Category Archives: Futurism

Springsteen is almost here, Midwest Meltdown at the Foundry and Latin futurism at The Grog: The week in live  cleveland.com

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Springsteen is almost here, Midwest Meltdown at the Foundry and Latin futurism at The Grog: The week in live - cleveland.com

Futurism was a twentieth-century Italian and Russian avant-garde movement in literature and arts. It promoted extreme artistic innovation and experimentation, declaring a radical disassociation from the past and a focus on new art, technology, and politics, commonly manifested through primitivism. The Futurists strongly rejected the self-awareness behind the overextended lyricism of Symbolismthe dominant school of the time. In contrast, it showed a preference for the visual arts that discussed conservative social elements and challenged them in order to provoke a violent negative response.

Italian Futurism began with a manifesto by F. T. Marinetti (18761944) titled Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo (The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism), which declared that artistic work without an aggressive element could not be considered a masterpiece. He enunciated the principles of Futurism in relation to poetry in Parole in Libert (Words in Freedom), demanding a language free of syntax and logical ordering that allowed the poet to rapidly convey intense emotion. In Immaginazione Senza Fili (Wireless Imagination) and Analogia Disegnata (Pictorialized Analogy), he discussed the maximum freedom of imagery and metaphor, which led to expressive use of typographya varying of font sizes and styles within a word or on the same line and free disposition of words on the printed page. Other important Italian Futurists poets were E. Cavacchioli, L. Folgore, and A. Palazzeschi.

Russian Futurism, like Italian Futurism, began as a revolt against the symbolist movement in Russia. The Russian Futurists split into two sub-schools: Cubo-Futurism and Ego-Futurism. Cubo-Futurism called for a broadening of the language with arbitrary and derived words. Major poets of this movement included David Burliuk (18821967), Aleksej Krucenyx (18861968), Vladimir Mayakovsky (18931930), and Viktor (Velemir) Khlebnikov (18851932).

Khlebnikov was acclaimed as the most profound and inventive poet of the Cubo-Futurism movement. His study ranged from dense and private neologisms to exotic verse forms written in palindromes. His poetry, albeit innovative and inspirational to his contemporaries, was too impenetrable to reach a popular audience. Another widely celebrated poet to come out of Cubo-Futurism was Mayakovsky, whose poetics were a mixture of extravagant exaggerations and self-centered and arduous imagery.

After his death, Mayakovsky was canonized by Joseph Stalin as the best and most talented poet of the Soviet epoch. The second sub-school, Ego-Futurism, gained momentum in 1911 with poet Ivan Ignateev, who lived in Petersburg, Russia. He wrote numerous manifestos and ran the Petersburg Herald. Ego-Futurism, like Cubo-Futuristm, was preoccupied with urban imagery, eccentric words, neologisms, and experimental rhymes. In contrast to Cubo-Futurism, the Ego-Futurists employed a less typographically rigorous method of experimentation and were more interested in the intensive exploration of the self through poetry. Other poets in Ego-Futurism include Vasilisk Gnedov (18901978), Igor-Severjanin (18871941), and V. Sersenevic (18931942).

Futurism became a vast movement in the early 1900s, influencing poets throughout Slavic countries, Spain, and England.

browse poets from this movement

Edward Hirsch also writes about Futurism in his book A Poet's Glossary:

futurism:Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (18761944) dramatically launched the futurist movement on February 20, 1909, with his violently upsetting, incendiary manifesto called The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism (We had stayed up all night, my friends and I) and then bombarded Europe with his proclamations about the future. The word futurismhad a startling success, and the new movement spread rapidly through Italy, France, Spain, England, and Russia. The hyperkinetic Marinetti, who christened himself the caffeine of Europe, the self-proclaimed primitive of a new sensibility, was the driving force of futurism. I felt, all of a sudden, that articles, poetries, and polemics no longer sufficed, he said. You had to change methods, go down in the street, seize power in all the theatres, and introduce the fisticuff into the war of art. The manifesto was his weapon, and he used it to praise danger and revolt, aggressive action, the beauty of speed (he famously proclaimed that A racing car . . . is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace), the metallization of man, the violent joys of crowds and cities. He also showed appalling innocence about war, which he glorified as the worlds only hygiene.

