as songs tend to repeat the same pattern, most manage to draw the listener in. Synths (“Oath ov Prometheus”), vaguely MENA-style saxophone (“Ænæ Lithi”), and sprinklings of piano (“Penumbrian Lament”), and humming strings (“Maladie de l’Esprit”)1 float in and out, and I only wish they were used more. Harnessing the drama of surging, urgent riffs (“Die Auslöschung,” “Oath ov Prometheus”) and heartfelt group screams and singing (“Death is Forever,” “A Lullaby for the Descent”), the iterated compositions win you over by sheer force. These plainly beautiful melodies and ardent vocal performances are inextricable, each lending the other a level of strength and gravity neither could claim in isolation. Some songs stand head and shoulders above others in this regard: “Die Auslöschung,” “Death is Forever,” “Maladie de l’Esprit,” and in particular, “I, the Deceit,” where Sakis Tolis brings not only his voice but a distinctly Scandinavian melodeath2 vibe to a song where he and Dimitria also duet in their shared native tongue. That song and many others are also examples of Unverkalt’s strange, quasi-pop-rock leanings that they incorporate through the use of bobbing, understated clean refrains that slingshot back into something heavier or more atmospheric (“Oath ov Prometheus,” “A Lullaby for the Descent,” “Introjects”). This weirdness sharpens Unverkalt’s style and works surprisingly well.
Héréditaire thus brims with feeling, strong melodies, and potential. Undeniably stirring at its best (“Die Auslöschung,” “I, the Deceit,” “Maladie de l’Esprit”), and with little idiosyncrasies of style giving it distinction, as a whole it feels oddly unrealised. One culprit is the shockingly compressed mix, which robs the guitars of their body and drums of their bite. Given the vocal range on display and the elements of instrumental experimentation (horns, piano, etc), this would sound far better with a roomier production. But it’s primarily the overly repetitive structure of the compositions that causes issues. Though the passion of the singing or screaming, and the force of a good melody cause you to briefly forget, every song follows essentially the same trajectory—or rather, the same sequence of things repeats across the album, sometimes spanning between songs. Whispers or quiet singing, a steady beat and post-rock atmosphere, black-adjacent speed and screaming, and a lapse into a swaying tempo. With nine tracks adding up to around 50 minutes, you start to notice.
I don’t want to rag on Héréditarire too much; it’s a good album. The fervency and melancholia of the vocal performances—from Dimitria especially—and melodies show the passion behind the project, and there’s a thread of individuality that could pull them out of obscurity. But for as expressive, intriguing, and compelling as their music often is, Unverkalt’s reluctance—or inability—to step outside of a template holds them down when they could be soaring.
Rating: Good
#2026 #30 #Feb26 #Frayle #GermanMetal #GreekMetal #HarakiriForTheSky #Héréditaire #Heretoir #PostRock #PostBlackMetal #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #SakisTolis #SeasonOfMist #Unverkalt
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Season of Mist
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: February 27th, 2026 -
Unverkalt – Héréditaire Review By Thus SpokeReviewing albums explicitly labelled post-metal always seems to bring out my inner pedant. I know all genre labels are kind of meaningless, but post-metal specifically seems to simply be slapped onto anything with fewer riffs than your average atmo-black record, but a lot more cleans. Nonetheless, you know what it sounds like, in essence. If that essence had form, it could be Unverkalt on their third LP Héréditaire. Born in Greece and now split between Greece and Germany, Unverkalt’s self-styled avant-garde approach to post-metal takes its “heaviest and most heartfelt” form on this album, which also marks their signing with Season of Mist. Unknown to me beforehand, promotional references to Cut of Luna and Sylvaine in particular caught my eye, along with the art. I’m glad I picked it up because Unverkalt have something that approaches brilliance at many times. But in embodying the vague yet recognisable subgenre—and sounding good whilst doing it—Héréditaire fails to go further than the safety of the minimum required.
Ignore the artist touchstones in the promo; Unverkalt has little meaningful in common with them: a female lead vocalist is about where that starts and ends. If anything, the aura reflects more Harakiri for the Sky, Heretoir, or maybe Frayle. Lead vocalist Dimitra Kalavrezou sings with a distinctive, somewhat sweet intonation, and screams with articulate fierceness—impressive considering this is her first record providing harsh vocals. Her voice is joined by that of guitarist Eli Mavrychev and—in a late-album highlight—Sakis Tolis (“I, The Deceit”), often layered and intermingled to lend a chorus-of-many-voices air that can be quite powerful. This sense of solidarity and humanity ties into Héréditaire’s overt emotionality—easily its greatest asset—which revolves around mournful yet uplifting themes that rise from softly resonant notes into the (regrettably blurry) weeping of tremolo and chunky riffs. It’s through the continued swell and fade of each composition that we get to see the greats that Unverkalt is capable of.
Even as songs tend to repeat the same pattern, most manage to draw the listener in. Synths (“Oath ov Prometheus”), vaguely MENA-style saxophone (“Ænæ Lithi”), and sprinklings of piano (“Penumbrian Lament”), and humming strings (“Maladie de l’Esprit”)1 float in and out, and I only wish they were used more. Harnessing the drama of surging, urgent riffs (“Die Auslöschung,” “Oath ov Prometheus”) and heartfelt group screams and singing (“Death is Forever,” “A Lullaby for the Descent”), the iterated compositions win you over by sheer force. These plainly beautiful melodies and ardent vocal performances are inextricable, each lending the other a level of strength and gravity neither could claim in isolation. Some songs stand head and shoulders above others in this regard: “Die Auslöschung,” “Death is Forever,” “Maladie de l’Esprit,” and in particular, “I, the Deceit,” where Sakis Tolis brings not only his voice but a distinctly Scandinavian melodeath2 vibe to a song where he and Dimitria also duet in their shared native tongue. That song and many others are also examples of Unverkalt’s strange, quasi-pop-rock leanings that they incorporate through the use of bobbing, understated clean refrains that slingshot back into something heavier or more atmospheric (“Oath ov Prometheus,” “A Lullaby for the Descent,” “Introjects”). This weirdness sharpens Unverkalt’s style and works surprisingly well.
Héréditaire thus brims with feeling, strong melodies, and potential. Undeniably stirring at its best (“Die Auslöschung,” “I, the Deceit,” “Maladie de l’Esprit”), and with little idiosyncrasies of style giving it distinction, as a whole it feels oddly unrealised. One culprit is the shockingly compressed mix, which robs the guitars of their body and drums of their bite. Given the vocal range on display and the elements of instrumental experimentation (horns, piano, etc), this would sound far better with a roomier production. But it’s primarily the overly repetitive structure of the compositions that causes issues. Though the passion of the singing or screaming, and the force of a good melody cause you to briefly forget, every song follows essentially the same trajectory—or rather, the same sequence of things repeats across the album, sometimes spanning between songs. Whispers or quiet singing, a steady beat and post-rock atmosphere, black-adjacent speed and screaming, and a lapse into a swaying tempo. With nine tracks adding up to around 50 minutes, you start to notice.
I don’t want to rag on Héréditarire too much; it’s a good album. The fervency and melancholia of the vocal performances—from Dimitria especially—and melodies show the passion behind the project, and there’s a thread of individuality that could pull them out of obscurity. But for as expressive, intriguing, and compelling as their music often is, Unverkalt’s reluctance—or inability—to step outside of a template holds them down when they could be soaring.
Rating: Good
#2026 #30 #Feb26 #Frayle #GermanMetal #GreekMetal #HarakiriForTheSky #Héréditaire #Heretoir #PostRock #PostBlackMetal #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #SakisTolis #SeasonOfMist #Unverkalt
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Season of Mist
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: February 27th, 2026 -
Unverkalt – Héréditaire Review By Thus SpokeReviewing albums explicitly labelled post-metal always seems to bring out my inner pedant. I know all genre labels are kind of meaningless, but post-metal specifically seems to simply be slapped onto anything with fewer riffs than your average atmo-black record, but a lot more cleans. Nonetheless, you know what it sounds like, in essence. If that essence had form, it could be Unverkalt on their third LP Héréditaire. Born in Greece and now split between Greece and Germany, Unverkalt’s self-styled avant-garde approach to post-metal takes its “heaviest and most heartfelt” form on this album, which also marks their signing with Season of Mist. Unknown to me beforehand, promotional references to Cut of Luna and Sylvaine in particular caught my eye, along with the art. I’m glad I picked it up because Unverkalt have something that approaches brilliance at many times. But in embodying the vague yet recognisable subgenre—and sounding good whilst doing it—Héréditaire fails to go further than the safety of the minimum required.
Ignore the artist touchstones in the promo; Unverkalt has little meaningful in common with them: a female lead vocalist is about where that starts and ends. If anything, the aura reflects more Harakiri for the Sky, Heretoir, or maybe Frayle. Lead vocalist Dimitra Kalavrezou sings with a distinctive, somewhat sweet intonation, and screams with articulate fierceness—impressive considering this is her first record providing harsh vocals. Her voice is joined by that of guitarist Eli Mavrychev and—in a late-album highlight—Sakis Tolis (“I, The Deceit”), often layered and intermingled to lend a chorus-of-many-voices air that can be quite powerful. This sense of solidarity and humanity ties into Héréditaire’s overt emotionality—easily its greatest asset—which revolves around mournful yet uplifting themes that rise from softly resonant notes into the (regrettably blurry) weeping of tremolo and chunky riffs. It’s through the continued swell and fade of each composition that we get to see the greats that Unverkalt is capable of.
Even as songs tend to repeat the same pattern, most manage to draw the listener in. Synths (“Oath ov Prometheus”), vaguely MENA-style saxophone (“Ænæ Lithi”), and sprinklings of piano (“Penumbrian Lament”), and humming strings (“Maladie de l’Esprit”)1 float in and out, and I only wish they were used more. Harnessing the drama of surging, urgent riffs (“Die Auslöschung,” “Oath ov Prometheus”) and heartfelt group screams and singing (“Death is Forever,” “A Lullaby for the Descent”), the iterated compositions win you over by sheer force. These plainly beautiful melodies and ardent vocal performances are inextricable, each lending the other a level of strength and gravity neither could claim in isolation. Some songs stand head and shoulders above others in this regard: “Die Auslöschung,” “Death is Forever,” “Maladie de l’Esprit,” and in particular, “I, the Deceit,” where Sakis Tolis brings not only his voice but a distinctly Scandinavian melodeath2 vibe to a song where he and Dimitria also duet in their shared native tongue. That song and many others are also examples of Unverkalt’s strange, quasi-pop-rock leanings that they incorporate through the use of bobbing, understated clean refrains that slingshot back into something heavier or more atmospheric (“Oath ov Prometheus,” “A Lullaby for the Descent,” “Introjects”). This weirdness sharpens Unverkalt’s style and works surprisingly well.
Héréditaire thus brims with feeling, strong melodies, and potential. Undeniably stirring at its best (“Die Auslöschung,” “I, the Deceit,” “Maladie de l’Esprit”), and with little idiosyncrasies of style giving it distinction, as a whole it feels oddly unrealised. One culprit is the shockingly compressed mix, which robs the guitars of their body and drums of their bite. Given the vocal range on display and the elements of instrumental experimentation (horns, piano, etc), this would sound far better with a roomier production. But it’s primarily the overly repetitive structure of the compositions that causes issues. Though the passion of the singing or screaming, and the force of a good melody cause you to briefly forget, every song follows essentially the same trajectory—or rather, the same sequence of things repeats across the album, sometimes spanning between songs. Whispers or quiet singing, a steady beat and post-rock atmosphere, black-adjacent speed and screaming, and a lapse into a swaying tempo. With nine tracks adding up to around 50 minutes, you start to notice.
I don’t want to rag on Héréditarire too much; it’s a good album. The fervency and melancholia of the vocal performances—from Dimitria especially—and melodies show the passion behind the project, and there’s a thread of individuality that could pull them out of obscurity. But for as expressive, intriguing, and compelling as their music often is, Unverkalt’s reluctance—or inability—to step outside of a template holds them down when they could be soaring.
Rating: Good
#2026 #30 #Feb26 #Frayle #GermanMetal #GreekMetal #HarakiriForTheSky #Héréditaire #Heretoir #PostRock #PostBlackMetal #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #SakisTolis #SeasonOfMist #Unverkalt
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Season of Mist
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: February 27th, 2026 -
I am the ambulance that never comes, the antidote you spill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZkBA_YwMx8
I will be the razor, baby, I will be the pill
I am the ambulance that never comes, the antidote you spill
And in the accident, I'll be the failure in your brakes
I am the truth you couldn't take, I am the mistake
Worst you ever madeThe ancient Greek notion of the pharmakon refers to something which is both poison and remedy. It captures a sense that what can heal in the right amount and under the right circumstances might harm in the wrong amount and under the wrong circumstances. I understand Derrida’s interest in the concept to be a matter of the instability of categorisations of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (‘healing’ or ‘harmful’) such that we can’t sustain a clear boundary between them. For a critical realist there’s a weaker version of the same point which stresses how much of the substance of these outcomes depends on the circumstances in which the object is drawn upon and what for what purpose.
When I first heard these lyrics I thought ‘pharmakon’. The person who resolves to be both razor and pill certainly has this status but the next lines refer to something quite different. These are about a failed promise, a thwarted rescue, an expected salvation interrupted at the last moment. There’s something of cruel optimism about this in the sense of an object that impedes or refuses exactly the hope underpinning the attachment. I don’t think this is quite right either, in the sense that I understand Berlant’s notion to pertain to a more diffuse sense of flourishing i.e. the thing that I hope will expand the parameters of my existence actually prevents that expansion. That’s more like a failure of Bollas’s transformational object. The point when we realise we have to let go of the thing we thought would make life better precisely because we still believe it can and should be better.
