Books book review An Evocative, Surreal Debut: Mouth by Puloma Ghosh A review of Puloma Ghosh’s new short story collection. By Alexis Ong | Published on June 11, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Puloma Ghosh’s short story collection, Mouth, pulses with relatability. The taste of awkward social maneuvers and restless impulses form a sweet nostalgia for a younger, weirder time when my body didn’t hurt from just getting out of bed. Whether Ghosh writes about obsession, compulsion, care, aloneness, it’s easy to fall into the rhythms of her characters, particularly the disconnected twentysomething protagonists who evoke the familiar mix of hard-headed rebelliousness and twee precociousness that defines so many MFA aspirations.  This isn’t necessarily a criticism. Mouth is a polished debut, bristling with neat prose and nuanced excursions into speculative presents and futures. The collection is packed with bangers, but at times, feels like Ghosh is making efforts to tame and contextualize her weirdness for a finicky literary audience that might be allergic to anything remotely close to the dreaded subworlds of genre. “In The Winter” felt most guilty of this—the shortest story in the collection which was decidedly not for me. “Natalya,” presented as an autopsy report, is a well-formed experiment with format and tone, but more often than not, felt like a perfunctory and unremarkable post-mortem of a relationship that wasn’t quite on par with the rich peculiarities of its bookmates. “Anomaly” is one such oddball—a seemingly straightforward tale of online dating with a surreal twist, and possibly my favorite in the book. The protagonist works an unfulfilling call center job while encased in a soundproof glass cubicle—a logical extrapolation of our existing surveillance-riddled reality—and half-heartedly spends her spare minutes swiping and ignoring bad icebreakers. She’s also living in a world struggling with a time war rife with spies and timeline-meddling—things usually confined to a grand sci-fi premise—which Ghosh smartly downplays to become an unnerving but very effective contextual backdrop. And when our protagonist does land a date, her would-be paramour suggests going to visit an anomaly, a vaguely menacing tear in spacetime that has inexplicably become a corny tourist attraction supervised by the government. It’s a lovely examination of absurdity and human hubris; after all, what could possibly go wrong at a cosmic aberration that has its own mini-train and fried cheese curd vendor?  Buy the Book Mouth Puloma Ghosh Buy Book Mouth Puloma Ghosh Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Another standout is “Leaving Things,” which does a tremendous job of evoking aloneness and resilience in a place slowly being emptied of human life. The protagonist, a trained vet, attempts to save a pregnant wolf—a bizarre act given that her town is subject to strange and increasing wolf attacks—but is only able to save what she believes is the baby in its belly. “Leaving Things” on its face isn’t a complex story; it’s easy to grasp the symbolic connections that Ghosh offers about the town’s disappearing women, duty of care, and autonomy. It’s an almost comical account of the protagonist’s predicament where Ghosh doesn’t quite follow the predictable trajectory of a love story, nor does she navelgaze on the unexpectedness of surprise motherhood, but builds something fresh and strange and distinctly her own.  When Ghosh is on fire, her prose is incandescent with the heat and bite of personal conviction. What I like best is her treatment of impulsiveness; her best characters are truly carpe diem’ing their way to their most authentic selves in the most bizarre circumstances. Occasionally, though, it’s possible to see where perhaps an early reader may have asked for a little more clarity, or a smidge more exposition or context, to the detriment of Mouth’s overall vibe. It reminds me a little of an old n+1 essay from 2010, MFA or NYC, specifically the increasingly uniform neatness and relatable appeal of MFA program output, while also making me neurotically question my own biases as a reader and critic. Stylistically, Ghosh’s prose also exudes a neat efficiency, but without eroding the sincerity and eccentricity of her ideas, especially when her characters are being fervently horny as is befitting their youth. But in places, like some of the flashbacks in “Lemon Boy,” I’m yanked out of Ghosh’s distinctive cadence by curiously stiff phrasing and the sense of an invasive formality and the diminishing sort of neatness and accessibility laid out in that n+1 essay. Ghosh is better than this, and I hope she knows it.  