Seen in → No.87
The “they looked promising but I ran out of time and besides this thing is already long enough” section: My manifesto for a post-carbon future (Paul Mason), Was the Automotive Era a Terrible Mistake? (I’m going to go with yes), Networked Dream Worlds (5G at Real Life), and The Desire for Full Automation (I actually read a good chunk of this one and it’s interesting, but it’s a 20 min read and I felt I had to re-read to even begin to compress it, but have a look.) Oh, also Writing the Future With Utopias and Building Utopia in Space (on Fred Scharmen’s book).
- 😍😍😍🌘 The Atlas of Moons. Fantastic animated long scroll through the moons (+ you can grab and rotate them) of the solar system (the Jupiter system is bonkers). ”Our solar system collectively hosts nearly 200 known moons, some of which are vibrant worlds in their own right. Take a tour of the major moons in our celestial menagerie, including those that are among the most mystifying—or scientifically intriguing—places in our local neighborhood.”
- 🇫🇷👩🚒 Notre-Dame came far closer to collapsing than people knew. This is how it was saved. Another fabulous visual report at the NYT. Incredible job by the firefighters.
- 🐲🏰 Woah. The Rise of the Professional Dungeon Master. “Nerd culture, Stranger Things, and the gig economy have created a world where Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts host games for $500.”
- 🇨🇳📱 Chinese vertical dramas made for phone viewing show the future of mobile video. “What’s remarkable about vertical drama is that it’s not just any scripted content cropped for a vertical aspect ratio. These shows are specifically imagined for the mobile screen from the ground up.”
- 🎥🌎 From 20,000 miles up, our home planet is a hypnotic swirl of the familiar and the sublime. “[Orbiting] much further than the International Space Station (245 miles) yet much closer than the Moon (c238,900 miles) – while perpetually fixed over the Eastern Hemisphere, Himawari-8 provides a unique perspective on the planet and its weather patterns.”
- 🐙🦑 For Smart Animals, Octopuses Are Very Weird. “Unencumbered by a shell, cephalopods became flexible in both body and mind.” (Love that phrase!)
- 🇬🇧🏡 I’ve seen the future and it’s Norwich: the energy-saving, social housing revolution. “This is proper social housing, rented from the council with secure tenancies at fixed rents. Not only that, it is some of the most energy-efficient housing ever built in the UK, meeting the exacting German Passivhaus standards – which translates into a 70% reduction in fuel bills for tenants. It might not look groundbreaking, but this little neighbourhood represents something quietly miraculous.”
- 🌎 This is what 50 years of human migration looks like. “Data from the past 50 years of international migration help us understand why people make the choice to leave and where they go. Less than 10 percent of these migrants are forced to flee; most are seeking a better life and move only when they can afford to. Global migrants totaled fewer than 100 million in the 1960s, and although the number has increased substantially since then, it remains a fraction of the world’s 7.6 billion people today.”
- 🤯🤔 Robert Rohde 🧵 on Twitter “Animated diagram of the Earth’s Carbon Cycle and how it has changed over time.Carbon, in various forms including CO2 and organic materials, is continually exchanged between the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere.However, human activities have perturbed the carbon cycle”