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.