under construction

Via Kottke, we discover the Internet Archive’s special curation of content indexed in the discontinued Yahoo! GeoCities platform, whose community created millions of rather pioneering features that have seeded the internet, including page templates, MIDI sounds and of course millions of GIFs. Give it a try and uncover some classic and nostalgic snap-shots—simply typing in “gif” yields some very good search results.

dyson sphere or cepheid variable

SETI, after receiving a significant grant from a wealthy donor, is turning its focus on a very particular and peculiar target—a star whose notice first caught the attention of astrophysicist Tabetha Boyajian (hence Tabby’s Star) for its strange peaks and dips in brightness.
These changes in luminosity are too drastic and irregular to be caused by transiting planets and has caused some to suggest that the star harbours around it an alien megastructure, which either partially or fully encloses the host star to capture all of the radiation it emits. The hypothetical engineering was elaborated by mathematician Freeman Dyson as the inevitable consequence of technological advance and the need for sustainable energy. Civilisations, faced with the prospect of being host to a dying or unstable sun, may even cling unseen and shielded from the Cosmos beyond to the inside surface of a sphere that’s been built to completely surround the star at the right distance to sustain life and utilities but perhaps over the æons, the diameter of the enclosure shrinks to grow closer to the flickering heat. I wonder how those later generations, distantly removed from the original project, might think of their Universe.

4x4

hydroptère: ecological, flying river taxis to be tested on the Seine

urban decay: one photographer watched the same ensemble of buildings over four decades

home bodies: one wife’s desperate plea to re-elect her husband to get him out of the house

internyet: the story behind how the Soviets conceived the world wide web and how the idea was derailed by the same challenges we face presently

ashes to ashes

Rather jarringly but with the message that last rites should not be nihilistic—or pantheistic—the Vatican has issued a prohibition against the scattering of cremains to the winds or dividing the ashes among family and friends as final keepsakes.
Although Church doctrine—just since 1963—allows cremation burial is preferable and earthly remains should be deposited on consecrated grounds and the grave-goods ought not kept in an urn on the mantle. Having lived in Germany for a long time, such morbid license that’s allowable in America does seem a little strange and quite other. What do you make of all this? As many amongst us are loathe to shuffle off this amortal coil, it is an uncomfortable thing to think about how we’d like to be celebrated.