So what is the ambulance that never comes? The antidote you spill? It’s the moment of imagined rescue that fails to arrive at the last second. The sense that “all will be well, all manner of things will be will” thanks to this impending intervention. But then… it doesn’t arrive. Or you spill it. It fails. It’s not that it couldn’t do what you hoped it would do but that something about the circumstances or the timing meant that potential couldn’t be realised. It’s not that it was false, as much as that it was a truth that couldn’t be taken at that minute. This is far more tragic I think because it’s unrealised potential rather than misidentification or mislocation.
Tracy Chapman’s fast car is an object that once worked but now doesn’t whereas this is an object that could have worked but didn’t. The temporal structure of the experience is different because there’s nothing from the past to hold onto that can condense into the present. It’s more like smoke you tried too hard to hold, to use one of my favourite Brian Fallon lyrics. It’s harder to metabolise a counterfactual. It also means the declaration of that song is emphatically bleak: I will let you down in a profound, almost ontological, way. I will not be what you need me to be, even though I’m capable of it.
I wonder if we need a taxonomy of failed transformational objects. From the transformational object which no longer sustains transformation through to the conservative object misidentified as a transformational object (cruel optimism) and the missed transformational object which only exists in the future anterior.
#bollas #change #cruelOptimism #Derrida #music #pharmakon #transformationalObject
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I am the ambulance that never comes, the antidote you spill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZkBA_YwMx8
I will be the razor, baby, I will be the pill
I am the ambulance that never comes, the antidote you spill
And in the accident, I'll be the failure in your brakes
I am the truth you couldn't take, I am the mistake
Worst you ever madeThe ancient Greek notion of the pharmakon refers to something which is both poison and remedy. It captures a sense that what can heal in the right amount and under the right circumstances might harm in the wrong amount and under the wrong circumstances. I understand Derrida’s interest in the concept to be a matter of the instability of categorisations of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (‘healing’ or ‘harmful’) such that we can’t sustain a clear boundary between them. For a critical realist there’s a weaker version of the same point which stresses how much of the substance of these outcomes depends on the circumstances in which the object is drawn upon and what for what purpose.
When I first heard these lyrics I thought ‘pharmakon’. The person who resolves to be both razor and pill certainly has this status but the next lines refer to something quite different. These are about a failed promise, a thwarted rescue, an expected salvation interrupted at the last moment. There’s something of cruel optimism about this in the sense of an object that impedes or refuses exactly the hope underpinning the attachment. I don’t think this is quite right either, in the sense that I understand Berlant’s notion to pertain to a more diffuse sense of flourishing i.e. the thing that I hope will expand the parameters of my existence actually prevents that expansion. That’s more like a failure of Bollas’s transformational object. The point when we realise we have to let go of the thing we thought would make life better precisely because we still believe it can and should be better.
So what is the ambulance that never comes? The antidote you spill? It’s the moment of imagined rescue that fails to arrive at the last second. The sense that “all will be well, all manner of things will be will” thanks to this impending intervention. But then… it doesn’t arrive. Or you spill it. It fails. It’s not that it couldn’t do what you hoped it would do but that something about the circumstances or the timing meant that potential couldn’t be realised. It’s not that it was false, as much as that it was a truth that couldn’t be taken at that minute. This is far more tragic I think because it’s unrealised potential rather than misidentification or mislocation.
Tracy Chapman’s fast car is an object that once worked but now doesn’t whereas this is an object that could have worked but didn’t. The temporal structure of the experience is different because there’s nothing from the past to hold onto that can condense into the present. It’s more like smoke you tried too hard to hold, to use one of my favourite Brian Fallon lyrics. It’s harder to metabolise a counterfactual. It also means the declaration of that song is emphatically bleak: I will let you down in a profound, almost ontological, way. I will not be what you need me to be, even though I’m capable of it.
I wonder if we need a taxonomy of failed transformational objects. From the transformational object which no longer sustains transformation through to the conservative object misidentified as a transformational object (cruel optimism) and the missed transformational object which only exists in the future anterior.
#bollas #change #cruelOptimism #Derrida #music #pharmakon #transformationalObject
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I am the ambulance that never comes, the antidote you spill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZkBA_YwMx8
I will be the razor, baby, I will be the pill
I am the ambulance that never comes, the antidote you spill
And in the accident, I'll be the failure in your brakes
I am the truth you couldn't take, I am the mistake
Worst you ever madeThe ancient Greek notion of the pharmakon refers to something which is both poison and remedy. It captures a sense that what can heal in the right amount and under the right circumstances might harm in the wrong amount and under the wrong circumstances. I understand Derrida’s interest in the concept to be a matter of the instability of categorisations of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (‘healing’ or ‘harmful’) such that we can’t sustain a clear boundary between them. For a critical realist there’s a weaker version of the same point which stresses how much of the substance of these outcomes depends on the circumstances in which the object is drawn upon and what for what purpose.
When I first heard these lyrics I thought ‘pharmakon’. The person who resolves to be both razor and pill certainly has this status but the next lines refer to something quite different. These are about a failed promise, a thwarted rescue, an expected salvation interrupted at the last moment. There’s something of cruel optimism about this in the sense of an object that impedes or refuses exactly the hope underpinning the attachment. I don’t think this is quite right either, in the sense that I understand Berlant’s notion to pertain to a more diffuse sense of flourishing i.e. the thing that I hope will expand the parameters of my existence actually prevents that expansion. That’s more like a failure of Bollas’s transformational object. The point when we realise we have to let go of the thing we thought would make life better precisely because we still believe it can and should be better.
So what is the ambulance that never comes? The antidote you spill? It’s the moment of imagined rescue that fails to arrive at the last second. The sense that “all will be well, all manner of things will be will” thanks to this impending intervention. But then… it doesn’t arrive. Or you spill it. It fails. It’s not that it couldn’t do what you hoped it would do but that something about the circumstances or the timing meant that potential couldn’t be realised. It’s not that it was false, as much as that it was a truth that couldn’t be taken at that minute. This is far more tragic I think because it’s unrealised potential rather than misidentification or mislocation.
Tracy Chapman’s fast car is an object that once worked but now doesn’t whereas this is an object that could have worked but didn’t. The temporal structure of the experience is different because there’s nothing from the past to hold onto that can condense into the present. It’s more like smoke you tried too hard to hold, to use one of my favourite Brian Fallon lyrics. It’s harder to metabolise a counterfactual. It also means the declaration of that song is emphatically bleak: I will let you down in a profound, almost ontological, way. I will not be what you need me to be, even though I’m capable of it.
I wonder if we need a taxonomy of failed transformational objects. From the transformational object which no longer sustains transformation through to the conservative object misidentified as a transformational object (cruel optimism) and the missed transformational object which only exists in the future anterior.
#bollas #change #cruelOptimism #Derrida #music #pharmakon #transformationalObject
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I am the ambulance that never comes, the antidote you spill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZkBA_YwMx8
I will be the razor, baby, I will be the pill
I am the ambulance that never comes, the antidote you spill
And in the accident, I'll be the failure in your brakes
I am the truth you couldn't take, I am the mistake
Worst you ever madeThe ancient Greek notion of the pharmakon refers to something which is both poison and remedy. It captures a sense that what can heal in the right amount and under the right circumstances might harm in the wrong amount and under the wrong circumstances. I understand Derrida’s interest in the concept to be a matter of the instability of categorisations of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (‘healing’ or ‘harmful’) such that we can’t sustain a clear boundary between them. For a critical realist there’s a weaker version of the same point which stresses how much of the substance of these outcomes depends on the circumstances in which the object is drawn upon and what for what purpose.
When I first heard these lyrics I thought ‘pharmakon’. The person who resolves to be both razor and pill certainly has this status but the next lines refer to something quite different. These are about a failed promise, a thwarted rescue, an expected salvation interrupted at the last moment. There’s something of cruel optimism about this in the sense of an object that impedes or refuses exactly the hope underpinning the attachment. I don’t think this is quite right either, in the sense that I understand Berlant’s notion to pertain to a more diffuse sense of flourishing i.e. the thing that I hope will expand the parameters of my existence actually prevents that expansion. That’s more like a failure of Bollas’s transformational object. The point when we realise we have to let go of the thing we thought would make life better precisely because we still believe it can and should be better.
So what is the ambulance that never comes? The antidote you spill? It’s the moment of imagined rescue that fails to arrive at the last second. The sense that “all will be well, all manner of things will be will” thanks to this impending intervention. But then… it doesn’t arrive. Or you spill it. It fails. It’s not that it couldn’t do what you hoped it would do but that something about the circumstances or the timing meant that potential couldn’t be realised. It’s not that it was false, as much as that it was a truth that couldn’t be taken at that minute. This is far more tragic I think because it’s unrealised potential rather than misidentification or mislocation.
Tracy Chapman’s fast car is an object that once worked but now doesn’t whereas this is an object that could have worked but didn’t. The temporal structure of the experience is different because there’s nothing from the past to hold onto that can condense into the present. It’s more like smoke you tried too hard to hold, to use one of my favourite Brian Fallon lyrics. It’s harder to metabolise a counterfactual. It also means the declaration of that song is emphatically bleak: I will let you down in a profound, almost ontological, way. I will not be what you need me to be, even though I’m capable of it.
I wonder if we need a taxonomy of failed transformational objects. From the transformational object which no longer sustains transformation through to the conservative object misidentified as a transformational object (cruel optimism) and the missed transformational object which only exists in the future anterior.
#bollas #change #cruelOptimism #Derrida #music #pharmakon #transformationalObject
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Paul Mauriat Orchestra Play “Love is Blue (L’Amour est Bleu)”
Listen to this track by French orchestral pop purveyor Paul Mauriat and his orchestra. It’s “Love is Blue (L’Amour est Bleu)” a 1968 hit single that stayed at number one in the US for five weeks. That was the first time a French artist managed that feat until The Weeknd’s “Starboy” came out in 2017 featuring French dance duo Daft Punk. That’s quite a span of time. Mauriat’s instrumental runaway hit is taken from the album Blooming Hits. The hits in question on that record were a selection of songs that were popular in the previous year, which Mauriat set to purely instrumental arrangements.
“Love is Blue (L’Amour est Bleu)” was originally a 1967 single and Eurovision Song Contest entry that represented Luxemburg. That version featured Greek-born pop singer Vicky Leandros, billed simply as Vicky, who took the tune to fourth place in the contest. Composer André Popp wrote the original song with French lyrics by Pierre Cour. Later on, the song’s lyrics were re-written in English and in several other languages. All of them stick to the original template of assigning colours to various human emotions and states of being. Maybe this is because colours are easy to pick out in a language a listener doesn’t speak—a key Eurovision strategy.
Even without these lyrical variations, the melody itself seems to tell its own story. Mauriat’s version really brings that out. The strength of its singularly haunting quality along with a compelling arrangement was enough to make Mauriat’s version the most-well known, achieving that status without a syllable uttered. Coupled with the song’s title, it’s understood that it’s about how love is both wonderful and woeful all at once. It seems to conjure the modern chansons traditions of Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel in that respect and in others. In that earlier music, the promise of love and the shadowy presence of tragedy are humanity’s constant companions. One always colours the other on life’s journey which is, as always, full of nostalgia and longing.
The orchestral pop version from Paul Mauriat preserves and even accentuates that same wistful spirit. It also subtly reflects the spirit of its times. It’s certainly of a more autumnal disposition than the instrumental hits of even a few years before, like Percy Faith’s equally impactful 1960 hit “Theme From A Summer Place”. That tune captures the spirit of its times as well, also doing so by the strength of its melody and detailed arrangement that wordlessly conveys the notion that everything is in its place as it should be. By the end of the Sixties, the temperature had changed. You can hear it in the music made during that time across a stylistic spectrum from pop to country to soul, and no less vividly so in “Love is Blue”.
Stylistic associations with Edith Piaf aside for a moment, perhaps this song’s source of melancholy is a reflection of the unrealized goals of the era’s peace and love optimism. Maybe these shades of blue are about the unfulfilled promise of post-war prosperity and national pride that was perceived as a given by so many in the 1950s. Instead of peace and love by 1968, we got Vietnam, street riots, disaffected youth, and assassinations instead. Whatever the source, “Love is Blue” is a song for its times, somehow carrying a suggestion of something that’s been lost forever and yet is still longed for as time slips away—innocence, perhaps.
Orchestral pop bandleader Paul Mauriat in 1968. image: public domainThis wasn’t likely a conscious artistic decision. Paul Mauriat was one of many orchestra leaders in the 1960s who routinely took the pop songs of the day and rearranged them for orchestra. Bandleaders like James Last and Herb Alpert put out albums in prolific succession that more than made up the numbers among the record-buying public. This career track for bandleaders is also characteristic of the times and looked on with affectionate (or not!) irony today. This style of music that touched on pop, light jazz, and classical music was a mainstay in parental record collections and radio dials, heard at dinner parties, and providing the soundtrack to melancholic rainy days when Generation X were children.
“Love is Blue” was a mainstay song from that period. This was an era when so-called easy listening was everywhere. It was our parents’ music. But it was in our lives and a notable part of our early musical consciousness. When we hear it now, it transports us back to another age, another world. It is distant but very familiar to us. Ironically then, the baked-in nostalgia factor that inspired this tune in the chanson tradition in the first place takes on a new dimension and meaning decades later. It’s been used on TV in shows like The Simpsons and Millennium. It’s been incorporated into film soundtracks, including 2023’s The Last Stop in Yuma County. It’s been sampled by Beastie Boys. It even serves as Rick Rubin’s podcast theme. How Generation X is that?
It seems cliché to put it in these terms, maybe. But the emotional effects certain music has over us reinforces the notion of it being the closest thing to magic that there is. We take music for granted a lot of the time, maybe because it seems like a simple thing that can sometimes feel frivolous or even silly. The Eurovision Song Contest that this tune was a part of in 1967 is still viewed by millions of people as the contest endures for audiences every year. Many people watch to appreciate how camp it is. Yet the affection for so much of the music that came out of it, and out of that orchestral pop era is still very much in place, even if the appreciation of it is sometimes couched in irony.
