'90s Music Videos, A History of Pasta, Sweating Robots, etc.
In which I share a few links to read at your leisure this holiday weekend.
🇺🇸 Just figured I’d send out an early newsletter for those of you that just have to pretend to work today, or for one to peruse in between lots of fun and/or sun this holiday weekend.
🔒 Create a new password to continue…
🚴♀️ The U.S. Bicycle Route System is “a developing national network of bicycle routes connecting urban and rural communities via signed roads and trails” and currently covers over 18,000 across 34 states (as well as the capital).
🐶 Are dogs color blind? “Dogs can see blue-violet and pale yellow hues. They can also discern different shades of gray fairly well. But they can’t see green, orange or red.”
🐙 Octopus may enter into REM sleep and dream like humans. “In this sense, while humans can verbally report what kind of dreams they had only once they wake, the octopuses’ skin pattern acts as a visual readout of their brain activity during sleep.”
🌕 What can we do with moon dust? “If we’re going to live on the moon we’re going to have to put its regolith to work for us.”
🤖 If you didn’t think we needed to build a robot that sweat, you were mistaken. “Researchers at Arizona State University are utilizing a specially-made version of the clammy android as a way to measure the effects extreme temperatures can have on the human body.”
🍕 Archeologists in Pompeii have unearthed a 2,000 year-old painting of a pizza, or at least a pizzaish.
🍝 An eleven-minute video on the history of pasta, “one of trade, culture, and migration on a global scale.”
🖼 A few weeks ago I mentioned that both The Met and the Art Institute of Chicago have Van Gogh exhibits this summer. But it should now be noticed that over 1,5000 of his paintings and drawings have now been digitized as well.
📹 “Chasing ‘Chasing Amy’” is an upcoming documentary on Kevin’s Smith’s (at least at one time) cult classic thru our current cultural landscape. “Why, as a 12-year-old, did director Sav Rodgers become obsessed with the movie Chasing Amy, and what does the film’s seemingly progressive (at the time) gender and sexuality politics, which includes frank depictions of out and happy LGBTQ+ characters, hold up to a modern lens?”
🤘 If you haven’t heard King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, perhaps you should check them out if you’re feeling (very) musically adventurous. “That jazzy, crunchy, and party-friendly sensibility have made them darlings among music fans who sit at the nexus of loving both the Grateful Dead and garage-punk indie rock. (Which is a much larger audience than the media might have you believe.)"
📺 …and/or check out this Youtube playlist I made of ‘90s alt rock music videos.
📚 The Verge has created a list of their 40 favorite books on tech, because what you need is another long list of books to (not) read. I own one of them and may or may not have read it yet.
🌱 A great piece on shifting your focus from “the grass is greener on the other side”, to "the grass is always greener where you water it.” “It's this understanding that has helped me turn my attention inwards, to nurture my own life and to celebrate my own accomplishments, however big or small.”
✝️ The radical theology of Mr. Rogers. “"Love is like infinity: You can't have more or less infinity, and you can't compare two things to see if they're ‘equally infinite.’ Infinity just is, and that's the way I think love is, too.”
💪 Some great advice from an interview with Perfume Genius: “I also just do it, you know what I mean? I just make shit. 90% of doing anything is doing it. Not to sound self-help-y, but when people are asking me for advice, my first thought is, you should just do it. You beat so many people already if you just actually make a finished thing.”
✌️Now, go. Enjoy your (hopefully) break, but then go finish the thing. Until next time, please keep the Hoping Machine running.
Love,
Luke
