“Long before people develop dementia, they often begin falling behind on mortgage payments, credit card bills and other financial obligations, new research shows.”
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Miguel Atwood-Ferguson’s Les Jardins Mystiques
“Each of the tracks is supposed to be a different mystical garden.”
I almost didn’t read this Q&A with jazz musician Miguel Atwood-Ferguson in the latest issue of Tricycle Magazine, but I’m glad I did. His debut album, Les Jardins Mystiques, came out last year — after 14 years in the making — and is streaming in full on Bandcamp. I like the music, but this was my favorite bit from the interview:
Since I’m not trying to be popular, I’m not trying to win awards, I’m not trying to do anything other than be sincere and share what is most authentically me, the worst thing I could do is be fake or do anything disingenuous. That’s why I didn’t make a short, easy-to-digest album. I wanted to attract my tribe and scare away the people that don’t have the ability to focus or that would be annoyed.
The Canine Rainbow and How Dogs See the World
How do we know how dogs see? Are they colorblind? Nearsighted? How do they perceive movement? Does their excellent sense of smell help dogs see? The first episode of Howtown from Adam Cole & Joss Fong is all about dog vision and is predictably fascinating.
Diary Comics, Dec. 30 & 31
A mini Friday Afternoon With Edith, this time! Also, sorry the color is disappearing from these, the additional child kind of brought it back to black and white. (Previously.)
The trailer for Butterfly in the Sky, a documentary film about Reading Rainbow and its host, LeVar Burton. “Reading Rainbow was not about learning to read, it was about loving to read.” Now streaming on Netflix.
Arisa Trew Nails a 900
14-year-old Arisa Trew just became the first female skater to land a 900. She calls it “a dream come true” on Instagram.
Fabric & Letterforms
I loved looking at some of the items from the Letterform Archive related to the representation of letters with fabric (knitting, cross-stitch, weaving, etc.) Also, I did not know this re: the word “text”:
The word “text” originated from the Latin word “textus,” which means “a weaving” or “a fabric.” In ancient times, textus referred specifically to the process of weaving fabric. Over time, the meaning of the word expanded to include written or printed material, reflecting the idea of words being woven together to create a coherent written work. This metaphorical extension continues today with words and phrases such as seamless, threadbare, unraveled, looming, frayed, tangled, and spinning a yarn, highlighting the connection between the physical act of weaving fabric and the intellectual act of composing written language, both of which involve the interlacing of individual elements to create a unified whole. In this installment of For Your Reference, we revisit the Archive’s stacks for books and other items that build a tangible connection between threads and letterforms.
The JWST has imaged the most distant known galaxy, seeing it as it was 290m years after the Big Bang. “An emerging theme is that galaxies and black holes appear to have grown much more rapidly than was expected.”
“Donald Trump has been found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.” First former president to become a felon. Congrats.
The Green-Energy Revolution Shows What Real Innovation Looks Like. “Fossil fuel power is on its way out, replaced by renewable energy so cheap that it’s catalyzing spectacular innovations in all manner of long-established industries.”
The trailer for Wolfs, an action-comedy flick starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt as rival fixers. “We are not secret partners.”
The Talking Piano
Ok, this is super freaky: this is a regular analog piano being played by a computer-controlled mechanical machine and it sounds like a person speaking. If you hadn’t seen this before, (it’s from 2009) take a listen:
Deus Cantando is the work of artist Peter Ablinger. He recorded a German school student reciting some text and then composed a tune for the mechanical player to sound like the recitation. I cannot improve upon Jason Noble’s description of the work:
This is not digital manipulation, nor a digitally programmed piano like a Disklavier. This is a normal, acoustic piano, any old piano. The mechanism performing it consists of 88 electronically controlled, mechanical “fingers,” synchronized with superhuman speed and accuracy to replicate the spectral content of a child’s voice. Watching the above-linked video, it may seem that the speech is completely intelligible, but this is partially an illusion. The visual prompt of the words on the screen are an essential cue: take them away, and it becomes much harder to understand the words. But it is still remarkable that the auditory system is able to group discrete notes from a piano into such a close approximation of a continuous human voice, and that Ablinger was able to do this so convincingly using a conventional instrument (albeit, played robotically).
This is so cool, I can’t believe I’d never seen it before. (via @roberthodgin)
AI Is a False God. “The idea that AI will lead us to some grand utopia is deeply flawed. Technology does, in fact, turn over new ground, but what was there in soil doesn’t merely go away.”