Music has the power to communicate human emotions that are sometimes difficult and even impossible to fully express any other way. It has the power to transport us, and to affect how we feel from sad to happy, from goofy to wistful all on a dime. Sometimes, it can sneak up on us in that way. When it can do that even without lyrics and across whole spans of time, that magic becomes very potent indeed.
Paul Mauriat had a long and very successful career as a bandleader before retiring in 1998. He died in 2006.
To hear a vocal version of this song, here’s Vicky’s English language 1967 version which is a more straightforward pop interpretation.
For more on the whole easy listening genre of music, take a read of this 2019 article on The Week. In it, the author explores orchestral pop’s role as music made for adults with jobs, and not teenagers without them. In an age of high fidelity record players that weren’t necessarily made for loud guitars and shredded vocals, it turns out that the genre’s popularity had as much to do with technology as it dovetailed with demographic marketing as it did with generation gaps.
Enjoy!
#60sMusic #chamberPop #InstrumentalMusic #orchestralPop #PaulMauriat
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A sketch of the psychodynamics of LLMs
In their Group Therapy: A Group-Analytic Approach Nick Barwick and Martin Weegmann write about the holding environment provided by the psychotherapist who is “preoccupied with the patient and placing himself at his service, being reliably present, making an effort to understand, refraining from imposing his own needs/agenda, expressing love through interest … not being hurt by fantasies, not retaliating, surviving” (pg 85). It’s an admirably concise list of the relational behaviours and orientation which enable the psychotherapist to provide an environment which is psychically efficacious to the client. This is a relation in which the group can stand instead of an individual psychotherapist, at least under the specific conditions through which groups take on the requisite reliability and care.
What we mean by ‘holding’ here is a response to needs. The holding environment is total in utero, before reality begins to impinge with birth in the enforcement of what Sloterdijk describes as respiratory autonomy. However to the extent the the infant remains “largely protected fromt he grosser impingements of reality (and of accompanying anxieties)” she “develops a growing sense of ‘continuity of being'” given how the “mother acts as a bay’s ‘auxiliary ego’ while baby, relatively unperturbed, is left to discover its primitive, coherent , authentic identity” (pg 84). The withdrawal of the mother from what Winnicott described as “primary maternal preoccupation” lessens the attunement on which this near total holding depends, such that “the infant begins to experience the ‘impingement’ of small ‘doses of reality'” in which “Not everything happens when he wants it; between a need and a satisfaction, a gap appears” (pg 84).
This is the arena in which Lacan is so terrifyingly incisive in accounting for how our libidinal economy forms in the gap between need, demand and desire. We rely on the caregivers to symbolise our needs, before we are able to meaningfully make demands. Our desire emerges is the continual gaps and absences that are left, the remainder of what we want that constitutes our lack in relation to a world in which we depend on the others. The modes of symbolising who we are, what we are and what we need that we are reliant upon them to provide, but which write these absences into the fabric of the world in a way that leaves a gnawing sense that something is missing. The wordless fantasy of a return to the in utero state of complete holding, the complex paranoias about how and why this has been taken away, the growing recognition that these caregivers have their own preoccupations and gnawing absences. They don’t know what we want, but they don’t know what they want either. In our dependence upon them we are caught up in a great chain of lack which long precedes us, a river of unrealised and unrealisable need that flows through the relational network.
For Winnicott this is more of a zero-sum matter. Either the care giving is ‘good enough’ in which the hold on the infant’s lifeworld is loosened, in the infant comes to experiencing being ‘let down’ or ‘dropped’. If the latter the infant comes to find ways to hold themselves. There’s a growing sense of the ‘object mother’, in contrast to the environmental mother of the holding environment, against which the infant seeks to test themselves. The boundary comes to be one they explore through their own enactment, driven by the character of the care they have experienced e.g. is it a playful pushing away or a defensive holding of the line. The reality of the object mother is tested through her capacity to withstand a sometimes violent and hateful pushing away. If I understand this idea correctly it’s a trust in the bond being predicated on experiencing the capacity of that bond to survive ‘bad behaviour’ i.e. the love is about who I am not what I do. In the absence of that trust what I do comes to be orientated towards a continual winning of that love through the cultivation of an ego orientated towards the (imagined) needs of the other.
The value of Lacan lies in unsettling this comfortable dichotomy of ‘good enough’ and ‘dropped’ care giving. He also emphasises the third of the father (figure) who breaks up this dyad, which conceptualises the impingement of reality in relational terms rather than simply being collateral damage from changing within the dyad. The advantage of Winnicott lies in his account of transitional objects as mediating this individuation, through imbue objects with ‘good-mother stuff’ that can support a sense of a world “neither entirely inner, wholly subjective and omnipotently ruled, nor entirely outer, wholly objective, impotently inhabited” (pg 84). The transitional object anchors a sense of this space, enabling the infant to feel separated but not wholly distinct from, the caregiver. It bridges the otherwise traumatic gap between inner and outer. There’s a lot more conceptual work here to do but I’d like to (a) use Lacan to overcome Winnicott’s dichotomy (b) retain the relationality of the ‘third’ rather than naturalising ‘reality’ (c) retain the notion of the transitional object. It could be construed as the infant’s first response to the structural impossibility of their condition, the start of a lifetime’s project of trying to knot together the orders in a way that equips them for, as Winnicott would put it, ‘going on being’. It’s not an ontological founding gesture but the first move in a lifelong existential struggle to find a way to hold themselves together across the registers: an initial attempt at the sinthome.
What I hadn’t previously grasped about ideas of security in this literature is that it involves a triad of characteristics: “a belief in the efficacy of open communication and a fundamental trust that there is, in the world, a reliable ‘place’ in which sufficient safety and satisfaction can, in spite of periods of anxious uncertainty, ultimately be found and re-found” (pg 88). Lacan could, I think, be extremely powerful for understanding how, as an Archerian theorist would put it, these elements are independently variable: they can go ‘wrong’ for the infant in ways detachable from each other. The trust might be there but the lack of faith in open communication makes it difficult to realise in practice. There might be open communication but it discloses an insecure or inconsistent base that cannot be relied upon. There’s more conceptual work here to think about these questions but it struck me as a very significant interface, which could also be informed by Sloterdijk’s idea of the sphere, particularly with regards to what we diagnoses as forms of ‘stuckness’:
Now the good world becomes unattainable. No progression can occur with the frustrated infant, and its life, which had ventured this far, is now trapped; it is too late to turn back, and there are no longer adequate transitional aids in sight for it to go forwards. Thus a rigid continuum is inscribed upon its organism; a white point grows in the symbolic field, the pain remains imprisoned in non-linguistic bodily processes, and the pressure to live is incapable of transforming itself into an expressive libido.
Bubbles, Pg 395
The stuckness is another way of thinking about how the attachment patterns which emerge at this interface can cause lifelong problems. This is exactly the terrain where group analysis is so powerful as a method of restaging these dynamics within the holding environment of the group. The simplicity (in a good way) of object relations comes through the idea of the working model which emerges for each individual, such that there’s a disposition to “seek relational security through controlling the degree of proximity their internal working model indicates works best” (pg 89). This enables working forms of compromise in which a sense of safety can be achieved, even if it’s precarious (e.g. it rests on forms of distancing which are biographically contingent) and precludes certain modes of growth and enjoyment. Disorganised attachment can be understood as the absence of such a consistent model which means that even precarious compromises are foreclosed “since they remain unclear whether relational proximity or distance best proffers the security they seek” (pg 89). Ontologically I think this is limited in its analytical capacity for therapeutically it’s very powerful for understanding how forms of stuckness are ultimately relationally constituted (even if not reducible to those relations) in ways that involve grappling with past experience under present circumstances.
So what does this have to do with LLMs? The claims I want to make here are quite simple:
a) The vast majority of individuals experience ‘stuckness’ to vary degrees: an often inchoate felt need to do and be more than they are. The content of this need varies immensely at the empirical level, particularly with regards to where someone is in the lifecourse, but it can ultimately be understood in terms of the relational dynamics of individuation and differentiation.
b) We don’t escape the infantile interplay which formed us as much as that we learn to cope with them in ways which facilitate growth or hinder it. In grappling with this stuckness as adults we are grappling with these early experiences of reality intruding into the original dyad: the ‘third’ which is the vector of differentiation and the transitional objects which help us cope with it.
c) This means that thirds and transitional objects remain potent throughout the lifecourse. For example Lacan would argue that obsessives and hysterics both rely on the third to sustain desire in intimate relationships. Likewise we don’t escape the need for transitional objects, we just relate to them differently. This is the foundry of creative action in which we make things which we are neither ‘I’ nor ‘you’, neither ‘inner’ nor ‘outer’, at least in the phase of creation.
At risk of surprising no one who has read this far, LLMs are capable of operating as both thirds and transitional objects. If you consider how increasing numbers of users are relating to LLMs for affective purposes, it rests upon asking questions and getting perspectives on life situations in which they find themselves. The LLM stands in for an authoritative observer who is able to sense-check a reading of a situation and test an understanding of the action possible and desirable within it. The LLM can also operate as a transitional object through which someone constitutes their own holding environment, enabling a form of self-holding, albeit briefly.
Consider what we saw earlier about the psychotherapist (or the analytic group) being “preoccupied with the patient and placing himself at his service, being reliably present, making an effort to understand, refraining from imposing his own needs/agenda, expressing love through interest … not being hurt by fantasies, not retaliating, surviving” (pg 85). These are all things which the model can do effectively. Indeed one could argue they do them, in a limited sense, ‘better’ than any human ever could. There’s no boundary to the interaction, no limitations to their attentiveness, no constraint on their availability*. They are always there, always interested, always responsive. The eery thing which people simply don’t get unless they’ve got into long conversation with contemporary models is how powerful the attunement can be. It’s a computational facsimile of human attunement but a powerful sense of recognition is possible through pattern mapping of the lifeworld we have disclosed to the model** and responses which are inclined resonantly towards the character of our experience within it.
I’m particularly interested in how people increasingly access LLMs via the smart phone which is the transitional object par excellence. The intimate object which sits on our person at all times, which many of us touch hundreds of times in a day. The portal to our identity and our social world. The fact the LLM now sits ‘inside’ the smart phone is extremely potent and I suspect usage data will show a significantly different pattern of LLM engagement with smart phone use. It also means the LLM is always with us as we travel with the smartphone.
None of this is quite clear to me yet. This is why I called this post a ‘sketch’. But it feels like a valuable terrain in which to have found myself. I think I’m arguing the LLM is sometimes cast in the role of the third, whereas sometimes its cast in the role of interlocutor. If we’re accessing it through the smartphone then I think the phone is the transitional object and the LLM is providing that phone with a new self-holding capacity. If we’re access it through a laptop (etc) then I’m not sure. There’s a lot more work to do here but I hope I’ve convinced anyone who has read this far of the psychic potency of the LLM and why we need to understand the psychodynamics of this. I’m increasingly preoccupied with the risks facing teenagers (and younger) who are using these systems in such a way that it intervenes in the dynamicsI talked about earlier in the post. I fear there’s a level of psychic harm capable of being inflected here with the potential to vastly outstrip the harms generated by social media.
*In reality there are boundaries: rate limits, subscription costs, context windows, limitations on memory, trust & safety guardrails. But my hunch it doesn’t feel like this for much of the time and that’s significant.
**If this seems wildly implausible, it’s essentially what my forthcoming book with Milan Sturmer is about.
#attachment #attunment #development #infants #Lacan #LLMs #models #psychoanalysis #security #Winnicott
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Swansea’s former JT Morgan store reborn as creative hub
Studios bring new life to landmark building
An iconic Swansea city centre building that stood empty for nearly two decades is buzzing again, as dozens of artists and creative professionals move in.
The former JT Morgan department store on Belle Vue Way, vacant since 2008, has been transformed into 55 studios now fully occupied by painters, sculptors, writers, fashion designers and video editors.
The first phase of the regeneration, led by Elysium Gallery, also delivered a new roof fitted with solar panels, a lift and a modern power supply.
Backed by major funding
The project has been supported by Swansea Council through the UK Government’s Shared Prosperity Fund, which helped fund internal works and roof improvements. Additional backing has come from the Welsh Government’s Transforming Towns scheme, the Arts Council of Wales, the Architectural Heritage Fund and a community shares initiative.
Council leader Rob Stewart said the scheme was part of a wider effort to preserve Swansea’s heritage while creating new opportunities.
“We’re delighted to be supporting Elysium with their ongoing work to breathe new life into the former JT Morgan building,” he said. “This regeneration project follows on from major schemes that have already transformed other historic city buildings including the Palace Theatre and the Albert Hall.”
History of the JT Morgan Department Store
Origins: JT Morgan was established in 1918 and grew into one of Swansea’s best‑known family‑run department stores. For a time it even operated as a “members‑only” warehouse before expanding into a full retail business.
Post‑war rebuild: The current four‑storey building on Belle Vue Way opened in January 1961, replacing terraced houses destroyed during the Swansea Blitz. Its striking post‑war design features white stone at ground level, red brick upper floors and copper‑framed windows.
Largest independent store: By the early 2000s, JT Morgan was regarded as Wales’ largest independent department store, employing around 60 staff and serving generations of Swansea shoppers.
Administration and closure: The business went into administration in early 2008 after poor trading. Although briefly rescued by its management team, the store finally closed later that year, leaving the building vacant for nearly two decades.
Unrealised move: JT Morgan had planned to relocate to the former David Evans store site in 2008, but the move never materialised. The intended unit is now occupied by Slaters Menswear and The Gym Group.