Still, going down into that New England basement is visceral. In “Lemon Boy,” I am reading the true words of a real-deal Masshole who knows that the real horror of unfinished-basement college parties in Cambridge and Somerville isn’t damp wood or rats, but the monstrous indifference of the people around you.  Mouth is bookended by two of Ghosh’s most powerful stories, “Dessication” and “Persimmons.” The first is a delightful take on coming-of-age stories and identity, where the protagonist slowly befriends an undead girl—another Indian girl—at their small town’s ice rink; there’s also the silhouette of a larger world here that practices conscription for men, which Ghosh skillfully keeps just out of view. It’s a ruthless little story that wields teen-girl figure-skating as a weapon, as well as the inescapably long shadow of immigrant mothers and their legacies; to enter Ghosh’s world through this ice-wrought portal feels like an exquisitely cold, sharp baptism.  On the other end, “Persimmons” is still a mother-centric narrative tied up in responsibilities and legacies, but full of untouchable life and old, decaying structures waiting for the moment of relevance. Ghosh takes the smalltown claustrophobia in “Dessication” and reshapes it to fit a planetary setting in “Persimmons.” The result is a remarkable escalation of tension as the protagonist Uma prepares to fulfill a prophecy that bypassed her mother. Here, Ghosh is extra evocative with places and textures, mirroring her character’s farewell to the physical world. This wet, fleshy rite of fulfillment is how I leave Mouth—a violent burst of obligation, resentment, and vindication. It’s a very different sibling to how the themes are explored in “Dessication,” an almost joyful return to what feels like Ghosh’s raw voice, and a fitting end to a formidable debut. [end-mark] Mouth is published by Astra House. The post An Evocative, Surreal Debut: <em>Mouth</em> by Puloma Ghosh appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays robots Mixtapes for Sad Robots A sentient boombox stands beneath its own window and blasts “In Your Eyes” By Tenacity Plys | Published on June 11, 2024 Photo by Possessed Photography [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by Possessed Photography [via Unsplash] Music makes us more human. It’s an underhyped technology really—certain talented humans are able to transmit complex emotional states to others with very high fidelity, using only soundwaves! There’s a reason music played such a central role in the Voyager probe’s documents on human civilization—to explain humanity without language, one should use either music or math (and math is expressed in human language, so that’s more complicated). I tend to relate to AI characters; whether that’s my nonbinary gender or my neurodivergence is anyone’s guess. In my new graphic novel, the baby artificial intelligence SN_33P—pronounced Sneep, they/them pronouns—gains the ability to feel human emotions by listening to their creator’s old punk albums. They’re able to scan her files and experience every note simultaneously, but gains human-level sentience by listening in real time. (Unfortunately, this also gives them the ability to feel grief about their creator’s impending execution—but I’m getting ahead of myself.) I especially love when an AI has the same kind of existential dread and identity crises that we do—what’s more human than mental illness?? With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to make playlists imagining what kind of music would give higher consciousness to each of my favorite literary AIs. Most of these playlists are a little concerning; the kind of music where you’d ask your friend if they were okay if you saw them listening to it. I hope you worry a couple of your friends with the songs herein! Justice of Toren from Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice Justice of Toren is a musically-inclined artificial intelligence, just like SN_33P! She’s a sentient spaceship in service to a galactic empire with a tradition of lyric poetry and romantic ballads, many of which are featured in the Ancillary Justice books. The plot of the book is driven by Justice of Toren’s love for one of the officers that lived aboard the ship, and her encounter decades later with someone who reminds her of that officer. Justice of Toren eats, sleeps, and breathes lesbian yearning, so I created a playlist to match. It’s got standards like MUNa and boygenius, plus up-and-coming artists like Hemlocke Grove, a Kate Bush-esque artist who writes about heartbreak to the tune of serene 80s synths. Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey HAL9000 also likes music, as does Stanley Kubrick, the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He sings the nursery rhyme “Daisy, Daisy” in the film version of 2001, though classical is generally the vibe of the movie. 2001 is dark and meditative, almost spooky, with Kubrick’s signature emotional detachment. Hal doesn’t even have emotions for the first half of the movie, though his feelings are strong once they develop. He has the monolith to thank for his depression when it manifests, meaning it’s kind of an alien mental illness. In keeping with the film and Hal’s character, I went with generally highbrow depressive music, so you’ll find long, complex compositions in here, dark basslines, and an emphasis on musicianship. Like any sadboy, he can at least take comfort in his superior taste. Ana from Jess Rothenberg’s The Kingdom The Kingdom is about a robotic Disney princess (not really Disney, but like it’s obvious) who has been created to interact with kids at the theme park where she lives. She unexpectedly meets a young, hot guy who works as a janitor at the park and decides to revolt against her creators as a response to her sexual awakening. (Don’t we all?) The book is about exploring your identity after being told who you are your whole life. Ana would listen to Lana del Rey, for her twisted perspective on the prison of femininity. She’s sort of aligned with “femcel” culture—artists like Mitski and Fiona Apple who write intricate meditations on loneliness and bitterness. I also put “Boys Will Be Boys” by Dua Lipa on there, along with “labour” by Paris Paloma and a little Ethel Cain for good measure. Murderbot from Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries The Murderbot Diaries follow a spaceship crew and their assigned robot SecUnit. This particular SecUnit overrides its external orders and names itself Murderbot, but instead of murdering anyone (most of the time) it quiet quits at its job and lazes around watching TV whenever possible. Murderbot is especially obsessed with soap operas. For Murderbot, I’ve chosen dramatic music that feed MB’s hunger for tea, along with high-octane pop of all kinds—Charlie XCX, Ashnikko, Azaelia Banks, and Flo Milli, to name a few. This is a playlist with attitude that’s designed for high-femme bed rotting—it’s by far the “cuntiest” playlist on here, but make no mistake, Murderbot is just as sad as the other bots on this list. Slackbot from Calvin Kasulke’s Several People Are Typing In one of the most fun and original books I’ve read recently, Several People Are Typing, an everyday office worker’s consciousness is accidentally uploaded into the Slack app. He asks Slackbot for help, and Slackbot becomes sentient as it interacts with him, leading to a battle between Slackbot and the office worker for his vacant body back in the real world. Since Slack is the ultimate corporate app (except for its archnemesis Microsoft Teams), I think it would be into vaporwave, the meme genre from 2014. I put some trancewave in there for good measure, and some corporate sounding stock music. Perfect for your next sad company off-site! Klara from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun Klara is the closest to my character SN_33P, because she has the innocence of a child. She’s meant to be childlike, because she’s a kid’s toy programmed to act like a friend their age. Like most Ishiguro protagonists, she’s a little naive. She really loves the sun, because she’s solar powered, and her dearest wish is to make her owner Josie happy—even as Josie grows up and out of her friendship with Klara, Toy Story style. The result is perhaps the most depressed playlist of them all. It starts with Sufjan Stevens’ “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” and ends with “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman. In between, there’s FKA twigs, Phoebe Bridgers, and Ethel Cain at their most plaintive and vulnerable. When your inner child is feeling especially wounded, this is the playlist you need. [end-mark] The post Mixtapes for Sad Robots appeared first on Reactor.

