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You, who are members of the First Human Species
Last and First Men: a new film. The "70-minute cine-novella or essay film" (Peter Bradshaw) is based on Olaf Stapledon's 1930 novel (Gutenberg Australia etext).
It's posthumous work by Jóhann Jóhannsson, who wrote the music, collaborating with Yair Elazar Glotman. The film "began as a multimedia project in 2017" (Andrew Liptak).
It is narrated by Tilda Swinton.
It's posthumous work by Jóhann Jóhannsson, who wrote the music, collaborating with Yair Elazar Glotman. The film "began as a multimedia project in 2017" (Andrew Liptak).
It is narrated by Tilda Swinton.
You are the bot that fails the Turing Test
Which AI are you? Janelle Shane (previously; Twitter) led her neural network to produce a somewhat surreal personality quiz.
I don't know why I said that. Blame the lockdown!
Time to lick some doorknobs. Charlie Booker's offers a fresh Newswipe, antiviral edition. Guest appearances by Philomena Cunk and Barry Shitpeas. (SLYouTube)
I look at my hands. I can’t tell if they’re mine.
"Fuck the Bread. The Bread Is Over." Sabrina Orah Mark reflects on fairy tales, the academic job market, and being a mother during the COVID-19 pandemic. (SLParisReview)
The virus is rewriting our imaginations
"I was still shocked by how much had changed, and how quickly." After climbing out of the Grand Canyon, Kim Stanley Robinson reflects on how culture is and may be changing under the impact of COVID-19, from charismatic mega-ideas to societies within societies.
Strange defeat.
"Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state." George Packer analyzes the Trump administration's many COVID-19 failures. (SLAtlantic)
NUTS
The Battle of the Bulge began 75 years ago today. "On 16 December 1944 at 05:30, the Germans began the assault with a massive, 90-minute artillery barrage using 1,600 artillery pieces across a 130-kilometer (80 mi) front..." The final Nazi offensive crashed into American lines with initial surprise and success. After weeks of brutal fighting - the Malmedy massacre, the siege of Bastogne, Patton's relief drive - its ultimate failure by January 1945 spelled the end of the Third Reich's power in the west.
From the past until completion
The official trailer for Wonder Woman 1984 appeared. The new Wonder Woman movie, a/k/a WW84: Wonder Woman, is scheduled to appear next summer.
R.I.P. Gahan Wilson
Born dead, still weird. Legendary darkly funny cartoonist Gahan Wilson (Wikipedia) died at 89.
Reflections from The New Yorker, CBR, The New York Times, Stephen Colbert, and Neil Gaiman.
Reflections from The New Yorker, CBR, The New York Times, Stephen Colbert, and Neil Gaiman.
Recently in space
Robots, scary galaxies, new outfits, and a lack of spots. Asteroid 1998 HL1 flew pretty close by the Earth.
The sun is spotless, and has been so for a while. (Previously)
Tissue Ablation and Variant Regeneration: A Case Report
RIP, Michael Blumlein Science fiction/horror/fantasy writer and medical doctor Michael Blumlein died at 71. His last work was the novel Longer.
The first spacewalker, R.I.P.
"Stars were to my left, right, above and below me. The light of the sun was very intense..." In 1965 Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov (Алексе́й Архи́пович Лео́нов) was the first human being to walk in space.
Set your timer
Trailer: the Limetown podcast is entering television. In mid-October the video version of Lia Haddock's investigation (previously) will appear on Facebook Watch. Jessica Biel stars and produces.
We are shapeless. We can flow. We can crash.
Emerging protest tactics in Hong Kong. Antony Dapiran (City of Protest) describes the ways protestors organize against authorities, with a nod to Bruce Lee.
Not a dinosaur-killer, OK?
A barely-detected asteroid just buzzed the Earth. First glimpsed by Brazil's SONEAR Observatory just before it arrived, 2019 OK (JPL, Wikipedia, The Sky Live) raced by "at a speed of nearly 55,000 miles (88,500 kilometers) per hour. The closest it came to Earth was just under 45,000 miles (72,500 km), a safe distance, but still much less than the distance between the Earth and Moon."
"There is a war raging - right now - with the Magisterium."
His Dark Materials, Extended Trailer. The BBC and HBO released a glimpse of their adaptation of Philip Pullman's fantasy series, apparently due out later this year. The cast includes Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda as the Texan aeronaut.
A sarcastic quip that probably seemed absurd at the time
One Lord substituted for another. Edward Millar and John Semley consider The Wicker Man (1973; previously) and folk horror (previously) in light of anti-Enlightenment culture and reactionary movements. (SLBaffler)
From the Earth to the Moon and around the Moon
This week in space. The human race and its machines have been busy with projects beyond the Earth's atmosphere.
On Monday the Indian Space Research Organization (previously) plans to launch Chandrayaan 2, an orbiter, lander, and rover aiming to explore the Moon's south pole.
On Monday the Indian Space Research Organization (previously) plans to launch Chandrayaan 2, an orbiter, lander, and rover aiming to explore the Moon's south pole.
Strong stories that don’t resort to the same old clichés.
