liminal

Kottke directs our attention to the new publication by microbial researchers Scott Chimileski and Robert Kolter called Life at the Edge of Sight, an exploration of the profusion of activity that just barely resides on our level (unaided) of the perceptible and how studying that world has led to a greater understanding of our own macroscopic lives. The book also showcases the photographic talents of the former in framing and capturing such displays whose patterns and organisation seem universal and scalable.

fuglehuse

Specialising in installations that incorporate up-cycled materials, Danish artist Thomas Dambo and crew has since 2006 constructed more than thirty-five hundred bird houses in urban centres. Though the majority are concentrated in the artist’s home turf of the ARKEN museum campus outside of Copenhagen, the Happy City Birds project has built shelters in towns across Denmark and expanded abroad to include places such as Beirut and Berlin.

gratitude - don't give me no attitude

Wishing you and yours a very peaceful and bountiful Thanksgiving. As always, we appreciate your stopping by and there is room at the table.

virgula divina

Remarkably, ten out of twelve UK water utilities admit to resorting to dowsing when it comes to looking for leaking pipes. Despite volumes published to discredit the pseudoscience behind this type of divination, belief in its efficacy has persisted for centuries and the nervous energy, the ideomotor effect, that causes the rods to dip is the same sort of pretend-mediumship that pushes a planchette around a ouija board and probably ought not be the basis for diagnostics or repairs.

common-carrier or net-fatality

Via Slashdot, we learn that the Federal Communications Commission is not only going to dismantle the framework of net-neutrality that ensures no enterprise is privileged over another on the internet, the windfall legislation for Internet Service Providers and content-clearinghouses also will contain language that prevent state and local governments from enacting protections to replace those slated to be repealed. Because broadband crosses state boundaries, only a federal entity has jurisdiction and feedback from the public and municipalities was rebuffed and summarily dismissed. The extent of the pre-emption authority remains in question and may not only apply to throttling and blocking but perhaps also to locally developed laws that protect users’ privacy and integrity of data, possibly limiting the exposure of corporations to liability and law suits for sloppy handling of our information.

thrones and dominions or bible-study

Admittedly sight unseen and despite the apparent participation on the part of an interfaith consortia of holy collections willing to loan relics to the new museum to showcase, the curatorial staff of Hyperallergic, we believe, are right to be critical of the privately owned and operated Museum of the Bible just opened in Washington, DC, concerned for its scholarship and presentation.
Many creeds claim the Bible in different ways and the narrative of Protestant evangelicals ought not to be privileged lest we want to validate these internecine characterisations that limn Christianity as monolithic as an accurate one. To have the status of museum accorded to an institution rather than reptile farm or amusement park comes with responsibility, and many traditions come out of one book. What do you think? Perhaps our concerns are too rarified and give the founders more credit than due as I suppose the property is just going to be used as a backdrop for selfies and a venue for gala events (notwithstanding the dubious authenticity of some of the artefacts and how this secretive provenance encourages looting and plunder) and though the collection is accessible to the public (for an admission price that enriches the coffers of the founders), it appears very much like the same sort of vehicle for tax-avoidance as those cavernous freeports that house the world’s biggest though off-limits galleries. The collection’s curriculum is hard to define and may indeed be just incidental to the tax-exemptions and concession-sales it brings but it does seem to be provocative with its statement that the US is a Christian nation governed by evangelic morality.  There’s always been corruption and black-markets but once there is government endorsement of such behaviour (hiding under the ægis of religion), we all stand to lose as greater austerity and sacrifice is justified with less tax-revenue coming in.

6x6

oumuamua: that interstellar asteroid that visited our solar system has an unexpected shape 

session replay: the most popular websites log every keystroke and dalliance of every visitor and sell it to the highest bidder, via Slashdot

cryptogram: artificial intelligence enlisted to hunt the Zodiac Killer apparently writes creepy poetry in its spare time

kerning: fresh off the assembly-line, typewriters were put through the paces with “Amaranath sasesusos Oronoco initiation secedes Uruguay Philadelphia”

gastro obscura: our intrepid adventures have a spin-off food and drink blog

nori: the story behind the volunteer Manchester researcher who saved Japan’s post-war seaweed harvest, known as “Mother of the Sea” for her contributions