Category Archives: Space Travel

Masks have emerged as unlikely fashion heroes as the COVID-19 pandemic has developed. Every conceivable colour and pattern seems to have become available, from facehuggers to Darth Vader to bejewelled bridal numbers.

Many show how brevity and style can combine to protect the wearer, offsetting the fear the sight of a respiratory or surgical mask usually inspires.

Some, like those produced by not-for-profit enterprises including the Social Studio and Second Stitch, use on-trend fabrics and benefit both the wearer and the makers. Meanwhile, an Israeli jeweller has designed a white gold, diamond-encrusted mask worth US$1.5 million (A$2.1 million).

Yet, masks remain fundamentally unnerving. Mostly intended to either protect or disguise, they are designed to cover all or part of the face. In societies where emotions are read through both eyes and mouth, they can be disorienting.

In many places around the globe, masks have played an important role in conveying style, spirituality and culture for thousands of years. They have been a part of western fashion for centuries. Here are some of the highlights (and lowlights) of masks as fashion items.

Read more: How should I clean my cloth mask?

And make our faces vizards to our hearts/Disguising what they are Macbeth

One of the most bizarre accessories in 16th-century fashion was the vizard, an oval-shaped mask made from black velvet worn by women to protect their skin whilst travelling.

In an age where unblemished skin was a sign of gentility, European women took pains to avoid sunburn or significant sun tan. Two holes were cut for the eyes, sometimes fitted with glass, and an indentation was created to accommodate the nose. Disturbingly, they did not always have an opening for the mouth.

To hold the mask in place, wearers gripped a bead or button between their teeth, prohibiting speech. To the contemporary feminist, the mask raises associations with the scolds bridle: a method of torture and public humiliation for gossiping women and suspected witches.

During the following century, masks continued to be fashionable although the guise of protection gave way to mystique and desire. The small domino mask seen in a 17th century Netherlands example below and still worn by superheroes from Batman to Harley Quinn covered the eyes and tip of the nose. It was usually made from a strip of black fabric. For warmer months, a lighter veiling could be substituted.

Read more: Beware of where you buy your face mask: it may be tainted with modern day slavery

Venice has long been associated with masks, thanks to its history of carnival and masquerade. Their theatrical nature might lead to an assumption masks were always worn to deceive or seduce. Travellers expecting a masked amoral free-for-all in the early 18th century were surprised at how innocent the accessory really was in everyday life.

When worn at a masquerade, masks encouraged safe contact between the sexes bringing them close enough to mingle but maintaining the social distance between strangers that etiquette required. In this scenario, masks also encouraged a kind of egalitarianism by allowing people of disparate social classes to mix a freedom never allowed in normal social gatherings.

The gnaga mask, with its cat shape, allowed men to dress as women and skirt Venetian homosexuality laws. Venetian prostitutes were at various times prohibited from wearing or required to wear masks in public, yet married women were required to wear masks to the theatre, fostering an association between masks and sex.

Conversely, the infamous Harriss List of Covent Garden Ladies, published annually between 1757 and 1795, provided a catalogue of prostitutes to hire in London. One entry from 1779 described a woman who

by her own confession has been a votary to pleasure these thirty years, she wears a substantial mask upon her face, and is rather short.

John Clelands controversial 1748 book Memoirs of Fanny Hill describes Louisa, a prostitute, being made violent love to by a gentlemen in a handsome domino as soon as her own mask was removed.

A mask tells us more than a face, wrote Oscar Wilde in his 1891 dialogue Intentions, yet by the 19th century the mask as fashion accessory was dmod. Masks were generally only mentioned in newspapers and fashion magazines when referring to fancy dress and masked balls, which still took place in the homes of the wealthy.

Society is a masked ball, wrote one American columnist in 1861 mirroring Wildes famous quote, where everyone hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

Although masks were no longer recommended for maintaining a pale complexion, womens faces were still covered by veiling in certain situations: including, for the first time, weddings. Ironically, one Australian fashion column in 1897 decried the fashion, stating:

Veils are largely responsible for poor complexions This fine lace mask for it is nothing else hinders the circulation but does far more injury by keeping the face heated.

As if this were not enough, veils blew dust from the street into open pores and retained dirt, redistributing it onto the skin every time it was worn.

Veiling still had some fans, who touted its health and beauty benefits, and connotations of intrigue and excitement. It suggests such charming possibilities beneath it, a columnist in The Australasian wrote in 1897.

Fashionable or not, some masks were still worn behind closed doors. Enter the most bizarre masked accessory since the vizard: the toilet mask or face glove.

Devised by a Madame Rowley in the 1870s-80s, the rubberised full-face covering was advertised as an:

aid to complexion beauty treated with some medicated preparation the effects of the mask when worn at night two or three times in the week are described as marvellous.

Advertisements for these precursors to todays sheet mask beauty treatments contained testimonials from women who claimed to be cured of freckles and wrinkles.

The advent of the automobile in the early 20th century brought a whole new fashion range into the public arena. Motorists needed protection from weather, dust and fumes, so accessories had to be practical. For women, protection took the fashionable form of coats and face coverings.

Veils and hoods were wrapped around stylish large hats of the day, and fastened under the chin so that the entire face was safely covered.

Advertisements in the early 1920s describe a complete face mask for drivers ostensibly men as the accessory buttoned to the cap and [is] equipped with an adjustable eye shield against glaring headlights.

A design for women in 1907 was described as a window hood, which completely engulfed the hat beneath and closed with a drawstring around the neck. It had a gauze window for the eyes and another smaller opening at the mouth.

By the swinging 1960s, the cultural and sartorial landscape couldnt have been more different and yet, masks made an unlikely appearance in space age fashion championed by designers such as Andr Courrges and Pierre Cardin. Metallic mini dresses and one-piece suits were topped with space helmets that left an opening for the entire face or eyes.

More commonly adopted were plastic visors worn separately or as part of a hat, sometimes covering forehead to chin and taking on the appearance of a welders shield or indeed, the face shields worn by health workers today.

Sunglasses, a kind of mask in their own right, were taken to the extreme by Courrges with his infamous solid white shades with only a slit for light. Life described this as a built-in squint in 1965 - a design that dangerously narrows the field of vision.

Read more: The fashionable history of social distancing

Discussions during the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic around whether masks would be a fad, how long they would be required, and how to create your own at home, seem eerily prescient now.