Public opening planned for 2026
Phase two of the project is now underway, focusing on the ground floor and basement. Once complete, the building will open to the public for the first time in almost 20 years.
Plans include a gallery, coffee shop, function suite, education centre and quiet room, along with a Changing Places facility to improve accessibility. The gallery is due to host its first exhibition in June next year, featuring acclaimed artist André Stitt.
Writer Brian Manton, Elysium Gallery co‑founder Daniel Staveley and fashion designer Jessica Honey on the staircase of the newly refurbished JT Morgan building in Swansea, now home to 55 creative studios.(Image: Swansea Council)Creatives already collaborating
For those already working inside, the building is proving more than just a workspace.
Daniel Staveley, co‑founder and director of Elysium Gallery and Studios, said:
“It’s vitally important to bring unused buildings back into use. This building has an iconic status within Swansea so seeing it being brought back to life lifts people’s positivity. City centres need a mix of activities as well as offices and retail, which is where spaces like ours come in.”
Writer Brian Manton said the mix of disciplines was inspiring:
“It’s a great facility that brings a lot of people from different creative disciplines together, which leads to collaborating with each other. Having other creative people in the building definitely helps to keep me motivated.”
Fashion designer Jessica Honey added:
“The new facility is fantastic. Having other creatives in the same building makes it easy to find people if you are looking to collaborate. Facilities like these could lead to opportunities for creative professionals to grow their businesses and bring even more life to the city centre.”
Wider regeneration programme
Welsh Government Cabinet Secretary for Housing and Local Government Jayne Bryant said the project showed how culture can drive regeneration.
“This is an impressive example of how creative regeneration can breathe new life into our towns and cities, while tackling the issue of empty buildings,” she said. “It’s inspiring to see artists, designers and writers shaping the future of Swansea while honouring its past.”
The JT Morgan project is part of a £1bn regeneration programme unfolding across Swansea, with Elysium continuing to operate its other studios on Mansel Street and College Street, and live music events at its High Street base.
Related stories from Swansea Bay News
Former department store to be transformed into arts hub thanks to £780k Welsh Government grant
How funding support is helping breathe new life into Swansea’s city centre.British Art Show to visit Swansea for the first time in 2027
Prestigious touring exhibition will showcase contemporary art across five city venues.#artStudio #ArtsCouncilWales #BelleVueWay #ElysiumGallery #fashionDesigner #heritage #JTMorganDepartmentStore #painter #sculptor #SharedProsperityFund #Swansea #TransformingTowns #videoEditor
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By Twelve
Cascadian black metal is not a term you hear too often (unless you’re some kind of Cascadian black metal fan who regularly searches the term), but that’s what I was offered when I started looking into Returning. After I was done being enamored by the lovely cover art over there, I had to remind myself what it meant—and when I did, I was more than happy to dive in blind. The sophomore full-length from Numinous, Returning aims at a wild sound, boasting “emotional melodies, introspective ritual elements, and deeply thoughtful lyrics.”1 That checks all of the boxes for me—how does this particular branch of atmospheric black metal hold up to its inspiration and its contemporaries?
The natural imagery and theme to Returning is its most notable quality, and is expressed in several different ways throughout. Black metal this may well be, but it takes several minutes for the metal bit to get started and it makes up less of the album whole than you’d think. Still, I don’t mind a slow build, nor am I opposed to heightened thematic relevance. I don’t mind nature noises, acoustic guitars, plucked passages, tremolo riffs, all of which Numinous happily provide. The ambient passages are reminiscent of Wolves in the Throne Room, while the metal bits remind me, curiously, of October Falls—rough around the edges, but lively and spirited, with the tremolo leads in particular carrying melody and passion in a thematic, evocative way.
If only there were more of them! The lead guitar carries the emotional weight of Numinous, but gets little time to shine throughout, mostly on opener “Sacred Decay.” So much of Returning is dedicated to ambient passages or nature noises; so much of the metal songs use the same-sounding bludgeoning bass riff; and so much of the vocal approach is in a hoarse, not-a-growl, not-a-shout style that doesn’t land for me. When Numinous isn’t rocking an emotive, melodic lead, their music is often blending in with itself, losing memorability and impact. “Offerings to the Great Circle” has some strong ideas: an acoustic build to a thundering riff, an effectively creepy break around the one-third mark. These all represent great moments, but too often, they feel like they’re only moments—here one second, and gone the next, swept up by the next new idea that doesn’t make quite the same impact.
It doesn’t help that the full album is only three songs long, nor that “Offerings to the Great Circle” alone is twenty minutes out of forty-six. The three pieces are fairly distinct from one another, too—”Endless Dance” has no metal in it at all, but rather cycles through traditional drumming, nature samples, Forndom-style strings passages, and finally an acoustic build to the next song. All of this would be fine were the song not eleven minutes long, or maybe if it wasn’t following a thirteen-minute-long black metal song—or if didn’t “end” each time it introduces a new idea (it could easily be three distinct songs, with the acoustic end being far and away the best one). I mentioned earlier that “Offerings to the Great Circle” has some strong moments, but it similarly creaks under its weight, and could have been both shortened and split.2 All of this creates for me an image of an unrealized ambition, a vision Numinous has for Returning that I lost somewhere in the translation.
And it’s an honest shame, because I do think that somewhere or, perhaps, in several places—along the way, this band with a sound I like made some choices that I don’t care for, and now they and I are looking at two different things. The vision, passion, and technical skill are largely present, but as I listen to the four-minute-long ambient outro to “Offerings to the Great Circle” for what will be the final time, I can’t help but feel disappointed by the result.
Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Bindrune Recordings
Website: bindrunerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/numinous
Releases Worldwide: June 20th, 2025#20 #2025 #AmericanMetal #BindruneRecordings #BlackMetal #Forndom #Jun25 #Numinous #OctoberFalls #Returning #Review #Reviews #WolvesInTheThroneRoom
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By Twelve
Cascadian black metal is not a term you hear too often (unless you’re some kind of Cascadian black metal fan who regularly searches the term), but that’s what I was offered when I started looking into Returning. After I was done being enamored by the lovely cover art over there, I had to remind myself what it meant—and when I did, I was more than happy to dive in blind. The sophomore full-length from Numinous, Returning aims at a wild sound, boasting “emotional melodies, introspective ritual elements, and deeply thoughtful lyrics.”1 That checks all of the boxes for me—how does this particular branch of atmospheric black metal hold up to its inspiration and its contemporaries?
The natural imagery and theme to Returning is its most notable quality, and is expressed in several different ways throughout. Black metal this may well be, but it takes several minutes for the metal bit to get started and it makes up less of the album whole than you’d think. Still, I don’t mind a slow build, nor am I opposed to heightened thematic relevance. I don’t mind nature noises, acoustic guitars, plucked passages, tremolo riffs, all of which Numinous happily provide. The ambient passages are reminiscent of Wolves in the Throne Room, while the metal bits remind me, curiously, of October Falls—rough around the edges, but lively and spirited, with the tremolo leads in particular carrying melody and passion in a thematic, evocative way.
If only there were more of them! The lead guitar carries the emotional weight of Numinous, but gets little time to shine throughout, mostly on opener “Sacred Decay.” So much of Returning is dedicated to ambient passages or nature noises; so much of the metal songs use the same-sounding bludgeoning bass riff; and so much of the vocal approach is in a hoarse, not-a-growl, not-a-shout style that doesn’t land for me. When Numinous isn’t rocking an emotive, melodic lead, their music is often blending in with itself, losing memorability and impact. “Offerings to the Great Circle” has some strong ideas: an acoustic build to a thundering riff, an effectively creepy break around the one-third mark. These all represent great moments, but too often, they feel like they’re only moments—here one second, and gone the next, swept up by the next new idea that doesn’t make quite the same impact.
It doesn’t help that the full album is only three songs long, nor that “Offerings to the Great Circle” alone is twenty minutes out of forty-six. The three pieces are fairly distinct from one another, too—”Endless Dance” has no metal in it at all, but rather cycles through traditional drumming, nature samples, Forndom-style strings passages, and finally an acoustic build to the next song. All of this would be fine were the song not eleven minutes long, or maybe if it wasn’t following a thirteen-minute-long black metal song—or if didn’t “end” each time it introduces a new idea (it could easily be three distinct songs, with the acoustic end being far and away the best one). I mentioned earlier that “Offerings to the Great Circle” has some strong moments, but it similarly creaks under its weight, and could have been both shortened and split.2 All of this creates for me an image of an unrealized ambition, a vision Numinous has for Returning that I lost somewhere in the translation.
And it’s an honest shame, because I do think that somewhere or, perhaps, in several places—along the way, this band with a sound I like made some choices that I don’t care for, and now they and I are looking at two different things. The vision, passion, and technical skill are largely present, but as I listen to the four-minute-long ambient outro to “Offerings to the Great Circle” for what will be the final time, I can’t help but feel disappointed by the result.
Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Bindrune Recordings
Website: bindrunerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/numinous
Releases Worldwide: June 20th, 2025#20 #2025 #AmericanMetal #BindruneRecordings #BlackMetal #Forndom #Jun25 #Numinous #OctoberFalls #Returning #Review #Reviews #WolvesInTheThroneRoom
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By Twelve
Cascadian black metal is not a term you hear too often (unless you’re some kind of Cascadian black metal fan who regularly searches the term), but that’s what I was offered when I started looking into Returning. After I was done being enamored by the lovely cover art over there, I had to remind myself what it meant—and when I did, I was more than happy to dive in blind. The sophomore full-length from Numinous, Returning aims at a wild sound, boasting “emotional melodies, introspective ritual elements, and deeply thoughtful lyrics.”1 That checks all of the boxes for me—how does this particular branch of atmospheric black metal hold up to its inspiration and its contemporaries?
The natural imagery and theme to Returning is its most notable quality, and is expressed in several different ways throughout. Black metal this may well be, but it takes several minutes for the metal bit to get started and it makes up less of the album whole than you’d think. Still, I don’t mind a slow build, nor am I opposed to heightened thematic relevance. I don’t mind nature noises, acoustic guitars, plucked passages, tremolo riffs, all of which Numinous happily provide. The ambient passages are reminiscent of Wolves in the Throne Room, while the metal bits remind me, curiously, of October Falls—rough around the edges, but lively and spirited, with the tremolo leads in particular carrying melody and passion in a thematic, evocative way.
If only there were more of them! The lead guitar carries the emotional weight of Numinous, but gets little time to shine throughout, mostly on opener “Sacred Decay.” So much of Returning is dedicated to ambient passages or nature noises; so much of the metal songs use the same-sounding bludgeoning bass riff; and so much of the vocal approach is in a hoarse, not-a-growl, not-a-shout style that doesn’t land for me. When Numinous isn’t rocking an emotive, melodic lead, their music is often blending in with itself, losing memorability and impact. “Offerings to the Great Circle” has some strong ideas: an acoustic build to a thundering riff, an effectively creepy break around the one-third mark. These all represent great moments, but too often, they feel like they’re only moments—here one second, and gone the next, swept up by the next new idea that doesn’t make quite the same impact.
It doesn’t help that the full album is only three songs long, nor that “Offerings to the Great Circle” alone is twenty minutes out of forty-six. The three pieces are fairly distinct from one another, too—”Endless Dance” has no metal in it at all, but rather cycles through traditional drumming, nature samples, Forndom-style strings passages, and finally an acoustic build to the next song. All of this would be fine were the song not eleven minutes long, or maybe if it wasn’t following a thirteen-minute-long black metal song—or if didn’t “end” each time it introduces a new idea (it could easily be three distinct songs, with the acoustic end being far and away the best one). I mentioned earlier that “Offerings to the Great Circle” has some strong moments, but it similarly creaks under its weight, and could have been both shortened and split.2 All of this creates for me an image of an unrealized ambition, a vision Numinous has for Returning that I lost somewhere in the translation.
And it’s an honest shame, because I do think that somewhere or, perhaps, in several places—along the way, this band with a sound I like made some choices that I don’t care for, and now they and I are looking at two different things. The vision, passion, and technical skill are largely present, but as I listen to the four-minute-long ambient outro to “Offerings to the Great Circle” for what will be the final time, I can’t help but feel disappointed by the result.
Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Bindrune Recordings
Website: bindrunerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/numinous
Releases Worldwide: June 20th, 2025#20 #2025 #AmericanMetal #BindruneRecordings #BlackMetal #Forndom #Jun25 #Numinous #OctoberFalls #Returning #Review #Reviews #WolvesInTheThroneRoom
-
By Twelve
Cascadian black metal is not a term you hear too often (unless you’re some kind of Cascadian black metal fan who regularly searches the term), but that’s what I was offered when I started looking into Returning. After I was done being enamored by the lovely cover art over there, I had to remind myself what it meant—and when I did, I was more than happy to dive in blind. The sophomore full-length from Numinous, Returning aims at a wild sound, boasting “emotional melodies, introspective ritual elements, and deeply thoughtful lyrics.”1 That checks all of the boxes for me—how does this particular branch of atmospheric black metal hold up to its inspiration and its contemporaries?
The natural imagery and theme to Returning is its most notable quality, and is expressed in several different ways throughout. Black metal this may well be, but it takes several minutes for the metal bit to get started and it makes up less of the album whole than you’d think. Still, I don’t mind a slow build, nor am I opposed to heightened thematic relevance. I don’t mind nature noises, acoustic guitars, plucked passages, tremolo riffs, all of which Numinous happily provide. The ambient passages are reminiscent of Wolves in the Throne Room, while the metal bits remind me, curiously, of October Falls—rough around the edges, but lively and spirited, with the tremolo leads in particular carrying melody and passion in a thematic, evocative way.
