- 🌍 The exhibition University of African Futures “The artists in the show can be regarded as HistoFuturists. Science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler called HistoFuturist “someone who looks forward without turning his or her back on the past, combining an interest in the human factor and in technology.” (Related: see the other Butler’s piece above.)
- 🤯 🖨 🌲 (Watch the video.) 3D Printed Wood? It’s Here, and It’s Smarter Than It Sounds. “And as counter-intuitive as 3D printed wood sounds, it’s actually a very smart use of material. Using byproducts of wood production, like sawdust and paper pulp, they are able to combine it with lignin and a binding agent, and create stunning objects that look like they were carved out of blocks of wood.”
- 🤩 📸 Nature Resurges to Overtake Abandoned Architecture in a New Book of Photos. “From dilapidated power plants, abandoned medical facilities, and amusement parks left in rusted ruin, the compelling scenes that French photographer Jonathan Jimenez, aka Jonk, captures are evidence of nature’s endurance and power to reclaim spaces transformed by people. ”
- 🤬 💩 Mark Zuckerberg has bought 600 acres on Kauai from a non-profit for $53 million, nearly doubling his land holding in Hawaii. Here’s a look back at when he sued Native Hawaiians to force them to sell their land, to secure his previous 700-acre property.
- 👍🏼 💵 Tech Companies Don’t Need to Be Creepy to Make Money. “This is known as “contextual” targeting, distinct from the secret-police “behavioral” tracking that fuels advertising on many tech platforms and creates a mammoth dossier of your online activity. DuckDuckGo doesn’t even retain your search info. Every time you load the search engine, you’re a stranger.”
- 🌳 👍🏼 Forest the size of France regrown worldwide over 20 years, study finds. “Another regrowth area is found in the boreal forests of Mongolia, where 1.2m hectares of forest have regenerated in two decades due to the work of conservationists and the Mongolian government. Forests also made a comeback in parts of central Africa and Canada.”
Note — May 16, 2021