"There is indeed a healthy audience for thrillers without violence towards women." The Staunch book prize is "For A Thriller In Which No Woman Is Beaten, Stalked, Sexually Exploited, Raped Or Murdered." It was launched in 2018 by Bridget Lawless (IMDB, Twitter, Amazon).
Click around and explore – will you like what you experience?
Enter FutureBook. Join a new, future-oriented social media site, Ordinary Citizen! Get the appropriate news you like. Learn about the vacations and health treatments that are just right for you. Learn about PetCaptcha.
What we don’t want to do is jeopardize the viability of the institution.
Town versus gown. An Ohio judge ordered Oberlin College to pay a local bakery $25 million in damages. The amount was trimmed down from $44 million initially awarded by a local jury, and represents relief for reputational and financial harm allegedly caused to Gibson's by Oberlin students and administrators during protests and related events in 2016 and 2017.
Sky train in a common orbit
An astronomers spots dozens of satellites orbiting in a row. Two days ago SpaceX launched sixty Starlink satellites into Earth orbit. Astronomer Marco Langbroek (Twitter) caught them soaring overhead in Europe.
Data should be the new blood
But not in a very Gothic way. A Lancet editorial recommends rethinking medical data metaphors and policy. "We propose that health-care data records are digital specimens and should be treated with the same rigour, care, and caution afforded to physical medical specimens." (SLLancet) (via)
A great sun has set.
Gene Rodman Wolfe, 1931-2019. A titan of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and American literature has passed.
Some Interesting Predictions and a Possible Death Sentence
Tales of the Premonitions Bureau. Sam Knight tells the story of a British psychiatrist's attempt to scientifically explore precognition.
(SLNewYorker)
A busy week in space
All kinds of missions are under way. Humans and our machines are working hard.
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo touched the edge of space for a second time and with an extra passenger. After circling and dropping landers on an asteroid, JAXA's Hayabusa2 landed upon its surface and shot a probe into it. NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe examined its own asteroid for "multiple, bright, point sources."
Far away from the inner solar system, NASA's New Horizons probe caught and shared even better images of Ultima Thule.
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo touched the edge of space for a second time and with an extra passenger. After circling and dropping landers on an asteroid, JAXA's Hayabusa2 landed upon its surface and shot a probe into it. NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe examined its own asteroid for "multiple, bright, point sources."
Far away from the inner solar system, NASA's New Horizons probe caught and shared even better images of Ultima Thule.
Too weird a specimen to belong to any canon
"At one time or another, Willeford played half the deck of familiar American archetypes but was too exquisitely weird to ever fully cash in on any of them." Jacob Siegel on the writer Charles Willeford.
It’s time for Hubert Cumberdale to become a real boy
Looking into Glass Brother. David Firth returns to his unsettling Salad Fingers animated series (Wikipedia, IMDB, Know Your Meme) (previously). (likely NSFW)
Why am I publishing these random recollections toward a memoir?
Robert Caro on doing history. Archives, friends, patience, moving house, family, not embarrassing Lady Bird Johnson, the joy of documents, and the power of SU. (SLNewYorker) (Previously on MetaFilter)
The product was so good, it sold itself and went global.
"The Plot Against George Soros." Hannes Grassegger (Twitter) describes how two American political consultants launched an anti-Soros campaign, and how it then went viral. (SLBuzzfeed; originally appeared in German and with some differences)
Maybe American mobile phone carriers aren't exactly telling the truth
Ground truthing wireless reality in a rural state Carriers Verizon, AT&T, et al claimed that Vermont was well covered by mobile phone networks. A state employee tested the truth of this by driving through every single town, checking connection strength with a box of phones. The results (mapped) reveal massive coverage voids and big swathes of low signal strength, especially in rural areas.
Life on a shrinking planet.
"We will have drawn a line in the sand and then watched a rising tide erase it." Bill McKibben updates us on climate change. (SLNewYorker)
“It is 11 o’clock and the war is—”
As if God had swept His omnipotent finger across the scene of world carnage and cried, ‘Enough!’ At 11 am the guns of the Western Front fell silent, all at once, for the first time in four years of continuous and brutal warfare. After a false alarm four days earlier, Allied and German delegations agreed to an armistice. Facing general defeat, mutiny, and domestic revolution, Berlin sought an exit from the war. Kaiser Wilhelm II had abdicated two days earlier; the Weimar Republic was struggling to be born. Sixteen million people had been killed.
So this is probably my 10th client who is the smartest man in the world.
"There's nothing." Escaping NXIVM is a new CBC podcast focusing on the experience of Sara Edmonson, one high-profile defector from the recently-crashed cult. (Stitcher, iTunes, Twitter)
FOR HEAVENS SAKE STOP IT.
100 years ago today the Lost Battalion was rescued. It may have been the most famous American story of the Great War: more than 500 soldiers in the Argonne forest totally surrounded by the German Imperial Army, cut off, starving, under nearly continuous attack by artillery, gas, snipers, flamethrowers, and infantry assaults, not to mention subjected to friendly artillery fire. Commander Charles White Whittlesey refused multiple German entreaties, and six days later reunited 194 survivors with their army.
