I Doped Like Maria Sharapova And It Was Actually Pretty Great
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Entries for August 2017
Jerry Before Seinfeld
On September 19, Netflix is airing Jerry Before Seinfeld, a comedy special about how the world’s richest comedian got his start.
(BTW, Netflix is killing it this fall. Without having to seek anything out specifically, I already have at least 5 things I want to watch on there between now and November…not counting the backlog.)
Euclid’s Elements of Geometry done in a modernist Swiss Style
From Kronecker Wallis, the folks who brought you this reissue of Newton’s Principia, comes a new edition of Euclid’s Elements designed in a modernist Swiss Style.
Euclid’s Elements has been referred to as the most successful and influential textbook ever written. It was one of the very earliest mathematical works to be printed after the invention of the printing press and has been estimated to be second only to the Bible, in the number of editions published since the first printing in 1482.
The Elements is a mathematical treatise consisting of 13 books attributed to the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid. It is a collection of definitions, postulates, propositions (theorems and constructions), and mathematical proofs of the propositions. Elements is the oldest surviving large-scale deductive treatment of mathematics. It has proven instrumental in the development of logic and modern science.
The design and implementation of the book is based off of Oliver Byrne’s edition of Elements from 1847, of which Megan Mulder of the Z. Smith Reynolds Library writes:
Byrne’s Euclid is admired as much for its surprisingly modernist design and color palette — which seems to anticipate Bauhaus and De Stijl — as for its innovative pedagogy.
I have a copy of their Principia reissue (it’s beautiful), so I’m looking forward to this one.
100 Great Works of Dystopian Fiction
Vulture has compiled a list of 100 Great Works of Dystopian Fiction, “tales about a world gone wrong”. Entries on the list include some of the earliest examples like Mary Shelley’s The Last Man and The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, classics like Huxley’s Brave New World and 1984, modern classics like Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and William Gibson’s Neuromancer, and some newer books like On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee and A Planet for Rent by Cuban author Yoss. Even Infinite Jest makes an appearance. As does It Can’t Happen Here, a 1935 novel by Sinclair Lewis that sounds particularly relevant right now:
As the old saying goes, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme” — and Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here is proof. This 1935 satire chronicles the career of fictitious U.S. politician Buzz Windrip, a populist senator who wins the presidency. As it turns out, he’s a bit of a fascist, but more frightening than his actions is the speed — and eagerness — with which Americans join him in his authoritarian crusade. Lewis understood the American soul better than most, and he makes a compelling case that fascist tendencies would make a horrifyingly good fit for our polity if presented with the right amount of good, old-fashioned patriotism.
See also a reading list for the resistance.
Newly processed photos of Jupiter taken by NASA’s Juno probe
Seán Doran shared some recently processed photos of Jupiter that he worked on with Gerald Eichstädt. The photos were taken by NASA’s Juno probe on a recent pass by the planet. These are like Impressionist paintings…you could spend hours staring at the whirls & whorls and never find your way out. There are more images of Jupiter in Doran’s Flickr album, including this high-resolution shot that you can download for printing.
“The ability to behave randomly can be a great asset.” The human ability to produce randomness peaks at age 25.
Disturbed by on-field violence, top football TV analyst quits
Former NFL player Ed Cunningham has resigned from his job as a college football color analyst for ABC/ESPN because of “his growing discomfort with the damage being inflicted on the players he was watching each week”.
If Ed Cunningham had not already seen enough, he would be back in a broadcast booth on Saturday afternoon, serving as the color analyst for another top college football game televised on ABC or ESPN. It is the work he has done each fall for nearly 20 years.
But Cunningham, 48, resigned from one of the top jobs in sports broadcasting because of his growing discomfort with the damage being inflicted on the players he was watching each week. The hits kept coming, right in front of him, until Cunningham said he could not, in good conscience, continue his supporting role in football’s multibillion-dollar apparatus.
Another domino falls. Unless there are big changes to the game play, sooner or later football will likely become a marginalized sport in the US.
Politically, who played the Game of Thrones best in season seven?
