Volume 25, Number 2 - 1/15/22 | Arlington Institute

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Volume 25, Number 2 – 1/15/2022

FUTURE FACTS – FROM THINK LINKS

Although the mainstream media claim that mass psychosis, also known as group mind or herd mentality, does not exist, the media is precisely that means whereby politicians and advertisers shape public opinion and behavior.
Globally, 441 cardiac arrests and other serious issues have been reported among top athletes shortly after receiving a Covid vaccine.
The James Webb Space Telescope was designed with the expectation that it will be hit with space dust weighing less than a gram.
John Deere’s newest piece of farm equipment is a self-driving tractor with a base price of around $500,000 plus an estimated $50,000 add-on package of technology that will allow the machine to operate on its own.

Freddy Silva
Scotland’s Hidden Sacred Past
Saturday, January 22nd
in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia
or via LIVESTREAM!

Around 6000 BC a revolution took place on Orkney and the Western Isles of Scotland. An outstanding collection of stone circles, standing stones, round towers and passage mounds appeared seemingly out of nowhere. And yet many such monuments were not indigenous to Britain, but to regions of the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean.

Their creators were equally mysterious. Traditions tell of ‘strangers from afar’ who were physically different, dressed in white tunics and lived aside from the regular population. They were regarded as master astronomers with an uncanny ability to work with enormous stones. But where did these relatively advanced ancient architects come from?

Based on Freddy’s new book, Scotland’s Hidden Sacred Past, we shall examine Scottish Neolithic culture and find a trail of evidence leading to Sardinia and the Armenian Highlands — a plan that would eventually form Ireland’s own megalithic culture.

Click below for more information about this event and to get tickets.

Click Here for Tickets and More Info

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AUTOMATICALLY at checkout!
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Here’s a little sample of what Freddy will be talking about when he
joins us on January 22nd, 2022.
We hope YOU will join us too, either In Person or via Livestream!

Click Here for Tickets and More Info

Freddy Silva is a best-selling author, and leading researcher of ancient civilizations, restricted history, sacred sites and their interaction with consciousness. He is also a leading expert on crop circles.

He has published six books in six languages.

Described by one CEO as “perhaps the best metaphysical speaker in the world right now,” for two decades he has been an international keynote speaker, with notable appearances at the International Science and Consciousness Conference, the International Society For The Study Of Subtle Energies & Energy Medicine, and the Association for Research and Enlightenment, in addition to appearances on Gaia TV, History Channel, BBC, and radio shows such as Coast To Coast.

He is also a documentary filmmaker, art photographer, and leads private tours to sacred sites in England, France, Egypt, Portugal, Yucatan, Malta, Peru/Bolivia, and Scotland.

learn more at www.invisibletemple.com

I’d like to introduce you to TransitionNet, our new project to build a vision for a new world.

In the face of the implosion of the old system, I believe that those of us who want to be a part of building a new world must now rise to the occasion. That’s why we’re here and we need to get about our task. Now is our time.

Building a new world is not a simple thing. The complexity and magnitude of our present global situation makes it seem like an effort multiple times more complex than the original founding of the United State, for example. It’s a big deal. But although it is much more complicated, we also have the internet and increasingly capable technologies that can both engage people who want to participate as well as build an integrated concept – a vision – of how that new world might operate.

That’s why, for the past 18 months, The Arlington Institute has been working on the conceptualization, design and development of a global collaboration platform that will allow anyone, from anywhere in the world, to participate in an organized initiative to actively design the new world. We call it TransitionNet and it will support a worldwide network of local groups, each addressing specific pieces of the big puzzle.

All of the individual ideas and solutions from across the planet will feed into a central hub where they will be integrated into a whole picture of how the new world could work. We want that picture to be a very interesting, dynamic graphical interface that will allow anyone visiting the TransitionNet website to be able to easily navigate around and both visualize the present, emergent state of the whole concept as well as drill down to see the supporting documents for the proposed solutions. There will be something for everyone: government, energy, education, transportation, science, technology, etc.

Our plans are also to host an annual forum where all of the “designers” and Founders can come together and further work together in person on the big vision.

The most important – and pressing – goal is to get the software platform finished to that we can launch it and get the project formally operational.

To do that, the first thing we need is a relatively small group of individuals who see the big picture and want to help in making this initial big step a reality.

We need Founders – those who want to be enablers of the beginning of the biggest change in recorded history. Really. This is literally where we are. It’s a rather amazing time.

So, I’d like to give you the chance to become a Founder of TransitionNet. Founders are the early supporters of the project who are on the ground floor for everything downstream.

I don’t have the space here to provide you with all of the specifics of TransitionNet, but you can find more information here … and I’ll certainly include a detailed overview if you choose to help us now by becoming a Founder.

You can become a Founder by investing at least $100 in TransitionNet. If only only 150 Founder friends come forth, we should be able to finish the software development for the platform.

That may sound like a small amount of money. If you know anything at all about software development, then you know that $15,000 is a VERY small amount for developing a significant platform. The only way that we can do this is because TAI has been funding the programing team for almost a year and a half, and we’re now in the last phases of the development process. So we’re very close to being able to share a working model of a new capability that is literally designed to change the world.

Many of you have been wonderful supporters of The Arlington Institute over the years, helping us yearly during these holiday campaigns. It’s the only way we’ve kept FUTUREdition and our other programs going.

Now, we’re taking the big step into the future with TransitionNet. Our objective is to build a model for a new world. That is not hyperbole. It is actually what TransitionNet is designed to do.

It would be wonderful if you would join us.

If you would like to become a TransitionNet Founder or get more information about this big, world-changing project, just click here. We’d welcome you warmly in becoming one of the very early enablers to the biggest change in recorded history!

THINK LINKS

The Master Plan Behind the Covid Crisis – (The Conservative Woman – September 20, 2021)

This article provides a translated transcript of a presentation ‘Uncovering the Corona Narrative’ by the German author and journalist Ernst Wolff, which he delivered in late August. It can be viewed here in the original with subtitles. Wolff has had a long-term focus of criticism on the global financial and monetary system, especially the role of the IMF, the World Bank, the Federal Reserve, the Bretton Woods system and the worldwide fiat money. Here he details the unfolding global health and economic crisis consequent on the Covid-19 lockdowns and addresses the question of who has an interest in this destructive agenda. From the text: “The American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said: ‘Nothing happens accidentally in politics and when something happens, you can bet on it that it was exactly planned that way.’ When one looks at what’s happened in the last year and a half, these words are especially alarming. Can it really be the case that everything we’ve experienced was planned? I’ll (Wolff) say one thing right away: I can’t produce any evidence for such a plan in the form of verified documents, but after studying this topic in detail for 18 months, I must say that there is an impressive number of signs and indications pointing in exactly this direction.”