The son of a sitting president has been found guilty in a federal criminal court for the first time. A Wilmington, Delaware, jury found Hunter Biden guilty on all three federal felony gun charges he faced Tuesday morning. He violated laws meant to prevent drug addicts from owning firearms, the jury decided.   The case related to his purchase of a revolver in 2018. The prosecution says he lied about his drug use when he bought the gun six years ago. Tuesday marked the 12-member jury’s second day of deliberation in the criminal federal gun trial of President Joe Biden’s only living son in Wilmington. Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty. Biden could face up to 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $750,000, though as a first-time offender, he is likely to receive a shorter sentence than the maximum. The sentence is up to the judge. “Yawn,” said Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA founder and CEO, in response to the verdict.  Hunter Biden guilty.Yawn.The true crimes of the Biden Crime Family remain untouched.This is a fake trial trying to make the Justice system appear "balanced."Don't fall for it.— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) June 11, 2024 Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser to Donald Trump, alleged the Department of Justice may be protecting President Joe Biden from the verdict, interfering with the 2024 presidential election. DOJ is running election interference for Joe Biden— that’s why DOJ did NOT charge Hunter with being an unregistered foreign agent (FARA) or any crime connected with foreign corruption. Why? Because all the evidence would lead back to JOE.DOJ is Joe’s election protection racket.— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) June 11, 2024 Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., released a statement on the verdict. ?STATEMENT?Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal was smoked out after scrutiny by a federal judge. Today’s verdict is a step toward accountability but until the Department of Justice investigates everyone involved in the Bidens’ corrupt influence peddling schemes that generated…— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) June 11, 2024 CNN speculates the president may overturn his only living son’s sentence. WATCH: IMMEDIATELY after a jury in Delaware finds Hunter Biden guilty on all counts in his gun case, CNN starts speculating that President Joe Biden may commute Hunter's sentence. pic.twitter.com/CNeTwcDrSH— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) June 11, 2024 Joe Biden previously referred to his son at the smartest man he knows, said Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas. Well it looks like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Joe Biden called Hunter the smartest man he knows. Well the smartest man Joe knows just got convicted of a REAL crime. How will the leftist media spin this, or will they choose just not to cover it? pic.twitter.com/uwKo2krtdG— Wesley Hunt (@WesleyHuntTX) June 11, 2024 Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., said the verdict is a step toward restoring law and order in the United States. If it were not for the IRS whistleblowers coming forward to the Ways and Means Committee, Hunter Biden would have never faced accountability for the crimes he has committed.Today’s verdict is a step towards ensuring equal application of the law, regardless of one's last name.— Rep. Jason Smith (@RepJasonSmith) June 11, 2024 Biden’s lawyers rested their case Monday without calling Biden to testify in his own defense. Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell told the judge Friday that they were “down to that last decision” of whether to call the defendant. The prosecution accused Biden of making two false statements when filling out the paperwork to purchase the revolver. The 54-year-old father of four claimed not to be addicted to or actively using illegal drugs when filling out the form, and he also claimed his statement was true. The prosecution alleges he was addicted to crack cocaine during that period. Prosecutors have also alleged that he unlawfully possessed the weapon for 11 days. On Friday, the prosecution presented evidence of Biden’s crack cocaine addiction in the years leading up to and around the time he purchased a Colt Revolver in October 2018. Biden’s lawyers argue the prosecutors haven’t offered evidence their client was on drugs when he signed a federal form attesting that he was not using illegal substances, which he signed in order to buy the gun. The defense denies that Biden took drugs during the 11 days he possessed the gun. The president said last week that he would accept the jury’s verdict and has ruled out a pardon for his son.  The post BREAKING: Jury Delivers Verdict in Hunter Biden Gun Trial appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Concerned about potential governmental overreach during the COVID-19 pandemic, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has formally requested Dr. Anthony Fauci to participate in a transcribed interview. The interview, set by the Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, aims to probe Dr. Fauci’s alleged role in the Biden White House’s censorship initiatives. We obtained a copy of the letter for you here. Dr. Fauci, who held the dual roles of Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden and leader of the White House COVID-19 Response Team in 2021, is at the heart of allegations suggesting that senior officials under his leadership coerced one of the globe’s largest social media platforms into censoring discussions around the COVID-19 lab leak theory under White House “pressure.” Chairman Jordan’s letter to Dr. Fauci emphasizes the critical nature of his testimony, stating, “The Committee on the Judiciary and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government are conducting oversight of how and to what extent the Executive Branch has coerced or colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor Americans’ speech. We believe that you are uniquely positioned to aid the Committee’s