world, hold on

Released in 2006 by French DJ and producer Bob Sinclar (“Love Generation” and the Rock this Party re-mix of “Everybody Dance Now”) and house music performer Steve Edwards, the music video for “World, Hold On (Children of the Sky)” of a young boy who endeavors to save the planet from an impending cosmic catastrophe with the help of his dog, a science textbook and a rocket ship built in his bedroom.

dilute to taste

Via the always captivating Present /&/ Correct, we are thoroughly enjoying browsing this expansive vintage archive of food packaging from British grocer Sainsbury’s.  Perhaps especially cringe-worthy now and fitting with this tall drink of orange but in efforts to recover from a long, marked decline after the departure of long-time CEO Baron Sainsbury in 1992 and increased competition, the company launched a recovery plan in 2004 touted as “Making Sainsbury’s Great Again.” While the restructuring was in the beginning viewed favourably by industry partners, moves taken eventually led to the end of independence for the brand with it being acquired by Walmart and subsequently merged with the Asda chain.

demarchy

By way of a rather violent plan to protest the US electoral system—which was thwarted, TYWKIWDBI reacquaints us with the form of governance called sortation or rule by allotment. There would be no campaigning or focus on re-election and holding on to power (though I guess there’s ever the chance for collusion and cronyism) since representatives and parliamentarians would be chosen at random (by lots) out of a pool of willing and competent citizens who all have the equal chance to govern for a term.  What do you think?
Since there’s no money to be made from this style of selecting our officials and by contrast too much circulating in partisan politics, I doubt it would gain traction anywhere today—though the ancient Athenians considered these chance appointments to be a hallmark of democracy and in many jurisdictions jurors are chosen by such means and asked to discharge their civic duty. Voting, as it’s the only voice we have politically at the moment (I am glad that the protester above failed to blow himself up to call attention to this alternative but I am also pained to think about his bleak prospects in an American gulag), is of course vital and important and not voting counts twice for the opposite party, but I am not seeing the ballot presently as the consent of the governed—a popular mandate to justify the perpetuation of polarising pander and empty promise.

gashapon

Colossal shares a select gallery of some of the over twenty-five hundred miniature dioramas and landscapes that artist Tatsuya Tanaka has been furnishing on a daily basis for the past seven years.
His cast of tiny figurines and a keen eye for texture, decontext-ualized from everyday objects and office supplies has attracted millions of followers and fans and periodically compiles his best work into books and calendars, which we take a leaf from here. The title refers to the vending machine capsule toys (ガチャポン) where the little model people might have come from—the term being an onomatopoeic one for the cranking sound of turning the wheel and the sound of the capsule landing in the collection tray.

sunroof

Thanks to Maps Mania we learn that there is range of services covering different but all jurisdictions that can help businesses and home owners to decide whether or not to install solar panels on their roof-tops by illustrating the electricity and heat production potential at any given address. Customisable criteria are feed into the various programmes and return an estimate of how many kilowatt hours could be unlocked and the value of the energy produced at the going rate.

7x7

val-eri, val-dera: a fantasy map that put the world’s tallest peaks side by side

downside up: excerpts from a 1984 film that shifts perspectives

still life: a podcast from NPR producer Ian Chillag whose guests are all inanimate objects, via Waxy

postdictive processing: an audio-visual illusion from Caltech researchers

theatrical properties: stories behind an assortment of iconic film props, via Miss Cellania

feet dragging: a look at America’s despicable inaction on climate change

petunias: a range of cocktails inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings 

biosemiotics

Messy Nessy Chic lures us down a strange rabbit hole with a topic of discussion that I can vaguely recall regarding the perception of plant life with a documentary adaption (six years hence) of the 1973 The Secret Life of Plants (see previously) by authors Christopher Bird—whose previous works include the authoritative tome on the art of dowsing—and former war-time intelligence officer, journalist Peter Tompkins.
Profiling the careers of nineteenth and twentieth century botanists in a sympathetic manner, the book presented a battery of experiments based on pioneering polygraph tests developed by a Central Intelligence Agency interrogation specialist. Those results which have thus far resisted replication is generally discounted by the fact that plants do not have brains or nervous systems and instead invoke supramaterial, supernatural accounts of plant telepathy and calls to condemn the ideas presented as pseudo-science. What do you think? The notional sense, communication, symbiosis and memory are however found to pan out in the biochemistry and signalling of plants amongst themselves as well as the support network communities establish, so while attributing or recognising sentience might be problematic plants are surely not worth our disdain and abuse and ought to be appreciated for what they provide. Just as appreciation for thought and feelings in animals faced set-backs over hyperbolic claims, we are probably underestimating the complex lives of our vegetative friends in ways we cannot begin to imagine—especially considering the soundtrack by Stevie Wonder.

superlunary

Though the final arbiter of such things will be left in the capable hands if the International Astronomical Union, researchers have already hit upon a perfectly acceptable and sensible term for a natural satellite with its own sub-satellite: a moonmoon.
Despite the lack of such an arrangement present in our solar system, scientists have recently confirmed the existence of exomoons and believe that arrangements where smaller moons orbit larger one could indeed occur. The proposed term is also reviving a very silly meme in circulation last year about how the combination of one’s initials yielded an unfortunately derpy spirit animal name.