5x5

unrepresented: via the intrepid Presurfer, profiles of non-existent countries

feathering one’s nest: archaeologists discover a wealth of paper ephemeral in generations of roosting birds in the roof of a Moscow area cathedral

defence of driving: bizarre, vintage missionary meets Martian drivers’ education film

artist’s rendering: comparative visualisation of five hundred exoplanets

outrageous fortune: historic figures that gamed the system and the legacy of ancient lotteries

minstrel show or executive function

Via the always brilliant Mind Hacks’ Spike Activity that encapsulates weekly developments in neuroscience and psychology come an interesting study that the chemical signals that the blood delivers to the brain are not merely the well-travelled troubadours with reports of far-off happenings and fuel sources they they are generally taken to be but rather selective in their service.
I was always grateful that our bodies were smarter than us. Blood flowing into the folds of the brain does not just blindly acquiesce to the demands of the neurons, it seems, but rather can itself dictate what parts of the brain receive nourishment and assert a political influence after a fashion over the choices we make and priorities assigned. The circulatory system (which also pushes lymph) does not take orders from the brain from conception but like language and motor-skills, is also a learnt behaviour, which really is saying quite a lot about self-discipline. What do you think? What if it’s true that the blood can veto our will or lack of resolve?

gold from the waves, manna from heaven

In one of the darkest ironies that are apt to occur when the sciences and politics collide, chemist Fritz Haber’s double-edged contributions to human understanding enabled the world’s population to increase four-fold in a little more than a generation, giving arguably mankind the means to eat itself out of house and home, and from the same discovery, engineered by his own hand, a more violent and immediate process for mass-slaughter. Under the tutelage of several prominent professors and with a background in the dye-business (albeit organic), Haber invented a method for creating artificial ammonia from from the nitrogen and hydrogen given up already to the atmosphere by plants to return to the fields as a synthetic fertilizer—immediately changing the nature of farming, its scale becoming industrial and less labour-intensive. Awarded the Nobel Prize for this accomp- lishment, which sustains today over half the global population, whom wouldn’t have been born without the food-security Haber helped put in place, the scientist turned to his real passion—which was his quest to harvest grains of gold from the ocean, and Haber proved it was feasible although ultimately economically untenable—before turning to his next commission. As gunpowder was originally a by-product of the ingredients that went into natural fertilizers, Haber’s process of fixing nitrogen was also quickly recognised as a conduit for new weapons that might prove advantageous in the awful trench warfare of World War I that was turning into a impasse, with no progress by either side. After having created untold futures, Haber oversaw the first volleys of poison gas attacks in an unending chain of destruction. Haber also developed the gas mask at this time, anticipating that his methods would be incorporated broadly. Aerosols would figure in both achievements, giving rise to pesticides for growing crops and the gas-chambers of World War II. With a career so haunted, no wonder such an important figure in the coursings of modernity is hardly remembered.

marshmallow laser feast or perception and perspective

Though these human hikers might look like members of Daft Punk lost in the forest, donning their moss-covered virtual reality helmets, fed from a variety of sources and with a perception-enhancing range, these guests are attempting to experience the environment more as the residents do.

As senses go, human ones are pretty narrow but these augmenters first expands one’s horizons through sight and sound, magnifying and increasing the visible spectrum, culled from remote sensing and aerial footage as well, and then rather shamanistically puts the wearers through the rounds of the point of views of various woodland denizens. Check out a video at the link that demonstrates how the virtual reality experience has matured and hints at the invisible worlds it could reveal.

