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The title this week is my own thought. If this modern complex gets you down, or overwhelms, or you fight off sadness or anxiety… remember that we evolved to self-preserve, and that didn’t mean leisurely thumb twittling, nor quietly and calmly enjoying an afternoon… vs scanning the environment for potential threats, and constantly having the stress and anxiety of having your feelers up, and maximizing all your senses, SOLELY TO SURVIVE. Reading a book, being calm… none of that was in our DNA for survival. The highest form of human achievement might honestly be leisure, as it graduates us as intellectuals over the reactive animals we evolved to be.

So, if you’re not always happy or calm? We didn’t evolve to be that way, and it’s fine. It actually helps knowing.

We didn’t evolve to be happy. We evolved to survive https://www.sciencestrength.com/food-happiness/2022/1/4/we-didnt-evolve-to-be-happy-we-evolved-to-survive 

Also: The Secret to Happiness and Compassion: Low Expectations https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ambigamy/201408/the-secret-to-happiness-and-compassion-low-expectations

 

Yeah, but sheesh…. how low are we going here?

 

Random:

 

You’re a nobody until you aren’t. And then it’s too late. – Anon

 

 

 

“No, sir. This is the West sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”. – an epitaph to John Ford

 

 

“Does anyone in your family suffer from insanity?”

“No, they enjoy it.”

– Edward Hastings Ford, Vaudeville comedian, in interview.

 

 

 

 

STRIVE FOR THE INTRINSIC

  • John Williams Isn’t Retiring After All: The composer of Star Wars and Indiana Jones might have a few more musical scores left in him:

“I’ll stick around for a while,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I can’t retire from music. A day without music is a mistake.” https://gizmodo.com/john-williams-retirement-star-wars-indiana-jones-1849992571

 

But it leads to this wonderful anecdote about Elton John, and that the notion of retiring when you love something is silly: https://www.salon.com/2023/01/15/why-do-musicians-like-elton-john-find-retirement-so-tough-a-music-psychology-expert-explains_partner/ 

“For many musicians, the motivation to perform is intrinsic rather than extrinsic. Extrinsically motivated performers are interested in tangible rewards such as money. Intrinsic motivation meanwhile, is present when a musician performs mainly because of a strong inner desire to make music.
For intrinsically motivated performers, making music is inherently pleasurable and a means unto itself. This partly explains why the music profession remains attractive even if it does not always bring the financial security of other careers. It also explains why some celebrated performers find it difficult to stay out of the public arena”.

 

 

  • Also, A24. Oscars. Art. Also, *Scream Queens*. Mia Goth *&* Samara Weaving in a film together would be life. Two of my favorite actors ever, killing it. Sometimes literally. Go watch “Ready or Not” and get back to me. No seriously. I send you a dollar. It’s the most charming fun you can have in a horror film. It’s like the show Succession, but with board games and crossbows.

SPACE

 

  • This just broke up in space, in January. It won’t come back down for about 100 years because of its mass, but it’s weird, and people want to know more about what it’s propulsion system is, and what specifically it was for.

Kosmos-2499: Is it a spy or an assassin… or both? Following its launch in December 2013, the mysterious Kosmos-2499 satellite, possibly also designated 14F153, performed a complex orbital dance. In November 2014, the spacecraft came ever closer to its apparent target in space and to a possible climax of its secret mission. Space observers around the world held their breath in anticipation! https://russianspaceweb.com/Cosmos-2499.html#2023

Not the film Gravity, increasingly just real life.

 

 

 

This turned out to be wrong… it’s a Chinese satellite measuring carbon levels, and that’s apparently harmless lidar… but still amazing imagery.

 

 

 

 

  • Tell me you are really into human rights violations without telling me you’re into human rights violations:

U.S. sanctions Chinese satellite firm for allegedly supplying SAR imagery to Russia’s Wagner Group https://spacenews.com/u-s-sanctions-chinese-satellite-firm-for-allegedly-supplying-sar-imagery-to-russias-wagner-group/

 

 

 

  • Mauna Kea observatory caught a wonderful spiral pattern from a Space X launch, and fun satellite time lapse in there, to boot!

