Category Archives: Transhuman News

From cities in the sky to robot butlers, futuristic visions fill the history ofPopSci. In theAre we there yet?column we check in on progress towards our most ambitious promises. Read the series and explore all our 150th anniversary coveragehere.

Lately, all eyes are turned towards the moon. NASA has another launch attempt tentatively scheduled next week for the highly-anticipated Artemis 1 uncrewed mission to orbit Earths satellite, one of the first steps to set up an outpost on the lunar surface. But humansand science fiction writershave long imagined a moon base, one that would be a fixture of future deep space exploration. About five years before Sputnik and 17 years before the Apollo missions, the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, Arthur C. Clarke, penned a story for the 1952 April issue of Popular Science describing what he thought a settlement on the moon could look like. Clarke, who would go on to write 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, envisioned novel off-Earth systems, including spacesuits that would resemble suits of armor, glass-domed hydroponic farms, water mining and oxygen extraction for fuel, igloo-shaped huts, and even railways.

The human race is remarkably fortunate in having so near at hand a full-sized world with which to experiment, Clarke wrote. Before we aim at the planets, we will have had a chance of perfecting our techniques on our satellite.

Since Clarkes detailed moon base musings, PopSci has frequently covered the latest prospects in lunar stations, yet the last time anyone even set foot on the moon was December 1972. Despite past false starts, like the Constellation Program in the early 2000s, NASAs Artemis program aims to change moon base calculus. This time, experts say that the airand attitudesurrounding NASAs latest bid for the moon is charged with a different kind of determination.

You can talk to anyone in the [space] community, says Adrienne Dove, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida. You can talk to the folks who have been around for 50 years, or the new folks, but it just feels real this time. Doves optimism doesnt just come from the Artemis 1 rocket poised for liftoff at Kennedy Space Center. She sees myriad differentiating factors this time, including the collaboration between private companies and NASA, the growing international support for the space governance framework, the Artemis Accords, and the competition from rival nations like China and Russia to stake out a lunar presence. Perhaps one of the biggest arguments from moon base supporters is the need for a stepping stone to send humans even deeper into space. We want to learn how to live on the moon so we can go to Mars, Dove says.

[Related: How Tiangong station will make China a force in the space race]

Mark Vande Hei, a NASA astronaut who returned to Earth in March 2022 after spending a US record-breaking 355 consecutive days on the International Space Station (ISS), underscores the opportunity. Weve got this planetary object, the moon, not too far away. And we can buy down the huge risk of going to Mars by learning how to live for long durations on another planetary object thats relatively close.

Ever since Sputnik made its debut as the first artificial satellite in 1957, the Soviet Union deployed several short-lived space stations; NASAs Apollo Missions enabled humans to walk on the moon; NASAs space shuttle fleet (now retired) flew 135 missions; the ISS has been orbiting the Earth for more than two decades; more than 4,500 artificial satellites now sweep through the sky; and a series of private companies, like SpaceX and Blue Origin, have begun launching rockets and delivering payloads into space.

But no moon base.

Thats because exploring the moon is not like exploring the Earth. Besides being 240,000 miles away on a trajectory that requires slicing through dense atmosphere while escaping our planets gravitational grip, and then traversing the vacuum of space, once on the moon, daily temperatures range between 250F during the day and -208F at night. Although there may be water in the form of ice, it will have to be mined and extracted to be useful. The oxygen deprived atmosphere is so thin it cant shield human inhabitants from meteor impacts of all sizes or solar radiation. Theres no source of food. Plus, lunar soil, or regolith, is so fine, sharp, and electrostatically charged, it not only clogs machinery and lungs but can also cut through clothes and flesh.

Its a very hostile environment, says Dove, whose specialty is lunar dust. Shes currently working on multiple lunar missions, like Commercial Lunar Payload Services or CLPS, which will deploy robotic landers to explore the moon in advance of humans arriving on the future crewed Artemis missions. While Dove acknowledges the habitability challenges, shes quick to cite a range of solutions, starting with the initial tent-pitching location: the moons south pole. That region seems to be rich with resources in terms of ice, which can be used as water or as fuel, Dove says. Plus, theres abundant sunlight on mountain peaks, where solar panels could be stationed. She adds that there might be some rare earth elements that can be really useful. Rare earth elementsthere are 17 metals in that categoryare, well, rare on Earth, yet theyre essential to electronics manufacturing. Finding them on the moon would be a boon.