This darkly comic mask from 1918 demonstrates the same wish for ingenuity and levity that exists today:

Lebanese fashion designer Eric Ritter has sported a similarly macabre aesthetic. He was already thinking and writing about masks on Instagram in January before coronavirus spread around the world

On growing up without a mask

On being forced to wear a mask

On ecstatically removing a mask

On picking a mask back up

In Australia, entertainer Todd McKenney has launched an online marketplace for costume designers to make and sell one-of-a-kind masks directly to the public.

Face masks dont have to be created by artists, designers or couture fashion houses to make them appealing. But a look through our fashion history shows that ingenuity and humanity have long influenced our face wear whether for the purposes of allure, space travel or pandemic protection.

Continued here:

Friday essay: vizards, face gloves and window hoods a history of masks in western fashion - The Conversation AU

One Season Wonders, Weirdos And WannabesOne-Season Wonders, Weirdos, And Wannabes considers the merits of short-lived TV shows.

Paul Feig created an ideal binge watch for today that ended four years ago. His sci-fi sitcom, Other Space, which debuted April 14, 2015, on the ill-fated streaming service Yahoo! Screen, is perfectly suited to a mini-marathon in these quarantimes. At just four hours (eight half-hour episodes), you could watch the season-one travails of the crew of the UMP Cruiser, led by Captain Stewart Lipinski (Karan Soni), in less time than it would take you to make sourdough bread (we assumethats one stay-at-home hobby we never picked up.) The cast is full of bright comedic talents, including newer (at the time) talents like Soni, Eugene Cordero, and Milana Vayntrub. And with Joel Hodgson and Trace Beaulieu in its crew, Other Space even boasts a mini-Mystery Science Theater 3000 reunion.

Its great escapist fare, even if this band of misfits isnt especially adept at space exploration. Other Space starts off with a premise similar to Star Trek: Voyagers, but instead of accidentally riding an energy wave way off into the Delta Quadrant, the Cruiser crew unknowingly enters a wormhole or ripple on their first trip out of port together and ends up in uncharted lands or some other space. Stewart, whos dreamed of being on a starship since he was a kid, sees this as a great opportunity, while almost everyone else views it as an inconvenienceespecially Tina (Vayntrub), who left her great love Ted (Spys Bjrn Gustaffson) behind when she was ordered to board the Cruiser. Over the course of the season, away missions go awry, robots rebel, and conspiracies are uncovered.

Despite the setting, the series doesnt quite inspire a desire to live vicariously through the exciting adventures of Stewart, his first officer and sister Karen (Bess Rous), and science officer/science experiment Kent (Neil Casey). Other Spaces combination of close quarters, questionable food supply (even in the future, fudge doesnt make for a good breakfast), and a foreboding outside will instead feel awfully relatable. You might not have a wisecracking robot named A.R.T. (voiced by Beaulieu, with some puppeteering help from Sherry OConnor) negotiating to use your bathroom, but the growing sense of cabin fever and the blurring line between home and work space will still hit close to, er, home.

Now Other Space is once again available to stream, thanks to yet another new and free streaming service, Dust, ready to be discovered by anyone who didnt have the chance to watch the show on Yahoo Screen or the Tumblr page created and proselytized by Feig himself. The Freaks And Geeks creator is no stranger to the one-season wonder and having the rug pulled out from under by network executives. But in an interview with The A.V. Club, Feig says its not hyperbole to describe the cancellation of Other Space as the greatest disappointment in my career.

I was so proud of that show, Feig says of Other Space, which he first conceived of in 2004. We put so much work and time into it. Something I created years before and spent years trying to get made was suddenly something that came out but didnt really get the chance for anybody to see it.

When Other Space premiered in 2015 on Yahoo! Screen, it represented, among other things, the potential of new and niche streaming services (another element relevant to todays expanding programming landscape.) The sci-fi/workplace comedy hybrid had something to offer fans of Star Trek and The Office alike. Sonis Stewart is a Jimmy Stewart type: A well-meaning everyman with an idiosyncratic inflection (though a Jimmy Stewart character never fantasized about a pansexual threesome.) As his overly ambitious sister Karen, Rous is fierce but also racked with insecurity at coming in second to her less competent brother. Hodgsons burnout engineer Zalian is a standout, especially in concert with his robotic buddy A.R.T. (theres even a moment when the two riff while watching TV footage), but hes only one of several reliable sources of laughs. Vayntrub and Cordero make Tina and Michael, respectively, into beautiful fools with untapped resourcefulness. Conor Leslie more than holds her own as the ships computer Natasha, who is effectively sequestered from the group. (Feig remains grateful to Allison Jones, who cast both Other Space and Freaks And Geeks: Anybody you like in comedy was basically found by Allison Jones.)

But Feig believes its fundamental appeal is even broader: Having a group of people stuck together who dont really know each other and may not even really get alongthat to me is just a recipe for fun, relatable stories. That idea has been part of his oeuvre from the beginninghigh school is nothing if not a place where people from all walks are thrown togetherand continues to run through even the mismatched pairings at the center of The Heat and A Simple Favor. The conflicting personalities and competing energies just happen to also make for great workplace comedy, because everybody can relate to the idea of being stuck for a big part of your day with people you either kind of know or maybe you dont really like. Other Space is that to the nth degree, the filmmaker says, because now youre trapped with those people for eternity, in a very confined space.

Though it didnt set out to compete with more action-packed or heady sci-fi franchises, Other Space manages in some ways to be even more forward-thinking. As Brandon Nowalk wrote for The A.V. Club in 2015, Other Space flies past the real final frontier into a future where bisexuality is the norm. Gender norms are tweaked throughout: Male officers at Universal Mapping Project (the corporation that funds space travel in the show) wear skirt suits like they came off a Jean Paul Gaultier runway; collar balls have replaced neck ties; and instead of a golf course, its implied that girls night out is the setting for backroom deals and the exchange of insider knowledge. Sexual orientation is a spectrum, but there are no Very Special Episodes or even moments dedicated to queerness. That information is just a part of characters like Stewart, Karen, and Tina.

That sense of fluidity was important for Feig and his team, including showrunner Owen Ellickson and writers like Shelby Fero (a former A.V. Club contributor). That was a big thing for us, Feig says. We loved the idea that the future is very fluid. Even when I wrote the pilot back in 2004, I loved the idea that all the men are wearing dresses. I just wanted to kind of go, Yeah, in the future, it doesnt matter. Youre whatever you are. That should be cool. The fact that theres no judgment is one of the ways the show carries on the speculative traditions of science fiction. Feig was inspired by the President George W. Bushs (and Karl Roves) opposition to marriage equality, and the way LGBTQ+ rights regularly become a wedge issue. They all got in on it, scaring everyone with this ridiculous bogeyman of gay marriage. That was part of the influence in creating the show, but it was always something that weve wanted to do. We love that idea that everybodys very fluid on the show, because I do see that in the future. You see it already, especially in younger generations.

