if I only I could send this via carrier pigeon from Catalina
At LACMA, a conservator named Kamila Korbela is dedicated to restoring Day-Glo paintings from the 1960s that have begun to fade. I did not fully realize that the reason Day-Glo looks like it does is because it’s shifting on the electron level, which creates that shimmer effect and makes it difficult to look at—which is of course, why it was used in certain paintings. The difficulty in restoring it comes from the fact that it’s fading, but not traditionally:
The first problem is that Saturn Yellow is a mix of both conventional color and fluorescent dye. Both types of pigment lose their brightness, but in different ways. While color fades, fluorescence is more correctly said to “extinguish” — its ability to transform invisible energy to visible light exhausted through prolonged exposure.
Day-Glo also refuses to give out the formula (!) to conservators, but modern fluorescent paint ages differently, so Korbela is finding ways to artificially age the pigment to match.
A friend of mine visited Catalina, and sent back snapshots from a museum there that talked about the history of carrier pigeons on the island. Apparently it was earlier to train a pigeon to fly to Los Angeles from Catalina than it was to run underground telegraph cable or whatnot, and the LA Times had a section of news from Catalina, specifically delivered by pigeon.
The New York Times wrote about white barn owls hunting voles, and how they fare better hunting in moonlight, which is fascinating, but the real MVP is this tweet:
Three pieces about myths, folklore and legend. The first, about Max Rockatansky (the eponymous Mad Max) as folkloric and mythic hero, appearing in “times of crisis” à la King Arthur. The second, about the myth of the iceman as lothario, seducing women in their homes when he came to deliver ice, which inspired multiple songs in the 1890s - aughts.
I just learned about THE CANADIAN POTATO MUSEUM on Prince Edward Island and I cannot wait to visit (it has been added to the list along with the CUPNOODLES museum which I realized I have not discussed On Here, but contains a place where you can make your own custom ramen, and the CUPNOODLES Drama Theatre, shaped like a CUPNOODLES where you can watch films about the company’s history)
Wondered why the Soviets sent dogs to space while American sent chimps? Me too, honestly, but wonder no more. (Obligatory note that this does talk about which animals didn’t make it, which is more than a little heartbreaking!)
Soviet space dog names are also my favorites, Laika literally means “Barker”:
Bobik (Бобик) ran away just days before his flight in September 1951. A replacement named ZIB (a Russian acronym for "Substitute for Missing Bobik”…an untrained street dog found running around the barracks, was quickly located and made a successful flight
I love these billboards that are photographs of the mountains behind them:
Finally, a dive into Ursula K. Le Guin’s storytelling, which thanks to my friend Door (who has a great newsletter), introduced me to her “carrier bag theory”— the idea that the first human tool wasn’t a spear, but likely something to carry other things.
If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again—if to do that is human, if that's what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time
She then takes it a step further talking about how this works in science fiction:
If, however, one…redefines technology and science as primarily cultural carrier bag rather than weapon of domination, one pleasant side effect is that science fiction can be seen as a far less rigid, narrow field, not necessarily Promethean or apocalyptic at all, and in fact less a mythological genre than a realistic one.
A good note to end on, methinks.
etcetera: The NYT looks into if a supposed cell phone ringing during a production of Sea Wall/A Life was actually staged—despite the production denying it (!). In Corning, N.Y., a steam whistle still blows marking time for factory workers to start work, stop for lunch, and more (though they have modern clocks in the facility now). Want to play a video game where you’re a goose terrorizing a village? Untitled Goose Game is for you