Listening to April Rain's Mirror of Ether this week.

In particular Sleeping Beauty Syndrome

Tom me it looks like the US is late stage 3rd wave

It may not be the best tracking site but I've been using it since the beginning.

Feel free to suggest better sites.

When I saw the pattern on the parachute I thought there must be some meaning behind the pattern they chose.

I KNEW IT! The parachute patterns are encoded

https://imgur.com/nPZVCQP

In the livestream of the press conference. After they show the video, there's a more detailed analysis where they point out the things I would otherwise have missed, starting at about the 16 minute mark.

I'm personally a bit of a doubter that life will ever be found elsewhere,

I have no background to support my thoughts other than an interest in space and science.

If humans survive long enough I expect it will happen, but I agree with your sentiment. I think the timespan will be so vast as to make it meaningless to speculate about it now. How long before we could communicate and travel to the nearest star? We should definitely still try though!

My issue with the Fermi paradox is the assumption is that 1% of "life" on a planet becomes intelligent and similarly that 1% of those develop the necessary tech. I think those figure is way, way, waaaaaaaay too high.

As an analogy - how many types of living creatures on earth have developed tech to communicate beyond earth? Is it 0.01%?

Still like I say it's just my own thoughts without any scientific research to back it up.

This is amazing. I have a soft spot for percussion - above and beyond drummers.

I expect there isn't much of a market for pure percussion so it's nice to see someone taking initiative to showcase their skills.

I loved the music for Get Shorty - the TV show which has a lot of incidental drumming that created a surprising (to me) amount of tension and expectation.

I guess no thread about percussion is complete without the Evelyn Glennie TED talk - How To Truly Listen:

Embezzlement, kickbacks, wield power and tough love... he probably just forgot the safe word. Remember, daddy controls your breathing.

If you do find those photos I'd love to see some of them!

No it was during a wordwide tour - I checked and it was 2010 but can't find more details about where else it toured.

Another piece that really struck deep was funnily enough titled Reflection - the husk of a wooden boat on a sea of broken porcelain. The description mentioned the artist had given detailed instructions about the reconstruction and display and it set me wondering about the nightmare logistics and challenges of taking an exhibition like that around the world. I would never ordinarily think about those details.

The only bad thing about the exhibit was the videos of his pyrotechnic works (which I think were all performed and filmed in China). Not that they were bad just that I would have given anything to have been there to see one of them.

It is cool.

I went to a Cai Guo-Qiang exhibition (about 2010 maybe) which included Head On and it is amazing. I stayed in the room for about 30-40 minutes checking it out from every vantage point. One obvious part of the experience for me was in looking at it from different angles - walking under the cascade following the wolves trajectory and looking up evoked some surprisingly strong and strange feelings.

By far the most interesting part was watching how other people viewed and interacted with it though, with most spending just a minute or two walking through and glancing.

I knew I was in for a treat though when I first entered the building because Inopportune Stage One was installed at the building's entrance. That's quite the opening statement for an exhibition I can tell you.

I imagine they didn't tell Big T to keep mum, but probably used some lizard psychology to make him decide to keep it secret like fake bargaining against him for shares in the underground Martian facility

"If I had come up with what I'm saying today five years ago, I would have been hospitalized," he told Yediot. "Today, they're already talking differently."

Indeed... coronavirus is spread through 5G masts, Bill Gates wants to vaccinate people so tracking chips embedded in vaccines can easily be deployed, worldwide paedophile cabals are fronted by pizza shops ...

I have nothing to lose. I've received my degrees and awards, I am respected in universities abroad.

I do admire his chutzpah though - "I've already had my cake, now to eat it"

Surveillance tech or not that's a rich, gorgeous palette.

Max Richter: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

Kingsevill (scrofula) - had to look up the condition.

Until the 18th century, doctors thought the only way to cure the disease was to be touched by a member of a royal family.

We had a weird history choice at school - one choice included "Modern history" (which obviously means recent European history) and the other included "The history of medicine" but the weird part was the history of the Mormons - no seriously. The English school system decided in their infinite wisdom that it was important to educate the next generation of the workforce on Joseph Smith and his antics.

The medicine part was as awesome as it was gruesome though. Imagine being a teenage lad and studying about early operations and doctors getting high on ether. Fantastic.

This week I discovered World Domination Enterprises released some of their old material last year and that made me stupidly happy.

Go Dominator

Woke Up Just In Time

On Bandcamp:

• Go Dominator

• Paint the Curtains