Perfectly embodying the above phrase, the Martian helicopter Ingenuity on a recent survey flight found and documented the wreckage of the landing gear, parachute and buffering shell of the rover Perseverance. Click to enlarge plus more at the link above. The photographs and telemetry will inform future missions on how to best protect payloads and optimise equipment.
Friday, 29 April 2022
otherworldly
Saturday, 23 April 2022
8x8
song birds: a printed circuit bluejay and other avian friends
industrials: a leitmotif of edifying vocabulary—see previously—from Futility Closet
occultation: Perseverance rover captures Mars’ lumpy moon Phobos partially eclipsing the Sun
infinite tapestry: a generated side-scrolling landscape—via Web Curios
days of rage: a gallery of activism posters curated by the USC Library system—see previously—via ibฤซdem
art bits: an archives of HyperCard stacks (see also)—via Waxy
ghost in the shell: skeletons in video games
cheeps and peeps: the rich, melodic syntax of birdsong
Wednesday, 29 December 2021
mmxxi
As this calendar draws to a close and we look forward to 2022, we again take time to reflect on a selection of some of the things and events that took place in 2021. Thanks as always for visiting. We’ve made it through another wild year together and we’ll see this next one through together as well.
january: In the US state of Georgia’s run-off election, Democrat candidates prevail and thus switch the Senate’s controlling majority. The joint session of Congress to certify the votes of the Electoral College in favour of the Biden-Harris ticket is interrupted by a violent insurrection on the Capitol incited by Donald
february: A military uprising in Myanmar wrests power from the government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Actor Hal Holbrook (*1925) and veteran become fund-raiser who raised millions for the National Health
march: Oprah Winfrey interviews the estranged, self-exiled Sussexes about Meghan Markle’s treatment
april: Prince Phillip passes away, aged 99. As tensions escalate between Russia and NATO with a troop
build-up along the border with Ukraine, US President Joe Biden proposes to meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to normalise relations and restore diplomatic ties. The police officer who murdered George Floyd is found guilty on all charges. Walter Mondale (*1928), former vice president under Jimmy Carter, and presidential candidate with running-mate Geraldine Ferraro passed away, aged ninety-three. Astronaut Michael Collins (*1930) who orbited the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored the lunar surface passed away, aged ninety.june: G7 leaders meet in Cornwall, in person. A coalition government in Israel unseats Netanyahu after a
dozen years as prime minister. The US government establishes Juneteenth as a new federal holiday though new laws to disenfranchise Black voters continues apace in many Republican controlled polities. The space station Tiangong receives its first crew. Software and computer security pioneer John McAfee (*1945) found dead in a Spanish jail cell awaiting extradition to the US over charges of tax evasion. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, was disbarred for peddling the lie that that the election was stolen from his former client. The US government issues a declassified report to congress regarding unidentified aerial phenomenon. A twelve storey condominium complex near Miami, Florida collapses with dozens injured and unaccounted for.july: Outrage as more mass-graves of indigenous pupils found at historic Canadian residential schools. Hundreds perish from record heatwaves and wildfires along the Pacific coast of North America. Angela Merkel makes her last official visit to the United Kingdom, addressing the Houses of Parliament, the last
foreign leader to do so since Bill Clinton in 1997. Richard Donner (*1930), film director behind The Goonies, Superman and the Lethal Weapon franchise passed away. England plans to fully reopen with no COVID-19 restrictions late in the month despite a resurgence in cases and the rapidly spreading Delta variant. Jovenel Moรฏse, the Haitian president, was assassinated. Continual and torrential rains exacerbated by the climate emergency caused severe flooding in western Germany and the Henan region in China. The Special Committee on the January 6september: The legislature of the state of Texas passes a tranche of new laws curtailing voting access, restricting teaching of America’s racist past and present, mandating the national anthem at sporting events, permitting universal carry laws for firearms and doing away with licensure or training requirements and
