Collection

It's been a bit of a while, but I've been collecting ALL sorts of links to share and not gotten around to posting them on Spoutible, my sole social home now on Teh Intarwebs.

My apologies, by the way, for the formatting. I literally am collecting these from a zillion sources, it's late, and my head is pounding. So - here goes...

German museum weirdly asks Italy to give back the Discobolus

The implicit bias problem won’t be solved by training alone | Aeon Essays

"Eugene Ofosu, asked whether same-sex marriage legalisation was associated with reduced anti-gay implicit biases across US states. His team studied US IAT scores between 2005 and 2016, and what they found was striking. While the implicit anti-gay bias for each state, on average, decreased at a steady rate before same-sex marriage legislation, these biases decreased at a sharper rate following legalisation, even after controlling for demographic variables such as participants’ age and gender, as well as state-level factors such as education and income."

Development hell (nature.com) 

"the story may have been less about idiot male techs and more about the NASA approach of solving all problems with more equipment. ...if you want to hear about NASA engineers not understanding female anatomy, better options are available ..."

What To Do When Your Period Comes… In Space ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)

Indigenous people wrestle with Buffy Sainte-Marie false identity claims - The Washington Post 

I've spoken for years about what I call Colonizer #Trek (lookin' at you, #TNG). Here is an interesting look at the questions of ethics, resources, private and public management, and financial and disability access as well as other barriers to participation in space - and what the heck's going on already. "The popular narrative that space is a bottomless reservoir of resources does not fit the facts." ... "(W)e are at step zero." Please enjoy this well-written essay.

As space gets more commercial, how can it be governed ethically? | Aeon Essays

Meet the absentee gods and nefarious spirits of ancient Mesopotamia | Aeon Videos

Cats have nearly 300 facial expressions | Science | AAAS

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/16/fox-news-violent-crime/ 

Perception Census | Welcome (dreamachine.world)

FBI: Killings fell 6 percent in 2022, violent crime declined - The Washington Post

In post-communist Europe, economics is laden with morality | Aeon Essays

In France, workers build a castle from scratch the 13th century way : NPR

Alien life might not be something science can ever ‘discover’ | Aeon Essays

For socialism and freedom: the life of Eugene Debs | Aeon Essays

Reviving Virginia’s historic Black cemeteries after decades of neglect - The Henrico Citizen

The deeper I’ve fallen down this rainbow-colored rabbit hole, the more I’ve come to understand that my shock at the breadth of queerness in nature is a symptom of a horrible miseducation, of centuries of science bullying the abundance of queerness off the record.
Orion Magazine - A Work of Love

Also, Biological Exuberance may be #MyNewDragName

Native Americans are building their own solar farms (bbc.com)
Native Americans are building their own solar farms
For decades, Native Americans were reliant on the US government to bring them power. Now, that may be changing


The last 2 are gift links - no paywall:

https://wapo.st/3tdrl9I

Jubilation and high expectations as Poland marks end of right-wing rule

Donald Tusk as prime minister will face challenges fixing relations with the E.U., restoring independence to courts and media and loosening abortion restrictions.

We will keep finding ways to Karen up the place. Pee-yew.
https://wapo.st/3RbTS7u
First-time author loses book deal for ‘review bombing’ authors on Goodreads
Cait Corrain, the author of the sci-fi fantasy novel “Crown of Starlight,” has faced backlash for “review bombing” fellow authors for months through fake Goodreads accounts.

Collection

The older I get, the more interplanetary sciences strike chords with my faith. On the ancient waters we - and our planets - are made of.

Best. Advent. Caledar. Ever. Will you check back? I will! Stunning, stunning, stunning.

I have been a bit full of woe (when I've troubled to blog at all) this year, so how about an observation of what seems to be an uptick of heartening news in terms of our material history?

It feels like there are more stories of repatriation of artifacts - not just one behemoth, say, like The British Museum, investigating shady deals or sending cultural art and items home, but a wider movement. Take a look at just a few recent pages of The History Blog, and see how often looted and alien-"discovered" pieces are returning to their contexts. Or national treasures kept at home. These stories, along with rescues and restorations, are good for the soul and sometimes kind of fun.

Merry Christmas to all ... not everything is falling apart!

Edited to add this ... sometimes, we do have to let certain pieces of the past go. And that's okay too.






And, yes. The eagle-eared might catch A Certain Connection which is interesting, if only on a personal level.

Collection

The hard-knockers won...

How about a good old history-of-fashion link again, for the first time in a while? Or would you prefer astronomical pursuits? Here we have science and style in one. "My seamless isn't space-less anymore!" Or is "My Barbaloot (space) suit's a convolute!" better? Hidden figure shapers? Choose your pun ... Either way, click away; worth the story, especially its ending. On the development of NASA's first space suits - by way of Racked.

