M. Caspian's Blog, page 7

I’m in love with the Y. & Sons aesthetic

Y. & Sons offers a 21st century flavor of traditional Japanese yukata and kimono, with, as they put it, “a provocation that [one] seems not to be able to taste when wearing only [Western] clothes.”

[image error]

[image error]

[image error]

[image error]

[image error]

They’ve just done a collab with menswear designer T-Michael, making a range of yukata from traditional wool & worsted tailoring fabrics.

[image error]

[image error]

I want this to become the signature global aesthetic this century. Reject the suit and tie. Tubes of fabric had their dash. Let us embrace folded cloth and draping.

Now write “I will not commit Catoptromancy” 500 times

An 8-year-old Kiwi schoolgirl just got detention for trying to summon Bloody Mary in the girls’ bathroom.

What punishment do you get if you try to summon lyrical geniuses?

Ceramic artist Keiko Masumoto

[image error]

Ceramic artist Keiko Masumoto is producing work I would maim someone to own. Her work “subvert[s] traditional ideas of the vessel, so that the motif is the form and the vessel the decoration’.

[image error]

[image error]

Her website is currently down, but when it comes back everything she makes is stunning.

 

 

Communication based on quantum entanglement is a step closer *squee*

Music Monday: De La Soul

Australian stationery brand Kikki K is releasing a wooden box to conspicuously put your phone in when you get home so you are forced to interact with the humans you live with.

[image error]

 

[image error]

 

Seller SkullLillyDesigns offers a couples version on Etsy too. (I had to google Guy Finley to find out who the hell he is. That is one obscure person to quote.)

[image error]

[image error]

God forbid we should, you know, just turn our phones off. Or maybe the idea is to gift one of these to the person who won’t meet your eyes for longer than half a second at a time, as a subtle hint. At $USD $18 for the small Kikki K box and USD$36 for the large it looks like offline really is a luxury.

 

Double-headed space worm

[image error]Both space worm heads convey a certain incredulous derpiness.

A bunch of NASA researchers headed by Junji Morokuma just published an article describing how they sent flatworms to the International Space Station for 5 weeks.

Flatworms are cool because if you cut them in half each half will regenerate the missing part. And Morokuma & Co didn’t just send whole flatworms. They sent 15 “pre-amputated” flatworm segments from which they had chopped off both heads and tails. And one of these flatworm segments, when returned to earth, did not regenerate a head and a tail. Instead it grew two heads.

Then they cut both heads off the body again, and the body fragment still re-grew two heads. Whatever changes had been caused by the time in space remained in the organism.

Morokuma’s team also detected “physiological, behavioral, morphological, and microbiological changes” in the flatworms. For example, for unknown reasons the space worms had considerably less tendency to avoid light than the control worms who remained on earth.

Changes in microbiome are particularly fascinating, although they make a much less interesting headline than “double-headed space worm”. If an organism’s microbiome changes after only 5 weeks in space, what might happen to human microbiota in the nine months it will take for colonists to travel to Mars.

Research on the effects of extended periods in space have generally focused on the big things: muscle loss, blood pressure, affects of gravity loss etc. But humans carry 1kg of bacteria in their gut, and there are totally fascinating connections between gut biota and human social behavior (including a controversial association with autism). Humans like to think we have free will, but the more we understand ourselves as a giant cluster of interdependent cells, mitochondria, and bacteria the more we realize we’re fooling ourselves. We’re not human individuals deciding we want to watch Game of Thrones with a friend, we’re a fleshy “brain–gut–microbiome axis” responding to constant chemical signals that affect our social communication.

What if, after all that careful testing of astronauts before and during training, people with quite different behaviors and personalities landed on Mars? Elon Musk has sworn to attempt a Mars colony by 2022, so I guess we’re gonna find out.

I can’t wait.

I’ve been using my MacBook charger wrong

[image error]

Holy shit, you guys.

I was packing up my laptop today, coiling my power cable to fit into my cable bag, and the man next to me leant over and said, “Would you like to know a better way to do that?”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I slowly nodded (on alert in case this was some kind of scam). He took my power cable from me, untangled its already-mobius-esque length, and did this.

Mind. Fucking. Blown. I had no idea those flaps folded out!

Music Monday: Jonathan Sarlat

Grab a glass of wine and close your eyes.

It’s a piefee

This is a piefee. It’s a latte served in a chocolate-lined sweet pie crust.

[image error]Photo by Tasteful Bakehouse.

Tasteful Bakehouse on Karangahape Road has made a local media splash with their 2017 creation. My only beef with it is meat pies are far more of a Kiwi culinary tradition than sweet pies. Sweet pies exist, but more people grew up on apple crumble than apple pie. To me this is a coffee tart. A toffee? A tarfee? Cofart?

I feel 100% certain if I google I am going to find this idea has been done in a thousand other media posts in dozens of countries before now, but I refuse to burst the bubble of Chamnan Ly from Tasteful Bakehouse. Good on you, mate.

 

Thank you!

Thank you, humans who buy my books!

[image error]

I’ve sold 22 copies of Salt of Your Tears, and a bunch more read it on KU. I earned USD $79 from it, which pushed my US Kindle earnings over my $USD100 minimum payout, and I just banked a cheque, wooooo. Y’all have paid my June electricity bill and kept me warm and functioning for another month and I am so, so grateful. I wish I knew everyone’s names so I could thank you all personally. I literally do know the names of quite a few of you and squishy hugs will be forthcoming in October.