So what happened to bring about Other Spaces precipitous end? Feig says that Yahoo did put a very decent budget into the show that allowed us to have those sets and cool special effects. While Other Space doesnt have the same visual panache as say, Star Trek: Discovery, which launched only two years later in 2017, its still a great-looking show. 2015 certainly felt like the right time for a humorous yet earnest look at the rigors of space exploration, especially when new platforms like Yahoo! Screen were creating space for innovative comedies, including Community. Other Space was mostly well received by critics, though The New York Times Neil Genzlinger found it trucked in far too familiar territory. Feig still feels the sting of that review, but notes that a significant part of the problem was the fact that the platform changed promotional tacks after picking up the series. In a meeting before the launch, Feig was told, Were actually not going to do traditional marketing, were gonna go more through the site and do it through Yahoo and our algorithms. And I was just like, Oh no, I smell trouble. [Laughs.] Because the marketplace is so tough; you have to get known, you gotta get the word out.

Feig is still trying to get the word outespecially now that you can stream Other Space on Dust. With audiences exploring new streaming options and making their way through ever-expanding catch-up lists, theres no better time to binge a sci-fi comedy that remains an incisive reflection of the present day, five years after its premiere (and 16 years after Feig first started writing it.) And the series creator still holds out hope that hell be able to create new adventures for the not-quite-fearless crew of the Cruiser; hed bring the show back in a heartbeat if it ever got picked up again. But as with Freaks And Geeks, Feig can already trace the legacy of his short-lived series. Other Space served as a launching pad for great performers like Soniwhos since moved on to steal scenes opposite Daniel Radcliffe in Miracle Workersbut it also gave Feig a chance to work with and expand his repertory players, including Neil Casey, who co-starred in 2016s Ghostbusters. My wife and I never had kids, Feig says, so these actors are are my children in a way, I feel very parental towards them. [Laughs.] Seeing all of these people, from Freaks And Geeks and Other Space, going on to have great careers you get so happy that their talent was seen, and you get really happy that you were able to see what the rest of the world was going to see in them before anybody else got to see it. Just another one of the ways Other Space was prescient.

Read the rest here:

Paul Feig still wants you to make room for Other Space - The A.V. Club

NUTTY conspiracy theorists tirelessly scan photos of Mars in search of objects that are out of the ordinary.

While the vast majority can be put down to mistaken identity, some mysterious finds have never been explained by Nasa.

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From beer bottles to "alien statues", here are some of the weirdest findings reported by eagle-eyed internet users in recent years.

Back in 2017, alien-hunters claimed they'd found evidence of an ancient Martian "soldier" frozen solid on the Red Planet.

Images captured by the Curiosity rover appeared to show a humanoid creature wearing a space suit and carrying a weapon.

The creature was spotted by Paranormal Crucible who postedthe video on Youtube.

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The video description states: "Intriguing object which I spotted while going through the NASA archives.

"This one definitely looks artificial in nature and in my opinion is an ancient statuette.

"The odd thing about this one is that it does resemble an alien grey or possibly an insect type species of alien."

It seems more likely, however, that the "alien" was simply an unusual pile of rocks on the Martian surface.

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He's one of history's greatest minds, but Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates also dabbled in space travel, according to conspiracy nuts.

The dubious find was made last year by Scott C Waring, who runs the crackpot website UFOSightingsDaily.

Scott found the thinker's face on Mars in photos taken by Nasa's Spirit rover 15 years ago.

"This is Socrates the great greek philosopher and teacher. Every detail about the face matches perfectly. Was Socrates from Mars? Perhaps.

"That would explain his advanced and organised way of thinking and how he tried to influence the world with it."

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Notorious conspiracy nut Scott C Waring claimed he'd spotted signs of a sarcophagus embedded in the red planet's rocky surface last August.

Scott said his "discovery" proved that Ancient Egyptians came from Mars.

"I've got an interesting discovery on Mars that is going to rock archaeology," Scott said in a YouTube video about the find.

"There is an Ancient Egyptian tomb of sorts carved into the side of this mountain on Mars.

"Are ancient Egyptians from Mars? Did they then move to Egypt? Egypt is very similar in appearance and weather to that of Mars. No other place on Earth looks much like Mars."

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Apparently, the Martians are cracking open a cold one whenever we're not looking.

A self-described Mars "anomaly hunter" found what he claimed was evidence of a green beer bottle on the Red Planet's surface in 2017.

The image was snapped by Nasa's Spirit rover during a mission on the surface of Mars in November 2007.

Thomas Miller, 64, who unearthed the "anomaly", admitted he couldn't be sure it was a beer bottle.

However, he said the idea that astronauts could one day share a brewskie with ET was a pleasant one.

"If someday we visit their planet it would be nice to think we could sit down and have a beer with them," Thomas told MailOnline.

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Some batty Mars-fans think they've found evidence of Earth-like wildlife on Mars.

A "bear and its cub" were found by basement-dwellers in Curiosity images snapped back in 2016.

YouTube user Mister Enigma posted the image in a video in which he claimed it may be a creature or even a statue of a creature.

He added: What is even more odd is that right next to it on the left we see what looks like a small creature or cub.

Although the faces look different it is possible the creatures are similar to what we have on earth.

There are many theories of the origins of life of Earth coming from our next door neighbour Mars so it is very well possible that these could be a type of Martian bear.

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Conspiracy kooks had a field day following the landing of Nasa's Insight Mars lander in November 2018.

The contraption sent back some of the most detailed images of Mars yet, providing plenty of fodder for whacky alien-hunters.

One image snapped by the machine showed a human-like figure on a rock that conspiracy theorists claimed was an alien statue.

Other said it was an alien life form in the flesh. We're not so convinced.

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In other space news, Nasa's manned mission to Marscould be delayed by 25 yearsas experts warn of radiation, health scares and food shortages.

Japan is ready to mine Mars's largest moonafter successfully completing all of the compulsory space contamination paperwork.

Nasa managed to record the incredible sound of a Marsquake -which you can listen to here.

