A decent number of articles for this month from different fields to boot.
To start off, we have an astonishing announcement about fully synthetic cells, that is living cells that have no ancestors and they are entirely made in the laboratory. Nicknamed Spudcells, these are bubbles of liposomes containing chromosomes engineered to be a minimum viable set. The cells can reproduce after a fashion but arguably are not truly alive because they are dependent on a diet of DNA-free liposomes to survive and thrive. They have no metabolism and do nothing but execute the instructions in their DNA to replicate provided they have the right building materials available. Even so this is a huge step in creating the earliest forms of purely synthetic life and is the stuff of real science-fiction brought to reality.
Next we have a more modest but still interesting paper that studies the cognitive impact of participating in the annual Ramadan fasting. What’s cool here is that to measure potential differences in cognitive performance, the researchers used data from tournament chess games, covering almost 10,000 players from 178 countries. The result is that they were unable to detect substantial differences in between Muslim players’ during Ramadan and outside of it, implying that the cognitive impact is minimal.
It has become a truism that discourse on all social media trends towards the negative. This paper expands on that, arguing that when many people comment on the same topic online, there is a natural urge to differentiate yourself, to say something different from what has already been said. To that end, users tend to make increasingly negative comments over time. They observe that this tendency is especially strong when the initial post is positive, prompting users to counteract that positivity by making critical comments.
Finally we have the news that astronomers have detected for the first time an atmosphere surrounding an Earth-like rock planet orbiting within the habitable zone of its star. Before anyone gets too excited though, what they actually detected was helium escaping from the upper atmosphere of the planet in question, LS 1140 b about 48 light-years away. This is enough evidence that the planet retains an atmosphere but should not be construed as meaning that the atmosphere is mainly made of helium. It does serve as a good demonstration that their methodology for detecting atmospheres around exoplanets work and suggests that this is only the first of many such discoveries.
This Japanese series and the manga that inspired it is so beloved that there are Korean and Chinese versions of the show. My wife mentioned it in passing a while and since it’s leaving Netflix soon, I thought I should give it a shot. The format with its short episodes of straightforward stories, each highlighting a dish is easy to digest. It’s also as easy to like as the comfort food it features. Unfortunately it’s equally as insubstantial and far too sentimental. I can see the appeal for some audiences after watching one season but it’s not for us.
The Odyssey had a lot of negative press going in with critics zeroing in on his ahistorical choices and an overly modern interpretation of the Greek classic. But when the film finally hit the cinemas, it looks like Christopher Nolan has done it again and won over both the critics and audiences. I admit that I had my doubts as well and certainly it’s simplistic in how it casts Odysseus as a flawed hero but still a hero. But sitting down in the cinema before a huge screen, this level of depth is more than good enough as Nolan has delivered an epic, audio-visual experience like no other this year that will effortlessly keep you glued to your seats for its nearly three hours running length.
I’ve said it many times before, I tend to dislike roguelikes because of the lack of long term progression and I’m bad at twitch games. After hearing so much about Hades, I finally sat down to play it and I’m instantly hooked. This might be a roguelike but it is all about long term progression and it’s very twichy but it’s also very forgiving in terms of difficulty. Following everyone’s advice, I turned on God Mode and didn’t look back, which practically guarantees that anyone would be able to beat the game eventually. I still think I did pretty well in getting to the end boss by about the 12th attempt and beating him after another 12 or so deaths.
Political films usually make for heavy watching, especially when they’re about the politics of countries that one has little familiarity with. I’m Still Here is an exception. Despite being quite long, it focuses only on the travails of a single family during the Brazilian military dictatorship of the 1970s and so is fairly easy to grasp. There are plentiful scenes that show how the happy life of the family was shattered by the father being disappeared by the government. It’s well-made and is a worthy record of this family’s struggle. But it’s probably too conventional and too specific a subject to be of interest to non-Brazilians.
People keep talking up this German science-fiction series and how much of a mindbender it is. I was skeptical if it’s even really science-fiction for a long time and so held off. I’ve now taken the time to watch the first season and what do you know, I don’t really consider it to be science-fiction after all. Instead, it’s a mystery box show with time travel at its central conceit. What differentiates it is that it must have been meticulously planned out from the beginning whereas other such shows make shit up as they go along and pretend otherwise. I’m looking at you Lost. This means that in principle, it’s possible to figure out the clues they provide before they drop the big reveals. The show has its issues but the mystery is a fair one so I’m very much down for the next season.
Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut is an emotionally intense adaptation of a memoir by writer Lidia Yuknavitch. As the narrator states at the beginning, it’s a disjointed account as it adheres not to orderly chronology but to the emotional lows of a woman’s formative years. The result is highly impressionistic yet vivid with a powerful mastery of imagery. It’s astounding work for a first-time director and one of the best book adaptations I’ve seen in a while, capturing unspeakable trauma and pain that can hardly be articulated in words.