The amount of media coverage of Game of Thrones was a touch too much this summer, but this ranking of the political strategies of the main players in season seven by Zack Beauchamp was both entertaining and informative. I mean:
To understand Cersei’s success, we need to reach back to the classic work of Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz.
Before looking at the list, I’d assumed Jon Snow would get lower marks (he left the North vulnerable and cratered his coalition’s chances at a truce with Cersei), but Beauchamp makes a good case here.
I’ve argued before that the best way to think about the White Walkers, from the human point of view, is as a threat akin to climate change — a massive collective threat that humans were ignoring in favor of petty internal squabbling. Jon, to his immense credit, is the only leader who recognized the enormity of the threat early enough to try to rally others to stop it. He’s kind of a Westerosi Al Gore, only he succeeded in getting to run a country.
So the best way to think about Jon’s mission is through the lens of environmental diplomacy: He needed to convince the world’s leading powers to abandon the internecine struggle over the throne and refocus on the White Walker threat. He didn’t have a ton to work with: The North is a distinctly third-tier power, weaker militarily than both the Targaryen and Lannister alliances and the country most vulnerable to the White Walkers.
Jon may have failed to rally Cersei to his cause, but he succeeded in bringing on Daenerys. And that’s by far the most important, mostly because her dragons and cache of dragonglass represent the only chance humanity has at fending off the White Walker threat. If it weren’t for Jon, humanity would be fundamentally doomed.
French Resistance spy Jeannie de Clarens dies at 98
WWII spy Jeannie de Clarens died last week in western France at the age of 98. While working as an interpreter for a group of businessmen in occupied France during World War II, de Clarens passed information about German V1 & V2 rockets to the British government.
Getting wind of a secret weapons project, she made it her mission to be on hand when the topic was discussed by the Germans, coaxing information through charm and guile.
“I teased them, taunted them, looked at them wide-eyed, insisted that they must be mad when they spoke of the astounding new weapon that flew over vast distances, much faster than any airplane,” she told The Washington Post in 1998. “I kept saying, ‘What you are telling me cannot be true!’ I must have said that 100 times.”
One officer, eager to convince her, let her look at drawings of the rockets.
Most of what she heard was incomprehensible. But, blessed with a near-photographic memory, she repeated it in detail to her recruiter, Georges Lamarque, at a safe house on the Left Bank.
In London, intelligence analysts, led by Reginald V. Jones, marveled at the quality of the information they were receiving from Paris, notably a startling document called the Wachtel Report. Delivered in September 1943, it identified the German officer in charge of the rocket program, Col. Max Wachtel; gave precise details about operations at the testing plant in Peenemünde, on the Baltic coast in Pomerania; and showed planned launch locations along the coast from Brittany to the Netherlands.
Relying on this information, the British organized several bombing raids against the plant, which delayed development of the V-2 and spared untold thousands of lives in London.
As punishment for her resistance, de Clarens was held by the Germans in camps until near the end of the war. Total hero. (thx, kathryn)
How climate change makes hurricanes like Harvey worse
How anthropogenic climate change affects single storms like Hurricane Harvey is difficult to say. But from climate data, a couple of things about hurricane trends are clear. While the overall number of hurricanes will decrease due to the effects of climate change, the number of severe hurricanes, those causing the most damage, will increase. And the storms will also be wetter and, when combined with rising sea levels (also caused by climate change), will result in more coastal flooding and damage like we’re seeing now with Harvey.
See also Houston is experiencing its third ‘500-year’ flood in 3 years. How is that possible?
Climatologists say the mechanism by which this is happening is fairly straightforward. “Warmer air can contain more water vapor than cooler air,” according to the 2014 Climate Assessment produced by the U.S. government. “Global analyses show that the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere has in fact increased due to human-caused warming. This extra moisture is available to storm systems, resulting in heavier rainfalls.”