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A Brief Guide to Futurism | Academy of American Poets

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Soda drinkers, beware it looks like your favorite sugary drinks may be linked to hair loss.

A new study out of Tsinghua University in Beijing has found a new link between sugary drinks and male pattern hair loss, with beverages ranging from soft drinks to artificially-sweetened juices to energy drinks being some of the primary culprits.

In short,it's depressing news:all the stuff that tastes really great may make you lose your hair.

The paper, newly published in thejournal Nutrients, is hardly the first we've heard about the ill health effects of sugary drinks.And doctors have long suspected a link between excess sugar and hair loss.

But the study's wider-lens examination of the connection is intriguing. The researchers at Tsinghua's Vanke School of Public Health anonymously surveyed 1028 men online between the ages of 18 and 45 on the Chinese mainland last year, asking them their sweetened drink intake, any health issues they may be experiencing, whether they smoked or drank, and if they were experiencing hair issues, as well as psychological questions.

The results were striking. Respondents with male pattern baldness, they found, were drinking an average of 4,293 milliliters per week that's more than a gallon, or more than two of those two-liter bottles of Pepsi you can buy at the grocery stores while respondents with full heads of hair drinking just 2,513 milliliters.

More research is needed, but the Tsinghua researchers hypothesized that the root cause could be sugary drinks' propensity to heighten blood sugar. Diabetes studies have shown that heightened blood sugar levels appear to be associated with hair loss, and with sweet drinks being a major risk factor for developing or worsening diabetes, so the logic may hold up.

Given that this research linking sugary drinks and male pattern hair loss is so preliminary, the paper's authors noted that further study is needed.Nonetheless, it's an intriguing and disturbing new reason not to pound down too many sodas or Red Bulls.

More on hair loss:Doctors Say a Random Cheap Pill May Actually Reverse Balding

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Scientists Link Male Pattern Balding to Wildly Popular Beverage

A fireball in the supernova remnant W49B. with infrared data (red, green) with X-ray data (blue). [Caltech/J. Rho, T. Jarrett & NASA/CXC/SSC/J. Keohane et al.]QUESTION:

"I heard a star goes supernova after it has produced the element iron. Is this true? If so, how?"

Asked by: Taylor Sullivan

Supernovae have produced nearly every element occurring in nature. When a star is born, it is because it has enough mass to create enough heat, gravity and pressure to sustain nuclear fusion. Fusing hydrogen atoms to helium gives off enormous amounts of energy, and the star spends its life quietly fusing away. This process takes four hydrogen atoms to fuse into one helium atom. Hydrogen has only one proton, while helium has two protons along with two neutrons. This means that two protons are missing. Matter cannot be created or destroyedit can only be turned into something else.

In this case, the two missing protons have turned into two neutrons. This energy is what makes the star shine and give off heat. Well.. after a while, the star has built up quite a bit of helium. This helium has found its way to the stars center to create a helium core. Since hydrogen only has one proton, and helium has two protons and two neutrons, its heavier. That means the star has a little more mass in its core, which generates more heat. This heat builds up more and more, until its hot enough and has enough pressure to start fusing helium to carbon. This process generates a little less energy than fusing hydrogen to helium, but it still produces energy.

As a guideline, a star that has about one half the mass of the sun is too small and cool to fuse helium to carbon. So it will end up as a white dwarf made of helium. Stars between one half to four times the mass of the sun are massive and hot enough to fuse carbon to oxygen. Carbon and oxygen are fused more or less at the same time, and youll end up with a white dwarf made out of carbon and oxygen.I want to jump off topic here for a moment and ask a basic chemistry/physics question to all you readers. What happens when you introduce large amounts of heat and pressure to carbon? A girls best friend, diamonds!