441 Athlete Cardiac Arrests, Serious Issues, 259 Dead, After COVID Shot – (Good Sciencing – January 6, 2022)

It is definitely not normal for so many mainly young athletes to suffer from cardiac arrests or to die while playing their sport, but this year it is happening. Many of these heart issues and deaths come shortly after they got a COVID vaccine. While it is possible this can happen to people who did not get a COVID vaccine, the sheer numbers clearly point to the only obvious cause. The so-called health professionals running the COVID vaccine programs around the world keep repeating that “the COVID vaccine is a normal vaccine and it is safe and effective.” So in response to their pronouncement, here is a non-exhaustive and continuously growing list of mainly young athletes who had major medical issues in 2021/2022 after receiving one or more COVID vaccines. The mainstream media still are not reporting most, but sports news cannot ignore the fact that soccer players and other stars collapse in the middle of a game due to a sudden cardiac arrest. Many of those die – more than 50%. More people are writing to tell us that in many cases, we didn’t mention a person’s vaccination status. There is a good reason for that. None of the clubs want to reveal this information. None of their sponsors want to reveal it. The players have been told not to reveal it. Most of their relatives will not mention it. None of the media are asking this question.

Dr. Robert Malone with Warning for Parents about the Dangers of Vaccinating Their Children with the C-19 Shot – (BitChute – December 14, 2021)

Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, states that he is pro-vaccine and is vaccinated against Covid19. However, in this video clip, he warns against injecting children with the Covid19 vaccines and explains three main issues that parents need to understand before they take the irrevocable action of having a child vaccinated, Specifically he states that the vaccines’ toxic spike protein can damage the heart, brain and other organs. He also notes that there are no long term studies of the effects of the vaccine, particularly for children. (Editor’s note: When you click on this link, you may receive a warning that the link is “unsafe”. To access the videoclip, you will need to scroll to the bottom of the page and press “continue”. There is nothing about the link that is unsafe for your computer; someone’s concern is that the information may be “unsafe” for the reader.)

CDC Director Walensky Admits the Vast Majority of COVID Deaths Had Not One, Not Two, Not Three – But “At Least FOUR” Comorbidities – (Gateway Pundit – January 10, 2022)

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky finally admitted that an “overwhelming” number of Covid deaths that have been recorded in the US were individuals with multiple comorbidities which were a main contributing factor in their deaths. Walensky acknowledged the number during an interview with Good Morning America on January 7, 2022.“The overwhelming number of deaths – over 75% – occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities, so really these are people who were unwell to begin with.” Walensky’s admission confirms what the Gateway Pundit and others have reported for months – this virus is not deadly for the vast majority of people, aside from those who are elderly or very sick already. Article includes embedded link of the Walensky interview. Walensky was discussing a recent study from the CDC on Americans vaccinated against COVID-19. The study found that among 1,228,664 vaccinated individuals, 36 died of COVID-19, and 28 of the 36 (roughly 78%) had four or more risk factors, also known as comorbidities. Dr. Walensky’s interview was shortened for broadcast time, which led to her analysis of the data to be misinterpreted by some.

High-resolution Lab Experiments Show How Cells ‘Eat’ – (PhysOrg – December 30, 2021)

A new study shows how cell membranes curve to create the “mouths” that allow the cells to consume things that surround them. “Just like our eating habits basically shape anything in our body, the way cells ‘eat’ matters for the health of the cells,” said Comert Kural, associate professor of physics at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study. “And scientists did not, until now, understand the mechanics of how that happened.” Membrane curvature is important, Kural said: It controls the formation of the pockets that carry substances into and out of a cell. The pockets capture substances around the cell, forming around the extracellular substances, before turning into vesicles—small sacs one-one millionth the size of a red blood cell. Vesicles carry important things for a cell’s health—proteins, for example—into the cell. But they can also be hijacked by pathogens that can infect cells. But the question of how those pockets formed from membranes that were previously believed to be flat had stymied researchers for nearly 40 years. “It was a controversy in cellular studies,” Kural said. “And we were able to use super-resolution fluorescence imaging to actually watch these pockets form within live cells, and so we could answer that question of how they are created. Article explains the curvature and pocket formation processes in detail.

Not to Alarm Anyone, but Scientists Taught Goldfish to Drive – (Gizmodo – January 5, 2022)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A goldfish drives a tank down the street… There’s no punchline. That’s really what happened. Biologists at Ben-Gurion University who “wanted to test the navigational skills of goldfish outside their accustomed habitat” contrived a “Fish Operated Vehicle” from a computer-rigged water tank on wheels. With sensors to propel the vehicle in whichever outward direction the fish swam, they tested to see if it would navigate toward a target that guaranteed a treat. Here’s a video; otherwise, who’d believe this fish story? (Hat-tip to Daybreak and Rob Gerwitt.)

A Fan of Black Coffee and Dark Chocolate? It’s in Your Genes, New Study Says – (CNN – December 29, 2021)

Prefer your coffee black? Then you probably like dark, bitter chocolate, according to new research identifying a genetic basis for those preferences. If that’s you, you are the lucky genetic winner of a trait that may offer you a boost toward good health, according to caffeine researcher Marilyn Cornelis, an associate professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Studies find moderate amounts of black coffee — between 3 and 5 cups daily — have been shown to lower the risk of certain diseases, including Parkinson’s, heart diseases, Type 2 diabetes and several types of cancer. But those benefits are likely to be more pronounced if the coffee is free of all of the milks, sugars and other fattening flavorings we tend to add. In prior research, Cornelis and her team discovered that a genetic variant may contribute to why some people enjoy numerous cups of coffee a day, while others do not. “People with the gene metabolize caffeine faster, so the stimulating effects wear off faster, and they need to drink more coffee,” she said. In a new study published in Nature Scientific Reports, Cornelis analyzed more precise types of coffee drinkers, separating black coffee lovers from cream and sugar (or more) lovers. “We found coffee drinkers with the genetic variant that reflects a faster metabolism of caffeine prefer bitter, black coffee,” Cornelis said. “We also found the same genetic variant in people who prefer plain tea over sweetened, and bitter, dark chocolate over the more mellow milk chocolate.” Future studies will try to tackle the genetic preference for other bitter foods, Cornelis said, “which are generally linked to more health benefits.”

