A time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night. This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, El Salvador, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Lake Titicaca, and the Amazon. Also visible is the earths ionosphere (thin yellow line), a satellite (55sec) and the stars of our galaxy.
Author: foxtongue
and so I step to night
Evening
by Rainer Maria Rilke
The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;
and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;
and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.
a tiny delicious taste of what there was
my very favourite art car
Duane Flatmo’s steampunk-styled artcar, El Pulpo Mechanico
El Pulpo was made entirely from recycled materials, mostly scavenged scrap metal, and only completely assembled for the very first time on playa.
It was astonishing, how there could be so much in one place. We arrived to a line-up, dust and darkness and running lights, every tenth vehicle hosting a tiny party of celebrants, giddy to finally arrive. I pulled my bike off the back of the car, explored back and forth, gliding as if flying from conversation to conversation, stopping to chat wherever I could. The line moved fast, though, and soon we were past the gate, pushing past the empty playa to the city, lights, music, and chaos swelling out of the dust, guiding our way.
The greeters, when you meet them, have a particular script. They ask if you’re new, if this is your first year, if you need to ring the bell or roll in the dust, as they hand you your booklet, your maps, and miscellaneous stickers. Mostly, though, what they say is, “welcome home”. There are layers to it, acceptance, comfort, joy. It is rote, but it is meaningful, and it was fascinating to feel the reply this time, to know that this trip was already different from last year, already more.
I set up my camp in the dark, assembling poles and slipping them into clips by touch, my small tidy pile of belongings lit only by the ambient light of a lantern that a new campmate Quan sweetly brought out to me after I’d already put up my tent. I fell asleep wrapped in simplicity, my bedding still clean of playa, wondering where Tony was, wondering at the stars. I was briefly disappointed in myself, at my driving exhaustion, my inability to go out and explore, but tomorrow would be okay too, I decided, freshly minted, a perfect block of time, seasoned and ready to be carved.
a memoir
When You Are Old
by Spencer Gordon
Life is a long time grieving, especially the first time. The second time you try, and it’s all right, there’s less tears; it’s a reunion you never thought would happen. Then the call comes back: the hard line in the head that said
don’t kiss, don’t dance, don’t do that. And even drinking is easier, somehow, like each sip was watered down with berries and pills and ice. You never dreamed it would be so easy. But this is your second time around,
and you’re used to feeling used, and you want to see the people you thought were gone for good, and so you lean toward the fat neck beside you, and you say kiss me darling, I’m back for you, and you alone, and the trees
aren’t sad, are they? The air is a calm mourner, you say; it doesn’t need a wake to drink at. It doesn’t need friends or family. You’re like the wind, you think. You don’t need a friend. You don’t need another life. And so it ends.
leaving for burning man and I’m not afraid. i have binoculars and my cape and my fangs.
And with that, I leave for the desert. Jordan’s due here any minute and all of my things are packed. We’re hoping to stop in Tacoma on the way down, so Andrew and I can finally meet, but as I haven’t heard from him yet, it may be something we’ll do on the way back. Our only other stop is Reno, to shoot some cards and try a slot machine, just because we can and never have. It feels strange to be going this alone, like I should be waiting for Tony to get home before taking off, but he left yesterday, it’s only the echo of our past relationship that’s reverberating through the walls. Nicholas stayed over last night, kidnapped from a party room at PAX, and said he’s not sure he could do such a thing, sleep comfortably in a place he used to live with a partner. “Too many ghosts”, he said. Maybe that’s it. At any rate, I’m leaving, and I won’t be on-line for awhile.
I love you all. I wish you all well. Be happy. Be safe. I’ll try to see you soon.
you monster (this is a triumph)
A bit of interesting trivia: this short was scored by Mike Zarin, the person responsible for the soundtrack of the first Inception trailer, the one featuring the giant, iconic THRUM which laid the groundwork for Hans Zimmer’s score to the film.
See also: The Gary Hudston Project, an elaborate in-game proposal level, and how it came into being.
one of my favourite pieces at moma
Lunar Alphabet II (1978-9) & Lunar Sentence II (1978-9) by Leandro Katz.
Silver gelatin prints from an Argentine artist, born 1938. The decoded sentence reads, “When we pulverize words, what is left is neither mere noise nor arbitrary, pure elements, but still other words, reflection of an invisible and yet indelibible representation: this is the myth in which we now transcribe the most obscure and real powers of language.”
mesmerizing
I’ve been spending almost all my time in Seattle preparing Tony’s things for Burning Man, packing while he’s at work, sifting through the dusty gear and left over supplies tucked away into the storage closet from last year. Now that his stuff has been put in a van, it’s time to look at my own things again.
Re-pack suitcase. Re-pack laptop bag. Double-check camping box. Double-check shelf-stable food box. Freezer-test fruit juice bottle-sicles. Charge all the things! (camera battery, cell-phone, ipod, laptop). Empty the camera card. Get a bag of ice, a hairbrush from the pet store, some bag clips, some terrible road snacks. Pretend I feel ready. Eat all the perishables out of the fridge. Eat some ice-cream for luck. Do all possible laundry. Pack extra batteries. Swap out the purse for the pocket-belt. Fill ipod with new music. Mend Tony’s band jacket. Print out my Burner Map. Download and print Rockstar Librarian’s 2011 Burning Man Music Guide v2.0.
Unilateral phase detractors and lunar flange retro-encabulators.
Dark matter may be an illusion caused by gravitational polarization of the quantum vacuum.
If matter and antimatter are gravitationally repulsive, then it would mean that the virtual particle-antiparticle pairs that exist for a limited time in the quantum vacuum are “gravitational dipoles.” That is, each pair forms a system in which the virtual particle has a positive gravitational charge, while the virtual antiparticle has a negative gravitational charge. In this scenario, the quantum vacuum contains many virtual gravitational dipoles, taking the form of a dipolar fluid.
“We can consider our universe as a union of two mutually interacting entities,” Hajdukovic said. “The first entity is our `normal’ matter (hence we do not assume the existence of dark matter and dark energy), immersed in the second entity, the quantum vacuum, considered as a sea of different kinds of virtual dipoles, including gravitational dipoles.”
He goes on to explain that the virtual gravitational dipoles in the quantum vacuum can be gravitationally polarized by the baryonic matter in nearby massive stars and galaxies. When the virtual dipoles align, they produce an additional gravitational field that can combine with the gravitational field produced by stars and galaxies. As such, the gravitationally polarized quantum vacuum could produce the same “speeding up” effect on the rotational curves of galaxies as either hypothetical dark matter or a modified law of gravity.