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Jellyfish Lake, Palau by kozyndan

“Well, in 50 years, if there is no fish and we killed all the animals, the only thing that will be left are cockroaches and jelly fish. And people will eat that. We’ll be like, yeah, not really as good as the hamburgers and chicken I used to have, and the tuna was delicious. But bring it on. I’ll have the jellyfish and the cockroach, and we shot it up with MSG, and now I’m eating it. It’s how people adapt in prison, you know?” -Bill Maher on Larry King Live, 2010

word!

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22 / 05

3 notes

flasd:

1825 - Adding mercury to mercury: the sensational drawings by the Weber brothers as they observed the changing wave fronts made by a drop of mercury into a pool of mercury.

(via ae-ther)

22 / 05

208 notes

inthenoosphere:

Arc of Networked Self-Dissolution. As the intensity, granularity, reflexivity of technologies of self increase (x-axis), the experience of self-coherency (measured in narcissistic conversation traits) initially increases in direct linear proportion and then, having passed a determinant threshold, quickly soon drops well below initial state (y-axis).

A. Imagine the years just before Facebook as somewhere on the left of the arc
B. then the years of its growth in the late ‘00’s just to the right of that,
C. then the introduction of the QS-inspired timeline, to the right of that,
D. and then, the world-to-soon-come of exotic social QS apps just to the right,
E. and then, at the the peak of the arc, some defining cognitive break after which self dissolves into a sea of branded data mush.
F. and then, a weird externalized language of post-individual social networks starts to appear. It might confound the logics of that micro-sourced, micro-targeted data, or it may fulfill its ambitions for us.

by Benjamin H. Bratton
Director, Center for Design and Geopolitics, Calit
Associate Professor of Visual Arts
University of California, San Diego

Read the full article here

This was once my motivating reason to embark on further study. As i’m in a period of supreme model apathy I can’t subscribe to this, but interesting to see someone has gone to the trouble

02 / 05

7 notes

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Scary biomimicy at work here

avesraptor:

akumyo:

Hex robot

Holy crap

(via churchofindustry)

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11 / 04

49 notes

The Laboratory will provide unique facilities and simulated environments (littoral, desert, tropical) and instrumented reconfigurable high bay spaces to support integration of science and technology components into research prototype systems. The objective of the Laboratory is to enable Navy and DoD scientific leadership in this complex, emerging area and to identify opportunities for advances in future defense technology.

The Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research (LASR) has opened on the NRL site in Washington, D.C.

(Source: bashford)

11 / 04

2 notes

// Genetic Switchboard//

/// I’m obliged to post this, given that I called out that Synbio huckster below

First, we designed and characterized riboregulator variants to complete the foundation of the genetic switchboard; then we constructed the switchboard sensor, a testing platform that reported on quorum-signaling molecules, DNA damage, iron starvation, and extracellular magnesium concentration in single cells. As a demonstration of the biotechnological potential of our synthetic device, we built a metabolism switchboard that regulated four metabolic genes, pgi, zwf, edd, and gnd, to control carbon flow through three Escherichia coli glucose-utilization pathways: the Embden–Meyerhof, Entner–Doudoroff, and pentose phosphate pathways. We provide direct evidence for switchboard-mediated shunting of metabolic flux by measuring mRNA levels of the riboregulated genes, shifts in the activities of the relevant enzymes and pathways, and targeted changes to the E. coli metabolome. The design, testing, and implementation of the genetic switchboard illustrate the successful construction of a higher-order system that can be used for a broad range of practical applications in synthetic biology and biotechnology.

(Source: pnas.org)

31 / 03

0 notes

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Vaporware???

My main aim in setting up this Tumblr was to separate my longform musings from topics I wished to share. Every now and again I will link back to my other blog

This is one such moment, related to above video I’ve written a post musing about what Software Studies can tell us about the juncture we find ourselves in regarding Synthetic Biology:

A Software Studies Excavation of Syn-Bio Vaporware

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19 / 03

0 notes

My own favourite quote in this article is

“I will not be happy if I cannot have a medical scan in my 70s, because we wasted helium on party balloons while I was in my 30s.”

A totally valid complaint. But I can’t help but hear the future gerontocracy in that sentence

slavin:

“

I’VE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR FIVE FUCKING YEARS. If you see a child with a helium balloon, ask their parents why they hate cryogenics and the Large Hadron Collider. ASK THEM WHY THEY HATE THE FUTURE.

Helium stocks run low – and party balloons are to blame | Science | The Observer

19 / 03

5 notes

With the development of GPS controlled drones, far-reaching cheap radio equipment and tiny new computers like the Raspberry Pi, we’re going to experiment with sending out some small drones that will float some kilometers up in the air. This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. A real act of war.

The Pirate Bay - TPB LOSS (via DanW)

(Source: bashford)

19 / 03

4 notes

Interesting thing about glitchnews is how the glitches are a result of how a digital TV encoder parses error correction. I was briefly obsessed with this when I realised that the digitisation of hertzian space meant that TV static as we once knew it would be a thing of the past. I created a little video as testimony to its passing a couple of years ago http://www.thereisnowetware.com/tv-commons/

slavin:

this is my new favorite tumblr.

glitchnews:

Horses trained by Willie Mullins are exercised prior to the festival meeting at Cheltenham racecourse in England.

13 / 03

18 notes