What do you think of the bonkers Mars sightings? Let us know in the comments!

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk

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Bonkers conspiracy theorists spot mysterious objects on Mars from alien statues to a bottle of BEER - The Sun

During the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the formation of the African Union in May 2013, African Heads of State and Government signed the 50th Anniversary Solemn Declaration. It symbolized the re-dedication of Africa to the attainment of the Pan African Vision of an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its citizens, representing a dynamic force in the international arena. Agenda 2063 is the concrete manifestation of how the continent intends to achieve this vision within 50 years, from 2013 to 2063.

This declaration culminated in the Agenda 2063. One of the flagship programs of the Agenda 2063 is the African Space Policy. The policy is anchored on Strengthening Africas use of outer space to bolster development in critical sectors such as agriculture, disaster management, remote sensing, climate forecast, banking and finance, defence and security. This policy resolve led to the adoption of the African Space Policy and Strategy, as the first of the concrete steps towards realizing an African Space Agency.

The policy focuses on mobilizing the continent for institutional and capacity development towards achieving the four pillars of space technology, namely; Earth Observation (EO), Navigation & Positioning, Satellite Communication, and Space Science & Astronomy for socio-economic benefits. This article focuses on how Non-Governmental Institutions play an essential role in the execution of these goals.

Non-Governmental Institutions are institutions that are not government-owned. They include Private firms in the space sector, private schools and research institutes. The realization and execution of the Outer Space Program requires a certain focus and will that governments cannot provide. This is only natural because national governments have to attend to the structural problems still plaguing most African nations. It is arguable that a working indigenous space sector would play an important role in the alleviation of these underlying problems; however, it would seem that these problems are urgent and need immediate attention.

Nonetheless, this shift in focus and priority creates a chasm that can quickly be filled by purpose-created and driven private firms. Because these firms and companies deal with space issues, they are the best fit to seal the chasm consequent to national governments distracted focus. The ailing political will of several governments is propped up by the need to make a profit nature of these private firms.

Furthermore, the relative stability of private firms, especially companies with perpetual succession and unalterable object clauses in their memorandum of association, provide a fix to the bane of political instability, which, according to the Space-Strategy mentioned above, constitutes a block to the execution of the Outer Space Program. This potential for a sudden change in Africa causes a problem fixable by the relatively more stable mechanism of companies in the space sector. It is not difficult to perceive the importance of these non-governmental institutions in this regard.

Additionally, the Space Strategy realizes the lack of innovation in delivering relevant space services and products as one more of the threats facing the execution of the program. This is because it is evident that innovation is not any governments strong suit. The capacity to innovate is directly related to the ability to make a profit as well as to outwit competitors. It is thus an essential skill in most private companies and firms. This innovative ability, it could be argued, played a considerable part in SpaceXs mastery of the reusable rockets, which has significantly reduced the cost of space travel. This same innovation will equally positively affect the fruition of Africas Outer Space goals.

In Africa, the education system faces many challenges, especially concerning public and foundational educational institutions. According to the International Finance Corporation, Governments are relying increasingly on the private sector to help fulfil public policy objectives in education, as well as to regulate providers appropriately, integrate them with the public system, and increase access to students at all income levels. This is also why, according to Lisa Vives, New York-based Africa American Institute, in its State of Education in Africa report, private institutions are increasingly stepping in to educate children who lack access to an education and to fill the gaps in a countrys public education system.

This issue, the Space Strategy admits, is one of the weaknesses of the program. It posits that inadequate core skills in several areas of space science may be one of the challenges the continent has to deal with to achieve its space goals.

It is only natural that the inculcation of these core space science skills primarily occurs in the early stages of a young persons educational sojourn. However, African governments do not yet have the funding to provide for the schools and other learning institutes capable of ensuring the effective and efficient inculcation of these skills. Thus, this critical duty falls on the private sector. The private sector has taken the initiative as regards the provision of quality education in Africa, as can be deduced from the referenced articles. Thus, it is no gainsaying that the private educational sector would be significant in availing critical space science skills to learners in the continent.

In conclusion, the private sector arguably has one of the most critical functions concerning the success of Africas Space Programs. However, this is not to disregard the necessity of public-private partnership in the realization of the goal to mobilize the continent to develop the necessary institutions and capacities to utilize the four pillars of space technology, for socio-economic benefits.

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Importance of Non-governmental Institutions in the Implementation of the African Space Policy & Strategy - Space in Africa

Trusted retailer Zavvi is currently offering the LEGOCity Rocket Assembly & Transport for $119.99 shipped when codeLC10has been applied at checkout. Typically fetching $150, todays offer saves you 20%, marks one of the first discounts weve seen, and brings the price down to a new all-time low. This 1,055-piece creation brings space travel to your LEGO City setup with an over 16-inch tall rocket ship, transporter, and plenty of other accessories. Alongside a launch control room and rover garage, this creation also comes packed with minifigures including two astronauts, a pair of ground crew technicians, Launch Director, scientist, and a lab mechanic.Learn more in our launch coverage, and then head below the fold for more LEGO deals from $12.

Over atBest Buys official eBay storefront, were tracking the LEGO Star Wars Resistance Y-Wing Starfighter for $45.99. Down from its $70 going rate, todays offer amounts to 35% in savings, beats Amazons sale price for the all-time low there by $10, and marks the best weve seen to date. Assembling the latest rendition of Y-Wing starfighter from the Star Wars universe, this578-piece set measures 17-inches long and includes five minifigures.Dive into our hands-on review for all the details.

Earlier today, we checked out all of the details on LEGOs upcoming Braille set, which offers a more educational spin on its usual bricks. Then dont forget to dive into our recent review of LEGOs NES kit, which we found to be a must-have for Nintendo and retro gaming fans alike.

Give young space adventurers a treat with a NASA-inspired rocket launch set, which is great for independent play. This incredible LEGO City 60229 Rocket Assembly & Transport kids toy containing 1055 pieces, features a large multi-stage rocket launch control room with rotating satellite dish and a rocket assembly crane with winch.

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Save up to 40% on LEGO City, Star Wars, Marvel, and much more starting at $12 - 9to5Toys

Hedra, a one-shot comic by Jesse Lonergan recently republished by Image, follows an astronaut as she searches the galaxy for signs of life after the Earth is decimated by nuclear war. All of the comics fifty-some pages are visually gripping, poignant, and silent. While silent comics (aka those devoid of text) arent nonexistent the graphic novel Space Bear was another silent sci-fi that hit shelves in July they certainly arent the norm. Silent comics give comic artists a way to flex their abilities as storytellers, and to show audiences that a picture can unquestionably be worth one thousand words. Even if this were a larger genre, it wouldnt take away what a beautiful book Hedra is.

