Meteorite study suggests Earth may have been wet since it formed

Enstatite chondrite meteorites, once considered 'dry,' contain enough water to fill the oceans -- and then some. 

Why Every City Feels the Same Now

 Why Every City Feels the Same Now. Darran Anderson article. 

Ust-Kova site: 20,000 year old figurine carved from mammoth ivoy

Ancient mammoth ivory carving technology reconstructed by archaeologists. 

Fast Radio Burst predicted

Mysterious radio burst from space repeats at time astronomers predicted. "The presence of a repeating pattern could imply that the powerful bursts are linked to the orbital motion of a massive star, a neutron star or a black hole."

Solar System is Traveling through Cloud of Supernova Debris

 An international team of scientists has found interstellar iron-60, a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 2.6 million years that is predominantly produced in massive stars and ejected in supernova explosions, in deep-sea sediments dating from 33,000 years ago to the present.

Possible Local Interstellar Cloud is the remains of a supernova. 

Musatils in Saudi Arabia 7,000 years old.

 Massive stone structures in Saudi Arabia may be some of oldest monuments in the world. "It is quite possible that these structures would have been visually spectacular, and perhaps quite extensively painted."Huw Groucutt. 

Few artifacts associated with them and seem distinct from the "kite" structures. Too low to be animal corrals. 

This is what Pavement singer Stephen Malkmus has bookmarked on his browser. So many on Twitter have been dunking on Malkmus for saying Chapo Trap House says obnoxious things. However, they do say obnoxious things. That's why I enjoy listening to them. It was in context of saying the fucking godawful Guardian is good that made Malkmus look like a lost cause shitlib. The rest of the interview is pretty good, although n+1 very rarely does shit for me. The Baffler is great.

Anyone who starts proclaiming their love for Smashing Pumpkins in reaction hasn't been paying attention to what our boy little Billy Corgan has been up to for many years.

impossible mission

Vice President Pence Gives NASA Five Years to Put Americans Back on the Moon—or Else. Oh, that's not hard to figure out. They're going to kill NASA. Either the Republicans will sell it off or fold it into the military. There is no plausible way that NASA can make it to the moon with its current funding.

It’s important to note that returning to the Moon will be expensive—one estimate suggested $104 billion in 2005, or almost $135 billion today. Estimates calculate that the Apollo missions cost $120 billion in today’s dollars. Congress appropriated NASA $21.5 billion, more than its $19.9 billion ask, in 2019. The president’s proposed NASA budget includes cuts to scientific programs like the WFIRST telescope and NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement, but does offer over $300 million in funding for developing a lunar lander.

 This is a sad joke.

I need to see this ASAP

Still haven't pursued that thread of reading more Strugatsky Brothers after discovering that Roadside Picnic is every bit as great as the hype. 

From left to right: Macario Matus, Roberto Bolaño (Arturo Belano), Mario Santiago Papasquiaro (Ulises Lima), Orlando Guillén (the Lame), Alcira soust Scaffo (aid descouture), Julián Gómez and Bruno Montand (Felipe Müller) House of the lake, Chapultepec, City of Mexico, 1975.

I've read about Fanny for many years, (and yeah, it's probably that David Bowie interview was possibly the first mention) but I never stumbled onto their music. This 1971 live footage is amazing.

The Marvin Gaye cover at 19:40 has some wonderful slide guitar and piano work. TBH, everything about it is amazing.

Playing with Fire: 30 years on

How Did It Feel? Spacemen 3's Playing With Fire Revisited. Too often i listen to Spacemen 3 on very poor quality mp3s. That needs fixing.

The Saudis definitely want to get their hands on nuclear technology

Flynn-backed plan to transfer nuclear tech to Saudis may have broken laws, say whistleblowers. No shit. The Saudis will probably get their hands on nuclear technology anyway through Pakistan. That's probably why the U.S. is falling over itself to make that sale before that deal goes down, because the plan didn't die with Michael Flynn being charged.

Heh. I never got around listening to the entirety of Sparkle Hard.

I like it well enough. It sounds less obviously middle-aged than Sparkle Hard. Nothing bores me more right now than middle-aged music by middle-aged people right now. Give me old or young. There is an extremely maudlin streak in art made by middle-aged people.

What caught my eye was this Holy Mountain looking thing suggested by Youtube after i watched that. I'll need to remember Aldous Harding.

Found out that Damo Suzuki is playing New Orleans on April 28th at the Music Box Village. Think i'll be out of town. Looked to see what he's been doing live in recent years and found this lecture, which I'll watch later.

Russian Doll

Years ago I gave up any pretension of possessing an ability to critique anything coherently, but the new television series Russian Doll is pretty fucking Borgesian. It's seemingly very conscious too. An interview I've seen with one of the creators says she loves video games as a creative medium. It's well-known that video game creators lean heavy on Borges in their branching narratives. However, it's almost certain that Headland and/or Lyonne is directly acknowledging Borges with the mirrors and split timelines. There are too many other literary allusions. They didn't just stumble onto that, but are deft enough not to make a clumsy namecheck.

Speaking of namechecks though, it delights me that "Jodorowsky's Dune" is used as a password to a drug den.

Ken Nordine was still alive?!

Beltway Gushing for a Backstabbing Democrat

The Most Important New Woman in Congress Is Not Who You Think. Holy shit- this hagiography by Michael Kruse is extraordinarily silly and out of touch this week. Mikie Sherrill is a conservative, not a moderate. She's awful on every issue. It doesn't matter if she flipped her district from red to blue. She'll vote for shitty legislation. She'll be groomed for big stuff. She's an enemy.

More after the break.

To be honest, i only recall consciously seeing Bruno Ganz in Wings of Desire and Faraway, So Close!

LIGO is being upgraded

LIGO is being upgraded. LIGO goes back online this spring, but the next upgrade, Advanced LIGO Plus, doesn't appear to be complete until 2024.