5x5

ser más listos: Mexico makes significant overtures to decriminalising marijuana

cash and carry: the 1M Hauly bag for occasions when one needs to discreetly transport large amounts of banknotes

coronal: new spectacular footage of the Sun‘s activity courtesy of Solar Dynamics Observatory

sea monkey kingdom: classic comic book advertisements too good to be true

the mads are calling: wonderfully campy Bond franchise supervillain subversions

gradient and avatar

Though the concept became cemented as sort of an academic urban legion through the stories of futurist Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy whose interbellum characters first speculated on social networks and social capital in a rebuilt world and the work of playwright John Guare, the notion of Six Degrees of Separation, the chain that binds any two people together with six steps or fewer, reaches even further back to the pioneering wireless transmissions of Guglielmo Marconi, speaking on the shrinking globe and growing interconnectedness among people.
Incidentally, this was probably the most original thing that the radio-promoter said or did, as Marconi rarely acknowledged the significant contributions of his fellow researchers and was very parsimonious about crediting other innovators. The Small World tracer experiments of psychologist Stanley Milgram also helped fix the notions of virality and algorithmic exploration in the public imagination: seeing if letters from geo-social endpoints could research their targets through a chain of casually acquainted couriers alone. Perhaps until the ice-breaker Six Degree of Kevin Bacon emerged, Milgram was best known for his controversial Obedience Experiments, wherein test-subject became acclimated to the idea of administering electric shocks to another individual as corrective-reinforcement to demonstrate how just following orders leads to dehumanisation and catastrophic collapse of perspective—that most would choose to be one the right side of authority, even if that meant inflicting pain on others. Another sort of hybrid experiment between these two extremes of connectedness and detachment involved stand-in actors dubbed cyranoids, after Cyrano de Bergerac’s device to woo Roxane through a more handsome interlocutor. As another heuristic tool, Milgram hoped that the understudies whispered their lines might open up insights about bias and stereotypes and self-perception too. I wonder if there are cyranoids for ghost-writers at large.

magicking or the jack parsons‘ project

One of the pioneering rocketry engineers outside of the German camp (corresponding with many of the scientists who would comprise Operation Paperclip) was an individual named Marvel Whiteside (Jack) Parsons, who inspired by science fiction went on invent jet fuel and various techniques for improving thrust and guidance that solidified America’s standing in aerospace industry and helped the nation realise better the potential of the applications, was a founding member of the Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) after the Great Depression subsided.
Parsons’ interest in science fiction also made him impressionable to the useful imaginations of others, and after a brief stint as a devoted Marxist (which might have proven highly-suspect later on), Parsons turned to the new occult religion Thelema, dicated a few decades earlier by British philosopher and prestidigitator Aleister Crowley, having received these revelations whilst vacationing in Cairo from a præter-human law-giver. In the tradition of humanist writer François Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, Thelema maintains that man was the measure of all things through tantric sacraments and magick (the Force explained in terms of the new Quantum Mechanics) admits of a complex cosmology and ritual acts, including one which Parsons and his friend L Ron Hubbard (who, cogently I suppose, later went on to found the Church of Scientology) performed in order to summon one goddess known as the Mother of Abominations. Ever the champion of research and space exploration, Parsons continued his aerospace experiments undeterred, offering free-lance services to Mexico and Israel, after he was dismissed from JPL for his infamous behaviour and accused of un-American activities. Under somewhat mysterious circumstances, Parsons died working on some pyrotechnic special effects for an upcoming Hollywood film in his home laboratory—the Parsonage. Though Parsons did not live to see the Space Race that he enabled and some miraculous achievements in exploration and understanding of the Cosmos, his legacy, despite how it might have been deprecated and over-shadowed, remains undeniable.

three-ring or alas and alack

Atlas Obscura has an interesting, involved biography of the complicated and convoluted live of Mad Monk Rasputin’s daughter, Maria.

The entire article is a rewarding read and not to reveal too many spoilers, after being transplanted from rural Siberia to Saint Petersburg for cultural refinement and fleeing the Revolution after her father’s mysterious assassination, Rasputina first found work in a cabaret act in Bucharest, all the while continuing a rapport with her murdered father through séances—who apparently offered dubious romantic advice, carrying on with a confidence-trickster who impersonated an impoverished Romanov family member. In the mid 1930s, Rasputina immigrated to America and worked as a lion-tamer, until being mauled by a bear put an end to that career-path. Afterward, she worked as a riveter in a Los Angeles shipyard during World War II while publishing her life story until compelled to retire due to her age, though still hale and hearty. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Rasputina supplemented her pension by giving psychic-readings, complete with trance visitations of candid First Lady Betty Ford.