The Blade Runner 2049 backstory
The original Blade Runner was set in 2019, so 30 years have passed since then by the time the action picks up in Blade Runer 2049. While I imagine some of what happened in the interim will be covered in the new film, too much exposition is a narrative killer. So the filmmakers are releasing three short films that fill in the 30 year gap. The first one is set in 2036 and focuses on Niander Wallace, a character from Blade Runner 2049 played by Jared Leto.
In 2023, government authorities legislated an indefinite “prohibition” on replicant production, as a year prior a massive EMP detonated on the West Coast and is pinned on Replicants. So in this Wallace piece, we’ll see the beginnings of the new Replicants that are created after the prohibition is lifted.
At Comic-Con earlier in the year, a Blade Runner timeline was shown to fans:
2018: After a bloody mutiny by a Nexus 6 combat team in an Off-world colony, Replicants are declared illegal on Earth — under penalty of death.
2019: A prototype Replicant, Rachael, and Officer Rick Deckard, a Blade runner, escape Los Angeles together.
2020: After the death of founder Eldon Tyrell, the Tyrell Corporation rushes a new line of Nexus 8 Replicants onto the market for use Off-world. Unlike previous Nexus models, built with 4-year lifespans, the Nexus 8s have open-ended lifespans, as well as ocular implants for easy identification
2022: The Blackout. An EMP of unknown origin detonates somewhere in the West Coast. Cities are shut down for weeks. Electronic data is corrupted or destroyed over most of the United States. Finance and trade markets crash worldwide. Food supplies become dire. Theories spread as to the cause of the Blackout; none are proven. The most popular blame Replicants.
2023: Replicant Prohibition. The governing authorities legislate an indefinite “prohibition” on replicant production. Nexus 6 models are now all decommissioned due to their programmed 4-year lifespans. Surviving Nexus 8 models are to be retired. Those that can, go into hiding.
2025: Idealistic scientist Niander Wallace pioneers advancements in genetically modified food and shares his patents for free, marking an end to a global crisis. His company, Wallace Corporation, E&C, expands across the globe — and into the Off-world colonies.
2028: Niander Wallace acquires the remains of the bankrupt Tyrell Corporation.
2030s: Niander Wallace improves upon Tyrells’ genetic engineering and memory implantation methods to make replicants obedient and controllable.
2036: Prohibition is repealed. Wallace reintroduces a new line of “perfected” Replicants — The Nexus 9.
Early 2040s: The LAPD commits additional resources to bolster its existing Blade Runner unit, tasked with locating illegal Replicants and retiring them.
2049: When we return to Los Angeles, 30 years after the original movie, climate change has caused the sea level to rise dramatically. A massive Sea Wall has been built along the Sepulveda Pass to protect the Los Angeles basin. Los Angeles is even more uninhabitable than before and filled with poverty and sickness. Humans, who were not well enough to leave for the off-world colonies are left behind. There is no fresh food, and inhabitants survive on Wallace’s genetically modified food products sold from vending machines at street markets.
I’ll include the other two short films here as soon at they’re posted. (thx, david)
Update: The second short is out, starring Dave Bautista (Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy) as a replicant on the run.
Update: The third short is out; it’s animated by Shinichiro Watanabe of Cowboy Bebop.
Errol Morris’ new Netflix series, Wormwood
True crime OG Errol Morris has teamed up with Netflix for a 6-part series called Wormwood. The series is an exploration of the CIA experiments with LSD in the 1950s and the death of CIA employee Frank Olson, who was covertly given LSD more than a week before he died. Olson’s death was ruled a suicide, but many years later, the US government settled a potential wrongful death lawsuit out-of-court with a $750,000 payment to the family.
The show itself is a mixture of documentary and historical reenactment (starring Peter Sarsgaard & Bob Balaban) that is now somewhat standard in the true crime genre, having been pioneered by Morris in The Thin Blue Line. Of the show, Morris writes:
Isn’t journalism the pursuit of truth? But what if the truth proves to be elusive, hard to get at? How far does one go? Where does one stop? Are there limits, emotional and otherwise, to the pursuit of truth? Can it be injurious to one’s health? Here we have the story of one man’s sixty-year quest to identify the circumstances of his father’s death. Did he jump from a hotel window? Or was he pushed? And if he was pushed, why? What for? A shadowy world of hidden and imagined intentions coupled with dark and horrifying revelations. In many ways, a personal family story, but in many other ways, a story of America’s decline in the period following World War II. It asks the question: To what extent can a democracy lie to its citizens and still, in the end, remain a democracy?