Lonergans artistic style in Hedra is unapologetically diagrammatic mathematical and exacting. Hedras layouts arent traditional, frequently relying on concentric circles and rows of squares in combination with more industry-standard rectangular panels. This layout, in relation to massive nightscapes, creates the feeling of reading star charts and using them to plot ones course. Even white boundaries between panels, which normally act as a sort of pause between images, are at times part of the image themselves as the movement of a bomb or spaceship through the dark blue void of space. Hedras cover is rendered in the same style and acts as a satisfying taste of whats to come. While simpler, its still striking.

Almost every page of Hedra could easily be printed and treated as a poster or fine art print. It is a book which is incredibly pleasing to the eye at the page level, even when isolated from its narrative sequence or story.

That said, shapes more specifically polyhedra (three-dimensional shapes with flat polygonal faces) also play a significant, almost metaphysical, role within the comic. This theme feels easy to associate with the medieval astrological concept of the music of the spheres and the astronomer Johannes Keplers Harmonices Mundi (which discusses polyhedra and astronomy as they relate to that concept). For Hedra, polyhedra become part of the way one finds their place in the universe and finds hope for a new world.

Hedras core feels fundamentally retrofuturistic, both in the aesthetics of things like spaceship and spacesuit shapes, but in its focus on nuclear apocalypse, and its optimism towards space travel. Its a playful book with a Gulliver-vs-the-Lilliputians moment and at moments Hedra is filled with a sense of wonder.

Hedras emotional core feels ballsy, especially in a time when the Doomsday Clock is set to one hundred seconds to midnight and the coronavirus pandemic is sweeping the globe. Lonergans narrative doesnt shy away from the possibility of a reality where the human race faces catastrophe. Hedra takes one of the most what ifs and instead of offering the optimistic it will never come to that pulls from annihilations ashes a forceful and then. And then, life finds a way. And then, we find a way forward. And then. With this rarer breed of optimism, Hedra becomes a story about seeking (and finding) rebirth and renewal in a world where that seems impossible.

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Hedra (One-Off): Its The End of the World (And I Feel Fine) - Comic Watch

George Whitesides of Virgin Galactic believes that a new wave of human space flight innovation will capture the attention of the international public.

Photo: Pexels

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While Earth-bound citizens grapple with quarantines, a new era of space exploration is blasting off. After years of only gradual expansion, emerging players and new technologies have reignited the space race in the 21st century.

While the Cold War spurred major scientific and commercial achievements, progress tapered off dramatically as government enthusiasm and funding for space exploration waned. But dramatic technological advances and lucrative business models changed the conversation, and private companies are making up for lost time. New investments and fresh private-public partnerships mean that booking a berth in space could happen sooner than we think. Countries like Japan, China, India and the United Arab Emirates are jumping in, too, expanding the borders of geopolitics.

George Whitesides, the chief space officer and former CEO of Virgin Galactic, a company founded by Sir Richard Branson in 2004 to develop commercial vehicles for space tourism, joined the Altamar podcast team of Peter Schechter and Muni Jensen to discuss the future of space travel.

The interview came on the heels of a major announcement: Virgin Galactic, in conjunction with NASA, is opening a private astronaut program with public accessibility. Previously, Whitesides served as NASAs chief of staff after working on President Barack Obamas transition team for the agency. Hes also served as the executive director of the National Space Society and is a sought-after adviser for companies and organizations such as the Federal Aviation Administrations Commercial Space Transportation division, the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee, the Space Generation Foundation and the Zero Gravity Corporation, among others.

According to Whitesides, Virgin Galactic seeks to expand space access to everyone, so that its not just the province of professional astronauts; it becomes the province of you and I, and the benefits of space accrue to everyone. Whitesides explained that partnerships between NASA and the private sector reignited public interest in space to levels unseen since the Apollo moon landing.

He said he predicts that theres going to be this wave of human space flight innovation coming up, and thats something that really captures the attention of the American public and the international public.

Whitesides explains the partnership between NASA and the private sector.

According to Whitesides, companies are taking advantage of great technical trends that are driving innovation and playing out in the commercial interest, such as developments that allow spacecrafts to be reused.

As he pointed out, travel to Europe would be pretty expensive if every time you got on a 747, you threw away the 747 on the other side in London. In turn, Whitesides believes that passenger travel to space could soon be a reality: I think its on the order of months and its not years, so thats really the main headline.

It could expand rapidly after that: Were going through this weird, interesting and inspiring transitional moment where, in the past, very few people will have known an astronaut, or have known somebody who has gone to space, whereas going forward, most people will know someone who has been to space, and thats an interesting transitional hallmark, he said.

Whitesides explains that the number of people who have traveled to space could soon significantly increase.

Until recently, only a handful of companies and countries were large enough to invest in space. This is the kind of thing that takes not just months, or even years; it takes decades sometimes to do these programs, Whitesides said. But lower costs and more accessible technology are creating opportunities for new ventures.

Virgin Galactic and other private sector players are betting that space travel will pay off as people pay to realize lifelong dreams to visit space. Competition over customers for a rocket ship ticket is likely to be fierce: Marshalling the resources to maintain efforts over the course of a decade or more is really challenging and requires either strong billionaire backers, or government resources or others, he said.

The intermingling of private and government funding in space has become no stranger to geopolitics, either. Between the United States, India, China, the UAE and countless other government-sponsored programs, space is not just becoming closer and cheaper its also getting more crowded.

Although Whitesides thinks an actual space war is unlikely, he expressed caution over the potential for foul play. Different national entities are working at how they can do really serious negative stuff in orbit, he said. There is no doubt there are a lot of nefarious shenanigans going on in orbit today between the Great Powers, and that is something thats driving the creation of the Space Force and other kinds of governmental responses.

Whitesides explains concern about government operations in space.

Whitesides remains optimistic about the prospects of space travels impact on the world. I think that what weve seen is that nations can retain friendly relations in space, even when theyre having pretty challenging relationships on the ground, he said. I think its good that humanity has these programs they can work together on, even through challenging times.

Altamar is a global politics podcast hosted by former Atlantic Council senior vice president Peter Schechter and award-winning journalist Muni Jensen. To listen to the full episode, click here.