Code-named Fracture Jaw
In 1968 general Westmoreland asked for nuclear weapons to be sent to Vietnam. The story was contained in a cable declassified in 2014, but only now being written about in a new book. (SLNYTimes)
The music was neither fake nor true.
"The Comforting Fictions of Dementia Care." Larissa MacFarquhar explores many dimensions of treatment for people afflicted with memory diseases. (SLNewYorker)
To conquer hell
"The French have given us a hard nut to crack." One hundred years ago this week began the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the largest (1.2 million soldiers) and most costly (110,000+ casualties) American military campaign in history. Commanded by John Pershing (previously), the United States First Army attacked in the Verdun area (previously), aiming for Sedan. The successful offensive ended with the November 11th armistice that also concluded the First World War on the western front.
“Not Even Scared!”
Skulls and snuffboxes, tombs, bankers, umbrellas, devils, pins, babies... Baroness Mathilde de Rothschild collected skull art, which she then donated to a Parisian museum. The Fondation Bemberg Musée is now hosting an exhibition of this cranial creativity, entitled Même pas peur!
Hayabusa 2 had landed. And is hopping.
The story of an asteroid, one space probe, and two robot rovers. About 200 million miles from Earth the JAXA space probe Hayabusa2 (Japanese language site; English language site; Wikipedia) has landed two tiny rovers on top of a very small asteroid, 162173 Ryugu. The rovers (named 1A and 1B) are now hopping on Ryugu's surface, taking photos, and sending them back to Earth via Hayabusa2 in orbit.
Because I still see the boy.
Survivors of Vermont orphanage abuse come forward. Christine Kenneally investigates horrific stories of child abuse by nuns at a Burlington orphanage and the subsequent legal struggles.
Content warning: violence against, torture, rape, murder of children. (SLBuzzfeed)
"it will be a very cold day in hell"
The statue of Baphomet... is seated and accompanied by two smiling children. The Satanic Temple (previously) has deployed a statue of "a goat-headed, winged creature" in Little Rock, Arkansas, right near the Capitol building. The idea is to challenge the government for recently erecting a Ten Commandments statue.
One hundred years ago the tide finally turned
The Allies started the final offensive on the Western Front. On August 8, 1918 began what history would call the Hundred Days Offensive; it would end WWI's terrible Western Front before the year was out. In front of Amiens a Canadian, Australian, British, American, and French attack used tanks and air power to drive deeply into German lines, winning surprise, causing panic, and capturing many prisoners. Shortly afterward the German command realized the war was over.
AI nationalism or AI without borders?
New Manhattan Projects. Ian Hogarth (Twitter) explores how increasingly important AI can play a role in a new geopolitics.
He asked me to leave him on, because otherwise he would be scared
"Eight participants felt sorry for the robot, because it told them about its fears of the darkness." Scientists asked subjects to interact with a robot, then turn it off. Some of the robots protested, and people responded in different ways.
The west isn't necessarily the best
What are higher education deserts? The Chronicle of Higher Education explores where and which Americans are the farthest away from colleges and universities.
The Urban Institute offered a somewhat different approach, combining geography and broadband.
The American Council on Education focused on geography, but used a different model to yield different results.
The Urban Institute offered a somewhat different approach, combining geography and broadband.
The American Council on Education focused on geography, but used a different model to yield different results.
This week in space
New images of the universe. Beyond our solar system, one team of astronomers imaged the first ever photo of a planet being formed (study). Citizen scientists created this image of Jupiter's northern hemisphere, based on the Juno spacecraft's raw image feed. Meanwhile, the Dawn probe offered a new set of closeups of Ceres.
"Retreat? Hell, we just got here!"
The battle of the "Bois de la Brigade de Marine". One hundred years ago United States Marines fought the brutal Battle of Belleau Wood. As the Allies struggled to contain the German spring offensive (previously), a Marine force and a French unit turned back a German attack, then drove them out of a dense, small forest, suffering nearly ten thousand casualties. Ever since Belleau Wood has been legendary in American military culture.
CAPTURED THE TOWN OF CANTIGNY ON MAY 28 1918 AND HELD IT
100 years ago today the United States launched its first offensive in World War One. In the Battle of Cantigny the First Division attacked a ruined French town, then held it against a German counterattack. France provided direction, advice, air cover, and more hardware. Although a minor action, it was an American victory, so Cantigny proved to the Allies, the Central Powers, and the rest of the world that American forces could actually fight well in modern war.
Much larger and more terrible battles would lie ahead in the coming months.
En-route to Trincomalee. Approximately 14018 miles to go
Taking the long war round Starting in late 1941 Pan Am flight 18602, the California Clipper, flew to New York via an unusual route.
(part 2, part 3)
a startling gesture, a toast to unsuicide
Now the fate of trees, and of the whole world forest, is squarely in our machine-amplified hands. A new interview with novelist Richard Powers touches on the uses of fiction, the importance of awe, the relationship between technology and nature, and the resistance to Trump, among others. (via)