Scientists Identify a Previously Unknown Type of Storm, Called an ‘Atmospheric Lake’ – (Science Alert – December 25, 2021)

A new type of weather condition has been observed, existing primarily in one particular part of the world: compact, slow-moving, moisture-rich pools. Researchers are calling these ‘atmospheric lakes’. This unique type of storm occurs over the western Indian Ocean and moves towards Africa. Unlike most storms – created by a vortex – the lakes are produced by water vapor concentrations that are dense enough to produce rain. These atmospheric lakes are similar to atmospheric rivers, narrow bands of dense moisture. However, the new type of meteorological phenomenon is smaller, slower moving, and detaches itself from the weather system that creates it. Existing as they do in an equatorial region where the wind speed is often very low or negligible, these atmospheric lakes are in no rush. In an analysis of five years of meteorological data, the longest-lasting storm stayed in the air for 27 days in total.

Solar Recycling Is Broken, But There’s a Plan to Fix It – (The Verge – December 29, 2021)

A new Department of Energy-funded research project seeks to solve one of the biggest challenges with solar power — what to do with solar panels after they die. Unfortunately, when a solar panel dies today, it’s likely to meet one of two fates: a shredder or a landfill. Arizona State University (ASU) researchers are hoping to change that through a new recycling process that uses chemicals to recover high-value metals and materials, like silver and silicon, making recycling more economically attractive. Earlier this month, the team received a two-year, $485,000 grant from the DOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office to further validate the idea, which they hope will lay the groundwork for a pilot recycling plant within the next three years. Matching funds are being provided by ASU and energy company First Solar, which is serving as an industrial adviser on the project. If all goes well, a cleaner and more cost-effective solar recycling process could reach the market right as the first wave of solar panels hits the waste stream. Meng Tao, a solar sustainability researcher at ASU who’s leading the new recycling effort, notes that currently, it costs up to $25 to recycle a panel, after decommissioning and transit costs. New solar recycling processes that recover more metals and minerals could improve the economics considerably. Tao and his colleagues are proposing one such process, in which the envelope-sized silicon cells inside solar panels are first separated from the sheets of polymers and glass surrounding them using a hot steel blade. A patent pending chemical concoction developed by Tao’s recycling startup TG Companies is then used to extract silver, tin, copper, and lead from the cells, leaving behind silicon. Tao claims TG Companies has already developed technology to recover 100% of the silver, tin, copper, and lead in solar cells. The new DOE grant will allow his team to further optimize the recycling process for solar panels and verify whether silicon can be recovered at a high enough purity to manufacture new cells without going through an energy-intensive purification step known as the Siemens process. If all goes well over the next two years, the next step will be to attract private investors to finance a pilot plant that can use the process to recycle around 100,000 solar panels a year.

BMW Unveils Car That Changes Color at Touch of a Button – (Guardian – January 5, 2022)

BMW has unveiled a chameleon car that changes color, in the latest attempt by automotive firms to combine their vehicles with cutting-edge technology. At the touch of a button, a driver can change the shade of the car’s exterior, allowing the color to shift between black and white or even light and dark stripes by activating electronic ink in the wraparound shell. “You decide what you want to wear, what your social media status is – and you can decide what your car looks like,” said Stella Clarke, BMW’s project lead on the vehicle. Clarke added that the technology could be used to locate the car by making it flash when the driver is looking for it, or to display the vehicle’s battery capacity externally. According to BMW, the effect is created by applying an electrical charge to microcapsules – which contain particles of white and black pigments – suspended within a liquid encased in the wrap. The color alternates depending on whether a negative or positive charge is applied, causing either the white or the black pigments to collect at the surface of the microcapsule. The concept car, which is not available for public sale, was unveiled at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

Mercedes Unveils a 1,000-Km Range, Solar-Powered, Vegan Friendly Electric Car – (Observer – January 5, 2022)

Mercedes-Benz just revealed a concept electric supercar that seeks to end the debate around the so-called “range anxiety” once and for all. After 18 months in the making, Mercedes has unveiled the Vision EQXX, a compact electric vehicle that boasts a range of over 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) on a single charge, far longer than that of any production or concept EVs we know of—although the company said the range figures were “preliminary and based on digital simulations in real-life traffic conditions.” For comparison, the longest-range EV in the market, Lucid Air Grand Touring, has an EPA-rated range of 516 miles. Tesla’s Model S Long Range has 405 miles. It’s also the most efficient of all existing EV models. The car is partially powered by 117 solar cells built into its roof. The main battery pack, Mercedes said, has been redesigned by its engineers “so it could accommodate more energy from a smaller and lighter package.” Together, the system achieves an outstanding energy consumption of less than 10 kWh per 100 kilometers, equivalent to 0.167 kWh per mile. Tesla’s 2020 Model 3 Standard Range Plus, the most efficient EV in the market, consumes 0.24 kWh per mile. Mercedes’ production EVs, about a dozen models in its EQ series, won’t have such impressive specs just yet. Another message Mercedes wants to send with Vision EQXX is its gradual departure from genuine leather and other animal products. EQXX’s interior is made of a bio-based leather alternative called Mylo, produced using mycelium, a vegetative structure of mushroom that grows underground. Other materials used in the car include a cactus-based biomaterial called Deserttex and carpets made from bamboo fiber. The move is in line with an industry-wide trend. Last year, Volvo, which has stopped making gas cars (it still makes hybrid cars), announced goals to go “leather-free” by 2030 and make recycled and bio-based material account for a quarter of the material used in its news cars by 2025.

