Cassettes Still Rock (and hiss)
It’s cool to spool again as the cassette returns on a wave of nostalgia
Sales are soaring and current stars are releasing tracks on the format… but is anyone actually listening to them?
Pause. Stop. Rewind! The cassette, long consigned to the bargain bin of musical history, is staging a humble comeback. Sales have soared in the last year – up 125% in 2018 on the year before – amounting to more than 50,000 cassette albums bought in the UK, the highest volume in 15 years.
It’s quite a fall from the format’s peak in 1989 when 83 million cassettes were bought by British music fans, but when everyone from pop superstar Ariana Grande to punk duo Sleaford Mods are taking to tape, a mini revival seems afoot. But why?
“It’s the tangibility of having this collectible format and a way to play music that isn’t just a stream or download,” says techno DJ Phin, who has just released her first EP on cassette as label boss of Theory of Yesterday.
“I find them much more attractive than CDs. Tapes have a lifespan, and unlike digital music, there is decay and death. It’s like a living thing and that appeals to me.” Phin left the bulk of her own 100-strong cassette collection in Turkey, carefully stored at her parents’ home, but bought “20 or 25 really special ones” when she moved to London. “I’m from that generation,” she says. “It’s a nostalgia thing – I like the hiss.”
Social Media Boys
Dragon Aurora
Nasa releases picture of mysterious ‘dragon’ aurora rearing its head in the sky
by Jasper Hamill
A view0 of the mysterious dragon aurora snapped in Iceland on February 18 (Photo: Jingyi Zhang & Wang Zheng)
NASA has released incredible pictures of an unusual ‘dragon’ aurora roaring silently in the sky over Iceland.
The stunning natural wonder was caused by particles emited from the sun which smash into the atmosphere to cause a dramatic light display.
Nasa wrote: ‘Have you ever seen a dragon in the sky? Although real flying dragons don’t exist, a huge dragon-shaped aurora developed in the sky over Iceland earlier this month.
‘The aurora was caused by a hole in the Sun’s corona that expelled charged particles into a solar wind that followed a changing interplanetary magnetic field to Earth’s magnetosphere.
‘As some of those particles then struck Earth’s atmosphere, they excited atoms which subsequently emitted light: aurora.
‘This iconic display was so enthralling that the photographer’s mother ran out to see it and was captured in the foreground.
Wi-Fi For The Brain
Neuroscientists Say They’ve Found an Entirely New Form of Neural Communication
by PETER DOCKRILL
Scientists think they’ve identified a previously unknown form of neural communication that self-propagates across brain tissue, and can leap wirelessly from neurons in one section of brain tissue to another – even if they’ve been surgically severed.
The discovery offers some radical new insights about the way neurons might be talking to one another, via a mysterious process unrelated to conventionally understood mechanisms, such as synaptic transmission, axonal transport, and gap junction connections.
“We don’t know yet the ‘So what?’ part of this discovery entirely,” says neural and biomedical engineer Dominique Durand from Case Western Reserve University.
“But we do know that this seems to be an entirely new form of communication in the brain, so we are very excited about this.”
Lagerfeld Gone
Legendary Designer Karl Lagerfeld Has Died
Karl Lagerfeld, one of the most prolific and widely popular designers of the 20th and 21st centuries, has died in Paris. He was 85.
Lagerfeld was creative director of Chanel, the French house founded by Gabrielle Chanel, for an era-defining, age-defying 36 years. Upon assuming the reins in 1983, Lagerfeld swiftly revived Chanel, reinterpreting the house founder’s iconic tweed skirtsuits, little black dresses, and quilted handbags. He did it via the lens of hip-hop one season and California surfer chicks the next—he was a pop culture savant—without ever forgetting what the revolutionary Coco stood for: independence, freedom, and modernity.
