Five Bullets 4.7.23
This week: Repatriation, REACH, Artemis & more
Hello and welcome back to Circles In Space for Five Bullet Friday, where each Friday I share some interesting stuff I collected during the week.
If you’re new to Circles In Space, I wrote a bit about myself and my newsletter.
Good morning and happy Friday everyone! It’s a cool and partly cloudy Spring day here in New York City.
Earlier this week, I reported for jury duty but wasn’t assigned to a case. I blogged about my experience and thoughts on the challenges facing the jury in former President Trump’s case who was arraigned in Manhattan on Tuesday, a historic first.
In other news, I created a Twitter account this week. I know I’m very late to the party but I thought I’d give it a go. I’m not quite sure how or what I’m going to use it for but I’ve been having fun testing it out.
On to this week’s topics.
This week’s bullets:
Are museums celebrating cultural history or clinging to stolen treasures? Nat Geo covers recent repatriation efforts by museums to return stolen and looted artifacts to their country of origin. During the colonial era, expeditions from Britain, France and Germany were sent to Africa and beyond to steal artifacts for display in museums. The objects since languishing in museums include priceless ancestral heirlooms and even human remains - the U.S. National Museum of Natural History returned the remains of almost 7,000 people. A new generation of museum curators and political leaders seek to honor repatriation requests by acknowledging wrongdoing and transferring control of these objects to their rightful stewards.
Jill Lepore’s article The Data Delusion explores how other forms of knowledge fell by the wayside once computer-analyzed data became the norm and why using data to determine human behavior doesn’t always work. A particularly interesting fact: data science has its origins in espionage.
“That Netflix can predict what you want to watch, that Google knows which sites to serve you—these miracles are the result of tools developed by spies during the Cold War. Commerce in the twenty-first century is espionage for profit.” - The Data Delusion
Installed at the 34th Street Herald Square N and R subway platforms since 1996, REACH - New York is an urban musical instrument by artist Christopher Janney. The instrument resembles a green beam suspended above both the uptown and downtown platforms. When commuters wave their hand in front of one of the ‘eyes’, a sound is triggered - either from melodic instruments including marimba or flute to nature or forest sounds. REACH is designed to get people to musically interact with one another.
NASA has chosen its crew for the Artemis II moon mission. Scheduled for late 2024, the four astronauts will take a 10 day trip around the moon and back, paving the way for future moon landing missions in 2025. The crew is comprised of three Americans and one Canadian and includes the first woman and the first person of color to reach the moon. The mission marks NASA’s first trip to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1973.
Apple has released its new classical music app seeking to improve the genre’s streamability (apparently the issue is in the metadata). I’ve been testing the app out this week and listening to lots of new music including Raphael Feuillatre’s Visages Baroques.
I've played with the REACH instrument before. It's cool to see amidst the crowded, dark, and dirty subways haha.
“Commerce in the twenty-first century is espionage for profit.” Wow, truth!