oversight, as you served as Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden and Chief Medical Advisor for President Biden’s COVID-19 Response Team. During your tenure, the Response Team participated in extensive efforts to unconstitutionally monitor and censor Americans’ speech on social media platforms. Accordingly, we request that you appear for a transcribed interview and produce documents relevant to our investigation.” The allegations of censorship are further complicated by accusations against Dr. Fauci for sidelining opposing views within the scientific community, notably those of Dr. Robert Redfield, former CDC Director, who supported the lab origin theory of the virus. Such actions purportedly exemplify a broader attempt to suppress dissenting opinions on the pandemic’s origins. Furthermore, recent reports from the Coronavirus Select Subcommittee allege Dr. Fauci may have also engaged in efforts to “destroy” or “hide” essential records concerning the virus’s origins, potentially using personal emails and other non-official communication methods to evade the Freedom of Information Act and public scrutiny. In his testimony on June 3, 2024, before the Coronavirus Select Subcommittee, Dr. Fauci claimed to have maintained “an open mind” about the lab leak theory and denied influencing the narrative to downplay it—a statement contradicted by Facebook’s action influenced by the Biden Administration’s Response Team. The documentation demanded by Chairman Jordan includes extensive records of communications from January 1, 2019, to the present, involving Dr. Fauci and any connections with executive branch employees, contractors, agents, and technology companies, including social media giants. These documents are intended to clarify the extent and nature of any information control concerning COVID-19 content and the authenticity of such content on prominent platforms. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Fauci is Called to Testify on Accusations of COVID Speech Suppression appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Sinwar: The More Civilian Deaths in Gaza, the Better

The Hunter Biden Verdict is In

A team doing follow-up investigations into seven potential candidates for Dyson spheres has found that they have likely been misidentified.Dyson spheres are hypothetical alien megastructures built around (or partially around) stars in order to harness their energy. Finding one would be unlikely (sorry to break it to you, but we have found zero aliens to date) but we do have a few possible ways to search for them.Though we are not yet capable of beginning construction on such a megastructure (unless we're willing to sacrifice Mercury), we can take a look at the signatures that would be observed when looking at a star surrounded or partially surrounded by such a project.      Astronomers are looking for two things: variable luminosity as the structure passes in front of the star from our perspective, and an excess of infrared light caused by heat waste that could be emitted by a megastructure. This gets complicated, as dust can occlude stars and make them (briefly) look like megastructures, and stars with extreme debris fields can cause an excess of infrared light.However, both recent papers focused on looking for excess infrared radiation that could be worth a second glance, with one paper identifying seven candidates for further investigation, and another finding 53.One paper focused on searching for partial Dyson spheres – megastructures that do not entirely surround the star – and looked at a catalog of around 320,000 stars, identifying "seven sources displaying mid-infrared flux excess of uncertain origin". Surprisingly, these candidates appeared to be M-dwarf stars in their main sequence, or stars smaller in mass than our Sun that are in the main stable period of their lifespan. Stars of this age would not be expected to have extreme debris disks."M-dwarf debris disks are very rare objects, and up to date, only a reduced number has been confirmed," the team explains, adding that proposed explanations for this lack of debris disks include detection and age biases, or different processes taking place around these smaller stars."However, the temperature and the fractional infrared luminosity [...] of our candidates are different from those of typical debris disks, which tend to be cold (10 - 100 K) and to have low fractional luminosities [...] These high fractional luminosities [...] is a feature more compatible with young disks compared to those of ordinary debris disks [...], but the lack of variability seems to be inconsistent with the young-star scenario," the team writes, adding that there are several natural explanations for excess infrared, though none of them could clearly explain what is going on with these candidates, given that they are M-dwarfs."Are our candidates’ strange young stars whose flux does not vary with time? Are these stars M-dwarf debris disks with an extreme fractional luminosity? Or something completely different?" they question.Unfortunately, another team has taken a look at those seven candidates and suggests that they are likely the result of nearby DOGs and hot DOGs."We propose that DOGs [dust obscured galaxies] lying close to the line-of-sight of these M-dwarf stars significantly contribute to the measured WISE [Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer telescope] mid-IR flux densities in the WISE W3 and W4 wavebands," the team explains in their paper. "These three stars have therefore been misidentified as DS candidates. We also note that with an areal sky density of 9 × 10−6 per square arcsecond, Hot DOGs can probably account for the contamination of all 7 DS candidates drawn from an original sample of 5 million stars."While disappointing, the search is still worthwhile. Even if we do not find any megastructures, we could find other unusual star systems, and learn about extreme debris disks, potentially caused by collisions between rocky planets.The first study is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the second is published in Research Notices of the American Astronomical Society.