The star has died and its a white dwarf made out of carbon: a giant diamond in the sky. Stars with masses greater than four times the mass of the sun are massive and hot enough to fuse oxygen to silicon. No, not the stuff they make implants out of, thats "silicone" (sometimes, one letter can make a big difference).

Stars that have earned the title of "supergiant"are so massive and so hot that they begin fusing silicon to a solid core of iron. Once the star starts fusing iron, thats it-- its doomed. Fusing silicon to iron takes more energy than it gives off. This means that the star is going to die soon; it is causing its own death by using more of its own energy than it is getting back from nuclear fusion.

When a star is fusing iron in its core, it's still giving off insane amounts of energy. The helium, hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and silicon are still there in the star in different shells. Hydrogen is at the surface, still fusing to helium; a little further down, helium fusing to carbon and oxygen; further down we have silicon until the core, where silicon fuses to iron.This is why the star still exists and doesn't spontaneously explode the moment the first iron atom pops into existence.

At this point, the energy process is just no longer exothermic but endothermic. Iron cannot be fused into anything heavier because of the insane amounts of energy and force required to fuse iron atoms. The atomic structure of iron is very stable, more so than most other elements. I'm not saying all other elements are radioactive or unstable, just that iron is slightly more stable than the previous elements.

Stars this massive can turn into several things; it depends on how heavy it is. They can explode into supernova, collapse into various types of neutron stars, or even form a black hole.The iron in the stars core isnt the reason why the star went supernova, its overall mass made it explode. But, the iron in its core caused it to die.

The rendering aboveillustrates the progression of a supernova blast. A starspends its life fusing hydrogen into helium. It then starts to fuse elements that are a bit heavier, leading up iron. Once iron comes into the equation, things get very bad very quickly. Suddenly, it's no longer able to sustain equilibrium, so its core collapses in on itselfand it castsoff its gaseous envelope in one fell swoop, sparking a supernova. Later on, the remainder of its gas gets energized by the core it leaves behind, either a pulsar or a neutron star (sometimes, if the star is massive enough, it leaves a stellarmass black hole behind instead), and it glows brilliantly for a time. We call theseamazing things supernova remnants.

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What Happens When Stars Produce Iron? - Futurism

"Only one could survive."Heartbreak at Sea

Twenty five years since its first release, James Cameron's swooning epic "Titanic" is still the third highest grossing movie of all time. Besides its storied legacy, it's also spawned an endless debate among fans on its ending: whether Jack, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, could have survived the freezing ocean if he'd climbed onto the floating door with Rose,played by Kate Winslet.

And now, Cameron renowned for his obsession with minute cinematic details says he's finally put an end to the debate with an actual scientific study.

"We have done a scientific study to put this whole thing to rest and drive a stake through its heart once and for all," Cameron told The Toronto Sun while promoting his latest blockbuster sensation "Avatar: The Way of Water." "We have since done a thorough forensic analysis with a hypothermia expert who reproduced the raft from the movie and we're going to do a little special on it that comes out in February."

"We took two stunt people who were the same body mass of Kate and Leo," the acclaimed director explained, "and we put sensors all over them and inside them and we put them in ice water and we tested to see whether they could have survived through a variety of methods and the answer was, there was no way they both could have survived. Only one could survive."

For now, that's all the details we have on the study, but this isn't the first time Cameron has addressed the perennial, nagging question. In 2017, he debunked a theory posited on the TV show "Mythbusters" that Jack could have survived by tying Rose's life vest to the door for buoyancy.

"You're underwater tying this thing on in 28-degree water, and that's going to take you five to 10 minutes, so by the time you come back up you're already dead," Cameron told The Daily Beast at the time. "So that wouldn't work."

And science aside, Cameron thinks Jack's death was thematically integral to the story so there's no point getting hooked up on something he's not going to change his mind on anyway.