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Is Commercial Space Travel Finally Taking Off? BRINK News and Insights on Global Risk - BRINK

The Smithsonian Institution announced today that the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center and the National Zoo will both reopen July 24 following months of closure as a public health precaution due to COVID-19. The two facilities will greet visitors with new health and safety precautions, including timed-entry passes, hand-sanitizing stations, mask requirements for ages six and up, and limited numbers of visitors. But the massive Udvar-Hazy indoor complex, located in Chantilly, Virginia, near Dulles International Airport, should have no problem offering plenty of space for maintaining social distancing. The 17-acre aviation and aerospace museum, which opened in 2003 as an adjunct to the popular National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. houses in its huge hangars thousands of notable artifacts that could never have fit inside the much smaller museum on the National Mall.

Together, the Udvar-Hazy, along with the museum on the National Mall (currently undergoing a massive renovation) showcase the largest collection of space and aviation artifacts on Earth. Of the 6 million visitors to both last year, 1.3 million of them came out to the Virginia site.

When Hazy's doors reopen Friday, visitors will encounter partially visible artifacts drapped with plastic sheeting in the facilitys Boeing Aviation Hangar due to a two-year roof repair project currently under way. That will preclude full viewings of big planes like the Lockheed SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft. And public tours, rides and exhibition interactives won't be available or operable. But there are still more than enough remarkable artifacts to warrant attentionnot the least of which is the still-controversial Enola Gay. August marks the 75th anniversary of its fateful mission to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

With fewer visitors, this will be a time for a more intimate opportunity to check out some of the museum's singular and memorable items. They include the kind of colossal things that you cant quite avoid seeing and would never expect to see indoors, from the elegant curves of the supersonic Concorde to the battered exterior of the Space Shuttle Discovery. As well as thousands of smaller, sometimes personal items crucial to key moments in space flight, from a Mission Control pocket stopwatch to a map marker from the Mercury Project. And even more surprisingly, is the carcass of one of the smallest involuntary space fliersa spider from a Skylab experiment suggested by a high school student.

Here we present a dozen of our picks not to be missed.

Millions may have just tasted their first quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic, but astronauts returning from the moon had to shelter in place as well, lest they spread any unknown lunar germs. Equipped with elaborate air ventilation and filtration systems, the Mobile Quarantine Facility was used by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins after their historic trip to the moon in July 1969. The retrofitted Airstream trailer with living and sleeping quarters and a kitchen was sealed but in motion for their first 88 hours back. First aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, it was transferred to the Pearl Harbor Naval base in Hawaii and eventually the cargo hold of a C-141 aircraft taking the trio to Houston, where a more spacious quarantine facility awaited them at the Johnson Space Center. Crews from Apollo 12 and Apollo 14 also quarantined but by July 1971, following the Apollo 15 lunar landing mission, the practice had been abandoned.

Its fitting that one of the earliest A-Series rockets from Robert H. Goddard is in the Smithsonian. It was the Smithsonian Institution that funded the man who would become known as the father of rocketry, leading to his declaration in 1920 that a liquid fueled rocket could reach the moon, a notion much ridiculed at the time. In 1935, Goddard tried to demonstrate the possibilities of such a rocket in Roswell, N.M. to a pair of big-name supporters, Charles Lindberg and Harry Guggenheim. A technical glitch prevented its launch that day but Lindbergh made sure the 15-foot rocket would be donated to the Smithsonian. It became the first liquid-fuel rocket in the collection.

Early rocketry could be surprisingly primitive, as seen in the jerry-rigged two-foot wooden sled Robert F. Goddard devised in the early 1920s to convey flasks of super-cold liquid oxygen that were much too chilly to touch. Goddard had first started experimenting with solid propellant rockets in 1915, switching to more powerful liquid propellants in 1921. The rudimentary sled, of pine, nails and twine, providing high contrast to the steely sleekness of the all the other objects in the Udvar-Hazy Center, was donated to the Smithsonian in 1959 by the scientists widow, Esther C. Goddard.

One of the smallest items at the Udvar-Hazy Center is the carcass of a Cross spider named Anita, who, with a companion named Arabella, became involuntary space travelers on the Skylab 3 mission in 1973. They were there as part of an experiment to test how weightlessness affected their web building. The idea came from a 17-year-old student from Lexington, Massachusetts, Judith Miles, who responded to a NASA initiative for student experiment ideas. It turns out the arachnid astronauts spun webs in space using a finer thread in response to the weightless environment. Neither Anita nor Arabella survived the nearly two months in space. But they were placed in glass bottles with their names on them. (Arabella is on loan to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.)

As the lunar module of Apollo 11 was fast approaching its historic target on July 20, 1969, it was also running low on propellant. Neil Armstrong approached Tranquility Base searching for a clear patch to land, as Charles Duke at Mission Control in Houston barked out the minutes remaining before the fuel ran out60 seconds, 30 Seconds, he said in those tense final minutes. Duke based his count on a handheld Swiss-made Heuer stopwatch. When Armstrong announced The Eagle has landed. Mission control responded: We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. Were breathing again. Thanks. The item was donated to the museum by the NASA in 1978.

The alien mother ship that spectacularly lands at Devils Mountain at the end of the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind was lit like the kind of disco ball youd expect from a ship equipped with such a massive sound (and, as it turned out, communication) system. Without lights it looks more like a death star a much smaller one. But the model, 63 inches round and 38 inches wide, is a surprising find in the Udvar-Hazy Center. Conceived by Steven Spielberg but made by a team led by Gregory Jein, it was built using parts from model trains and other kits. But its makers had a little fun with the parts of it that werent seen on camera, such that its affixed with the model of a Volkswagen bus, a submarine, World War II planes, and R2-D2 from Star Wars one of the modelers had just come from that production. Theres also a mailbox in there and a cemetery plot.

There are not many items in the massive space and aviation collection that are as simply drawn and so brightly painted. But the six-inch, red plastic device had an important job: Showing where the capsules of the Mercury Project were at any time of their flights. It was moved across a world map indicating international tracking stations by a pair of wires. The crude map dominated the wall at Mission Control on Cape Canaveral, Florida, for all six of the manned flights from the Mercury program from 1961 to 1963. The actual Mercury capsules themselves, that gave flight to Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Gordon Cooper, Wally Schirra and Scott Carpenter, were uniformly gun barrel gray with a touch of Army green. But definitely not pink.

