With Artemis II just around the corner, it’s time to meet a very important member of the team.
Last year, the Moon Mascot design contest received thousands of submissions from over fifty countries for the zero gravity indicator for the Artemis II mission. This plush item serves a very important purpose — it indicates when the astronauts have reached space by floating around the spacecraft! The zero gravity indicator also reminds the astronauts of Earth when they are far from home.
Ultimately, the Artemis II astronauts selected “Rise,” designed by Lucas Ye of Mountain View, California, as the zero gravity indicator that will fly with the crew around the Moon. “Rise” was inspired by the iconic Earthrise moment from the Apollo 8 mission.
“Rise” has a little pouch that will contain the SD card with the names submitted to the Send Your Name with Artemis campaign — all 5.6 million of them!
The other top finalists included:
“Big Steps of Little Octopus,” Anzhelika Iudakova, Finland
“Lepus the Moon Rabbit,” Oakville Trafalgar School, Canada
“Creation Mythos,” Johanna Beck, McPherson, Kansas
“Corey the Explorer,” Daniela Colina, Peru
Artemis II is launching no earlier than April 1 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida and will fly four astronauts — NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen — around the Moon and back to Earth.
You can see “Rise” having a main character moment as the Artemis II astronauts flew to KSC to prepare for launch on Friday, March 27:
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I'm on a tour with my new book, the international bestseller Enshittification: catch me next in Toronto, San Diego and Seattle! Full schedule here.
Cooking in Maximum Security is a slim volume of prisoners' recipes and improvised cooking equipment, a testament to the ingenuity of a network of prisoners in Italy's maximum security prisons:
Cooking in Maximum Security has a new English translation from Half Letter Press, who also publish the classic Prisoners' Inventions, which is one of my favorite books of all time, a collection of keenly observed, beautifully drawn material improvisations from America's prisons:
But Cooking in Maximum Security drills down much deeper on the method than those other books, elevating the makerish improvisation of the chefs whose work it reproduces. They explain how to make an oven out of a wooden stool lined with cigarette foil and draped with heavy blankets, into which a small gas burner is introduced:
https://www.cookinginmaximumsecurity.com/tools/
Or how to turn a toothbrush handle and the razor blade from a pencil-sharpener into an all-purpose paring knife:
These field-expedient gadget improvisations are incredibly satisfying. They have the vibe of a good episode of Scrapheap Challenge, or the high-stakes duct-tape ingenuity of Apollo 13. And while these recipes and build notes were collected in the 2010s, the pencil/charcoal illustrations have a classic 1970s feel, like the illustrations out of the Moosewood Cookbook or The Joy of Sex. If you love the kind of clever repurposings that filled the pages of Make magazine, you'll love this.
Plus, the food sounds incredible. Mouth-watering. Fresh bread whose dough was warmed and risen by setting it atop the heat-radiating surface of a CRT television!
One thing that sets Cooking in Maximum Security apart from other prison cookbooks is the unique character of Italian maximum security prisons, in which visitors are allowed to bring a fairly large variety of goods to inmates, and where the commissary is stocked with an incredible variety of basic ingredients, including things like goat and beef livers (the book reproduces an entire commissary menu, with prices, as an appendix). Prisoners have access to beer and wine, and find endless uses for old beer cans. The book also drops in casual clues about life in an Italian prison, for example, when it suggests getting your wooden stirrer by taking down a crucifix and using that.
Cooking in Maximum Security arose out of a project called "MoCa" (a play on the essential moka coffee maker that is the most versatile and widely used tool in this book). Prisoners met with, and corresponded with, outside helpers who put together the entire volume. One collaborator, Mario, died shortly after sending a long letter (reproduced in an appendix) from solitary confinement, and this letter, along with other notes interspersed through the recipes, give a brilliant anthropological account of life in Italian maximum security prisons.
The MoCa project isn't done – they've embarked on "Phase II," which will collect recipes from Spanish prisoners.
It's a remarkable book, and an essential companion to Prisoner's Inventions.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
e-NABLE is a global volunteer network that uses 3D printers to make free and low-cost prosthetic hands and arms for children and adults. Their open-source designs let makers around the world turn plastic, time, and kindness into something useful.
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