essentially banning abortion by placing a bounty on abettors and deputising neighbours to litigate the ban against neighbours. New Wave actor Jean-Paul Belmondo (*1933), whose roles defined the genre and called the French counterpart of Marlon Brando, James Dean and Humphrey Bogart, passed away. El Salvador becomes first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie” singer Marรญa Mendiola (*1952) of Baccara passed away in Madrid. An effort to recall and replace Democrat governor of California fails and Gavin Newsome retains his place, though the balloting and counter-campaigns cost taxpayers of the state in excess of a quarter of a billion dollars. The first commercial, all-amateur space tourism mission safely splashes down after three days in orbit. Entrepreneur, inventor and computing pioneer behind the ZX Spectrum, Clive Sinclair passed away, aged 81 (*1940). Justin Trudeau’s party retains power following national elections. After three years under house arrest in Canada and fighting extradition to America on charges of espionage and circumventing sanctions against Iran, business executive Meng Wangzhou, daughter of the head of Chinese communications giant Huawei, is released.october: US president Biden’s agenda is derailed, diminished by moderate voices in his party. A vaccine for malaria is trialled in Africa. Amid a growing corruption scandal, Austrian leader Sebastian Kurz
tenders his resignation, though choosing to remain leader of his political party and will retain his seat in parliament. William Shatner, aged ninety, as a space tourist becomes the oldest human to enter the Earth’s orbit. Attending an open-advice surgery for his constituents from Leigh-on-Sea, long-time MP David Amess was murdered by an attacker with a knife. Former US Joint-Chief-of-Staff and Secretary of State, Colin Powell (*1937) dies from complications arising from COVID-19. President Biden’s Build Back Better plan, under pressure from elements of his own party, is rather austerely pared back, dropping proposed benefits like universal college tuition and paid family-leave. Garbage social media network rebrands its parent company as Meta as it prepares to build and embrace its concept of the metaverse. A military coup in Somali plunges the country into chaos with no signs of peaceful resolution.november: A powerful storm-flood in western Canada cuts off Vancouver from the rest of British Columbia. Weaponised refugees massed at the EU frontier by a provoking Belarus at enormous personal
cost are slowly being repatriated to the lands they fled. After exonerated in a gross miscarriage of justice, Republicans acclaim a teenage, white supremacist murderer as their new hero. Award winning Broadway songwriter Stephen Sondheim passes away, aged ninety-one in the same week as Schoolhouse Rock! lyricist Dave Frishberg (*1933). The COVID-19 Omicron-variant, first detected in South Africa, is causing major concerns as convention cases rage resurgent in Europe, poised to be more widespread and deadly than the same time a year ago. Inflation and supply-chain issues threaten global economic recovery. On the anniversary of its independence from the UK in 1966, Barbados becomes the world's newest republic, with Sandra Mason as the island’s president.december: Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows releases Power Point slide-deck that outlined options for Trump to hold on to the presidency in the chaos of the 6. January insurrection to the commission investigating the attempted coup. Monkees singer Mike Nesmith (*1942) passes away. An unseasonal tornado rips through western Kentucky, leaving over a hundred dead. Gothic novelist Anne Rice (*1941 as Howard Allen Francis O’Brien) passed away. Tensions continue to mount at the Russo-Ukraine border with Russia putting forward a litany of demands for NATO to avoid invasion. Journalist and author Joan Didion (*1934) passed away due to complications from Parkinson’s
disease. Borders close and travel-restrictions re-imposed over truly exponential spread of the the Omicron variant; preliminary findings suggest although less lethal, hospitals and other essential services could be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers and vulnerable populations still need protection. Archbishop Desmond Tutu (*1931), anti-apartheid hero and moral-centre, passes away aged ninety. Sadly veteran blogger Jonco, behind Bits & Pieces, passed away quite suddenly, leaving the blogosverse a dimmer place. On the last day of the year and just weeks short of planned celebrations for her one-hundredth birthday, beloved talent and treasure with a career spanning over eight decades, Betty White (*1922) passed away.
