Researchers at the University of Toronto have developed a model that reconstructs the visual proteins of some of the earliest cetaceans, offering a vision through the eyes of ancient whales. https://hakaimagazine.com/news/what-did-the-ancient-whale-see/

Deep below an island in Finland, nuclear waste experts are pondering how to communicate with humans stretching thousands of generations forward. Can we use cryptic icons from the ancient past to inform decisions for the far future? Deep Time Underground longnow.org Finland’s nuclear waste experts have, for decades, quietly envisioned distant future ecosystems. Exploring their

In 01999, the poet Gary Snyder sent @stewartbrand an epigram: This present moment That lives on to become Long ago. This was Brand’s response:

From British Columbia to Florida, sea gardens stewarded by the Indigenous peoples of North America provided food for millennia. Can they once again help sustain communities? How Indigenous Sea Gardens Produced Massive Amounts of Food for Millennia www.smithsonianmag.com Communities created bountiful food without putting populations at risk of collapse

For centuries, Northern Europeans played a strategy board game called hnefatafl, a pastime of the Viking elite that was eventually made obsolete by the spread of chess to the region. https://www.inverse.com/culture/viking-board-games-hnefatafl

A new study reveals that airborne signs of plant photosynthesis can be used as an “early warning system” weeks or even months before droughts strike. https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2202767119

Japan’s history can be told as a story of the “never-ending human dance with water,” its landscape deeply-shaped by the natural and infrastructural paths of water. https://aeon.co/essays/how-can-history-help-the-never-ending-human-dance-with-water

Time isn’t just a number you read off of a clock. The work of artist Alicia Eggert expands our understanding of time, using neon and balloons to toy with our lines between the now and eternity. https://longnow.org/ideas/02021/05/18/how-long-is-now/

End-of-the-world novels are memento mori for civilization — reminders of the risks facing our society in ways that are both sobering and life-affirming. End-of-the-World Novels Are ‘Memento Mori’ for Civilization longnow.org Why envisioning the collapse of civilization can be unexpectedly life-affirming.