A PopSci story in July 1985 detailed elaborate plans proposed by various space visionaries to colonize the moon and make use of its resources. Among the potential technologies were laboratory and habitat modules, a factory to extract water and oxygen for subsistence and fuel, and mining operations for raw moon mineralsa precious resource that could come in handy and provide income for settlers. While NASA may provide the needed boost to get a moon base going, its the promise of an off-world gold rush for these rare, potentially precious elements that could solidify and expand it.

My hope is that this is just the beginning of a commercial venture on the Moon, Vande Hei says. Hes looking forward to seeing how businesses will find ways to be profitable by making use of resources on the moon. At some point, weve got to be able to travel and not rely on the logistics chain starting from Earth, Vande Hei adds, taking the long view. Weve got to be able to travel places and use the resources.

[Related: Space tourism is on the rise. Can NASA keep up with it?]

And space is lucrative. In 2020, the global space industry generated roughly $370 billion in revenues, a figure based mostly on building rockets and satellites, along with the supporting hardware and software. Morgan Stanley, the US investment bank, estimates that the industry could generate $1 trillion in revenue in less than two decades, a growth rate predicted to be driven in no small part by the US militarys new Space Command branch. But those rising numbers mostly reflect economic activity in Earths orbit and what it might take to get set up on the moonbut they do not reflect the potential to begin converting the moon into an economic powerhouse. What happens next is anyones guess. The big dollar signs are one reason, no doubt, that the tech moguls behind private ventures like SpaceX and Blue Origin are investing heavily in space now.

The progress towards deeper space traveland potential long-term human colonization on the moon or beyondbegs for larger ethical and moral conversations. Its a little bit Wild West-y, says Dove. Although the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the more recent Artemis Accords strive to create a safe and transparent environment which facilitates exploration, science, and commercial activities for all of humanity to enjoy, according to NASAs website, there are no rules or regulations, for instance, to govern activities like mining or extracting from the moon valuable rare earth elements for private profit. Theres a number of people looking at the policy implications and figuring out how we start putting in place policies and ethics rules before all of this happens, Dove adds. But, if the moon does not cough up its own version of unobtaniumthe priceless element mined in the film Avataror if regulations are too draconian, it will be difficult for a nascent moon-economy to sustain itself before larger and more promising planetary outposts, like Mars, come to fruition and utilize its resources. After all, the building and sustainability costs and effort have been leading obstacles of establishing a moon base ever since the Apollo program spurred interest in more concrete plans.

Doves not really worried that private companies will pull out of the space sectortheres little doubt they will find a way to profit. Rather, she views politics as the moon base programs chief vulnerability. Politics always concerns me with any of these big endeavors, she adds. Not only domestic politics but international politics will be at play. We see that with the ISS.

As a retired military officer who was living on the ISS with Russian cosmonauts when Russia invaded Ukraine, Vande Hei also worries about international conflicts derailing space programs. If we have a world war in Europe, if were just struggling to exist [on Earth], exploring space is not going to be at the top of the priority list. But he also sees a bright side. He views international competitionor a moon base raceas a healthy way to create a sense of urgency. Vande Hei estimates that a moon base is something we could do within [this] generation.

Dove also sees the opportunities that laboratory facilities on the moon could open up for future space researchincluding her own. The moon is very interesting in terms of understanding the history of Earth, she says. I would love to go do science on the moon.

Link:
Is it finally time for a permanent base on the moon? - Popular Science

Following The Young Pope, The New Pope, and The Two Popes, the time has officially come for the Woke Pope. In Viaggio, Gianfranco Rosis fascinating Rorschach test of a documentary, is also something of a Peoples History of Pope Francis, pontiff since 2013, in that it largely consists of television broadcast footage of the man on his sundry global travels, though the filmmaker wisely deigns not to visualize his popular Twitter account. We dont glimpse him from his own subjective point-of-view, as Fernando Meirelles and Jonathan Pryce attempted to show in their version; instead Rosi privileges what the global Roman Catholic membership and also what curious nonbelievers and secular onlookers observethe dignified outer surface. And intriguingly enough, its a fairly flattering picture as one of the worlds oldest, most powerful institutions attempts some crisis PR in front of the contemporary worlds gaze.

