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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| If there are any articles I really should stay away from, it would be fashion articles. And yet, this one from Wired got stuck in my pile: The Zipper Is Getting Its First Major Upgrade in 100 Years  By stripping away the fabric tape that’s held zippers together for a hundred years, Japanese clothing giant YKK is designing the future of seamless clothing. I would never have known of YKK's existence were it not for those letters being on zipper pulls. For more than a century, the zipper has stayed more or less the same: two interlocking rows of teeth, a sliding pull, and the fabric tape that holds it together. And it's a marvel of engineering... until it stops working, at which point it becomes a source of extreme frustration. Their new AiryString zipper looks ordinary at first glance. Then you realize what’s missing: there’s no tape. There are, of course, pictures at the linked article. It’s a small but important redesign that feels almost futuristic in its simplicity, a fastening system that sinks into a garment instead of sitting on top of it. I, well, don't see how that could possibly be the case. Not even with the pictures. “We wanted to address the challenges involved in zipper sewing,” says Makoto Nishizaki, vice president of YKK’s Application Development Division. The idea grew out of a collaboration with JUKI Corporation, a leader in industrial sewing machines. Together, the two companies reconsidered how a zipper could be made and how it could merge more seamlessly with fabric. This may be the first time I've seen the adjective "seamlessly" used in a literal, non-metaphorical, sense. So there's that. The zipper, as we know it, hasn’t had a real overhaul since the 1910s. Its long reign owes much to reliability—it’s sturdy, inexpensive, and easy to sew. YKK apparently doesn't believe in the adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Designers now work with featherlight nylons, stretch fabrics, and technical blends that behave more like skin than cloth. The old zipper, with its woven borders and stiff seams, has started to feel out of sync with what surrounds it. I hadn't noticed. The teeth were redesigned, the manufacturing process rewritten, and new machinery developed to attach the closure to garments. That was my question, coming as I do from a place where function is more important than form: without the cloth strips, how in the hell does the zipper get attached to the garment? And the article doesn't go into enough detail about that. Perhaps it's a proprietary thing; I don't know. When asked what zippers might look like in 50 years, Nishizaki doesn’t talk about smart fabrics or AI-assisted closures. He returns to YKK’s mantra: “Little parts. Big difference.” Gotta say, though: most of what I see purporting to be "innovation" (especially from Wired) is all about adding failure points, not subtracting them. When I first looked at the article, I fully expected it to be about some robotic clothing fastener that requires an app to configure and control. This is why I'm a pessimist: I can only be pleasantly surprised. Still wondering how the hell this is easier to attach to garments, but that's not my problem. |
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