1. Strange mesoamerican rave gone wrong (or is it “right”?)

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2. My kind of democracy

Sisi wins Egypt election with 97 percent of valid votes – France24 – 02.04.2018

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been re-elected for a second term with 97.08 percent of valid votes cast in an election last week, the election authority said Monday.

The head of the authority Lasheen Ibrahim said at a press conference that turnout was 41.05 percent of the almost 60 million registered voters.

Sisi’s sole rival and an erstwhile ardent supporter, Moussa Mostafa Moussa, won 2.92 percent of the valid votes, Ibrahim said.

Moussa entered the election at the very last moment after first leading a re-election campaign for Sisi, saving the vote from having just one candidate.

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3. The clouds of Venus don’t hide life; they ARE life.

Life Floating in the Clouds of Venus – Motherboard 02.04.2018

As detailed in a paper published recently in Astrobiology, studies of organisms capable of withstanding extreme environments on earth—appropriately known as extremophiles—has made the prospect microbial life on Venus more plausible in recent years. In fact, pockets of carbon dioxide-munching microbes adrift in the Venusian atmosphere may explain mysterious dark patches that have been observed in Venus’ clouds for over a century.

Moreover, conditions get far more Earth-like in the low-to-mid Venusian atmosphere (around 25 miles up). Here, the atmospheric pressure and gravity are approximately the same as Earth, and temperatures range between 32 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Taken together, these are all conditions that make Venus’ atmosphere a promising candidate for extraterrestrial life in the solar system.

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4. Well played

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5. Anything called Dragon Bookbinding deserves some attention

Resurrecting the art of China’s scale bookbinding – CNN 02.04.2018

At his studio in Beijing, artist Zhang Xiaodong layers hundreds of sheets of thin paper on top of one another until they form a complete and impeccable image. When the chapters of his elaborate books are unfolded, the pages move like the bellows of an accordion.

This ancient Chinese art, known as dragon scale bookbinding, stretches back more than 1,000 years to the Tang dynasty. Passed down between generations of royals and literate upper class families, the finished works were thought to resemble dragons, each page appearing like a “scale.”

 

And you Western peasants are reading normal books, turning one page after the other like some kind of an imbecile or Mongol barbarian.

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