Links and Thinks 2022-11-02
Links and Thinks 2022-11-02
Art, science, poetry, technology and television
I had planned on using my wordpress blog as a repository of all the detritus that I find on the web, and use substack as a place for long form writing. But wordpress is annoying me - especially the obnoxiously-placed ads - so I have decided (at least for now) to go all-in with substack.
A little bit of art…
Alan Moore is done with comic books.
There were an awful lot of headlines saying ‘Comics Have Grown Up’. I tend to think that, no, comics hadn’t grown up. There were a few titles that were more adult than people were used to. But the majority of comics titles were pretty much the same as they’d ever been. It wasn’t comics growing up. I think it was more comics meeting the emotional age of the audience coming the other way.”
A little bit of science…
Nicotiana benthamiana is a model plant from northern Australia. It is an excellent plant to study gene silencing and functional genomics. In biotechnology, it is used to produce heterologous proteins for use in medicine.
Dromius is a genus of ground beetle native to the Palearctic (including Europe), the Nearctic, the Near East, and North Africa.
A little bit of poetry…
John Betjeman on the Monitor arts program (BBC, 1959).
There’s something very moving about watching Betjeman walking around the post-War ruins of London, nine years on, while reciting his own poems.
A little bit of technology…
Relevance of floppy disks in the age of cloud computing.
Who buys floppy disks in an age when more sophisticated storage devices like CD-ROMS, DVDs and USB flash drives have been made increasingly obsolete by internet and cloud storage? Those in the embroidery, tool and die, and airline industry, especially those involved in aircraft maintenance, says Persky.
A little bit of TV…
I am watching Magpie Murders (no “The”), and I am enjoying it.
New York Times review here.
Telegraph review here.
It is a whodunit about whodunits within a whodunit.
This is the second show this year where Lesley Manville and Claire Rushbrook appear as sisters (the laudable Sherwood being the other).