Thursday Things: Curse of the Spider God Edition
22 April 2021. Vol 3 No 16 By Dan McGirt. #89
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Spider god tested for freshness. Photo by Annemarie Grudën on Unsplash
Say, what’s new in Peru? Knife-wielding spider god mural unearthed in Peru
An ancient ceremonial building that was built thousands of years ago in northwestern Peru's La Libertad region was decorated with a painting of a spider deity clutching a knife. Archaeologists discovered the mural in November 2020, after local farmers damaged the temple structure during the expansion of their sugar cane and avocado plantations.
Nothing ensures a bountiful avocado harvest like damaging the ancient temple of the knife-wielding spider god.
The 17th-Century Plan To Trade With Aliens On The Moon. Then there was the time that Oliver Cromwell’s brother-in-law had a plan to build flying ships and trade with aliens on the moon. In the 1600s. We didn’t cover that part in history class.
Cromwell’s brother-in-law was John Wilkins, a distinguished scholar and Anglican clergyman who was a founding member of the Royal Society … He also believed that the Moon and the surrounding planets were all inhabited, and was convinced that he could build a flying machine to reach them. His ambitions were loftier still, though: he hoped to establish trade with the residents of the Moon/other planets, and so contribute to the prosperity of Britain.
A perfectly reasonable undertaking. How do 17th century spaceships get to the moon?
Wilkins explained that flight was well within the capabilities of mankind. They merely need the aid of a flying machine piloted by either a good or bad angel—he didn’t care which. If the angels were unwilling, however, voyagers could instead use a winged chariot to break free from gravity as if opposing the force of a magnet, then snap delicately to the surface of the Moon to greet the aliens who lived there.
Sounds legit. Someone tell Elon Musk he’s doing it wrong.
Huge superyacht squeezes down narrow Dutch canals. The Netherlands shows Egypt how to manage a canal.
We haven’t done a biomedicine post in a while. COVID vaccines and treatments have dominated the health news for the past year, obviously, but other developments continue. I love seeing stories like this one: Genetically-Caused Blindness Reversed with Single Injection of Antisense Therapeutic. “A patient with a genetic form of childhood blindness gained vision for more than a year after receiving a single injection of an experimental antisense oligonucleotide, sepofarsen, into the eye.”
MIT offers free access to 34 major architecture books. If you’re into architecture and urban design, you’ll want to check out these classic texts now digitized and offered for free by MIT.
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