Kosmos 482, a Soviet spacecraft which had been in orbit for fifty-three years,
crashed down somewhere over the Indian Ocean. The craft, weighing twenty talents, was
intended to travel to Venus, but ran aground around the Earth.
I didnât know i needed
T. rexâscented perfume until now.
The makers describe it as âleatherâ, âunconventionalâ, and âwoodyâ.
âThe Homeromanteion was a text used between
the second and fourth centuries to provide automatic oracular answers to questions. Three dice
are cast to generate one of 216 possible numbers, each referring to a line selected from Homerâs
Odyssey or Iliad.â In other words: Xanthe-bait of the highest order. Try it today!
One needs no introduction, and can barely even be called a number in
the traditional sense. It is both the building block from which every other number is built and the
unmoving rock, the sole multiplicand that leaves any factor it touches unchanged. It is so
fundamental that we barely think of it: if there is an apple in front of us on the table, we call it
an apple, only invoking the numeral one if we might have been expecting two. More
than that, it is Ďὸ áźÎ˝, the Monad, that from which all else flows forth; so sublime it is barely a thing, just
as it is barely a number.
Three, on the other hand, is the magic number2, and it has a way of getting in our heads. The technical term is
hendiatris â things just sound better
in threes. Think vĂŠnĂ, vĂdĂ, vĂcĂ; wine, women, and song; or
libertĂŠ, ĂŠgalitĂŠ, fraternitĂŠ. And how many cultures around the world have some sort
of threefold God, be it the Holy Trinity, the Hindu Trimurti, or Julianâs âZeus, Haides, and Helios in oneâ?
Seven is where things get interesting. For once iâll dispense with
the cultural and metaphysical aspects â itâs been done â and note a curious thing about our human
number sense. If there are, say, four cows in a field, we can look and instinctually know that there
are four cows, without needing to consciously count. Five and six are doable, but difficult, and
vary based on age and person.3
But seven is where this sense breaks down. Beyond that barrier, we lose our intuitive animal sense,
and we have to actually count. Seven is the number that sets us apart from the animals; if one and
three are the numbers of the Gods, then seven belongs to humanity.
So, what do you get if you smush those three digits together? By some sheer coincidence, the most
famous number in physics. The number 137 is, give or take a few hundredths4, the value of the fine-structure constant, one of the universeâs fundamental, unchanging values as
etched into the standard model of particles. Nobody really knows why it has the value it has; as
Richard Feynman once said, âIt has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than [a hundred]
years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.â
(Worry they did: Wolfgang Pauli, the first man to theorise the neutrino, spent much time
deliberating with Carl Jung on how this godforsaken 137 had wormed its way into the universeâs code,
and why it might have done so.)
So, thatâs why 137 is my favourite number. A remarkable figure, you might say.
I have a general policy of not blabbing my mouth about politics on the site, because it just makes
everyone miserable, but i just woke up, and iâm quite fucking angry at the Supreme Court,
and thatâs all iâll say.
Given that they did it for the original Mega Drive games, Sega should totally rerelease the
Sonic Rush duology for mobile phones. The vertical form factor makes it the only platform
where itâd be at all feasible.
Pictured: what the main characters would have done if they were not pro-cancer
Yesterday i went to the cinema to go watch Death of a Unicorn,
A24âs new one-horned horror-comedy-thing. I could have reviewed it in
prose, but iâve elected to leave my thoughts in bullet-point form, as thereâs a lot good, a lot bad,
and not much conjoining the two in my mind.
The good
I appreciate that this movie is wholly unapologetic about being about a unicorn. No tongue in
cheek, just, yep, thatâs a mythical unicorn, weâre fucking rolling with it.
The design of the titular beast is also great, majestic but capable of being a horror monster
when it needs to be. The decision to keep the legendary unicornâs beard rather than shave it off
(as has become common under the influence of My Little Pony) is commendable.
Richard E. Grant and Will Poulter are great in it, and are the only ones who seem to have
understood the assignment in terms of going buck-wild with their performances.
The bad
The well of âfilms that are satires about the faux-progressive 2020s nouveau riche and
how theyâre all stupid dum-dumsâ has run well and truly dry â that this is a film
literally about beating a dead horse doesnât help. It could have at least had the
dignity to come out before Glass Onion dealt the finishing blow.