Monday, 13 September 2021
5x5
life finds a way: samples from Perseverance suggest Martian surface was wet for a long time
yan, tan, tethra: finger counting conventions across various cultures—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links
well-tempered clavier: the mathematical magic of JS Bach
annals of improbable research: laureates of this year’s Ig Noble prizes announced—see previously
uchuu: cosmologist create a detailed simulated pocket Universe—downloadable to the public, a hundred terabytes worth of data
Monday, 6 September 2021
6x6
circumhorizon arc: a rare Fire Rainbow photographed—via TYWKIWDBI
mars & beyond: Walt Disney’s robot pal Garco takes us on a speculative journey in search of extraterrestrial liferip: legendary NBC weather man Willard Scott has passed away, aged eighty-seven
escape artist: immersive exhibits speak to our communal sensory experience
valley of the dolls: Peerless Playthings pretend pills
cloudspotting: the World Meteorological Organisation added aspertias as a supplementary feature in 2017 Cloud Atlas—see also
Wednesday, 16 June 2021
8x8
what sophistry is this: Mark Liberman discusses the rhetoric of “elevated stupidity”
truly toastmasters: a virtual toaster museum with fine exhibits from many eras and manufacturers
water shrews: the BBC Science & Environment desk examines these superb divers of this large group of insectivores called collectively Eulipotyphla, “the truly fat and blind”—via Super Punch
les citรฉs obscures: revisiting the imaginative utopias of architect Luc Schuiten (previously)
games for crows: like Where’s Waldo but with emoji—via Waxy red rover: Zhurong Mars explorer sends a selfie
letragraphia: the sleek, revolutionary graphic design of Felix Beltrรกn
urbane dictionary: a gloss of cancel-culture terminology
catagories: ๐ง๐ช, ๐พ, ๐, ๐ฃ, ๐ง , antiques, environment, language, Mars, networking and blogging
Thursday, 22 April 2021
9x9
carbon footprint: mining is a dirty business
kiki.object: a feminist manifesta for block-chain
bat stuck in hell: recently departed songwriter Jim Steinman’s unproduced Batman musical
the gates of paradise: William Blake’s (previously) perpetual cycle of birth and re-birththe singing, ringing tree: not to be confused with this other etherial perennial, panoptica in the Pennine Hills of Lancashire
the hawking index: an unscientific survey of popular titles’ rate of abandonment by the clustering or spread of their highlighted text
this is the type of errant pedantry up with which i will not put: a proposal that the past particle of choose should properly be corn
project ceti: ground-breaking attempt to decode whale language—see also—via Slashdot
fourth rock from the sun: Martian rover Perseverance extracts breathable oxygen from the planet’s surface soil
Tuesday, 20 April 2021
7x7
one man’s trash: a preview (plus whole film) of a documentary about spelunking in New York City’s garbage
dare mighty things: Martian rover Perseverance (previously) conducts first test flight of its airfoil drone

personnage: the almond and pebble that inspired Joan Mirรณ’s sculpture
palace of culture: a choreographed tour of Lithuania’s Socialist Modernist architecture
moon unit: Space X awarded NASA contract for lunar lander for the upcoming Artemis mission
pegged: artist Helga Stentzel (previously) creates a clothes-line polar bear to raise awareness for climate change
catagories: ๐ช๐ธ, ๐, ๐ก️, ๐จ, ๐ฌ, architecture, environment, Mars
Thursday, 8 April 2021
nรผแบa
Framing what was formerly the stuff of science-fiction into fact that’s seeming just within our reach, we are treated to a virtual fly-through tour that one architectural studio envisions for Martian habitation with the cliffside self-sustaining settlement that could eventually accommodate a quarter of a million Earthlings at Tempe Mensa (see also) with construction beginning by 2054. Learn more at the links above.
catagories: ๐, ๐ญ, architecture, Mars
Wednesday, 10 March 2021
dare mighty things
Via Super Punch—and our thanks for letting us revisit a pretty incredible moment when Perseverance touched down—we have this flowing dress (see also) inspired by the Martian rover’s parachute, whose unfurled patterns encoded an inspiring, rewarding message. Mission planners and scientists have been dropping the motto in press-releases for some time, including a feature on Curiosity (the openings in that rover’s wheels spelled out JPL, Jet Propulsion Labs just as the hem of the dress, outer ring of the parachute gives the facility’s coordinates) with the same title back in 2013 but it’s really enjoyable to see it all come together. In the spirit of a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, the invocation first appeared in an address (“The Stenous Life,” 1899) by Theodore Roosevelt: “Far better is it to dare might things, to win glorious triumphs, even though chequered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much—because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory not defeat.” Find out about more Easter eggs on the manifest, including an emblem of the Rod of Asclepius in deference to the present pandemic on Earth.