 

 

  • In “Oh it’s the plot of Armageddon”:

Scientists Warn Giant Asteroid Is Actually Swarm of Particles, Nearly Impossible to Destroy We might have to rethink our asteroid defense strategy. https://futurism.com/giant-asteroid-actually-swarm-particles-impossible-destroy

 

 

 

  • If not only for the retrofuturism design, this is cool:

Sending atomic clocks close to the sun could unlock the secrets of dark matter By Charles Q. Choi published about 3 hours ago Spacecraft carrying ultraprecise atomic clocks could help uncover the identity of the invisible and mysterious substance https://www.space.com/atomic-clocks-sun-unlock-dark-matter

Science and Technology

 

 

 

More here:

The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an otherwise unknown script, referred to as ‘Voynichese’.[18] The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and stylistic analysis indicates it may have been composed in Italy during the Italian Renaissance.[1][2] The origins, authorship, and purpose of the manuscript are debated. Various hypotheses have been suggested, including that it is an otherwise unrecorded script for a natural language or constructed language; an unread code, cypher, or other form of cryptography; or simply a meaningless hoax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript

 

Yale’s fully digitized book, available to code breakers and the unwashed masses alike:

 

 

 

  • This makes so much sense, ALL THE SENSE. THE “UFOS” ARE A DELIBERATE DISTRACTION:

Adversary Drones Are Spying On The U.S. And The Pentagon Acts Like They’re UFOs: The U.S. military seems aloof to the fact that it’s being toyed with by a terrestrial adversary and key capabilities may be compromised as a result. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the-u-s-and-the-pentagon-acts-like-theyre-ufos

 

 

 

 

There’s also a simpler concept: is it still the same axe? –> “This was my grandfather’s axe. Of course, it has occasionally required some repairs. My father replaced the handle and I replaced the head.”

A Fresco from Pompeii depicting Theseus and Ariadne escaping from Crete. According to Plutarch, the Athenians preserved the ship that Theseus used to escape, by replacing the parts one by one as they decayed.

Well, philosophers be damned, because science didn’t even need to go quantum, but into cellular microbiology with RNA to relate the historic complexity of prebiotic chemists (cool job title, BTW) and whether it matters versus having to reframe their hypothesis, premise, or however they view the building blocks of life. It’s pretty wild, and a great thought experiment being practically applied to help us understand where we came from, and reframe how we scientifically view it.

“The origin of RNA is one of the most formidable problems facing prebiotic chemists. We consider RNA as a product of evolution, as opposed to the more conventional view of RNA as originally being the product of abiotic processes. We have come to accept that life’s informational polymers have changed in chemical structure since their emergence, which presents a quandary similar to the paradox of “My Grandfather’s Axe”. Here, we discuss reasons why all contemporary components of RNA—the nucleobases, ribose, and phosphate—are not likely the original components of the first informational polymer(s) of life. We also evaluate three distinct models put forth as pathways for how the earliest informational polymers might have assembled. We see the quest to uncover the ancestors of RNA as an exciting scientific journey, one that is already providing additional chemical constraints on the origin of life and one that has the potential to produce self-assembling materials, novel catalysis, and bioactive compounds.”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074552113001154

 

 

 

  • This is people, culture and society, but as for capitalism, logistics, and the future, tech is gonna have to solve this, because immigration reform won’t solve this when it truly begins in the USA. As for data on employment, it may have silently started around 2010.  There’s always money in the frozen banana stand, but what if there’s no one there to go get it?

Filling jobs will be a nightmare, but your commute will be wide open roads.

CHINA’S POPULATION JUST DROPPED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 60 YEARS IT HAS BEGUN. https://futurism.com/the-byte/chinas-population-dropped-first-time-60-years

 

 

 

 

CHANNEL: https://www.twitch.tv/watchmeforever

 

 

 

  • Really, this is object detection and not facial, but it’s a new step in the process of thwarting AI.

I’ve talked about this for at least 10 years on this blog, and now it’s functionally happening: Makeup and fashion has been used to trick facial recognition, and cyberpunk and other novels (like one that is already bleeding edge obsolete because so much time has passed) have chatted about tricking AI recognition. This is fashion that is finally doing it:

Flamboyant Italian clothes defeat facial recognition without masks https://newatlas.com/good-thinking/facial-recognition-clothes/

 

 

 

  • I thought it not hitting its head was amazing, but the “do a barrel roll” moment made my jaw drop.

