Scientists estimated how many alien societies in the Milky Way can send interstellar messages. But just because they can talk does not mean we will hear them.

Motherboard

NASA intends to return to the moon to stay. The infrastructure needed to make it possible is explained. Narrated by 'Star Wars' actress Kelly Marie Tran.

Credit: NASA / via VideoFromSpace YouTube

“If they had [breached the fence],” the president continued, “they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen.”

The Guardian

Launched from a submarine, the Poseidon drone is shaped like a giant torpedo and nicknamed the “Doomsday Drone.” The weapon is designed to send a deadly tsunami wave into populated coastlines — it carries a nuclear warhead weighing up to two megatons and can autonomously cross the North Atlantic.

Asia Times

The Worm showcases over 300 images from NASA’s archives chosen with one simple criteria: each photograph must feature ‘the worm’.

Standards Manual

The Trump administration has discussed whether to conduct the first U.S. nuclear test explosion since 1992 in a move that would have far-reaching consequences for relations with other nuclear powers and reverse a decades-long moratorium on such actions.

The Washington Post

People desperately need to go back to work and save what they can of their lives. But Mike Davis argues that a rapid reopening of the economy would only result in unspeakable tragedy for millions.

Mike Davis | Jacobin

In some ways, space isn’t so much essential as it is inertial.

Ingrid Burrington | Engadget

Hey so here’s the paper Cyborgs and Space (1960) by Clynes and Kline in which the word cyborg was first introduced. It’s short. Here’s the first line:

"Space travel challenges mankind not only technologically but also spiritually, in that it invites man to take an active part in his own biological evolution."

Our geological era, the Anthropocene, in which human activity is the dominant agent of change in our ecosystems, is pretty fraught. That line makes me wonder…

Matt Webb | Interconnected

"So, the blog is formally ending this month, May MMXX.

My weblog is a collateral victim of Covid19, which has become a great worldwide excuse to stop whatever you were doing."

Bruce Sterling | Beyond the Beyond

For the final push we’re turning the Sci-Fi spotlight on the epic, Ultimate ’80s Sci-Fi Movie Mashup!

via HyperDrive YouTube Channel

It’s been five years since Mad Max: Fury Road came out in theaters, but if the director George Miller has his way, Furiosa will soon ride again. The film is a prequel centered on a young Furiosa, and Miller is searching for an actress in her 20s to take over the role.

Movies | The New York Times

We Are the Mutants is a weekly updated magazine focusing on the history and analysis of Cold War-era popular and outsider culture, with a strong emphasis on speculative (sci-fi, fantasy, horror), genre, pulp, cult, occult, subculture, and anti-establishment media.

The title of the magazine is taken from graffiti seen at the University of California at Berkeley in the late 1960s: “The bomb has already dropped, and we are the mutants.”

Self-publishing on the internet is a rewarding and powerful experience – you can very quickly produce work that is accessible to billions of people for very low cost.

This library will introduce you not just to code resources, but also to examples of alternative forms of screen-based interaction and the technologies they are based on.

by Jake Dow-Smith

The explorers who set one of the last meaningful records on earth.

The New Yorker

Kim Stanley Robinson will publish his next novel in October: The Ministry for the Future. As with many of his recent novels, like New York 2140, 2312, or Aurora, his focus is firmly on the state of the Earth, and the effect that climate change has on human civilization.

Tor.com

I dig this illustration Ganzeer shared in his latest newsletter, created for a reprinted version of a popular blog post he wrote a while back, about life with the coronavirus.

What felt impossible has become thinkable. The spring of 2020 is suggestive of how much, and how quickly, we can change as a civilization.

By Kim Stanley Robinson | The New Yorker