You don't wick power from the powerless. Equilibrium is conductivity: the process of greater resource dissipating into areas with lesser resource - heat is drawn into chilled space, a concentration of density expands into less-dense space, etc. Where there is greater power, lesser power doesn't creep in, it absorbs whatever is released.

Okay, and SO. MANY. PLOT BUNNIES. I love so much of this, every paragraph seems to have a brilliant idea for another story or novel or play or movie or graphic art. I'm not even working on the WIP anymore, this is too cruel! Even The Atlantic's unconscious bias toward theoretical blue collar workers (who, "perhaps" might be a load of alcoholics) is interesting ... Hmmmm.

Scale

God said let there be lights in the firmament of the Heaven, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years.

My lifespan seems a small enough thing to me.

To a fruitfly, it might seem a wasteland of time, beyond bearing.

To a molecule ... to an atom, to a gluon ... all existing at such different scales: would my life seem vanishingly short, or extraordinary in its immensity?

A living cell might exist within a comprehensible "human" scale, though it comes and goes more quickly than we do.

The molecule - these can be broken so easily, or may hold tight for eons and eons. Some unstable and brief, some all but immortal from where humanity stands.

Down into the tenacious atom ... the nucleus ... these buzzing, speeding systems outstripping any velocity we can understand - are we great, slow, neverending collossi, or fleeting organisms, so ephemeral as to be irrelevant? So tempting to conceive a universe in the orbit of an atom. So human.

And, if space folds into itself, who is to say that scale does not ... that Horton was right, along with every one of us when we discover the mind within the brain we already had: that, though we know the universe is the greatness around us, we also occupy the greatness which encloses lives and systems and universes impossibly small? That there are systems within us; planes we do not understand which make us up. Not merely the individual cells coming and going, each one's life one necessary part of what we think is "our" own life - but symbiants - even the impulses and autonomic actions that preserve life, but we do not create.

We are minuscule and immense; it is all in how we look - outward, and inward.

And we owe debt both to the greatness beyond us, as well as the greatness we enclose, which contains all we think is "small" ... That we are both gargantuan and infinitessimal, and that our part is to BE part of both these scales: in the universe, which is the organism of which all our lives are the tiniest part: and as the universe, within which myriad forces exist, dependent upon us, or making up the magic and meat that *is* us.



My lifespan seems a small enough thing to me.

But if I do not honor its scale, it might as well be nothing at all.

More Space Nerding

Played this for my mom yesterday, we had a little fun. I am grateful, fortunate, and so glad my parents raised me with constant interest in nature and science, as well as art and people.

And here we have almost all of that, wrapped up in one clip.

Also: any questions why I love Star Trek?

Voyager's Golden Record

Have you ever heard it?

Because talk about a click beyond. Please take this trip.

It is record of the gloriousness of our very planet, and the finest accomplishment of which humanity is capable. Not merely the sounds - all of which share some piece of Earth's magnificence - but the Voyagers, the record, the images. Sharing life.

Here, the official tracks, courtesy of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory archive (not created by JPL).





Also, we need to make t-shirts that say, "Out there, our concepts of velocity become provincial." (Meanwhile, every sound on the record is provincial! Though some might disagree about The Laughing Man.)

Here is MIT's unofficial copy; for those of you who know what HiFi means, it brings with it the enjoyable pops and cracks of the albums we played on those. Which has an Earthling charm of its own.

PBS's as-usual wonderful special on the 40-year-old Voyager twins.

This ...

... is what got me to log back onto Twitter for the first time in a week and a half ...

Glorious.

Collection

Every week at the very *least*, I am struck with gratitude for a couple of things in my upbringing - one, I grew up at a time when popular entertainment was thinner on the ground, so we had 3 networks and PBS to choose from until I was like THIRTEEN and, gasp, a whole *fifth* channel showed up (what eventually became Fox). PBS being a great place to visit, its programming made up a hearty chunk indeed of my up-growin', and I still gravitate to its offerings, some of them as old as I am, but always intriguing - and, to boot, with parents like mine a great way to learn critical television watching.

Our Earth is a master chef. She really knows how to cook!

All this intro is apropos of the neato-spedito NOVA now playing. Shiny gems! How do opals come to be? What can we learn from so-called "flawed" diamonds (now I want one; I've never given two hoots about a dang diamond before, but - five billion year old geology, preserved in a beautiful uncut stone? GIMME inclusions!)? I am enchanted by how excited these scientists are, it's funderful to watch. The thing about learning the science of things we romanticize is this: sometimes, understanding the properties that lead us to emotional conclusions actually *deepens* the fascination and mystic feeling.

