Source: Taylor Anton White
Monday Musings — 29JAN24
Well I thought a nice bit of color and niceness would go over good. Spent the weekend in the hospital getting IV-antibiotics for a foot wound, and am home now doing great. My shortest hospital stay in a long time. Today is for being home and making a grocery list (haha). But you all should watch the nice videos, and look at the pretty art, hopefully it starts your Monday nicely.
For almost half a century, Don Ritchie would approach people contemplating suicide at the edge of a cliff near his home.
Sometimes all it takes is someone to listen, and a cup of tea.
“I enjoy the process of freely imagining myself, following the inspiration I get from everyday life. It is a process of forming new creations by connecting various ideas and images encountered in the process of work, like solving a guess or puzzle. Exploring this infinite world of imagination and feeling energized through this process fuels my passion for my work, and I find unique and vibrant traces in the results.”
Check out more from Junwoo Park below!
‘Water bear’ genomes reveal the secrets of extreme survival
‘Water bear’ genomes reveal the secrets of extreme survivalby Casey McGrath, Society for Molecular Biology and EvolutionA photograph of the tardigrade Ramazzottius varieornatus, in the center of a phylogeny of CAHS, the largest of the six desiccation-related protein families analyzed in this study. Credit: Kazuharu Arakawa, Keio Institute of Advanced BiosciencesTardigrades may be nature’s ultimate survivors. While these tiny, nearly translucent animals are easily overlooked, they represent a diverse group that has successfully colonized freshwater, marine, and terrestrial environments on every continent, including Antarctica.
Source: ‘Water bear’ genomes reveal the secrets of extreme survival
Monday Musings — 22JAN24
From a commencement speech at Harvard by Charlie Munger (How to Guarantee a Life of Misery):
My third prescription for misery is to go down and stay down when you get your first, second, third severe reverse in the battle of life. Because there is so much adversity out there, even for the lucky and wise, this will guarantee that, in due course, you will be permanently mired in misery. Ignore at all cost the lesson contained in the accurate epitaph written for himself by Epictetus: “Here lies Epictetus, a slave, maimed in body, the ultimate in poverty, and favoured by Gods.”
The rest is pretty good too.
https://www.space.com/barbenheimer-star-defies-explanation
The newly discovered Barbenheimer Star exploded in a supernova billions of years ago, leaving behind a cloud of unusual elements in its wake. (Image credit: University of Chicago/SDSS-V/Melissa Weiss) Scientists have discovered evidence of a massive star from the early universe that does not fit with our current understanding of the cosmos.
Epic: The Musical is a loose adaptation of Homer’s “The Odyssey” by Jorge Rivera-Herrans, who wrote the music and lyrics and also orchestrated and produced the tracks. His song clips and process videos have gone viral on social media with over 60 million views across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. The yet-to-be-released musical also has an active Discord fan community of over 30,000 people who share fanart, memes, fan theories, cover songs, positive affirmations, and tattoos of the lyrics.
Free to listen on Spotify, or get the ones that have been released on Bandcamp:
https://jayherrans.bandcamp.com/album/epic-the-troy-saga-original-concept-album
A link filled Monday, of stuff that interested me this week. Not much musing going on is there. Just wanted to share good stuff. We all need that don’t we. See you next week.
Nengiren’s Embroidered Figures Embrace Feeling Carefree in Clothing — Colossal
Extravagant garments and quirky accessories adorn Nengiren’s collection of characters, encapsulating the boundless possibilities of fashion.
Source: Nengiren’s Embroidered Figures Embrace Feeling Carefree in Clothing — Colossal
Extravagant garments and quirky accessories adorn Irene Saputra’s characters encapsulating the boundless possibilities of fashion. The Tangerang, Indonesia-based embroidery artist, a.k.a. Nengiren, centers her work around dressing a nona kecil, or little woman.
Nengiren creates each character with no plan in mind. In the same way we might get dressed in the morning, she spontaneously designs the components of each figure’s outfit of the day, or “OOTD,” as she embroiders. She shares with Colossal:
Nona Kecil’s evolution mirrors my own journey as an artist. Initially, she adorned simple OOTDs with muted colors and straightforward patterns. However, the turning point occurred three years ago when I embraced motherhood. Balancing time between my son and art intensified my experimentation, leading Nona Kecil to explore more expressive and elaborate outfits.
With a graphic design background, illustration experience, and an interest in fashion, overarching motifs of typography, flashy patterns, color combinations, and texture guide the fabrication of each outfit, creating an array of harmonious looks. By way of vibrant threads and satin stitches, geometric shapes join together to construct a completely unique ensemble every time.