On Netflix on December 15.
Update: Here’s the full trailer for Wormwood:
My recent (and not-so-recent) media diet
Quick reviews of some things I’ve read, seen, heard, and experienced in the past few weeks. As always, don’t take the letter grades so seriously. Somehow it’s been almost two months since my last installment?
Paterson. I would pay to watch Adam Driver read the phone book and that’s kinda what this is so I was satisfied. (B)
Despicable Me 3. I have a soft spot for the Minions movie (don’t know why, afraid to ask myself) but not for this one. (C+)
Cars and Trucks and Things That Go by Richard Scarry. This was my favorite book to read to my kids, but both of them can read by themselves now, so this is perhaps the last time I will get to sit down and read it with them and oh no I’m crying right now. (A+)
Mr. Holmes. This could have been good but 24 hours after watching, I’d forgotten everything about it. (C)
Spider-Man: Homecoming. My brain let out a big ol’ “ohhhhhh” after I realized two-thirds of the way through where they got the title. (B)
The Defiant Ones. Great. But I felt Dre’s apology for his violence against women was lacking. As with many apologies from the wealthy and powerful, it had more to do with him than with his victims. (A)
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. I love reading weirdo books with my kids. (A)
Game of Thrones (season 7). Pure pulp and soap at this point. (A-)
Hey, Cool Job Episode 21: Wellness Expert And Swole Woman Casey Johnston. I LOL’d at “I’m going to remain poor and right”. (B+)
Dunkirk. I feel like Christopher Nolan watched Mad Max: Fury Road and said, “I can do that…but my way.” Also reminded me strongly of Run Lola Run. (A-)
Dunkirk: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack contributed heavily to my enjoyment of this film. (A)
Baby Driver. A 2-hour music video. If were 25 and had never seen a Tarantino movie, I would have thought this was the coolest shit ever. (B)
The total solar eclipse. A once-in-a-lifetime experience I will attempt to replicate at the earliest opportunity. (A+++)
Past installments of my media diets can be found here.
How to hear what your voice sounds like to others
Chances are, you hate the sound of your own voice because when you hear it played back on recording, it doesn’t sound anything like what you hear when you talk. Vocal coach Chris Beatty shows us a simple trick to hear our own voice (in real time) closer to how others do.
Premium mediocre
Venkatesh Rao recently coined the phrase premium mediocre to denote a certain type of product, service, or experience with which we are all very familiar these days.
Premium mediocre is the finest bottle of wine at Olive Garden. Premium mediocre is cupcakes and froyo. Premium mediocre is “truffle” oil on anything (no actual truffles are harmed in the making of “truffle” oil), and extra-leg-room seats in Economy. Premium mediocre is cruise ships, artisan pizza, Game of Thrones, and The Bellagio.
Premium mediocre is food that Instagrams better than it tastes.
Premium mediocre is Starbucks’ Italian names for drink sizes, and its original pumpkin spice lattes featuring a staggering absence of pumpkin in the preparation. Actually all the coffee at Starbucks is premium mediocre. I like it anyway.
Premium mediocre is Cost Plus World Market, one of my favorite stores, purveyor of fine imported potato chips in weird flavors and interesting cheap candy from convenience stores around the world.
The best banana, any piece of dragon fruit, fancy lettuce, David Brooks’ idea of a gourmet sandwich.
Premium mediocre, premium mediocre, premium mediocre, premium mediocre. Mediocre with just an irrelevant touch of premium, not enough to ruin the delicious essential mediocrity.
A friend used to say that if something is described as being “classy”, it almost certainly isn’t. Premium mediocre is knowing that and being fine with it. (via mr)
Black Mirror season four
Six new episodes of Black Mirror are headed our way when the fourth season premieres later this year. There’s a short teaser trailer (above) and Netflix has also announced casts and directors for the season.