United Airlines First Passenger Plane to Make Journey on 100% Plant-based Jet Fuel – (Nation of Change – December 30, 2021)

On December 1, United Airlines flew the first passenger flight using 100% sustainable aviation fuel. The plane departed Chicago O’Hare International Airport and arrived at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, a 610 mile trip with 100 passengers on board. The “unprecedented flight” is a first in aviation history. To date, the United Airlines Eco-Skies Alliance program, which launched in April 2021, “has collectively contributed toward the purchase of more than 7 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) this year alone,” making the airline a leader in the usage of SAF, alternative fuel made with non-petroleum feedstocks, according to a United Airlines press release. The SAF flight was on a new United 737 MAX 8 and used “500 gallons of SAF in one engine and the same amount of conventional jet fuel in the other engine to further prove there are no operational differences between the two,” according to a United press release. (Editor’s note: We don’t quite understand how that equals 100% SAF.) The United SAF flight was operated in partnership with Boeing, CFM International, Virent—a subsidiary of Marathon—whose technology enables 100% drop-in SAF, and World Energy—the world’s first and North America’s only commercial SAF producer.

You Can Thank Mozart for the Taste of This Wine – (PBS – December 31, 2021)

Tuscany is renowned for its world-class wine, and from the vine to the vat, little has changed in its wine making practices over the centuries. But one small vineyard is challenging tradition, and bringing its wine to life with the sound of music. In vineyard, Paradiso di Frassina, there’s another peculiar ingredient. For seven days a week and 24 hours a day, these Sangiovese grapes are fed a steady diet of Mozart. The man behind this unorthodox approach is owner Carlo Cignozzi, a former musician. Cignozzi says the vines closest to the speakers produce the juiciest grapes and the greenest leaves. He doesn’t have to use much fertilizer or any pesticides. Mozart, he says, drives away the pests because the sound interferes with the insects’ ability to hear each other and hence mate – so they go to some neighboring vineyard that is quieter. Some researchers say there may be some veritas in that eccentric viticulture. Scientists at the CREA Research Laboratory in Tuscany are trying to verify some of those claims. Article goes on to interview researchers and the Paradiso di Frassina wine master. Link includes a transcription of the entire 6 minute video clip but it’s far more interesting to watch it and see the vineyard and the people involved.

Chinese Method For Growing Veggies Year-Round in Frigid Canada Really Works – And Has No Heating Costs – (Good News Network – January 3, 2022)

A Chinese agronomist has helped Canadian greenhouse technology move forward, curiously by moving backward. Dong Jianyi uses only materials and the laws of thermodynamics to grow cucumbers, peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, and more—even in the frigid Alberta winter—all without using a single watt . A geologist who abandoned the oil industry due to crashing oil prices, Dong Jianyi’s Fresh Pal Farms is believed to be the largest “passive greenhouse” in Canada. The 300-foot long, 30-foot wide greenhouse is constructed out of a steel frame with two polyolefin plastic roofs. An electric motor allows operators to extend and retract an insulating blanket to trap heat absorbed during the day. This keeps the 10,000-square foot interior space at 82°F compared to outside December temperatures of 20°F. On the north side lies a 24-inch thick clay wall, which captures light more easily from a south-lying sun. At night the clay radiates heat into the space, further ensuring the plants can survive winter temperature that in Olds, Alberta can fall to -31°F. Last year Dong grew 29,000 pounds of tomatoes alone last year while saving $30,000 in energy and heating costs. The passive solar greenhouses have a high upfront cost, Dong admits, but they pay back the investment in subsequent years through energy savings.

MIT Professor Warns That Cartels Could Use “Slaughterbots” to Evade Justice – (Futurism – December 12, 2021)

Cheap, lightweight killer robots are just around the corner — and major military powers, including the US, are doing very little to stop them. MIT artificial intelligence and weapons researcher Max Tegmark warned that the kind of “slaughterbots” that militaries are already working hard on may soon be in the hands of civilians as well. “They’ll be small, cheap and light like smartphones, and incredibly versatile and powerful,” he told the site. “It’s clearly not in the national security interest of these countries to legalize super-powerful weapons of mass destruction.” The greater context is even more chilling. The US, Russia, and China have all signaled that they are against an outright global ban on these so-called “legal autonomous weapons” (LAWs) ahead of a United Nations debate and resolution vote this week. Tegmark’s Future of Life Institute (FLI) at MIT recently released a film about the dangers of this terrifying technology, and the doomsday-esque near future the institute imagines is as horrific as you’d expect: facial recognition drones, robots being used for robberies, and politically-motivated mass executions. “If you can buy slaughterbots for the same price as an AK-47,” he said, “that’s much preferable for drug cartels, because you’re not going to get caught anymore when you kill someone.” “Even if a judge has lots of bodyguards, you can fly in through a bedroom window while they’re sleeping and kill them,” he continued. “And it’s going to go far beyond that. Because pretty soon anyone who wants to knock off anyone for any reason will be able to do this.” This technology has already been used on battlefields.

How Organized Retail Theft Rings in One Ohio Town Use Facebook Marketplace to Sell Stolen Goods – (NBC – December 30, 2021)

One thief said he made $2,500 a day stealing power tools before he was arrested: “You make more money than you do selling drugs, and it’s less jail time.” What’s being overlooked, law enforcement officials and big tech watchdogs say, is the role online resale sites play in the surge. Before the world was wired, people who resold items, stolen or not, usually had to use their names or show their faces. They bought classified ads in newspapers or went to pawn shops. The internet changed everything. For the past two decades, law enforcement has struggled to keep up as one platform succeeded another as the preferred marketplace for stolen goods. Craigslist has continued to let users sell things anonymously, but it fell out of favor with the public as competing sites began to crop up, said Peter Zollman, the founding principal of the AIM Group, which tracks classified advertising. EBay also garnered criticism for hosting illegal activity, but officers now praise the company for accommodating them when needed. In recent years, police say, Facebook Marketplace has increasingly become a go-to destination for organized rings that sell items ripped from big-box store shelves. In April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors that Marketplace had hit 1 billion monthly users worldwide and expected the trend to continue. E-commerce experts said that as Facebook Marketplace grows, its oversight isn’t keeping up. Among law enforcement agencies, the company has already gained a reputation for being so slow to respond and cooperate that investigators often have to give up or invent workarounds. Facebook has been blasted for amplifying conspiracy theories and extremism with its algorithms, and now it seems to have become America’s favorite new fence. Article includes discussion of proposed legislation that would require Facebook Marketplace, Amazon and other sites to verify users’ identities if they sell more than a certain dollar amount over a certain period of time – and the pushback from big tech. Both sides present sound points.

