Beethoven, Future, Universe, Coffee, Sight
Beethoven's Funniest Symphony
Inside the Score | YouTube | 12th August 2020
Beethoven's 8th symphony, often overshadowed by the 7th and the 9th, is filled with mischievous comic twists. "Just when we think it's all over with a big blast, Beethoven reduces the dynamic to the quietest possible, and ends with [an] unfinished fragment of the first theme. We thought he'd end with a big bang, but he tricked us!" (8m04s)
The Fake Futurism of Elon Musk
Tom Nicholas | 9th August 2020
Henry Ford, a controversial automobile innovator much like Elon Musk, traded on the almost "religious belief in the future" of the 20th century. Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" – a trust in the neoliberal status quo -- seemed to signal the death of this futurism. Musk's "appeal lies less in his specific proposals than in the more fundamental fact that he answers a contemporary desire to believe in the future again" (27m14s)
Half The Universe Was Missing...Until Now
Veritasium | YouTube | 31st July 2020
Baryons (which include protons and neutrons) should make up 5% of the universe, but they only seem to make up 2.5% – the "missing baryon problem." Computer simulations suggest that "they are out there, just in between the galaxies, in these sheets, or filaments, and they're very spread out." They are only detectable because of Fast Radio Bursts, millisecond-long pulses from the other side of the universe (14m09s)
The Global Coffee Crisis Is Coming
Vox | YouTube | 10th August 2020
Arabica – the most popular high-end coffee species – is highly susceptible to changes in heat and rain. Climate change, unsurprisingly, is taking a toll. In Colombia, one of the global centers of coffee production, "changing weather patterns have made it hard to predict the life cycle of the coffee plant," and so the environmental crisis is snowballing into an economic one (11m33s)
Catchy Video Of The Week
A funky, growling electro-pop banger paired with lightning-in-a-bottle visuals
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