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

savvy consumers

Via Kottke, we discover an open directive from Foster Kamer that should top our list of New Year’s resolutions—which might prove surprisingly easy to uphold considering what’s at stake—that encourages literate and circumspect consumption of journalism by unshackling oneself from one’s social media feeds.
We can choose to step away from the cycle of manipulation and the internet echo chamber—and perhaps the fear of missing out (FoMO)—by not incentivizing the content-brokers and help those whose horizons are already being limited and not allow the hosting or favour of a single outlet be the measure of success. Supporting independent and quality reporting and diversity of content can be made to seem like either impossible or unnecessary, given our own vanity with what we regale ourselves with—though the plurality of view-points is an illusory one, or that there’s no standing up to the giants who’ve set the hurdle to entry too high. The antidote to the notion that the internet is a one-stop shop, however, is simple and just takes a bit of attention and intention to make online ecology a better one—whose health and integrity have become even more vital to the off-line world as the boundaries are blurred: step out of that walled-garden and rely on your browser, search-engines (though be wary of what is driving these as well), use book-marks, subscribe to newsletters and create your own daily-digest and push back against the monoculture we’re enabling because we are easily besotted with convenience and a bit of flattery.