The Inflatable Crowd

Have you ever wondered where they get all the extras for crowd scenes in movies like The King’s Speech and Spiderman 3? Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) is expensive and extras are difficult to handle, besides costing money. The Inflatable Crowd Company offers the alternative – 30 thousand inflatable plastic mannequins for use in movies where a large crowd is required.

More:Amusing Planet

Thanks Bruce!

Floating Photographic Lab

Last year collaborative artists Claudius Schulze and Maciej Markowicz launched a project named [2BOATS] that they steered from Hamburg to Amsterdam. Schulze’s handmade houseboat doubles as a hub for creative workshops and discussions, while Markowicz’s studio is also a fully functioning camera obscura.

More: Colossal
Thanks Bruce!

Self-driving Delivery Vehicle Looks Like A Lunchbox

Two former lead Google engineers have designed a new type of vehicle that is focused on low-speed, local, and last-mile deliveries. The startup, named Nuro, thinks that it will reduce traffic accidents and boost local businesses who are looking for ways to thrive and compete in the age of Amazon.

Nuro’s R1 prototype looks like a giant lunchbox on wheels. The “handle” on the roof is actually a platform for the vehicle’s sensor array, which includes LIDAR, cameras, and radars.

More: The Verge

Emotional Support Peacock?

Apparently emotional support peacocks are a thing and they are not allowed to fly on United Airlines.
Dexter the peacock was not permitted to board a flight from Newark to LA although his owner had purchased a ticket for him.
I think I'd require emotional support if I had to fly across the country with a peacock as a seatmate. The tweet below says it all:

Just an observation....

In 2017, Trump became President.
In 2018, Americans started snacking on Tide-pods and flying with emotional-support peacocks. https://t.co/Yst35OmsjM

— Ana Navarro (@ananavarro) January 30, 2018

More here 

Via

Happy International Lego Day!

60 years ago this drawing accompanied Godtfred Kirk Christiansen’s US patent application for the Lego toy building brick.

If you've ever stepped on one of these buggers while barefoot you probably will not be celebrating International Lego Day.

Via 

Why Does Stepping on Legos Hurt So Much?

Related to the post above:

The Engineering of the Drinking Bird

Bill Hammack reveals the operation and clever engineering design underlying the impractical famous drinking bird toy.



Via

Terry Gilliam's Monty Python Animations

And now for something completely different. Terry Gilliam's 1974 crash course on how he made his cut-up Monty Python animations.



Via Boing Boing

Caughnawaga’s Historical Hospital

I recently came upon this old photograph of the Kateri Hospital on the Caughnawaga reserve near Montreal (now called Kahnawake). When I was little my family lived in Chateauguay, a stone's throw away from the reserve. Our family doctor was indigenous and when I was four years old I had my tonsils removed at that hospital. I remember the ether mask and the sore throat afterwards. It was wintertime and I also remember seeing small children in nightgowns standing on the upper balconies when we arrived.  I asked my mother if they were cold and she told me they were "Eskimos" from the far north and that they were used to the cold.

The hospital was rebuilt in the 1930s and looked more like this when I was a patient:

Kateri Memorial Hospital early 1980s

A new hospital was built in 1986. A historical account of the hospital from 1905-2005 was written to celebrate its centenary.

The Cosmic Dope

A weirdly wonderful plant experience by Brazilian director CLEMENTE


The Cosmic Dope - A Plant Experience (by CLEMENTE) from CLEMENTE on Vimeo.

Keita Morimoto's paintings inspired by Edward Hopper

I'm hoping to see Toronto-based artist Keita Morimoto's latest series of paintings, entitled Light Passage. The classical compositions and dramatic use of light and dark are inspired by the works of Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, William Eggleston and others. There are subtle references to anime, street fashion and youthful rebellion that refer back to Morimoto's Japanese heritage. 

Morimoto's Light Passage at the Nicholas Metivier Gallery in Toronto from 8 February until 3 March 2018. 

