Fungal Lightning
http://www.bldgblog.com/2020/05/fungal-lightning/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2020-05-09 03:24
tags:
energy
food
photos
“Japanese researchers are closing in on understanding why electrical storms have a positive influence on the growth of some fungi,” Physics World reported last month, with some interesting implications for agriculture.
Some cool pictures.
Walker Lane Redux
http://www.bldgblog.com/2019/07/walker-lane-redux/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2019-07-08 02:21
tags:
geology
To make a story short, a handful of geologists have speculated, at least since the late 1980s, that the San Andreas Fault could actually be dying out over time—that the San Andreas is jammed up in a place called the “Big Bend,” near the town of Frazier Park, and that it is thus losing its capacity for large earthquakes.
As a result, all of that unreleased seismic strain has to go somewhere, and there is growing evidence—paleoseismic data, LiDAR surveys, GPS geodesy—that the pent-up strain has been migrating deep inland, looking for a new place to break.
That new route—bypassing the San Andreas Fault altogether—is the Walker Lane (and its southern continuation into the Mojave Desert, known as the Eastern California Shear Zone).
Walker Lane
http://www.bldgblog.com/2019/04/walker-lane/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2019-04-19 18:51
tags:
geology
I was thus instantly fascinated several years ago when I read about something called the Walker Lane, a huge region of land stretching roughly the entire length of the Eastern Sierra, out near the California/Nevada border, which some geologists now believe is the actual future edge of the North American continent—not the San Andreas. It is an “incipient” continental margin, in the language of structural geology.
Warnings Along the Drought Line
http://www.bldgblog.com/2018/08/warnings-along-the-drought-line/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2018-08-27 20:37
tags:
food
history
life
urban
So-called “hunger stones” have been uncovered by the low-flowing, drought-reduced waters of Czech Republic’s Elbe River, NPR reports. Hunger stones are “carved boulders… that have been used for centuries to commemorate historic droughts—and warn of their consequences.” One stone, we read, has been carved with the phrase, Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine, or “If you see me, weep.”
Although there are apparently extenuating circumstances for the rocks’ newfound visibility—including a modern-day dam constructed on the Elbe River which has affected water levels—I nonetheless remain haunted by the idea of uncovering buried or submerged warnings from our own ancestors stating that, in a sense, if you are reading this, you are already doomed.
Gold Fault Laser
http://www.bldgblog.com/2018/01/gold-fault-laser/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2018-02-02 04:57
tags:
energy
fiction
future
photos
urban
It involves installing a gold-plated laser somewhere deep in the San Andreas Fault to extract geothermal energy from the landscape. Think of it as a kind of gonzo version of the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth.
The press release, from architect Mark Foster Gage, is a great example of a solipsistic inventor’s imagination at full blast—featuring “geothermal resonance technologies,” nano-gold foil-wrapped laser components, an “experimental phenolic cured resin foam,” and so on.
Planetary Scale
http://www.bldgblog.com/2017/12/planetary-scale/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2017-12-07 20:34
tags:
architecture
design
space
urban
A few months ago, Eleven Magazine hosted a quick competition to rethink the planetarium. It’s a great design brief: Eleven’s editors asked “if architecture itself could become—once again—a tool for experiencing and understanding space. How can architecture engage with and enhance today’s renewed age of space exploration and discovery? What does the next generation of planetariums look like?”
Conversion Moment
http://www.bldgblog.com/2017/11/conversion-moment/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2017-11-22 20:55
tags:
architecture
urban
As a very brief aside, meanwhile, one of many things that remains amazing to me about the architectural world today is that these sorts of buildings—grandiose brick megastructures, from water towers to old tobacco warehouses to classic New York brownstones—are immensely popular as domestic renovations or large-scale residential conversions, but they otherwise seem to be completely beyond the pale for architects to consider designing from scratch in the present day. Even when contemporary architects do take on such commissions, they seem to leave their creativity at the door.
Worth the Weight
http://www.bldgblog.com/2017/11/worth-the-weight/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2017-11-14 20:14
tags:
architecture
opsec
policy
It’s like some undiscovered Italo Calvino short story: an agency physically deformed by the gravitational implications of its secrets, its buildings now bulbous and misshapen as the literal weight of its mission continues to grow.
