Category Archives: New Utopia

A way in which artists voice their ideals is by creating alternative realities, constructed free from the restraints of the physical world. Its in this balance between fiction and non-fiction that artists can freely discuss topics that might seem more abstract or difficult to voice otherwise. London-based artist Jazz Grant does this entirely throughout her practice, wherein she blends hand-cut paper collage with digital animation techniques to voice her dreams for the future. This merging of two techniques gives her work a familiar yet disturbing sensibility, a place where she can build her own utopia and explore the concept of inclusivity.

So far, Jazz has built a portfolio filled with work for Dazed, Burberry, Gucci and Adidas. Alongside her commercial projects, shes also produced a host of personal work which uses archival imagery sourced from films, family photo albums, phone footage or photos taken on trips. Collage, in Jazzs eyes, is an apt tool for organic creative expression, especially when it comes to addressing a more diverse and equal world. I think themes of utopia and community resonate with me, so they tend to emerge naturally through the imagery I gravitate to and the way I piece it together, she says. I didnt specifically choose collage in order to translate these ideas, but the process does help to visually combine and suggest multiple concepts.

Jazzs process is undeniably personal. While creating a piece, she acknowledges the past and will often look back on her familial history in order to make informed decisions about the future. As the old saying goes, history always tends to repeat itself, but this can be a positive thing if done so consciously and correctly. In the upcoming panel featuring Jazz, shes looking forward to discussing the power of re-contextualising imagery in order to tell stories of her two key themes: inclusivity and utopia. It will be a highly inspiring accord, and Jazz is always keen to learn from her peers: Im looking forward to gaining an insight into how the other women work, their journey, she says, what sparks their imagination and when they feel most inspired.

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New World: How can visual artists utilise their work to envisage a better tomorrow? - It's Nice That

As far as titles go, From is pretty ponderous stuff. By definition, the word offers no impetus and lacks any sense of momentum. People in this new Epix thriller are re perpetually off balance, forever trapped in an endless loop of predetermined repetition always waitingfor things to happen, rather than instigating change or seeking out solutions.

In life, to come from somewhere else means to have arrived somewhere new. This is not only a linguistic conundrum but a fundamental indicator of change, and something audiences might want to consider before diving into From.

With Jack Bender and the Russo brothers as executive producers, From plays like a Grimm Brothers fairy tale with smatterings of early Stephen King thrown in. With a set-up that includes an impenetrable forest and after-dark curfews, this is bogeyman under the bed territory. Crudely fashioned emblems ward off evil spirits, while windows are covered and nailed shut to protect the unwary. Fireside fables and harrowing half-truths are passed on to newcomers, while daily life is overseen by the town sheriff Boyd Stevens.

Lost alumni Harold Perrineau leads without instruction and admonishes free from judgment. Existing in a no mans land between colony house and the townsfolk, Boyd fights against despair on a daily basis. Up on the hill, Elizabeth Saunders wages a similar war as Donna, preparing people for the life they have chosen to lead. Misdemeanors are dealt with publicly, while overt acts of strength take their toll in private.

This fragile status quo is disrupted by the arrival of a new family. Headed up by Eion Bailey as Jim Matthews, this flashpoint marks the start of a strong opening episode. Character moments fill in the family dynamic, while relationships elsewhere are quickly established through the slick use of cross-cutting to maintain momentum. Atmospherics and incidental instrumentation do the rest, which in turn leads to some unwanted attention from the inhabitants.

Doppelgangers, unsavory discoveries, and moments of genuine pathos pepper this series from minute one, as time becomes an abstract concept. Trapped in a loop that robs people of ambition, yet strengthens their desire for companionship, this feels like a ramshackle utopia. Without the pressures of society to achieve, interactions become simpler, agendas diminish, and rules take on an overtly symbolic hue. Lifestyles are more liberated and loss cuts much deeper, as connections are stronger and personal choices more crucial.

Production designer Mat Likely also ensures that this forgotten town is run down to the point of being another character in the drama. Burnt-out cars, abandoned buildings, and a distinct dustbowl ambience hangs over everything, adding to the sense of timelessness that broods beneath the surface of this township in decay.

Beyond Harold Perrineaus sheriff and Elizabeth Saunders matriarch, other standout performances come from David Alpays new comer Jade,and Ricky Hes deputyKenny. Between the fish out of water apathy which defines Alpay and Hes angst-ridden overtones, each actor imbuesFromwith some essential narrative depth. As audiences get to experience the ramifications of direct action on these characters over time, writer and creator John Griffin also includes other elementsfrom elsewheredesigned to dig them in deeper

Aside from its jump scares, monstrous apparitions and small-town tragedies, From aims to ask some awkward questions. It harks back to a simpler time devoid of artificial interference, where entertainment came from people spending time together, rather than being distracted by ambition or attention-seeking social media moguls. In this show, time is the real enemy each person faces, as hope gives way to futility and years drift by without progress.

Horror exists in the perpetual grind of living moment to moment. Boundaries become barriers, treelines are stripped of their beauty and roads represent a life lived on loop. As audiences would expect from the involvement of Lost alumni Jack Bender, From has its own internal logic that will have people asking questions. The eclectic cast includes some unique character creations that would fit right in on a deserted island. That said, those similarities are fleeting and never impact on the originality that this show strives for. Some may also accuse From of being formulaic by tapping into established genre tropes, but surely if those are done well and feel earned, that is no bad thing.

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New Epix Series 'From' Tackles More than Monsters Under the Bed - We Got This Covered

Star Trek has a healthy range of expanded universe media, with the Star Treknovel series being possibly the longest-running tie-in book series in all of television. From classic stories that slot neatly into the ongoing narrative to entire new crews and worlds, the novels have vastly expanded the depth of their parent shows.

