7x7

alpha quadrant: astronomers spy more terrestrial exoplanets in our corner of the Milky Way

glymphatic node: new anatomical system discovered charged with cleansing the brain and spinal cord

 twitterpated: applying artificial intelligence to group and identify bird song

sub-space: a helpful, accessible explanation of that Chinese satellite network’s quantum entanglement experiment, disabusing our expectations of instantaneous communication

kalkül: images from a vintage East Germany children’s maths text book—site tip from Everlasting Blört

lacquer: Australian researchers are making advances with “solar paint” that pulls hydrogen from the atmosphere like a photosynthesising plant

tame: in depth genetics study suggest cats self-domesticated—or maybe it’s their humans that are house-broken

apocrypha

Wil Wheaton, having engaged with a commenter expounding on the historical context regarding the origins of Christianity and the received tradition unmediated by political expediency, improved vastly on the slogan entreating God to save one from his followers, by remarking that “Canon Jesus is better than Fandom Jesus.” I much prefer the way Wheaton turned out to the way the series imagined he would, as well.

saturday matinée

The always entertaining Poseidon’s Underworld takes a nostalgic look at a typical Saturday morning television line-up, including the Sid & Marty Krofft production that I probably thankfully have no memory of (I recall having an aversion to any programming that was not animated) called Far Out Space Nuts.
Starring Bob Denver and Chuck McCann as low-level, jump-suited NASA employees accidentally launched into space and faced a series of misadventures with extra-terrestrial friends and foes, it struck me as influencing the premise of Mystery Science Theater 3000, although apparently with a much larger budget and much less funny.
We’re also reminded how young children were encouraged to binge-watch the whole of the morning with a space opera leitmotif to indulge in—with Space Nuts followed by Ruth Buzzi and Jim Nabors playing lost astronauts, accompanied by a chimera called a dorse, who seems to inform modern meme-culture.
These aired circa 1975 but bled over in syndication for years to follow.  Be sure to check out Poseidon’s Underworld for the entire revue —including Shazam!, which I do recall and whose invocation was the initialism of the gods and heroes that helped out our super-hero: Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, Mercury! We think Billy Batson could have benefited from some better role-models, like Athena perhaps—and though compartmentalised, segregated by programming for boys and programming for girls were also on offer.

6x6

wrong side of the tracks: gentrification and inequality captured in aerial photography

fifty columns: there’s an installation in Johannesburg at the site where Nelson Mandela was arrested, which from a distance (like this structure in Melbourne) forms the visage of South Africa’s anti-Apartheid statesman and is a monument to those who fought for reform

dialogue agents: a pair of chat-bots (here are another two doing the talking) learning to communicate and negotiate (and keep the volley going) in the wilds of social media have developed their own language

this is spinal mäp: a customisable template that turns cartography metal, via things magazine

f—k you, i’m millwall: a fan of the South London football club who fended off assailants during June’s London Bridge attack and hailed as a hero is having his response turned into a beer by a Swedish beer company, via Nag on the Lake

thousand islands: homesteading on the archipelago on the Saint Lawrence seaway straddling the US and Canadian borders

écocentrisme

Immediately after Dear Leader unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accord to the consternation and disappointment of nearly all, France’s newly-elected president generously invited all those displaced, unwanted and defunded ecological scientists and entrepreneurs to his country to set up shop.
Now with the full faith and support of parliament and ministries of the environment and education, the government is making good on that promise and has pledged thirty million euros to fund foreign environmental studies and programmes—with a matching grant from schools and other organisations—that will support the work of fifty researchers (on top of on-going domestic initiatives) at least over a period of five years.

ring of accolades

I am just as weary with the tedious, nauseating reign of Dear Leader and that praise-panel (Marion, don’t look at it. Shut your eyes, Marion. Don’t look at it, no matter what happens!) earlier this week really just about did us in. We however felt it was our duty to report on the probably roots of this insatiate need for flattery, which we learned likely came from Dear Leader’s role-model and touch-stone, Roy Marcus Cohn—attorney and chief-counsel behind what was truly the biggest witch-hunt in US history by aiding Joseph McCarthy’s investigations into un-American activities.
After helping to ruin the careers of countless real and imagined Communist-sympathisers and went on liberate Julius and Ethel Rosenberg of their lives for spying on the basis of rather dodgy testimony, Cohn began representing Dear Leader, along with other prominent Mafia figures and the management of Studio 54. Cohn’s counsel first came to public attention in 1973 when the US government accused Dear Leader of violating statute that prohibited the discriminatory practises in renting to tenants and Cohn audaciously launched a countersuit, which while failing did kind of give him a pass. And as if that was not enough, Cohn mentored Dear Leader in the most Machiavellian style that he should insist upon loyalty, reinforced often by having confidants recite a circle of accolades and introduced Dear Leader to the right-wing media moguls that became his campaign’s mouth-piece and dog-whistle. Roy Cohn died from AIDS-related complications in 1986 with posthumous speculation that Cohn was in a gay relationship, counter to his violently homophobic stance that was behind the so-called “lavender scare” parallel with McCarthy’s persecution.

in memoriam

Everyone is entitled to their opinions on terms limits and the scope and tenure of soft-powers and could probably summon up a dozen vexing counter arguments—but I think it can be said with confidence that if Helmut Kohl was not allowed to remain chancellor of West Germany from 1982 to 1990, the reunification probably would not have occurred.

The US and the UK preferred a weaker, divided Germany but the statesman was willing to throw his own economy in turmoil by a goodwill gesture to East Germany which dignified both powers and helped usher in an end to the standoff of the Cold War.   Had Kohl not then gone on to govern the whole of Germany for another eight years, the European Union as we know it with its trade partnerships, labour integration and common currency may have never been formed at all—and for keeping true to the course of geopolitics in a steadfast fashion whose alternatives seem rather unthinkable, Herr Kohl is owed a great debt of gratitude. We’d do him an honour in remembering how fragile such institutions are considering their precarious roots that only grit and resilience brought them about and the same qualities are essential in saving them.

bathyscope

Colossal exposes us to some of the latest denizens of the deep captured in photography for perhaps the first time with marine biologist and dive team leader of Moscow University’s White Sea research station Alexander Semenov.
These specimens are truly alien like the Pega confœderata that looks like section of air-cushion wrap to cushion fragile items in transit—seeming exceedingly delicate (here is a curation of another researcher’s approach in capturing and communicating the bizarre appearance and anatomy of the strange jellies, slugs and worms) and would indeed dissolve away if brought to the surface, existing in an almost solid state of being. These creatures are particularly at the mercy of our poor stewardship of the planet’s oceans as pollution takes years to settle to the bottom reaches of the abyss and once it reaches this terrain, there is no place else for it to go and toxins and other detritus becomes concentrated. These animals are already a mystery and we can’t pretend to know their threshold for human garbage.