Why Don't We Have Iridium Tools?

Stardew Valley offers players the opportunity to grow crops, rear livestock, and mine, using tools often present in video games such as the pickaxe, axe, and hoe. Unlike other video games, one of the most precious materials within Stardew Valley is iridium, with players being able to upgrade tools to iridium quality during late stages of the game. This begs the question, why are iridium tools not used in the real-world? This paper will consider the properties of iridium, and cost of materials to answer this question, suggesting instead that platinum-iridium alloys would create more suitable tools

How Good Is Your First Wordle Guess?

Wordle is a 5-letter word guessing game used by millions daily. Debates have been sparked as to which word is the most effective first guess. This paper poses a simpler new score-based model that can mathematically judge how good your guess is. Have you been fooled by an incorrect suggestion online

Why does Michael sleep for hours after consuming a family size chicken pot pie?

The classic US sitcom “The Office” follows the day-to-day working life of a Dunder Mifflin paper office in Scranton, with Michael Scott being the incredibly erratic yet surprisingly successful boss. Michael decides to ingest a whole family-size pot pie for lunch, resulting in him falling into a deep sleep for hours. Whilst doing so, everyone else in the office changes the clocks and tricks him into leaving work early. This paper will investigate the relationship between digestion, hormones, and neurotransmitters to explain the mechanisms by which Michael fell into his deep slumber

Beyond Borders: Navigating Cultural Sensitivities In Presenting Tulu Ritual Objects In Western Museums

The Tulu region of Karnataka has evolved various forms of performance-based rituals invoking the native guardian spirits, heroes, animals, etc. One such major seasonal festival of this region, Bhutakola, celebrates the several guardian spirits and tutelary deities (calleddaivas and bhutas) who protect the villages of Tulunadu. These deities are manifest during the festivals through ritual objects–in particular, masks, breastplates, and anklets–that are worn by a human performers. However, these objects have been displaced and displayed at American Art Museums through art collectors, enthusiasts, and the art market. I study the material dimensions of the Bhutakola ritual and its ritual efficacy, and its subsequent of these objects and their subsequent display in museums. I then ask: how might the identities of these objects change once they are displaced and displayed? To borrow from Richard Davis, what are the “disruptions and transformations” of these objects from their previous lives? Keywords: Bhutakola, Tulunadu, Museum Objects, Masks, South Asi

The Feral Garden Of The More-Than-Panorama Museum

This essay relates the story of a panorama museum’s care and response to Los Angeles’ multi-layered urban development and surplus materials from its most understudied space :the back garden. Connected to the rear of LA’s Union Theatre, which houses the nineteenth-century Euro-American style Velaslavasay Panorama (VP), is a garden of thick, entangled plants, with stone paths snaking beneath string lights. As the visitor traverses the ‘jungle’, she glimpses architecture like the Pavilion of the Verdant Dream with a wooden door and ornamental lattices, and the green hexagonal Arulent Gazebo with a copper-tiled roof. The garden instantiates the ‘feral’ DIY LA art that the VP curators practice, transporting thevisitor from a site of virtual travel to a site of ‘rootedness’ in the moment. Centering on the concept of ‘feral’, this essay presents the Velaslavasay garden as an organic experimental part of the more-than-panorama museum. Keywords: Feral art, painted panorama, heterotopia, neighbourhood, Los Angele

“Devouring The Soil’s Words” – Margaux Schwab from 'Foodculture Days' In Vevey on Multispecies Curating as Grounded Practice and Entangled Metabolisms

Founded in 2017 in Vevey, Switzerland, by Margaux Schwab, 'foodculture days' is a publicly funded cultural format that provides a platform –understood in the broadest sense of institutional framing– to share and build knowledge around food as a medium for convivial practices of nourishment for all species. By fostering longstanding relations and collaborations between local practitioners, such as farmers, cooks, gastronomes, winemakers, activists, and gardeners, with a globally interconnected network of artists, scientists, philosophers and researchers, the complexities of environmental and social justice in the realm of food are addressed in different strands and activities of the initiative. Its main project, a ten-day long festival that emerges every two years in the town of Vevey, is a moment of reflection, gathering and dialogue that allows the public and practitioners involved to rediscover the urban space and everyday locations, such as markets, streets, cafes, shops, agricultural initiatives, museums, and galleries, from a perspective where food, art and ecology intersect. Our conversation about the emergence, the different strands of 'foodculture days' and their vision for the future is based on a shared conviction that cultural programming attempting to address global topics rooted in a local context and focussing on more-than-human timescales and process-oriented art practices needs formats within different spatial and temporal regimes. Keywords: multispecies curating, radical hospitality, conviviality, grounded practice

Can you wake up by True Love’s Kiss?

Fairy tales have been around for many years and the Disney version of fairy tales often portray “true love’s kiss” as a magical force that can overcome any spell. While this is fiction, there are biological and neurobiological responses to kissing and romantic love, which have real scientific implications. This paper explores the neurobiological basis of romantic attraction, particularly focusing on the neurotransmitters, hormonal responses, and brain activity associated with kissing. This paper further examines the physiological responses that can theoretically contribute to the reawakening of a person in a coma, offering a different perspective on the interaction between external stimuli and brain function

To Counter-Colonise Brazilian History Instead Of Decolonising It: On The Problematics Around Decolonisation In Museological Exhibitions

An observation from the perspective of Social and Experimental Museology on the interventions carried out in the long-term exhibitions at the Museu Histórico Nacional in Rio de Janeiro as part of the project “Decolonial Brazil: Other Stories.” This article analyses the agents involved in the project, the history and context in which the national museum is situated, and introduces Nêgo Bispo's concept of ‘Counter-colonisation’ to highlight museological processes as tools for questioning the past and experimenting in the present. Keywords: Museology; Brazilian History; Decolonialism; Experimental-Museology; Counter-Colonisatio

Once Upon a Time – Is it possible to turn straw into gold?

In Once Upon a Time (OUAT), a series based on fairytale characters and their real stories from another realm, one of the characters, Rumplestiltskin (The Dark One), possesses the magical ability to spin straw into gold. While this is clearly fiction, the concept raises an intriguing scientific question: is it possible to extract gold from straw in the real world? Advances in genetic engineering have made it possible to modify plants for phytoextraction. This paper will explore the process by which plants take up gold from the soil, through phytomining

Parasitic mastermind: Exploring the science of Plaga Araña

In the computer game called Resident Evil 4 (2023), there are a plethora of enemies who have been infected by a fictional parasite called las Plagas. The game features a wide range of different types of Plaga parasites, with a notable example being Plaga Araña. This paper explores this particular parasite’s biology and how it is able to control its host. Comparisons will be made to real-world parasites to examine any similarities and differences