#9. Can’t Stop the Signal, Mal
Mr. Universe: Can't stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere.
So, the world is really tough right now, something which I don't need to tell any of you. Everyday the news seems to bring not just one, but a whole bevy of new issues we have to care about. (This is part of the plan: overload us with issues; we can't possibly care about everything all of the time.)
But there's something that gives me some hope: you can't stop art. Oh, sure, individual voices can be silenced, and individual platforms can be throttled, but, as Mr. Universe told Malcolm Reynolds: "You can't stop the signal, Mal."
It is easy to catastrophize that the world is going back in time to eras where all opposition was suppressed, but America--for good or ill--is the media capital of the world. We put out tons of movies, books, TV shows, and, above all: internet media.
I have no doubt (because it's already happened) that oligarchs like the Zuckerburgs and the Musks and the Bezoses will silence speech on their platform, but the signal is just TOO BIG. The information superhighway, made of its tubes, just has too many tubes to stop.
Art will survive. Books will survive. Our economy is built on media, and you can tariff Hollywood if you want to but, as another Malcolm said "life will find a way."
You can't stop the signal, Mal.
Interesting and Fascinating Things in the News
#1. So Nessie, if Nessie existed, which it doesn’t, it was thought to be an ichthyosaur--so, picture Nessie. These were the swimming dinosaurs with big long necks and flippers and tails that lived 130 million years ago. Well, several years ago, there was a three-month dig in Torres del Paine National Park, in Patagonia, and on the very last day of their heretofore fruitless ichthyosaur search, a team led by Judith Pardo-Pérez found FIVE ichthyosaurs, including--INCLUDING--a perfectly preserved pregnant ichthyosaur with a little fossilized ichthyosaur fetus in its belly. They named this mama Fiona, and you can read all about her here.
#2. Have you ever thought that it would be a good idea to let yourself be bit by a cobra? Well, it wouldn't be. But a guy did it, intentionally, and spent four days in a coma. But then he proceeded to let himself be bitten an additional 200 times over the course of his life--black mambas, taipans, cobras, kraits and many others. His name is Tim Friede, and what he succeeded in doing is turning his blood into a fantastically magical antivenom. Yes, REALLY. And the findings were published in this article in the journal Cell.
#3. This one isn't so much of a "hey that's neat" story as a "well, that explains a few things" story. A behavioral economist and his team have been running thousands of games of Monopoly between test subjects, but the twist is that one player is advantaged over the other. With the flip of a coin, one play gets more money at the start of the game, gets to roll two dice instead of one, and gets twice as much money when they pass Go as the others. The researcher, Paul Piff, said that in the tests, as the advantaged player begins to win (and they almost always win) they talk louder, they eat more snacks, they brag. And, when the game ends and the winner is asked why they won, the answer is NEVER (really, never, in all the tests) that they won due to luck. They come up with answers about this decision or that decision, but they never point to the coin flip. The conclusion: advantaged people tend to believe that they got where they got on their own, regardless of the advantage. Anyway, a little depressing, a little interesting. You can read it here.
#4. In lighter news, ever wonder why you can't slurp up your spaghetti without getting sauce on yourself? (It's true! You can't! The noodles ALWAYS flip around.) Did you also know that if you take a dry spaghetti noodle and snap it in half--it doesn't snap in half. A dry spaghetti noodle, broken with your hands, will always shatter into more than two pieces. (Try it. The professor who tried it spent the whole night breaking spaghetti all over his kitchen floor when he first realized it.) Want to know why it's so incredibly hard for even very good chefs to make a non-clumpy cacio e pepe? Well, the answer to all of these noodle mysteries is physics. (To learn how a physicist cracked the cacio e pepe code, read this article from the BBC.)
Distractions and Diversions
Love you some Star Wars? Can't get enough of Andor? (I absolutely love it.) In this video, an architect breaks down the breathtaking production design of Andor to explain some of the inspirations for the sets. It's fascinating not just in a "this looks really cool" way, but in a "this reveals aspect to the characters that I hadn't thought about" way.
Speaking of Star Wars, and in honor of May the Fourth, Adam Savage from Tested went to visit the world's largest collection of Star Wars memorabilia. Some of the stuff is what you'd expect--toys in original packaging--but the neater ones are some of the stuff is fan-made, like a hand-beaded Emperor's Guard helmet from Mexico, or franchised in foreign countries, like a row of little dancing stormtroopers from Japan.
And to round out Star Wars Day, here's one of my favorite crafters taking a bunch of models from Star Wars: X-Wing (a miniature wargame) and making this awesome illuminated diorama.
That's all I've got for this week, folks. Read more about me here, and in honor of this week: Live Long and Prosper.