If only there were more of them! The lead guitar carries the emotional weight of Numinous, but gets little time to shine throughout, mostly on opener “Sacred Decay.” So much of Returning is dedicated to ambient passages or nature noises; so much of the metal songs use the same-sounding bludgeoning bass riff; and so much of the vocal approach is in a hoarse, not-a-growl, not-a-shout style that doesn’t land for me. When Numinous isn’t rocking an emotive, melodic lead, their music is often blending in with itself, losing memorability and impact. “Offerings to the Great Circle” has some strong ideas: an acoustic build to a thundering riff, an effectively creepy break around the one-third mark. These all represent great moments, but too often, they feel like they’re only moments—here one second, and gone the next, swept up by the next new idea that doesn’t make quite the same impact.
It doesn’t help that the full album is only three songs long, nor that “Offerings to the Great Circle” alone is twenty minutes out of forty-six. The three pieces are fairly distinct from one another, too—”Endless Dance” has no metal in it at all, but rather cycles through traditional drumming, nature samples, Forndom-style strings passages, and finally an acoustic build to the next song. All of this would be fine were the song not eleven minutes long, or maybe if it wasn’t following a thirteen-minute-long black metal song—or if didn’t “end” each time it introduces a new idea (it could easily be three distinct songs, with the acoustic end being far and away the best one). I mentioned earlier that “Offerings to the Great Circle” has some strong moments, but it similarly creaks under its weight, and could have been both shortened and split.2 All of this creates for me an image of an unrealized ambition, a vision Numinous has for Returning that I lost somewhere in the translation.
And it’s an honest shame, because I do think that somewhere or, perhaps, in several places—along the way, this band with a sound I like made some choices that I don’t care for, and now they and I are looking at two different things. The vision, passion, and technical skill are largely present, but as I listen to the four-minute-long ambient outro to “Offerings to the Great Circle” for what will be the final time, I can’t help but feel disappointed by the result.
Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Bindrune Recordings
Website: bindrunerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/numinous
Releases Worldwide: June 20th, 2025#20 #2025 #AmericanMetal #BindruneRecordings #BlackMetal #Forndom #Jun25 #Numinous #OctoberFalls #Returning #Review #Reviews #WolvesInTheThroneRoom
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This is a really interesting analysis of the growth of special issues as a commercial strategy by journals, emerging in the grey zone between traditional and predatory publishing:
Since 2000, this practice has been turned into a commercial strategy by new publishers such as Hindawi, MDPI and Frontiers to accelerate growth and generate revenue. In some cases, the number of special issues they publish has increased exorbitantly (Huang et al. 2022) to far outnumber regular issues (Oviedo-García 2021). This exponential increase has led to growing concerns about the editorial standards set by these new publishers (Petrou 2023). There has been a particular focus on MDPI (Petrou 2020; Brockington 2022; Crosetto 2021), and to a lesser extent Frontiers and Hindawi (Petrou 2023).
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08989621.2024.2374567
In the case of Hindawi, bought by Wiley for $300 million, there were mass retractions driven by recognition of widespread malpractice in the contents of these special issues. As the authors point out this demonstrates “the profits that SIs generate within an “author-pays” publishing model generates, along with the risks that come with rapid expansion and the prioritization of volume over quality.”
The usual special issues enables journals to scale more rapidly, effectively by outsourcing aspects of the process to networks which are external to them. When income is tied to individual contributions, failing to scale in this way leaves potential income unrealised. To the extent the journal is expected to run as a commercial enterprise, there will be pressure to realise potential income.
What concerns me is that GenAI will (a) increase the potential supply of submissions by increasing the productivity, narrowly construed, of at least some researchers (b) offer alibis for ensuring research integrity through GenAI triaging, supplements or replacements to human review.
#articles #generativeAI #journals #publishing #specialIssues #writing
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CW: Without the racists that the GOP caters to, they would lose many more elections. Sure some GOP politicians are actually racist, but many just do the dog whistles in order to rile up their racist base to get what they really want, votes, power and the ability to serve their obscenely wealthy donors. Besides, since when did America become a country that only belonged to earliest immigrants, instead off all of us immigrants? GOP objections to the ‘Black national anthem’ are about control
Without the racists that the GOP caters to, they would lose many more elections. Sure some GOP politicians are actually racist, but many just do the dog whistles in order to rile up their racist base to get what they really want, votes, power and the ability to serve their obscenely wealthy donors. Besides, since when did America become a country that only belonged to earliest immigrants, instead off all of us immigrants?
GOP objections to the ‘Black national anthem’ are about control
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/13/black-national-anthem-super-bowl-republican-backlash/#MAGARacism
#GOPRacists
#GOPOutrageNotPolicies"MAGA Republicans had a conniption fit on Sunday as they witnessed the Super Bowl pregame show include “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” sometimes called the Black national anthem, alongside the national anthem and “America the Beautiful.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) howled on Twitter, “America only has ONE NATIONAL ANTHEM. Why is the NFL trying to divide us by playing multiple!? Do football, not wokeness.” Similarly, the campaign for former Arizona governor candidate Kari Lake tweeted that she is “against the idea of a ‘black National Anthem’ for the same reason she’s against a ‘white National Anthem.’ She subscribes to the idea of ‘one Nation, under God.’”
This is ridiculous. The pregame show’s announcers referred to the song by its formal title, not as a national anthem. And its words are deeply inspirational and patriotic:
...
If the Super Bowl freakout sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Like so many other issues, this is about control — control of U.S. history, of shared culture and of public spaces. Why do MAGA Republicans become so enraged when some Americans choose to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”? Why do they go berserk when the College Board constructs an AP African American studies course?Of course, no one is forcing anyone to say “Happy Holidays.” Nor is anyone forcing children to enroll in an Advanced Placement course on African American studies (though doing so might prevent the next generation from going into the world ignorant about basic facts such as when the Civil War was fought).
Similarly, no one is preventing anyone from missing the pregame show or — God forbid! — the Super Bowl itself. So why the level of visceral anger at “Lift Every Voice and Sing”?
This is a manifestation of the resentment among many Americans that the way they understood their country is being “taken” from them. In their concept of the United States, America is a White and Christian country, and every other group is a footnote — peripheral to the majesty of the “real” American story.
Some might argue that not everyone who objects to “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is a white nationalist. But far too many people have become so attuned to the status quo that something new or different is off-putting. They should consider the source of that irritation. What is wrong with allowing a richer, fuller expression of American identity? Why shouldn’t others who are not culturally dominant have their own source of patriotic devotion?
As Robert P. Jones, head of the Public Religion Research Institute, tells me, the song is “hopeful about an American future, but it does not trade in American myths of white Christian chosen-ness or innocence.” More than a “competing national anthem,” he adds, it is a “more sober, more honest vision of America — a journey toward an unrealized future rather than a defense of an innocent past.”
Certainly, there should be enough time in the hours and hours allotted to the Super Bowl spectacle for such a moving tribute extolling devotion to God and country. As the last lines of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” proclaim, “May we forever stand true to our God, true to our native land.”
Amen."
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The Curve of the World: Out Today!
The Curve of the World by Vonda McIntyre (Aqueduct: Seattle, 2026)
Buy the Book
From the Publisher | Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes and Noble
About the Book, and Vonda
The Curve of the World is Vonda McIntyre’s last gift to us, and it is magnificent. In this alternate history of the ancient world, where Minoans build a globe-spanning trading community, Vonda has taken up the challenge of her good friend Ursula K. Le Guin and become a dreamer of a wider reality, creating a glorious vision of a working world. The Curve of the World is the sum and summit of all Vonda McIntyre was as a writer and as a human being, a marvellous vision of how the world might have been, perhaps once was, and might, still, one day be. The world needs this novel.
But don’t read this book because it’s Good For You. Read it because it’s a real story about a genuine alternative to our world featuring true grownups—and all the delights and, well, ‘learning opportunities’ attendant on that. Seriously, reading this book feels like sitting by a driftwood fire at dusk, while the waves slish and salt-scented breeze dries the tears of joy on your cheeks—the kind of joy that comes from feeling peace and rightness and rootedness in a world just waiting for you to walk it.
Don’t take my word for it. Go read this review on Salon Futura, or this Starred Review in Publisher’s Weekly. Or see below for other writers’ praise.
I loved Vonda. In 2019 she fought to stay alive to do her final rewrite—of a novel she began in the early aughts but then abandoned when she felt dispirited by her career. (I have a lot to say about this, but not here.) Kelley and I were delighted when sometime after she was Guest of Honour at the 2015 Worldcon (2016? I don’t remember) she told us she was working on it again. Not so very long after that, she gave us the first complete draft to read. We did, and as always between long-time writer friends, we had many long conversations about what worked and what could be better.
She went back to work on it again. But then she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and suddenly the clock was ticking—ticking very, very fast.
Vonda fought to stay alive to finished this book. It was just days after she saved the file that she entered the final days of round-the-clock hospice care at home. Sadly, my father died during that time so we couldn’t be here for her final days—we had to fly to the UK to deal with family stuff, Dad’s estate etc—but we’d said our goodbyes. I only wish she could be here to see this day. Please buy the book.
Praise
”A gentle elegiac tone pervades this stunning posthumous historical fantasy from multi–Hugo and Nebula award winner McIntyre (Dreamsnake), who died in 2019. In ancient Crete, Iakinthu, a former bull dancer, is at the apex of her second profession as chief diplomat-trader of her seafaring nation. To fulfill Minoan tradition, she must take her adopted son, Rhenthizu, to meet his birth mother in a faraway land no Minoan has ever visited, after which he will choose which woman to live with. Their epic journey plays out as a feminist odyssey through six distinctive and mostly matriarchal cultures, superbly constructed around permutations of myth and legend. McIntyre’s scene-setting is lush and immersive, and her finely drawn, women-led cast leaps off the page as they confront obstacles with wit and wisdom. This sensitive and captivating voyage of discovery is a fitting capstone to a remarkable career.”
—Publishers Weekly, May 2026“The Curve of the World is magnificent, a glorious vision of a wider reality: a world in which global commerce and fairness are not a contradiction in terms. It is the sum and summit of all Vonda McIntyre was as a writer and human being, her last, best gift to a world in sore need of hope.”
—Nicola Griffith, author of Ammonite and Hild“I loved this book! It’s a glorious adventure with a heart as big as the world! Iakinthu Gephyra is a diplomat, trader, explorer, and the ‘bridge between people’ who strives to understand and accept cultures that are not her own. To find the family of her adopted child, she sets forth on the most difficult voyage her people have ever undertaken, sailing beyond the Sunset Sea and across the Nameless Ocean. A fascinating exploration of culture, family, and identity, about finding your way and discovering where you belong.”
—Pat Murphy, author The Adventures of Mary Darling and The Wild Girls“A vivid, luminous novel. As Minoan traders travel the ancient world, McIntyre brings to richly imagined life six distinctive cultures of antiquity, all touched with magic. The characters are so real that I could see, feel, even smell them, and I passionately wanted each to succeed at their various quests. The Curve Of The World is a wonderful capstone to a storied career.”
—Nancy Kress, author of Observer“Vonda takes us from the known world, a world with known dangers and known comforts, into the unknown, the wild but civilized West. As she herself looked ahead to the journey from life into death, she opens to us a world filled with unrealized possibilities. This is a marvelous book of the civilizations that could have been.”
—Eileen Gunn, author of Stable Strategies for Middle Management and Questionable Practices“The Curve of the World is full of daring, and rich and rare invention, but feeling true, as far as can be known, to the mysterious, apparently/ probably women-centered, ancient Minoan culture. I loved the giving of beautiful gifts, between chance voyagers meeting on the ocean. So much better than mere trade. A wonderful book.”
#bookBirthday #books #novel #publication #THECURVEOFTHEWORLD #VONDANMCINTYRE
—Gwyneth Jones, author of Life and Bold as Love -
The Curve of the World: Out Today!
The Curve of the World by Vonda McIntyre (Aqueduct: Seattle, 2026)
Buy the Book
From the Publisher | Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes and Noble
About the Book, and Vonda
The Curve of the World is Vonda McIntyre’s last gift to us, and it is magnificent. In this alternate history of the ancient world, where Minoans build a globe-spanning trading community, Vonda has taken up the challenge of her good friend Ursula K. Le Guin and become a dreamer of a wider reality, creating a glorious vision of a working world. The Curve of the World is the sum and summit of all Vonda McIntyre was as a writer and as a human being, a marvellous vision of how the world might have been, perhaps once was, and might, still, one day be. The world needs this novel.
But don’t read this book because it’s Good For You. Read it because it’s a real story about a genuine alternative to our world featuring true grownups—and all the delights and, well, ‘learning opportunities’ attendant on that. Seriously, reading this book feels like sitting by a driftwood fire at dusk, while the waves slish and salt-scented breeze dries the tears of joy on your cheeks—the kind of joy that comes from feeling peace and rightness and rootedness in a world just waiting for you to walk it.
Don’t take my word for it. Go read this review on Salon Futura, or this Starred Review in Publisher’s Weekly. Or see below for other writers’ praise.
I loved Vonda. In 2019 she fought to stay alive to do her final rewrite—of a novel she began in the early aughts but then abandoned when she felt dispirited by her career. (I have a lot to say about this, but not here.) Kelley and I were delighted when sometime after she was Guest of Honour at the 2015 Worldcon (2016? I don’t remember) she told us she was working on it again. Not so very long after that, she gave us the first complete draft to read. We did, and as always between long-time writer friends, we had many long conversations about what worked and what could be better.
She went back to work on it again. But then she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and suddenly the clock was ticking—ticking very, very fast.
Vonda fought to stay alive to finished this book. It was just days after she saved the file that she entered the final days of round-the-clock hospice care at home. Sadly, my father died during that time so we couldn’t be here for her final days—we had to fly to the UK to deal with family stuff, Dad’s estate etc—but we’d said our goodbyes. I only wish she could be here to see this day. Please buy the book.