The impossibly cute Aurogiro may look like a character from Pixars Cars sequel Planes, but the idea was to build an aerial Model T that could take off from driveways and fly around, or, with the above rotor wings folded back, drive leisurely down the street at 25 mph. Test pilot James G. Ray did just that when he landed it in a downtown Washington D.C. park in 1936, folded back the wings and drove down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Commerce Department which commissioned the project. The precursor to the helicopter performed well, but with an estimated cost of $12,500, it was too expensive for the average suburbanite for whom it was intended. Only one was built.

Sometimes space explorers come from other walks of life. Take 34-year-old New Jersey truck driver and skydiving enthusiast Nick Piantanida, a skydiver who wanted to set a new record for highest jump, in his case from a balloon. His first attempt in 1965 was the victim of a wind shear; he landed in a city dump in St. Paul, MN. His second attempt in February 1966 set a world altitude record of 123,500 feet, but a mishap with an onboard oxygen supply forced controllers to cut the gondola loose. For Strato-Jump III, three months later, Piantanida reached 57,600 feet when disaster struck and the gondola had to be cut loose again. He may have accidentally depressurized his helmet; he never gained consciousness and died four months later in August 1966 at 34.

This French-made two-seat ultralight from 1992 lived up to its name it only weighed about 360 pounds empty but with its 34-foot aluminum tube and sailcloth wingspan this model was used by the conservationist group Operation Migration to help guide endangered flocks of Whooping cranes and other bird species to new migratory routes from Canada to the American South. Flying about 31 mph, it also broadcast crane calls during the flights. It was also featured in the 1996 family film Fly Away Home with Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin.

Discovery was the third Space Shuttle orbiter in space, and racked up the most miles in its 27 years, traveling almost 150 million miles from its 39 Earth-orbital missions from 1984 to 2011. It carried 184 crew members (including John Glenn who returned to space at 77 in 1998). Among its many missions was launching the Hubble Space Telescopeand a couple of its repair missions. Discovery represented the Return to Flight in missions following the loss of the Challenger in 1986 and Columbia disaster in 2003. In all, it clocked 365 days in spacemore than any other orbiters. When it finally retired, it was flown to Virginia in April 2012 after first taking a victory lap over the Nations Capital. It was the first operational shuttle to be retired, followed by the Endeavour and the Atlantis a few months later.

The biggest thing by far in the Udvar-Hazy Center and maybe in all of the Smithsonian museums is the 202-foot-long Concorde from Air France. In its day, the supersonic airliner cut in half travel time across the Atlantic Ocean, but ultimately couldnt maintain its first-class service because of high operating costs. A sleek, international creation by Arospatiale of France and the British Aviation Corporation, Concorde flew at a maximum causing altitude speed of 1,354more than twice the speed of sound. Air France agreed to donate a Concorde to the Smithsonian in 1989 and lived up to the bargain in 2003, providing the Concorde F-BVFA that had been the first Concorde to open service to Rio de Janeiro, New York and Washington D.C.

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Twelve Must-Sees When the Smithsonian Reopens Udvar-Hazy Center July 24 - Smithsonian Magazine

As of mid-July, the average flight only carries about 60 people, flying at an average of about 50 percent capacity, according to the trade group Airlines for America, making it easier for the more generous airlines to guarantee open space.

Rather than blocking seats, American and United are offering rebooking for travelers on crowded flights through pre-flight notifications, though some fliers have complained that changing plans at the last minute is inconvenient. Joy Gonzalez of Seattle, a recent flier on American, said the options shed been given to change involved long trips with two or three layovers.

We have multiple layers of protection in place for those who fly with us, including required face coverings, enhanced cleaning procedures and a pre-flight Covid-19 symptom checklist and were providing additional flexibility for customers to change their travel plans, as well, wrote Ross Feinstein, an American spokesman, in an email.

A United spokesman, Charles Hobart, wrote in an email that the overwhelming majority of our flights continue to depart with multiple empty seats.

On airlines that arent blocking seats, carriers say they allow passengers, once boarded, to move to an empty seat within their ticketed cabin, even if that seat is a premium seat, assuming there isnt an issue with balance and weight distribution.

But there have been some incidents on American planes in which passengers complained that they were not allowed to move to premium seats. They made it very clear that if you are trying to sit in empty seats to socially distance, you are still not permitted to sit in exit row seats because you have to pay for them, commented John Schmidt, a Times reader, on July 8, about an American flight from Austin to Los Angeles. This was a public announcement. Is definitely their policy, he wrote.

On July 10, American said it sent a reminder to its flight attendants that read, For now, its OK for customers to move to different seats in the same cabin.

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Worried About Crowded Planes? Know Where Your Airline Stands - The New York Times

Executive Summary

CEOs such as Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg and Twitters Jack Dorsey have announced plans to scale their remote-work initiatives. But, as Microsofts Satya Nadella warns, we may be at risk of replacing one dogma with another if we make a big move toward permanent remote work.

The real issue is not whose predictions turn out to be right or wrong (no one has a crystal ball), but whether those leaders are thinking deeply enough about what they want their new work paradigm to achieve and whether they can architect and construct systems that will allow them to meet their objectives.

To think through those complexities, the authors suggest using Future-back thinking, a process for developing a vision of your best possible future and a clearly laid-out strategy to achieve it. This includes (1) Articulating your grand purpose and aspirational objective (your reason for designing the new system) and envisioning the system and what it looks like; (2) considering each of the assumptions; (3) testing those assumptions; and (4) using the learnings from these experiments to adjust or pivot your systems components, but also your vision itself.

Mark Zuckerberg recently shared his plans for the future of remote work at Facebook. By 2030, he promised, at least half of Facebooks 50,000 employees would be working from home. We are going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale, he declared in a follow-up interview. A few days before, Jack Dorsey had announced that Twitter and Squares employees would be allowed to work where[ever] they feel most creative and productiveeven once offices begin to reopen.

After spending the last two decades building amenity-filled campuses that maximize the collisionability of talent and ideas while enticing their workers to stay in the office for as much time as they can, Covid-19 has shown these leading-edge technology companies that their workers can be just as productive or in some cases, even more so when they stay at home.Its not just tech. Executives in traditional industries who spent days and weeks on the road are discovering that a well-managed Zoom meeting can be as effective as a face-to-face and a lot easier (and less expensive) to organize.

