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The Satyrs’ Forest’s 2023 word of the year

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It’s that time of year again for the dictionaries of the world to come remind people that they still exist, and that there is absolutely, definitely a reason for anyone to ever pay for them instead of going on Wiktionary for free1, by proclaiming a singular lemma to be Word Of The Year™.

They’re not usually very good at it. Irritatingly often they plump for words that were around for hundreds of years before that year, slang terms that won’t be around in five years, let alone fifty, or terms with dubious status as words at all. That is why last year, as chief etymologist and steward of this noble wood, i picked my own — “special military operation”. In hindsight, i might have chosen something less dour, but that’s the way the biscuit breaks.

So then, how can you capture the essence of the year that was 2023 in a single word? It has been a year of political stagnation, social carrying-on-per-usual, but of technological upheaval. Merriam-Webster thought authentic summed it up best, as a counter to industry plants and GPT malaise… but i’m sorry, that’s bollocks and they know it. Not a word from 2023, been around for decades, go straight to gaol, do not pass go.

Oxford, on the other hand, had a rather different, more vernacular choice — one i am inclined to agree with. The word of the year for 2023 is:

rizz

noun. (colloquial) Effortless charisma, the sort that lets you win friends, influence people, and get the girls.

I’ll admit, it’s not quite a 2023 word. It first gained steam in late 2022, and was popularised by the streamer Kai Cenat all the way back in 2021 — but to hell with it! The first mention in my group chat is January of this year, and it has taken the youth by storm in such a way that it seems destined to stick around, even if only to call back to the twenties the way radical might the nineties or groovy the sixties.

It too captures Merriam-Webster’s reaction to the plastic sheen of modern technology. Your friends might have rizz. The people you follow online might have rizz. But ChatGPT? I’m sorry, Dave, but as a large language model, it is not possible for me to have rizz.

Merry rizzmas, everyone, and a happy new year — let’s hope 2024’s word is as undour as this one!

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXV

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Lords of Misrule 2023 — let the misrule begin!

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It’s been a long year. That’s the traditional thing to say, but honestly, it’s been quite a short year for me, and autumn has crept up without me even noticing. That can only mean one thing…

Io Saturnalia!

It’s time, once again, for our third annual Satyrs’ Forest Lords of Misrule, where in the spirit of the season, i put you (yes, you) in charge of the site.

If you write or put togeher something — absolutely anything* — and email it to misrule@satyrs.eu, come Saturnalia (December 17 to 23, for those who aren’t up to date on their Roman calendar) i’ll put it up on the site, on the blog and on its own dedicated permanent subpage, etched in stone for all to see.

As in years past, i ask only that you refrain from political polemics and anything that would get this noble forest in legal trouble. Other than that, the sky is the limit. A video essay on the occult implications of Gremlins 2? A rant about that new skyscraper that blots out the view of your favourite billboard? Anything goes. Whatever you — my lords of misrule — want.

You can submit your entries from today until the 16th of December, 2023. Have fun, and don’t be afraid to get weird with it!

— Xanthe

A dispatch from Barnard Castle

· Tagged as museums, visits, County Durham, Barnard Castle · Leave a comment
A shot looking up at an old Georgian palace with glass trees in the foreground

Hello. I’ve been to the Bowes Museum. I thought i might tell you about it.

Housed in a gloriously incongruous French mansion in the small town of Barnard Castle1, it was built to house the art collections of the noble Bowes-Lyons — a family lucky enough to count the Queen Mother herself among their members.

Its collection lies largely parallel to the “main” visual arts: ceramics, fashion, textiles, furniture, and other such things which must account for function as much as form. Most of it plunges headfirst into the latter, a bit frilly even for my often anti-modernist tastes, but i did like this caduceus-adorned wooden cabinet:

A dark wooden cabinet whose middle is adorned with a beautiful embossed caduceus

The star of the show here is the Silver Swan, a gorgeous eighteenth-century automaton which preens and sways on a bed of glass water. Unfortunately, it’s broken, and the closest you’ll get to see it is its dismembered corpse awaiting restoration, so [raspberry noise]. You can, however, see their exhibition on its legacy, which houses a wonderful collection of modern animatronics made by crafters and tinkerers from all over the world, like this 10/10 pianist:

There are a few items which don’t fit into the above. They’ve managed to snag some real Goyas, Canalettos, and El Grecos. (Los Grecos?) They even have Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, somehow — i assume it’s on loan from London?

Information for visitors

  • Admission: £15.50 for an annual membership; £13.50 for locals — don’t be fooled by the eye-watering £18 day ticket for shmucks!
  • Address: The Bowes Museum, Newgate, Barnard Castle, DL12 8NP
  • Accessibility: The museum has an accessible entrance and a lift serving all three floors.
  • Getting there: Bus network’s fucked at the minute. Sorry.

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXIV

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A decorative frontispiece for a Victorian book of “curvilinear” designs

The Sledgehammer projection

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An equal-area map of the countries of the world, with a curved outline curving in gently towards the poles

This post relies on some spiffy new browser features, and might not work on your machine. Apologies.

The Sledgehammer projection — named after the Peter Gabriel song — is a novel equal-area map projection designed to fill the same niche as the Winkel Tripel. A composite of the Hammer and Peters projections, it preserves area, gives both parallels and meridians pleasing curves, and with its pointed poles, it does not distort areas in far northern latitudes to the extent that flat-topped projections such as Equal Earth do. (I dare even say that it handles Antarctica alright.)

The exact formula, based on Strebe (2017)’s technique:1

  • Sledge(λ,φ)=p(h′[12⋅h(λ,φ)]), where
    • h(λ,φ) refers to the Hammer projection2,
    • h′(x,y) refers to its inverse3, and
    • p(λ,φ)=(89⋅3πλ,43sinφ)

To invert:

Sledge′(x,y)=h′(2⋅h[98⋅π3x,asin(34y)])

And, finally, an equation describing the outer boundary of the map:

tan2(316πx)=3-3y2

An interactive version is available here. Happy mapping!

</hiatus>

· Tagged as meta, links · Two comments

Welcome back, ladies and gentlefolk! I’ve been trapped labouring in a Colombian salt mine for the past four months, but after a daring escape which my lawyers have advised me not to speak of, i’ve returned to safety to provide you all with yet more content®™.

Some links i’ve had sitting around gathering mothballs to start you off:

Looking at the Big Sky: the world in 2025

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I was, tentatively, putting off finishing this until i’d gotten the relevant part of the main site in a working state. But, given that i’m rebuilding the whole thing from scratch, and i was itching to put it out there — behold! The world in 2025 of Looking at the Big Sky, a sci-fi alternate-history -type setting i’m working on. (It’s not particularly sci- at the moment, i’ll admit — this is just a stepping stone on the way to 2338.)

You can find the full resolution image here. Wordpress is just being something of a shit.

Hey, wanna see the most beautiful thing i’ve ever seen?

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I don’t know if it’ll come across too well in photo form. I was lying on the grass, as one does, and lo and behold, there in the sky appeared what i could only describe as a double-backwards-double-rainbow:

Two iridescent arcs intersect in the sky, a smaller version of the same phenomenon playing out below

I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe that makes me a shut-in? I don’t know. Some quick prodding around revealed it to be not a rainbow, but a halo: a circum-zenithal arc, its iridescent colours made by the low sun’s light filtering through the icy clouds above.

The Sagrada Familia. The view from a Pennine peak. My home town from above, caught by pure chance on a flight to Turkey. The first sight of the Tyne Bridge down Grey Street. And now this. That’s the top tier — sights i’ll never forget in my life.