祝你生日快乐

Accomplished self-trained pharmacist and educator from Ningbo and Nobel laureate for developing malaria treatments that have saved the lives of untold millions, Tu Youyou is celebrating her eighty-seventh birthday today. It can seem very confusing but I suppose it’s really quite a straightforward matter to wish her a happy one. Ms Tu relates that her given name comes from a verse in the Shih-ching (the Chinese book of classic poetry) that the deer bleat ‘youyou’ as they gaze on wild Artemisia (hao)—a type of sagebrush whose chemical derivative (artemisinin or qinghao su), Tu would come to discover, can be used as an anti-malarial drug.

check your privilege, obi-wan

Kottke is now the host and curator of The People’s History of Tattoonie, which itself was in danger of becoming rarefied and disjointed as an anthology of sorts. Usually I find such satire a little heavy-handed for my taste as we all ought know not to impose our cachet and culture upon something long, long ago and far, far away (notwithstanding how a more advanced culture would have more mature definitions of identity than we do, and in the end we usually just look smug fancying ourselves to be the soul of consideration and accomodation) but this dialogue, line of argument is pretty brilliant and needless to say illustrative. “Your ‘Big Story’ of the military-imperial complex lets you ignore what’s right in your FACE.”

bess, you is my woman now

5x5

an error in the matrix: those iconic strings of computer code in the opening credits of the franchise are sushi recipes

clerestory: fantastic Mid Century Modern bird houses

the glasgow school: Scottish sisters and classmates whose style profoundly influenced what we call Art Nouveau, via Everlasting Blort

pseudo-random numbers: some computer encryption is based on the unpredictability underlying globules of oil and water of a wall of lava lamps

event horizon: a preview of some of the planned excursions into outer space for the upcoming year