More: Creative Boom

Botanical Dance

Enchanted by the natural world Australian photographer Debbie O'Donnell began seeking out beauty in the world of flora and botanicals. Her series Botanical Dance is a glorious celebration of nature.

More here

Thanks Bruce!

DIY Mini Boat

Ahoy mateys!You can build this mini (but still full-sized) electric boat from a kit ($950USD).  It's simple to build with zip-tie and epoxy construction. It's designed to last a lifetime and float even if flooded because it is precision cut from marine plywood and is designed with internal bulkheads that provide emergency floatation.

More here

Via

An Extinction Illusion

There are 12 dots on this grid. When they are reduced in size, and outlined in black, they disappear.  only a few of them are visible at a time, in clusters which move erratically on the page. Where they are not seen, the grey alleys seem to be continuous, generating grey crossings that are not actually present. Some black sparkling can be seen at those crossings where no disk is seen.

How many dots can you see at a time?

Link

Via

PS22 Chorus "Dreams"

A haunting tribute to Dolores O'Riordan of The Cranberries.

Meteora Monasteries

Monks from the Greek Orthodox Church constructed their soaring monasteries, known as Meteora, on towering sandstone spires (some reaching 1,300 feet above ground) in the heartland of Thessaly, leaving a monumental mark in Greece’s natural history.



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Iceland now growing a forest for the first time in a millennium

When the Vikings arrived in Iceland a thousand years ago the island was twenty-five to forty percent forest. Now not so much. But Iceland is now growing the first new forests since Viking times.



Via 

The Cultural Borders of Songs

The Pudding has mapped last month’s #1 songs in 3,000 places. It looks like Canada has more in common with Europe than the US (musically speaking).

Via Boing Boing

Write Your Name in an Ancient Writing System

Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a European Research Council funded project hosted at the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge. They have produced downloadable handouts for people to learn to write their names in seven different ancient writing systems.

Nice houses but I wouldn't want to live in them.

A teahouse built too high, meteora monasteries, a hoarder's house and more:



Thanks Bruce!

Sunday Links

Savagely funny postage stamps channel British Brexit angst 

Fostering Isn’t Perfect, But It’s For Us - by Katie Wheeler

Snapshots From a Land of Endless Night New York Times readers who live near the Arctic Circle describe the surreal experience of polar darkness.

Elena Ferrante's first column for The Guardian ‘The cat brought in a snake and left it under my bed. Screaming, I chased it out’ 

Palermo teens pump up the velo Bici Palermo Tuning spend anything up to €1,300 customising their bikes with car batteries and multiple speakers to develop thunderous sound systems. The police are not impressed

Massive vintage movie poster collection is being digitized and made available online

Charming miniatures byＫiyomi (@chiisanashiawase2015)  Via

The Comedy Wildlife 2017 unveils the hilarious photos of the winners 

Craigslist Confessional Writer Helena Bala has been meeting people via Craigslist and documenting their stories for over two years.

Rumored Chutes  In 1931 the House on the Embankment, a building across the river from the Kremlin, was the largest residential complex in Europe, a self-contained world the size of several city blocks. It is said that N.K.V.D. agents used the garbage chutes that ran like large tubes through many apartments, popping out inside a suspect’s home without having to knock on the door. Via

The Mystery Manuscript Found in a Used Copy of 'Alice in Wonderland' 

A Gritty, Musical Portrait of Trans and Drag Sex Workers in 1990s New York

How accurate is your mental map?

Joan As Police Woman: Warning Bell

There's a 63-Year-Old Tiki Bar Hiding in This Hotel's Basement

What would Niagara Falls be like without all of its tourist trappings? Visiting Niagara Falls in the early 19th Century  Via

50 years of circus photography

Powder surfing to Debussy’s Clair de Lune

The best dish from every UK restaurant with 2 or 3 Michelin stars 

I can feel you creep into my private life Tune-Yards’ frontwoman uses their new album to critique her “white woman’s voice”

Watch Shakespeare inside Westminster Abbey I wish I could see this.