In more recent years, as the company’s fortunes grew and grew, Lagerfeld became known for the lavish Grand Palais sets he conceived for the six Chanel collections he designed a year. There was a rocket ship, a reproduction of the Eiffel Tower, and a supermarché stocked strictly with Chanel-brand products. Florence Welch sang on the half-shell at the Spring 2012 show. Most memorable of all was the improbable giant iceberg from Scandinavia that Chanel shipped across the continent for the Fall 2010 show. Lagerfeld also pioneered the concept of the traveling pre-season show. The Karl caravan has landed variously in Versailles; West Lothian, Scotland; Dallas; Seoul; and, spectacularly, Havana, Cuba.
LORDS OF CHAOS, Mayhem Dissed
Call for Lords of Chaos film about suicide and satanism to be banned
One of the most controversial films ever made has been approved for release in the UK despite featuring self-harm, suicide and burning of churches by members of a satanic black metal band.
Official film classifiers in the UK and US are understood to have been so concerned about the release of Lords of Chaos that it was reviewed at the highest levels.
Church groups have, however, called for it to be banned following controversy over the role of online self-harm images in the death of Molly Russell, 14, who took her own life after viewing such images on Instagram.
The film, based on the real-life Norwegian black metal band Mayhem,contains explicit violence, including two murders and the burning…
Motility Re-dated
Discovery of the oldest evidence of motility on Earth
Previously, the oldest traces of this kind found dated to approximately 600 million years ago: the Ediacaran period, also characterized by a peak in dioxygen and a proliferation in biodiversity. Scale bar: 1 cm. Credit: A. El Albani / IC2MP / CNRS – Université de Poitiers
An international multi-disciplinary team coordinated by Abderrazak El Albani at the Institut de chimie des milieux et matériaux de Poitiers (CNRS/Université de Poitiers) has uncovered the oldest fossilised traces of motility. Whereas previous remnants were dated to 570 million years ago, this new evidence is 2.1 billion years old. The fossils were discovered in a deposit in Gabon, where the oldest multicellular organisms were found. The results appear in the 11 February 2019 edition of PNAS.
A few years ago, geologist Abderrazak El Albani and his team at the Institut de chimie des milieux et matériaux de Poitiers (CNRS/Université de Poitiers) discovered the oldest existing fossils of multicellular organisms in a deposit in Gabon. Located in the Franceville Basin, the deposit allowed scientists to re-date the appearance of multicellular life on Earth to 2.1 billion years—approximately 1.5 billion years earlier than previously thought (600 million). At the time, the researchers showed that this rich biodiversity co-occurred with a peak in dioxygenation of the atmosphere, and developed in a calm and shallow marine environment.
In this same geological deposit, the team has now uncovered the existence of fossilised traces of motility. This shows that certain multicellular organisms in this primitive marine ecosystem were sophisticated enough to move through its mud, rich in organic matter.
Nippy Hot Rod Tractors
Police impound tractor after it was reported for drag racing motorbikes
‘Pretty nippy’ tractor weighs around 5.5 tonnes and has up to 175hp
By Thomas Cock
Police in Wiltshire seized a five-tonne tractor after being told it was racing against motorbikes.
The farm vehicle was impounded after it was found to be using red diesel – duty free fuel only to be used for agricultural purposes.
Police also said the driver could not produce valid insurance at the time.
They tweeted a picture showing a New Holland T6 175 tractor.
This model is listed online as having up to 175hp and weighing around 5.5.tonnes.
One twitter used described it as “pretty nippy.”
The tractor had a large sticker on it saying “seized by police – no insurance”.
God Bless Testosterone
Local powerlifter lifts vehicle off man trapped underneath after accident
By: Alan Campbell
YPSILANTI, Mich. (WXYZ) — A local power lifter is being hailed as a real life super hero, after his quick actions helped save a man pinned under a rolled over vehicle.
Ryan Belcher, works out and trains at the gym 5 days a week. It’s his life, and a place he credits for giving him extra strength on a day he needed it the most.
“I just lifted and started pushing the vehicle as hard as I could,” Belcher said.
Belcher isn’t your normal power lifter.
“What’s weird is it’s easier for me to not know the weight,” he said.