Around 2,400 meters (7,874 feet) below the Jinping Mountains in China’s Sichuan Province, the world’s deepest laboratory is quietly unraveling the mysteries of the universe. The China Jinping Underground Laboratory (CJUL) became fully operational in December 2023, swiping the title of the “world’s deepest lab” from another dark matter lab called SNOLAB, located around 2,000 meters (6,562 feet) below the surface of Ontario, Canada.Along with being the world's deepest, CJUL is also the world’s largest underground laboratory with a total area of 330,000 cubic meters (11.7 million cubic feet).It serves as a hub where multiple research projects and universities carry out several different experiments, all of which aim to answer one question: what the hell is dark matter?Dark matter does not emit, absorb, or reflect light, nor any other forms of electromagnetic radiation, making it "invisible" and tricky to detect. We know it exists, however, because we can see the gravitational effect it seems to have on visible matter. Somewhere between 1 to 10 percent of the universe is made of familiar “normal” atomic matter, while the rest is made up of dark energy and dark matter.One of the best approaches to sniff out this mysterious stuff is to head underground. Dark matter laboratories are typically located below the Earth to shield them from cosmic rays and other background radiation that bombard the surface. These high-energy particles can interfere with the sensitive detectors used to search for dark matter interactions, creating false signals that muddy the waters.               Going underground doesn’t totally erase this problem, though. Radon is a radioactive gas that is constantly seeping out of surrounding rocks and can be a major source of interference in deep underground experiments. As such, the surface of the CJPL is coated with a thick layer of special materials that blocks out 99 percent of the radon gas.Deep within the CJUL, sheltered by kilometers of rock, the cosmic ray rate is under 0.2 muons/m2/day, making it the best-shielded underground laboratory in the world. This ideal setting provides the potential to gather some of the sharpest insights into dark matter yet. The US has a similar facility called the Sanford Underground Research Facility, located 1,478 meters (4,850 feet) beneath the Black Hills of South Dakota. Scientists are still yet to make a direct detection of dark matter – we don’t even really understand its precise properties – but it is underground labs like CJUL and the Sanford Lab that are trailblazing the way into the unknown."Whether we will find dark matter or not, every step we take is a step into the unknown, so every small step forward is a huge leap," Liu Jianglai, chief scientist of the PandaX group, one of the research projects at the CJUL, said in a statement.

Indulge me, if you will, in a little hypothetical situation. The Earth has suffered a major catastrophic event, human life as we know it has been wiped from the face of the planet and only a few species of living things remain, but which species are up to the task of surviving such an apocalypse? We explore our top five contenders. TardigradesFirst on our list has to be everyone's favorite microscopic creature. While we at IFLScience stan a tardigrade, there’s more science to their survival than meets the eye. Tardigrades have been known to survive in just about every extreme environment Earth can throw at them. According to National Geographic, they are the "most indestructible animal on Earth". They can claw their way through sand dunes, survive being frozen, and even live at high altitudes. Scientists have figured out that a protein called Dsup can protect the genetic material in each of a tardigrade's cells making a tiny shield against dangerous particles. They can survive high levels of radiation that most other creatures could not – there is even some suggestion they could be on the Moon.  CockroachesMoving onto our second animal, it would be a shame not to mention the humble cockroach. Since they survived the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, they’ve got a pretty good chance of surviving the next global catastrophic event. Part of the reason for their success is both their size and their dietary habits. These flat-bodied insects can squeeze themselves into tiny crevices other critters can’t reach for protection, including inside soil. Plus, rather than relying on one type of food source, they will pretty much consume anything even if it isn’t technically food. Cockroaches are also incredibly resistant to toxins such as insecticides, making them one of Earth’s harder creatures to get rid of. VulturesDepending on the conditions of the disaster, some animals could actually benefit from a global crisis. Vultures, for example, may also be able to survive something like a zombie apocalypse and with plenty of undead carrion around, could even thrive. They even have specially adapted stomachs with acid capable of digesting some pretty nasty bacteria, so potentially would be able to stomach some zombie guts.SharksWe’ve not turned our attention to the sea until now. All manner of frankly unusual looking creatures survive down there and are specially adapted to life in the darkness and extreme pressure that comes from the deep ocean. While a potential apocalypse could cause all sorts of issues for the ocean, such as acidification or extreme sea level rise, some creatures might just cling on. Greenland sharks are extremely long-lived, with known individuals surviving more than 400 years. They are known to have lived through both World Wars and nuclear weapons tests and the evidence is right there in their eyes.  