Egg Art 

160 Years of Ice Skating in New York City: Ice skating in New York reveals the history of social spaces in a city that helped shape the foundations of modern life.

The Bizarre Spending Habits of Nicolas Cage

Still Life

Any good that has to do something with your life has a story of you inside of it , maybe a short memory.

still life from mehdi shiri on Vimeo.

An animation by Mehdi Shiri

Via The Morning News

Choir creates a thunderstorm

Angel City Chorale is a nonprofit arts organization located in Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Via TYWKIWDBI 

Grave New World

Indecline, “Grave New World,” 2018

Guerrilla street art collective Indecline staged a gravesite at a Donald Trump golf course in New Jersey. The six gravestones mourn the loss of things that Trump has killed, like decency, the last snowman, our future, and the American Dream.

Indecline, “Grave New World,” 2018

More here

Via PfRC

Behind the Tradition of the Church Hat

Church hats are not just hats . They are crowns and when a woman puts one on she becomes a queen.



Via

Self-Parking Slippers?

‘ProPILOT Park Ryokan’ is a temporary experience engineered in a Japanese inn by Nissan to promote the self-parking vehicle technology for its all-electric Leaf vehicle. When guests remove their hotel-provided slippers they roll away and self-park in a neat row.  Also, when taking a seat at the traditional low tables known as chabudai, floor cushions wheel themselves into place automatically. When not in use, they automatically return to their designated spots at the push of a button.



I don't think self-parking slippers are a must but I know some folks who could use a little help with parking.

Via Urbanist

Cartoon Maps From The 1860s

Interesting anthropomorphic cartography drawn by a teenager in the 1860s.

The young lady who is responsible for these Sketches is now in her fifteenth year, and her first idea of Map Drawing is traceable to her meeting with a small figure of Punch riding on a Dolphin, and contrived to represent England. The thought occurred to her when seeking to amuse a brother confined to his bed by illness.

More maps: Flashbak

Forensic Facial Reconstruction Reveals 9,000-Year-Old Face

The appearance of the 18-year-old woman, whom researchers named named Avgi, or 'Dawn,' is based on a female skull excavated from a cave occupied in 7,000 B.C.



Read more 

When Owner Rejects Her Live Gifts, Cat Brings Leaves Instead

Baloo, a tortoiseshell cat, figured out that her owner, Ben, did not appreciate the rodents, birds and other small creatures she was bringing to him as gifts so she began bringing him large, nice looking leaves instead.

Such an intelligent and beautiful animal! I posted this story because Baloo is the doppelganger of my tortie, Joyce.

Via

Hiroji Kubota’s Black Panthers, Chicago, Illinois, 1969

Via Ferocious Sprout

Mars On Earth

After hearing about the Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (aka HI-SEAS) photographer Cassandra Klos was intrigued by the subject matter of Mars simulations being another version of a dual reality. Over two-and-a-half years Cassandra visited and participated in simulations at HI-SEAS as well as the Mars Desert Research Station in Hanksville, Utah (MDRS) and the Human Exploration Research Analog at Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas (HERA).
Cassandra’s interactions with the workers and pioneers who inhabit these strange locations have informed her Mars On Earth project.

Read more: It's Nice That 

Nigerian Hairstyles Gifs

Working with fractals, photographers Francois Beaurain and Medina Dugger have created beautiful and intricate gifs inspired by Nigerian Hairstyle art.

Via

Starting With Women

2018 proves to be the year to address ongoing issues within women’s equality in modern society. Starting with Women is a campaign with illustrations by Felipe Vargas and animation by Dirk Jan Haarsma that promotes women's rights specifically in land and resources.


Starting With Women from Dirk Jan Haarsma on Vimeo.

Via 

In 100 Texts, the Story of Love, Heartbreak, and an Unplanned Baby

When Victoria Mapplebeck found her decades-old Nokia phone hidden in the back of a kitchen drawer, she was forced to relive a story she had worked hard to forget.