That brings us to Star Trek: Picard, which premieres its second season on Paramount+ on March 3. The tie-in novels are important for this show; by the time it beings,a considerable amount of time has transpired between the events of the 2002 filmStar Trek: Nemesis. Though the show features a lot of flashbacks to events that happened in the interim, with only 10 episodes per season its difficult to truly get a rounded picture of the experiences Picard and his crew had during those times of turmoil for the Federation.

Thats where the Star Trek: Picardnovels come in. Currently standing at three books, they serve as prequels to season 1, fleshing out the new characters and adding context to events we heard about on the show. Just what happened when the Romulan relief mission failed? How did Raffis Starfleet career really end? How did Rios acquire La Sirena?

As the countdown to season 2 gets underway, lets take a look at what else the Picard universe can offer, starting with the man himself

Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 Episode #110 Pictured: Sir Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard of the the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: PICARD. Photo Cr: Trae Patton/CBS 2019 CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Una McCormacks 2020 novel The Last Best Hope extensively deals with the events immediately surrounding Jean-Luc Picard leaving Starfleet and the initial efforts to relieve Romulus following the news that their star will go nova. Picard is the central character in the novel. At the same time, there are appearances from Geordi La Forge and Beverly Crusher from The Next Generation era as well as Raffi Musiker and Agnes Jurati, who are introduced inPicard.

Fleshing out Picards decision to leave Starfleet, the novel covers events between 2381 and 2385 when he is promoted to admiral and given command of the mission to save as many Romulans as possible, the most incredible relief effort in history. Picard was the first choice for the task. Still, not everyone within Starfleet or the Federation is interested in saving the Romulans, and the admiral is constantly challenged by those who wish to either scale back the mission or cancel it altogether.

The task is deemed too politically sensitive for the Enterprise. Picard willingly surrenders his command of the flagship to take on the Romulan mission. Instead, he takes command of the USS Verity, an Odyssey-class cruiser. Worf is promoted to captain of the Enterprise at Picards recommendation, and Jean-Luc never again sets foot on the ship.

Picard chooses Raffi Musiker as his new first officer and is assigned Lieutenant Koli Johan, a Bajoran specialist whom he admires for her communication skills and empathy. All agree that the refugee program must be dealt with sensitively, which becomes near impossible. When the initial facilities are not deemed adequate, Picard risks the wrath of both the Federation and Romulan Empire by settling refugees in Federation space.

There are successes on the mission, including settling Romulans on the world of Vashti, where Picard makes a connection with a young Elnor. Yet events on Nimbus III are a disaster. As seen in Star Trek V, the planet is located in the Neutral Zone, and armed Tal Shiar forces demand that the Federation withdraw. Picard has no choice but to obey; dozens of Romulan refugees are massacred, which leads to Lieutenant Koli Johans resignation and much bad feeling.

Picard throws himself into the mission anew and visits Vejuro, one of the most populated worlds outside the Romulan system, which allows him to experience Romulan culture and politics first hand. Picard is eventually recalled to Earth to deal with the fallout from the synth attack on the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards. He believes the attack was caused by the androids somehow gaining sentience and rebelling.

The attack on Mars fleet yards is devastating to the Federation. Outer worlds, riled up by politicians exploiting their xenophobia, openly discuss leaving the alliance. The Federation decides to end the Romulan relief mission, condemning millions to death, all to keep their own alliance stable.

Picard is shocked at the failure of the overall mission, the loss of life accepted by the Federation, and the failure of the values he held so dearly. He resigns from Starfleet and returns to Labarre, where we find him at the beginning ofStar Trek:Picard.

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What the Star Trek: Picard novels add to the story of the show - Winter is Coming

From the dawn of industry 250 years ago, formal education has remained essentially static, largely fossilised. In lecture halls around the globe, students still gaze not-so-fondly at the instructor delivering content that theyre expected to memoriseand cramming is tested and rewarded.

The future of work conversation is inherently a future of education conversation. If the hallmark of 20th-century learning was access to a college education, the third decade of the 21st century requires frameworks that digitally support lifelong learningand then re-learning.

Many of the jobs in the future workforce have not quite been imagined yet. Almost all roles in the Jobs On the Rise report on LinkedIn can already be done remotelyor automated. This incredible pace of change also signifies that the half-life of skills is shrinking rapidly, jobs for life gone forever, and the gig economy is here.

Never before in history has learning and earning been more closely correlated!

Experts agree that networked Artificial Intelligence (AI) will immensely amplify human effectiveness. Education 4.0 is warmly embracing this no-longer-distant utopia. Given that computers will soon match or sometimes exceed human intelligence even on complex decision-making, reasoning, etc to some higher level is a foregone conclusion. Agility and efficiency are inherent in these digital solutions. Will robots replace teachers by 2030? While the jury is out on that one, technology certainly has the potential to massively replace human workers, and workers in education are no exception.

Whether robots take the form of artificially intelligent software programmes or humanoid machines, research does suggest that technology is poised to automate a huge proportion of jobs worldwide, disrupting the global economy and leaving millions unemployed.

Essentially, in this world of violent shifts, in-demand skills will be very different from what has been taught so farand how its taught. Education 4.0 needs critical thinking, rapid absorption, relearning, and indeed unlearningemphasis always on creativity and innovation. Ironically, in an increasingly emotionally distant world, we will need even a more daunting mix of interpersonal and collaboration skills, while the learner owns the process, the pace and remains self-directed. More bite-sized learning is needed since, allegedly, humans now have an attention span less than a goldfish! Learning morsels will have to be bite-sized, snackable and immersivein virtual and augmented reality to bring learning vividly to life.

Teachers as experts will no longer be at the centre of learning; they must morph to being facilitators, coaches, mentors and dot joiners. Since content is no more king, very ubiquitous and very accessible, they must be strong pedagogical leaders, who lead learning.

With AI, students will learn in mobile classrooms with study tools that adapt in real-time to deliver bespoke content. Above-average students shall be challenged with harder tasks and questions and those who experience difficulties will get the opportunity to immerse slower, until they reach the required level and be positively reinforced in their individual learning journey. Teachers will be able to see clearly which students need help, in which areas, and choose between instant countermeasures. Similarly, students will be able to modify their own personalised learning process with tools they feel suit them.