The Purpose of a System Is What It Does. “Driving change requires us to make the machine want something else. If the purpose of a system is what it does, and we don’t like what it does, then we have to change the system.”
“Planet of the Apes” Goes to a 70s Mall
From Life magazine and photographer Ralph Crane, a gallery of outtakes from the filming of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes in 1972.
The Century City mall, selected for its futuristic appearance, was a primary battleground in the plot. LIFE staff photographer Ralph Crane came to the set and took pictures of the costumed actors in the mall, trying on shoes and making eyes at the lingerie store display, as well as eating in the mess hall with their masks half off. The pictures make for easy laughs, capturing the kind of shenanigans that help liven up a fourth Apes film in as many years.
(via daniel benneworth–gray)
Here’s a behind-the-scenes of Ayo Edebiri doing the voice for the Envy character in Pixar’s Inside Out 2. She is so awesome.
Bill McKibben reviews an exhibition with “images of climate change that cannot be missed”. “We’re still early enough in this battle that, if we act decisively, we can limit the number of people who will have to bear this kind of trauma.”
Trailer for Season Three of The Bear
I have to admit, The Bear is a little up and down for me. But the highs (Forks, Fishes, Honeydew) are so high that it’s well worth the effort. Anyway, the trailer for season three dropped yesterday and, no surprise, it looks intense.
So. Much. Unaddressed. Trauma. That these people are inflicting upon one another. (Men will literally open a Michelin-starred restaurant instead of going to therapy.) It seems like Carmy, not the restaurant, is the titular Bear. (via laura olin)
“My Bike Is Everything to Me”
Former NBA player and TV sportscaster Bill Walton died on Monday at the age of 71. He was a quirky dude and as someone who’s been known to veer off onto seemingly unrelated tangents, I appreciated his oddball broadcasting style. Basketball was good for Walton but it also ruined his body. In response, he turned to biking to keep active and to get around.
I am the luckiest guy in the world because I am alive and I can ride my bike. It is the ultimate celebration of life when you go out there and are able to do what you can do. I have not been able to play basketball for 34 years. I have not been able to walk for enjoyment or pleasure or exercise in 41 years, but I can ride my bike.
In a brief clip of a talk Walton gave (at the University of Arizona, I believe, the custodian of Biosphere 2), he elaborated on how important his bicycle was to him:
I love my bike. My bike is everything to me. My bike is my gym, my church, and my wheelchair. My bike is everything that I believe in going on in the Biosphere. It’s science, it’s technology, it’s the future, engineering, metallurgy - you name it, it’s right there in my bike. My bike is the most important and valuable thing that I have.
Walton knew: the bicycle is low-key one of humankind’s greatest inventions:
By contrast, a person on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than a pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man’s metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, a person outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.
As one of the commenters on this post said, “Tailwinds and smooth asphalt forever, buddy.”
How planes fly: “Air, very important magic.” See also: No One Can Explain Why Planes Stay in the Air and how airfoils work.
404 Media explains the antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation/Ticketmaster. “It is about a systematic vertical integration of the entire live music business”: ticket sales, live music venues, artists’ tour booking, and concert promotion.
Drawing Media, an Interview With Rex Parker
Edith here. For the latest installment of my newish illustrated column, I spoke with Rex Parker, a.k.a. Michael Sharp, of the beloved crossword puzzle blog Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle. (I started following relatively recently but now read it daily, leaving it perpetually open on my phone.) Sharp also teaches English Literature at Binghamton University, runs a vintage paperback blog called Pop Sensation, and tweets about The Lamps of Film Noir at The Lamps of Film Noir.
Rex, have you read (watched, listened to, or otherwise experienced) anything good recently?
Sure. Lots of stuff. My best friend and I decided to read all of Proust this year. We’re way behind already, but I have read Swann’s Way, the first of the seven volumes, and it’s exquisite. And hilarious. I did not expect Proust to be hilarious.
What’s something you’ve read or seen that changed your life, even in a small way?