It was around 4:30 Thursday afternoon when Belcher heard something outside his workplace on the 2600 block of Michigan Avenue in Ypsilanti.
“I just hear a big smash and, as I look out, a crowd of people are coming and this vehicle is flipped upside down and my first instinct was to just take off out there,” he said.
MAGMA
Yellowstone volcano: How scientists ‘intensely monitor’ rising column of HOT MAGMA
THE YELLOWSTONE volcano has been “intensely monitored” by a team of scientists and volcanologists concerned by a 400-mile-long plume of hot magma that is rising beneath the surface of the Earth.
By CALLUM HOARE
The Yellowstone volcano has erupted three times in history – 2.1 million years ago, 1.2 million years ago and 640,000 years ago. Scientists have previously revealed that, should an earthquake occur, it could take less than two weeks before a catastrophic reaction event with the potential to wipe out three-quarters of the US is triggered. Now, it is the job of geologists to “intensely monitor” a large area of molten rock directly below the surface of the supervolcano, it was revealed in a documentary.
“We can reconstruct a 3D picture like an MRI scan by recording thousands of earthquakes.”
The documentary then reveals how the mapping system of more than 150 seismometers has identified a 400-mile-long magma plume rising from the Earth’s core.
Should this reach the surface, there could be catastrophic effects.
The last eruption of Yellowstone produced around 2,500 times more volcanic material than the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens.
Little Sis I Got Your Back
Steamboat Coming
Yellowstone’s Steamboat Geyser Is Gushing at a Record Pace
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — Late last year, Jeff Carter happened upon Steamboat Geyser, the tallest active geyser in the world, just before it erupted. “It was so much louder, and higher and stronger than anything I had seen, almost frightening,” he said. “People around us were so emotional, just cheering and roaring,” Mr. Carter said. “This old fellow who had it on his bucket list was so verklempt when the geyser erupted, it was neat.” All but dormant for years, Steamboat is erupting fairly frequently these days and more people like Mr. Carter are getting to witness it.
While Old Faithful is a global icon of punctual eruption — it usually erupts every 90 minutes or so — it is the exception among geothermal features. Most of Yellowstone National Park’s 1,000 or so geysers are far more irregular and unpredictable. Many geysers, like Steamboat, are quiet and then suddenly rouse. Steamboat sometimes jets water to heights of 300 to 400 feet — far higher than Old Faithful’s top height of 185 feet…
Fifth Estate Fashion
Extra! Jeremy Scott makes news (literally) on the runway
NEW YORK (AP) — CHAOS! HORROR! PANIC! BABY, IT’S HOT! Designer Jeremy Scott has always liked to make news, but with his latest collection he did it literally, drawing design inspiration from New York’s tabloid headlines.
Chromatically speaking, Scott’s runway show Friday evening at New York Fashion Week was a very disciplined collection in all black and white; Scott usually uses a riot of bright colors and large cartoon graphics in his clothes.
Here, garments were emblazoned with an artist’s versions of the New York Post and the Daily News — on dresses, trousers, jackets, jumpsuits and much more. Some of the most striking items: dainty, elegant chiffon party dresses printed with tabloid headlines.
“A MILLION LITTLE PIECES” Backstage
Why There’s Magic to ‘Proper Indie Filmmaking’
BY ASHLEY LEE
Photo Source: Courtesy Tiff
On the first day of production for “A Million Little Pieces,” Aaron Taylor-Johnson was completely naked. Per the instruction of Sam Taylor-Johnson (his director, screenwriting partner, and wife), the actor began dancing for the camera, spinning wildly with vacant eyes before falling out a window.