Project-based learning and working will be key. This means they have to learn how to apply their skills to a variety of real-life situations. This is when organisational, collaborative, and time management skills can be absorbed as basics and then constantly renewed through their careers through internships, mentored collaborative projects.

Though mathematics was considered one of the three literacies, it is without a doubt that to divine meaning, the manual part of utilising this literacy will become irrelevant. Computers will take care of all statistical analyses, analyse data, predict trends and provide options. Digital literacy now means that human interpretation of data becomes a crucial part of future curricula. Applying theoretical knowledge to numbers, and using human reasoning to infer logic and trends from these data will become a fundamental new aspect of this literacy.

Examinations were always stressfulan infrequent probe for relative ranking, not for facilitating comprehension, absorption and application. We will see courseware platforms that assess and measure constantly and intervene appropriately to nudge the individual up the curve. Imagineas AI gets more sophisticated, it will be possible for the camera to accurately read eyes and facial expressions to assess the current learning state.

Companies across the globe, too many to name, are currently developing intelligent instruction design and digital platforms that use AI to provide learning, testing and feedback to students, identify gaps in knowledge and redirect to topic adjacencies when appropriate.

We are staring at a complete makeover of what constitutes teaching and learning. Visible are the deep cracks in the edifice of traditional teaching. Once again, another rich example of our civilisation going up the slope of the Maslow Pyramid.

Rohtash Mal

rohtash.mal@gmail.com

Ex-corporate honcho and organisational yoda; nowentrepreneurand stargazer

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Education 4.0: Adapting to the fourth industrial revolution - The New Indian Express

I would say I think about the end of the world a lot and I actually blame the song, If the World Was Ending by JP Saxe and Julia Michaels, which blew up on TikTok sometime in 2020. Since then, I have struggled to get the idea out of my head. In the song, Saxe and Michaels are two lovers who have broken up and grown apart. When an earthquake hits the city they reside in, they both are left pondering the question, if the world was ending, youd come over right? Its every bit as cringey and disingenuous as it sounds. While its likely that it was meant more as a breakup or an in your feelings type song than any meaningful commentary on the end of the world, it spurred me to ponder how I think about an inevitable apocalypse.

Whether its zombies or armageddon, its kind of fun to imagine a massive, Earth-shattering ending of life as we know it. Where would I be? Who would I call? What would I want in my final moments as the world collapses into fiery rubble around me? Maybe fun isnt the right word, but its certainly easier to glamorize the apocalypse with sensationalized movies like 2012 than actually sit down and realize we are already living through the end of the world and its actually much worse than any Roland Emmerich movie could be. I wish the apocalypse that is to come could be a little bit more like the 2018 film Bird Box with its dramatic premise that causes the characters to make gripping life-or-death choices, or even like the world of The Maze Runner, which at least gave us characters to root for and cool robot bugs.

Our apocalypse might be similar to the makings of our best science fiction writers, but it certainly wont have the glamor. To be completely honest, the end of the world doesnt really strike the kind of fear in me I think it probably should. In place of this fear is more of a passive understanding that whats to come is out of my control. Maybe I should be angrier about the worlds looming climate change disasters or the ongoing threat of a major global conflict that has the capacity to wipe out life on Earth.

As it stands right now, most days I feel powerless to make any significant change that could possibly put to a halt the rapid downward spiral it feels like the world is heading towards. With the emphasis constantly placed on individual actions that are palatable enough to appeal to the masses like reusable bags and paper straws, often we lose sight of the true forces that have the power to send the world as we know it into a true apocalypse corporate greed and capitalism.

If that sounds at all too nihilistic, its probably because I just finished reading Tom Kaczynskis Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse. Set to release in March of this year, Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse is an expansion of Kaczynskis 2013 collection of comics, Beta Testing the Apocalypse. With comics pulled from The Drama, Punk Planet and Backwards City Review as well as two new stories, Kaczynski creates a work that forces the reader to stare directly into the face of the worst parts of our world. This kind of honest and unabashedly cynical writing style fits perfectly with Kaczynskis subject matter. While hes not afraid of having a bit of fun telling his stories, he is able to masterfully examine the world in which we live and the place of human beings in it.

One of my favorite stories in the collection is called Million Year Boom. Originally published in MOME 11 in 2008 and reprinted in the anthology Best American Nonrequired Reading in 2009, our protagonist has recently been hired at a start-up that was looking to make it big in the green economy. The protagonist notes that the conglomeration of hippy scientists, lawyers and managers, drowning in investor capital all lacked any semblance of corporate identity and rather extended their tentacles into a variety of industries. Sounds pretty familiar. As the protagonist spends more time at the start-up, he starts to experience allergy symptoms, which are quickly abated when his coworker suggests a medication that takes away his symptoms. As the story continues, the protagonist becomes more distinctly animal, with his heightened senses spurred by the medication as well as new primal urges.

Kaczynski does a better job writing and illustrating the story than I could ever achieve through explaining it. As Adalbert Arcane explains at the Notes and Theories section of the novel (absolutely required reading if youre picking up this book), Million Year Boom excavates the primitive drives concealed within us under a thin veneer of civilization. Arcane goes on to say that in order to save the planet, its necessary for humans to devolve. Even all the green activists view the planet as something to protect (we are more significant than nature) or insist that we must de-industrialize (i.e. to devolve, implicit in that demand is our already existing evolution beyond nature).

As an environmentalist, Im not sure what it looks like to think about preventing a climate change-induced apocalypse from happening that doesnt include a feeling of needing to protect. Maybe that need to protect really does come from a sense of significance over nature after all, I think theres an argument that could be made that we have mastered nature to the point in which we can use it to meet all of our needs.