Monday Musings — 15JAN24
Source: suzi long
That’s from Suzi Long’s portfolio, of fun birds with fun shoes. Starting off your week.
It’s currently welded shut. But if you could open it, you would find the deepest hole that has ever been drilled into the earth.
The Kola Superdeep Borehole is 12 kilometres deep (7.5 miles). For context, the deepest mine is 4 kilometres deep. Cruising altitude for a passenger jet is 11 kilometres up. The bottom of the Mariana Trench is 11 kilometres down.
I really want you to understand that if you jimmied open that tiny rusty cover, there would be nothing between you and a hole that is deeper than the Mariana Trench.
They began drilling in 1970 and stopped in 1995 when they ran out of funds. The aim was just to try and drill as deep into the earth’s crust as they could. (Wikipedia says the company was liquidated due to low profitability, but surely no one thought “dig as deep as possible for no reason” was going to make a profit?)
Anyway, they made it almost halfway through the Earth’s crust. It’s hard to know how much further they would have got. Their instruments kept melting. (“At those depths, rock began to behave more like plastic. [The temperature] rises 25 degrees for every kilometre you go down.”)
We cannot even get to the Moho!
The Moho is what you get when someone named Andrija Mohorovičić discovers something (“MOH-huh-ROH-vuh-chitch”). It’s the boundary between the crust and the mantle, and is technically the Mohorovičić Discontinuity, but it just gets called the Moho. (Wikipedia page)
(A different attempt to drill through the thinner crust on the seafloor was called “Project Mohole”. It made it about a hundred metres.)
As an aside, I found out about the Kola Superdeep Borehole after reading about Theia and saying out loud, “I’m pretty sure this is a dumb question but could we get iron from the core?” so a point in favour of asking dumb questions.
Here’s some music.
That’s it for today. nothing profuound, since I’m too tired this week. Love you all.
Monday Musings –8JAN24
Bringing together recent videos with a new body of photographs and prints that sets written words aside in favor of mark-making outside of text, Unsewn Time asks us to consider our relationships to unpredictable change and ruptures in time.
Source: Kameelah Janan Rasheed: Unsewn Time | The Art Institute of Chicago
For Unsewn Time, Rasheed worked with mark making, rubbing, folding, chemical reactions, and other material explorations to consider how meaning is conveyed in forms that are created through intimate rituals and improvisational processes. Rasheed painted and collaged directly on light-sensitive photographic paper to create two large-scale works for the exhibition. She played with the quantity, order, and duration of applying photographic developer and fixer, as well as the introduction of slivers of light. She also worked with materials such as vaseline, ink, and rubbing alcohol, consciously ceding control and letting chance effects guide her working process. In addition to these material interactions, she considered her full body as an important tool in this process. In her home studio, she used the weight of her walking or rolling over the paper with her body to create marks, impressions, and varying distribution of chemicals.
And here’s how to make yourself a little alcohol heater, in case you lose power. This is a small one but you can make them bigger.
That’s it for today. Nothing profound here.
Why you should grow and keep big muscles · Today Purpose
Source: Why you should grow and keep big muscles · Today Purpose
Life isn’t just about how long we live; it’s about how well we live it. We often hear about increasing our lifespan, but is a longer life worth it if we can’t move and become dependent on others? What’s equally, or even more important, is enhancing our healthspan—the period during which we enjoy a good quality of life. From what I’ve observed when talking to older people, they care more about “improving the quality of their life” than “living a longer life”
Imagine being unable to engage in activities you love, like traveling, playing with kids, hiking, or even just gardening. The loss of functional ability can lead to a diminished the enjoyment we have in life.
What can you do to maintain your independence, relationships, and dignity? I believe the answer lies in working out, especially resistance training that helps keeping our strength
The Cooperative That Could – The American Prospect
How S Group became Finland’s most dominant retailer
Source: The Cooperative That Could – The American Prospect
S Group’s quiet efficiency is instructive for American leftists as well. Perhaps thanks to the heavy influence of academics on the American left, we have a habit of producing analysis from 30,000 feet, or based on highly abstract metaphysical theories. S Group reminds us of the value of practical expertise and concrete benefits for the broader population. For any institution of serious size to benefit people, careful attention must be paid to the dull details of management and logistics.
S Group might not be the most sizzling, eye-catching subject in the world. But sometimes, it turns out, great successes are like that.