Praise
”A gentle elegiac tone pervades this stunning posthumous historical fantasy from multi–Hugo and Nebula award winner McIntyre (Dreamsnake), who died in 2019. In ancient Crete, Iakinthu, a former bull dancer, is at the apex of her second profession as chief diplomat-trader of her seafaring nation. To fulfill Minoan tradition, she must take her adopted son, Rhenthizu, to meet his birth mother in a faraway land no Minoan has ever visited, after which he will choose which woman to live with. Their epic journey plays out as a feminist odyssey through six distinctive and mostly matriarchal cultures, superbly constructed around permutations of myth and legend. McIntyre’s scene-setting is lush and immersive, and her finely drawn, women-led cast leaps off the page as they confront obstacles with wit and wisdom. This sensitive and captivating voyage of discovery is a fitting capstone to a remarkable career.”
—Publishers Weekly, May 2026“The Curve of the World is magnificent, a glorious vision of a wider reality: a world in which global commerce and fairness are not a contradiction in terms. It is the sum and summit of all Vonda McIntyre was as a writer and human being, her last, best gift to a world in sore need of hope.”
—Nicola Griffith, author of Ammonite and Hild“I loved this book! It’s a glorious adventure with a heart as big as the world! Iakinthu Gephyra is a diplomat, trader, explorer, and the ‘bridge between people’ who strives to understand and accept cultures that are not her own. To find the family of her adopted child, she sets forth on the most difficult voyage her people have ever undertaken, sailing beyond the Sunset Sea and across the Nameless Ocean. A fascinating exploration of culture, family, and identity, about finding your way and discovering where you belong.”
—Pat Murphy, author The Adventures of Mary Darling and The Wild Girls“A vivid, luminous novel. As Minoan traders travel the ancient world, McIntyre brings to richly imagined life six distinctive cultures of antiquity, all touched with magic. The characters are so real that I could see, feel, even smell them, and I passionately wanted each to succeed at their various quests. The Curve Of The World is a wonderful capstone to a storied career.”
—Nancy Kress, author of Observer“Vonda takes us from the known world, a world with known dangers and known comforts, into the unknown, the wild but civilized West. As she herself looked ahead to the journey from life into death, she opens to us a world filled with unrealized possibilities. This is a marvelous book of the civilizations that could have been.”
—Eileen Gunn, author of Stable Strategies for Middle Management and Questionable Practices“The Curve of the World is full of daring, and rich and rare invention, but feeling true, as far as can be known, to the mysterious, apparently/ probably women-centered, ancient Minoan culture. I loved the giving of beautiful gifts, between chance voyagers meeting on the ocean. So much better than mere trade. A wonderful book.”
#bookBirthday #books #novel #publication #THECURVEOFTHEWORLD #VONDANMCINTYRE
—Gwyneth Jones, author of Life and Bold as Love -
The Curve of the World: Out Today!
The Curve of the World by Vonda McIntyre (Aqueduct: Seattle, 2026)
Buy the Book
From the Publisher | Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes and Noble
About the Book, and Vonda
The Curve of the World is Vonda McIntyre’s last gift to us, and it is magnificent. In this alternate history of the ancient world, where Minoans build a globe-spanning trading community, Vonda has taken up the challenge of her good friend Ursula K. Le Guin and become a dreamer of a wider reality, creating a glorious vision of a working world. The Curve of the World is the sum and summit of all Vonda McIntyre was as a writer and as a human being, a marvellous vision of how the world might have been, perhaps once was, and might, still, one day be. The world needs this novel.
But don’t read this book because it’s Good For You. Read it because it’s a real story about a genuine alternative to our world featuring true grownups—and all the delights and, well, ‘learning opportunities’ attendant on that. Seriously, reading this book feels like sitting by a driftwood fire at dusk, while the waves slish and salt-scented breeze dries the tears of joy on your cheeks—the kind of joy that comes from feeling peace and rightness and rootedness in a world just waiting for you to walk it.
Don’t take my word for it. Go read this review on Salon Futura, or this Starred Review in Publisher’s Weekly. Or see below for other writers’ praise.
I loved Vonda. In 2019 she fought to stay alive to do her final rewrite—of a novel she began in the early aughts but then abandoned when she felt dispirited by her career. (I have a lot to say about this, but not here.) Kelley and I were delighted when sometime after she was Guest of Honour at the 2015 Worldcon (2016? I don’t remember) she told us she was working on it again. Not so very long after that, she gave us the first complete draft to read. We did, and as always between long-time writer friends, we had many long conversations about what worked and what could be better.
She went back to work on it again. But then she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and suddenly the clock was ticking—ticking very, very fast.
Vonda fought to stay alive to finished this book. It was just days after she saved the file that she entered the final days of round-the-clock hospice care at home. Sadly, my father died during that time so we couldn’t be here for her final days—we had to fly to the UK to deal with family stuff, Dad’s estate etc—but we’d said our goodbyes. I only wish she could be here to see this day. Please buy the book.
Praise
”A gentle elegiac tone pervades this stunning posthumous historical fantasy from multi–Hugo and Nebula award winner McIntyre (Dreamsnake), who died in 2019. In ancient Crete, Iakinthu, a former bull dancer, is at the apex of her second profession as chief diplomat-trader of her seafaring nation. To fulfill Minoan tradition, she must take her adopted son, Rhenthizu, to meet his birth mother in a faraway land no Minoan has ever visited, after which he will choose which woman to live with. Their epic journey plays out as a feminist odyssey through six distinctive and mostly matriarchal cultures, superbly constructed around permutations of myth and legend. McIntyre’s scene-setting is lush and immersive, and her finely drawn, women-led cast leaps off the page as they confront obstacles with wit and wisdom. This sensitive and captivating voyage of discovery is a fitting capstone to a remarkable career.”
—Publishers Weekly, May 2026“The Curve of the World is magnificent, a glorious vision of a wider reality: a world in which global commerce and fairness are not a contradiction in terms. It is the sum and summit of all Vonda McIntyre was as a writer and human being, her last, best gift to a world in sore need of hope.”
—Nicola Griffith, author of Ammonite and Hild“I loved this book! It’s a glorious adventure with a heart as big as the world! Iakinthu Gephyra is a diplomat, trader, explorer, and the ‘bridge between people’ who strives to understand and accept cultures that are not her own. To find the family of her adopted child, she sets forth on the most difficult voyage her people have ever undertaken, sailing beyond the Sunset Sea and across the Nameless Ocean. A fascinating exploration of culture, family, and identity, about finding your way and discovering where you belong.”
—Pat Murphy, author The Adventures of Mary Darling and The Wild Girls“A vivid, luminous novel. As Minoan traders travel the ancient world, McIntyre brings to richly imagined life six distinctive cultures of antiquity, all touched with magic. The characters are so real that I could see, feel, even smell them, and I passionately wanted each to succeed at their various quests. The Curve Of The World is a wonderful capstone to a storied career.”
—Nancy Kress, author of Observer“Vonda takes us from the known world, a world with known dangers and known comforts, into the unknown, the wild but civilized West. As she herself looked ahead to the journey from life into death, she opens to us a world filled with unrealized possibilities. This is a marvelous book of the civilizations that could have been.”
—Eileen Gunn, author of Stable Strategies for Middle Management and Questionable Practices“The Curve of the World is full of daring, and rich and rare invention, but feeling true, as far as can be known, to the mysterious, apparently/ probably women-centered, ancient Minoan culture. I loved the giving of beautiful gifts, between chance voyagers meeting on the ocean. So much better than mere trade. A wonderful book.”
#bookBirthday #books #novel #publication #THECURVEOFTHEWORLD #VONDANMCINTYRE
—Gwyneth Jones, author of Life and Bold as Love -
The Curve of the World: Out Today!
The Curve of the World by Vonda McIntyre (Aqueduct: Seattle, 2026)
Buy the Book
From the Publisher | Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes and Noble
About the Book, and Vonda
The Curve of the World is Vonda McIntyre’s last gift to us, and it is magnificent. In this alternate history of the ancient world, where Minoans build a globe-spanning trading community, Vonda has taken up the challenge of her good friend Ursula K. Le Guin and become a dreamer of a wider reality, creating a glorious vision of a working world. The Curve of the World is the sum and summit of all Vonda McIntyre was as a writer and as a human being, a marvellous vision of how the world might have been, perhaps once was, and might, still, one day be. The world needs this novel.
But don’t read this book because it’s Good For You. Read it because it’s a real story about a genuine alternative to our world featuring true grownups—and all the delights and, well, ‘learning opportunities’ attendant on that. Seriously, reading this book feels like sitting by a driftwood fire at dusk, while the waves slish and salt-scented breeze dries the tears of joy on your cheeks—the kind of joy that comes from feeling peace and rightness and rootedness in a world just waiting for you to walk it.
Don’t take my word for it. Go read this review on Salon Futura, or this Starred Review in Publisher’s Weekly. Or see below for other writers’ praise.
I loved Vonda. In 2019 she fought to stay alive to do her final rewrite—of a novel she began in the early aughts but then abandoned when she felt dispirited by her career. (I have a lot to say about this, but not here.) Kelley and I were delighted when sometime after she was Guest of Honour at the 2015 Worldcon (2016? I don’t remember) she told us she was working on it again. Not so very long after that, she gave us the first complete draft to read. We did, and as always between long-time writer friends, we had many long conversations about what worked and what could be better.
She went back to work on it again. But then she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and suddenly the clock was ticking—ticking very, very fast.
Vonda fought to stay alive to finished this book. It was just days after she saved the file that she entered the final days of round-the-clock hospice care at home. Sadly, my father died during that time so we couldn’t be here for her final days—we had to fly to the UK to deal with family stuff, Dad’s estate etc—but we’d said our goodbyes. I only wish she could be here to see this day. Please buy the book.
Praise
”A gentle elegiac tone pervades this stunning posthumous historical fantasy from multi–Hugo and Nebula award winner McIntyre (Dreamsnake), who died in 2019. In ancient Crete, Iakinthu, a former bull dancer, is at the apex of her second profession as chief diplomat-trader of her seafaring nation. To fulfill Minoan tradition, she must take her adopted son, Rhenthizu, to meet his birth mother in a faraway land no Minoan has ever visited, after which he will choose which woman to live with. Their epic journey plays out as a feminist odyssey through six distinctive and mostly matriarchal cultures, superbly constructed around permutations of myth and legend. McIntyre’s scene-setting is lush and immersive, and her finely drawn, women-led cast leaps off the page as they confront obstacles with wit and wisdom. This sensitive and captivating voyage of discovery is a fitting capstone to a remarkable career.”
—Publishers Weekly, May 2026“The Curve of the World is magnificent, a glorious vision of a wider reality: a world in which global commerce and fairness are not a contradiction in terms. It is the sum and summit of all Vonda McIntyre was as a writer and human being, her last, best gift to a world in sore need of hope.”
—Nicola Griffith, author of Ammonite and Hild“I loved this book! It’s a glorious adventure with a heart as big as the world! Iakinthu Gephyra is a diplomat, trader, explorer, and the ‘bridge between people’ who strives to understand and accept cultures that are not her own. To find the family of her adopted child, she sets forth on the most difficult voyage her people have ever undertaken, sailing beyond the Sunset Sea and across the Nameless Ocean. A fascinating exploration of culture, family, and identity, about finding your way and discovering where you belong.”
—Pat Murphy, author The Adventures of Mary Darling and The Wild Girls“A vivid, luminous novel. As Minoan traders travel the ancient world, McIntyre brings to richly imagined life six distinctive cultures of antiquity, all touched with magic. The characters are so real that I could see, feel, even smell them, and I passionately wanted each to succeed at their various quests. The Curve Of The World is a wonderful capstone to a storied career.”
—Nancy Kress, author of Observer“Vonda takes us from the known world, a world with known dangers and known comforts, into the unknown, the wild but civilized West. As she herself looked ahead to the journey from life into death, she opens to us a world filled with unrealized possibilities. This is a marvelous book of the civilizations that could have been.”
—Eileen Gunn, author of Stable Strategies for Middle Management and Questionable Practices“The Curve of the World is full of daring, and rich and rare invention, but feeling true, as far as can be known, to the mysterious, apparently/ probably women-centered, ancient Minoan culture. I loved the giving of beautiful gifts, between chance voyagers meeting on the ocean. So much better than mere trade. A wonderful book.”
#bookBirthday #books #novel #publication #THECURVEOFTHEWORLD #VONDANMCINTYRE
—Gwyneth Jones, author of Life and Bold as Love -
The Curve of the World: Out Today!
The Curve of the World by Vonda McIntyre (Aqueduct: Seattle, 2026)
Buy the Book
From the Publisher | Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes and Noble
About the Book, and Vonda
The Curve of the World is Vonda McIntyre’s last gift to us, and it is magnificent. In this alternate history of the ancient world, where Minoans build a globe-spanning trading community, Vonda has taken up the challenge of her good friend Ursula K. Le Guin and become a dreamer of a wider reality, creating a glorious vision of a working world. The Curve of the World is the sum and summit of all Vonda McIntyre was as a writer and as a human being, a marvellous vision of how the world might have been, perhaps once was, and might, still, one day be. The world needs this novel.
But don’t read this book because it’s Good For You. Read it because it’s a real story about a genuine alternative to our world featuring true grownups—and all the delights and, well, ‘learning opportunities’ attendant on that. Seriously, reading this book feels like sitting by a driftwood fire at dusk, while the waves slish and salt-scented breeze dries the tears of joy on your cheeks—the kind of joy that comes from feeling peace and rightness and rootedness in a world just waiting for you to walk it.
Don’t take my word for it. Go read this review on Salon Futura, or this Starred Review in Publisher’s Weekly. Or see below for other writers’ praise.