For a film that was marketed as a ridiculous, bonkers horror-comedy in the vein of
Evil Dead II, itâs not actually that funny. I chuckled a few times but⌠thatâs it,
really; it never veers off that cliff into complete insanity like i was hoping it would.
The portrayal of the visions given by the unicorn was boring as shit. Infinite ways you could
show the sight of the transcendental, and you pick CGI nebulĂŚ and
stars? What is this, Guardians of the Galaxy?
[peter_griffin_godfather.webm] I did not care for Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega. Their performances
are nothing. Their characters are nothing. They insist upon themselves.
The neutral observation
The fatal flaw is that the evil plan made a little too much sense. Like â actually,
yeah, youâre right! I think once youâve established that (a) the unicornâs blood
cures cancer and (b) the unicorn can heal itself, you do, in fact, have a
utilitarian obligation to bring this stuff to market. Maybe not with the methods the evil pharma
family use, but still.
By now, youâve probably heard the breathless news that theyâve brought dire wolves back from the
dead. And, sure, maybe technically theyâre just regular wolves genetically engineered
to match the dire-wolf phenotype.1
But thatâs still such a cool achievement that i canât bring myself to be a spoilsport about it,
and neither should you. Anyway:
Time has the cuter photos of the wolves, and
the New Yorker goes more in depth on the people behind it.
What a great flick! My beef with Tarantino is that you can often tell that, just behind the camera,
heâs jacking off at the thought of how clever he is and how many obscure seventies
TV shows he knows, and while thatâs still true here, the electric
pairing of Pam Grier and Robert Forster washes all those eye-rolling feelings down until youâre left
with the aftertaste of nothing but a good-ass crime thriller. 8/10 â my Tarantino power ranking goes
something like Inglourious Basterds > this > Pulp Fiction >
Django Unchained >>> Reservoir Dogs.
Spoorloos (The Vanishing)
This grim Dutch crime thriller is consistently mentioned alongside Paul Verhoeven as proof that
âsee? Dutch cinema isnât all badâ, which is something you could almost convince me of if it
werenât for every top-five listâs inclusion of
a film about an evil lift.
Anyway, while Spoorloos does occasionally veer uncomfortably close to âTV
movie of the weekâ territory, itâs carried by its villain, an exemplar of the banality of evil. He
does what he does because heâs experienced being a hero, and heâs just curious what it feels like to
be a villain â and thatâs what makes him fucking terrifying. Check this out if you get the
chance. 7/10.
The Monkey
Osgood Perkins returns right soon with another horror endeavour, this time a gory comedy about an
evil cuddly monkey. The Monkey doesnât reach the highs of fear and tension that
Longlegs does, but neither does it completely bottle the ending, so letâs call it a draw,
shall we? 6ž/10.
Quiz Show
I put this on on a lazy afternoon. I was suitably entertained. I remember nothing from it. A
platonically perfect 5/10.
The Mist (rewatch)
The Twelve Angry Men of horror puts modern (well, 2000s) American society up against a mirror
and examines how people would really react to a mass calamity in a way that hits different
in the post-covid era, where everyoneâs brain has had time to cook in the sun. Plus: the cruelest
twist ending in cinematic history. 8/10.
The Blues Brothers
Dan Aykroyd is an actual crazy person and thatâs why The Blues Brothers works. This is
two-and-a-half hours of overindulgent insanity, the cinematic equivalent of a five-year-old playing
with their toys, and i wouldnât want it any other way. I nearly had an asthma attack laughing so
hard. 10/10.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Warm. Fuzzy. Inessential. Itâs weird seeing Adam Scott with a beard. 6/10.
Severance (season 2 finale)
The back half of Severanceâs sophomore season fell victim to some shonky pacing decisions,
placing two self-contained, slow-paced bottle episodes right before the final two, messing up the
flow we were in and negating the chance for an epic Season 1-style three-episode ramp-up, but
nonetheless, the double-length finale successfully sticks the landing. The camcorder conversation,
where Markâs innie and outie finally âmeetâ, may as well be what the whole show has been building up
to, and it just keeps going from there. Every company needs a Choreography and Merriment department.
9/10.
Flow
The first part of a feline double feature, about an adorable black kitty who goes on a
maritime journey after the world is inundated by a mysterious flood. The gimmick (if you can call it
that) is that the film is told without a single line of dialogue â just animal noises and a backing
of beautiful C418-esque music composed by the filmâs director.
