Memory Born
Scientists Watch a Memory Form in a Living Brain
While observing fearful memories take shape in the brains of fish, neuroscientists saw an unexpected level of synaptic rewiring.
( originally published in Quanta Magazine)
IMAGINE THAT WHILE you are enjoying your morning bowl of Cheerios, a spider drops from the ceiling and plops into the milk. Years later, you still can’t get near a bowl of cereal without feeling overcome with disgust.
Researchers have now directly observed what happens inside a brain learning that kind of emotionally charged response. In a new study published in January in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team at the University of Southern California was able to visualize memories forming in the brains of laboratory fish, imaging them under the microscope as they bloomed in beautiful fluorescent greens. From earlier work, they had expected the brain to encode the memory by slightly tweaking its neural architecture. Instead, the researchers were surprised to find a major overhaul in the connections.
Idiots All Around
Ellis on Cimino
How Hollywood destroyed Michael Cimino
Talent alone couldn’t keep the lights on
Of all the downfalls in Hollywood history, Michael Cimino’s haunts me the most, destroyed by his artistic ambitions in a corporate town whose rules he didn’t want to play by. Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich may come close, but they never ruined an entire movement or destroyed a film studio. In a single stroke of hubris and artistic obsession, Cimino burnt down the New Hollywood that created him with just one movie: Heaven’s Gate (1980).
Filmmakers had made massive bombs before Heaven’s Gate and they have made massive bombs since. Three or four were released last year, including Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story and Guillermo Del Toro’s Nightmare Alley, which is by far the best film Del Toro has created. Both of these films are nominated for Best Picture Oscars this year and have probably lost far more money for their studios than Heaven’s Gate. How is it that Cimino became so famous and was able to create two towering works of art in the space of three years? And then become a pariah?
Supercheer
Deep Peering
James Webb: ‘Fully focused’ telescope beats expectations
IMAGE SOURCE,NASA/ESA/CSA/STSCI – The test star has the ungainly name 2MASS J17554042+6551277. A red filter optimises the visual contrast
The American space agency has achieved a major milestone in its preparation of the new James Webb Space Telescope.
Engineers say they have now managed to fully focus the $10bn observatory on a test star. The pin-sharp performance is even better than hoped, they add.
To get to this stage, all of Webb’s mirrors had to be aligned to tiny fractions of the width of a human hair.
But the agency cautions that a lot of work still lies ahead before the telescope can be declared operational.
Lee Feinberg, the Nasa engineer who has led the development of Webb’s optical elements, described the release of the first properly focused image as phenomenal.
“You not only see the star and the spikes from the diffraction of the star, but you see other stars in the field that are tightly focused, just like we expect, and all sorts of other interesting structure in the background,” he told reporters.
Best Hide-the-ball
Baby Nissan’s
Nissan’s Pike Factory Cars Were Retro Before Retro Was Cool
Today, the four pint-sized cars, including the once-popular Pao and Figaro, are ideal gateways into classic car ownership
In the late ‘90s, the American auto market began its long flirtation with retro-classic design led by models like the Chrysler PT Cruiser, Volkswagen New Beetle and Plymouth Prowler. But by that time, this particular vibe had already run its course on the other side of the Pacific. In fact, Japan’s own infatuation with the marriage of modern motoring and old-school styling had originated nearly a dozen years before Detroit discovered the benefits of mining nostalgia.
In 1985, Nissan took its customers by surprise with the Be-1, a pint-sized car that wrapped one of the brand’s existing commuter platforms in a shape seemingly lifted from a time machine. In the process, it kicked off a minor design revolution that not only changed how Japanese buyers approached the cheap and cheerful section of the showroom, but also reverberated through the years to impact modern-day enthusiasts.
Stray Space Rock Surprises
Asteroid impacts Earth just two hours after it was discovered
The asteroid, 2022 EB5, was small and burnt up in the atmosphere. However, more asteroids are coming, one flying by closer to the Earth than the Moon.
By AARON REICH
An asteroid struck the Earth over the weekend, just two hours after it was discovered.
