A special series from The Verge that confronts the legacy and mythmaking of the Vietnam War, 50 years after the fall of Saigon. 50 Years After the Fall of Saigon
Category: History
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Calculating Powers: A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500
calculatingempires.net The last time I saw Crawford’s work at the MoMA it was maybe around 2021. It left me filled with anguish and a lot of contempt for industrial progression. Which, frankly I needed the perspective. Immensely thankful I live in a city where I can go visit the MoMA to experience Anatomy of an AI System in person.
From the about page of calculatingempires.net:
Calculating Empires is a large-scale research visualization exploring how technical and social structures co-evolved over five centuries. The aim is to view the contemporary period in a longer trajectory of ideas, devices, infrastructures, and systems of power. It traces technological patterns of colonialism, militarization, automation, and enclosure since 1500 to show how these forces still subjugate and how they might be unwound. By tracking these imperial pathways, Calculating Empires offers a means of seeing our technological present in a deeper historical context. And by investigating how past empires have calculated, we can see how they created the conditions of empire today.
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William Anders, Earthrise photographer, Apollo astronaut and pilot has died
Anders sadly perished a few days ago at the age of 90 in a terrible plane crash. Anders was a man of many talents. Running General Dynamics was probably not one of them. I’ll leave that story out of this post, but leave that to you look up. Instead, I want to share something else about William Anders. One of his greatest shining achievements, was probably this unscheduled photograph he took during the Apollo 8 mission.
First, for the uninitiated, Apollo 8 was the first crewed mission to leave Earth’s orbit completely to reach the moon. The crew then orbited the moon some 10 times before returning back to Earth. It was a landmark historical mission.
A transcript from NASA’s program Earthrise: The 45th Anniversary:
On December 24, 1968, a few minutes after 10:30 am Houston time, Apollo 8 was coming around from the far side of the Moon for the fourth time. Mission Commander Frank Borman was in the left-hand seat, preparing to turn the spacecraft to a new orientation according to the flight plan. Navigator Jim Lovell was in the spacecraft’s lower equipment bay, about to make sightings on lunar landmarks with the onboard sextant, and Bill Anders was in the right-hand seat, observing the Moon through his side window, and taking pictures with a Hasselblad still camera, fitted with a 250-mm telephoto lens. Meanwhile, a second Hasselblad with an 80-mm lens was mounted in Borman’s front-facing window, the so-called rendezvous window, photographing the Moon on an automatic timer: a new picture every twenty seconds. These photographs, matched with LRO’s high-resolution terrain maps, show that Borman was still turning Apollo 8 when the Earth appeared. It was only because of the timing of this rotation that the Earthrise, which had happened on Apollo 8’s three previous orbits, but was unseen by the astronauts, now came into view in Bill Anders’s side window. Here’s what it looked like, as recreated from LRO data by Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio. You’ll hear the astronauts’ voices as captured by Apollo 8’s onboard tape recorder, beginning with Frank Borman announcing the start of the roll maneuver, and you’ll see the rising Earth move from one window to another as Apollo 8 turns.
Borman: All right, we’re gonna roll. Ready… Set…
Anders: The impact crater with uh – at uh – just prior to the subsolar point on the south side, in the floor of it, uh, [unintelligible], there is one dark hole. But I couldn’t get a quick enough look at it to see if it might be anything volcanic.
Anders: Oh my God, look at that picture over there! There’s the Earth comin’ up. Wow, is that pretty!
Borman: Hey don’t take that, it’s not scheduled.
[shutter click]
Anders: You got a color film, Jim? Hand me a roll of color, quick, would you?
Lovell: Oh man, that’s great.
Anders: Hurry.
Lovell: Where is it?
Anders: Quick
Lovell: Down here?
Anders: Just grab me a color. A color exterior. Hurry up. Got one?
Lovell: Yeah, I’m looking’ for one. C 368.
Anders: Anything. Quick.
Lovell: Here.
Anders: Well, I think we missed it.
Lovell: Hey, I got it right here [in the hatch window].
Anders: Let me get it out this one, it’s a lot clearer.
Lovell: Bill, I got it framed, it’s very clear right here!
[shutter click]
Lovell: Got it?
Anders: Yep.
Lovell: Take several, take several of ’em! Here, give it to me!
Anders: Wait a minute, just let me get the right setting here now, just calm down.
Lovell: Take –
Anders: Calm down, Lovell!
Lovell: Well, I got it right – aw, that’s a beautiful shot…Two-fifty at f/11.
[shutter click]
Anders: Okay.
[…]
Source: Transcripts of Earthrise: The 45th AnniversaryI love this interaction. It highlights just how much a team effort it took to take these photographs, and just how astounding the visage of Earth rising up out of the darkness as they orbited out of the dark side of the moon. Truly captivating.
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Why a Manhattan subway station could be a shelter in a nuclear attack
City officials at the time proposed fitting out deep underground stations with shelter rooms that had plumbing, pantries and first aid kits. But those plans were shelved due to a lack of federal funding.
The 190th Street station opened in 1932 and is situated underneath 140 feet of bedrock at Fort Tryon Park. It’s been 80 years since the first atom bomb exploded on Earth, and we still haven’t outfitted the station with fallout survival materials. I’m no doomsday prepper but this would be a worthy investment as the current Russian-Ukraine conflict continues to evolve.