Rosi, a documentarian whos cemented a secure following after a decade of critical and industry success, offers light editorializing. He decided to pursue another arguably unnecessary docu-portrait of one of the worlds most documented people after realizing theyd both traversed some of the same ground over the past decade amidst their activist outreachnotably the island of Lampedusa, a flashpoint location in the refugee crisis, which Francis visited in 2013 before Rosi commenced filming Fire at Sea, and then the Middle East, the focus of his 2020 work Notturno, which was accused of providing an overly generalized view of the region after the fall of ISIL. What makes In Viaggio a valuable (as opposed to another negligible) study of the Pope is Rosis deft understanding of this subject, and his openness for the audience to decide what to make of all his rhetoric.

And to return to what can reductively be called wokeness: whats striking in all of Franciss words to his cross-continental flock is the absence of anything religiose; rather, he stands regally at his pulpit decrying under-regulated capitalism, harsh border policies, intolerance, and discrimination while promoting tolerance, inter-faith dialogue, and decolonizationa proud, if mostly inoffensive liberal humanist agenda. He offers variations on this from Havana to Nairobi to Occupied Palestine while also being profusely apologeticif not much more than thatabout the Churchs sex-abuse scandals and its historic role in the colonization of indigenous lands. Rosi really leaves it up to us to be fully persuaded by this or, contrarily, see it as a great illustration of the large gulf between saying and doing, especially where the vastly powerful and oligarchic are concerned.

Franciss nine years as the Catholic Churchs figurehead have seen him take 57 trips across 53 different countries; Rosi sees this dedication to travel as an intellectual and spiritual practice; a reverse pilgrimage, so rather than followers streaming from remote places to the Vatican, the pope himself travels to the people. Paolo Sorrentino, in his adroit HBO series, conceived of a pointed alternative, with St. Peters Square in the Vatican emptied of revelers and the young, Italian-American pope dedicated to a retrograde, authoritarian, and old-fashioned interpretation of the religion.

And what of the potentially short-lived downtown New York vogue for Catholic conversiona return to traditional values, however sincerely we want to interpret that? Though Rosis film might be overlooked by potential viewers as it leaves the comfortable environs of domestic festival showings, its still a greatly artful piece, a visual essay deeply attuned to how Catholicism is evolving in the modern world and how its chief corporeal symbol on Earth can alternately help with his avid faith, or instead hinder us with his lofty, untouchable manner. Which is par for the course as the symbolic, paramount representative of a religionsomething to think about in a week which saw the death of Elizabeth II, the UKs head of state.

In Viaggio premiered at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival.

Read the original post:
Venice Review: In Viaggio is a Fascinating Rorschach Test of the Pope - The Film Stage

There was someone Joel Rivas had in mind when he started Heard, a wellness program for people in the food and beverage industry: himself.

Ive worked in the service industry since I was 17, and for a good few years I struggled with substance abuse, he says. I got clean later on, but it wasnt until the why of my life was addressed that I could really address the addiction part, the mental health issues I had.

Using his background in restaurants and bars along with his experience working in health care business development, Rivas launched his nonprofit, Saint City Culinary Foundation, in San Antonio in 2017, with Heard being his first initiative.

Our industry is full of workers who are wired givers, and chances are they are not filling their cup back up after hours of serving the public, Rivas says. They make $2.13 an hour, plus tips, so they cant afford therapy. A lot of people fill that with other things.

The first few years were slow going. Restaurant workers initially didnt take to the in-person support groups; sometimes Rivas had five to 15 people; other weeks there would be no one. Heard expanded to Austin and Houston, while also building out its telehealth counseling sessions and free programming: monthly educational mixers focused on anything from finance to sign language, yoga classes, and industry-run clubs. Once the pandemic hit, Rivas could sense Heard would be needed more than ever.

I knew it was going to be rough ahead, he says. I knew I had to listen.

Calls poured in, not only from restaurant workers but from therapists and therapy groups around the country offering to help. In 2021, Heard collaborated with Capital Area Counseling, an Austin-based mental health clinic that has a lot of experience supporting restaurant workers, to offer one-on-one therapy for $10 a session. That year, Rivas saw a big jump in the total number of restaurant workers reached through Heard: 400.

This is my third time in therapy, says Matt Garcia, chef and co-owner of GiGis Deli in San Antonio (which is currently on hiatus). The first two didnt mesh, but with Heard, these counselors understand our dynamic as people in food and beverage. Slim margins, tight labor, everything is day-to-day, and nothing is good enough. A lot of us felt like this for a long time, even before COVID.

Garcia began meeting with a Heard counselor last December, when he was recovering from a broken leg and figuring out where he was going next as a chef.

