I’ve been fascinated with pen plotters for a long time now and I’ve owned several of them – but for some reason never posted any of my explorations or findings online. Until now, at least. You might wonder what’s so special about pen plotters? Well, let me tell you. Pen plotters are friendly robots
Source: An intro to Pen Plotters — Hej.
That feeling when the present catches up with your dreams of what the future might bring.
Entomologists call it the windshield phenomenon. “If you talk to people, they have a gut feeling. They remember how insects used to smash on your windscreen,” says Wolfgang Wägele, director of the Leibniz Institute for Animal Biodiversity in Bonn, Germany. Today, drivers spend less time scraping and scrubbing. “I’m a very data-driven person,” says Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, Oregon. “But it is a visceral reaction when you realize you don’t see that mess anymore.
As far as human freedom goes, the quality of government dominates the statistical relationship.
Source: Quality of Government, Not Size, Is the Key to Freedom and Prosperity – Evonomics
Just as the bright city lights are vanishing behind us, the Milky Way starts to become clearly visible up ahead. Its now us, pacing at almost the speed of sound along the invisible highway and the pitch-black night sky above this surreal landscape. Ahead of us are another eight hours flight time, but we already stopped counting the shooting stars. And we got already to a few hundred.
Read the full article on Beyond Clouds.
In 256 bytes, Linus Åkesson has produced not only an incredible set of visuals, modulating and morphing sierpinsky gaskets, but a beautiful, driving, piece of music.
He goes into depth about how it was made. The code can be seen below, in all its inscrutable wonder:
Animation by Maxime Causeret set to the music of Max Cooper
Maxime also shows us a section of animated reaction-diffusion patterns, where simple chemical feedback mechanisms can yield complex flowing bands of colour — these forms of system were originally thought up by Alan Turing, and were part of the early seeds of the field of systems biology, which seeks to simulate life with computers, in order to better understand the systems producing the complexity we see in the living world. They were also the starting point of my main research area many years ago before I got lost in music! (where I began with the question of what patterns could be produced via reaction-diffusion forms of system as opposed to gene-regulatory network controlled patterning).
Via: colossal
Tardigrades, also known as Water Bears or Space Bears, are incredible members of the microcosmos that can be found just about anywhere in the world. These eight-legged invertebrates are only 0.1-1m…
Source: How to Find Tardigrades (Water Bears) in Your Own Backyard
For thousands of years, when farmers in mountainous regions have expanded their farms to grow crops on the steep slopes, they have carved massive steps into the terrain.
“Iran’s sympathetic response to the American tragedy has been exceptional for a country under US economic siege for two decades. Only hours after the Sept. 11 attack, President Muhammad…
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