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13 Months, 28 days
Calendars and time-keeping, is what makes or breaks civilizations. It’s no mistake that the Julian and Gregorian calendar varieties carry their Caesarian namespace. Managing how we catalog time is a pretty political, financially-motivated and generally sensitive topic. We don’t like change. It’s human nature to resist change. It takes serious inertia to introduce new (let alone change) calendar or time formats.
There once was a time when each local town kept their own time individually. Which was frankly, insane. Train and locomotives carried a lot of sway back then, and then on November 18th, 1863 it become the gold standard. However, it didn’t become law until Congress passed the Standard Time Act in 1918.
Does it ever piss you off that you can’t calculate what day of the week it will be a month from now? Or schedule an appointment off the top of your head on a day of the week that’s a weekend? Or a weekday? Why do some months have 30 days and others have 31? What’s up with February? The hell is a leap year? The Gregorian calendar is a mess.
This could all be so much easier. Eastman Kodak did their homework. They realized a more efficient calendar would yield more productive appointments and scheduling. I mean, wouldn’t be amazing if every month was the same format? 13 months, 28 days:
Image from Bloomberg It’s also known as the International Fixed Calendar. There would be 13 months (the 13th month would be called Sol, sandwiched between June and July), and no month would contain a “5th week,” because each month would be comprised of 4 weeks. Incredible. The entire calendar can sit in a beautiful matrix (see above). New Year’s Day would simply be an “magic” day, added as a sort of holiday at the end of the year. Also called “Year Day” or “Double Sunday” as the calendar resets for the new year, it would fall on a Sunday it ends and begins on. The next day would be Jan 1, a Sunday.
Do you like this concept? Because I sure do. If you like it as much as I do, contact your representatives here! Make your voice heard.
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The Coronavirus is causing the world’s largest work-from-home experiment
The Coronavirus is essentially a flu-like respiratory-illness. Here’s what we know so far:
- It’s contagious like SARS, and about 2x more infectious than the seasonal flu.
- So far, the fatality rate is less than 3%. There’s already been more fatalities than the last SARS outbreak in China. Keeping that number low is going to have to be a global effort. Young children and the elderly are at a higher-risk of respiratory issues.
- The period for symptoms to fully appear is roughly 2-weeks. This is what makes this virus especially difficult to detect and prevent. The virus can easily spread from person to person prior to showing any symptoms.
- The virus has already spread across multiple borders. Primarily mainland China has the most confirmed cases. Russia, Unites States, United Kingdom, Thailand, Turkey, Japan, Australia and have had infected travelers confirmed.
- The WHO has declared the Coronavirus a global health emergency which should catalyze superpowers to work to contain the spread of the infectious virus.
- To prevent further spread of the disease, many Chinese companies are asking their corporate workforce to work-from home:
Tiko Mamuchashvili, a senior event planner at the Hyatt hotel in Beijing who was supposed to return to work on Friday, was initially told her vacation would be extended until Feb. 3. Then she received a notification to work from home for two additional days. A few days later, the directive was extended until Feb. 10. She has to notify her department each morning about her whereabouts and report whether she is running a temperature.
“Usually going back to work from holidays feels a little weird, but working from home this time with such short notice feels even more unusual,” she said. With hotel event cancellations rolling in on a daily basis, “basically, all I can do is answer emails,” she said.
Wuhan’s concerted effort to fight the spread of this virus abroad and within its border is remarkable. But, other metropolitan areas like Hong Kong are not getting the same countermeasures. Reportedly there’s been 15 confirmed cases in Hong Kong. Hopefully others can and will emulate Wuhan’s work-from-home experiment and their hyper-mobilized efforts to quarantine, treat and contain the spread:
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Chinese tourists are allegedly being recruited to spy on the US
The people of China are vacationing more than ever before. A while back I came across a story where Chinese tourists swarmed a tiny village in Austria. Who could blame them, UNESCO World Heritage Sites are breathtaking places to visit.
In 2018, there were 2.9 million Chinese travelers to the United States. Each year, that number has been in decline. But China’s boom isn’t slowing down. In 2010, we knew it was just warming up. As travelers from the People’s Republic of China ebbs and flows, there’s been some espionage lurking underneath.
This story centers around a Chinese tourist, Qingshan Li. He was visiting the US under a tourist visa in San Diego, California. Li was allegedly caught attempting to purchase military munitions under suspicious circumstances. Justin Rohrlich at Quartz reports:
One of the items Li was allegedly after, a Harris Falcon III AN/PRC 152A radio, is designated as a defense article on the United States Munitions List, and subject to international arms trafficking regulations. This means the Falcon III, which provides US troops in the field with National Security Agency-certified encrypted communications, cannot leave the country without a special license issued by the State Department.
Li had agreed to pay AB a total of 50,000 renminbi, or roughly $7,200, for the radio. He knew AB was already under investigation for export-related crimes and believed AB “was attempting to get rid of the radio in light of AB’s entanglement with law enforcement,” according to court filings.
What’s old is now new again. This isn’t the first, nor the last time we’ll be seeing foreign actors participating in freelance espionage while vacationing abroad. Popular tourism spots such as Tallinn, Estonia’s capital used to be hotbeds for KGB activity during the Cold War.
While the he largest immediate threat to the US is cyber-security and Russia’s election interferences — we can expect to see more of this tried-and-true method of “freelancing spying” from other countries, not just China.