Synarchism
to rule together, to rule in harmony
Inspired by another post here on Tumblr, I decided to look into the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong a bit more, it truly was one of the most amazing and terrifying places on earth. Being slightly smaller than an NFL stadium, the structure was built of 350 smaller interconnected buildings and hosted, at its peak, a population density of 5 million people per square mile.
To put those numbers in perspective, this would be like taking the entire population of metro Philadelphia, the 4th largest in the US, and putting it in 1 square mile instead of 1,744.
The area was also largely ungoverned and unregulated. Factories, apartments, schools, temples, churches, shops, cafes, hotels and almost anything else one could imagine were housed within the structure that never had a full blueprint of it done. Buildings were built onto buildings, expanded, rebuilt, and re-purposed as needed without a central authority of any kind.
Within the structure, natural light was almost non-existent, and an unknown number of miles of jury-rigged wires provided electricity to everything. Water constantly dripped down to the lower levels from both rain and leaking pipes, while garbage filled every passage. A constant yellow haze filled the structure and there were never any government safety inspections.
The Kowloon Walled City was demolished in the early 1990s as part of the deal that returned Hong Kong to the Chinese from the British. The entire area is now a park.
I find places like this fascinating, it is just incredible what we, humans, build and live in. This, hive, for lack of a better term, was one of the most interesting structures I’ve yet looked at.
For a documentary shot inside of the Kowloon Walled City, check here:
= tsutomu nihei’s Blame!
SCP-087 AKA THE CREEPY STAIRCASE GAME
SCP-087 (free download available here) is a Unity first person horror game based on the SCP-087 entry at the SCP Foundation. Basically it’s a never ending stairwell with random creepy and scary sounds but past the surface it’s an immersive experiment into fear.
Taking things one step further from imaginative creepy tales on the internet, SCP-087 is a simple, creative descent into what scares you and how much can you take before it’s too much. Try it out and see how far you can travel down those dimly lit stairs before you turn back or turn the game off.
Haha! Woah, man. The website is incredibly interesting! Will be doing a lot of reading. Also gonna try this game. Gonna shit brix tonight.
Fun guy chillin’ in South American rainforest finds plastic-eating fungi
Seriously, though this is kind of a big deal. Know that big problem we have? You know, the one involving a crapload of used plastic hanging around in landfills with nowhere to biodegrade for a couple million years? Well, Jonathan Russell might’ve solved that problem. See, Russell and his fellow Yale students went to Ecuador, where they found a new kind of fungus they’re calling Pestalotiopsis microspora. Big deal, you’re thinking. Anyone can find fungus anywhere! Well, something his fellow students found out after the fact is that this fungus can live on a diet of polyurethane alone — and even crazier, it doesn’t even need air to do so! In other words, we could potentially put it at the bottom of a landfill and cover it with plastic, and it would do the rest of the work. This might be game-changing if it works as advertised. (photo via Flickr user dbutt; EDIT: Updated with link to research abstract) source
Short-term memory requires communication between multiple brain regions that collectively mediate the encoding and maintenance of sensory information. It has been suggested that oscillatory synchronization underlies intercortical communication. Yet, whether and how distant cortical areas cooperate during visual memory remains elusive. We examined neural interactions between visual area V4 and the lateral prefrontal cortex using simultaneous local field potential (LFP) recordings and single-unit activity (SUA) in monkeys performing a visual short-term memory task. During the memory period, we observed enhanced between-area phase synchronization in theta frequencies (3–9 Hz) of LFPs together with elevated phase locking of SUA to theta oscillations across regions. In addition, we found that the strength of intercortical locking was predictive of the animals’ behavioral performance. This suggests that theta-band synchronization coordinates action potential communication between V4 and prefrontal cortex that may contribute to the maintenance of visual short-term memories.
I really love the neuroscience of brain wave activity and synchronicity.
Did you know that you can freeze bubbles? These temperatures are perfect for using that left over bubble mix from the summer. Go outside on any day when it’s below 32 degrees F and try this: blow a bubble and then catch it on the bubble wand. Wait a few moments while it freezes- it will turn into a cool crystal ball before it shatters!
You can also make icy crystals with your bubble solution! To do this: dip a large loop in the bubble solution – but dont blow a bubble. Instead, watch the crystals grow. The will form a lattice structure!
Too cold to go outside? You can learn how to make your own crystal ball bubbles in the freezer with soap by checking out the site below…
Great snow day idea to keep the kidos busy!
so cool
This is a rare meteorological phenomenon called a skypunch. When people see these, they think it’s the end of the world. Ice crystals form above the high-altitude cirro-cumulo-stratus clouds, then fall downward, punching a hole in the cloud cover.
These phenomena are also known as Von Karman vortices. “Von Karman vortices form nearly everywhere that fluid flow is disturbed by an object.”
The images show a cloud vortiex swirling behing Jan Mayen Island in the Greenland Sea, another one near Heard Island, in the Indian Ocean and two formed by the winds rushing over the Cape Verde Islands.
The animation shows how a von Karman vortex develops behind a cylinder moving through a fluid.