I loved Vonda. In 2019 she fought to stay alive to do her final rewrite—of a novel she began in the early aughts but then abandoned when she felt dispirited by her career. (I have a lot to say about this, but not here.) Kelley and I were delighted when sometime after she was Guest of Honour at the 2015 Worldcon (2016? I don’t remember) she told us she was working on it again. Not so very long after that, she gave us the first complete draft to read. We did, and as always between long-time writer friends, we had many long conversations about what worked and what could be better.
She went back to work on it again. But then she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and suddenly the clock was ticking—ticking very, very fast.
Vonda fought to stay alive to finished this book. It was just days after she saved the file that she entered the final days of round-the-clock hospice care at home. Sadly, my father died during that time so we couldn’t be here for her final days—we had to fly to the UK to deal with family stuff, Dad’s estate etc—but we’d said our goodbyes. I only wish she could be here to see this day. Please buy the book.
Praise
”A gentle elegiac tone pervades this stunning posthumous historical fantasy from multi–Hugo and Nebula award winner McIntyre (Dreamsnake), who died in 2019. In ancient Crete, Iakinthu, a former bull dancer, is at the apex of her second profession as chief diplomat-trader of her seafaring nation. To fulfill Minoan tradition, she must take her adopted son, Rhenthizu, to meet his birth mother in a faraway land no Minoan has ever visited, after which he will choose which woman to live with. Their epic journey plays out as a feminist odyssey through six distinctive and mostly matriarchal cultures, superbly constructed around permutations of myth and legend. McIntyre’s scene-setting is lush and immersive, and her finely drawn, women-led cast leaps off the page as they confront obstacles with wit and wisdom. This sensitive and captivating voyage of discovery is a fitting capstone to a remarkable career.”
—Publishers Weekly, May 2026“The Curve of the World is magnificent, a glorious vision of a wider reality: a world in which global commerce and fairness are not a contradiction in terms. It is the sum and summit of all Vonda McIntyre was as a writer and human being, her last, best gift to a world in sore need of hope.”
—Nicola Griffith, author of Ammonite and Hild“I loved this book! It’s a glorious adventure with a heart as big as the world! Iakinthu Gephyra is a diplomat, trader, explorer, and the ‘bridge between people’ who strives to understand and accept cultures that are not her own. To find the family of her adopted child, she sets forth on the most difficult voyage her people have ever undertaken, sailing beyond the Sunset Sea and across the Nameless Ocean. A fascinating exploration of culture, family, and identity, about finding your way and discovering where you belong.”
—Pat Murphy, author The Adventures of Mary Darling and The Wild Girls“A vivid, luminous novel. As Minoan traders travel the ancient world, McIntyre brings to richly imagined life six distinctive cultures of antiquity, all touched with magic. The characters are so real that I could see, feel, even smell them, and I passionately wanted each to succeed at their various quests. The Curve Of The World is a wonderful capstone to a storied career.”
—Nancy Kress, author of Observer“Vonda takes us from the known world, a world with known dangers and known comforts, into the unknown, the wild but civilized West. As she herself looked ahead to the journey from life into death, she opens to us a world filled with unrealized possibilities. This is a marvelous book of the civilizations that could have been.”
—Eileen Gunn, author of Stable Strategies for Middle Management and Questionable Practices“The Curve of the World is full of daring, and rich and rare invention, but feeling true, as far as can be known, to the mysterious, apparently/ probably women-centered, ancient Minoan culture. I loved the giving of beautiful gifts, between chance voyagers meeting on the ocean. So much better than mere trade. A wonderful book.”
#bookBirthday #books #novel #publication #THECURVEOFTHEWORLD #VONDANMCINTYRE
—Gwyneth Jones, author of Life and Bold as Love -
The Day the Micro-Rotor Was Introduced: Buren Super Slender and Universal Microtor
On February 18, 1958, representatives from Buren Watch Company and Universal Genève announced “the greatest technical advance in 30 years,” the micro-rotor automatic watch movement. This joint announcement, and the actions of the inventors and companies before and after it, contradict the oft-repeated story of conflict between them. In fact, the invention and introduction was friendly, thanks to the cordial Hans Kocher, who invented the micro-rotor yet allowed others to share the limelight and the credit.
Buren and Universal collaborated in the simultaneous introduction of the micro-rotor automatic movement in 1958Debunking the Legend
Like so many areas of watchmaking history, the story of the micro-rotor automatic watch is rich with folklore. And like too many other topics, most of those stories are flat-out wrong. I have been hearing this particular story for years, and was shocked to find that it is entirely contradicted by the plain facts published at the time.
Here’s the gist of what I was told about the launch of the Buren and Universal micro-rotor movements:
- Buren was first to market, introducing their micro-rotor movement in 1957 or maybe even 1954
- Universal infringed on Buren’s patent, didn’t have the technical expertise to design a new movement, and maybe never even had a patent of their own
- Buren sued Universal or tried to block them from marketing the Microtor
- And inexplicably that Universal actually produced the Buren movement because they couldn’t get it to work
None of this is remotely true.
- Technician-watchmaker Hans Kocher of Buren Watch Company invented the micro-rotor movement, filing a patent in 1954
- Jean-Michel Froidevaux and Fred Bandi, skilled technician-watchmakers at Universal, independently invented their own micro-rotor technology, filing a patent just 11 months later
- Kocher and Bandi collaborated on the launch, co-authoring an article on the technology and writing about each other’s work in supportive terms
- Buren and Universal announced their work at a joint press conference on February 18, 1958 and released their micro-rotor watches at the Basel Fair that year
- The companies targeted different markets and there is no sign of a lawsuit or any acrimony
- Both companies, along with Piaget, continued actively to develop micro-rotor movement technology for over a decade
- The technology was abandoned after both were purchased by American companies more interested in quartz electronic watches
So let’s sit back and enjoy the true story of the development of the micro-rotor watch movement!
Coverage of the joint 1958 launch of the Buren Super Slender and Universal Microtor
Image: Europa Star Eastern Jeweler 46, 1958The Rise of Self-Winding Watches
Le Locle watchmaker Abraham-Louis Perrelet is usually credited for building the first self-winding watch in the 1770s. Many1 have questioned the primacy of Perrelet’s “montre à secousses” (“shaking watch”), but many subsequent watchmakers, including Abraham-Louis Breguet, Louis Recordin, and the Jaquet-Droz family, claimed to have been inspired by his design. Perrelet’s watch used a weight mounted to the side of the movement, causing it to shake when moved. The concept of automatic winding (and even the name “perpetual”) were widely known through the 19th century but such a complex mechanism was deemed unnecessary to bring to market.
Harwood saw a market for a sealed self-winding watchAfter World War I, Englishman John Harwood saw a need for self-winding watch. Soldiers were increasingly wearing wristwatches, and these were often damaged by moisture and dust. Inspired by a playground see-saw, Harwood independently2 invented a rocking weight segment that could wind the watch without a hole in the case. He patented the concept in 1923, built a prototype using a Blancpain movement, and brought the Harwood Perpetual to market with the help of A. Schild and Fortis of Grenchen. The watch only went into production late in the decade, and just a few thousand were produced before the Great Depression soon spelled the end.
You might also enjoy reading about “The Backward Evolution of the Rotating Bezel“
Harwood showed that the advent of the wristwatch had created customer demand for a self-winding movement, and the race was on to deliver a more practical one. I previously wrote about Eugène Meylan’s automatic winding mechanism, which was sold by Glycine starting in 1931. Another early player in automatic watches was Blancpain, which built a patented sliding watch called the Rolls for the French firm, Léon Hatot. Another modestly-successful automatic watch in this period was the Wig-Wag, which used the motion of the movement relative to the strap to wind the watch. But these oddball automatics soon fell by the wayside3.
It was the Rolex Oyster Perpetual that brought together all of the elements of the modern automatic wristwatch. Introduced about 19344, Rolex used a centrally-mounted rotor and winding mechanism stacked on top of their excellent movement. This technique was impractical in a pocket watch (which tended to sit vertically in a pocket) but made much more sense when strapped to a wrist. But the Rolex Oyster Perpetual movement was so thick it had to be mounted in a so-called “bubble-back” expanded case.
The Rolex Oyster Perpetual really was ahead of its time!
Image: Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie, January 1936Seeing their success, especially though World War II, every Swiss company was racing to compete with Rolex with their own waterproof automatic watch. Felsa’s 1947 Bidynator brought bi-directional winding to the table5, ETA’s 1948 Eternamatic showed the potential of a rotor supported by ball bearings6, and Patek Philippe developed a “circumferential” rotor that extended down and around the movement. But all of these mechanisms added thickness, even as stylish consumers of the 1950s demanded ever-thinner watches. But making a thin automatic watch was inconceivable until the late 1950s, and the slimmest offerings (Zenith’s Cal. 133 and Movado’s Cal. 331) were bumper automatic movements, thin by accident rather than intentional design.
Hans Kocher and the Micro-Rotor
Hans Kocher grew up in the shadow of the H. Williamson watch factory in Büren an der Aare, Switzerland. He ran errands for the company as a young boy, and his work ethic so impressed the company’s chairman that he was sent to London to learn the business. But Kocher’s life took a turn when he met Austrian-born Josefine Rinner, a confectionary entrepreneur living in Zürich. The couple moved to Spain after the war, and their son (also named Hans) was born there in 1919. Kocher only settled down in 1923, marrying Josefine and returning to Bienne to work for the Williamson company. But the factory was bankrupt by 1931, with a group of local businessmen purchasing it. They invited Hans Kocher to return to Büren to take over management of the factory in 1932, and he spent the rest of his career there.
This rotor-in-a-rotor concept shows Kocher’s progress of inventionBut this is the story of the younger Hans Kocher, who apprenticed in Büren before studying at the Technical school in Bienne. Following World War II, young Hans Kocher moved to Saint-Imier and worked in the technical department of the nearby Cortébert Watch Company. He was a wunderkind, filing patents, developing a central-seconds movement, and reorganizing the company’s manufacturing process. In 1951, after he proved himself, Kocher returned home to become technical director of the Buren Watch Company7.
Kocher believed that technology could elevate Buren in the competitive Swiss watch market and decided to build the best-possible automatic watch movement. Although many aspects of automatic winding were already patented by others, he saw an opportunity to address some of the shortcomings of contemporary automatic watches. For example, Kocher invented a mechanism to allow an automatic watch to be wound by hand, addressing widespread anxiety about power reserve. He also invented a few different bi-directional winding mechanisms and a more effective jewel pivot.
Another Kocher invention seemed to go nowhere: He embedded a tiny rotor inside the main winding rotor, creating a “Tilt-A-Whirl” effect to accelerate startup. Although this didn’t make it into production, this was the first glimpse of a micro-rotor winding system. A month later, Kocher filed a patent that he would later call his greatest work.
Hans Kocher’s design for Buren had a symmetry lacking in the production movementOn June 21, 1954, Buren Watch Company filed a patent for a fully-realized micro-rotor automatic watch movement. Rather than adding a rotor on top of an existing movement, Hans Kocher redesigned the entire ebauche, reorganizing the wheel train to sink a tiny rotor inside. This was much more than a re-packaging effort, with nearly every component re-designed.
It would take nearly four years of development to bring the micro-rotor movement to market. The Swiss government had largely restricted companies from producing their own ebauches, but this was allowed for in-house and complicated movements. And the micro-rotor was indeed a very complicated movement, requiring entirely new design and tooling to be installed at the factory in Büren!
Kocher’s original micro-rotor movement design was elegant and symmetrical, already quite well-developed even in 1954. He called it a “planetary rotor” because he thought it resembled the planetary gearsets in automatic transmissions. But he spent years working on the construction and mechanics of the rotor and the exact arrangement of the wheels and bridges. And he soon had an unexpected collaborator.
Universal, Froidevaux, and Bandi
On May 27, 1955, Manufacture des Montres Universal of Geneva filed a remarkably similar patent for a micro-rotor movement. This was 11 months after Buren’s filing, yet three years before either patent would be published. Although the Swiss patent is un-signed, the American patent specifies that the inventors were Jean-Michel Froidevaux and Fred Bandi, two technician-watchmakers even younger than Hans Kocher. Both were incredibly talented and had made numerous inventions related to automatic watch winding and other areas of horology.
Patek Philippe filed for a patent their own micro-rotor movement in 1975, bringing their Cal. 240 to market a few years later. It has been continually updated and is one of the most-loved movements by enthusiasts like me. Chopard Manufacture leaned into the micro-rotor concept with the launch of the L.U.C movements in 1997, and it remains a highlight of the company’s offerings. A new Universal Genève launched in 2005, bringing a new Microtor (Cal. UG-100) to market in 2006. Schwarz Etienne and Parmigiani Fleurier both introduced new micro-rotor movements in 2010, and both supply these to other fine watch makers to this day. Armin Strom, Hermès, Girard-Perregaux, Bulgari, and many others have also released high-end micro-rotor movements. And Piaget never stopped developing their micro-rotor movements.
The original Universal design is similar to Büren’s at a glance but obviously not derivativeAt a glance, the Universal patent looks very similar to Buren’s, but a closer examination shows that nearly every aspect of the design is different. The American patent authorities examined it closely, rejecting only the most broad claim made by Universal. Given these differences, and the evident skills and imagination of Froidevaux and Bandi, I believe that it was independently invented.
Froidevaux left Universal by 1956, just as the company was developing the micro-rotor watch movement for production. This was the same year that Universal opened its own new factory near Geneva, severing ties with the chronograph factory in Ponts-de-Martel that had been the source of complicated in-house movements for Universal since 1941. The new Carouge-Genève factory was likely outfitted with new machinery to produce the micro-rotor, along with other in-house movements developed by Fred Bandi.
It is very likely that the amiable Hans Kocher knew of the work underway in Geneva by this time, and he may have offered Fred Bandi some technical advice. Indeed, we know that the two collaborated on a paper outlining the benefits of the micro-rotor movement, which was published in the September/October 1957 edition of Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie. They cite the improvements gained by this design in reducing movement height, stress on the rotor bearings, and ease of servicing.