“Arkangel” stars Rosemarie Dewitt, Brenna Harding and Owen Teague. It is directed by Jodie Foster.
“Black Museum” stars Douglas Hodge, Letitia Wright and Babs Olusanmokun. It is directed by Colm McCarthy.
“Crocodile” stars Andrea Riseborough, Andrew Gower and Kiran Sonia Sawar. It is directed by John Hillcoat.
Yay! Fleabag is coming back for season two on BBC and Amazon
To The People I’ve Lost Over This Election
Back in March, John Pavlovitz wrote an open letter to friends he has lost contact with because of the 2016 election. This paragraph in particular articulates something I’ve been having trouble putting my finger on w/r/t some lost personal relationships due to “politics”:
I know you may believe this disconnection is about politics, but I want you to know that this simply isn’t true. It’s nothing that small or inconsequential, or this space between us wouldn’t be necessary. This is about fundamental differences in the ways in which we view the world and believe other people should be treated. It’s not political stuff, it’s human being stuff — which is why finding compromise and seeing a way forward is so difficult.
Fair or not, that is precisely how I feel. See also I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People:
I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters.
Update: Jennifer Wright: If You Are Married to a Trump Supporter, Divorce Them.
Supporting Trump at this point does not indicate a difference of opinions. It indicates a difference of values.
Values aren’t like hobbies or interests. They don’t change over time, and they more or less define who you are. Trump’s administration may have been, for some of us, a time when what we value has become much clearer to us.
So, while you may be able to convince your partner that there is a more efficient way to load the dishwasher, you will never be able to convince them that they need to care about people they are fundamentally uninterested in caring about.
Disney princesses reimagined as electoral maps
Pretty much what it says on the tin. Not much else to add.
Hey Ladies! the book
The Hey Ladies! column from The Toast is coming out in book form in May 2018 (pre-order here).
Based on the column of the same name that appeared in The Toast, Hey Ladies! is a laugh-out-loud read that follows a fictitious group of eight 20-and-30-something female friends for one year of holidays, summer house rentals, dates, brunches, breakups, and, of course, the planning of a disastrous wedding. This instantly relatable story is told entirely through emails, texts, DMs, and every other form of communication known to man.
From the column, here’s some Friendsgiving planning:
In terms of NBT aka night before thanksgiving AKA thanksgiving eve, i’m sorry to say that I won’t be here. My dad bought me a flight home (yay daddy’s girl forever haha!) and I’m leaving Monday. I saw a post on Buzzfeed about doing a friendsgiving? Is anyone interested in this? was thinking we could skip the food and just go out for tequila shots? hahah I love the holidays!
I also don’t know if anyone recalls but I will NOT be going out the night before tgiving in my hometown and that is mostly because I do not want to run the risk of seeing Jacob, my high school ex. I keyed his car in 2001 and I’m almost positive he knows it was me. What’s the statute of limitations on a crime like that? I’ve been listening to too much Serial.
Oddly, both the Times and the New Yorker have run knockoff “Hey Ladies!” pieces in the past couple of months. Not so cool.
Last Flag Flying
Directed by Richard Linklater, Last Flag Flying tells the story of three army buddies (played by Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell, and Laurence Fishburne) who reunite when one of their sons is killed in combat. Judging from the trailer, this looks great, but what’s interesting is that this is a sequel of sorts to a Hal Ashby movie from more than 40 years ago.
Last Flag Flying is a sequel to Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail, which arrived all the way back in 1973. Both movies are based on novels of the same name from Darryl Poniscan (he published Last Detail in 1970 and Last Flag in 2005), and both feature the same trio of characters. Last Flag Flying finds Steve Carell playing the role Randy Quaid filled in Ashby’s original, Cranston filling in for [Jack] Nicholson, and Fishburne stepping in for Otis Young.