 

 

 

  • It’s real small:

Scientists Have Built a Macroscopic Tractor Beam Using Laser Light https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-built-a-macroscopic-tractor-beam-using-laser-light

 

 

 

 

  • Artificially Intelligent creations for the search term “Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Matrix”. And it’s beautiful. Jeff Goldblum, Sharon Stone, Viggo Mortensen, Tommy Lee Jones, Rutger Hauer, and more:

 

 

 

 

  • And fake people at a fake party that look increasingly like demonic white supremacists (When you ask for “people” you get white people, so it’s a joke folks):

 

 

 

  • This wild:

DARPA CRANE X-plane could be a giant leap in aircraft design: Aurora Flight Sciences will start the detailed design of the novel, high-performance aircraft as it powers towards an X-plane demonstration flight. https://www.space.com/darpa-crane-x-plane-active-flow-control

CRANE itself is pretty crazy:

The Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE) program aims to design, build, and flight test a novel X-plane that incorporates Active Flow Control (AFC) as a primary design consideration. Crane seeks to optimize the benefits of active flow control by maturing technologies and design tools, and incorporating them early in the design process. Active flow control could improve aircraft performance by removing jointed surfaces, which currently drive design configurations that increase weight and mechanical complexity. Demonstrating AFC for stability and control in-flight would help open the design trade space for future military and commercial applications. https://www.darpa.mil/program/control-of-revolutionary-aircraft-with-novel-effectors

 

 

  • The XB-70 Valkyrie:
@8luco8 Credits Mustard #moderntechnology #learnwithtiktok #usa #russia #europe #valkyrie #fyi ? original sound – ????

 

 

  • The plot of Contagion fully nailed almost every single aspect of the pandemic, 8 years early (2011 – 2019)  Now this? and… OH It’s the plot of the 2003 film, “The Core” ——>

The Earth’s core stopped spinning, is changing directions. https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgyje7/earths-core-has-stopped-and-may-be-reversing-direction-study-says

 

 

 

  • Also, a good read with the person who wrote Contagion vs our pandemic, and what he may have changed:

I couldn’t bear to watch ‘Contagion’ last year, but I rewatched it recently and asked the screenwriter what he would change https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/what-to-watch/ct-mov-revisiting-movie-contagion-a-year-into-the-pandemic-20210506-rjsgxcmerfachnfqfsgqm6fbya-story.html

Fact-Checking 'Contagion,' The Movie About A Global Virus Outbreak : Goats and Soda : NPR

 

 

 

 

  • What’s the saying about hiring a lazy mathematician? Or that lazy hires figure out shortcuts others wouldn’t have seen? Now add artificial intelligence. This was immediately unsurprising, and odd that my reaction was admiration on finding the shortcut, where a human would be blackballed from a university or newspaper. CNET’s AI Journalist Appears to Have Committed Extensive Plagiarism CNET’s AI-written articles aren’t just riddled with errors. They also appear to be substantially plagiarized. https://futurism.com/cnet-ai-plagiarism

Can Anti-Plagiarism Tools Detect When AI Chatbots Write Student Essays? | EdSurge News

 

 

 

 

  • People have described consciousness as “electrified meat in a biomech”, and they’re not wrong. To confirm, here ya go. Flesh robots. It’s like the classic Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Sutherland film “Virus”. Call that a recommendation for you sci-fi and international water salvage fans.

OFF TO THE RACES THIS BIOHYBRID ROBOT WALKS USING LAB-GROWN MOUSE MUSCLES Engineers have created the fastest-moving part-meat robot yet. https://www.inverse.com/innovation/walking-biorobot-muscle-cells

 

 

 

NATURE?!?! [or why ancestors invented Gods]

 

  • Glacial calving:

 

 

  • Volcano and sonic boom!
@solotraveler439 Réponse à @CamiHazzard ? son original – Solotraveler439

 

Comedy

  • Airplane trivia for the existential win:
@airplanefactswithmax Aircraft sink #airplanefact #aviation #aircraftmechanic #pilot #flightattendant #aircraftmaintenance #fyp ? original sound – Max

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MOVIES AND TV

  • His colonoscopy?

 

 

 

  • John Carpenter’s “Big Trouble in Little China” was a love note to Kung Fu, which has aged beautifully without any exploitative, racist, or known tropes other than celebrating the culture, the fantasy of Kung Fu and magic, and San Francisco in the 1980s, with a dumb as bricks but fast reacting John Wayne trucker, essentially the defacto sidekick to the Asian sidekick who does everything! But not only that, the creature effects were something else, whether the Bigfoot weirdo, the Cavern Angler Fish that eats redshirts, or the floating eyeball sentry. A fun dive into the effects in that film, but if you’ve not watched in years, it’s hilarious, fun, action packed, and well aged. Like a fine wine. ENJOY!