“I wanted the audience to know, very quickly, exactly who he was, without repeating imagery we’ve seen before,” explains Sam Taylor-Johnson of introducing the film’s drug-addicted character. “I said, ‘You’re a broken human being, and your behavior has to be so raw and without any boundaries or sense of self. So, your nakedness, you have no sense of it being right or wrong. You have no shame. You have no anything, really.’ Of course, when we shot it, it’s like, ‘Oh, god.’ ”
Asteroid Space Station
Scientists want to build a space station INSIDE an asteroid and use artificial gravity from the rapidly spinning space rocks to mine valuable minerals
- It is possible to bore into the middle of an asteroid and mine from within
- Mining on the surface of asteroids is impossible as the gravity is insufficient
- Inside the asteroid would allow it to use the artificial gravity from its spinning
- Experts say the real-life applications of this technology remains unproven
An asteroid would need to be made of solid stone and spin one to three times a minute to provide enough gravity to resemble that of the Martian surface. Visualisations of the potential project have not been created and it may look like anything from a simple cavern to a complex spacecraft similar to the International Space Station (stock image)Space stations of the future may be built inside distant asteroids, scientists claim.
One team of researchers found it would be possible to bore into the middle of a distant space rock, erect a space station and mine valuable minerals from within.
They proved it would be mathematically possible, with the right asteroid, to put a cylindrical space station inside a rock several hundred feet wide.
Experts say the logistical possibilities of this concept remains an issue and that it is at least several decades away from becoming a reality.
Some scientists rebuffed the research and claim not enough is known about the physical composition of asteroids to guarantee building a space station inside a huge rock would not cause it to fragment and break apart.
Les secrets du Chateau
Secrets of the Chateau Marmont
As the ultimate movie-colony clubhouse turns 90, Mark Rozzo prowls among the bungalows and crannies off Sunset Boulevard where mega-stars and ne’er-do-wells, from Garbo and Harlow to Lindsay and Britney, have whiled away nearly a century of enchanted evenings.
by MARK ROZZO
Photograph by Nikolas Koenig/OTTO.
In the late 1920s, as Hollywood was booming and Beverly Hills was sprouting a bumper crop of movie-colony mansions, the stretch between them was little more than sagebrush and scrub. It was known as No-Man’s Land. Winding through it was a forlorn trail with a presumptuous name: Sunset Boulevard. Where this unpaved road met Marmont Lane, catty-corner to an oasis-like complex of villas in mid-construction called the Garden of Allah, the attorney and developer Fred Horowitz became mesmerized by a barren hillside. One day in November of 1926, the story goes, he rolled up to the unpromising site in a town car, pulled out a snapshot he’d taken in the Loire Valley of the Château d’Amboise (where Catherine de Medici and Henry II of France shacked up in the 16th century), and, in a title-card moment from a silent movie, shouted: “YES.”
Horowitz had found his spot. Here, on the north side of Sunset, he would build a brawny, earthquake-proof, seven-story, Manhattan-worthy apartment house in a fairy-tale French Gothic style: thick, buff-colored walls, spiky turrets, steep roofs, arched windows, raftered ceilings, and a vaulted colonnade, with the two flanks of the building folding in upon a grassy courtyard, all adding up to a veritable fortress of luxury, taste, and fantasy. His California castle—“distinctively furnished and decorated,” as the early ad copy put it—would have state-of-the-art kitchens and bathrooms. Promising Park Avenue-style discretion and privacy, it would be a sanctuary for New Yorkers moving West and for movie machersdesiring East Coast polish. Horowitz toyed with names: Chateau Sunset? Chateau Hollywood? He went with Chateau Marmont. It sounded French. Along with the Garden of Allah, the Chateau Marmont turned that faceless frontier into what would become the Sunset Strip.
Taco Art @ SXSW
Holy Guacamole! A Group of ‘Taco-Loving Creatives’ Is Building a Pop-Up Museum Devoted to the Mexican Snack at SXSW
The pop-up promises to “deliver true Instagrammable goals.”
Avocados. Courtesy of Tacotopia.
The pop-up museum trend shows no sign of dying out as the latest Instagram trap is set to touch down in Austin, Texas, just in time for the SXSW film, music, and media festival, which runs from March 8 to 16. It’s called Tacotopia, and it’s already threatening to go on a six-city tour to New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and Scottsdale, Arizona.