Sharks have also been around on Earth since before trees, and before Saturn had rings, so there's a good chance at least one of the 500 species of shark would survive. Emperor penguinsTrying to include larger animals in this list is especially difficult. Many have evolved especially niche adaptations and would not survive in a habitat changed by global disaster. Something like a bear, while it could hibernate through winter, would still need a lot of food to survive once it finished hibernating. Camels are also capable of surviving without food or water for periods and can survive heat extremes. On the opposite side of the scale, the wildcard entry at number five is the emperor penguin. Emperor penguins can survive some of the most brutal cold temperature extremes the Antarctic can throw at them, including wind speeds of 200 kilometers (124 miles) per hour and temperatures of −50°C (−58°F). They can also survive several weeks without eating by living off fat reserves. They occupy some of the most remote areas on Earth and therefore could be able to avoid zombies or disease spread by simple logistics. 

If we want to live in the modern world, we can’t help but be reliant on space. Satellites whizzing about over our heads provide us with telecommunications and precise positioning, as well as keeping us safe with weather forecasting and many other analyses, like keeping an eye on wildfires, floods, ice, and pollutants released into the atmosphere.But the population of satellites has skyrocketed (pardon the pun) in the last several years, and this has changed the landscape (skyscape?) of what is going in orbit. As of today, June 11, there are 11,780 satellites orbiting our planet according to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). Most of them are functioning and in low-Earth orbit.The number of satellites in orbit has massive increased in the last few years.Image credit: © IFLScienceGeostationary orbit (GEO) is also known as geosynchronous orbit, and it is located 35,786 kilometers (22,236 miles) in altitude above Earth's equator. A satellite placed there will follow the same spot on the Earth’s surface as it moves around the planet with the same period it takes the Earth to spin. There are currently 552 satellites there. Communications and weather forecasting satellites are often placed in GEO.Then there is medium-Earth orbit (MEO), a vast region from 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) up all the way to GEO. This is a prime location for navigation satellite constellations such as the Global Positioning System, Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou. There are 199 satellites currently in this orbit, but some space internet providers are considering moving here.And the reason for that is that low-Earth orbit (LEO) is getting crowded. There are currently 8,110 satellites in LEO and 6,050 of them are from SpaceX’s megaconstellation Starlink. The project from Elon Musk’s company aims to double its current number to reach nearly 12,000 satellites. And it could be expanded even more, to 34,400 satellites.There are many concerns about the deployment of so many satellites, especially in LEO. One major concern is how it is changing the night sky both for advanced astronomy but also just in terms of light pollution, even in areas that do not have artificial lights.The other concern is the massive increase in space junk. Space is big for sure, but interesting and valuable orbits are a small subset of that. Satellites need to have their orbits readjusted often, and all these movements lead to some of them crossing paths. But what happens when the satellites are no longer working? There are almost 3,000 objects like that! Their orbits will continue to change but with no ability for us to control them (there are some proposed countermeasures though).    A collision is space could herald worse to come. Collisions beget collisions simply because a piece of space junk breaking apart becomes a swarm of space junk. Scientists are concerned that we could end up in a Kessler Syndrome situation, where the number of collisions and amount of space debris grow exponentially. This scenario could render entire regions of near-Earth space a danger to pass through.