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Rummaging through the extensive archives of Open Culture, we discovered these wonderful, curious artefacts from 1984 and the release of David Lynch’s cinematic adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic saga Dune. In an attempt to build off the merchandizing success that followed the Star Wars franchise, publishers rushed to market a children’s colouring book and activity book, which included projects like a recipe for No-Bake Spice Cookies—cinnamon offered as a substitute for the mind expanding spice melange. Learn more at the link above.

economies of scale

Although I still listened in digest form, I found myself a little soured on TED Talks of late when confronted with the comment whose context I cannot remember questioning whether I recalled the last seminar I’d listened to. I couldn’t say and assumed that that meant it didn’t really have resonance and endurance for me as an idea but realised that I was not really analysing the opinion. Then (appropriately on the day that the GDPR became enforceable) NPR’s produced an episode of the TED Radio Hour that was every bit as probing and important and had all the hallmarks of a lecture series at its finest. Building up to the closing remarks of computer scientist Jaron Lanier, the show (do check out all the talks at the link above—my opinion is completely rehabilitated even if I still cannot remember the topic before this one) demonstrated how much of an impossible request it is of our mental capacity to hang in a state of suspension between distraction and the anxiety of missing out for an increasingly large portion of our day. Our minds are made to be bombarded with signals and impressions of all sorts and have the tolerance for a lot of stimulus but when it comes mediated through dozens of competing sources, the focus of our attention and time becomes increasingly alienated and commodified by algorithms with the goal of funnelling the most traffic by making things just a notch more extreme—until its ugliness is reflected back at us.
This engineering designed to make us sample over and beyond what we would have previously delimitated as aligned with our values, standards and beliefs of course is not confined to the on-line world and its personas and avatars but has real world consequences as virality leaps off our screens—and not just in the aggregate either but moreover individually our capacity for critical-thinking and genuine engagement atrophies when all those uncounted micro-decisions are not our own and we lose the ability to cope and cultivate resilience in the face of adversities both sudden and subtle. We are not doomed but if we fail to change and allow our lives to be defined by attention-seekers that yoke of autocracy and dystopia will be ours to bear.

gatekeeper

Through a process of elimination, researchers have isolated the protein that mosquito-born viruses exploit to gain entry into animal cells and may signal the elimination of diseases and infections delivered by such a vector.

The single protein identified as Mxra8 (assigned to the immunoglobulin domain)—which is notably absent from mosquitos, does not seem to affect viral replication but its absence does bar entry so the virus can’t establish a foothold in its host. Climate change, human incursion into nature and the global network of transportation and shipping mean that these diseases are not confined to exotic places any longer and affect everyone. Parallel trials with human cell cultures seem to confirm the initial findings.

zapis socjologiczny

Our gratitude to Calvert Journal for introducing us to the work and legacy of self-taught Polish photographer Zofia Rydet (1911* - 1997 †) who is best remembered for her ambition and obsession to document every household in the country.
Embarking on this mission in 1978 aged 67, her unfinished project “Sociological Record” comprises over thirty thousand informal black and white portraits of people among their belongings, prized possessions, ingratiating herself to sometimes suspicious strangers by telling them she was taking pictures for the Pope. Learn more about Rydet’s life and career at the links above.