(via)
“Humanity is good. Some people are terrible and broken, but humanity is good. I believe that.” - Hank Green.
Me too.
(Source: huntersonahotelbed)
This is the oldest piece of music known to humankind. It’s engraved in cuneiform on a tablet from 1400 BC. It was a hymn to their goddess Nikkal.
I showed this to Eric, noting that I could believe this came from Iron and Wine or Andrew Bird. I am awed at this this path of humanity, music, history, beauty - from cuneiform to the Web. The world is an astoundingly wonderful place.
(Source: missjessicasmith)
Greek and Armenian Orphan Refugees Experience the Sea for the First Time, Marathon, Greece (image courtesy of Trevor Paglen)
One of one hundred images nano-etched on an ultra-archival disc in perpetual Earth orbit (via brainpickings)
Placing a satellite into geosynchronous orbit means placing it into the deep and alien time of the cosmos itself. What, if anything, does it mean that the spacecraft we build are undoubtedly humankind’s longest-lasting material legacy?
What does it mean that, in the near or far future, there will be no evidence of human civilization on the earth’s surface, but our planet will remain perpetually encircled by a thin ring of long-dead spacecraft? Perhaps it means nothing. Or perhaps the idea of meaning itself breaks down in the vastness of time.
On the other hand, what would happen if one of our own probes found a graveyard of long-dead spacecraft in orbit around one of Saturn’s moons? Surely it would mean something. What if we were to find a spacecraft from a different time — a spacecraft that contained a message or provided a glimpse into the culture that produced it? - Trevor Paglen
When you use the word ‘flummox,’ for instance, your tongue is rolling across the same territory of every person who has ever spoken that word. It carries every sentiment every person has ever meant when speaking that word, plus your own. They say that every third breath you breathe contains at least one of the same molecules Caesar exhaled as he was dying.
Muriel Rukeyser has said, ‘The world is made of stories, not atoms.’ Think of the words, then, the same words you breathe that have been inhaled and exhaled throughout history. If you’re looking for a link, there it is. They are only shapes and noises formed into meaning. How many shapes and noises have crossed the tongues of those who have come before? And this exact shape and noise has crossed centuries to come to you, fully formed … Words say simultaneously too much and too little. This is why they are perfect for communication, most people’s lives operating in the uncomfortable balance between too much and too little. Nothing more precise.
” B.K. Loren, from “Word Hoard” in Parabola, v.28, no.3, August 2003 (via apoetreflects)