I was buying something at my college bookstore in ’90 or ’91 and there was this amazing point-of-purchase display for a a new line of crime fiction from Vintage called “Black Lizard.” The display was a cardboard standee with this set of amazing-looking novels housed inside, covers facing out — black-and-white stills (evoking midcentury B movies) with bright slashes of color across them that featured the authors and titles. I’d never heard of any of them, but there were blurbs from people like Stanley Kubrick on them. They were so beautiful, so striking … they struck some chord in me that I didn’t know was there. I would later recognized this chord as “Noir.” I bought two of those books on the spot: Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson and The Burnt Orange Heresy by Charles Willeford. I read them both immediately, in two gulps, faster than I’d ever read anything (I’m a slow reader).
Five years later, the Robert Polito biography of Jim Thompson, Savage Art, came out and was a big splash. *That* book changed my life — it featured a photo spread of all Thompson’s paperback originals, the 25-cent pocket books with lurid covers and taglines. I was mesmerized. I knew I couldn’t afford Thompson originals, but at some point, I thought, “Well, there must be lots of other paperbacks out there from this same era, with this same look, that I *can* afford.” And I marched right into downtown Ann Arbor, to the first used bookstore I came to, and started my vintage paperback collection right then and there (a collection that’s at about 3,000 books at the moment). The first one ever bought was called Louisville Saturday, which I wrote about here.
Do you subscribe to anything you don’t read?
Of course. Mostly Substacks I *want* to read but just don’t seem to get around to. Maybe this summer? (Maybe not.)
Read anything you don’t subscribe to? Like, are there paywalls you’re always skirting?
I don’t skirt paywalls. As someone who relies on his own readers for a good part of his income, I believe in paying for the media you consume.
Do you have a favorite newsletter?
Vince Keenan, former editor-in-chief of Noir City, has a noir-themed newsletter I like.
Scott Hines’s Action Cookbook Newsletter is fun. Those are both newsletters with regular cocktail content, which keeps me coming back.
Have you ever lied about reading or watching something? Or felt tempted to lie about it?
The great thing about getting old is that I do not give a fuck about whether anyone thinks I’m well read or up on current shows. So no, no lying, as a rule.
Are there any cultural moments you currently think about unusually often? A song lyric, a moment from a TV show, or anything like that?
There are thousands. I don’t know how to pick one. If I can call the first decade of “The Simpsons” one cultural moment, yes. That show rewired my brain. It was the best thing on the air by light years. I still can’t believe it was real, let alone (somehow) still on the air thirty+ years later. So much about the way I write, think, teach, etc, comes from being immersed in that show for years and years. Not just direct quotes, but my whole sense of humor, my sense of timing. So many great, great, funny writers and performers were at the core of that show, from Conan to Albert Brooks to Phil fucking Hartman. And it was a show that didn’t treat women horribly. You could feel the affection that show had for Marge, and especially Lisa, who is an icon. My personal hero. That first decade was truly miraculous to me. The only thing that compares in live-action shows, for me, is “Freaks & Geeks,” which lasted just one glorious season. Again, I can’t believe something so perfect ever even made it to air.
What were you really into when you were 12?
Sadness. Donkey Kong. And The Motels — I listened to the album “All Four One” over and over and over and over. Martha Davis was my first celebrity crush. No, second. Olivia Newton-John was first.
Is there a book/movie/whatever you’d like to experience again for the first time?
Not really. Maybe The Long Goodbye, which is my favorite novel, but I actually enjoy rereading it every year. I enjoy knowing it so well. I enjoy meeting sentences and paragraphs again like they’re old friends. You can’t get that on a first reading, obviously.
Is there something you wish your phone could do that it doesn’t?
Go away.
Please tell me something silly that you love.
My cats. They have such weird habits. Like, Alfie hates when you make the bed. He will not let you. Clean sheets are his enemy. No one knows why. Both cats have figured out that if you sit at the bottom of the stairs, you can look in the mirror on the closet door there and see the sliding glass door in the kitchen that opens onto the back deck (and vice versa). Sometimes I find the cats in these completely different parts of the house, one in the kitchen, the other at the bottom of the stairs, just staring at each other in that mirror. I’m like “buddy, you can just go in the next room and see Ida in person,” but no. Mirror staring. Cats are ridiculous, which is why they’re great.
Thanks, Rex! Rex’s crossword blog can be found here. And past Drawing Media installments can be found here.
Poll results show that “America’s best decade” isn’t the 80s or the 50s…it’s “whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you’d never heard of war crimes tribunals…”
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Noah Kalina on viewing old photos or videos of yourself:
I think that’s why it’s so uncomfortable for some people to watch old videos of themselves. It exposes the core of who you really are.