Black holes could delete the Universe
In their latest video, Kurzgesagt takes a look at black holes, specifically how they deal with information. According to the currently accepted theories, one of the fundamental laws of the Universe is that information can never be lost, but black holes destroy information. This is the information paradox…so one or both of our theories must be wrong.
The paradox arose after Hawking showed, in 1974-1975, that black holes surrounded by quantum fields actually will radiate particles (“Hawking radiation”) and shrink in size (Figure 4), eventually evaporating completely. Compare with Figure 2, where the information about the two shells gets stuck inside the black hole. In Figure 4, the black hole is gone. Where did the information go? If it disappeared along with the black hole, that violates quantum theory.
Maybe the information came back out with the Hawking radiation? The problem is that the information in the black hole can’t get out. So the only way it can be in the Hawking radiation (naively) is if what is inside is copied. Having two copies of the information, one inside, one outside, also violates quantum theory.
So maybe black holes holographically encode their information on the surface?
A Blue Angels jet surprises a crowd with a low pass
Sunday at The Chicago Air and Water Show, a Blue Angels combat jet flew very low past an unsuspecting crowd and surprised the bejeezus out of some folks. It’s worth watching this video on a large screen multiple times while focusing on the reaction of a different person each time. You can see how low and fast the plane was flying from another angle. They also flew between the buildings downtown.
How fast could LeBron James run a mile? 4:40? 4:20?
A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof
Before yesterday, I never wanted to hear or read about Dylann Roof ever again. But Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah’s superb piece in GQ about what led Roof to commit his terroristic act is very much worth reading.
Felicia Sanders, one of the few survivors, told the courtroom early on that Roof belonged in the pit of hell. Months later, she said that because of him she can no longer close her eyes to pray. She can’t stand to hear the sound of firecrackers, or even the patter of acorns falling. Because of Dylann Roof, Felicia Sanders had been forced to play dead by lying in her dying son’s blood, while holding her hand over her whimpering grandbaby’s mouth. She had pressed her hand down so tight that she said she feared she would suffocate the girl. Eighteen months later, Felicia Sanders pointed that same hand toward Dylann Roof in the courtroom and said, with no doubt in her voice at all, that it was simple — that man there was “pure evil.”
Their vitriol was warranted but also unexpected, since in most of the press coverage of the shooting it had largely been erased. Almost every white person I spoke with in Charleston during the trial praised the church’s resounding forgiveness of the young white man who shot their members down. The forgiveness was an absolution of everything. No one made mention that this forgiveness was individual, not collective. Some of the victims and their families forgave him, and some of them did not. No one acknowledged that Dylann Roof had not once apologized, shown any remorse, or asked for this forgiveness. Or the fact that with 573 days to think about his crime, Dylann Roof stood in front of the jurors and, with that thick, slow tongue of his, said without any hesitation whatsoever, “I felt like I had to do it, and I still feel like I had to do it.”
On the first morning that Felicia Sanders testified, I was seated directly behind Dylann Roof’s mother, and because she is skin and bones, it was apparent that she was having some kind of fit. She trembled and shook until her knees buckled and she slid slowly onto the bench, mouth agape, barely moving. She said, over and over again, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She seemed to be speaking to her boyfriend, but maybe it was meant for Felicia Sanders, who was soon to take the stand. A communiqué that was a part of the bond that mothers have, one that was brought up by the radiant shame one must feel when your son has wreaked unforgivable havoc on another mother’s child. Whatever it was, it was Gothic.
When behavioral economics meets a $700M Powerball jackpot
Business Insider went out onto the streets of NYC and tried to buy people’s just-purchased Powerball tickets ahead of the $700 million drawing. They did not get many takers, even when offering twice the price they paid (which meant they could just go and buy double the number of tickets and slash their odds of winning). The video says this is an example of regret avoidance.
A theory of investor behavior that attempts to explain why investors refuse to admit to themselves that they’ve made a poor investment decision so they don’t have to face the unpleasant feelings associated with that decision. Regret avoidance causes investors to not correct bad decisions, which can make those decisions worse. Regret avoidance is the result of cognitive dissonance.
