In the past few months, firms including SpaceX, Google and Blue Origin have all shared plans to launch large fleets, or constellations, of satellites into low Earth orbit. The networks would act in a similar way to the interconnected computers inside data centres on Earth, which process, store and transmit data on a massive scale. Putting these 'orbital data centres' into space could, in theory, address concerns about their energy and water consumption, and their occupation of wide swathes of land. The idea is that constellations would use sunlight for energy rather than driving up electricity costs on Earth, and they would be cooled by space's naturally cold environment rather than by water sources on our planet. For some, such a solution can't come soon enough. Data centres on Earth have become so environmentally taxing that communities and politicians are taking action against them. For example, the board of trustees for a township in the US state of Michigan voted last week to institute a one-year moratorium on the delivery of water to hyperscale data centres so that the township can study the effects of a planned facility....

I join my voice to those of Donald J. Trump, Lindsey Graham, John Fetterman, and all the others calling for a secure White House ballroom now. Never mind that the White House Correspondents' Dinner, held in the Washington Hilton, is not hosted by the White House, so if a White House ballroom did exist, it would have altered nothing about Saturday night's events. How dare you say such an unpatriotic thing at a time when we most need unity' Unity and a ballroom, the sooner the better! If you look closely enough, every event, not just now but also throughout history, is proof that we need a secure White House ballroom. The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius, 79 C.E.: Had they been in a ballroom-bunker combo attached to the White House, the ancient Pompeiians might be alive today. The White House is nowhere near Mount Vesuvius. The Donner Party: Had the Donner Party been in a nice ballroom, perhaps even one with a bunker attached, things would have gone very differently. First, a ballroom is a climate-controlled environment. Second, it would have been difficult'indeed, impossible'to lug the ballroom through any sort of mountain pass as winter neared. Third, when the food ran out, they would have had access to canapes and other ballroom-associated snacks....

Few people have taught us to see America quite like Lee Friedlander. The 91-year-old photographer has been making pictures since the late 1940s, focusing largely on what critics and historians describe as the urban social landscape: all of these little jigsaw scenes of our built environment. He notices the everyday moments that go unseen by most, moments so inconsequential that we probably wouldn't even bother dismissing them as mundane. Friedlander once distilled his approach into a simple ethos: 'I just walk and see something interesting.' Life Still, a monograph of Friedlander's work that Aperture published this spring, collects photos from the 1950s to the present, and it's in Friedlander's careful placement of pictures side by side that these puzzle pieces begin to depict a meaningful and at times delightful whole. Looking at them is like noticing that the song you're listening to catches the beat of a passing car, or seeing two strangers walk in symmetry on opposite sides of the street. You study Friedlander's pairs, recognizing the rhymes across time and space. The only clues that date his wanderings arrive in the shape of a mid-century refrigerator, or a certain hairstyle, or a peeling political bumper sticker....

And by the way, did you know that much of Hong Kong's skyline is designed to accommodate the passage of flying dragons' Allowing the mythical creatures a straight shot from the mountains to the sea is a principle of feng shui'the Chinese art of putting objects into harmony with the environment'so many Hong Kong architects punch gaping 'dragon gates' right into the middle of their buildings. Feng shui is not to be taken lightly. Indeed, architect I. M. Pei designed the angular, dragon-gate-less Bank of China Tower without much regard for the rules; the nearby HSBC building installed rooftop cannons to protect itself from the bad energy....