Via The Atlantic

Wear Gloves When You Handle This Book

SHADOWS FROM THE WALLS OF DEATH, printed in 1874 is a book that might kill you. It contains just under a hundred wallpaper samples, each of which is saturated with potentially dangerous levels of arsenic. Near the end of the 19th century, the American Medical Association
estimated that as much as 65 percent of all wallpaper in the United States contained arsenic.
Of the original 100 copies of the book, only four remain. Michigan State University’s copy rests on a shelf in the library’s Special Collections division. Each page is individually encapsulated in plastic so that researchers and the curious can handle it without fear.

More: Atlas Obscura

How They Say "Cheers!" in 70 Countries

Via Miss Cellania

The Sami People Of Sweden

This series by Swedish photographer Joel Marklund brings his country’s indigenous and unrepresented community into focus.

More here 

Stunning Timelapse of Rio

This 10K timelapse demo of Rio De Janeiro shot by Joe Capra of Scientifantastic is best viewed fullscreen in full HD. It was put together to showcase the extreme resolution of the PhaseOne IQ180 camera and it is magnificent.


10328x7760 - A 10K Timelapse Demo from SCIENTIFANTASTIC on Vimeo.

Via

My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes

Was my father's leftover stuff the key to who he really was?

NYTimes.com

Paul Robeson sings to Scottish miners

American actor, singer and social activist Paul Robeson died in this day in 1976. In 1949 Robeson visited Woolmet Colliery near Edinburgh. He sang "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night" for miners in the canteen, a song about an American trade unionist who was allegedly framed on a murder charge and executed in 1915.

Trump Slump?

For some reason (starts with T, ends with P) people don't want to visit the US these days.

10 business associations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Restaurant Association, have created a travel industry group aimed at reversing the growing unpopularity of the U.S. as a vacation destination.
More here

Via Follow Me Here…

Best in Show

Is your dog overrated? Information is Beautiful  examined data on intelligence, longevity, genetic ailments and other markers to create a “data-score” and then plotted it against public popularity of various breeds, according to the American Kennel Club.

click image to enlarge

Sorry bulldog owners, your pet is the big loser here.
Via

Would you like a Lego model of your home?

Etsy shop Little Brick Lane will use photos and plans of your home to build a mind-bogglingly detailed replica out of Legos. Each home takes 8 to 10 weeks to build. A custom Lego home with only exterior detailing costs $1,500, while both exterior and interior detailing will set you back $2,500.

More here

A Room With A Different View Each Morning

The room is part of the documentary project by Montreal-based architectural practice l’abri for tourisme québec about a couple traveling in a room with a different view every morning. never knowing what magnificent view of Quebec they will wake up to.

all over quebec in a room with a different view every morning, by l'abri from designboom on Vimeo.

More here 

Via

Lonely Houses

Manuel Pita - aka @sejkko - is a Portuguese scientist. His art is influenced by magic realism, minimalism and geometric patterns.

Via Blort

Red Lotus Sea, Thailand

How Much Warmer Was Your City in 2017?

Last year was the second hottest year on record. In a database of more than 3,800 cities compiled by AccuWeather, about 88 percent recorded annual mean temperatures higher than normal.

Enter your city to see how much warmer or cooler it was.

Click here for interactive graphic

Quiet

Via

Cuba

This Expedia video shows off the beauty of Cuba, one of the most Instagrammable countries I've visited.

DIY Rubber Band Machine Gun

The Q shows us how to build a rubber band machine gun from cardboard, wood, string, hot glue, and popsicle sticks.



Via 

Recycling

Via I Have Seen The Whole Of The Internet

Li Wei's Dangerous Reality

Beijing artist Li Wei creates work that combines performance art and photography. His performance series, Mirroring, places the artist in apparently gravity-defying situations using mirrors, metal wires, scaffolding and acrobatics.

  More here