No matter what you try to do, no matter where you end up going, no matter how much you might try to change, you are who you are, and that very particular and unique type of personality you have stays with you forever.
It’s fascinating, painful, revelatory, and embarrassing.
The photo above is my 6th grade school picture from 1984. I loved that velour vest for reasons I cannot presently fathom. When I think about who that kid was and who I am now, I hope that I’ve retained the best parts and let go of the things that didn’t serve him so well. It’s a process…
Counterpoint (or perhaps complementary point): I think often of this old post from The Sartorialist about a woman who reinvented herself upon moving to New York:
Actually the line that I think was the most telling but that she said like a throw-away qualifier was “I didn’t know anyone in New York when I moved here….”
I think that is such a huge factor. To move to a city where you are not afraid to try something new because all the people that labeled who THEY think you are (parents, childhood friends) are not their to say “that’s not you” or “you’ve changed”. Well, maybe that person didn’t change but finally became who they really are. I totally relate to this as a fellow Midwesterner even though my changes were not as quick or as dramatic.
Scientists have figured out why killer whales are smashing up luxury yachts: it’s a new fad among teen orcas. “A combination of free time, curiosity and natural playfulness has led to young orcas adopting this ‘trend’ of boat-bumping.”
Good god, the temperature in Delhi hit 50.5°C (122.9°F) today, an all-time record. “Years of scientific research have found the climate crisis is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.”
A Documentary Film About Jim Henson
Two of my biggest childhood touchstones were Sesame Street and the Muppet Show. The creative spark behind both shows was Jim Henson, the subject of a forthcoming documentary directed by Ron Howard. From the press release:
Produced with the full participation and cooperation of the Henson family, “Jim Henson Idea Man” is an unprecedented, intimate look at Henson’s illustrious, revolutionary career and complex personal life. Using never-before-seen personal archival home movies, photographs, sketches, and Henson’s personal diaries, as well as interviews with those who knew him best, the film is the definitive portrait of one of the world’s most inspiring and iconoclastic creators.
Jim Henson Idea Man will be available to stream on Disney+ on Friday. (via the kid should see this)
The trailer for Best of Five, a documentary series about the 2014 Classic Tetris World Championship. “This five-episode documentary series tells the story of the tournament, the players, and what it means to be the champion of an unwinnable game.”
An Instagram account full of the amazing, slightly deranged, and (I’d assume) designed-for-hiding-stains fabric patterns for public transportation seating. Collectively beautiful.
Whales Have an Alphabet. “Carl Zimmer, a science reporter, explains why it’s possible that the whales are communicating in a complex language.”
tinyPod turns a strapless Apple Watch into a wee iPod with a click-wheel. “Is it brilliant? Is it bizarre? Maybe a bit of both.”
Parents Just Called To Make Sure You Thought Of Every Possible Thing That Could Go Wrong In Life. “Oh, and before I forget, the risk of nuclear annihilation is higher than the Cold War. Love you!”
Okay, I Did Reread ‘My Favorite Thing Is Monsters’ Part One
Maybe I can piggyback this on the Hot Frank Summer we’re all about to have/are currently having (I’m doing it!), but I did reread Emil Ferris’s fantastic graphic novel in advance of Part Two coming out TODAY, and it only gets better on a second reading. Plus there’s a Frankenstein tie-in, too, so…
There are also cool new features on Ferris in Vulture and WaPo, as well as some sweet Part Two micro teasers on Desert Island Comics’ Instagram.
Last Week’s Reads: Scrabble, Emoji, Quilts
Hey, I took the week off last week! But I missed it here and am glad to be back. Here are a few things I enjoyed while I was gone:
1. Emily Gould’s ranking of 15 recent children’s books written by celebrities, in The Cut. For instance, No. 15 (lowest):
Finally, it’s here, the book everyone has been clamoring for: woke retellings of Aesop’s fables, by Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman! In Portman’s version of “The Three Little Pigs,” the first two pigs unwisely build their houses out of fast-food leftovers and plastic drinking straws. The wolf blows their houses down to warn them that only sustainable, environmentally friendly building practices are acceptable.
Lol.
2. This little half factoid, teased on the Iowa Quilt Museum’s Instagram: “The Double Wedding Ring is one of the most unfinished patterns in American history.” But why? Broken engagements? Is the design too ambitious? I can confirm that it was difficult even to draw.