I also feel confident that no matter what happens to our Earth whether life is business as usual for the next 1,000 years or the climate crisis kills us all in the next 100 nature will find a way to go on without us. Arcane also gets to this point in his Notes and Theories on Kaczynskis never-before-published Utopia Dividend. Arcane mentions the countless times nature has filled in the areas that humans have abandoned, filling in the voids and creating wild spaces once again. However, Arcane also says, When environmental activists talk about isolating and preserving natural habitats, deindustrializing and denuclearizing, they really speak about humans leaving the planet. This can be achieved through only two means: extinction or exodus.

Im not sure the solution to saving our planet and preventing an apocalypse is simply to leave. While that certainly would solve the problem on Earth, itd either extend the inevitable to when we all pack up and move to another planet or completely wipe humans out of existence. I may not be afraid of the coming apocalypse, but I still would rather it not happen! And Id prefer for humanity to survive for future generations. Unfortunately, I dont have any of the answers. Is it better to be more pessimistic or optimistic about the state of our climate crisis? Do my individual actions really matter in preventing the human-caused apocalypse from happening? Is hope for a better future all we have? I guess Im just crossing my fingers that I can figure it out before the apocalypse comes.

Daily Arts Writer Isabella Kassa can be reached at ikassa@umich.edu.

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A collection of thoughts on the end of the world - The Michigan Daily

One year ago NASAs Perseverance rover plunged through the Martian atmosphere and safely landed in Jezero Crater, a 45-kilometre-wide gouge that scientists suspect once hosted a deep, long-lived lake. The rovers ultimate target is near Jezeros western edge: a large, fan-shaped pile of sediments that washed into the basin through a notch in the crater rim about 3.5 billion years ago. In other words, the target is a river deltathe exact type of environment that could preserve signs of ancient Martian life-forms.

Perseverance is the tip of the spear in humanitys grand quest to find traces of a relict Martian biosphere. The $2.7-billion missions overarching objective is to collect dozens of Martian rock samples, many of them from the delta. Then, sometime in the early 2030s, a sequence of spacecraft should return those samples to Earth for up-close scrutiny, possibly allowing scientists to at last answer the question of whether the solar system was ever home to more than one life-bearing world.

Also Read |NASA's Perseverance completes 1st year on Mars

Perhaps past microbial life could have existed on Mars when it was a little warmer and a little wetter, says Lori Glaze, director of NASAs planetary science division. The surface of Marsthe geology, the geologic historyis preserved. We can see back 4.3 billion years on the surface... You cant do that in other places.

Stitched together from 16 images captured by NASAs Perseverance rover, this video pans across a panoramic view of a portion of Jezero Crater, revealing brown hills in the middle distance that are part of the craters ancient river delta.

Perseverances early observations are already revealing that Jezeros geologic history is richer than previously imagined, with dramatic shifts in environmental conditions. Now, as the rover ramps up its sample-collection campaign, scientists back home are eager to send it west, toward the alluring river delta and its potential biological treasure. Mars, however, does not always play by the rules. Already the planet has thrown a few unanticipated challenges into the rovers first Earth year on the Martian surface.

Every time weve sent a mission to Mars, weve had to learn more about how Mars actually is going to treat our spacecraft, and we have to learn how to operate in that environment, Glaze says. But Perseverance is doing well, she adds. Things are moving along at a really good clip. [The team is] making pretty great progress.

Early Science outside the Landing Strip

Perseverance is not alone in celebrating its first Martian anniversary. It was one of three space missions to reach Mars last February. The United Arab Emirates Hope orbiter is still circling the planet. And Chinas multicomponent Tianwen-1 missioncomposed of an orbiter, a lander and a roveris there, too. That missions rover, Zhurong, is currently exploring a Martian plain called Utopia Planitia, some 1,800 kilometres northeast of Perseverances location.

Also Read |China denies making space junk set to crash into Moon

Back in Jezero Crater, however, Perseverances Martian adventures took an unexpected turn almost right away, starting with where the rover touched down on February 18, 2021.

In all of the simulations that were done beforehand, the most likely place to land was a big, flat area that we started calling the landing strip right in front of the deltaI mean, literally within 100 meters of the front of the delta, says the California Institute of Technologys Ken Farley, the missions project scientist. So we were joking around that on February 19 we were going to wake up looking at a wall in front of us. And, um, we didnt.

Annotated satellite image of Jezero Crater dated December 15, 2021, shows the route Perseverance (light blue dot) had taken (white line) into the craters Stah region since touching down on February 18, 2021. The rover would retrace its path back to the landing site before following a new route (blue line) to Jezeros river delta. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

As the rover descended to the surface, an onboard navigation system autonomously guided Perseverance to an area the software had deemed safewhich it was. But instead of landing within an Earth days drive of the delta, the rover ended up about 2.5 kilometres away, on the other side of a treacherous, sandy, rock-strewn terrain called Stah, which is Navajo for amid the sand. Circumnavigating that patch would more than double the length of the rovers path to its primary exploration target. Yet as Perseverance scouted its immediate surroundings, mission controllers chose to let it linger on the crater floor and explore Stah before doubling back and heading to the delta.

I worked on Curiosity ever since it landed in Gale Crater, says Perseverances deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). And [with] that very first image that we got down from Perseverance, I looked at that landscape and thought, Wow, we are not in Gale Crater anymore. This is nothing like [what] I have ever seen in Gale.

Also Read |SpaceX tourists will make attempt at spacewalk during flight

Instead of landing in lake sediments, the rover found itself on fractured bedrock littered with bizarre, sometimes dusty rocks. Many of those rocks are covered in an intriguing purplish coating that resembles desert varnishes on Earthpatinas associated with hardy, radiation-resistant types of terrestrial microbes. Initially, rock textures and geochemistry defied classification. But once the rover had ground through the weathered surface of a Jezero rock, scientists, saw exactly what they would have expected in a lava flownot a lake bottom.

All of the rocks that we have confidently identified are igneous, Farley says. They have nothing to do with the lake.