Designated 2022 EB5, the small rocky object impacted the planet on March 11 north of Iceland, according to numerous astronomers online.
At just three meters wide, 2022 EB5 was around just half the size of an average male giraffe, which grows to be around five-six meters in height. As such, it was unlikely to do any damage if it had impacted the planet.
The Roadkill App
Road to table: Wyoming’s got a new app for claiming roadkill
By MEAD GRUVER
LANDER, Wyo. (AP) — The aroma of sizzling meat in melted butter wafts from a cast iron pan while Jaden Bales shows his favorite way to cook up the best steak cuts from a big game animal.
The deep red backstrap pieces, similar to filet mignon of beef, are organic and could hardly be more local. They’re from a mule deer hit by a car just down the road from Bales’ rustic home in a cottonwood grove beneath the craggy Wind River Range.
Bales was able to claim the deer thanks to a new state of Wyoming mobile app that’s helping get the meat from animals killed in fender benders from road to table and in the process making roads safer for critters.
CME Triple-threat
‘Strong’ solar storm to hit Earth on Monday may pose rare ‘triple threat’ from space
People across the world may be able to see the Aurora, a light show that is often seen in high latitude areas, this is expected to be seen further towards the equator during the storm
By Jaimie Kay
Data from NASA and the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has predicted that the phenomena will impact the planet over the next two weeks.
The NOAA has predicted an 80 percent chance of a major storm hitting Earth on Monday, March 14.https://get-latest.convrse.media/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailystar.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fstrong-solar-storm-hit-earth-26451045&cre=top&cip=4&view=web
Under their current predictions, there is a 20 percent chance that the storm will impact the UK.
People across the world may be able to see the Aurora, a light show that is often seen in high latitude areas, this is expected to be seen further towards the equator during the storm.
Metasex
Sex in the metaverse will be ‘equally enjoyable’ as real life act, experts claim
SEX in the metaverse could become as common and “equally enjoyable” as sex in real life, according to two experts.
Daniel Golden, vice president of adult site DreamCam, and cam model Carly Evans spoke to The Sun about how the metaverse could evolve sex online.
Mark Zuckerberg recently said he thinks people will one day spend most of their time in the metaverse.
Turning our everyday lives virtual will take some adapting and new approaches to common activities, including sex.
Golden told The Sun: “I think the metaverse could change the sex industry and the sex industry could change the metaverse.
“The sex industry has been driving technological innovations for years, since VHS tapes, and I think the expanding technology and room for fantasy in the metaverse will provide a great environment for not just Dreamcam users but sexually curious individuals to try new things.”
Pacino On Michael
Al Pacino on ‘The Godfather’: ‘It’s Taken Me a Lifetime to Accept It and Move On’
Fifty years later, the actor looks back on his breakthrough role: how he was cast, why he skipped the Oscars and what it all means to him now.
By Dave Itzkoff
It’s hard to imagine “The Godfather” without Al Pacino. His understated performance as Michael Corleone, who became a respectable war hero despite his corrupt family, goes almost unnoticed for the first hour of the film — until at last he asserts himself, gradually taking control of the Corleone criminal operation and the film along with it.
But there would be no Al Pacino without “The Godfather,” either. The actor was a rising star of New York theater with just one movie role, in the 1971 drug drama “The Panic in Needle Park,” when Francis Ford Coppola fought for him, against the wishes of Paramount Pictures, to play the ruminative prince of his Mafia epic. A half-century’s worth of pivotal cinematic roles followed, including two more turns as Michael Corleone in “The Godfather Part II” and “Part III.”
Duh
Listening to music really does chill people out, reduces anxiety
TORONTO, Ontario — Listening to music really does chill people out, a new study reveals. A team from Ryerson University says treatments integrating music and auditory beat stimulation are particularly effective in reducing anxiety in some patients.
Auditory beat stimulation (ABS) involves combinations of tones, played in one or both ears, designed to trigger changes to brain activity. Studies show cases of anxiety have been steadily increasing, particularly among teenagers and young adults, over recent decades.
