Both your local friendly curators are Taureans, a super Earth sign. Wikipedia says it also means that the planets that rule us are “stubborn, warm and indulgent.” 🙌
Let’s get started with this month’s advent calendar of mind-stretches.
On the left: All phases of the moon at once, by Timo Helgert
In the middle: Timelapse of the ISS and the moon, by Eric Cheng
On the right: Gorgeous storms filmed by Mike Oblinsky
April hosts both Taurus and Earth Day (why only a day?) Here are a few ways to appreciate nature this month:
Take a digital shinrin-yoku (the art of forest-bathing) on tree.fm.
Watch a dreaming octopus.
Listen to a commercial fisherman on restoring ocean health by reforesting with sea kelp.
Read about logging in the old-growth forests of Alaska, with photos by photographer, plant ethnobiologist, community leader and supercurious friend Josh Cogan.
Enjoy Whitman in the Woods in drag with Taylor Mac.
Loosely related: Why do AIs mistakenly think everything is a giraffe? It’s so pervasive that people who train AIs call the phenomenon “giraffing.”
💁♀️ KEEPING IT REAL
Apparently, songwriting is easier than giraffes for Google’s AI. A supercurious reader tipped us on to the Lost Tapes of the 27 Club, where AI created “new” songs by Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana and the The Doors, all artists who died at 27 years old. The music and lyrics are generated after training the AI on their earlier songs.
Apparently age matters. Mozart, who died at 34, is harder for AI to replicate. OpenAI’s attempt is much less convincing.
Friends of thesupercurious are getting into NFTs: Alexa Meade and PES had their first NFT offerings this month. Jonathan Mann, of Song-A-Day fame, wrote a catchy tune about them. And Harper Reed has, as always, taken it next level.
⚡️ KEEPING IT SIMPLE
On the left: We love @BrandyLJensen’s news summary: “After years of bitcoin and reddit short selling and credit default swaps and a million other things i don’t understand it’s so refreshing to hear that global commerce is in peril because a big boat got stuck in a canal.” As quoted in Matt Stoller’s more detailed essay about rethinking global trade.
On the right: 5 days after the cargo ship was freed, 22 Pharoahs were paraded to their new home at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. The mummies were carried on specially made barges/hearses in a two-hour event to rival a Super Bowl Half Time show.
😑 OVER IT
50s Throwback: A mustachioed barber perfectly coifs a teen with the must-have men’s hairdo of the time: “The Elephant Trunk.”
70s Throwback: A boys’ school in Perth, Australia has banned mullets. Unless you are Ziggy Stardust or Rihanna, we agree.
80s Throwback: Remember when the shopping mall ruled over styles and social lives? A few teens get heady about their favorite hangout destination in this month’s thesupercurious original, Mall Malaise.
And they say youth is wasted on the young. Know what else we’re over?
Heels. We much prefer these.
The upcoming boba shortage.
Dying of over-caffeination, like the novelist Honoré de Balzac.
Exercise, a la cosmologist @KatieMack.
Cabin fever, per @AliceSmithMusic, who loves to sing when she’s winning. Don’t we all.
🏆 HALL OF FAME
Of course, some others of us actually grow up and do major things with our lives:
Akron, Ohio has declared April 1 as annual DEVO DAY.
Janet Jackson’s album Rhythm Nation was one of only 25 recordings admitted to the Library of Congress this year, along with entries by Winston Churchill, Patti Labelle, and Kermit the Frog. Rhythm Nation’s iconic 1989 music video was shot in black in white as a deliberate call for racial unity, a message that feels equally urgent today.
HBOMax renewed Warrior for Season 3, the martial arts period drama originally pitched by Bruce Lee. One of the only big budget shows with all-Asian leads, the characters exist free of the myth of the “model minority”. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar agrees.
Pushing boundaries in real life, we loved this NYTimes photoessay in response to the mass shooting in Atlanta last month. We think Bruce Lee would have approved, too.
🤐 LAST WORD
Graffiti artist @ElSeed paints the word “Love” in Arabic calligraphy on Ramdavi Didi’s house in Kathmandu.
Your curators,
Lisa and Jordan
🧐 Curiouser and Supercuriouser
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