stay-puft

Of the over four-thousand confirmed exoplanets—with some five thousand candidates waiting in the wings—three of the strangest, most unexpected reside in the Kepler 51 system, located in the Cygnus constellation twenty-six hundred light years away and have been classified as super-puffs.
Gas giants with the same circumference as Jupiter, they have only about one percent of the density, their rarefied atmospheres beaten to an airy consistency. Astronomers cannot quite fathom why the planets have such characteristics—though one theory suggests that the apparent surface is an upwelling of dust driven by some equally novel geothermal reaction—but agree that novel systems such as these are good incubators for positing the range of possibilities for planetary composition.

nach uns die sintflut

Taking a cue from ancient living coastal-hugging stalamites, colonial creatures called stromatolites (formerly wide-spread but now only found in Australia and Bermuda) that consist of layer-upon-layer of stratified microbial systems that play differing, symbiotic functions depending on where the high mater-mark has settled, researcher Jonathon Keats with Stuttgart’s Frauenhofer Institute for Building Physics suggests that we don’t try to address rising sea-levels by retreating further inland, a near impossibility since most of our conurbations—home to billions and our economic anchors are settled near the oceans, but rather by staying put.
Not only would the flood plain help mitigate extreme temperatures and the prospect that large cities may become unlivable heat-traps and avoid exacerbating the problem by making more land unavailable to uninterrupted forests in the process, levels of hi-rises being subsumed by the encroaching harbours adapting their function and growing upwards (timber buildings growing material for their next storey on the roof). It’s not a perfect nor an ideal form of redress but a realistic contingency and a more just one that may help us cope with the coming deluge without leaving vast swaths of humanity behind.

opus isodomum

Our gratitude once again to Present /&/ Correct for expanding our brick-and-mortar (see also) repertoire with this mediative volume by Melissa Price that looks at some of the chief stylistic and structural organising and coordinating principles behind this construction method, brick-bonding.
The most common types being Flemish, Monk, and Sussex it follows the notion that courses (the horizontal layers) should not be uniform straight across and changes the orientation of the masonry according to a set pattern for better load-bearing and aesthetic qualities. From the builder’s perspective, the brick has six positions depending how they’re turned and facing edge: stretcher, shiner, header, rowlock, soldier and sailor, which in tied and trusted patterns strengthen the ties with rows above and below.

happy little accidents

Messy Nessy Chic correspondent Francky Knapp stumbled across the vintage 2012 art lesson, Yellow Scream, from South Korean painter and instructor Kim Beom and shares her experience encountering the antithesis though no less effective and perhaps empathetic and approachable than Bob Ross’ method. Kim, a selection of his works exhibited at the MoMA and in other galleries, paints viscerally, the strokes evoking the spectrum of his cathartic cries but the technique, rather than alienating the audience with a tortured display of the misunderstood or unknowable artist, instead invites the student in with decorous abandon to consider how rage is best channeled through art therapy. Be sure and visit Messy Nessy Chic at the link up top to see and extended demonstration of Kim’s talent as an artist and a patient teacher.

🤔🐞

Via Kottke, we are acquainted with the entomological handiwork of Bernat Cuni of CuniCode whose used an 1890 volume of illustrated beetle exemplars from South America to train a neural network to general (see previously) swarms of convincing though wholly synthetic bugs, possibly a vexing development for the field of coleopterology in the future as habitat loss is fast out-pacing our ability to study and classify much less appreciate the diversity of Nature. I wonder if this algorithm can dream up yet undiscovered species as well and what that would mean in terms of predictive powers, what constitutes beetliness, at least superficially, and convergent evolution. Be sure to visit the links up top for more on the coding and methodology and to see s video presentation on the experiment.

子

In what’s become a nice beginning of the solar, civil new year tradition in anticipation of the coming lunar one Spoon & Tamago (see previously) present a selection of designer greeting cards (nengajo, 年賀状) to welcome the Year of the Rat, the first zodiacal animal in the cycle of twelve to kick off a new decade. We especially liked this one from design studio Enokoro that features all species of rodents from shrews to hamsters to capybaras—not forgetting our friends the naked mole rats. This year of the White Metal Rat begins on 25 January and runs through 11 February 2021.

one dimensional chess

Though it is far too generous and naïve on all of our parts to hope that Trump, an impeached president ordering the assassination of foreign military leaders in contradiction to the Geneva Conventions and without informing much less consulting Congress and quite possibly his own military intelligence and senior leadership, might have a follow-on strategy that would de-escalate the situation and privilege the standing of America and its allies in the region, even the most satirical or cynical among us would not have summoned up a such a blathering, insipid response.
A day after urging protestors storming the US Green Zone and embassy compound in Baghdad in anger over US airstrikes against the Iranian-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah militia to disperse, a drone, at the direction of Donald Trump, destroyed the vehicle convoy transporting Major General and elite Quds Forces commander Qasem Soleimani and Popular Mobilisation Forces commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis at the capital’s airport—barely any time elapsing since the signal to stop rallying had been issued to gauge whether the protestors were under the control of the Iranian military in the first place, as the Trump administration suggestion—absent any evidence or intention, or than a provocative missive since deleted by Trump’s son foreshadowing the drone strike. This brash, unilateral behaviour once again demonstrates to the world America’s untrustworthiness as an international partner and its penchant for betrayal rather than dialogue when relationships become strained. Undoubtedly this is a case of the tail wagging the dog and a distraction from the focus on Trump’s impeachment but I’d be willing to bet, coming from this conman and carnival-barker and his following of grifters, that there’s wrapped into that diversionary tactic (those are the only stratagem this scoundrel takes truck in—self-preservation at all costs) is something more to put on the table: offering the more hawkish elements of those that have left the Trump cabinet the war that they’ve always wanted in exchange for their continued silence.