"No, he needed to die," Cameron explained during the recent press tour. "It's like Romeo and Juliet. It's a movie about love and sacrifice and mortality. The love is measured by the sacrifice."

We'll have to wait until the study and/or the special come out, but if there's anyone who'd do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of a thalassic mystery, it'd be Cameron.

More on the ocean: Divers Growing Veggies in Underwater Greenhouses

Continued here:
James Cameron Says He Commissioned a Scientific Study on Whether Jack ...

You have probably heard about a trend called breatharianism, a 'diet' claiming that humans can sustain themselves without food and water, surviving on only light and air. This is a potentially lethal practice and several practitioners have, quite obviously, died because of it. Animals and humans are heterotrophic organisms, unable to produce their own food, thus they depend on organic sources to provide it.

Plants, on the other hand, are autotrophic organismsthat are able to produce food out of inorganic matter. With photosynthesis, they convert water, minerals and sunlight into glucose and oxygen. Plants use glucose as their source of energy needed for growth and life. Their role in the life cycle is important, because they serve as a source of food and oxygen for other living organisms.

But nature never fails to surprise us, sometimes ''the laws'' can be broken. Scientists have found some animals that can, just like plants, survive on photosynthesis:

Sea Slug(Elysia chlorotica) is an extraordinarily beautiful slug living in the waters of the east coast of the United States and Canada. It's distinctive feature is green colored, leaf-shaped body. The slug eats algae (Vaucheria litorea), but it's not it's only source of energy!

It seems like this slug stole photosynthetic organelles (chloroplasts) and some genes from the algae, which enables them to live without eating! They can spend their days laying out in the sun and, just like plants and green algae, get their energy through photosynthesis. The symbiosis that enables algae's chloroplasts to work for slug is called kleptoplasty.

Pea Aphid (Acyrthospihon pisum) is an insect living worldwide that feeds on plants (legumes). Even though they may look like any other insect, unpleasant or even terrifying to some, they truly are amazing.

Pea Aphids are capable of producing carotenoids, pigments found in chloroplasts (photosynthetic organelles) and chromoplasts, giving them orange-reddish colour and helping chlorophyll with photosynthesis. In aphids, carotenoids are responsible for their colour, some of them don't have it and are white. It also seems like carotenoids serve not only as a beauty compound, but they can also be usedto convert sunlight into energy. However, these correlations are not yet clear and well researched.

Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum), just like the sea slug, it lives in symbiotic relationship with algae. They were found in embryos of the animal. The salamander's embryos are found in clear colored eggs, laid by the females on the underwater plants, close to the surface, so that the light can reach them.

It seems like green algae help embryos get much-needed energy for growth and development from sunlight, whileproviding anextra source of energy(this, in turn,increases theirchances ofsurvival). Spotted Salamanders are the highest developed animal species and the only ones among all vertebrae, that can directly benefit from photosynthesis. Usually, the immune system of highly developed organisms will prevent such symbiotic behavior.

These special animals just show how complex the living world is, and that the line between plants and animals may not be so well-defined. It makes us wonder where evolution will take us in the next few billions of years (if we last that long) Maybe one day, even humans could benefit from photosynthesis. Just imagine the possibilities that this kind of life opens.

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Incredible Creatures that Use Photosynthesis For Energy - Futurism

A new report warns that China could soon be able to rule over the US economy and military using cutting edge tech a sign that the country is increasingly concerned about China's recent leaps in technological advancements.

The report was compiled,notably, by the think tank Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), which is chaired by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.The report concluded that the US will have to catch up with China's advancements in tech or risk not only falling behind, but becoming subservient to China as well.

The tech titan's warnings are not falling on deaf ears. The White House is clearly taking the report's recommendations seriously.

"I dont need to tell you that advancements in science and technology are poised to define the geopolitical landscape of the 21st century," national security advisor Jake Sullivan said in prepared remarks, responding to the report's release. "They will generate game-changers in health and medicine, food security, and clean energy."

