On Nov 18 of this year, the Voyager 1 spacecraft will be one light-day from Earth -- more than 16 billion miles. Voyager 2 will be nearly 14 billion miles away.

There's a quiet, heroic effort by NASA techs to keep these 49-year-old spacecraft functioning. The technology and parts we knew how to make in 1977 can still talk to us. It is a small engineering miracle.

Linking directly to the Hackaday story on this, but click through to The Register.

https://hackaday.com/2026/08/06/nasas-just-prolonged-voyager-2s-science-mission-with-a-big-bang/

Love me some engineers.

Non-Vancouver friends, stay tuned — I’ll probably collate some sort of series reading list (for published writing) and also put together a reader (for my own or unpublished work) since no one will be taking notes! There will definitely be some Ursula K LeGuin, Ursula Franklin, and Virginia Postrel’s THE FABRIC OF CIVILIZATION.

Vancouver-area friends: I’m running an experimental reading/talk series this fall, hosted by Fleet Studios and the UBC Fibre Garden. Bring your handwork projects and listen while you work. Free, standalone sessions, so just come when you can. It’s part of the UBC Fibre Garden/Fleet Studio fall programme: full details and info on all the other cool activities are here: https://www.fleetstudios.org/program/fleet-ubc

Topics will likely range from materials science through labour history, technology, colonialism, science and technology studies, and more (and I’ll take requests!). A mix of readings, writing, and more free-form talks,low on images so folks can focus on what they’re making — I think of it as protected handwork time first, not a lecture series. Thursday lunchtimes at UBC through the fall.

Likewise, you shouldn't be required to "respect your elders" for easily-abused bullshit social hierarchy reasons, but you should respect what they have learned & the perspective they can share.

Knowledge is a collective endeavor. We need each other. The average human lifespan is well under a century, so if we don't learn from each other, we won't be able to move forward. It's too short a timeframe. We have to carry forward knowledge from the past AND continue innovating & learning.

"Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California." Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes

- excerpt from There Will Come Soft Rain by Ray Bradbury.

Read the short story here https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/storiespdf/there-will-come-soft-rains.pdf

These days I'm generally either heads-down on projects (one of which is standing up the newsletter archives!) or I'm outside, so I really appreciate the folks who sign up for Metafoundry. It's infrequent and substantive, and everything is there in your inbox when you're ready to read. https://buttondown.com/metafoundry

Was reminded today of the piece on Internet newsletters that @clive wrote for WIRED just about ten years ago, which feels, if anything, even more relevant today: "The pleasure in reading a newsletter comes from the view into a unitary mind at work. Reading [Metafoundry, my newsletter] is like being plugged Oculus-style into her brain while she meditates on science and culture. The best newsletters are all like that: places online where one can talk—and listen—in private." https://www.wired.com/2016/05/rise-of-the-newsletter/

RE: https://saturation.social/@debcha/117023451096454986

Deb Chachra

'The dawn of infinite clean energy is beckoning, but we still have the problem of finite matter. What if energy ‘too cheap to meter’ means that we can finally close material loops, even for the mother of all problems: plastics'

#polycrisis #renewableEnergy #recycling #solar

https://fojournal.org/essay/energy-and-the-matter-problem/

As I told Monica Torres of HuffPost, "As [women] grow older and more mature in their careers, they lose some of the fear of speaking their mind. And certain men don’t like that. Men will allow women into the workplace ... and will be supportive of women in the workplace to the extent that women are compliant, supportive of the men, and they don’t push back.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/age-discrimination-women-goog_l_6a6ba2e0e4b01948ae9a97fd

As of this weekend, I've been based in Vancouver, BC for a year. To celebrate, I wrote a newsletter about Alexis Madrigal's book THE PACIFIC CIRCUIT, having a garden, and some of the things I've been up to this past while: https://buttondown.com/metafoundry/archive/determinate-tomatoes/

As of this weekend, I've been based in Vancouver, BC for a year. To celebrate, I wrote a newsletter about Alexis Madrigal's book THE PACIFIC CIRCUIT, having a garden, and some of the things I've been up to this past while: https://buttondown.com/metafoundry/archive/determinate-tomatoes/

Yes, #history do be like that sometimes

Africa is smashing all the solar records. The continent installed more grid-connected solar in the first half of 2026 than in all of 2025, and with projects under construction the year could finish at triple the previous record. That’s just official figures too - they don’t account for all the panels going up on roofs, mines and farms. African Energy https://www.africa-energy.com/live-data/article/african-2026-grid-solar-additions-surpass-those-2025
#ShareGoodNewsToo

I hope this email finds you interesting, you receive an invitation to some event or other.

The largest digital camera ever built has started filming a 10 year movie of the universe. From a mountaintop in Chile, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s 3,200-megapixel camera is now photographing the entire southern sky every few nights, producing roughly ten terabytes of data per night. The goal is an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse of the cosmos: pulsating stars, supernova explosions, asteroid orbits, & clues to dark energy and dark matter https://rubinobservatory.org/explore/how-rubin-works/technology/data
#ShareGoodNewsToo

Did another stream this morning, talking about why Taylor Farms is lashing out at everyone & everything right now.

This one is less "let's catch up on current events," & more How The Food Safety Sausage Actually Gets Made.

So if you're looking for less "chatter about this week's news" & more "How TF does the food system actually work," this is your stream!

https://youtube.com/live/r2KK_-jZpKs

There are few more cut-and-dried examples of transformative reuse than Jamaican "riddims" like the dembow riddim. If thousands of new songs based on one simple riff aren't definitively #fairuse, then nothing is.

https://www.ajournalofmusicalthings.com/the-existence-of-an-entire-genre-of-music-may-hinge-on-one-judges-decision/

I have consolidated many of these suggestions into a document with a few other links. Anything major that I am missing? This is mostly for the types of users I interact with (mainly older adults) so I did not include things like Slack and I'm not sure about things I don't use much like Outlook or Facebook. Other suggestions for links about removing AI geared towards not-very-technical people?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nYLmQLYZy_Mg-Dh6iME6R61Jjh4L6sRrw1v2dLXs9aE/edit?usp=sharing