China’s Live-streaming Influencers Are in the Crosshairs of Xi Jinping’s ‘Common Prosperity’ Drive – (Washington Post – December 30, 2021)

China’s live-streamers harnessed e-commerce, social media and personal star power to fuel the rise of a multibillion-dollar industry in recent years. State media heaped praise on these mostly young entrepreneurs as examples of Chinese innovation. Now, influencers who peddle products to fans online are targets in Xi’s “common prosperity” campaign, a wide-ranging crackdown that is bringing celebrities and Internet companies to heel in the name of addressing inequality. Authorities in Hangzhou hit Internet celebrity Viya with an unprecedented $210 million fine for evading taxes. Commentators, state media and other government bodies soon piled on the criticism. The live-streaming industry is among the “most vivid examples of industries that suck blood from the real economy,” one commentator wrote. Part of the regulatory blitz that has ensnared tech companies, private tutors and others, the campaign targeting live-streamers is about more than just showing Internet upstarts who is boss. It is also an effort to inject ideological rigor into the new economy after years of explosive growth and exert more control over which industries prosper as part of Xi’s economic vision. “There may be conflicting views on how to deal with this part of the economy … but the more decisive trend is going in a more ideological direction,” said Fang Kecheng, assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at City University of Hong Kong. “These online influencers are not regarded by top leaders as the best role models for society and for young people.”

China Harvests Masses of Data on Western Targets, Documents Show – (Washington Post – December 31, 2021)

China is turning a major part of its internal Internet data surveillance network outward, mining Western social media, including Facebook and Twitter, to equip its government agencies, military and police with information on foreign targets, according to a Washington Post review of hundreds of Chinese bidding documents, contracts and company filings. China maintains a countrywide network of government data surveillance services — called public opinion analysis software — that were developed over the past decade and are used domestically to warn officials of politically sensitive information online. The software primarily targets China’s domestic Internet users and media, but a Washington Post review of bidding documents and contracts for over 300 Chinese government projects since the beginning of 2020 include orders for software designed to collect data on foreign targets from sources such as Twitter, Facebook and other Western social media. The documents, publicly accessible through domestic government bidding platforms, also show that agencies including state media, propaganda departments, police, military and cyber regulators are purchasing new or more sophisticated systems to gather data. These include a $320,000 Chinese state media software program that mines Twitter and Facebook to create a database of foreign journalists and academics; a $216,000 Beijing police intelligence program that analyses Western chatter on Hong Kong and Taiwan; and a Xinjiang cybercenter cataloguing Uyghur language content abroad. These surveillance dragnets are part of a wider drive by Beijing to refine its foreign propaganda efforts through big data and artificial intelligence. They also form a network of warning systems designed to sound real-time alarms for trends that undermine Beijing’s interests.

How Our Ancestors Used to Sleep Can Help the Sleep-deprived Today – (CNN – January 9, 2022)

While researching nocturnal life in preindustrial Europe and America, A. Roger Ekirch, a professor in the department of history at Virginia Tech, discovered the first evidence that many humans used to sleep in segments — a first sleep and second sleep with a break of a few hours in between to have sex, pray, eat, chat and take medicine. Ekirch subsequently found multiple references to a “first” and “second” sleep in diaries, medical texts, works of literature and prayer books. A doctor’s manual from 16th century France advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day but “after the first sleep,” when “they have more enjoyment” and “do it better.” Ekirch’s subsequent book, At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, unearthed more than 500 references to what’s since been termed biphasic sleep. Ekirch has now found more than 2,000 references in a dozen languages and going back in time as far as ancient Greece. The practice of sleeping through the whole night didn’t really take hold until just a few hundred years ago, his work suggested. It only evolved thanks to the spread of electric lighting and the Industrial Revolution, with its capitalist belief that sleep was a waste of time that could be better spent working. Ben Reiss, author of Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created Our Restless World and professor and chair of the English department at Emory University in Atlanta, blames the Industrial Revolution and the “sleep is for wimps” attitude it engendered. “The answer is really to follow the money. Changes in economic organization, when it became more efficient to routinize work and have large numbers of people showing up on factory floors, at the same time and doing as much work in as concentrated fashion as possible,” Reiss said. Russell Foster, a professor of circadian neuroscience at the University of Oxford, said Ekirch’s findings on biphasic sleep, while not without controversy, had informed his work as a sleep scientist. Article includes some of Foster’s suggestions.

The 10 Strangest Space Structures Discovered in 2021- (Live Science – December 29, 2021)

The closer we look at the universe, the more beautiful and baffling it becomes. Orbiting more than 300 miles over Earth and separated by tens of millions of light-years from many of the interstellar objects it studies, the Hubble Space Telescope takes “working remotely” to a new extreme. As a reminder that the universe just gets stranger and stranger the farther you get from Earth, here are 10 of the most awesome, extreme and enigmatic space structures discovered in 2021. Article includes some glorious photos from the Hubble Telescope.

The Race for the Next-Gen Space Station – (IEEE Spectrum – December 16, 2021)

On any list of humanity’s greatest engineering achievements, the International Space Station almost always ranks near the top. It is as long as a football field, as spacious as a jumbo jet. It has made more than 123,000 orbits in 21 years. And it’s hard to find news stories today that don’t say it’s showing its age. The station is slowly leaking air, presumably from stress cracks in its hull that crew members have struggled to locate, and it’s getting increasingly expensive to maintain as parts wear out. NASA is officially supposed to retire the ISS by 2024, though it says that can probably be pushed back to 2030. Meanwhile, it’s trying to get the next station into orbit as quickly as possible. So what might a new station look like? And who will lead the charge? NASA has now awarded US $415.6 million to three aerospace consortiums to develop a new “commercial low Earth orbit destination.” One team is led by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, another by the satellite company Nanoracks, and the third by the aerospace giant Northrop Grumman. NASA’s plan, for some years, has been for private industry to take over the routine work of space operations, with NASA as “one of many paying customers.” If it works—as it has in the case of SpaceX ferrying astronauts to and from the ISS—NASA says it will save billions of dollars and free the agency to go explore the cosmos. Article examines the space stations being developed by each of the three consortiums.

