Different geographical concepts are naturally manifested in our surroundings. Lines, shapes, patterns, and textures can be seen in nature, and can be easily captured in photography. Russ Burden shares some tips and tricks in capturing the best shots, from reading the light, color and contrast to considering the shooting angle and the composition. Check his full piece on the subject here!
Image credit: Russ Burden
I like sleeping. Lying in bed and surrendering yourself to a long rest is a great pastime. I wish I could do it all the time, but alas, even I have chores and work to do. On a more serious note, why do our bodies need to go to sleep anyway? A recent study attempted to explore the evolutionary reasoning behind our biological necessity for sleep:
The cortex is one of the most complex brain regions. It can permanently readjust its structural connections to store new memories and eradicate old ones and consumes a large amount of energy for information processing.
While in principle any neuron might have a mechanism that allows it to switch off before it’s damaged by excessive use, the cortex might be the region that needs sleep most and tells us first when we are tired and how much sleep we need.
If the cortex does play such a big role in making us tired, could we somehow manipulate the cortex and change our need for sleep? In recent years, several techniques have been developed to stimulate the brain from the outside with electrode pads placed on the head or through magnetic coils positioned above the skull.
Both these methods generate electrical currents that modulate the electrical signals that neurons use to communicate with each other. This can therefore allow researchers to modify brain activity in a specific area — such as the cortex.
Image credit: Lux Graves
Damn, that’s a huge amount of money. With the rise of electric cars as a potential sustainable replacement for fossil fueled cars, Dyson has also attempted to join the competition. However, while thei design of their electronic car, codenamed N526, was successful, other circumstances led to its tragic cancellation. Fast Company has more details:
We worked with virtual reality to imagine and show interiors and to look at our car in comparison with other vehicles. I aimed for an entirely flat floor. I wanted to have the same adjustable and ergonomic front seat also in row two, the rear seats.
While you can’t make electric cars for a reasonable price, existing car companies were willing to make them because they help achieve specified exhaust emissions across their product range. So, if they take a loss on electric cars, they make a profit on polluting cars while appearing virtuous. Their cars would undercut the price of our car by a significant margin. By 2019, it was clear that it would be hard for us to compete at our elevated price and risky for us to proceed.
Because of this shifting commercial sand, we made the decision to pull out of production at the last minute. N526 was a brilliant car. Very efficient motors. Very aerodynamic. Wonderful to drive and be driven in. We just couldn’t ever have made money from it, and for all our enthusiasm, we weren’t prepared to risk the rest of Dyson.
Image credit: Dyson
Well, this must have been a sight to see. Don’t underestimate this event as something odd or just plain weird, as the dozens of cyclists in their birthday suits did not just parade themselves for perverse reasons or attention seeking. These cyclists took Amsterdam's streets to protest the use of cars polluting the environment and to create awareness for bike safety. All in all, a worthy campaign to champion, right?
-via Flipboard
Image credit: Flo Karr
Art Blocks is taking the NFT market by storm! The collection has generated a whopping $403 million in trading volume so far since it was launched in November 2020. That’s a lot of money. True to its trading worth, a single Art Blocks NFT was sold for $3.3 million worth of cryptocurrency. What’s up with the artworks in this collection to warrant this huge amount of hype and money? Decrypt has the details:
An NFT is a blockchain-verified deed of ownership to a unique digital item, whether it’s an image, video file, or something else entirely. Art Blocks is a generative art collection that spans a wide array of different drops by varying artists—some are flat images or interactive 3D compositions—but they’re all united by a similar origin story: every final, one-of-a-kind image is generated by the Ethereum blockchain.
The artist creates an algorithm or script and deploys it on Ethereum, experimenting with compositional elements to develop the project’s unique style before locking the code. During the minting process, the final image is generated from the script via the hash string or “seed” provided by the token
Each resulting image is different and created on the spot, sight unseen by the buyer, but there are consistent elements and repeating motifs that join them all into a cohesive project.
It’s a marriage of traditional art aesthetics and blockchain
data that yields something that is undeniably crypto-native. The look and feel of each drop varies widely across the different Art Blocks projects, but some have been celebrated and hailed as fine art—and they’re selling for similarly towering prices, accordingly.
Image credit: Art Blocks
Books have been around for centuries, printed and written in different languages around the world. Only a small number actually get an English translation -- whether it’s because of the work’s popularity or other factors. If you’re curious to find out the books that are most translated, Preply has compiled a list of the most translated books by country and presented the data in a cool infographic:
the most translated book in the world? It’s The Little Prince, which has been translated to more than 380 different languages! Following after that is The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. These are both considered classics that have had many decades to accumulate translations.
Preply excluded from these numbers religious texts that couldn’t be easily attributed to a single author or country.
