Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Artemis II astronauts, ESA Director of Human and Robotic Exploration Daniel Neuenschwander, NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya and NASA Orion Program management together during a recognition event with the ESA workforce at ESTEC in the Netherlands.

Yesterday, the four Artemis II astronauts visited ESA’s technical site in the Netherlands, where they met the team behind the European Service Module that powered their Orion spacecraft around the Moon and safely back to Earth.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen were joined by NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya and NASA’s Orion Program management for this first stop of post-flight visits to the European teams that supported the Artemis II mission.

The visit included a recognition event during which NASA Orion Program Manager Howard Hu presented ESA with a Program Award acknowledging the important European contribution to the mission.

Credits: ESA-P. Servent

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Artemis II astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen visit the Eagle room at ESA's site in the Netherlands to meet the engineers who monitored the European Service Module around the clock during their mission.

Yesterday, the four Artemis II astronauts visited ESA’s technical site in the Netherlands, where they met the team behind the European Service Module that powered their Orion spacecraft around the Moon and safely back to Earth.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen were joined by NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya and NASA’s Orion Program management for this first stop of post-flight visits to the European teams that supported the Artemis II mission. Later this week, they will also visit European Service Module prime contractor Airbus in Bremen, Germany, and Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, who built the module's structure.

Credits: ESA-P. Servent

Het terrein voor het aanmeldcentrum in Ter Apel is onveilig voor wachtende asielzoekers. Jongemannen met weinig te verliezen zorgen voor voor onrust en zelfs geweld. „Je zou ervoor moeten zorgen dat zij als een speer door de procedure gaan.”

Odysseus’ geduldige eega Penelope speelt een listige rol in Homerus’ Odyssee, heldendicht waarin vrouwen een prominente rol spelen. Toch is ze wat te lijdzaam in sommige moderne ogen.

Another month, another ambitious idea from Yuri Zaporozhets: a proposal for a standard PC-style BIOS for RISC-V computers. The Harmonic Firmware Initiative, or HFI for short, is simple and appealing in principle, but will be considerably harder to implement. From the project's own description, it aims to provide a BIOS-like experience, familiar from x86 PCs, for RISC-V hardware. When the machine starts, the firmware would identify the system and its hardware, list what peripherals are connected, offer the option to enter a setup program – and then hand over to U-Boot to load an OS. If the name seems familiar, this may be because last month we looked at several of Zaporozhets's previous projects, including his GateMate PC, the System/359 micro-mainframe, his 64-bit RISC-V version of QNX 6 QRV, and most recently, his QSOE RISC-V RTOS, which offers a choice of seL4 or its own in-house kernels. One part of the GateMate RISC-V PC project is a PC-style modular BIOS. This includes a video BIOS for the GateMate PC's bespoke video adapter. The HFI proposal is somewhat different. It's intended to work with an existing, standard RISC-V bootloader, the RISC-V version of the FOSS cross-platform bootloader Das U-Boot. It does include a video BIOS, though, one designed to initialize arbitrary video hardware in a standard way and bring it up to a VGA-like text mode. For now, Zaporozhets is developing HFI on his SiFive HiFive Unmatched. In that motherboard's PCIe slot, he has an old Nvidia GK208 graphics card, and his firmware can initialize that and show a text-based boot-up display, without using any old x86 BIOS code. As well as the homepage, there's also a six-page white paper [PDF] laying out the idea in detail. In this, he does mention what could be seen as a rival – another RISC-V firmware offering, the EDK2 implementation of UEFI. UEFI is large and complex, and the white paper says that most current boards use U-Boot instead. As the last section of the page says, this is an just an invitation with aspirations: "HFI is offered as an initiative, not a product to license. Its reference software is open by construction – HFI BIOS links U-Boot and carries U-Boot's license – and QSOE Systems stewards the whole: the interface specification, a high-quality reference implementation, and the porting to new controllers." It seems like an excellent idea to us. The absence of standard firmware has been a handicap for all Arm-based computers ever since the chips caught on outside Acorn Computers. This is why Arm OSes are hard to transfer from one hardware platform to another, why every phone needs its own ROM images, and it's why the move to Apple Silicon meant the end of the Hackintosh world. It would be very good news for RISC-V if it avoided the same fate. ®