Glamour, I admit/protest, is not generally a source I think of when it comes to news. Yet somehow, in my wanderings around the intertubes, at some point this week I bumped into this piece about Uber's discrimination against minorities and women. (Yes, the info here points specifically to discriminating against Black people; do you think they're better with other POC? I don't.) It's sad, and it is a good article.

This post from Ann Bennett made me happy if only for using the term "messes" in my favorite way, but it's also a neat agricultural/cultural/foodie piece. On the health benefits and history of 8 messes of poke salad. (Bonus content: in the comments, she uses "victuals.")

Okay, SUPERMOON! Who doesn't love a supermoon? I don't not! Pick your link here.

A 49,000 year old human settlement in Australia? Linkyness from the Sidney Morning Herald, because I kind of love that their domain is SMH.com. Most news'll do the SMH to you. (The posture in this picture? That doesn't remind me of anyone I know, at ALL. Except totally.)

You can adapt through mutations, but if you interbreed with the local population who are already there, you can get some of these adaptations for free.

Click for the story behind the quote: the genetics behind Neanderthallergies. Hmm!

For centuries, nobody batted an eye at singular they...

I'll pause with this quote and say this: honestly, in my nearly 50 years on the planet, I had never even heard of anyone objecting to "they" (or ... thinking it is new!???) until a year, maaaaayyyybe two, ago. What rocks do the people live under, who protest against this as politically correct tyranny? What language do they speak? As The Arrant Pedant says: this complaint is not about grammar.

Collection

Buzz Aldrin's moon-walking papers. I know this has been making the rounds - every now and then my being a late-adopter of The Latest Thing does, I know, make me late to good parties. But this was too neato-spedito to let go by without linking it.

Babies are the tiniest basic scientists - as if we could not tell by watching the little experimental geniuses. Little physics experiments, in the littlest hands of all!

On the experience of the numinous, with History Girl Caroline Lawrence. Numen is one of those words I've always loved, both for its concept and its sound and the way it feels to speak. This is a nice look at it, and the experience of it.

Frogs!

I found this before I knew about this and got all sad.

Frogs have a long history of symbolism, but my personal favorite is their role as avatar for fidelity and faithfulness.  A lot of animals have that honor, of course, but frogs have always exerted a peculiar charm on humanity.  For over twenty or so years now, I’ve had little silver frogs of one sort or another; the very cute tiny marcasite pin, the shiny, polished articulated tree frog who would sit politely or open his little mouth wide.  That little fellow was stolen, and I still miss him.  The sterling ring I still have, which my younger niece used to kiss whenever I saw her (she gave it a smooch when we were together again as a family this spring – clearly a child with her finger on the pulse of what faithfulness to affectionate traditions mean).  The newer articulated frog pin I hardly ever wear because, though I squee’d out loud when I saw it, it’s still not ... quite ... just like the original little guy.

A good friend of mine, who was a nanny for a while when he still lived around here (yes, he), had the care of a towheaded tot he always called “tree frog” – I honestly can’t even remember the boy’s name, he was just Friend’s Tree Frog.  Aww.

The 17th-century purses linked first above fascinate me – not only as one of the many proofs that ‘fads’ were popular well before the twentieth century, and aside from tulips – but as evidence of the care we put into those things which seem to have the most meaning in a certain place and time.  Silk thread and meticulous wire limbs; these little carriers, whether as purses or for holding needles or sweetmeats, are amazingly realistic and finely made.  Even the striated coloration on the belly of one shows the care with which these were made, and an importance we may have lost, even if the charm remains for us.

Space Coolness

Twelve shot in New Orleans today, at a Mother's Day parade.

But human beings also do this:



Even Bowie must be geeking on this one.

The small lyrical changes are fascinating ... but the images and the personal intimacy are heart-catching and magnificent.  THIS is *art* ... and I can't even aspire to such beauty.  I don't even want to, I'm just grateful we are capable of such immensity.

"Go Another 1% ..."

... and I don't mean THAT 1% this time ...

Neal Degrasse Tyson is stone cold OSUM.  It's 12.5 minutes you could call well spent.

 

More Plutonian News

Planet or no, the little cold guy is busy these days ...

It's Not Lunacy (... Yet It's On My Blog?)

It's a couple of days late, but I have been occupied and lazy, but since space stories geek me out as gleefully as history and archaeology do, here is a tale about the much beloved Pluto - planet and icon for its fans - un-planet, but still interesting (and moon rich!) to all.