Windswept Adan is the seventh studio album by Japanese singer-songwriter Ichiko Aoba(pictured), released on 2 December 2020 by her label, Hermine. The concept album follows the story of a young girl who is sent away by her family to the fictional island of Adan. Aoba and composer Taro Umebayashi wrote, composed, arranged, and produced the music for the album, which was preceded by one single, "Porcelain". Windswept Adan is a chamber folk and psychedelic folk album with elements of jazz, classical, and ambient music. Marking a departure from Aoba's earlier minimalist instrumentation, it includes a celesta, wind chimes, string arrangements, and vocal performances. The album received widespread critical acclaim for its arrangements, instrumentation, and worldbuilding. Upon its release, the album debuted at number 82 on the Billboard Japan Hot Albums chart and number 88 on the Oricon Albums Chart. Aoba supported the album with her first international tour between August and October 2022. (Full article...)
... that Karen Tei Yamashita realized the structure of her novel, I Hotel, by cutting, folding, and writing on ten cardboard cubes, each representing a year in the book?
... that Carrlyn Bathe met her husband after he sent her gear from his clothing brand?
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... that tacklers "bounced off" Chauncey Archiquette "as if he were a brick wall"?
... that Chief Constable James Smart flooded police courts with over 17,000 cases to prove how impractical it was for home owners to light their own stairs?
... that an Indiana university argued in court that The Silver Veil and the Golden Gate, a 1914 painting, was too modern for their art collection in 2024?
... that Piri Reis did not map Antarctica in the sixteenth century?
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The PlayStation is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was released in Japan on 3 December 1994, and most of the world in 1995. Sony began developing it after a failed venture with Nintendo to create a CD-ROM add-on in the early 1990s. The console was primarily designed by Ken Kutaragi and his team in Japan, while additional development was outsourced in the United Kingdom. An emphasis on 3D polygon graphics was placed at the forefront of the console's design. The PlayStation signalled Sony's rise to power in the video game industry. It received acclaim and sold strongly; in less than a decade, it became the first computer entertainment platform to ship more than 100 million units. Its use of compact discs heralded the game industry's transition from cartridges. The PlayStation's success led to a line of successors, beginning with the PlayStation 2 in 2000. (Full article...)
The Book of Fixed Stars (Arabic: كتاب صور الكواكبkitāb suwar al-kawākib, literally The Book of the Shapes of Stars) is an astronomical text written by Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (Azophi) around 964. Following the Graeco-Arabic translation movement in the 9th century AD, the book was written in Arabic, the common language for scholars across the vast Islamic territories, although the author himself was Persian. It was an attempt to create a synthesis of the comprehensive star catalogue in Ptolemy's Almagest (books VII and VIII) with the indigenous Arabic astronomical traditions on the constellations (notably the Arabic constellation system of the Anwā'). The original manuscript no longer survives as an autograph, however, the Book of Stars has survived in later-made copies. This image from the book shows the constellation of Orion, in mirror image as if on a celestial globe, and is from a copy in the Bodleian Library dated to the 12th century AD.
The mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana) is a tropical evergreen tree with edible fruit native to Maritime Southeast Asia, from the Malay Peninsula to Borneo. It is grown mainly in Southeast Asia, southwest India, and other tropical areas such as Colombia, Puerto Rico and Florida, where the tree has been introduced. The fruit is sweet and tangy, juicy, somewhat fibrous, with fluid-filled vesicles (like the flesh of citrus fruits), with an inedible, deep reddish-purple colored rind (exocarp) when ripe. In each fruit, the fragrant edible white flesh that surrounds each seed is the endocarp, the inner layer of the ovary, and is roughly the same shape and size as a tangerine, about 4 to 6 centimetres (1.5 to 2.5 inches) in diameter. This photograph, which was focus-stacked from 22 individual images, shows two mangosteens, one whole, and the other halved to expose the endocarp.
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