“The exhibit is part of a larger movement encompassing interactive and experiential art,” the press release helpfully points out for anyone who’s been hiding under a rock since Refinery29’s 29 Rooms and the Museum of Ice Cream ushered in this strange new age of ball pits and thematic odes to avocados, dreams, feminism, pizza, and rosé.
But this particular iteration doesn’t even pretend it’s there for anything more than to “deliver true Instagrammable goals” via larger-than-life immersive installations, according to its website. It will include such attractions as a foam pico de gallo ball pit, a “Señorita Needs a Margarita” lime swing, and a staircase leading to “Churro Heaven.”
It all feels vaguely sacrilegious: the jumping off point for the whole affair is a character dubbed the Goddess of Tacos, a cross between the Zapotec Goddess of Life and Ushnishavijaya, the Buddha Goddess of a Long Life. Tacotopia plans to work with local artists in all six cities to create unique installations for each stop on the tour.
Sullivan on Sex
The Nature of Sex
By
Photo: Yukipon
It might be a sign of the end-times, or simply a function of our currently scrambled politics, but earlier this week, four feminist activists — three from a self-described radical feminist organization Women’s Liberation Front — appeared on a panel at the Heritage Foundation. Together they argued that sex was fundamentally biological, and not socially constructed, and that there is a difference between women and trans women that needs to be respected. For this, they were given a rousing round of applause by the Trump supporters, religious-right members, natural law theorists, and conservative intellectuals who comprised much of the crowd. If you think I’ve just discovered an extremely potent strain of weed and am hallucinating, check out the video of the event.
I’ve no doubt that many will see these women as anti-trans bigots, or appeasers of homophobes and transphobes, or simply deranged publicity seekers. (The moderator, Ryan Anderson, said they were speaking at Heritage because no similar liberal or leftist institution would give them space or time to make their case.) And it’s true that trans-exclusionary radical feminists or TERFs, as they are known, are one minority that is actively not tolerated by the LGBTQ establishment, and often demonized by the gay community. It’s also true that they can be inflammatory, offensive, and liobsessive. But what interests me is their underlying argument, which deserves to be thought through, regardless of our political allegiances, sexual identities, or tribal attachments. Because it’s an argument that seems to me to contain a seed of truth. Hence, I suspect, the intensity of the urge to suppress it.
Conquering The Ardblair Stones
QUEEN AND SLIM – Cold in Cleveland
Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith continue movie making on chilly Cleveland set of “Queen and Slim”
By James Ewinger, The Plain Dealer
(AP Photo/Joel Ryan)
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Stars and film crew continue to mine movie gold on St. Clair Avenue, despite bitter cold.
The movie being made here now is called “Queen and Slim,” staring Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith. Filming, much of it at night, began this week and is expected to wrap here Friday.
After filming early Wednesday morning, Turner-Smith said in a Tweet it was “slightly chilly” in Cleveland with a screen shot of her weather app displaying a reading of minus-17 degrees, which likely was the wind-chill. Temperatures at that time were around zero.
By midday Wednesday, there was no evidence of a film on St. Clair Avenue, except for a lone City of Cleveland van. Filming was to resume at 5 p.m. as temperatures dipped below minus-5 with a wind chill in the minus-30s. St. Claire from East 61st to East 71st was to be closed for the second straight night.
Melina Matsoukas is directing the movie, with a script by Lena Waithe and author James Frey. The Hollywood Reporter and other film-focused outlets have called in a “Bonnie and Clyde” story.
“To me, this is protest art,” Waithe told Variety in July. “It’s about being black and trying to fall in love in a world that’s burning down around you.”
Variety called that “Queen & Slim” an “exploration of America’s social and political climate through the lens of a genre-defying love story. The film centers on a black man and black woman who go on a first date that goes awry after the two are pulled over by a police officer at a traffic stop. They kill the police officer in self-defense and rather than turn themselves in, they go on the run.”
