WARREN ELLIS LTD

I’m currently trying to clear my RSS backlog.  It’s just hit 33 C here, so thinking about actual work is off the cards for a while, and the clock is ticking down to the point where I’ll have to abandon the office.

But I just saw this new image of Jupiter captured by the Webb telescope:

Is it me, or does it have a weirdly dated feel to it?  It’s sepia, with overexposure elements.  It’s filtered, like NASA made it almost Instagram-ready.

There was something of a rant on the Real Life Mag newsletter the other day:

Many people felt the impulse to share these widely shared photos again and put their own stamp of breathless wonder on them, vicariously participating in this one small step for humankind. The stars become our selfies, a pretense to express an optimistic disposition, an enduring belief in “trusting the science” and the wonders of progress despite all the depredations of the “hell sites.”

While I don’t agree with the entirety of the piece, which tends to the default position of “why do we care about space while the planet is boiling”/ ”why do you like things I don’t want you to like” / “it’s time for you to be sad now”… I have to admit, this is a selfie for the hell sites.  I love the photo, I really do. It’s actually the most compelling image I’ve seen from Webb so far. But the first images from Webb seem to have been little more than social media opportunities.  That is an expensive thing to connect to an Instagram app.

Anyway.  Pretty picture.  Like, save, bookmark.

Things are about to get scary hot over here, so I’m trying to finish work and then prep the house and garden. Old British houses, as I always tell people, are built to retain heat, not flush it, and they don’t come with AC, so I’m going to have a job on my hands keeping everyone and everything alive. I already had a member of my family go to hospital during the last heat spike.

The newsletter will release as normal on Sunday, but things will be quieter here. If it hits 38C outside, it will easily be 41C here in my office, and, frankly, fuck a bunch of that.