Will Apples new $5 billion HQ, aka The Spaceship, turn out to be a white elephant? Will Google abandon its Googleplex? Will corporations empty out their office buildings everywhere and shrink their physical footprints? Are we on the brink of a new paradigm for work? Microsofts Satya Nadella isnt so sure. Switching from all offices to all remote is replacing one dogma with another, he said in a conversation with The New York Times. One of the things I feel is, hey, maybe we are burning some of the social capital we built up in this phase where we are all working remote. Whats the measure for that?

We suspect that the workforces of Twitter and Facebook will be less remote in 10 years than their leaders are predicting today, but much more remote than they could have imagined six months ago. The real issue, however, is not whose predictions turn out to be right or wrong (no one has a crystal ball), but whether those leaders are thinking deeply enough about what they want their new work paradigm to achieve and whether they can architect and construct systems that will allow them to meet their objectives.

WFH is helping them muddle through the immediate crisis, but what do they want from it in the long run? Higher productivity? Savings on office space, travel, and cost-of-living adjusted salaries for workers in cheaper locations? Better morale and higher retention rates?

To know whats best for your organizations future when it comes to remote work, you have to put it in the context of all the things that you are looking achieve. In other words, you have to have a conscious aspiration. Then you need to envision the workforce system that will make those things possible.

Having more or less remote work is not a point change in an otherwise stable system work from home is a system in and of itself, with many interfaces and interdependencies, both human and technological. These include:

While you can model such a system up to a point, its design specs will inevitably need to be revised as they come into contact with reality; as such, experimentation and learning will be key you cannot expect to have a one-time rollout.

For all of this to be developed and managed in the right way, a different innovation approach is needed.

At Innosight, where both of us work, weve developed a way of thinking and planning that we call Future-back. We cover this in detail in our new book, Lead from the Future, but heres the gist: Future-back is designed to help business leaders develop a vision of their best possible future and a clearly laid-out strategy to achieve it.

Thinking and planning from the future back allows you to fully articulate what you hope to achieve with your new work system and then design its major components from a clean sheet, unencumbered by how things work today or how they worked in the past. Once you have developed your vision, you need to consider all the things that would have to be true for that vision to be achievable, and then test those assumptions with initiatives you can begin today.

The process unfolds in four distinct stages.

You are doing two things in this stage: Articulating your grand purpose and aspiration (your reason for designing the new system) and envisioning the system and what it looks like.

To determine your grand objective your reason for re-imagining your existing system think about what you have learned from the Covid-19 emergency that led you down this path. Your initial aim is simply to develop clarity about your intended future, not achieve analytic certainty.

As you begin to sketch out your workforce system of the future, frame it as a purpose- and objective-driven narrative. This is your vision. As such, it should include: your Purpose (your ultimate inspirational why); your objectives and metrics (your tangible why); and a concise description of the components of your system and how they fit together (your what). For example:

In order to expand our talent base to the four corners of the world and ensure that they are fully-motivated by 2022, 50% of our creative workforce will work remotely for up to 50% of their time. Employees will be fully reimbursed for the costs of their home offices and work-related travel; salaries will reflect local costs of living.

Moving on to the system itself, ask yourself a series of questions about its resources and assets. What kinds of people will make up your system and where will they will be located? How will you organize your different functions and ensure that they work? What will your physical footprint look like? What remote technologies and tools will you need, and how will you combine them with in-person tools and technologies to ensure individual productivity and effective virtual collaborations?

Then you need to ask similar questions about policies and processes, and norms, and metrics.

As Donald Rumsfeld famously put it, there are known knowns and known unknowns, and also unknown unknowns that you must take account of. Work through each of them, surfacing as many of those known and unknown unknowns as you can. Each will need to be proven or disproven:that virtually-convened teams can problem-solve as well as teams that meet in person; that executive development can be carried out online as well as in-person meetings or not, as the case may be.

What do you need to learn and how can you best do it? To answer these questions, walk your vision and its key assumptions back to the present in the form of experiments. You will need more than one if there are different circumstances or contexts in which the system would work for example, if your company includes geographic locations with different societal norms or government regulations, or business units that are fundamentally different from one another (e.g., one that is more service- and manufacturing-oriented versus others that focus on knowledge work and design). People are different, too. WFH makes tremendous sense for some roles and personality types; less for others.

If you are a multinational and want to learn if WFH can work within one of your geographies, carve out a business function or small business unit; systematically apply the WFH technologies, practices, and rules and norms that you wish to use; run it in parallel for a short time; and then carefully measure its results against those of the larger unit.

Through this iterative process of exploring, envisioning, and testing, you will ultimately discover your best way forward. This learning will be an ongoing process, not a discrete event, unfolding over time as your assumptions are converted to knowledge.

Inevitably, there will be tradeoffs that must be negotiated. While you may be able to tap more talent and save money by not requiring your new hires to move, it is also likely that your creative ecosystem will become more diffuse. Some teams may need to meet in person as frequently as several days a week, so they wont have the luxury of living wherever they wish. You will likely have to beef up your technical and human capabilities before you can fully apply your new knowledge across your organization; significant investments may be required to provide sufficient bandwidth for your employees homes, reducing some of your expected savings. You may find, per those early experiments, that your new system wont work in every business unit or geography.

You will likely have to grapple with the pitfalls of causal ambiguity (the fact that what drives good results in one context may very well not in another). Any organization has constraints on its absorptive capacity; you must be prepared for systemic incompatibilities and rejection, which can stem from poor communication between units, the lack of a shared language, or longstanding rivalries and resentments.

At all times, its important to remember that your aspirational whats best should be about more than your bottom line. Back in August 2019, the Business Roundtable redefined the purpose of a corporation from one that solely serves its shareholders financial interests to delivering value to all of its stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, and communities . Ideally, a companys vision of its future workforce system or systems should reflect its leaders deepest thinking about its why, not just its what and how.

Even if remote work turns out to be less productive on some metrics than others, reducing carbon-based emissions or the improving work-life balancecould make up for it. Or not. Its possible that what works for Twitter and Facebook wont work for you, at least initially. Your struggles with it may point the way towards deeper changes that you have to make.

Future-back thinking doesnt reveal a future that is written in stone it gives you a way to shape it and own it, ensuring your organizations long-term viability. As Satya Nadella suggested, trading one dogma for another is rarely your best solution; in most cases, those dogmas themselves are your biggest problem. At the end of the day, the organizations that can develop the clearest, most inspiring visions, learn the fastest, and pivot the most capably, are the ones that win.

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Does Your Company Have a Long-Term Plan for Remote Work? - Harvard Business Review