Funny Lemmy
Picasso No NFT
Picasso’s Family Is at Odds With His Work Turning Into NFTs
More than 1,000 pieces of digital art are on the line
Last week, the artist—who died in 1973—was making headlines around the world with some unexpected news: His granddaughter Marina and her son Florian, a DJ and music producer, will mint more than 1,000 NFTs for sale based on Pablo’s work—specifically a large ceramic bowl he sculpted in 1958 that, until now, no one outside the family had known about or even seen. It’s big news for major art collectors and the crypto community, who constantly have their eyes on the big auction houses, eagerly awaiting a piece from one of the 20th-century greats to become available—even if it’s not something they can hang in a frame.
Originally, the main sale was to take place on a dedicated website hosted by the decentralized marketplace Origin Protocol. Matt Liu, Origin Protocol cofounder, explains, “For this particular drop, Marina and Florian Picasso’s team approached us, as they felt that [the] NFT platform Origin Story would offer them all the technology and branding capabilities needed to bring the entire sale to life in a big way.” The nuance of this particular platform? “Origin Story is a pretty incredible, first-of-its-kind platform that lowers the barrier of entry for all creators by offering a streamlined way to mint their own NFTs and sell them on the platform’s customizable storefronts,” Liu adds. There will be a sale of 1,000 NFTs on Man and the Beat, powered by Origin Story, and an auction of 10 exclusive NFTs on Nifty Gateway.
Insert Scrotum Here
Balldo
The “world’s first ball-dildo” is less of an erotic toy, more of a dadaist interrogation of the very concept of pleasure.
“WE DEFINITELY LIVE in the worst timeline, but I’m glad I get to see things like this,” my friend messaged me, along with a link to the Balldo. It took me a minute to comprehend what I was looking at. It’s a sex toy, and that’s about as clear as it gets. The company’s site described it as a “ball dildo” that allows you to “penetrate your partner with your balls,” which not only raised new questions, but unanswered so many questions about sex that I thought I previously understood.
I had to know more.
For anyone who doesn’t want to go down same rabbit hole, which includes multiple NSFW videos featuring both cartoon and real phalluses—the latter of which we won’t link to–here’s the short version of how the Balldo is supposed to work, according to its creators:
The skin of the human scrotum has a surprising number of nerve endings across its surface–an amount “comparable to the vulva,” Balldo’s marketing materials repeatedly remind the viewer. And yet, again according to Balldo’s marketing, said nerve endings have gone underutilized in sex. What—an exuberant voiceover asks two excited cartoon scientists and one inexplicably more excited cartoon naked man—could be done to solve this egregious oversight!?
“I did it for the attention.”
The Great Fracturing of American Attention
Why resisting distraction is one of the foundational challenges of this moment
By Megan Garber
Last month, as Delta Flight 1580 made its way from Utah to Oregon, Michael Demarre approached one of the plane’s emergency-exit doors. He removed the door’s plastic covering, a federal report of the events alleges, and tugged at the handle that would release its hatch. A nearby flight attendant, realizing what he was doing, stopped him. Fellow passengers spent the rest of the flight watching him to ensure that he remained in his seat. After the plane landed, investigators asked him the obvious question: Why? COVID vaccines, he told an agent. His goal, he said, had been to make enough of a scene that people would begin filming him. He’d wanted their screens to publicize his feelings.
I did it for the attention: As explanations go, it’s an American classic. The grim irony of Demarre’s gambit—his lawyer has not commented publicly on the incident—is that it paid off. He made headlines. He got the publicity he wanted. I’m giving him even more now, I know. But I mention him because his exploit serves as a useful corollary. Recent years have seen the rise of a new mini-genre of literature: works arguing that one of the many emergencies Americans are living through right now is a widespread crisis of attention. The books vary widely in focus and tone, but share, at their foundations, an essential line of argument: Attention, that atomic unit of democracy, will shape our fate.
Post-Beeple
One Year After Beeple, the NFT Has Changed Artists. Has It Changed Art?
Hardly at all.
By Blake Gopnik
Around 1425, the Florentine artist Masaccio painted the first major works in one-point perspective. That revolutionized what artists could do ever after.