Image credit: Preply
There’s hope for humans surviving on Mars! A workaround was found by experts. In theory, the areas near Martian caves should be shielded from some of the radiation that penetrates the planet’s surface. Unlike our planet, Mars’ surface doesn’t have a thick atmosphere that prevents UV radiation and ionizing radiation from space from reaching the surface. The Martian caves could serve as a potential shield from the harmful waves:
However, images of the planet from orbit have shown what appear to be entrances to caves, and the insides of these caverns could be protected from those harmful rays. Daniel Viúdez-Moreiras at Spain’s National Institute for Aerospace Technology has now calculated how much UV radiation would still make it into different types of caves at various locations on Mars.
He found that in many cases the levels of UV radiation inside the caves would be around 2 per cent of the levels on the surface. Those radiation levels are low enough to be relatively safe, but still high enough to sustain organisms that require light to produce energy via photosynthesis.
It isn’t clear whether ionising radiation – which is potentially even more dangerous than UV – would be blocked out in the same way, but it is likely, according to Viúdez-Moreiras. “Ionising radiation doesn’t present exactly the same behaviour as UV radiation,” he says. “However, it is expected that ionising radiation will also be strongly attenuated in pit craters and cave skylights.”
The consequences of this are twofold: caves may be safe locations for human explorers to hide from the extreme conditions at the Martian surface, and they may also be some of the best places to search for signs of life on the Red Planet. No lander or rover has ever visited a cave on Mars, but doing so would be the best way to figure out whether they really are habitable, says Viúdez-Moreiras.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/UArizona
Corporations, ugh. Universal Music Group (UMG) has blocked the video of British filmmaker Philip Bloom, claiming copyright to his shots of the Moon. Bloom filmed the Moon during sunset in Greece. When he uploaded his video on the Internet, he was sent a copyright infringement claim by UMG, with the notice that his footage matched 30 seconds of video owned by the company. What in the world? Does UMG own the Moon now? PetaPixel has the details:
Bloom says he’s baffled by the fact that a simple shot of the Moon could be flagged for copyright infringement.
“It’s utterly ludicrous, I mean it’s a shot of the moon!” he says. “I hadn’t realized they owned the licensing rights to it. I dare not upload a sunset shot as they’ve probably bought the sun too!
“It doesn’t affect me in any way other than it being annoying and ridiculous, but it does raise questions about the AI being used on Facebook… unless they actually have bought the moon? If so I bet that wasn’t cheap!”
Update on 8/27/21: Philip Bloom says that after the publication of this story, UMB has released the claims on his video along with several others.
Image via PetaPixel
Damn, should I start selling some pixel art NFTs too? Benyamin Ahmed has managed to sell pixelated doodles to thousands of crypto enthusiasts. The 12-year-old is now sitting on nearly $400,000 in Ethereum cryptocurrency after his NFT collection sold out overnight! He has sold over 3,350 NFTs from his collection called ‘Weird Whales,’ as Futurism details:
But that ethereality hasn’t stopped buyers. CNBC reports that the Weird Whales all sold out in nine hours. Ahmed, who spent $300 on the entire project, raked up 80 ether on those initial sales. That’s worth about $250,000 as of this article’s publication. Since that initial sale in July, Ahmed has collected another 30 ether — about $94,000 — in royalties when some of his buyers decided to sell their whales to someone else.
By the end of the month, CNBC projects that he’ll have over $400,000 in Ethereum — and Ahmed says he doesn’t plan to cash out.
“I plan to keep all my ether and not convert it to fiat money,” Ahmed told CNBC. “It might be early proof that, in the future, maybe everyone doesn’t [need] a bank account and just has an ether address and a wallet.”
Image credit: Imran and Benyamin Ahmed via CNBC
Meet the WaterPod, a sustainable floating pod that converts seawater into drinking water. Designed by Bennie Beh Hue May, Yap Chun Yoon, and Loo Xin Yang, the contraption can generate drinkable water through a natural desalination process. The team of designers was recognized by The James Dyson Award for their conceptual design. Here’s how the pod would operate:
WaterPod operates as a self-cleaning solar desalination system that absorbs seawater via underwater wicks, inspired by mangrove trees, which then passes through a condensation and evaporation process to remove the salt particles from the seawater. Just like mangrove trees, WaterPod’s underwater wicks fill the pod with seawater until its water levels reach the pod’s black fabric dome. Inside the dome, seawater undergoes evaporation as water vapors gradually flow from the transparent covering and collect in WaterPod’s storage compartment. Then, users can pump drinking water from the storage compartment’s recess. While the desalination process takes place, the WaterPod remains floating atop the water in a similar fashion to a conventional buoy. WaterPod’s top lid is filled with expanded polyurethane foam for thermal insulation and flotation enhancement while a cement base offers buoyancy stability.