Speech Recognition (Without The Speech)
Engineers translate brain signals directly into speech
Advance marks critical step toward brain-computer interfaces that hold immense promise for those with limited or no ability to speak
Credit: © adragan / Fotolia
In a scientific first, Columbia neuroengineers have created a system that translates thought into intelligible, recognizable speech. By monitoring someone’s brain activity, the technology can reconstruct the words a person hears with unprecedented clarity. This breakthrough, which harnesses the power of speech synthesizers and artificial intelligence, could lead to new ways for computers to communicate directly with the brain. It also lays the groundwork for helping people who cannot speak, such as those living with as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or recovering from stroke, regain their ability to communicate with the outside world.
These findings were published today in Scientific Reports.
“Our voices help connect us to our friends, family and the world around us, which is why losing the power of one’s voice due to injury or disease is so devastating,” said Nima Mesgarani, PhD, the paper’s senior author and a principal investigator at Columbia University’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. “With today’s study, we have a potential way to restore that power. We’ve shown that, with the right technology, these people’s thoughts could be decoded and understood by any listener.”
Decades of research has shown that when people speak — or even imagine speaking — telltale patterns of activity appear in their brain. Distinct (but recognizable) pattern of signals also emerge when we listen to someone speak, or imagine listening. Experts, trying to record and decode these patterns, see a future in which thoughts need not remain hidden inside the brain — but instead could be translated into verbal speech at will.
Withnail & I
The Cult of Richard E. Grant’s Withnail and I Is Finally Having Its Moment
After decades of obsessively quoting Bruce Robinson’s 1987 comedy, Gen Xers are using Grant’s Oscar nomination as an excuse to teach a new generation to demand the finest wines available to humanity.
Bruce Robinson’s script for his 1987 cult classic, Withnail and I,wanders effortlessly between the high (a Hamlet soliloquy) and the low (“You can stuff it up your arse for nothing and fuck off while you’re doing it!”). But it’s the incandescent performance of Richard E. Grantthat sends the dark British comedy—about a couple of out-of-work actors—into the stratosphere of greatness.
So it’s less weird than it might at first seem that the movie which screened at New York’s Film Forum on Thursday night wasn’t the one that has earned Grant a best-supporting-actor Oscar nomination—Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me?, starring Melissa McCarthy—but the one that forged his legend more than three decades ago.
Over coffee in Brooklyn, I asked Grant if he could tell when he read the script for Withnail and I that it was a role for the ages? “I knew it bone-deep,” he said. “It made me laugh out loud, it was so brilliantly written. Even the stage directions were hilarious. I had also been unemployed for nine months, too, so it was the best preparation I could have had for playing an embittered unemployed actor.”
Live Vortex
Sun Dogs
The Polar Vortex Is Causing Striking Solar Phenomena Called ‘Sundogs.’ Here’s What to Know
The polar vortex that has brought deadly cold and record-breaking low temperatures to the Midwest has also resulted in beautiful solar phenomena – sundogs.
According to the National Weather Service, sundogs form when sunlight refracts off ice crystals in the atmosphere and result in colored spots of light approximately 22 degrees either left, right, or both, from the sun.
The origin of the name “sundog” is not entirely clear, but according to Chicago meteorologist Tom Skilling, the name originates from the Greek myth that Zeus walked his dogs across the sky and that the bright “false suns” in the sky on either side of the sun were Zeus’ dogs.
Boston Drivers
Alternative Milk
White gold: the unstoppable rise of alternative milks
How wellness upstarts spoiled milk’s healthy reputation – and built a billion-dollar industry from juicing oats and nuts.
Cows being machine-milked in France in 2017. Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images
In the spring of 2018, New York was gripped by a sudden, very particular and, for some, calamitous food shortage. Gaps appeared on grocery shelves. Coffee shops put out signs, turning customers away. Twitter and Instagram brimmed with outrage. The truly desperate searched from Williamsburg to Harlem, but it seemed undeniable: New York was out of oat milk.