My whole world was changing and Im where I am today because of the work I have done with my therapist, he says. A lot of times it feels like there is no support from your job, your neighbors, your local government. Heard is there.

In partnership with Capital Area Counseling, Heard is now providing mental health first aid classes to local restaurants and bars, to train restaurant workers on how to identify and address mental health issues among their coworkers. Its also working to make affordable telehealth services available nationally by 2024.

Read the original post:
Bon Apptit's 2022 Heads of the Table Awards - Bon Appetit

Coast Salish sweat-lodge keeper Hwiemtun welcomes all to heal in his ceremonies on the Cowichan Tribes reservation on southern Vancouver Island.

For 40 years, Hwiemtun has been leading prayer and healing rituals in a sweat lodge beside his home. In his dome-shaped sanctuary, remade with fresh willow boughs every spring, participants sit shoulder to shoulder around a pit of steaming lava stones, sharing traumas, hopes and prayers.

More people than ever are seeking transformative sweat-lodge experiences, Hwiemtun says, as they try to heal from the traumas of residential schools, COVID-19 and dramatic changes in the natural environment. He spoke to Katharine Lake Berz.

Katharine Lake Berz: How did you become a sweat lodge healer?

Hwiemtun: As a young man, I followed the black road of drugs and alcohol. I was born into it on the reservation and was immersed in it. I didnt feel worthy of becoming a healer. But my Lakota uncle Melvin showed me unconditional love, helped me learn to love myself and passed his ceremonial role on to me. The lodge has become my way of life and I havent used drugs or alcohol since. I try and help others follow this teaching.

KLB: Can you explain the spirituality of the sweat lodge?

H: Sweat lodges are a ritual and a way of life for many Indigenous peoples. We connect with the Creator through fire, water, smoke and steam. A sweat helps purify and balance the body, mind, spirit and emotions.

Traditionally, Coast Salish people built sweat lodges on the side of a hill. The Lakota lodge tradition was brought to Vancouver Island by elders in the 1960s. Lodges have helped our people heal since contact and they are now gaining popularity across British Columbia.

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KLB: How does a sweat lodge ceremony work?

H: Women and men kneel on opposite sides of the lodge wearing loose-fitting clothes. A cedar fire outside the lodge heats the ceremonial stones and a firekeeper brings in freshly heated stones every 20 minutes. As we feed cedar, sage and tobacco to the stones, I share legends and wisdom from my elders and encourage participants to share their experiences too.

I play my drum and windpipe, pray and sing as the heat and smoke become more and more intense during the three-hour ceremony. Some people can transcend their thoughts and focus on their sense of being. Others are energized or feel closer to the Creator.

Stories and feelings revealed in a sweat lodge remain strictly confidential, but people say that the emotion and lessons shared during a sweat are like no others.

KLB: Are there guidelines for participating in a sweat?

H: Participants are not permitted to consume drugs or alcohol within four days of a sweat ceremony. This helped me with my sobriety years ago and I hope it encourages others to take care of themselves. Women must not participate in a sweat when they are on their moon cycle and are not permitted to sit cross-legged during the ceremony. Everyone must respect the sacred fire and never pass between it and the lodge.

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KLB: Why is the sweat lodge particularly meaningful now?

H: Todays society has many trials that we need to adapt to. We lament the traumas brought by colonization and the losses of COVID-19. We worry about Mother Earth. We long for peace and tranquility. By devoting to a sweat ceremony, people take time to care for themselves.

Mother Earth and the Creator are calling out to many now. My ancestors tradition of speaking with plants and trees is now better understood by white settlers. In the sweat, we rely on traditional plants and medicines and the natural environment of water, smoke and steam to cleanse ourselves. It is a way of humanity showing respect for nature.

KLB: Why do you feel it is important to welcome people from all cultures and religions to participate in the sweat-lodge ceremony?

H: I believe that what makes us human is to be accepting of everybody else. I have had the opportunity to share my tradition with people from many different nationalities. Sharing ceremony, we share spiritual reciprocity. Everyone is a teacher. We share the gratitude of being alive today. And no matter how many difficulties we have, we are not alone.

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Coast Salish sweat-lodge keeper welcomes all to share in healing - Broadview Magazine

As I write this, the US Department of Defense is ramping up the militarization of my homeland part of its $8bn scheme to relocate roughly 5,000 marines from Okinawa to Guam. In fact, ground has already been broken along the islands beautiful northern coastline for a massive firing range complex. The complex consisting of five live-fire training ranges and support facilities is being built dangerously close to the islands primary source of drinking water, the Northern Guam Lens Aquifer. Moreover, the complex is situated over several historically and culturally significant sites, including the remnants of ancient villages several thousands of years old, where our ancestors remains remain.