Image credit: via Yanko Design
The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden in Germany revealed the results of their restoration of a Johannes Vermeer artwork, and there was a hidden detail in the painting all along! The museum took two and a half years to restore Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. Thanks to a research project in 2017, it was revealed that the blank wall in the painting was not done by Vermeer. Instead, the overpainting was completed several decades after the canvas was finished. This conclusion motivated art historians to uncover what was covered up:
Once the work was completed in early 2021, art historians could gain a new appreciation for the painting. “With the recovery of Cupid in the background, the actual intention of the Delft painter becomes recognizable,” states Stephan Koja, director of the Old Masters Picture Gallery. “Beyond the ostensibly amorous context, it is about a fundamental statement about the nature of true love. So before what we looked at was only rudimentary. Now we understand it as a key image in his oeuvre.” In fact, as Koja points out, Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window stands at the beginning of a series of painting in which Vermeer shows a woman in a quiet, reflective moment.
Now, thanks to the restoration, art lovers around the world will be able to enjoy the artwork as Vermeer intended. To celebrate the finished restoration, the painting has been placed at the centerpiece of a new exhibition at the museum. Johannes Vermeer. On pausing will run from September 10, 2021 to January 2, 2022 and will include nine other paintings by Vermeer closely related to the restored artwork.
Image credit: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden / Wolfgang Kreische
If you’re planning to take some awesome photos in the upcoming fall, this tool might be of help to you! An interactive fall foliage prediction map shows the peak periods when leaves will be at their most colorful in each region. The Smoky Mountains portal designed the fall foliage prediction map for tourists:
The visual planning guide allows users to click through one week at a time, starting from August 30 to November 15, and shows the change in foliage across the United States, from “No Change” with leaves still green and all the way to “Past Peak” when leaves begin to fall.
The company uses a model that ingests a multitude of data sources including historical precipitation, NOAA precipitation forecasts, elevation, actual temperatures, temperature forecasts, and average daylight exposure to develop a baseline fall date for each county in the continental United States. Next, the model consumes hundreds-of-thousands of additional data points from a variety of government and non-government sources and layers this data over its own historical data from past years and, finally, with a high degree of accuracy, the algorithm produces nearly 50,000 date outputs indicating the progression of fall for every county in a graphical presentation that is easy to digest.
Image credit: Smoky Mountains
Archaeologists from Petrozavodsk State University in Russia have discovered a burial site of an ‘amber man’ who was painted with ocher, a red pigment used to mark a grave so it wouldn’t be disturbed. In addition to the distinctive paint job, the man, who was estimated to be from the Copper Age, was also buried with more than 100 pieces of jewelry. The man must have been rich when he was alive! Artnet has more details:
The man buried in the chamber was almost certainly of high social standing, and may have been a trader himself from the Eastern Baltic States.
The objects included pendants, discs, and amber buttons “arranged in rows face down” and sewn onto a covering made of leather and placed over the body. Another two tiers of amber buttons were found along the edges of the small grave.
The flint chips found are likely from tools placed over the body and “are clearly so-called votive items—offerings apparently symbolizing whole knives and arrowheads,” researchers said in their paper.
The unique aspect of this particular burial, they said, is that it is an individual grave. Other burials dating to the Mesolithic era and found in the forest belt of Europe are large cemeteries.
Burials with such a large number of jewels were previously unheard of in this area of Karelia, nor have they been uncovered in nearby northwestern regions.
Image credit: Petrozavodsk State University
Local clothing store owner and adoption advocate Scott Poore purchased a billboard to help a shelter dog find a home! Poore purchased a 30-foot structure and featured the smiling face of Sally Sue, an 11-year-old pit bull mix who has lived in a Kansas City shelter for 500 days. Poore hopes that with the billboard, Sally’s story can reach through to people who are not active on social media.
Image credit: YouTube/KMBC 9 News
A family went missing after a hike near Yosemite National Park. Jonathan Gerrish, Ellen Chung, their 1-year-old, and their family dog, were all found dead in Sierra National Forest. No signs of trauma, injury, or suicide were found. The circumstances behind their mysterious death is now being linked to a toxic algae bloom:
At first, officials speculated toxic gases may have been seeping out of an old mine 3 miles away from where the bodies were found and investigated under a hazmat warning, according to the Associated Press. But that warning has now been lifted.
“I don’t believe it’s connected to a mine,” Mariposa County Sheriff Jeremy Briese told the Bee.
Now, the State Water Resources Control Board is investigating the area for toxic algae blooms and lists the area near where the bodies were found as a place of “caution.” The Sierra National Forest issued a similar warning on July 13 regarding toxic algae blooms, advising visitors to avoid swimming in some bodies of water within the forest.
Still, the local Sheriff said there is no definite answer yet, and that the investigation is still ongoing.
Image credit: Cullen Jones