NASA Thinks Space Junk Will Hit the James Webb Space Telescope — But It’s Ok – (Inverse – January 10, 2022)

One of the most probable things to cause the Webb Telescope damage now and for the entirety of the mission? Pieces of space dust weighing less than a gram. “Let’s say, a piece of debris hits it,” posits Julie Van Campen, a NASA engineer and a deputy commissioning manager for the James Webb Space Telescope. “And then we had a problem like that broke a mirror,” or another piece of kit, she continues. What protects the telescope from this eventuality happening? “The answer is not much,” she says. Michelle Thaller, a scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center who led the broadcast, puts it more bluntly: “Some small impacts from micrometeorites will happen. You know, over the lifetime of the mission there will be some damage to the mirrors of the telescope.” We know the Hubble Telescope suffers this kind of damage — NASA has visual evidence the telescope’s mirrors are pockmarked with tiny craters made by pieces of debris hitting the telescope as it went through its orbit. But unlike the Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope will be operated and maintained remotely — there is no way to send a crew to repair physical damage now it is in space. We know the Hubble Telescope suffers this kind of damage — NASA has visual evidence the telescope’s mirrors are pockmarked with tiny craters made by pieces of debris hitting the telescope as it went through its orbit. But unlike the Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope will be operated and maintained remotely — there is no way to send a crew to repair physical damage now it is in space. But don’t panic — Even though Hubble has sustained little injuries over its lifespan, none are so great they have affected the telescope’s ability to do science or take stunning images of the universe to beam back to us here on Earth. The same will be true for the James Webb Space Telescope — its primary and secondary mirrors can both sustain some damage, enough even to put part of the images it collects out of focus. Van Campen likens this to getting a floater or speck of dust in your eye. It might cloud a little part of your vision, but you still see an awful lot — enough to make sense of what you are observing. Further, digital corrective tools can also help account for any small aberrations that might result from damage from micrometeors or other debris.

Physicists Crack Unsolvable Three-body Problem Using Drunkard’s Walk – (Live Science – January 4, 2022)

A physics problem that has plagued science since the days of Isaac Newton is closer to being solved, say a pair of Israeli researchers. For physicists, predicting the motion of two massive objects, like a pair of stars, is a piece of cake. But when a third object enters the picture, the problem becomes unsolvable. That’s because when two massive objects get close to each other, their gravitational attraction influences the paths they take in a way that can be described by a simple mathematical formula. But adding a third object isn’t so simple. Instead of following a predictable path defined by a mathematical formula, the behavior of the three objects becomes sensitive to what scientists call “initial conditions” — that is, whatever speed and position they were in previously. Any slight difference in those initial conditions changes their future behavior drastically, and because there’s always some uncertainty in what we know about those conditions, their behavior is impossible to calculate far out into the future. “[The three-body problem] depends very, very sensitively on initial conditions, so essentially it means that the outcome is basically random,” said Yonadav Barry Ginat, a doctoral student at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology who co-authored the paper with Hagai Perets, a physicist at the same university. “But that doesn’t mean that we cannot calculate what probability each outcome has.” To do that, they relied on the theory of random walks — also known as “the drunkard’s walk.” This is a big step forward for the three-body problem, but Ginat says it’s certainly not the end. Article explains their solution.

The Solar System Exists Inside a Giant, Mysterious Void, And We Finally Know Why – (Science Alert – January 12, 2022)

The Solar System floats in the middle of a peculiarly empty region of space. This region of low-density, high-temperature plasma, about 1,000 light-years across, is surrounded by a shell of cooler, denser neutral gas and dust. It’s called the Local Bubble, and precisely how and why it came to exist, with the Solar System floating in the middle, has been a challenge to explain. A team of astronomers led by the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has now mapped the Local Bubble with the highest precision yet – and found that the Local Bubble was likely carved out of the interstellar medium by a series of supernova explosions millions of years ago. This is consistent with previous studies, with an additional sting in the tail: the still-expanding Local Bubble is responsible for regions of heightened star formation at its perimeter. The Local Bubble was only discovered relatively recently, in the 1970s and 1980s, through a combination of optical, radio, and X-ray astronomy. Gradually, these surveys and observations revealed a huge region about 10 times less dense than the average interstellar medium in the Milky Way galaxy. Since we know supernovae can carve out cavities in space, sweeping up gas and dust as they expand outwards, this seemed a reasonable explanation for the Local Bubble. So why is the Solar System in the middle? Well, that’s purely coincidence. “When the first supernovae that created the Local Bubble went off, our Sun was far away from the action,” says physicist and astronomer João Alves of the University of Vienna in Austria. “But about five million years ago, the Sun’s path through the galaxy took it right into the bubble, and now the Sun sits – just by luck – almost right in the Bubble’s center.” According to the researchers, this suggests that the Milky Way is likely full of similar bubbles, since the likelihood of this happening is very low if the bubbles are rare.

Astronomers Discover One of the Biggest Structures Ever Seen in the Milky Way – (Science Alert – January 6, 2022)

Because it can be difficult to detect individual clouds of hydrogen gas in the interstellar medium (ISM), it is difficult to research the early phases of star formation, which would offer clues about the evolution of galaxies and the cosmos. However, recently an international team led by astronomers from the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy (MPIA) noticed a massive filament of atomic hydrogen gas in our galaxy. This structure, named ‘Maggie’, is located about 55,000 light-years away (on the other side of the Milky Way) and is one of the longest structures ever observed in our galaxy. Whereas the largest known clouds of molecular gas typically measure around 800 light-years in length, Maggie measures 3,900 light-years long and 130 light-years wide. As Jonas Syed, a Ph.D. student at the MPIA and the research project leader, explained: “The location of this filament has contributed to this success. We don’t yet know exactly how it got there. But the filament extends about 1600 light-years below the Milky Way plane. The observations also allowed us to determine the velocity of the hydrogen gas. This allowed us to show that the velocities along the filament barely differ.” The process of how atomic hydrogen transitions to molecular hydrogen is still largely unknown, which made this extraordinarily long filament an especially exciting find.