In Paris in 1839, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre demonstrated his new photographic invention. It changed the nature of visual representation and museum walls haven’t been the same since.
On March 11, 2021, all of one year ago, Mike Winkelmann, whose nom d’artiste is Beeple, sold a collage of computer illustrations for $69 million simply because that collage came attached to a digital certificate called an NFT. That colossal price launched a mad scramble among creators of all kinds — illustrators, musicians, photographers, even a few veteran avant-gardists — to join the NFT gold rush.
In the 12 months since, something like $44 billion has been spent on about six million NFTs, usually issued to certify digital creations but sometimes for physical objects like paintings and sculptures.
Hot Basquiat
Basquiat Is Hotter Than Warhol—and Now a Billionaire Wants to Sell a 1982 Work for $70 Million
Collector Yusaku Maezawa is auctioning off his wall-size Basquiat, featuring a devilish figure, at Phillips this spring
By Kelly Crow
A billionaire who recently rocketed to the International Space Station said he is sending one of his prized Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings to auction this spring for an estimated $70 million. The move hints at the shifting whims of the world’s wealthy but also underscores the continuing strength of the art market overall.
Yusaku Maezawa wasn’t well-known in art circles when he paid Christie’s a record-breaking $57.3 million for his untitled 1982 Basquiat six years ago. The collector reveled in the win by posting an image on his Instagram account, shrugging off the typical discretion exercised by some top buyers.
Now, the fashion mogul behind e-commerce site Zozotown said he is ready to resell his breakout Basquiat, enlisting boutique auctioneer Phillips to offer up the painting in May in New York. The 16-foot-wide work is splashed with red and salmon hues and features a horned devil-like figure that curators have suggested could be the former New York graffiti artist’s conflicted self-portrait.
[ click to continue reading at WSJ ]
Autopocalypse
Death by robots? Study finds automation is ruining people’s lives — and raising mortality rates!
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Death by robots might seem like an unusual cause of death, but as robots replace people on factory floors, there has been a rise of suicides and drug overdoses — especially in people between 45 to 54. A new study found a link between automation of U.S. manufacturing and an increased mortality rate among working-class adults.
Automation is partially responsible for a decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. Prior research has estimated a loss of 420,000 to 750,000 jobs during the 1990s and 2000s, most of which were manufacturing jobs.
“For decades, manufacturers in the United States have turned to automation to remain competitive in a global marketplace, but this technological innovation has reduced the number of quality jobs available to adults without a college degree — a group that has faced increased mortality in recent years,” says lead author Rourke O’Brien, assistant professor of sociology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences in a media release. “Our analysis shows that automation exacts a toll on the health of individuals both directly — by reducing employment, wages, and access to healthcare — as well as indirectly, by reducing the economic vitality of the broader community.”
[ click to continue reading at Study Finds ]
All Hands On Deck
Steam Deck Hands On: Valve Successfully Frees PC Gaming From the Desktop
Available today, the Steam Deck trades raw power for the impressive ability to make your PC gaming library portable.
By Jordan Minor
As someone who flew across the country to pick up a Steam Machine, only for Valve’s first attempt at merging gaming PCs and console concepts to go up in smoke, it’s telling that I’m still excited for the Steam Deck (starting at $399). After months of speculation and anticipation, we finally got our hands on Valve’s high-powered handheld gaming PC, a device that ships today to the first customers that preordered it. We’ll need more time for a full review, but here are our thorough first impressions of the Steam Deck, a handheld that delivers new joys to PC gamers who are willing to compromise on old standards.
The Steam Deck is big, but not that big. The 7-inch, 720p screen is roughly on par with what the Nintendo Switch offers, complete with a prominent bezel. The thicker main body (1.9 inches vs. 0.5 inches) is where you’ll find the volume buttons and microSD card slot and USB-C charging port. I wouldn’t want to drop the unit, but it feels sturdy enough that I wouldn’t immediately freak out if I did.