Produced volcanically, the igneous rocks on Jezeros floor contain large olivine crystals that typically form near the bottoms of thick lava lakes and flows. Scientists still do not know how or when the rocks ended up in Jezero, but it is now clear that the surface Perseverance is rolling across is not the original crater floor. Further investigations revealed that the rocks have been altered by water, which excavated small tunnels and pockets in their interiors that are now filled with salty minerals. At least on Earth, such minerals are perfect for preserving signs of life. Their presence, plus the mysterious purple varnishes, make these volcanic rocks unexpectedly tantalising targets.

Igneous rocks are typically not where you look to find signs of life because they come from really hot magmas that life doesnt necessarily favour, Stack Morgan says. But when you have these rocks sitting on the surface or in the subsurface interacting with water, then youre creating small niches within the rock itself that could be habitable. Youve got chemical ingredients in there; youve got water in there; youve got precipitation of salt minerals.

As Perseverance cast its gaze farther afield, it spied Jezeros mountainous crater rim and the wall of the delta. (We confirmed we do a have a delta, so check that box, Stack Morgan says.) It also spotted a curious rocky outcrop called Kodiak, which team members have used to gauge the depth of Jezeros ancient waters. Patterns on the rock suggest that on at least one occasion, water levels dipped surprisingly low, falling to more than 100 meters below an outflow channel to the east. Other observations provide hints of a deluge that gushed into the crater with enough power to carry along the large boulders now haphazardly strewn in some areas. In other words, Jezeros lake was occasionally stable and placid and at other times flushed by periods of intense runoff.

Rock layers of Kodiak, a flat-topped hill near the centre of this image, reveal ancient chapters of Jezero Craters history marked by gradual sediment deposition followed by massive flooding.

And oddly, Jezero appears to be much windier than anticipated. Fortunately, that has not bothered Perseverances robot friend, the helicopter named Ingenuity. Since April 2021 Ingenuity has been performing wellso well, in fact, that after its initial tests, the team began using it to help guide the rover through tricky terrains such as Stah. It aced those tests, Farley says. Now it is our companion, and it is continuing to fly and do recon for us.

Go West, Young Rover

Collecting and storing samples has also turned out to be trickier than anticipated. Last August, when Perseverance took its first shot at collecting a rock core, mission personnel were optimistic. They had tested the machinery on terrestrial rocks and performed extensive troubleshooting on the software guiding the process. The target rock showed no obvious challenging quirks. The task should have been easy.

But the first coring tube was devastatingly empty. To come up with a zero-volume empty tube was just mind-blowing, unfortunately, says JPLs Jessica Samuels, sample caching system lead for the mission. That was never something we were worried aboutnot acquiring the sample. We were worried about so many other things.

The rock, it turned out, had been so altered by water that it crumbled under the pressure of Perseverances drillnot an ideal result but one that left the team with a useful tube full of Martian atmosphere. That first sample failure was stressful, however, and if the problems continued, they could have scuttled the once-in-a-lifetime chance to gather and return pristine material from Mars.

View of NASAs Martian helicopter Ingenuity in flight, as seen by the Perseverance rover on April 25, 2021.

Since then the team has regrouped and successfully collected six rock cores, which Samuels says is validation that the system actually works as planned. Its not us. Its Mars, she says. Indeed, Mars served up another episode of sample-collecting shenanigans when pebbles recently wedged themselves into the rovers sample-caching hardware and Perseverance had to do a bit of a shimmy to shake them loose.

Theres never a dull moment in sampling, Samuels says. Its keeping us on our toes. And its keeping us continuing to think about the different environmental conditions.

Overall retrieving a small cache of samples from Mars is an audacious task that is just barely within our technological grasp, even if each of the missions moving parts performs perfectly. Were pushing the limits of the technology we have today to land and launch a rocket from Mars that is essentially just big enough to get a basketball into orbit, says Albert Haldemann, chief Mars engineer at the European Space Agency, a partner in the overall sample-return effort.

Perseverances already-collected igneous rock cores can be used to measure the strength of Marss ancient magnetic field and to precisely pin ages on the craters epochs. For now, scientists guess that water sloshed around in Jezero around 3.5 billion years ago, but Farley says there are half a billion years of uncertainty in that estimate. Soon, team members say, they will begin deciding when and where Perseverance should deposit a preliminary cache of materialsjust in case the rover is no longer functioning by the time the next spacecraft arrives to retrieve its bounty.

If everything is onboard Perseverance, and Perseverance dies unexpectedly, weve got nothing, Haldemann says. So a safety cache will be put down at a potential landing spotsooner rather than later.

Before it leaves the crater floor, Perseverance will fill two more of its 43 onboard, ultraclean sample tubes. Then it will turn west and make haste: Were gonna gun it for the delta, Stack Morgan says.

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What we learned from the Perseverance Rover's first year on Mars - Deccan Herald

If something looks too good to be true, it probably is. It's a lesson we all learn eventually, usually via some unfortunate and/or expensive series of events.

For the bike industry, the lesson came via the SpeedX Leopard - the crowdfunded bike that promised the world, yet delivered, as CyclingTips so aptly put it, "800,000 bikes abandoned in fields and construction sites around China."

Now, the Urtopia Carbon Electric Bike, which heralds the "new urban Utopia" might turn out to be genuinely all that it's cracked up to be: 30lbs/13-14kg, Gates Carbon Belt Drive, 250w/h/35~40Nm torque battery, thumb touch locking, GPS tracking, all for 2,505/$3,000.

However, in taking its name from a noun that means "an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect," and placing that imagining into the current supply and demand starved industry of 2022, the newcomer to the market seems to be begging us to look for the loopholes.

The closest competitor in weight/price ratio we've tested is the Ribble Endurance SL e, at 3,299 and 12kg. However, this was a paired down road bike from a direct-only brand. The likes of the commuter-ready Specialized Como SL comes in at 21.5kg at 4,250.

