How many mass extinctions has the Earth had, really? Most people talk today as if it’s five, but where one draws the line determines everything, and some say over twenty. However many it might be, new mass extinctions seem to reveal themselves with shocking frequency. Just last year researchers argued for another giant die-off just […]
Charting Earth’s (Many) Mass Extinctions Read More »
A six-part podcast from Emergence Magazine explores the plight of four Indigenous languages spoken in California—Tolowa Dee-ni’, Karuk, Wukchumni, and Kawaiisu—among the most vulnerable in the world: “Two centuries ago, as many as ninety languages and three hundred dialects were spoken in California; today, only half of these languages remain. In Episode One, we are
The Language Keepers Podcast Read More »
Changmiania liaoningensis, buried while sleeping by a prehistoric volcano. Image Source. Although the sensitive can feel it in all seasons, Autumn seems to thin the veil between the living and the dead. Writing from the dying cusp of summer and the longer bardo marking humankind’s uneasy passage into a new world age (a transit paradoxically defined
Changmiania liaoningensis, buried while sleeping by a prehistoric volcano. Image Source. Although the sensitive can feel it in all seasons, Autumn seems to thin the veil between the living and the dead. Writing from the dying cusp of summer and the longer bardo marking humankind’s uneasy passage into a new world age (a transit paradoxically defined
Sleeping Beauties of Prehistory and the Present Day Read More »
A new statistical study of 8,000 musical compositions suggests that there really is a difference between music and noise: time-irreversibility. From The Smithsonian: Noise can sound the same played forwards or backward in time, but composed music sounds dramatically different in those two time directions. Compared with systems made of millions of particles, a typical
Time’s Arrow Flies through 500 Years of Classical Music, Physicists Say Read More »
Responding to climate change by building hard infrastructures and favoring high-tech homogenous design, we are ignoring millennia-old knowledge of how to live in symbiosis with nature. Without implementing soft systems that use biodiversity as a building block, designs remain inherently unsustainable. There is a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs designed to sustainably
Julia Watson – Design By Radical Indigenism Read More »
This animated flight through the universe was made by Miguel Aragon of Johns Hopkins University with Mark Subbarao of the Adler Planetarium and Alex Szalay of Johns Hopkins. There are close to 400,000 galaxies in the animation, with images of the actual galaxies in these positions (or in some cases their near cousins in type)
Stunning New Universe Fly-Through Really Puts Things Into Perspective Read More »
Musicologist Phil Ford, co-host of the Weird Studies podcast, makes an eloquent argument for the preservation of the “Chants to Minimalism” Western Music History survey—the standard academic curriculum for musicology students, akin to the “fish, frogs, lizards, birds” evolutionary spiral taught in bio classes—in an age of exponential change and an increased emphasis on “relevance”
Time-Binding and The Music History Survey Read More »
Long Now Member Jason Crawford, founder of The Roots of Progress, is starting up a weekly learning group on progress with a steep discount for Long Now Members: The Study Group for Progress is a weekly discussion + Q&A on the history, economics and philosophy of progress. Long Now members can get 50% off registration using the link below.
Study Group for Progress Launches with Discount for Long Now Members Read More »
It is with great sadness that we share the news that Michael McElligott, an event producer, thespian, writer, long-time Long Now staff member, and relentless promoter of the San Francisco avant-garde, has died. He was 50 years old. Michael battled an aggressive form of brain cancer over the past year. He kept his legendary sense
Michael McElligott, A Staple of San Francisco Art and Culture, Dies at 50 Read More »
