March 30, 2023
Meet the mouse that builds 110 lb mounds of pebbles
Meet the pebble mound mouse. It creates its own microhabitat by scattering a mound of pebbles around its burrows. The air temperature around the pebbles warms up faster in the morning than the pebbles themselves, causing the formation of small droplets of dew by condensation. The mice carry the pebbles in their mouths to build the mound. The stones can weigh as much as half the mouse's body weight. [more inside]
A Predisposed Disappointment
It may seem strange to apply a theory developed with respect to such significant world events to stickers, a medium primarily concerned with circulating images of lazy cartoon ducks and the like. But that is part of the point. Stickers reveal how the realities of public secrecy in China within the culture of the everyday have crystallized. With stickers, the tactics of visual ambiguity, remixing, humor, affective masking, irony, and ambivalence — once the preserve of artists dealing with significant political events — have become a primary part of mundane visual expression. from Speaking in Stickers by Krish Raghav [more inside]
TRUMP INDICTED
A flicker out of the corner of your eye
"There is a world, almost within reach, in which LED lighting could be aesthetically fabulous. But right now, it’s one more thing that overpromises and under-delivers. What we’re starting to glimpse is a new phase in which good light, once easy to achieve and available to everyone, becomes a luxury product or the province of technological obsessives."
A little baseball humor for opening day
A Few More Last-Minute Baseball Rules Major League Baseball is adding a pitch clock, and if you're a baseball fan, you probably have strong feelings about this rule change. Reading this parody of MLB rule changes was a fun escape from the conversations about how the new MLB rules are ruining / saving the game.
ASMR at the Museum
Watch - and listen - as museum conservation staff work on or demonstrate objects at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. For example: Conserving a Eurovision dress; Humidifying a ballet tutu; Conserving a PJ Harvey costume; Handling a puppet book; Turning the pages of a medieval choirbook; The handling and care of precious books; Massaging hands with bath rasps from Iran; Preparing a Bollywood poster for stretching; Unlocking a 17th-century strongbox. The full playlist. (MLYT).
It's okay, I don't mind!
Girl, just eat in front of me A short original song from Singaporean TikToker Syapls on the occasion of the month of Ramadan. Enjoy. [more inside]
Let there be light.
Why are movies so dark these days? [Polygon] “The truth can’t be boiled down to any one factor. But one key element has largely gone missing from this conversation: filmmaking choices, and the current trends that have directors producing darker imagery. If streaming compression is a necessary evil of modern distribution, and if viewers will choose to watch movies and shows in suboptimal conditions regardless of the filmmaker’s intent, then why are so many directors, DPs, and colorists designing their work in a manner that’s incompatible with how so many people view media nowadays? What benefit are filmmakers getting out of this? The answers are complicated.” [more inside]
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