Government says possum bridges successful, but sceptics question data. The Western Australian government has released night-vision images showing scores of native wildlife are using rope bridges and underpasses along a highway in the South West region, but not everyone is convinced. WA's Main Roads has told the ABC that night-vision cameras have recorded thousands of critters using the mix of 19 rope bridges, 24 underpasses and two land bridges built along the Wilman Wadandi Highway, about 170 kilometres south of Perth. (Australia)

The Strange Worlds Among Us—of Turing, Trans People, and the Road to Laniakea by Ryka Aoki, author of the IMO excellent Light From Uncommon Stars.

De gesproken tekst van de reclame op Instagram (onderstaand) luidt: "Omdat je vindt dat discriminatie op welke grond dan ook onacceptabel is, en je er alles aan wilt doen om onrecht tegen te gaan." En die (fictieve) leus op de ramen is volkomen verwerpelijk natuurlijk. Maar wat nou als je eigenlijk vindt dat Nederlands onvermogen 'op welke grond dan ook' te discrimineren het eigenlijke probleem is. Kom je dan nog een beetje in aanmerking of?

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During the medieval and Renaissance periods, baskets were everyday essentials—no plastic bags at the supermarket or even reusable totes. They were also used for all sorts of activities, from handled varieties for produce at the market to decorative vessels holding sewing materials to large versions that could be worn like rucksacks. For Cardiff-based artist Lewis Prosser, a self-described “absurdist basketmaker,” folklore, regional identity, and cultural heritage center a multidisciplinary practice.

Through sculptural baskets that can be worn as costumes or displayed like venerable sculptures, Prosser taps into storytelling, masking traditions, and public ceremony and celebration. Welsh communities still celebrate Mari Lwyd during the Christmas period, a festivity that may have emerged with the Celts. A small group of men bedecked in ribbons and rosettes parade around town, leading a figure wearing an eerie horse skull. Another ceremonial festival, The Hunting of the Earl of Rone, takes place annually in the village of Combe Martin, North Devon, and although updated over the centuries, is also thought to have originated in pre-Christian times.

In projects like Making Merrie, Prosser combines music and dance in an ode to English folk performances called mummers’ plays, which were often staged during holidays and typically feature combat between two opposing forces, such as good and evil or winter and spring.

Prosser created the wicker costumes using basketry techniques found in the region of Wales and southwestern England, invoking the craft as “an essential human skill we’re at risk of forgetting—a skill that, if lost, means losing part of what it is to be human,” he says in a statement. The costumes are now in the collection of the Folk Preservation Society in Teignmouth, Devon, which continues to activate them in performances from time to time.

Currently, Prosser is facilitating a collaborative project called The Baskets Between Carnival and Lent. Inspired by Pieter Breughel the Elder’s seminal painting “The Fight Between Carnival and Lent” (1559), Prosser takes the composition’s 24 woven objects as a starting point, including willow shutters on buildings, a birdcage, and a woven beehive, otherwise known as a skep. Prosser is joining 10 basketmakers from across Europe to recreate all two dozen in the painting, and the finished pieces are slated for a show at Oriel Myrddin Gallery in Carmarthen, Wales, in spring 2027.

Prosser is also working toward a new performance for Burgos Biennial 2026 in Burgos, Spain, which kicks off in late September. “For this project, I will be devising an elaborate new basket-based sport called ‘hornball’ (cuerno pelota): a combination of ritual harvest celebration, competitive ball games, and wearable sculptures,” Prosser tells Colossal. See more on his Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article ‘Absurdist Basketmaker’ Lewis Prosser Weaves Contemporary Visions of Regional Heritage appeared first on Colossal.