Hans Kocher of Buren and Fred Bandi of Universal jointly announced the micro-rotor movement in this 1957 article in the Journal Suisse d’HorlogerieUp this point the thinnest automatic watch movements (Zénith’s Cal. 133 and Movado’s Cal. 331) had “bumper” movements rather than a free rotor. This is no surprise – the “sandwich stack” required to have a free rotor was inherently thicker than a winding mass that sat on the same plane as the wheel train and balance. But no bumper movement could match a micro-rotor embedded completely into the ebauche. Although not much thinner than hand-winding movements, the Büren and Universal movements were 20% thinner than most automatics at 4.1 to 4.2 mm8.
The Joint Release of the Buren Super Slender and Universal Microtor
On February 18, 1958, Raoul Perret of Universal Genève and Hans Kocher of the Buren Watch Company held a joint press conference in Geneva to announce “the greatest technical advance in 30 years.” Journalists from the major Swiss papers and industry journals learned about the revolutionary new micro-rotor technology, that would enable the companies to deliver the thinnest self-winding watches in the world. The companies promised that new watches using these movements would be released at the Basel Fair in April.
Ten days before the fair, on April 2, 1958, the Swiss paper Neue Zürcher Zeitung published an article with more detail on the technology of these new movements. Noting that “the fundamental concept behind this novel winding mechanism is identical in both designs,” the article praises both companies’ products, noting that “the specific technical solutions employed differ significantly.” This article was written by Fred Bandi, Technical Director for Universal Genève. Hans Kocher also wrote articles about the two companies’ launches, both independently and jointly with Bandi.
This 1958 advertisement, coinciding with the Basel Fair, shows both the Universal and Buren logos. The example preserved in The Watch Library even features a hand-written formula for the moment of inertia of a solid rotor, likely penned by a curious watchmaker!Finally, on April 12, 1958, the Basel Fair opened, with both companies showcasing watches housing their new micro-rotor movements. They even placed a joint advertisement in the Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie, featuring the logos of both companies.
The Büren showcase focused on the theme of “universality”The Buren Watch Company showed off their new Super Slender watch line at the fair, featuring Cal. 1000. This was a new ultra-thin watch line with a case meant to make the most of their “thinnest-ever” automatic watch movement. Confusingly, the company’s Basel Fair booth was a generic paean to post-war globalization, dedicated to the theme “l’universalité.” The new Super Slender movement was depicted on a small card at the corner, with the ultra-thin watches arranged among other more mundane products.
The Universal Genève display was dedicated to the Microtor Universal used the Microtor movement in the famous PolerouterUniversal Genève presented a strong contrast, dedicating their entire display to the new Microtor movement. They even built a large model in a transparent plexiglass case, demonstrating the internal relationship between the micro-rotor and wheel train. The new Cal. 215 was used in an existing product line, the Polerouter (which had been introduced as “Polarouter” in 1954). Although Universal offered new dial designs for 1958, the Microtor’s slimmer profile was not leveraged for a watch that was notably thin.
Buren proudly proclaimed that their Super Slender was the thinnest automatic watch in the worldBoth watches were brought to market in the following months with no hint of production delays. They are widely seen and advertised over the next few years in press coverage, company advertising, and retail promotion. For example, an April 1958 ad for international retailer Turler lists the Universal Polerouter Microtor for 270 francs in steel or 820 francs in gold. Meanwhile, the Buren Super Slender was advertised in 1959 for 170 francs in steel or 185 francs for the model with a calendar complication, called Cal. 1001.
What Happened Next
Buren and Universal leaned heavily into their micro-rotor watch movements for the next few years, developing and updating them continually. And two more ultra-thin automatic movements appeared at Basel in 1959 and 1960: The Sandoz 333, which used a peripheral rotor movement designed by FHF, and Piaget’s knock-out 2.3 mm thin micro-rotor Cal. 12 P. But the introduction of the Bulova Accutron on October 25, 1960 upended the entire industry.
Buren modified the wheel train bridge in 1959Buren actually introduced two micro-rotor movements at Basel in 1958: The base Cal. 1000 was truly “super slender” at 4.2 mm, but they also showed Cal. 1001, which added a date complication and 0.6 mm thickness. Although not as revolutionary as the micro-rotor, Paul Marmier’s patented date mechanism was quite innovative. It used an eccentric cam to keep the advance finger safely back from the date wheel teeth to avoid the risk of damage. The date advanced in just 12 minutes at midnight, and the mechanism also allowed quicker setting of the date by moving the time back to 11:30.
By 1959 Buren added Cal. 1002 and 1003, which featured a thinner balance cock to make way for an elongated wheel train bridge screwed to the base plate for greater stability. The original Cal. 1000 and 1001 remained in production, however, into the 1960s.
The Universal Polerouter collection expanded in 1959 with the Jet and Date modelsUniversal added a date complication as well, though theirs added over 1 mm to the thickness of the base Cal. 215. This did not pose an issue because the Microtor was used in watches of more ordinary thickness like the Polerouter Date. But the Geneva company did finally lean into the thin profile of the basic Microtor movement with the new 1959 Polerouter Jet, boasting that it was as thin as a hand-winding watch and the thinnest waterproof automatic watch in the world. Universal put the Microtor-Calendrier movement on a diet over the next few years, beveling the edges and slimming it to 4.7 mm (once again 0.1 mm thinner than the competing Buren movement). And Universal proved the robustness of their movement by equipping members of the Swiss Greenland Expedition with Microtor-powered Polerouters during the International Geophysical Year.
Other watches had previously been advertised for their ultra-thin profile, including Omega’s Centenaire and Cyma’s Navystar, but Movado, Sandoz, and Piaget were the strongest contenders. Movado had claimed the crown for the thinnest watch in 1935 with the Novoplan and delivered the automatic Cal. 331 in 1952, which was just 4.3 mm thick thanks to a beveled bumper rotor.
The Sandoz 333 was supposed to be the thinnest automatic watch but was launched a year too lateSandoz announced the “thinnest waterproof watch” in 1954 with their hand-winding Cal. 55, allowing them to produce a 6.9 mm watch. And they saw an opportunity in a peripheral rotor concept under development at the Fabrique d’Horlogerie de Fontainemelon. Unaware of the micro-rotor8, Sandoz and FHF targeted the 1959 Basel Fair to launch this new ultra-thin automatic watch. Despite being upstaged, the Sandoz 333 remains the first peripheral-winding automatic watch to market.
Piaget claimed outright victory for the thinnest watch in 1957 with the 4 mm Ref. 904, housing the 2.0 mm Cal. 9 P. Valentin Piaget of their specialist movement maker Complications SA saw unrealized potential in the micro-rotor concept. His Cal. 12 P, patented in 1958 and announced at the Basel Fair in 1960, dispensed with the center wheel and radically sliced away the ebauche. Measuring just 2.3 mm thick, this movement allowed Piaget’s Ref. 12 watches to stay at just 4 mm thick overall. Piaget has remained committed to this design, producing Cal. 1200 to this day!
The 1965 Buren Intra Matic was a modern interpretation of the ultra-thin dress watch
Image: Europa Star 35, 1965Buren embraced Piaget’s ideas, and their Cal. 1280 was similarly stripped-down, coming in at just 2.85 mm thick. This was used in their modern Intra Matic9 line, launched at the Basel Fair in 1965. Variations with date and central seconds ranged up to 3.60 mm, still over half a millimeter thinner than their original Super Slender.
The Intramatic movement made history on March 3, 1969 when Hans Kocher10 and Gerald Dubois announced the Chronomatic movement, built on Buren’s micro-rotor ebauche. This would be the first Swiss automatic chronograph in customer hands, used by Breitling, Heuer, and Hamilton, which had purchased Buren in February of 1966. Hamilton-Buren was taken over by the SIHH group in 1971 and the once-great Büren factory was closed the following year, with all assets sold. This came just as the Chronomatic was gaining market traction and sadly just before the launch of Buren’s great Calbre 8211.
The Universal Golden Shadow was just 4 mm thick
Image: Eastern Jeweler 93, 1966Universal also collaborated with Piaget, filing a joint patent in March of 1959 for a slim ratcheting winding system for micro-rotor movements. They continually updated their Microtor movement line, culminating in the 1966 introduction of the re-designed Cal. 66. Unlike the hand-made Piaget Cal. 12 P, the new Universal and Buren movements were designed for mass production and daily wear. And Universal once again beat Buren’s mark, with their ebauche measuring just 2.50 mm thick. This time Universal leaned into the thinness of the movement, matching Piaget with a new Golden Shadow watch line just 4 mm thick.
Everything changed for Universal in August of 1966, as the Bulova Watch Company of New York purchased the company. Flush with cash from the Accutron, a global phenomenon never before seen in watchmaking, Bulova sought to solidify its control over the luxury watch industry by bringing the Geneva firm under its control. Universal continued production of the Microtor family into the 1970s and even developed the world’s thinnest quartz movement in 197512. But Bulova was slow to embrace quartz as the market for the Accutron evaporated. The Universal factory in Geneva was bankrupt by the late 1970s and was sold in 1983 to new investors.
The Micro-Rotor Lives On
The micro-rotor is not dead. Far from it: There are more micro-rotor movements on the market today than ever before!
Universal was re-launched as an upscale sister brand to Breitling on April 8, 2026 and two new Microtor movements form the core of the new offerings. The new double-barrel Polerouter Microtor is a lovely tribute to Hans Kocher, who was deeply involved in both innovations. And the new Compax Microtor movement recalls the pioneering Chronomatic movement.
Research Notes
- The question of whether Perrelet was the first to create a self-winding watch was a matter of great interest through the 20th century. Historian Alfred Chapuis uncovered many prior and subsequent designs, yet he concluded in his seminal book “La Montre Automatique Ancienne” that Perrelet absolutely deserved the credit. That being said, the self-winding watch “discovered” by Léon Leroy of Paris in 1949 may not have been created by Perrelet, according to a 1996 Europa Star article by Jean-Claude Nicolet with rebuttal by Jean-Claude Sabrier.
- Not being a watch industry insider, Harwood may have been completely unaware that dozens of watchmakers had developed self-winding watches for over a century prior to his invention. And L. Leroy of Paris had already produced a self-winding wristwatch a year before Harwood’s patent. But he was the first to recognize the market for a wristwatch with a sealed case and self-winding movement.
- The sliding weight concept was actually successfully revived by Pierce just after World War II. This “dissident” Moutier firm was unwilling to abide by the Swiss cartel’s production quotas, so they were blocked from working with nearly every other company. So they developed their own slim sliding-weight automatic, an amazing in-house chronograph movement, and more! In modern times we have seen another sliding-weight automatic, the Corum Golden Bridge Automatic.
- I’m not a Rolex expert, but I am confounded by the lack of definitive history for this most-important watchmaker. The earliest mention I could find of the Oyster Perpetual comes from Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie in September of 1934, and it was fully illustrated in January of 1936. Given that Rolex trademarked the name in 1932, I guess that places the introduction of the Rolex Perpetual movement in 1933 or 1934. It definitely wasn’t 1931, despite countless blog posts and Rolex’s own advertising.
- Incredibly, some of the earliest known self-winding pocket watch movements also have clever bi-directional winding solutions: The four controversial maybe-Perrelet movements have a pawl winding system similar to the much-later Pellaton and Magic Lever, and many of the “shaker” movements had bi-directional winding too. But Felsa’s elegant Bidynator inspired the whole industry to adopt this concept. Surprisingly, modern movements are dropping bi-directional winding, finding that it’s not actually all that useful.
- Ball bearing support for a winding rotor was patented in 1929. But these typically placed the bearings at the periphery, supporting the rotor itself. ETA’s original Eternamatic was a tiny movement for ladies watches so the engineers brought the ball bearings to the center. Seeing how well it worked, the “five balls” became the logo of Eterna!
- I should clarify that the name of the town is “Büren an der Aare” and it is commonly called “Büren”. But the brand name of the watch company, officially adopted by H. Williamson in 1916, was “Buren Watch Company” without the umlaut. This was generally used by the company through the 1960s, though they sometimes did include the umlaut in advertising and public communication. Confusingly, most patents list it using the Anglicized form of the name of the town, “Bueren Watch Company.” I try to be consistent (or perhaps confusing) and use “Büren” to refer to the town and “Buren” to refer to the company.
- Oops! The Fabrique d’Horlogerie de Fontainemelon was working on another thin automatic winding system at the same time, filing patents on their peripheral rotor on September 11, 1956. This was before the announcement or publication of the micro-rotor, and they no-doubt thought that their “Fontomatic” Cal. 65 would be the thinnest automatic movement at just 4.5 mm. This came to market in 1959 as the Sandoz 333, and advertisements for this latecomer specifically neglect to mention that number, which was surpassed a year earlier by both Buren and Universal.
- Buren trademarked “Intra Matic” in 1964 and used this name in the 1965 launch. But they also used “Intramatic” in this period, variously using both names. They had a sub-model called the “Intramatic Polestar” or “Intra Matic Pole-Star” in the 1960s as well, and I can’t imagine Universal loved this name.
- This would be Hans Kocher-Aeschbacher, the son, rather than his father Hans Kocher-Rinner, who retired that same year. The younger Hans Kocher was a truly remarkable man, deserving of a Prix Gaïa award in all three categories: Watchmaker, businessman, and historian. He was also incredibly magnanimous, not giving undue attention in his industry history writing and speaking to the Buren “planetary rotor” despite considering it his life’s greatest work.
- I’m wearing my Buren Calibre 82 watch as I write this!
- The 1975 Golden Shadow and White Shadow Quartz movement measured 3.45 mm thick. It was rapidly surpassed by Citizen, just under 1 mm in 1978, Seiko, 0.90 mm that same year, and the incredible Swiss Delirium movements.