Having raised 2,562,469, via1,353backers (at time of writing), the brand contacted Cycling Weekly, suggesting "its reckoned as THE most popular campaign on Indiegogo now!"

The Urtopia is available in a US build, at $3,000, for a UK/Euro build for 2,505.

The bike features a carbon fiber frame, fork, seatpost and handlebar. It weighs 30 pounds, which translates to 13.6kg.

The brand does follow this up with "(14kg minimum)" in its FAQ, which is a little bit of a head scratcher. But, at that weight, they are right in saying "an average girl can carry it upstairs without much effort!", assuming that by 'girl', the writer means 'adult woman' - which seems a reasonable assumption since there are only two frame sizes, to suit riders from 5"5 to 6"5 (165 to 195cm - I'm on the cusp at 166cm).

The max rider weight is 110kg and Urtopia says the frame "has passed some of the requirements of BS EN 14766 standard designed for mountain bikes on rough terrains."

The Urtopia uses a 250w centrally positioned e-bike motor providing 35~40Nm torque. There's five modes: Pedal, Eco, Comfort, Sport and Turbo, and the Samsung battery will last a reported 80miles/130km in Eco mode.

Modes can be swapped via "AI voice control", and the brand says "Urtopias proprietary clutch technology enables a riding experience exactly like when you ride a regular bike without any drag. With integrated gyroscope and torque sensor, Urtopia knows when you're riding on inclined or rough roads and may adjust power output accordingly to ease your effort."

The singlespeed design uses a Gates Carbon Drive belt - a clean and fuss free transmission that we've tested before to great success.

Of the brakes, Urtopia says the bike "is equipped with a front and rear hydraulic disc brake system, which are more reliable than rim brakes, or v-brakes, providing a safer riding experience." Our tech heads are a bit beyond the #savetherimbrake movement, and don't really need convincing - but we'd like to know more about the stopping power, such as which brand they come from and at what spec level.

The tyres, reassuringly, are Kenda's Kwest rubber, in 35mm.

There are some other features that piqued our interest, including the "fingerprint unlock, eSIM card, dot-matrix display, built in Bluetooth, WiFi, and 4G modules... Anti-theft tracking system... [and] Millimeter wave radar," the latter providing warnings of approaching vehicles, similar to the Garmin Varia.

These are the kind of features that experts at Car Design Research told us the cycling industry needed to incorporate, in order to encourage a new breed of bike rider onto two wheels. However, traditional bike riders are harder to convince - just look at the furore that met Cannondale's attempts to embed lights and a Varia radar into its latest Synapse.

Urtopia's Indiegogo page includes several third party reviews based on prototypes, but we're keen to assess the bike for ourselves, so have requested a press sample to bring you a full review.

(Image credit: Urtopia)

One area where the SpeedX Leopard came unstuck was in meeting the high demand created by its crowdfunding success.

Urtopia is operating during a time when even well-established brands are battling with supply chains and competition for containers.

Urtopia has updated its backers around its current projected delivery capacity, noting "given the unpredictability of the current global logistics as we enter the third year of the pandemic, there are things beyond our control despite our best efforts."

However, the brand does appear to be having much more luck than some of the more mainstream outfits in terms of its projected delivery dates.

Posting an update on February 16, it stated: "the first batch was produced by the end of January and 30 of them have been shipped to the US already," before adding: "The second batch production will be divided into two parts. Those to the US will be in containers by March 15 and arrive in the US around April 10. Delivery can be expected after mid of April. Those to Europe will be in containers by March 25 and arrive in Europe by April 25. Delivery can be expected by late April and early May."

Urtopia has been pretty up front with its backers about their role in the product development process.

"These first delivered Urtopia e-bikes willshoulder the responsibilityof first test-runs with real customers," the brand said, adding "we believe that our customers are better served when we try harder to ensure the quality of such a technologically advanced and complicated piece of equipment, instead of rushing to deliver a half-baked prototype." We'll be interested to hear their feedback, and can hopefully provide our own when a protoype arrives.

The bikes are being manufactured in China, and "batch-shipped to local warehouses across North America and Europe." Urtopia says it has warehouses in the USA, Germany, Netherland, France, UK and Canada, and that customer orders will be placed at the nearest warehouse to your location and delivered from there.

Experts operating in the more commercially successful automotive market tell us that e-bikes need to be smarter, and more convenient, in order to stand up to the demands of the masses and attract new riders. The traditional cycling industy isn't ticking those boxes yet, likely because its target audience is somewhat resistant to change - and it certainly isn't able to meet the price point offered by this new creation.

Is the Urtopia the beginning of a smart new world for commuting cyclists? Or is it the beginning of somebody's nightmare? The proof will be in the riding - and we're looking forward to it.

Excerpt from:

Is this crowdfund topping e-bike too good to be true? - Cycling Weekly

Whether it's through fire-breathing dragons, time travel, psychic powers, or spaceships that sail effortlessly between distant stars, there's never been a shortage of tropes in fantasy or science fiction stories that challenge our belief of what's possible. Yet while fantasy and science fiction authors are great at imagining new forms of magic and technology, authors aren't so good at imagining different political systems. Indeed, for the most part, they fall back on the same old political or economic systems: for fantasy, we have our usual monarchies and empires, kings and queens, nobles and commoners. For sci-fi, the future is often bleak, dominated by hyper-capitalist corporate galactic warfare or techno-bureaucratic empires clinging to power on their newly-annexed planets.

As a fantasy author myself, I'm intrigued as to how writers' imagination hit a wall when imagining political alternatives. I am reminded of the oft-quoted remark from literary theorist Frederic Jameson, who quipped that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.

In my first novel, an epic fantasy story entitled "The Spirit of a Rising Sun," I tried to challenge this myopia around political and economic systems in fantasy; in doing so, I spent a lot of time pondering the politics and economics that feature so heavily in some of our most cherished stories, and trying to understand why it's so hard for writers to think outside the political box.

