The life-changing magic of Japanese clutter | Aeon Essays

In the late 20th century, Japan was known for its minimalism: its Zen arts, its tidy and ordered cities, its refined foods and fashions. But Tsuzuki peeled away this façade to reveal a more complicated side to his nation. And Tokyo was the perfect setting for this exfoliation. Like the interiors he photographed, it remains visually overwhelming – even cluttered. Outside, enormous animated advertisements compete for attention against a jigsaw puzzle of metal, glass, concrete and plastic. In the sprawling residential districts that radiate from the city centre, compact homes are packed in formations as dense as transistors on a semiconductor chip, while confusing geometries of power lines spiderweb the skies above.

Artificial intelligence rethinks the past: How computers are reconstructing Etruscan and Roman landscapes – The Past

What can artificial intelligence bring to archaeology? Maurizio Forte introduces recent work dedicated to reconstructing ancient landscapes, and weighs some of the risks and rewards.

Seeking the Silk Roads: An extraordinary story of the power of connections – The Past

The Silk Road has long been seen as a conduit for exotic goods travelling both east and west. But taking a wider perspective reveals how extraordinary objects and ideas were moving much more widely, as Sue Brunning and Luk Yu-ping told Matthew Symonds.

Dehydration melting at the top of the lower mantle | Science

The water cycle involves more than just the water that circulates between the atmosphere, oceans, and surface waters. It extends deep into Earth’s interior as the oceanic crust subducts, or slides, under adjoining plates of crust and sinks into the mantle, carrying water with it. Schmandt et al. combined seismological observations beneath North America with geodynamical modeling and high-pressure and -temperature melting experiments. They conclude that the mantle transition zone—410 to 660 km below Earth’s surface—acts as a large reservoir of water.

Scientists made the findings at the time after studying earthquakes and discovering that seismometers were picking up shockwaves under the surface of the Earth.

From that, they were able to establish that the water was being held in the rock known as ringwoodite.

If the rock contained just 1 per cent water, it would mean that there is three times more water under the surface of the Earth than there is in the oceans on the surface.

Even a Single Bacterial Cell Can Sense the Seasons Changing | Quanta Magazine

Though they live only a few hours before dividing, bacteria can anticipate the approach of cold weather and prepare for it. The discovery suggests that seasonal tracking is fundamental to life.

Sears Homes 1915-1920

Sears has opened the doors to its vast archival collection and invited the public to peek inside. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online.

From 1908–1940, Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold about 70,000 – 75,000 homes through their mail-order Modern Homes program. Over that time Sears designed 447 different housing styles, from the elaborate multistory Ivanhoe, with its elegant French doors and art glass windows, to the simpler Goldenrod, which served as a quaint, three-room and no-bath cottage for summer vacationers. (An outhouse could be purchased separately for Goldenrod and similar cottage dwellers.) Customers could choose a house to suit their individual tastes and budgets.

Jack Rusher ☞ Classic HCI demos

A curated collection of HCI demo videos produced during the golden age from 1983-2002.

Temple 16 and Rosalila Tunnels, Copan | Copán Ruinas

In 3D(achtig) door een tempel lopen, yay!

In the World’s Largest Rainforest, a Prehistoric Metropolis Emerges After More Than 2,500 Years — Colossal

While previous expeditions to the area have documented large mounds and monuments throughout the area, the enormity and complexity of this find exceeded expectations with the discovery of thousands of houses, complex roads, plazas, ceremonial sites, and drainage canals. More than 6,000 rectangular earthen platforms, which were likely homes and communal buildings, are connected by a vast and sophisticated road network connecting 15 urban centers, surrounded by terraced agricultural fields.

New images show remarkable state of preservation of Ernest Shackleton’s ship | Antarctica | The Guardian

The famed vessel, which sank in 1915 after becoming stuck in pack ice, was discovered in 2022 resting at a depth of 3km below what Shackleton called “the worst portion of the worst sea in the world”.

The images, compiled from thousands of detailed 3D scans of the wreckage, show how little it has altered or decayed in the century since, with the ship’s rigging, helm and woodwork all remarkably preserved under the icy waters.

Big Advance on Simple-Sounding Math Problem Was a Century in the Making | Quanta Magazine

A new proof about prime numbers illuminates the subtle relationship between addition and multiplication — and raises hopes for progress on the famous abc conjecture.

One morning last November, the mathematician Hector Pasten finally solved the problem that had been dogging him for more than a decade by using a time-tested productivity hack: procrastination.