[ click to continue reading at PC Mag ]
Cloudocracy
Our New Cloud-Based Ruling Class
by YANIS VAROUFAKIS
Capital is everywhere, yet capitalism is on the wane. In an era when the owners of a new form of “command capital” have gained exorbitant power over everyone else, including traditional capitalists, this is no contradiction.
ATHENS – Once upon a time, capital goods were just the manufactured means of production. Robinson Crusoe’s salvaged fishing gear, a farmer’s plough, and a smith’s furnace were goods that helped produce a larger catch, more food, and shiny steel tools. Then, capitalism came along and vested owners of capital with two new powers: The power to compel those without capital to work for a wage, and agenda-setting power in policymaking institutions. Today, however, a new form of capital is emerging and is forging a new ruling class, perhaps even a new mode of production.
At the beginning of this change was free-to-air commercial television. The programming itself could not be commodified, so it was used to attract viewers’ attention before selling it to advertisers. Programs’ sponsors used their access to people’s attention to do something audacious: harness emotions (which had escaped commodification) to the task of deepening… commodification.
The essence of the advertiser’s job was captured in a line spoken by Don Draper, the fictional protagonist in the television serial Mad Men, set in the advertising industry of the 1960s. Coaching his protégé, Peggy, on how to think about the Hershey chocolate bar their firm was peddling, Draper caught the spirit of the times:
“You don’t buy a Hershey bar for a couple of ounces of chocolate. You buy it to recapture the feeling of being loved that you knew when your dad bought you one for mowing the lawn.”
Salumeria
A Look Inside the Curing Room at Chicago’s Lardon, Quite Possibly America’s Finest Salumeria
Chef Chris Thompson breaks down the process behind his immaculate cured meats
BY EMILY MONACO
Vegetarians, you may want to look away
It’s 33 degrees today in Chicago — a good temperature for butchering, according to Lardon chef Chris Thompson, but not for curing, a task best carried out at about twice that. But the temperature won’t stop Thompson from his regular Thursday morning routine: putting up coppa, finocchiona and more for the pork-focused menu at his Logan Square restaurant, which decidedly and unapologetically breaks with plant-forward dining trends.
Thompson proudly leads the way through the curing room, a tight squeeze rendered even tighter thanks to the plethora of bresaola, prosciutto, salami and more hanging within — meats Thompson proudly refers to as his “babies.”
“We probably have over 3,000 pounds of meat in here, right now,” he says with a grin, most of which comes from whole hogs raised locally and humanely by Trent Sparrow of Catalpa Grove in Dwight, Illinois.
Three Pietas
Michelangelo’s three ‘pietas’ united in historic first
Florence (Italy) (AFP) – It is admired the world over as an exquisite depiction of maternal grief. But Michelangelo’s “Pieta” has overshadowed two other moving sculptures on the same subject by the Renaissance giant.
That is why Florence’s Opera del Duomo museum in Italy is putting on display together for the first time all three versions of the Virgin Mary mourning over the body of her son Jesus Christ.
The Tuscan museum’s original “Bandini” goes on show Thursday alongside casts of the “Pieta” and “Rondanini”, which are on loan from the Vatican Museums.
The Mouth Of The South
Q&A: Ted Turner Biographer Porter Bibb
All the drama around CNN and Jeff Zucker got me thinking about Ted Turner. I called up Porter Bibb, who wrote the best-selling 1993 biography of CNN founder Ted Turner, Ted Turner: It Ain’t As Easy as It Looks. Bibb told me about how he came to be Turner’s biographer, and, most interestingly, Turner’s unsparing, unfavorable thoughts about CNN under recently-ousted Jeff Zucker, and John Malone’s relationship to Turner.
Turner’s life — his father’s suicide, winning the America’s Cup, turning a rinky-dink Atlanta station at the end of the dial into a media powerhouse, his marriage to Jane Fonda — is the raw material for a great TV series. In the age of streaming, Bibb thinks Turner’s full life is better suited for a multi-part limited series, though he compares the possibilities not unfairly to Scorsese’s Howard Hughes biopic, The Aviator. (Interested? Ping me and I’ll put you in touch with Bibb, who controls the rights).
