Technology is always changing, quickly becoming dated or even obsolete as new updates are released. Remember LaserDiscs? What about 8-tracks? For Japanese musical trio Open Reel Ensemble, analog contraptions meet digital combinations to make unique and experimental sounds. Using reel-to-reel recorders from the 1970s and 1980s as musical instruments, the stage and studio setup is just as interesting as the recordings.
Delving into a nostalgic technology, the group describes their hybrid contraptions and techniques as “magnetic folklore instruments. They tap into a sense of nostalgia for reel-to-reel, also known as magnetic tapes. They’ve described their genre as “Magnetikpunk.”
China and Japan are also building “maglev” (magnetic levitation) train lines, the article points out — though it also includes this quote from rail expert and author Christian Wolmar. “Hyperloop is unworkable. The infrastructure it needs would be amazingly expensive to build and it can’t deliver the capacity to compete with high-speed railways or airlines. “It doesn’t integrate with existing transport modes, the infrastructure required to reach city centers would cause intolerable noise and disruption. And there are doubts over energy costs, capacity and passenger safety if something goes wrong at such high speeds…. “[T]he economics of it just don’t work.”
Scientists have captured an exceptionally rare, high-resolution view of an active region that produced two powerful X-class solar flares—an achievement rarely possible from Earth. Using the GREGOR solar telescope in Tenerife, researchers recorded the explosive activity of the sun’s most energetic sunspot group of 2025, revealing twisted magnetic structures and the early stages of flare ignition with unprecedented detail. The flares triggered fast coronal mass ejections that lit up Earth’s skies with vivid auroras in the nights that followed.
morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.
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