The report identifies three key "technology battlegrounds," including microelectronics, 5G connectivity, and artificial intelligence, which could "represent the next chapter of the industrial revolution."

China is already making major headway in expanding those technologies which could leave the US behind.

And that could have some disastrous consequences. In the worst case scenario, the report notes, China could take control over rare Earth minerals, which means that "Americas military is crippled, and the nation is plunged into a depression," and "Americans are forced to live in a world where China can turn off the technology tap."

As a result, "the United States and other democracies would become economically dependent, losing their engines of prosperity and freedom of action in the world," the report warns.

In short, the think tank argues that "there is ample reason for concern" about China winning the technology race.

But it's not game over for the US. The country can harness existing industries to build out "an advantage in critical technologies," the report concludes, while also investing to "bring technology hardware manufacturing back to the US."

According to the report, the US will have to act by the end of this decade to make sure China doesn't gain the upper hand a dire warning, representative of the emergence of a major power struggle between world powers.

What'll actually happen is anyone's guess. After all, China's already staring down the barrel of a precipitous population bomb that could wreak havoc on its economic ambitions. But the stakes,at least, are as clear as they've ever been.

READ MORE: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Warns China Could Cripple US Military, Economy [PCMag]

More on China: China is Leading the Next Revolution in Mobile Technology

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Former Google CEO Issues Dire Warning About China - futurism.com

Image by Penn Dental Medicine

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine have accidentally discovered that bacteria and fungi can team up to form a mobile "superorganism" that will wreak havoc on your teeth, according to a new study published this month in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers discovered these "interkingdom assemblages" while studying toddlers with severe tooth decay. A closer look revealed that the conjoined bacteria-fungi exhibited a greater resistance to antimicrobials, and in general were much more virulent.

What's worse is that these superorganisms are mobile and can "walk" something they couldn't do before joining forces in an assemblage.

"We noticed the bacteria and fungi forming these assemblages and developing motions we never thought they would possess: a 'walking-like' and 'leaping-like' mobility," said Hyun Koo, a co-corresponding author of the study and a professor at Penn Dental Medicine, in a press release.

"They have a lot of what we call 'emergent functions' that bring new benefits to this assemblage that they could not achieve on their own," he added. "It's almost like a new organism a superorganism with new functions."

According to the study, this emergent mobility is facilitated by small branches of fungal filaments called hyphae, that, as they extend and make contact with another surface, lift the whole assemblage up, carrying the bacteria with it.

The researchers posit that the assemblages gain their increased virulence, resilience, and mobility from their tight cohesion between cells and a strong,glue-like extracellular polymer formed as a result of the bacteria-fungi assembly.

Being both hard to kill and extremely mobile means that these superorganisms can quickly colonize your teeth and cause some pretty nasty tooth decay.

The researchers believe that studying how to target these assemblages could help prevent childhood tooth decay, which affects more than half of all six- to eight-year-old children in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"If you block this binding or disrupt the assemblage before it arrives on the tooth and causes damage, that could be a preventive strategy [against childhood cavities]," Koo suggested.

More on dental health: Lazy Flossers Rejoice! Tiny Robot Shapeshifters Will Brush and Floss for You

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Researchers Say Microbes Assemble Into "Superorganisms" That Crawl Around Your Teeth - Futurism

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It's no secret that Tesla CEO Elon Musk likes to let loose sometimes,in a respite between extremely long work days and an infamously packed schedule.

From lavish weekend-long parties to attending Burning Man, Musk has long been known to attend social gatherings of all kinds, as detailed in a recent New York Times feature.

And, perhaps unsurprisingly, recreational drug use is a topic that seems to come up a lot in his company.

According to the NYT, Musk likes to pass around a chartpurporting to explain why 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and psilocybin mushrooms are healthier choices than alcohol.

