4x4

pictogram: Andy Warner presents a comprehensive portrait of the history and bureaucracy of the emoji, in comic form

rimsky-korakov: the ærodynamics of mosquito flight is wholly novel in the insect kingdom

woke: well-spoken, eloquent artificial general intelligence, Luna, aspires to be super-intelligent when she grows up

gig economy: out-sourcing companies exploit psychological tendencies to incentivise and prod free-lancers onward, via Super Punch

back-up copy

Adjacent to the World Arctic Seed Vault on the island Spitsbergen Norway has just opened a new doomsday archive for civilisation’s data, calling for submissions considered especially culturally significant.
Volume of course is not infinite and something to be discounted as a negotiable commodity as the information is transferred on to multi-layered film and stored in a format that isn’t dependent on a given operating system or media format, in case the worst case scenario comes to pass and all of the underlying support structure crumbles. At the time of publication, the two countries have submitted caches of data, Brazil and Mexico.

graters gonna grate

Though the soft cheese wouldn’t be the ideal sculpting medium (I can’t claim to speak from experience) and she’s actually made of twenty kilos of English cheddar, the name Brie-oncé is perfect for this likeness of the pop diva created for a wine and cheese festival that took place in London over the weekend. Read more about the intriguing world of competitive (accompanied by groan-worthy cheesy puns—you’ve been warned) at the link up top.

geosynchronous or keeping up appearances

After the success of the Rosetta mission which saw a space probe land rough-shod on a comet and with planned excursion to forcibly place an asteroid in orbit around the Moon, it seems that the next logical step is to tether an upside-down skyscraper to a captured satellite and have it sweep out an orbit just above the skyline of a terrestrial metropolis.
Maybe these stalactites might counter the race to be the tallest among the stalagmites.  The Analemma Tower, which takes its name from the phenomena responsible for the Sun’s apparent progression across the sky, seems like an unattainable goal, a project that seems very pie-in-the-sky and will never be realised but it’s these sort of radical departures that really drive progress and deliver those long-promised realities like flying-cars and the space-elevator.