3. The Most Misunderstood Emojis of 2024, in Axios. The revolving hearts don’t make the list, but maybe we cracked the code on those. 💞
4. “As was the case with alcohol, my first and last thoughts of the day are usually Scrabble related.” Brad Phillips’ essay in the Paris Review about swapping one addiction for another. “Editing this essay today, on six different occasions I’ve stopped to open ISC.RO [and play Scrabble]. Each time, I’ve played more games than I’d intended.” Also: “A common obsession is a powerful unifier, one that renders all other biographical information meaningless.”
A Pickpocket’s Story
Until his recent incarceration, Wilfred Rose was a very successful pickpocket operating on the streets of NYC.
Some of the thieves have a shtick. There is Francisco Hita, who when caught touching someone’s wallet, pretends to be deaf, the police say, responding with gesticulations of incomprehension. There is an older man who pretends to be stricken by palsy while on a bus, and then uses a behind-the-back maneuver to infiltrate the pocket of the passenger next to him.
There are flashy dressers, like the 5-foot-3 Duval Simmons, whose reputation is so well known among the police that he says he sometimes sits on his hands while riding the subway, so he cannot be accused of stealing. Mr. Simmons, an occasional partner of Mr. Rose’s, said he honed his skills on a jacket that hung in his closet, tying bells to it to measure how heavy his hand was.
Mr. Rose’s notoriety stems from how infrequently he has been arrested, and how, at least in the last 15 years, he has never been caught in the act by plainclothes officers.
See also Adam Green’s fascinating piece on Apollo Robbins from The New Yorker. Especially the bit about surfing attention:
But physical technique, Robbins pointed out, is merely a tool. “It’s all about the choreography of people’s attention,” he said. “Attention is like water. It flows. It’s liquid. You create channels to divert it, and you hope that it flows the right way.”
Robbins uses various metaphors to describe how he works with attention, talking about “surfing attention,” “carving up the attentional pie,” and “framing.” “I use framing the way a movie director or a cinematographer would,” he said. “If I lean my face close in to someone’s, like this” — he demonstrated — “it’s like a closeup. All their attention is on my face, and their pockets, especially the ones on their lower body, are out of the frame. Or if I want to move their attention off their jacket pocket, I can say, ‘You had a wallet in your back pocket — is it still there?’ Now their focus is on their back pocket, or their brain just short-circuits for a second, and I’m free to steal from their jacket.”
Listening to Sand: The Sound Design of Dune
From the SoundWorks Collection, this is a 30-minute featurette on the sound design of Dune, in which the film’s sound teams talks about how they created the sounds of the Arrakis desert, the sandworm, ornithopters, spice, and the voice of the Bene Gesserit.
That’s something which - I learned a trick from Lee Scratch Perry, who I worked with in Switzerland about 10 years ago. He’s the pioneer of dub reggae, which must be the genre of music with the most bass. And one of the tricks that he used was to record a bass line and then to play it back through a huge speaker in a room that’s resonant…and record that. So it enhances the resonance of the bass. You also hear something of the shaking of the room. So that was one of the tricks that we used to give a sort of a very tactile sense to this spiritual adventure that Paul’s going on.
There are several other videos on this topic should you desire to rabbit-hole: The Sounds of Dune, How The Sounds of Dune Were Made, Dune Sound Design Explained, Director Denis Villeneuve and Sound Team on Dune, and Dune: Part Two | Deeper into the Desert: The Sounds of the Dune:
Lol, tiny bumper stickers for your phone, including “My other phone is a burner”, “Caution: Extremely Online”, and “I brake for Notes app apologies”.
How could you not be interested in a post with a headline like this: Hear the Song Written on a Sinner’s Buttock in Hieronymus Bosch’s Painting The Garden of Earthly Delights.
This is absolutely mesmerizing: a crowd of people jumping, dancing, chanting, and pulsing in Pamplona, Spain during the San Fermin festival.
Data Visualization of the Most Common PIN Numbers
Based on an analysis of leaked PIN numbers by Nick Berry, Information is Beautiful made this visualization of the most common PINs.