As Alex Tabarrok notes, it’s also a demonstration of the endowment effect (Tabarrok: “these people are crazy!”).
In psychology and behavioral economics, the endowment effect…is the hypothesis that people ascribe more value to things merely because they own them. This is typically illustrated in two ways. In a valuation paradigm, people will tend to pay more to retain something they own than to obtain something they do not own — even when there is no cause for attachment, or even if the item was only obtained minutes ago. In an exchange paradigm, people given a good are reluctant to trade it for another good of similar value. For example, participants first given a Swiss chocolate bar were generally unwilling to trade it for a coffee mug, whereas participants first given the coffee mug were generally unwilling to trade it for the chocolate bar.
One way to think about it is if you buy a lottery ticket for $5 and someone offers you $10 and you don’t take it, financially it’s like you’ve paid $10 for the ticket, an easily replaceable item with an average worth of about $2.50 (and more likely worth nothing). But no one should be buying tickets anyway because the lottery sucks.
Great 1970 eclipse stamp by the legendary Lance Wyman
A Mexican postage stamp designed in honor of the 1970 total solar eclipse. It was designed by Lance Wyman, who also did the logo and graphics for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.
Knausgaard’s four-book series on the seasons
Karl Ove Knausgaard is writing a series of four books, one for each one of the seasons. The first one, Autumn, just came out yesterday.
Autumn begins with a letter Karl Ove Knausgaard writes to his unborn daughter, showing her what to expect of the world. He writes one short piece per day, describing the material and natural world with the precision and mesmerising intensity that have become his trademark. He describes with acute sensitivity daily life with his wife and children in rural Sweden, drawing upon memories of his own childhood to give an inimitably tender perspective on the precious and unique bond between parent and child. The sun, wasps, jellyfish, eyes, lice—the stuff of everyday life is the fodder for his art. Nothing is too small or too vast to escape his attention. This beautifully illustrated book is a personal encyclopaedia on everything from chewing gum to the stars. Through close observation of the objects and phenomena around him, Knausgaard shows us how vast, unknowable and wondrous the world is.
Ah, so that’s what the chewing gum thing was about. The NY Times review is positive overall with a few caveats. The Times also did a By the Book with Knausgaard in which he shares “books I want to read, books I have to read and books I believe I need to read […] we are talking about id, ego and superego books”. Among his book picks are Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett and The Brain: The Story of You by David Eagleman. There is also this:
I hardly ever laugh.
LOL Knausgaard.
The oldest known photo of a US President
A daguerreotype photograph taken of President John Quincy Adams in 1843 has recently surfaced and is due to be auctioned off by Sotheby’s in October.
The daguerreotype, which carries an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000, was taken in a Washington portrait studio in March 1843, when Adams was in the middle of his post-presidential career in Congress. He gave it as a gift to a fellow representative, whose descendants kept it in the family while apparently losing track of its significance.
Emily Bierman, the head of Sotheby’s photographs department, called it “without a doubt the most important historical photo portrait to be offered at auction in the last 20 years.”
It’s mind-blowing that there are photos of the 6th President of the US — James Monroe, the 5th President, was not photographed. Adams was born in 1767, several years before the Revolution, and served as President until 1829, but he isn’t the earliest born person to be photographed. That honor (probably) belongs to John Adams (no relation), who was born in 1745.
I love these Tesla drag race videos. At 3:22, watch the Tesla SUV hold its own vs a Lamborghini Aventador
The best photos and videos of the 2017 solar eclipse
Photo and video credits from the top: Nashville progression photo by Richard Sparkman. HDR photo with Moon detail by Dennis Sprinkle (this one blew my mind a little). Rock climber by Ted Hesser (the story behind the photo). Progression photo by Jasman Lion Mander. Photo from the Alaska Airlines flight by Tanya Harrison. Video of the eclipse shadow moving across the Earth from the NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite. Neon cowboy photo by Rick Armstrong. ISS transit photo and video by Joel Kowsky. Partial eclipse video by NASA’s SDO spacecraft. Partial eclipse video by the ESA’s Proba-2 satellite. Video of the eclipse shadow moving across the US by the NOAA’s GOES-16 weather satellite. Time lapse video from The Salt Lake Tribune. Amazing 4K close-up video by JunHo Oh, ByoungJun Jeong, and YoungSam Choi…check out those prominences!