Itâs a beautiful, serene, lovely experience â all animated in good olâ open-source Blender, no less!
It got me to really feel things for these animals â it was a good idea to dial the anthropomorphism
down to, like, 10%, rather than 75%. Theyâre intelligent enough to steer a boat, but thatâs about
it. The kibby bats around a lemurâs tail and hates dogs. 9/10.
FelidĂŚ
The second part of the double feature: FelidĂŚ1, a 1994 German film about⌠okay. Okay. Look. Bear with me here. The idea is that itâs a film noir
except everybody is a cartoon housecat. And for the first twenty minutes or so, i was thinking,
okay, thatâs a nice idea, but i donât know if it has much more than that idea? And then it
goes full-tilt into Crazytown. This movie contains, in no particular order:
Cat buttholes
Cat sex
Cat homophobia
Cat eugenics
Cats speaking Latin
Cats reading German
Cats using a computer
Cat murder
So much gory cat murder
An electroshock cat cult
Genetically engineered lab cats
A cat psychopomp who takes care of the cat dead in his cat catacombs
A dream sequence involving a giant evil Gregor Mendel commanding a literal sea of dead cats
And itâs all done in the animation style of an eighties-nineties-type Disney film (with some
budgetary concessions and dodgy lip-synch, because, hey, nobodyâs actually going to watch this). It
reminded me, weirdly enough, of an old Garfield cartoon i watched as a kid â the one where he
had nine lives, specifically that segment where he was an escaped lab cat. I have only the haziest
memory of it, but damned if it (and the annoying-ass little girl in the Garf-den of Eden) didnât
stick with meâŚ
I donât know who the fuck the audience for this is other than furries and sicko Europeans, but i
fucking love that it exists. Iâm gonna be thinking about it forever, whether i want to or not. All
hail Claudandus? 9/10.
Iâll elaborate properly on getting around to the bimensal stuff-i-watched-recently post, but for
now, you should absolutely go and watch Flow and FelidĂŚ right now. Two
films about cats: one beautiful and serene, one weird and deranged. Go do it. Theyâre great.
The worst part about Chinaâs anti-mapping laws is that thereâs no street view or 3D
in China on Google Earth â just a vast, gaping gap in the global patchwork of imagery. Is it too
much to ask to be able to rotate a model of Chongqing on my computer instead of in my mind? đď¸
Washington1, a town in urban County Durham long since incorporated into Sunderland, is not a place where one
expects much nature. The palatinateâs chirping woods and rolling Pennine moors are not so far away,
and the path i took to get to todayâs attraction led not through winding country roads but broad,
grey industrial arteries, designed to ferry thousands to and from Nissanâs immense factory.
But at the end of the road, down by the river Wear, there lies a wee patch of idyll: the
Washington Wetland Centre.
On a hilltop in the distance: the previously covered
Penshaw Monument.
Iâd come on a good day for it, clearly, as the first thing i saw coming out of reception was the
staff corralling all the ducks together for their annual vaccination, by means of a ramshackle
assemblage of mesh fences. (Crowd control for birds!) The littlest one kept trying to escape his jab
like an ornithological Bobby Kennedy.
Most fabulous of all creatures of the air on offer are the eiders, the diva-est ducks in the world,
emitting a chorus of sassy coos as they revel in their status as undisputed kings of the pond.
(Youâll have to take my word for it, as i neglected to take a video, erring towards the side of it
being better to live in the moment than through a phone camera. I was yet to realise what good
blog-fodder the visit would make.)
As apologies for the lack of Eider Content, please accept this invasive rodent instead.
On the other side of the preserve a viewing area juts out to overlook the Wear â still salty and
tidal this close to the sea â and an artificial
saline lagoon, built to provide a home for those creatures who prefer a more brackish milieu. The signs tell me
that, rare as they historically have been, more and more European otters have made their home along
the wear, and the lucky visitor might hope to see one⌠if only the centre were open at dawn or at
dusk, when they come out.
The signâs not joking â Asian small-clawedsâ bite force is enough to break your bones.
Not to worry, for the centre are also very proud of their main mammal enclosure: a family of
utterly2
adorable Asian small-clawed otters. Theyâre a lot less squeaky than the ones at Northumberland Zoo,
and wondering why, two theories popped into my head.