Friday, 19 February 2021
6x6
polar flare: examining every map projection and how it distorts our world view at once—see previously
simon says: a vast archives of electronic handheld and table-top games and consoles from decades past—via Swiss Miss
fabian society: capitalism coexists with constructivism in Czech city of Zlรญn
hello world: the newest Martian probe beams back its first images
Sunday, 7 February 2021
happy martian new year
Saturday, 19 December 2020
ultima lingula
Saturday, 14 November 2020
all this trouble over a fat little man in a red suit
Saturday, 31 October 2020
8x8
no wait, that was the prince of tides: researchers identify neural cells responsible for episodic, cinematic memories
there goes the neighbourhood: a five-storey historic building in Shanghai walks to its new location, avoiding demolition, via Slashdot
utopia planitia: future Martian settlements will not be colonies beholden to terrestrial governmentsanti-pop: Danny Elfman—previously of Oingo Boingo, releases his first surprise single in three-and-a-half decades
stingy jack: the legend behind the Halloween lantern from Nag on the Lake
brototype: the baked-goods based photography of Jill Burrow
haute couture: Ken Tanabe’s annual DIY ideas for stylish Halloween costumes
brain-in-a-vat: laboratory-cultured neural organoids could be conscious, via Miss Cellania’s Links
Saturday, 17 October 2020
6x6
floating worlds: the artistic vision of Joanna Pousette-Dart
river under earth: profiles of Russia’s indigenous Finno-Ugrian peoplesa mountain out of a molehill: the burrowing “mole” unit (see previously) of the Martian lander Insight is completely buried
iso 7000: international standards for symbols on equipment and peripherals—via Things Magazine
non-rhoticity: Open Culture takes us on a retrospective tour of American accent and dialectal divides
pearl de wisdom: allow these squirrel and opossum spiritual readings and mediations to lift one out of doom-scrolling
Friday, 31 July 2020
parting shot
Launched on 23 July, China’s mission to Mars, Tianwen-1, beamed back this postcard of a crescent Earth and its satellite from a distance of a little over a million kilometres as it accelerates towards the Red Planet.
The image joins a growing gallery of iconic photographs that help bring perspective and humility. The alignment of the two worlds mean that this is among the fastest and most efficient times for Martian travel and Tianwen-1—the first probe of a series of planned excursions and is named (ๅคฉๅ) for the eponymous ancient work of epic prose that begins asking how the universe was created, thus Heavenly Questions—was joined during this auspicious launch window by and orbiter from the United Arab Emirates and NASA rover named Perseverance. All three will arrive in February 2021, touching down at Utopia Planitia.
Sunday, 28 June 2020
nakhlite type
The classification of Martian meteorite (see also) that was the first of its kind to suggest the presence of water and then for a tantalisingly brief time nearly a century later as technology and analysis methods improved microbial life, named for the Egyptian village of El Nakhla El Bahariya were it fell, broken up by the heat of entry into about forty samples raining down, on this day in 1911.
They are ejecta of volcanic rock from the plains Elysium Mons that was able to escape the planet’s gravity through a violent asteroid impact, wandering through space for ten million years before being captured by Earth, occasionally impacting over the past ten thousand years. Though likely apocryphal since there were no remains recovered and no other corroborating witnesses, astronomers still repeat the legend and it’s become a mascot in the field of meteor studies, a local farmer recounts how a fragment landed directly on his canine helper, vaporising the animal without a trace, the so-called Nakhla dog. In 1999, a sample previously unexposed to earthly elements was cleaved off and studied using a powerful scanning electron microscope revealing a matrix of pores very similar—though not conclusively so—to the traces that bacteria would leave in rocky substrate on Earth, leading many researchers to conclude that the Red Planet at least at one point harboured the niche environment that could support life.
catagories: ๐, 1999, archรฆology, Mars
Thursday, 14 May 2020
maulwurf
After more than a year of inactivity due to the unexpected impacted character of the soil where it landed and deployed, NASA and DLR (previously) can report that one of the instruments included on the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP
Nicknamed “the mole,” the probe has the technical designation of a mobile penetrometer, a sort of self-hammering nail—will dig to a depth of up to five metres and generate (albeit miniscule, truly a mountain out of a mole hill) seismic activity that can be used to determine the composition of the core and study heat flows from the planet’s centre through the substrate and to the surface.
catagories: Mars
Sunday, 8 March 2020
approaching pavonis mons by balloon (utopia planitia)
A few days ago, NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day featured this collapsed opening in a shield volcano (Peacock Mountain) in the Martian Tharsis region—originally discovered during the Mariner 9 mission in 1971 with the gentle rise and general topography near the planet’s equator making the feature a good candidate for the anchor of a space elevator, tethered to the captured asteroid of Deimos—and teased that the protected environment within the cavern could be a promising refuge for hold-out Martian life forms. Long before being imaged again by a Mars orbiter in 2011, it was the subject of the eponymous Flaming Lips’ song from their 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The next phrase of the exploration programme, due to land February 2021 includes a rover called Perseverance equipped with a drill to extract and study core samples and an aerial drone, which could peer down into such places.
catagories: ๐ถ, ๐ญ, 1971, archรฆology, Mars