Certainly, there are key works in science fiction that push us to consider non-capitalist futures. Ursula K. LeGuin's 1974 book, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia," is exemplary in this regard. In the book, we travel alongside our hero and physicist Shevek, who hails from a planet governed by anarcho-syndicalist principles: political and economic equality, working-class self-management, equality between genders, and a voluntarist orientation toward social life. Although his is a planet of relative material poverty, we nonetheless see how these principles inform his own worldview, including his disdain for inequality in all its guises. Shevek travels to rival system Urras, where inhabitants practice a form of state capitalism that is rife with the usual inequities.

Class conflict, income inequality, and the recurring question of how society ought to be organized are at the heart of not only "The Dispossessed," but much of LeGuin's corpus.

More recently, the popular sci-fi novel series turned Amazon show "The Expanse" pushes the politics of sci-fi in critical directions. In the not so distant future, the solar system is divided into three opposed camps: Earth, Mars, and the Belters. The Belters are those who are confined to mining asteroids in the Asteroid Belt for precious resources that support the populations of Earth and Mars. While the Belters in recent seasons pursue their own freedom through extraordinarily violent means aimed at destroying countless civilian lives on Earth, their inclusion in the story nevertheless points towards the willingness in science fiction to explicitly represent the working classes. It's an interesting contrast to, say, "Star Wars," where the question of what is produced, by whom, and how it is distributed is not discussed at all. Where did Luke and Leia get their food from? Whose labor-time was expended while mining the minerals for not one but two Death Stars? How did the Rebel Alliance obtain the energy to power their X-wings? Though such questions are often addressed in the deeper roots of lore, I typically find myself asking these sorts of questions at the outset.

RELATED:On its final run, "The Expanse" serves a last supper for we who continue fighting for our humanity

While the futuristic orientation of science fiction lends the genre an easy ability to reimagine the politics and economics of tomorrow, major works in fantasy rarely seem to challenge the social systems of the path. "Game of Thrones," for example, only ever flirts with alternative forms of political organization notably, with the Brotherhood without Banners, whom we see only in glimpses.

The Brotherhood was essentially a guerrilla group that opposed kings on all sides of the ongoing conflict, claiming to fight instead for the common people. Elsewhere, a poor religious leader called the High Sparrow challenges Olenna Tyrell, the matriarch of the rich and powerful House Tyrell that rules over Highgarden, by insisting the law applies equally to both low and high-born alike. He then pointedly asks her if she has ever performed manual labor before, before then posing to her the question of what should happen if the many cease to fear the few. This was a rare moment for "Game of Thrones," in that this bit of dialogue hinted at deeply-buried class divisions between manual laborers and aristocrats in the GoT universe.

Likewise, in one humorous scene of "Game of Thrones," the poor wildling woman Osha, whose home was with the Free Folk, or who recognize none of the kings or kingdoms of Westeros, challenges and annoys the noble-born Theon Greyjoy when he demands she address him with honorifics. Her brief moment of questioning threatens the ideological foundations of the entire feudal order, something the show did not take up in more depth.

Yet the heroes of this universe show time and time again that they are incapable of fully imagining an alternative world to their feudal order. In perhaps the story's gravest misfire, even our hero-turned-villain Daenerys Targaryen, for all her efforts in breaking the chains of the old world to usher in the new, can still only ever envision a world in she is installed atop the Iron Throne, rather than a world without monarchs at all. In the show's final episode, as those who survived Dany's burning of King's Landing aim to rebuild society, Sam's meek suggestion of extending democracy to everyone regardless of noble birth is laughed out of consideration.

Given that so much of our popular fantasy and science fiction stories (but certainly not allI can't read everything!) rarely seem to introduce new political or economic systems, I wanted in my own story to showcase a different sort of arrangement. The story's hero, a young woman named Oyza Serazar, is indeed drawn to the possibility of such a world. Captured when she was young after her city is attacked by gun-wielding overseas invaders from a place called Hafrir, she was forced into a life of servitude before being thrown indefinitely into prison. But there, she reads a forbidden book she managed to smuggle in, one that calls into the question the divine authority of monarchs and the power the nobility, claiming the commoners ought to instead collectively manage society's productive tools in their own interests. At the same time, she's heard rumors of a mysterious new collectivity calling themselves Ungoverned, deep in the swamps outside the ruins of her old city. Trapped in prison, Oyza can thus only ponder if the Ungoverned are real, if they practice the teachings of the book she loves, and if she might one day break free to find them.

Whether I succeeded or not remains an open question, but I do think there is much more room for writers of fantasy and science fiction to conjure up worlds that defy the politics and economics of our own world. Socialist writers, anarchist writers, and communist writers are well-positioned to think differently about some of the most basic and everyday practices of life under capitalism. Why, in the science fictional future, is there always banking, money, markets, finance, wage-labor, corporations, inequality? Why, in the fantastical past, can we not see beyond monarchs, emperors, and kingdoms? Is it possible, furthermore, to not just imagine fictional worlds differently, but the very world we ourselves live in?

If there is anything that fantasy and science fiction writers can contribute to popular discussions about how to remedy the ills of our present historical conjuncture, it ought to be through the constant reminder that the new problems we face may never find their solutions within the confines of the old. Does capitalism, for example, provide us with the tools to solve a complex problem like climate change? If the history of capitalism is any indication about its future, the answer is resoundingly no. I thus recently find myself thinking more and more about an old slogan on the left that nonetheless remains powerful to this day: "another world is possible."

Read more on sci-fi and fantasy politics:

The rest is here:

Why can't sci-fi and fantasy imagine alternatives to capitalism or feudalism? - Salon

Francis Ford Coppola has always been a risk-taker. Even after making three of the finest films of the 1970s (and beyond) with The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, and The Conversation, the studios werent willing to take a gamble on Apocalypse Now, the five-time Oscar winners surreal fever dream of a Vietnam film, loosely based on Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness. So he invested every cent he had to get the budget where it needed to be, and made one of the most celebrated war films of all time. I invested all my money and own the film, Coppola told The Washington Post in 1979. I think Ill get it back.

