July 08, 2016 at 10:53PM

Today I Learned: Here are a couple of TILs I've been hoarding over the last couple of days while I waited for internet: 1) Solarpunk is a movement/genre that, broadly speaking, envisions a future where humanity is highly technologically advanced, highly re-integrated into nature, highly decentralized, and values individual and communal human life. Unlike cyberpunk, it is a distinctly utopian form of futurism; unlike steampunk, it is a radically forward-looking movement. It also has one of the most beautiful google image searches I've seen in quite some time (http://ift.tt/29tL2hL, for the lazy). If you ever want to know my best-case vision of the future, it looks decidedly like solarpunk. 2) ...how Pokemon Go works. Pokemon Go is an augmented-reality Pokemon game, played on any mobile phone. The game consists of static encounters in the world, some randomly generated (most wild pokemon, which appear in locations relevant to their type, i.e., water-type pokemon might appear only near water sources), some fixed (real-world landmarks corresponding to in-game places of interest, like gyms). When you come across a wild pokemon, you can attempt to catch it using a simple finger-swipe-based minigame. When you come across another trainer, you can battle your respective pokemon with another swiping-based minigame. There's an additional social layer to the game, in that you can join teams of trainers and battle for control of gyms, which again, are located near real-world landmarks. You can capture gyms, then leave pokemon to guard the gym against other teams. If they battle and defeat your pokemon sufficiently often, you will lose control of the gym. I'm not sure how many teams there are, or how big they are, but I'm curious to see how well the Pokemon Go social dynamic turns out. 3) X-gal is a molecule similar in structure to lactose, which is a dimer made of a galactose molecule and a glucose molecule. The enzyme β-galactosidase, which normally cleaves lactose, will also cleave X-gal, but instead of releasing a galactose and a glucose, X-gal breaks down into a galactose and a blue-colored indole. This makes X-gal a sensor for β-galactosidase -- if you add X-gal to something and it turns blue, it has β－galactosidase (or something else that can break down lactose-like molecules). Today I learned that X-gal is a little annoying to work with, in that a) it is typically dissolved in DMF, a somewhat toxic solvent, and b) you need a fair amount of it to make agar plates with X-gal in them at working concentration.