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Tag: architecture

let there be light, for maybe seven minutes: 12feb26

Published February 12, 2026 by Warren Ellis

It has stopped raining for whole minutes.

As I write this, it’s darkening down again. I am still completely tapped out, which is getting really fucking frustrating now. So I’m going to leave this here and hope for a comeback tomorrow.

TODAY:

STATUS: 💀
READING: THE QUEEN’S AGENT: FRANCIS WALSINGHAM AT THE COURT OF ELIZABETH I (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: Ambient Daily 48

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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UFO Cuisine – 27jan26

Published January 27, 2026 by Warren Ellis

This is a restaurant called Iris in Norway. I really want to go there one day.

The whole article, which has lots more photos, is fascinating. But I kind of love that Nordic hyperlocal-style cuisine is shedding the rustic authenticity bit and going UFO.

OPERATIONS: got an extra little task dropped on me last night, so I am basically rammed for another week to ten days now
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)

At the end of September, Britain’s foreign secretary, Alec Douglas-Home, spoke with President Eisenhower, who said that he wished that Lumumba ‘would fall into a river of crocodiles.’ Douglas-Home replied that ‘regretfully, we have lost many of the techniques of old-fashioned diplomacy.’


MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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6dec25

Published December 6, 2025 by Warren Ellis

TODAY:

I need to get around 10 pages of script and probably one rough outline out the door today. I also have 3000 unread stories in my RSS reader! Most of me is ready to curl up somewhere with a book.

Currently rebuilding the board for the newsletter, which returns on 11 January 2026.

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morning computer fish church

Published November 10, 2025 by Warren Ellis

White Arkitekter restores Gothenburg’s fish church.

A new collagen fingerprinting tool can help scientists identify species from archaeological bone fragments. Pacific islanders of the late Stone Age, also known as the Neolithic period, were master fishers. Archaeological evidence indicates that these groups caught fish both inshore as well as in open waters.

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Now, researchers have found a way to shed light on the types of fish they feasted on and the advanced fishing techniques used to capture them. The new Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) tool can detect the unique chemical fingerprint hidden within collagen, a structural protein that makes up most of bone mass.

The researchers tested 131 archaeological bones and accurately identified three tuna and five shark varieties

Antarctic fish have built a sprawling neighborhood of neatly arranged nests in the Weddell Sea — a surprising display of organization in some of the coldest waters on Earth. The discovery suggests that these fish strategically group their nests to better protect their eggs from predators, adding to evidence that the Weddell Sea harbors complex, vulnerable ecosystems worth preserving, researchers report October 29 in Frontiers.

The Milky Way galaxy is like a gigantic ocean gyre or eddy that spins and wobbles around its center.

But our home galaxy also has a colossal wave rippling through it, pulling and pushing an ocean of stars and cosmic dust in its wake, according to newly released images from the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope.

The images show that this wave of motion emanates from the center of the Milky Way and takes up a large portion — a little less than half — of the galaxy’s entire body, which itself is warped in the outer edges. Looking at the galaxy in a vertical sideways view, you see that stars float above or below the disc’s dusty central body, as if they were fish bobbing up and down in a wave of water after a boat passes by.

morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/

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morning computer by rail

Published November 3, 2025 by Warren Ellis

new chapter in Britain’s railway story has been marked with the unveiling of Rail Clock, which is the country’s first national clock design in more than half a century.

Revealed today (16 October) at London Bridge station, the striking new timepiece by Design Bridge and Partners is set to become a landmark of British design and a powerful symbol of connection across the UK’s rail network.

Commissioned by Network Rail to coincide with the railway’s 200th anniversary in 2025, the project aimed to create a standardised clock that could unify the passenger experience across the country while celebrating the rich heritage of British rail design. The result is a 1.8-metre physical and digital timepiece that fuses timeless symbolism with modern functionality, and reimagines one of the nation’s most recognisable icons in the process.

Swathes of glass and steel make up the sinuous exterior of the new Gare de Mons station in Belgium, which has been designed by Swiss-Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

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Located along the international Paris to Brussels train line in Mons, the station‘s sculptural structure is organised around a raised gallery volume that stretches 165 metres across the site.

Conceptualised by Calatrava as a “monumental bridge”, its volume traverses a series of 350-metre-long platforms and bus stops that extend outwards from the gallery’s underside.

morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/

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morning computer america the abandoned

Published October 6, 2025 by Warren Ellis

America The Abandoned.

Social media usage peaked in 2022 and has been on a steady decline since. An analysis of 250,000 adults across more than 50 countries by the digital audience insights company GWI found that adults aged 16 and older spent an average of two hours and 20 minutes per day on social platforms at the end of 2024. That figure is down almost 10% from 2022. The decline is most pronounced among teenagers and people in their twenties. Usage has traced a smooth curve upward and then downward over the past decade. This is not simply the unwinding of increased screen time during pandemic lockdowns. The data also captured a shift in how people use these platforms. The share of people who report using social media to stay in touch with friends, express themselves or meet new people has fallen by more than a quarter since 2014. Opening the apps reflexively to fill spare time has risen. North America is an exception to the global trend. Social media consumption there continues to climb. By 2024 it reached levels 15% higher than Europe. Meta and OpenAI recently announced new social platforms that will be filled with AI-generated short-form videos.

morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/

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