But for as long as Coppola has been making movies, he has really wanted to make one movie: Megalopolis. And now, at the age of 82, the filmmaker told GQ that hes ready to risk it all again and drop some seriously mad cashlikely more than $100 millionon finally seeing his pet project through to completion.

As GQs Zach Baron writes:

It is a film called Megalopolis, and Coppola has been trying to make it, intermittently, for more than 40 years. If I could summarize the plot for you in a concise way, I would, but I cant, because Coppola cant either. Ask him. Its very simple, hell say. The premise of Megalopolis? Well, its basically I would ask you a question, first of all: Do you know much about utopia?

The best I can do, after literally hours talking about it with him, is this: Its a love story that is also a philosophical investigation of the nature of man; its set in New York, but a New York steeped in echoes of ancient Rome; its scale and ambition are vast enough that Coppola has estimated that it will cost $120 million to make. What he dreams about, he said, is creating something like Its a Wonderful Lifea movie everyone goes to see, once a year, forever. On New Years, instead of talking about the fact that youre going to give up carbohydrates, Id like this one question to be discussed, which is: Is the society we live in the only one available to us? And discuss it.

Its certainly a tall order, but given that this year marks the 50th anniversary of The Godfather, maybe its not so far-fetched to believe that if anyone can make the next great classic film, it would be Coppola. Even so, no studio in Hollywood seems ready to make that gamble.

After more than four decades of talking about Megalopoliswhich he says is as ambitious as Apocalypse NowCoppola understands that, the more personal I make it, and the more like a dream in me that I do it, the harder it will be to finance. And the longer it will earn money because people will be spending the next 50 years trying to think: Whats really in Megalopolis? What is he saying? My God, what does that mean when that happens?

Still, the situation feels like dj vu to the director. Do you know why I own Apocalypse Now? Because no one else wanted it, he says. As for casting? Oscar Isaac and Zendaya are just two of the stars Coppola is eyeing.

You can read Coppolas full GQ interview here.

See the original post here:

Francis Ford Coppola Will Spend $120 Million To Make 'Megalopolis' - UPROXX

Greens Leader Adam Bandt is that whiny girl on the Brady Bunch who constantly complains, Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! except that he cries, Billionaires, Billionaires, Billionaires!!!

Where jealousy drove Jan to be fixated on her older sister, the Green-eyed monster drives Mr Bandt to obsession with those wealthier than him.

Writing inTheAustralianthis week, Mr Bandt blamed every conceivable ill on Australias billionaires.

Billionaires dont pay their fair share of taxes. Billionaires receive unfair handouts. Billionaires increase their wealth during pandemics. Billionaires are favoured by the Liberal Party. Billionaires are the reason you were late to work this morning. Okay, I made that last one up, be Mr Bandt might as well have said it.

Billionaires, billionaires, billionaires!

Mr Bandt is so fixated on billionaires that he mentioned them 12 times in a 15-paragraph article. For context, he mentioned climate five times, coal just twice, and the environment once.

The real enemy, you see, is Scrooge McDuck.

The Greens would you have call to mind all your woes while harping with them, Billionaires, billionaires, billionaires!

The problem with Australia are those successful entrepreneurs who take enormous risks to create wealth and, in the process, employ tens of thousands of Australians while providing much-needed services bastards!

But fear not. If you elect the Greens at the next federal election, Mr Bandt will slug it to the wicked billionaires. (Right before he hammers the annoying middle class. Well get to that in a moment.)

The Greens will push a new billionaires tax, Mr Bandt wrote triumphantly. Thats the only wealth tax well be pushing. A big, new six per cent tax on billionaires wealth.

How wonderful life would be if billionaires did not exist. Instead of working for major corporations, we could work for the government on communal farms. Others could work in state-run factories. And still more could work as fact-checkers at the ABC.

The rest of us could work for the big new bureaucracy that would be required to annually assess who the billionaires are, value every item they own, and levy them with Mr Bandts big, new six per cent tax.

Stealing from, er, taxing the wealth of billionaire boogey men will pay for the Greens imagined Utopia in which everything is free and where school leavers can aspire to just smoke weed for a year or two.

According to the 2021Financial Reviews Rich Listthere are 111 billionaires in Australia. So the Greens entire policy platform is based on taxing 111 people.

Of course, the problem with getting your policy ideas from fairies at the bottom of the garden is that reality is rarely factored in. Mr Bandt is so busy making snow money angels with the$40 billionhe expects to pickpocket from billionaires each year that it never occurs to him they will simply take their wealth along with their businesses and many of our jobs elsewhere.

The sinister billionaires will be disappeared; banished by Bandt, the man who has zero business experience and who has never employed anyone.

With all that economic activity gone, the Greens will then be free to set about creating their Looney Land utopia in which solar panels we cannot afford power all the businesses we no longer have.

But rest assured, Mr Bandt promised, We wont be going after everyday people like the Liberals do, but instead make big corporations and billionaires pay their fair share and rein in their unfair handouts.

Ah yes, use the language of envy to demonise big business and billionaires, billionaires, billionaires.

And then, when Adam Hood and his band of Merry Watermelons fail to raise the revenue to pay for their socialist wet dreams, they will simply widen the shakedown to include the middle class.

Only a fool believes that they can vote for others to be slugged with a wealth tax while expecting it will never be imposed upon them.

Mr Bandt concluded his piece in The Australian by claiming that Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, whose seat of Kooyong will be hotly contested at the next election, is terrified of a Greens victory.

Mr Bandt, 92 per cent of Australia is terrified!

You can follow James on Twitter. You can order his new book Notes from Woketopiahere.

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Adam Bandt has billionaires on the brain - The Spectator Australia