First, that itâs the Northumbriansâ fault. Their northern sibs were greater in number, a family of
four to Durhamâs two, and they were, by all accounts, masters of putting on a show. They appeared in
an orderly fashion when their circadian rhythms told them it was feeding time, pipped and squeaked
incessantly at the keeper until they got their fish, performed some cuteness, and then went back
inside when their bellies were full. They knew exactly what they were doing, methinks.
Second, that the Washingtonian otters were grieving. I said there were two, the younger Buster and
the elder Musa, and you might be hard-pressed to call that a family. But until this month, there
were three.
Mimi, the clanâs matriarch and a
scamp who bonked so much they had to give her a lutrine IUD, passed of
old age at fourteen (a good innings by her speciesâ standards, no doubt). When she went, they had to
put her corpse back in the enclosure so the others would understand.
They were still otters. Still playful. But something about them seemed⌠morose. Maybe, in between
the fish and the scampering and the puzzle feeders, they were still thinking about her.
On the way out, i passed a tiny observatory, cleverly named âCygnusâ for the constellation of the
swan, used by night for the
Sunderland Astronomical Society. I donât know if itâs
of much use this far into the zone of light pollution, but they certainly seem to enjoy it, so
perhaps my relatively sky-privileged Northumbrian self shouldnât play the lecturer. Perhaps that
fateful night that Mimi died, a star in the sky began to twinkle a little brighter.
David Byrne is the only figure in popular culture who treats the massive machinery that powers
modern life with the respect it deserves. If you understood the vastness of the great web of
logistics that results in your ability to go to Aldi then eighty per cent of your artistic output
would be about buildings too.
I found out from
a chain of comments
on the venerable Language Hat that the Jewish surnames Katz, Matz, and
Schatz were all originally acronyms.
Katz comes from ×××× ×Ś×קkohen tsedek ârighteous priestâ â
youâll of course recognise kohen as the origin of the surname Cohen, denoting
Judaismâs paternal priestly lineage.1
Matz is similarly derived from ×××¨× ×Ś×קmore tsedek, meaning
âteacher of righteousnessâ, and Schatz, the odd one out, comes from
׊××× ×Ś×××רshaliaáş tsibur, referring to a
cantor, though more literally translated as
âemissary of the congregationâ.
Meanwhile, in the Russian Empire, bastard children would often have their surnames
symbolically clipped just so
noĂśne went around thinking they had anything to do with their aristocratic fathers. Thus
Ivan Pnin was the son of Nikolaj
Repnin, and
Elizabeta TĂŤmkina was the
daughter of Grigorij PotĂŤmkin.
This isnât a surname, but by all accounts it isnât a given name either, and once youâve noticed it,
youâll never be able to unsee it. The name Jebediah does not exist.
Jedediah was a very real Biblical figure after whom many a son has been named, but
thereâs no variant of any real-life person being named Jebediah with a
B. (I know what youâre thinking â but, nope, Jeb Bushâs name is⌠an
acronym, again, for John Ellis Bush.)
Thereâs this weird inconsistency in English in how we treat the names of people from cultures where
the surname comes first. Chinese and Korean people usually keep the original order:
Qian Xuesen and Bong Joon-ho are indeed from the families Qian and Bong, and it would
be quite the faux pas to refer to âMr Joon-hoâ.
Japanese names are less consistent â traditionally theyâve been flipped to conform to the English
order, so Hayao Miyazaki was born to a Mr and Mrs Miyazaki, but the trend in recent times has
been to restore them to the original order, such that the former foreign secretary officially styles
himself as KĹno TarĹ, born to KĹno YĹhei.
Then, at the bottom of the ladder, there sits Hungary, whose names are so European-sounding and so
universally reordered that most people donât even realise that, in his home country, the prime
minister is called OrbĂĄn Viktor. (This gets even more confusing with middle names â the mayor
of Budapest, known elsewhere as Gergely Szilveszter KarĂĄcsony, is natively
KarĂĄcsony Gergely Szilveszter, his given name nestled squarely in the middle!)
One last onomastic oddity. In olden days, the capital letter F was
written as if double struck, looking like two lowercase fâs put side-by-side. This was copied
and copied and misread over and over again until it became the case that some particularly snooty
English surnames were properly spelt to begin in lowercase â such as in the cases of
Gonville ffrench-Beytagh
and Charles ffoulkes. Truly, the irregularities of our languageâs orthography know no bounds.