It wasn’t just New York, in fact. The entire US was suffering from a shortage of Oatly, a Swedish plant milk whose rapid rise from obscure digestive health brand to the dairy alternative of choice had caught even Oatly by surprise. Since its US launch in 2016, Oatly had gone from supplying a handful of upscale New York coffee shops to more than 3,000 cafes and grocery stores nationwide. The company had ramped up production by 1,250%, but when I spoke to CEO Toni Petersson in late summer, they were still struggling to meet demand. “How do we supply when the growth is this crazy?” Petersson said.
Fortunately, when it comes to milk, in 2019 there is no shortage of alternative alternatives. Visit your local supermarket and you will find a refrigerated aisle overflowing with choice: almond milk, hazelnut milk, peanut, tiger nut, walnut, cashew – and that’s just the nuts. Coconut, hemp, spelt, quinoa, pea – you name it, somewhere a health-food startup is milking it. London tube stations are filled with ads for new plant milks – or rather, “mylks” (EU law prevents dairy alternatives from using the word milk if it isn’t produced by a lactating mammal). Cookbooks dedicate entire chapters to blending and straining your own. Sainsbury’s now stocks around 70 different options. There are the wellness punks (Rebel Kitchen, Rude Health), the dairy puns (Malk, Milkadamia, Mooala) and the nourishers (LoveRaw, Good Karma, Plenish). “People are just looking at every nut that exists and seeing if they can squash it into a milk,” said Glynis Murray, one of the owners of Good, which squashes hemp seeds into oil and milk.
Trevor The World’s Loneliest Duck Gone
They’re Watching Us
Private company launches “largest fleet of satellites in human history” to photograph Earth
A private company has set off a revolution in space by launching hundreds of small satellites, enough to photograph the entire landmass of the Earth every day
by
For decades the U.S. Has relied on spy satellites to look deep inside the territory of its adversaries. These giant billion-dollar satellites take high resolution photographs which can see objects as small as a fist inside Russia, North Korea or wherever the target is. Tonight we will take you inside the intelligence agency where those photos are analyzed, and we will also take you inside a revolution that is rocking the top secret world of spy satellites. A private company named Planet Labs has put about 300 small satellites into space, enough to take a picture of the entire land mass of the Earth every day. Those small satellites have created a big data problem for the government which can’t possibly hire enough analysts to look at all those pictures. Welcome to the revolution.
This is how the revolution began. Twenty-eight small satellites sent out into orbit by astronauts from the biggest of all satellites, the International Space Station.
Lunar Meteor Exposes Itself
A meteor hit the moon during the lunar eclipse. Here’s what we know.
In what may be a first-of-its-kind event, a flash of light seen during totality has astronomers on the hunt for a new crater on the moon.
BY
On Sunday, January 20, viewers across the Western Hemisphere were treated to the rusty hues of the decade’s last “blood moon” eclipse. But as people across the planet watched the moon glow crimson, some lucky observers caught an unexpected delight: the flash of a space rock striking the lunar orb.
“It’s a rare alignment of infrequent events,” says Justin Cowart, a Ph.D. candidate at Stony Brook University in New York. “A [meteoroid] about this size hits the moon about once a week or so,” he says. But if this event is confirmed, it may be the first time such an impact has been recorded during a lunar eclipse.
An eagle-eyed viewer on Reddit spotted the potential impact during the eclipse and reached out to the r/space community to see if others could weigh in. The news spread quickly on social media, as people from across the path of totality posted their images and video of this tiny flicker of light.
The Notable QUEEN & SLIM
The Notable Films Of 2019: O-S
“Queen & Slim”
Following his superb turns in “Get Out,” “Black Panther” and “Widows,” Daniel Kaluuya is set to lead this Lena Waithe-penned indie romance drama which sees “Insecure” and “Master of None” director Melina Matsoukas make her feature debut. Famed author James Frey came up with the initial idea for the project about a black man (Kaluuya) and a black woman (Jodie Turner-Smith) who go on a first date that goes awry after the two are pulled over by a cop. They kill the police officer in self-defense and rather than turn themselves in, they go on the run in a film that aims to “define black love as a revolutionary act.”