science is everywhere (+ short story recs)
Poetry is history. History is the grist of science.
In this study, Zhang &c studied Chinese poetry and found that “the range of the YFP in China has contracted by at least 65% over the past 1400 years… the YFP’s range in the mainstream of the Yangtze River decreased by 33%, while its range in tributaries and lakes shrank by 91%.”
“Poem is one kind of condensed literary work that reflects the poets’ experience and environment at that moment... Many ancient Chinese poets travelled among cities by boat, meticulously recording environmental details and aquatic species, particularly freshwater megafauna... The YFP has been frequently depicted by poets because of its conspicuous large body size and unique surfacing behavior. Consequently, ancient poems in China can function as a valuable resource to reconstruct past distribution ranges of freshwater megafauna.”
- Range Contraction of Freshwater Megafauna Was Written in Ancient Poems (via)
guess you gotta use what data you can find
“The earliest known written record of locusts was found inscribed on an ox bone in Oracle Script (Jiaguwen, the earliest Chinese script) 3,500 y ago, asking: ‘Will locusts appear in the field; will it not rain?’”
This is old news (2013), but I just learned that a Utah-based truckdriver named Mike Clements built the World's Largest Amateur Telescope using a declassified spy satellite mirror that his buddies just happened to find on sale at auction and tell him about. (like when you know you got that one friend who’s really into telescopes and like, dude, c’mon, when are you going to come across another barely-chipped 900 lb 70” space mirror, you gotta go for it)
“he never actually drew up plans for his monstrous telescope — he just adapted the design from smaller telescopes in his mind.” - DailyMail
love to think of my dude here driving alone at night, A Fleet Of One (one of my fav McPhee essays), building this thing in his head, then he delivers his 30,000 Pounds of Bananas (my fav Harry Chapin song, even better than Cat's in the Cradle) or whatever and goes home to make a walmart order and throw this thing together out back
Some short stories I’ve read and enjoyed recently
Zero in Babel by E. Lily Yu (via
) - DIY gene editing in high schoolWants by Grace Paley (ditto) - very short, hard to explain, just go read it
Pilgrims by Elizabeth Gilbert - mostly for the rhythm of it, the quiet recognitions
- (via Ten Cold Hot Dogs) - “I got up off the floor. I went to the computer. I scrolled back to ambition, way at the beginning of her hundred row sheet. Its 2.5 stared at me. I changed it to a 10.”
Xeno ISO Synth for One-Time Encounter by Louis Evans (via
) - NSFW personals ad, alien bug ISO robot. “I don’t need much aftercare, but it’s nice if you make a low, continuous hum, around 10 kHz, to simulate stridulation.”How to Bury a Gentile (via brainwane) - a "short vaguely historical vaguely spooky ghost story about Jews and burial rites"