Monsters in Chinatown https://monsterlegacy.net/2016/09/16/big-trouble-in-chinatown-monster-sewer-chinese-wildman-eye-guardian-flying-creature/

 

  • Short sci-fi called “Uprising”, which might be a good reminder to be effortlessly friendly to all the first robots and semi-intelligent AI.

 

 

 

  • THERE IS ALWAYS NEW TRIVIA AND THINGS. Amazing:

 

 

  • This was fun:

 

  • Red Letter Media… uhhh… at it, again?

‘The worst film ever’: the story behind Nukie, the forgotten ET knock-off Earlier this year, a VHS of the ‘awful’ 1987 film sold for $80,600, making it one of the most expensive videotapes of all time. But why? https://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/58061/1/nukie-the-et-knock-off-film-awful-alien-vhs-interview

 

 

 

 

  • OOOooof these Roundtables. Directors, this time. a few years old. This is where Ridley Scott mentions he got Stanley Kubrick’s wide aerial shots for The Shining for the studio’s desire to have a happy ending to Bladerunner, and it’s also why he had to use a Volvo. I think Danny Boyle (might be wrong) also noted that Kubrick’s “HAL” from 2001 was named after IBM… I=H, B=A, M=L, IBM = HAL. That Quentin will do stage plays to see other actors embody his work is so fantastic. I just love the industry. Wish I was in it at times, knowing if I was I would wish I was out.

 

 

  • God’s Country looks like a Neo-Western with the spirit of Peckinpah. It vibes like Straw Dogs where physical violence isn’t the only violence, and with a pacing that’s going to drive you insane. I cannot wait to see this.

“A black former police officer turned professor in a rural college town is drawn into an escalating battle of wills that puts her most deeply held values to the test in this modern Western.”

 

MUSIC

 

  • So I did a thing, and bought tickets to a thing, and I don’t like doing things or going to things. But Jai Paul and Frank Ocean? COME ON. So I guess I am going to Indio and Coachella Valley to spend too much to see a couple people. Bjork too, and others… but Jai Paul. And Frank Ocean… two reclusive, wild storied gents who some even thought were “done” or no longer making music. I am losing my mind.  I found Jai after my pooch passed in 2014 and started playing video games, and hearing his Jasmine on the FlyLo GTAV radio station as I drove around running over people and blowing up cars. Good times.

His first single, that got him noticed within a few weeks, was BTSTU “Back to Save the Universe”… and both Beyonce and Drake sampled it within seconds. He got elevated, platformed, released Jasmine, and then… 2013 his album for XL Recordings, totally unfinished, was leaked. He went into hiding. It was a rough, difficult, growing period for him. I think he went back into a cave of production, a happy and safe place, and he just went silent. People thought it was over, and then they announced the Paul Institute in 2017, where Jai and his brother would be producing smaller artists.  Finally, on my Mom’s birthday in June of 2019, he released two more “finger on the pulse of the moment and ‘mise-en-place’ for modern production values and cultural music vibe” singles. DYLHN (Do You Love Her Now) and “He”. They were banger summer soul tracks that included gated reverb and vocals that called back to Prince.  What’s more, he embedded a secret code at the beginning of each track that led to unlocking merch on his website, a fun and delightful unexpected surprise… he reprinted some rare albums, had some fun perks, and released his new singles on lp, all of which sold out immediately from £11, and sell now on Discogs for £200+. So dumb. I snatched up a few, so yay. But it’s not about value, it’s about playing out and DJing that music, and making mixes with it for others. =)

JASMINE – JAI PAUL

 

Frank singing my parent’s wedding song and first dance.