The construction of these firing ranges will entail the destruction of more than 1,000 acres (405 hectares) of native limestone forest. These forests are unbearably beautiful, took millennia to evolve, and today function as essential habitat for several endangered endemic species, including a fruit bat, a flight-less rail and three species of tree snails not to mention a swiftlet, a starling and a slender-toed gecko. The largest of the five ranges a 59-acre multipurpose machine-gun range will be built a mere 100 feet (30 metres) from the last remaining reproductive hyon lgu tree in Guam.

If only superpowers were concerned with the stuff of lowercase earth, like forests and fresh water. If only they were curious about the whisper and scurry of small lives. If only they were moved by beauty.

If only.

But the militarization of Guam is nothing if not proof that they are not so moved. In fact, the military buildup now under way is happening over the objections of thousands of the islands residents. Many of these protesters, including myself, are Indigenous Chamorros whose ancestors endured five centuries of colonization and who see this most recent wave of unilateral action by the United States simply as the latest course in a long and steady diet of dispossession.

When the US Navy first released its highly technical (and 11,000-page-long) draft environmental impact statement in November 2009, the people of Guam submitted more than 10,000 comments outlining our concerns, many of us strenuously opposed to the militarys plans. We produced simplified educational materials on the anticipated adverse impacts of those plans, and provided community trainings on them. We took hundreds of people hiking through the jungles specifically slated for destruction. We took several others swimming in the harbor where the military proposed dredging some 40 acres of coral reef for the berthing of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. We testified so many times and in so many ways, in the streets and in the offices of elected officials. We even filed a lawsuit under the National Environmental Policy Act, effectively forcing the navy to conduct further environmental impact assessments, thus pushing the buildup back a few years.

But delay was all we won and the bulldozers are back with a vengeance.

A $78m contract for the live-fire training range complex has been awarded to Black Construction, which has already begun clearing 89 acres of primary limestone forest and 110 acres of secondary limestone forest. Its bitterly ironic that so many of these machines bear the name Caterpillar when the very thing they are destroying is that precious creatures preciously singular habitat. To be sure, such forests house the host plants for the endemic Mariana eight-spot butterfly. But then again maybe a country that routinely prefers power over strength, and living over letting live, is no country for eight-spot butterflies.

While this wave of militarization should elicit our every outrage, indignation is not nearly enough to build a bridge. To anywhere. Its useful, yes. But we need to get a hell of a lot more serious about articulating alternatives if we hope to withstand the forces of predatory global capitalism and ultimately replace its ethos of extraction with one of our own. In the case of my own people, an ethos of reciprocity.

And nowhere is that ethos more alive than in those very same forests for it is there that our yomte, or healers, are perpetuating our culture, in particular our traditional healing practices. It is there on the forest floor and in the crevices of the limestone rock that many of the plants needed to make our medicine grow. It is there that our medicine women gather the plants their mothers, and their mothers mothers, gathered before them.

These plants, combined with others harvested from elsewhere on the island, treat everything from anxiety to arthritis. As someone who suffers from regular bouts of bronchitis, I can attest to the fact that the medicine Auntie Frances Arriola Cabrera Meno makes to treat respiratory problems has proven more effective in my case than any medicine of the modern world. Yet Auntie Frances, like so many other yomte I know, takes no credit for the cure. As she tells it, to do so would be hubris, as so many others are involved in the healing process: the plants themselves, with whom she converses in a secret language; her mother, who taught her how to identify which plants have which properties and also how and when to pick them; and the ancestors, who give her permission to enter the jungle and who, on occasion, favor her, allowing her to find everything she needs and more.

More than this, she tells me that I too am part of that process that people like me, who seek out her services, give her life meaning. That she wouldnt know what to do with herself if she wasnt making medicine. That the life of a healer was always hers to have because she was born breech under a new moon and thus had the hands for healing.

But such things are inevitably lost in translation. And no military on earth is sensitive enough to perceive something as soft as the whisper of another worldview.

This piece is an extract from Julian Aguons book No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies, which was released this week by Penguin Random House in the UK and Australia, and by Astra House in the US. The extract originally appeared as an op-ed on the Wire in June 2020

Excerpt from:
In Guam, even the dead are dying: the US military is building on the graves of our ancestors - The Guardian