No.106 Asides

🚇 At The New York Times, a superb step by step look at the history of the subway map’s design: The New York City Subway Map as You’ve Never Seen It Before.
🇨🇳 🌳 🏗 Shanghai’s 1000 Trees Project Takes Shape. “Described more as future topography than as architecture, the complex has a distinctive stepped profile, populated by enormous planters and trees. Hundreds of columns help support the building and each hold several trees, combining to create a manmade forest of over 25,000 specially selected tree species.”
🇨🇳 Carl Minzner 🧵 on new stats indicating that China’s aging process might be forwarded by a decade. “i.e., China looks like Japan today (re: aging) by late 2030s, not 2040.” (1/x) This is very *big*. And certain to get overlooked amid daily coverage of US-China relations/trade war/impeachment stuff. But let me try to drill down on why this is absolutely crucial. (with h/t to @stuartbasten, whose book is a must-read on this subject.)…
🇬🇷 🧵 by Michel Lara: A thread/photographic essay of humans among Classical ruins where Time, master of men, reigns supreme. A Peloponnesian shepherd sits among the ancient ruins of the athletes’ entrance to the Olympic stadium in Olympia, Greece c.1907.
🇮🇳 Wild Silkworms Produce Proteins Primed for Bioprinting. “Many research groups are testing “ink” made from silk proteins to print human tissues, implants and perhaps even organs. The process is a less costly alternative to conventional 3-D printing with collagen, a key protein in the body’s natural scaffolding.” (Via samim.)
👾 Counter-Strike World Champions Aim for First Esport Team IPO. “Denmark’s Astralis is set to become the first esports team to go public in a bid to cement its status in a $1.1 billion global market that’s more than doubled since 2016.”
Robert Lang on the 11 Levels of Complexity of Origami. “In this video for Wired, physicist and origami master Robert J. Lang demonstrates the 11 increasingly complex levels of origami. How all the legs and antennae and other small features are designed at the more complex levels is fascinating.”