InWith Promises World’s First Soft Smart Contact Lens – (CNet – January 9, 2022)

The concept of contact lenses that can deliver real-time information to the human eye has been around in movies for years. But there are several companies right now hoping to make that vision a reality. During CES 2022, Mojo Vision announced partnerships with Adidas and other athletic companies for its hard electronic lens. The company has demonstrated that its device, when held in front of an eye, can display text and images. Enter InWith Corporation, which says it’s developed the world’s first soft electronic contact lens. In an interview with CNET, CEO Michael Hayes says the lenses will work with your smartphone or another external device to show you real-time information about the world around you. “You’ll be able to see things such as, What is the speed limit on this road? What direction am I heading? Where is the next exit and how many miles away?” Hayes also says the lenses will have the ability to help people who suffer from Presbyopia (the loss of your eyes’ ability to focus on nearby objects) by adjusting to different scenarios in real-time, eliminating their need for multifocals or reading glasses. To be clear, we haven’t seen a demonstration of InWith’s technology, but Hayes says the company is aiming for Food and Drug Administration approval this year. More details in embedded video. See also: Mojo Vision’s Smart Contact Lenses Want to Track Your Fitness.

What Is Aquamation? The Green Alternative to Cremation Chosen by Desmond Tutu – (CNN – January 2, 2022)

At Desmond Tutu’s request, the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s body underwent aquamation — considered to be a greener alternative to cremation — South Africa’s Anglican Church has confirmed. Aquamation is a water-based process whose scientific name is “alkaline hydrolysis”, in which a “combination of gentle water flow, temperature, and alkalinity are used to accelerate the breakdown of organic materials” when a body is laid to rest in soil, according to Bio-Response Solutions, a US company which specializes in the process. The company’s website says the process “uses 90% less energy than flame cremation and does not emit any harmful greenhouse gases.” According to the Cremation Association of North America (CANA), an international non-profit organization, alkaline hydrolysis is sometimes referred to as flameless cremation. The body is placed in an alkaline hydrolysis machine, comprised of an airtight chamber filled with a solution made of water and alkaline chemicals. The chamber is then heated, liquifying the body and leaving only bone behind, according to CANA’s website. Once the bones are dried they can be pulverized. “The process results in approximately 32% more cremated remains than flame-based cremation and may require a larger urn,” according to CANA. As well as requesting an eco-friendly alternative to cremation for his body, Tutu also took other steps to ensure his funeral would be as modest as his lifestyle was — his body laid in state in a simple pine coffin, which was the “cheapest available” at his request, his foundations said.

Money Has Never Felt More Fake – (Vox – December 31, 2021)

Non-fungible tokens, little digital assets that exist on a blockchain — are having a moment. What’s not really clear is why. Then again, everything about money feels a little strange at the moment. Between NFTs, crypto, and GameStop, AMC, and other meme stocks, money has rarely felt more fake. Or, at the very least, value has rarely felt so disconnected from reality. As Jacob Goldstein wrote in Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing, all money is sort of a collective myth. “Money feels cold and mathematical and outside the realm of fuzzy human relationships. It isn’t,” he wrote. “Money is a made-up thing, a shared fiction. Money is fundamentally, unalterably social.” The social aspect is clear in much of what’s going on now, whether it be a group of investors on Reddit trying to take down a hedge fund betting against GameStop or people paying thousands of dollars to claim ownership of digital art they could effectively have for free. Historically, the economy was theoretically based on labor and value creation at the individual level, and on the structural level, voting shares in companies based on their financial fundamentals and future value, said tech industry veteran Anil Dash, CEO of the programming company Glitch. But that idea died long ago. “A machine is what it does, and the purpose of the system is the output of the system. And the purpose of our financial systems … is to create ever more detached financialization that can just generate what the industry calls wealth and what the rest of the world just doesn’t see.” In other words, the confusing status of value today is a feature, not a bug. You can see this clearly in the markets in 2021. A made-up quote from a 2021 Onion article gets at the attitude: “NFTs might be bizarre speculative bullshit, but what isn’t? Aren’t we all just finding ways to turn everything that exists into something we can make money off of? I might be throwing away thousands of dollars on NFTs, but you’re throwing away thousands of dollars on TSA PreCheck or lottery tickets or donating to political candidates or raising children. Critics will say NFTs are wasteful and can be used for fraud and other crimes—fine, yeah, find me something that isn’t?” (Editor’s note: The Onion is a digital media company and newspaper organization that publishes satirical “news” articles.)

Is the World Ready for the Farmerless Tractor? – (Washington Post – January 7, 2022)

CES is the trade show where the future of technology struts its stuff for a few days in Las Vegas each year and John Deere farm equipment was there, showing its newest equipment. Technology now gives us farming without farmers — the end stage of a trend some 75 years in the making. Since 1948, total agricultural output in the United States has more than doubled, while the number of self-employed and family farmworkers has dropped by roughly 75%. Put another way: One farmer today does the work of eight agricultural workers in the post-World War II generation. And that’s before the farmerless tractor. There are now two kinds of farmers, broadly speaking: small-scale farmers, most of them working second jobs in nearby towns or cities, and large-scale operators able to afford the $500,000 price tag on John Deere’s 8R 410 tractors with a 2430 chisel plow, as well as the estimated $50,000 add-on package of technology that will allow the machines to operate on their own. Artisans and industrialists, with a dwindling world in between. According to a paper by the agricultural economist Jayson Lusk at Purdue University, two-thirds of the nation’s farm output comes from operations with sales above $1 million per year. As a result, the wealth gap hit farm country early. U.S. spending on foods and fibers is robust, but the money goes into fewer hands. Census data indicate that about 40% of Americans lived on a farm in 1900, and today the number is around 1%. As a society, we’ve not done a very good job of managing this tidal change. The change that has swept agriculture — the uncoupling of labor from wealth creation and requiring radically fewer jobs to produce ever-more-profitable output — is coming to the economy as a whole. Manufacturing is in the thick of it now, with effects visible in Rust Belt cities. Construction increasingly relies on tech-enabled prefabrication. Logistics operations — ports, railroads, warehouses — are automating as fast as they can. Even law firms and financial services are not immune.