As for taking these drugs himself, the richest man in the world seems to prefer playing it safe whatever that means in this context.

"I have been with him on mild exploratory journeys," David Marglin, a longtime friend of Musk's met him at Burning Man, told the NYT. "And he appreciates the value of those journeys."

"Nothing out of control or wild," he added, "but its all night, and theres dancing and revelry."

Then there was the time when musician Azealia Banks accused Musk of being on Twitter "while on acid" back in 2018, which Musk disputed.

However, Musk has long maintained that we should seriously consider the health benefits of these kinds of drugs.

"I think, generally, people should be open to psychedelics," Musk said during a 2021 interview. "A lot of people making laws are kind of from a different era, so I think, as the new generation gets into political power, I think we will see greater receptivity to the benefits of psychedelics."

Musk maintains that psychedelics may actually be better than commonly used drugs, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which are often prescribed to treat depression.

In April, Musk tweeted that "Ive talked to many more people who were helped by psychedelicsand ketamine than SSRIsand amphetamines."

But that doesn't mean we should take him by his word after all, he's a business magnate, not a neuroscientist.

And it's worth noting that while psilocybin is generally seen as fairly safe by doctors, the same isn't necessarily true of MDMA, known for causing intense euphoria and sometimes brutal hangovers. It might not be a disaster to take it every once in a while, but it's widely established that abusing it frequently can lead to a wide range of neurological issues.

There certainly has been plenty of recent interest and a significant number of small studies by the scientific community to study the potential therapeutic use cases of psychedelic and other recreational drugs.

For instance, some studies have found that the psilocybin can improve the symptoms of depression. Scientists have also found that LSD-based drugs could also help with anxiety and depression.

The evidence, however, is still preliminary and many of these studies are still too small to draw any definitive conclusions.Methodologically, it's also impossible to establish a meaningful control group, because if someone starts tripping, it becomes pretty clear to them that they didn't take the placebo.

But Musk, for one, is a firm believer in their potential and he's willing to go out of his way to prove it to you.

READ MORE: Elon Musk Has the Worlds Strangest Social Calendar [The New York Times]

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Elon Musk Has Reportedly Been Telling Friends About Benefits of Shrooms and MDMA - Futurism

Who's telling the truth here?He Said, He Said

After reports emerged that Elon Musk had allegedly been in contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO smacked them down in classically Muskian fashion.

"I have spoken to Putin only once and that was about 18 months ago," Musk tweeted in response to the claims. "The subject matter was space."

This response runs counter to reports from analyst Ian Bremmer, the founder of the Eurasia Group political risk consultancy, who in a note to subscribers claimed that Musk had been speaking with the Russian president regarding the invasion of Ukraine, and that Putin was "prepared to negotiate" if Ukraine accepted the Russia's annexation demands.

Bremmer went on to say in the note, which was viewed byVice,Bloomberg, and other news outlets, that he'd discussed the purported peace talks with Musk a few weeks prior and that the Russian demands were mirrored by the billionaire's now-infamous Twitter poll in which he asked his followers whether Ukraine should give in to specific Russian demands.

That poll, while wildly unpopular in the West, was apparently viewed favorably by the Kremlin, with officials cracking jokes that seemed to denote a sort of backhanded affection for Musk.

"I wasnt planning on writing about this," Bremmer wrote in the subscriber note, adding that "it feels important to write about whats happening."

In response to yet another tweet in the thread, Musk went on to say that it would be "pointless" for him to speak with Putin, given that "there is currently no overlap between Russian and Ukrainian demands."

While it's now unclear which figure is lying, it should be noted that Musk has heretofore seemed pretty supportive of Ukraine amid its invasion from its large and powerful neighbor, and even was reported to have spoken with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in March of this year.

More Elon-ism:Professor of Engineering Issues Brutal Dig at Elon Musk, Sparking Backlash

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Elon Musk Says He Has Not Been Talking to Putin, Thank You Very Much - Futurism