 

 

  • Minneapolis rapper “Prof” released a new single called “Pack a Lunch” and it’s FANTASTIC. Dude looks like a comic jokester a la Dave, with mad MAD drip. It’s a great track:

 

  • This is HILARIOUS and awesome… John Carpenter and the Cadillac Devilles singing “Big Trouble in Little China”. Dude bootstrapped EVERYTHING and became a synth god. LOL

 

 

  • Jeff Beck, pre Frampton, doing a cover of the Beatles with a talk box on guitar:

 

 

 

  • Tom Waits, looking cozy, playing an old timey piano in his old timey way:

 

Also, Tom’s tribute to Roy Orbison:

 

 

  • Daft Punk, Alive, 4K IMAX… cast this to your big screen. I unearthed this again because my first newsletter had two dead / hidden / deleted Youtube videos. This was one of them:

 

 

  • EDIT: THE PERFORMANCE IS TAKEN DOWN DUE TO COPYRIGHT STRIKE, SO HERE IS ANOTHER ORCHESTRA INTERPRETATION (and it’s unrushed):

And this Berliner Philharmonic in 2010, with Ion Marin conducting Aram Khachaturian’s Adagio for Spartacus and Phrygia, from his ballet “Spartacus”. It’s the most unrushed version I’ve ever heard, and it’s glorious. For classical fans, the camera work might be too similar to Uncut Gems, but I love it.

 

They say that Mozart wrote for silly, little rich people, and Khachaturian wrote for the Gods.

 

 

  • Cute:
@yannonmusic #duet with @veyso330 #fyp #youmakemydreamscometrue ? orijinal ses – Veysel Çelik

People, Culture, Society, “Entitlement & Surprised Pikachu”

 

  • Ahhh yes… a farce about the nature of consumerism and consumption became a consumerist and consumptive farce. Delightful.
 
The Rise and Fall of the Pet Rock: A Look Back at the 1975 Holiday Craze https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/pet-rock-craze/

 

 

  • Upshot: Some Arizonans flouted warnings, built “wildcat” communities outside of incorporated cities, subverted a law with a loophole, were actively told that water would be shut off with a hard end date, and now the libertarian community is acting SHOCKED I TELL YOU, clutching their pearls, that water has been turned off, and they built, uhhh… “their houses on sand” to take a biblical leaning. Also, we can go with “you reap what you sow”.

A community without water: What to know about Rio Verde Foothills: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/scottsdale/2023/01/19/arizona-community-without-water-what-to-know-about-rio-verde-foothills/69819245007/

“Libertarians are like house cats: absolutely convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don’t appreciate or understand.” No idea who originally said it.

And, Hitch forgot “stupid”:

“I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough”. – Christopher Hitchens

 

 

 

 

  • Los Angeles, before it was Los Angeles, back in the 1930s:

Stunning Vintage Photos Capture Street Scenes of Los Angeles in the 1930s https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/los-angeles-street-scenes-1930s/

 

 

 

  • Lady Di, on whether she may end up Queen. Prophetic, powerful, self-aware:

 

 

  • Known variously as Rowland le Sarcere, Roland le Fartere, Roland le Petour, and Roland the Farter, Roland really had a single job in the court: Every Christmas, during the court’s riotous pageant, he performed a dance that ended with “one jump, one whistle, and one fart” executed simultaneously. For this, King Henry the II took care of Roland: He was gifted a manor house in Hemingstone, Suffolk, and more than 100 acres of land. For farting on cue.

An article about the history of farting for audience pleasure and profit: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/roland-the-farter-professional-flatulence

Roland the Farter, The Life of a Medieval Flatulist - History Hustle

Vehicles

 

  • Hoonigan released a 10min retrospective tribute to Ken.

RIP Ken Block. Long live Ken and his positive influence and good vibes for a tight community. He’ll never die.

 

 

@dupontregistry The FIRST Atlas ATV has landed the US!! #atv #atlasatv #offroad ? original sound – duPont REGISTRY

 

 

 

 

  • Mitsubishi is returning to racing, they digitized dozens of clips into 30 second thrill rides.

Article: Mitsubishi Just Uploaded 40 Years of Spectacular Classic Rally Footage to YouTube Mitsubishi is returning to motorsport, so the world could use a reminder of why that matters. https://www.thedrive.com/news/mitsubishi-just-uploaded-40-years-of-spectacular-classic-rally-footage-to-youtube

Here’s their channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MitsubishiMotorsTV/videos

Here’s one vid:

 

 

 

 

Bonneville salt speed flats

Setting speed records on the Bonneville Salt Flats Speed Trials, 1966

 

 

  • Fukushima is still off limits in many areas, and the cars inside that zone are AMAZING:

 

 

  • The Mitsubishi Delica. That’s my whole comment.

 

 

 

By Uncle FishbitsCategories: Newsletter