Conversation Piece, October 8, 2017

Enjoy our Sunday series, Conversation Piece, a NUVO–curated digest of things on the Internet we think you’ll want to talk about. 

Dream vacation. A new book by photographer Maryam Omidi takes you inside Soviet-era sanatoriums from Armenia to Uzbekistan, which once afforded workers a place to holiday, courtesy of a state-funded voucher system. The Soviet utopian structures are architecturally amazing, and the treatments provided inside offer an interesting glimpse into a very utilitarian interpretation of a resort as an institution for civilian reinvigoration.  See more, here.

How to feel depressed. Do cultural differences change what depression feels like? The Atlantic’s Shayla Love explores the phenomenon of depression manifesting in physical symptoms among people in Asian societies, and the modalities that privilege some to articulate they psychological states while others are silenced. Learn more, here.

City living. This short, simply-animated BBC video takes a gander at how societies have approached urban planning throughout the ages, from ancient Greece to modern and futuristic models of ever-more functional cities. Become a spectator in the race towards ideal urban living, here.

Houston, we have a trash problem. The next time you gaze up at the starry night sky, bear this in mind: you’re really just looking at a bunch of junk—specifically, 170 million pieces of space debris. While most of these pieces are small, 670,000 are one centimetre or larger, which is enough to disable the International Space Station in the event of a collision. Find out what we’re doing to tackle galaxy garbage, here.

_________