According to the analysis, just 20 4-digit numbers account for 27% of all PINs: 1234, 0000, 7777, 2000, 2222, 9999, 5555, 1122, 8888, 2001, 1111, 1212, 1004, 4444, 6969 (nice), 3333, 6666, 1313, 4321, 1010. The diagonal line is people using repeated pairs of digits (e.g. 2727 or 8888) while the horizontal line near the bottom is people who are presumably using their (19xx) birth year as a PIN. (You can see the beginning of a 20xx line on the left side.)
The best causally unguessable PINs would seem to be unrepeated pairs of numbers greater than 50 — so 8957, 7064, 9653, etc. Choose wisely.
Two dairy workers have caught the H5N1 virus from cows, “the first known instance globally of a person catching this version of bird flu from a mammal”. We are just playing with fire with this stuff, aren’t we? 🫣
Slow Publishing With Arion Press
San Francisco’s Arion Press still uses decades-old machines to make beautiful books by hand. They’re one of the few remaining presses in the world that do everything from start to finish — they even cast their own type.
Arion dwells in an almost extinct corner of the book world: Call it Slow Publishing. It produces only three books a year, each a unique art object reproduced in editions of less than 300. Art is so important, in fact, that the illustrators-art-world luminaries-drive the title selection process.
“We learned that the projects went a lot more smoothly when we said to the artist, ‘What do you want to do?’” Blythe said.
Anthony Bourdain visited Arion in 2015 for a online series called Raw Craft — it’s a great look at how and why they produce books this way:
Business Insider’s Still Standing series recently profiled Arion as well:
(thx, stephen)
If I were in NYC this July, I’d go see this Uptown Shakespeare in the Park production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (by way of the Harlem Renaissance).
The editors of Scientific American: There Is Too Much Trash in Space. “It’s time for nations — and the billionaires commoditizing space — to clean up Earth’s near orbit.”
The Budapest Children’s Railway
The Gyermekvasút (Children’s Railway) is a 7-mile-long rail line in Budapest that’s operated by children aged 10-14 (aside from the train’s driver).
Children’s Railway, Budapest is one of Budapest’s most unique attractions. Like any other railway, it has ticket offices, diesel locomotives, signals, switches and a timetable. Unlike other railways though, this one is run by children. The line stretches among the Buda hills from Széchenyihegy to Hűvösvölgy, crossing the Cogwheel Railway and serving Normafa as well as the highest point of Budapest: Jánoshegy.
The project, then called the Pioneer’s Railway, was started in 1947 as a part of a three-year Communist plan. This video shows how the railway operates and includes interviews with current workers as well as former workers from the Communist era:
Seems like all the kids are big train nerds…adorable.
An Open Letter to Wyna Liu, the New York Times’ Connections Editor. “But on those days when I don’t solve it… well, let’s just say those are dark days. I don’t sleep properly anymore. I can’t eat.”
Do We Live in an Infinite Nesting Doll of Black Hole Universes?
Kurzgesagt is back with another video about black holes; it has the innocuous-seeming title of The Easiest Way To Build a Black Hole. But the main topic of the video is the speculation that universes (like ours!) might exist within black holes.
Black holes might create infinite universes while destroying time and space. Everything in existence could be black holes, all the way down. We might live inside a black hole that is inside a black hole, that is inside a black hole. But let’s start at the beginning and build a black hole out of air.
This one is a bit of a brain-bender. From the show notes:
The first part of the script is based on the empirical fact that, somewhat intriguingly, the observable universe seems to have the exact size and mass that would be required to make a black hole as big as the observable universe itself.
The second, completely independent proposal we explore is the idea that our Universe could be born from the singularity of a black hole, and that in turn the universe that contains that black hole could be born from a black hole itself. If so, universes in later generations of this process could be better fitted to produce an abundance of black holes, in a sort of “natural selection” towards efficient black hole production.
Joss Fong and Adam Cole introduce their new YouTube channel Howtown, where they will “dig into the evidence behind commonly held facts and claims in the news”. I am excited for this one!
From Becca Rothfeld’s All Things Are Too Small, an amazing quote on consumer brands’ solution to mass production: “The ideal product was therefore something that a person would go on wanting even when she had it.”
How Not to Get Screwed Buying a Used Car
This video about how not to get screwed buying a used car crams an astounding amount of good information into three minutes.
Update: Bold claim by Robin Sloan on Twitter:
The calm density of this video is way more “future of visual communication” than 99% of claimants to that title
I agree. That video contained more information than a 44-minute episode of Mythbusters but the pace and energy were more relaxed.
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