The Truth about Mass Psychosis – (Forbidden Knowledge – January 12, 2022)

Mass Psychosis is also known as Group Mind, Mob Mentality or Herd Mentality. Before modern civilization, we lived in herds and in order to survive in the herd, we conformed to the herd. Mass Psychosis begins when an individual mind starts to identify as a member of a group based on any unifying factor. The unifying factor doesn’t even need to make sense. In order to successfully conform to the group, the individual must put aside personal intuition and follow the guidance of the group. This makes a person highly-controllable and spiritually stifles the individual, which causes them to crave group acceptance even more. Man’s disposition for Mass Psychosis has been written about for millennia, most notably, in ancient scripture and philosophy. And we all experience this as human beings, whether we reflect upon it or not. In 1895, Gustave Le Bon published The Crowd, wherein he explains the key processes for cultivating Mass Psychosis: Anonymity, Contagion and Suggestibility. This work is known to have influenced world leaders, businesses and tyrants, of which the ethics has been written about for decades. And yet, AP and Reuters outrageously claim that Mass Psychosis does not exist, when it is, in fact the corporate media apparatus to which they belong that makes this all possible, waging psychological warfare against a group of the population who believes the media would never lie to them. Without Mass Psychosis, today’s leaders would have no power. Just like advertising, everything about politics is about cultivating Mass Psychosis. Whereas, the individual pursuit of happiness has inevitably led to beauty and innovation, creating and controlling groups of people, which has been the biggest power play on Earth for all of recorded history, almost always leads to death and destruction, the science and study of Mass Psychosis could be used to enlighten humanity, by educating the individual about the power and potential of the human mind.

Maybe 2022 Should Be the Year We Turn Over Decision-making to the AI – (Washington Post – December 31, 2021)

This time of year always brings thoughts of how badly we messed up the past 12 months and how much better we’ll definitely make the next dozen. So the Smithsonian has another idea for 2022: What if instead of relying on our own resolutions we asked an AI what it thinks we should do? The “Futures” exhibit both online and at its Arts and Industries Building offers a “Resolutions Generator,” an AI that makes suggestions on what commitments we should undertake for 2022. Yes, it’s a slightly weird idea that turns up some weird results. “Change my name to one of my favorite shapes,” it suggests, or “Every Friday for a year I will wear a different hat.” And, “Every time I hear bells for a month, I will paint a potato.” Designed by AI researcher-writer Janelle Shane, the generator’s odd results are deliberate; she purposely trained the AI (the powerful GPT-3) with some of the wackier resolutions humans have put online, then set its parameters wide. “We wanted the AI to come up with the kind of interesting resolutions we’re not thinking of,” Shane said. “We wanted whimsy,” added Rachel Goslins, the director of the Arts and Industries Building, “with a little bit of real.” OK, so probably not many people will really “Go into a library, climb up onto a shelf, yell down ‘I am a giant giraffe!’” But it’s a lot easier than trying to lose those 15 pounds. And this way you end up in a library. (Editor’s note: This is a mildly serious article dressed in whimsy that, among other things, notes, “Canadian researchers in September found that AI made consistently better choices than doctors in treating behavioral problems. Even a button-down institution like Deloitte has a staffer who has persuasively argued that we should use AI, not humans, to update government regulations.” And winds up suggesting that “The future of algorithmic decision-making might not so much be that a computer tells us what to do as we find a way to tell it what we want it to tell us to do. Think of it as Alfred from Batman. Yes, it can know us better than we know ourselves. But only from quietly hanging around us for so long.”)

Artificial Intelligence Is Restoring Lost Works by Klimt, Picasso and Rembrandt. Not Everyone Is Happy about It. – (Washington Post – December 29, 2021)

Gustav Klimt’s 1900 painting “Philosophy” might have been remembered as a pivotal artwork. Made at a turning point in the artist’s career, it was vividly colored, dramatically composed — even provocative in its blatant nudity and unflinching emotion. “Philosophy” is one of three massive “faculty paintings” that the Austrian painter (1862-1918) created for the University of Vienna’s assembly hall ceiling and that were lost in a fire at the end of World War II. The new version, created by Google Arts and Culture using machine learning, shows a very different Klimt than you’d expect if you’re familiar with “The Kiss” or “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I.” A glance at the colors in the reconstructed work, and you might mistake Klimt for his Fauvist contemporaries or think he was hanging around with the painter Marc Chagall. The faculty paintings are one of several recent attempts to use artificial intelligence to re-create lost art. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam used AI to reconstruct missing panels from the edges of Rembrandt’s famous “Night Watch” and, over the summer, temporarily installed them alongside the real thing. A pair of researchers in the United Kingdom, who call themselves Oxia Palus, say they’ve rebuilt a Picasso nude that was hidden beneath “The Blind Man’s Meal,” using 3-D printing and AI. In October, an orchestra in Bonn, Germany, performed Beethoven’s 10th and unfinished symphony in full. The version was written by an algorithm. It’s an alluring idea. Peek beneath a Picasso at an earlier painting under the surface layer and it’s like you’re peering into the artist’s mind, eavesdropping on thoughts from a century ago. See a painting that was lost to catastrophe come back to life and it’s like you’ve traveled back in time, reversed fate. But if any of this re-created universe of lost art, like “Philosophy,” is inaccurate, the AI creators might not be resurrecting history but inadvertently rewriting it. (Editor’s note: This article offers a nicely rounded investigation of both what may be gained and lost through AI recreations of lost art works.)

Stentors: Single-Celled Giants – (Youtube – July 8, 2019)

Stentors are the largest single-celled creatures on Earth. Sometimes called trumpet animalcules, they are usually horn-shaped and can a reach length of two millimeters. For single cells, they have some surprising capabilities. In just under 10 minutes, this video clip will give you fascinating information that you almost certainly have no use for – other than to discover, yet again, what extraordinary forms life takes. Technically speaking, they are a genus of filter-feeding, heterotrophic ciliates, representative of the heterotrichs.

He Bought a Lighthouse – (New York – December 20, 2021)

“It was a legit hazmat situation, but it was gorgeous.” That was the condition in which Brooklyn-based artist and builder Randy Palumbo found the lighthouse he’d just purchased in a government auction. Palumbo’s rapidly self-destructing lighthouse sat on a pile of rock off Long Island, barely accessible via fishing-boat ferry. Palumbo enlisted his artist friends to transform the rusty, moldy structure into an otherworldly escape. And it couldn’t be more off-the-grid, with solar panels and a wind turbine, a composting toilet, and a nifty dishwashing system. Oh, and the light still works.

The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.
— Rainer Maria Rilke

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