More eclipse photos on Petapixel (and here), BBC, Bored Panda, The Verge, and the NY Times.
Update: I added the time lapse video from The Salt Lake Tribune. (via the kid should see this)
Update: Added the 4K close-up video.
Alaska’s permafrost is melting. Lots of carbon in there…
What witnessing a total eclipse is like
In an essay from 1982 about her seeing a total solar eclipse in Washington (recently republished in this collection), Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard puts into words what I only attempted to express in my eclipse experience.
I had seen a partial eclipse in 1970. A partial eclipse is very interesting. It bears almost no relation to a total eclipse. Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him, or as flying in an airplane does to falling out of an airplane. Although the one experience precedes the other, it in no way prepares you for it.
I heard lots of disappointment with the eclipse among friends and on social media. It was neat — look, there’s a chunk out of the Sun — but they thought it would be darker or that the air would get colder. But none of that stuff really happens unless you’re really close to totality…and then it goes completely dark and your brain turns inside out. Twitter user @hwoodscotty said:
Probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Totality is so much different than even 99%. 10/10 Would recommend.
Standing on a mountaintop for totality was crossing into another dimension, suddenly finding ourselves on another world. Amazing. Sparkling ring, sun fire ghostly streaming, darkest circle. I understand now why people chase the eclipse. Totality is unlike anything. Entire landscape shifted, valleys, hills, mountains painted in nightcolour and cold. Sparkling planets came out in a midnight sky.
But back to Dillard’s piece…this part, about the shadow rushing towards them, sounds amazing:
I have said that I heard screams. (I have since read that screaming, with hysteria, is a common reaction even to expected total eclipses.) People on all the hillsides, including, I think, myself, screamed when the black body of the moon detached from the sky and rolled over the sun. But something else was happening at that same instant, and it was this, I believe, which made us scream.
The second before the sun went out we saw a wall of dark shadow come speeding at us. We no sooner saw it than it was upon us, like thunder. It roared up the valley. It slammed our hill and knocked us out. It was the monstrous swift shadow cone of the moon. I have since read that this wave of shadow moves 1,800 miles an hour. Language can give no sense of this sort of speed — 1,800 miles an hour. It was 195 miles wide. No end was in sight — you saw only the edge. It rolled at you across the land at 1,800 miles an hour, hauling darkness like plague behind it. Seeing it, and knowing it was coming straight for you, was like feeling a slug of anesthetic shoot up your arm. If you think very fast, you may have time to think, “Soon it will hit my brain.” You can feel the deadness race up your arm; you can feel the appalling, inhuman speed of your own blood. We saw the wall of shadow coming, and screamed before it hit.
Next time, and there will definitely be a next time, I’m hoping to get up high somewhere so I can see the shadow and more of the 360-degree sunset. BRB, pricing plane tickets to Argentina…
Update: Before the 2017 eclipse, Vox talked to some eclipse chasers about what it’s like to witness a total solar eclipse.
Joss Fong, who produced the video, shared the following on Twitter:
now that i’ve recovered from the drive, i can say that a lot of what these eclipse chasers told me makes sense now. agree completely that it’s something you have to see for yourself. what was different for me though is …. i got pretty sad. there’s a fine line between awe and grief. maybe in a different year it would have gone the other way, but tbh every exceptionally beautiful sunset makes me a tiny bit sad too. but this was sunset sadness times a thousand. absolutely punched by the impermanence. i hope i see it again and i hope you can see it too.
Update: From XKCD:
I watched from a beautiful nature reserve in central Missouri, and it was — without exaggeration — the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.
3-Way (Not Calling)
This is NSFW and pretty funny. 3-Way (Not Calling) is a short film about one couple’s attempt to spice things up in the bedroom with another person and how it goes slightly wrong and also slightly right. (via film school rejects)
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