In regards to the NY Times article about NSA and CIA breaches.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/12/us/nsa-shadow-brokers.html
The Ghost of Cognition Past, or Thinking Like An Algorithm
http://www.bldgblog.com/2017/11/the-ghost-of-cognition-past-or-thinking-like-an-algorithm/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2017-11-08 18:13
tags:
ai
life
web
I mention all this after reading a new essay by artist and critic James Bridle about algorithmic content generation as seen in children’s videos on YouTube. The piece is worth reading for yourself, but I wanted to highlight a few things here.
I liked this article quite a bit more than the original.
Under the Dome
http://www.bldgblog.com/2017/05/under-the-dome/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2017-06-02 13:47
tags:
maps
photos
A gigapixel bathymetric map of the Gulf of Mexico’s seabed has been released, and it’s incredible. The newly achieved level of detail is almost hard to believe.
Plus salt domes and voracious maws.
Incidental Detection
http://www.bldgblog.com/2017/05/incidental-detection/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2017-05-20 23:49
tags:
links
physics
tech
wifi
A home alarm that detects burglars via wifi irregularities. Plus links to similar developments.
Stories of one thing unexpectedly being used to detect the presence of another have always fascinated me.
Inflatables Give Structure To Air
http://www.bldgblog.com/2017/04/inflatables-give-structure-to-air/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2017-04-26 19:11
tags:
architecture
fiction
future
urban
Ten minutes later, the cases pop open: a whirring sound is heard as small industrial fans begin to operate, inflating carefully packed chains of linked polyethylene structures. Buildings emerge, expanding out from each case until entire rooms and corridors—whole ballrooms and domes—block the street. No one knows how to turn the fans off.
Offworld Colonies of the Canadian North
http://www.bldgblog.com/2017/02/offworld-colonies-of-the-canadian-north/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2017-02-22 17:20
tags:
architecture
article
future
urban
In any other scenario, a weather-controlling super-wall would sound like pure science fiction. But extreme environments such as those found in the far north are, by necessity, laboratories of architectural innovation, requiring the invention of new, often quite radical, context-appropriate building types.
A dystopian scenario in which an entire Arctic—or, in the future, Martian—city might be abandoned and shut down overnight for lack of sufficient economic returns is not altogether implausible. It is urbanism by stock price and spreadsheet.
Infrastructural Voodoo Doll
http://www.bldgblog.com/2017/01/infrastructural-voodoo-doll/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2017-01-12 04:41
tags:
article
flying
opsec
policy
security
urban
The Season of Burning Trucks
http://www.bldgblog.com/2017/01/the-season-of-burning-trucks/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2017-01-03 23:13
tags:
ai
cars
hoipolloi
ioshit
tech
But there is still something remarkable and almost Raymond Carver-esque about this story of a small town in Arkansas being visited—over and over again—by runaway trucks, their drivers misled by GPS, their vehicles mechanically unprepared for the town’s sharp curves and steep terrain.
Mass Effect
http://www.bldgblog.com/2016/12/mass-effect/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2016-12-13 06:11
tags:
ideas
physics
retro
tech
urban
How much technology is there in the world? By weight???
Over at the consistently interesting Anthropocene Review, a group of geologists and urbanists have teamed up to calculate the total mass of all technical objects
“Fictive Swims” Through Piscine Virtual Reality
http://www.bldgblog.com/2016/12/fictive-swims-through-piscine-virtual-reality/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2016-12-03 06:23
tags:
biology
ideas
paper
tech
Back in 2012, we read, researchers at Harvard University found a way to fool a paralyzed fish into thinking it was navigating a virtual spatial environment.
In any case, the fish-in-virtual-reality setup was apparently something of a trend in 2012
The Architecture of the Overlap
http://www.bldgblog.com/2016/11/the-architecture-of-the-overlap/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2016-11-30 23:09
tags:
architecture
tech
video
visualization
One of my favorite museums, Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, has teamed up with ScanLAB Projects for a new, 3D introduction to the Soane’s collections.
Direct link is pretty media intensive.
http://explore.soane.org/
500 years of utopia
http://www.bldgblog.com/2016/11/500-years-of-utopia-opens/ [www.bldgblog.com]
2016-11-07 15:08
tags:
ideas
life
urban
For 500 years, utopia—a word coined by Sir Thomas More to describe the ideal city—has been used as popular shorthand for a perfect world and lies at the heart of the Western political imagination. But what does it really mean today in the context of 21st-century urbanism, especially in a megacity like Los Angeles that has been the setting for utopian and dystopian thinking almost since its founding?