Intellectual journal

 Superflat world: who invented the visual language of Japanese pop culture  The "Kid" bomb divided the history of Japan into before and after: this state could be the future of the world, but it became the country of the victorious kawai - a culture of those who do not want to grow up. As the founder of the Superflat art movement, artist Takashi Murakami brought the Japanese love of everything cute and touching to the point of absurdity, says historian Nancy Stalker in her book Japan. History and Culture: From Samurai to Manga ”, which was published by the publishing house“ Alpina Non-Fiction ”. The Knife publishes a snippet on why the members of the Super Plane, who were supposed to challenge the emptiness of the consumer society The Superflat art movement emerged in the late 1990s in response to a general obsession with consuming “cute”.  Its founder Takashi Murakami (born 1962) formulated the aesthetics and theory of contemporary art, which he called "super flat...

 People in isolation  There are two types of prison isolation. A solitary person develops hypersensitivity, can lead to impaired cognitive functions, cause aggression, provoke depression, form a persistent feeling of hopelessness, etc. Joint confinement makes a person suspicious, enhances emotional control.  We found ourselves in self-isolation for the most part with our relatives and friends. On the one hand, the number of couples wanting to get married has increased: living together 24/7 has brought people closer and strengthened their feelings. But this, on the contrary , pushed someone to divorce and even provoked a surge in domestic violence. The constant presence of the Other (as if we missed him inside our own head!) Often becomes unbearable.  Among other things, Dostoevsky in hard labor was suffering from the "forced cohabitation" - not even the unspoken laws and rules of the prison community, but simply the constant presence of other people.  Andrey S...

 Be careful, the doors are closing. Time, routine and psyche on self-isolation through the eyes of writers  Because of the pandemic , we attended a rehearsal for the end of the world: it never occurred to anyone that there would be massive self-isolation in our century - and this experience we just have to comprehend. Who can help in this matter? Writers with a prison past - who better than them know what real limitations and loneliness are. We study what happens with time, routine, neighbors and our psyche in isolation (alas, this knowledge can still be useful to us).  If you take a quick glance at spring 2020, a nap immediately rolls over: the days from March to May merge into a single shapeless lump. And all the major events of that period cannot break this dense dark veil. It is difficult for us to recover our own feelings and emotions that we experienced only six months ago. But if you have difficulties with reflection, you can turn to someone else's experience - an...

Just the other day, news feeds were almost a sensation - phosphine gas was discovered on Venus, which may indicate the presence of living organisms! For a person far from astrobiology, this news may cause confusion, because at first glance Venus does not seem to be a promising candidate for the role of an inhabited planet. Surface temperatures approaching 500 degrees, pressures 90 times that of Earth, and an almost complete absence of water make life anything like Earth's impossible. However, the ideas of scientists about Venusian life have long been reminiscent of a swing: Venus was sometimes called a world capable of supporting the global biosphere, or a living hell. The same thing happened with Mars, only Venus moved along this path more slowly: it was much more difficult to explore it. It is possible that the recent discovery is just the tip of the iceberg, and ahead is the most extraordinary mission in history to search for extraterrestrial life. Venus in the ultraviolet ...