The book was optioned years ago to a couple of Turner executives, but rights eventually reverted to Bibb. A few others have kicked the tires, including Oliver Stone. But as Bibb explains, he’s feeling a new eagerness to see something come to screen both because of the timeliness of the story and Turner’s declining health.
Bibb was Rolling Stone’s first publisher where he recruited high school buddy Hunter Thompson to write for Jann Wenner’s publication; now he’s an investment banker (currently at Mediatech Capital Partners) specializing in media deals for 40 years.
Nandi Bushnell
Trigger Art
Great art is supposed to be ‘triggering’
The rise of trigger warnings is a threat to artistic freedom.
by Ella Whelan
What ‘triggers’ us in art is subjective. At the opening night of JM Synge’s Playboy of the Western World in Dublin in 1907, audience members were triggered into rioting, including throwing projectiles at the stage, because of its shocking content – including a portrayal of patricide and scenes involving ladies’ knickers. Sinn Féin leader Arthur Griffith described the play as ‘a vile and inhuman story told in the foulest language we have ever listened to from a public platform’. WB Yeats, who had not expected such a reaction, berated the audience for having ‘disgraced yourselves again’. Synge, however, was quietly triumphant, writing to his fiancé the morning after: ‘It is better any day to have the row we had last night, than to have your play fizzling out in half-hearted applause. Now we’ll be talked about.’
Almost 115 years later, the idea that art can and should surprise us in shocking or even hurtful ways feels like a thing of the past. The art world today is often so terrified of unruly audiences, who these days take to hurling tweets instead of rotten fruit, that trigger warnings are now ubiquitous. They have become a means of controlling and anticipating what kind of reaction a piece might elicit.
The Bard
Selema Masekela Is on a Mission to Return Surf Culture to the People
The bard of the action sports world chats about African surf culture, his career highlights, and his secret love for Miranda Lambert
BY DANNY AGNEW
Selema MasekelaIan – Drachman/Mami Wata
For anyone familiar with the world of action sports, Selema Masekela needs no introduction. The legendary sports commentator was ESPN’s host of both the X Games and Winter X Games for 13 years, has covered both the Olympics and World Cup for NBC Sports, and served as both host and executive producer of VICELAND’s docu-series Vice World of Sports. His voice and visage are inextricably linked with some of the most — if you’ll pardon the expression — “holy shit” sporting moments of the last quarter century.
The son of famed South African jazz musician Hugh Masekela (and an accomplished musician in his own right), Selema has also spent a significant portion of his life on the African continent and has of late been hard at work on Afrocentric surf apparel brand Mami Wata. The term “Mami Wata” translates to “Mother Water” (or “Mother Ocean”) and serves as a powerful moniker to invoke the brand’s celebration of African surf culture as well as their mission to create jobs, grow economies and support youth surf therapy organizations on the African continent. In addition to their range of eye-catching tees, hoodies and boardshorts (all designed and produced in South Africa), Mami Wata also supports said organizations via the book AFROSURF, described as “a visual mindbomb packed with over 200 photos, 50 essays, surfer profiles, thought pieces, poems, playlists, photos, illustrations, ephemera, recipes, and a mini comic, all wrapped in design that captures the diversity and character of Africa.” It’s a dope read and we highly recommend picking up a copy.
The Rock ‘n Roll GOAT
Xbombing
SpaceX’s Starlink Satellites Are Photobombing Astronomy Images, Study Says
Streaks left by passing satellites mar observatories’ celestial images, potentially hinder spotting of dangerous asteroids
By Aylin Woodward
As the armada of satellites circling Earth grows, a new study shows that astronomy images are being marred by streaks of reflected sunlight left by the fast-moving objects.
SpaceX alone launched nearly 150 of its expanding fleet of Starlink telecommunications satellites in the past month.
For the study, published Jan. 14 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers examined the effects of Starlink satellites on about 300,000 images taken by an instrument at the Palomar Observatory in Southern California. Between November 2019 and September 2021, they noted a 35-fold increase in the number of corrupted images.