Sunday, September 30, 2018

RIP Otis Rush

Otis Rush, one of the pioneering guitarists of the Chicago blues scene, died Saturday from complications from a stroke he suffered in 2003. He was 84.



Read more: Rolling Stone

Music For Sunday Morning



Via

Sunday Links

Bodys Isek Kingelez: Paris Nouvel, 1989
Photo by Frédéric Pignoux/Cnap (France)

Bodys Isek Kingelez: Building Fantasy  In the late 1970s, the Congolese sculptor Kingelez (1948-2015) began crafting what he called “extreme maquettes,” fantastical buildings constructed out of whatever he could get his hands on.

Rockwell and Repin The recent Senate hearings over the nomination of Brent Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court led to social media postings of Norman Rockwell‘s eloquent 1959 painting The Jury Room.

The moment tsunami hits Palu city More than 400 people have been confirmed dead after a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake hit an Indonesian city on Friday. *Edit:the final death toll could number in the thousands*

When Televisions Were Radioactive: Anxieties about the effects of screens on human health are hardly new, but the way the public addresses the problems has changed.

Writers’ Cribs Via 

Forbidden behaviour | Comune di Venezia Thanks Bruce!

Let’s Read Old Magazines 

The Sandwich That Helped Feed Puerto Rico After FEMA Failed 

‘This guy doesn’t know anything’: the inside story of Trump’s shambolic transition team  Via

For Those Who Love Coziness and Feeling Extremely Wealthy A review of an $88 candle.

Ke Lefa Laka: Memories of a Lost Mother

How to make Anthony Bourdain's classic meatballs

As our urban living arrangements get smaller is there a way to make them more liveable? Yes. The answer, of course, is robots.

David Hockney unveils iPad-designed window at Westminster Abbey 

Pancake moons and grounds galaxies

Scenes: The Wicked Shit  A wild weekend at the Gathering of the Juggalos with the die-hard fans of American horrorcore rap duo Insane Clown Posse.

Airfare Study Claims This Is Exactly How Far in Advance You Should Book Your Flights

The Missing Boys Of St. Anne's Residential School

Tanuki, the Japanese raccoon dog, is a shape-shifting, hedonistic and jovial trickster. Via

Classical Pianist Glenn Gould to Tour World as Hologram

You've heard of Mustang Sally. How about Axis Sally?

William Faulkner Was a Really Bad at Being a Postman Luckily he had other talents.

For $1000 Professional 'Trip Sitters' Will Save You From a Bad Acid Trip

Saturday, September 29, 2018

“Chinatown Edition” of Monopoly Highlights the Game’s Anti-Gentrification Roots


NYC-based art and activism collective Chinatown Soup has developed a “Chinatown Edition” of Monopoly. The collective's founder, Michelle Marie Esteva, aims to create a more utopian neighborhood. Highlighting the issues surrounding gentrification, it includes “Chance” cards like “Convert a tenement building into a condo, donate $200 to the Community Center for displacing the elderly,” and other socially responsible concepts.


More here

Via

Modern London for one night only

An exhibition showcases illustrations by London based Lukas Novotny from his new book, Modern London . It traces the development of the city’s skyline from lost buildings torn down in a few short years to the latest in Olympic developments and city skyscrapers. The exhibition and book launch takes place on the evening of October 4 in Shoreditch. It is free but tickets need to be booked in advance.



If you can't get to the launch you can buy the book here.

More: IanVisits

The longest movie also has the longest trailer.

Anders Weberg's Ambiancé is the longest film ever made at 720 hours! The Swedish filmmaker hopes to release the film in 2020. It will be shown in its full length on a single occasion syncronised in all the continents of the world and then destroyed.

The trailer below lasts 7 hours and 20 minutes and was filmed in one take with no cuts:



Via Pasa Bon!

Friday, September 28, 2018

Moth Drinking Tears From the Eye of a Sleeping Bird

Leandro João Carneiro de Lima Moraes, a Brazilian researcher from the National Institute of Amazonian Research, has documented an erebid moth feeding on the tears of a black-chinned antbird. This behavior is called “lachryphagy.” To feed in this way, moths gently insert their straw-like proboscis into the eyes of their unwary hosts, sucking out the nutrient-laden tears.



More here

Photographs of life in Manzanar, an American internment camp for Japanese Americans


After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the US government ordered all Japanese Americans (two thirds of them American citizens) living on the West Coast to report to assembly centres for eventual transfer to internment camps.







Project Director Ralph Merritt hired photographers Dorothea Lange Ansel Adams to document life at the camp. Lange and Adams were joined by WRA photographers Russell Lee, Clem Albers and Francis Stewart. (Lange was fired after a few months for her "sympathetic" approach.) Two Japanese internees, Toyo Miyatake and Jack Iwata, secretly photographed life within the camp with a smuggled camera. Their images have been gathered together in a new book, Displaced: Manzanar 1942 - 1945.


More: Creative Boom

Failed Food Packaging


Wrong Hands

Thursday, September 27, 2018

The Stable Marriage Problem

Given a group of 10 men and 10 women, all straight, is it always possible to pair them off in stable marriages, that is, to pair them so that there exist no man and woman who would prefer each other to the partners they have? Yes it is.



In 1962, mathematicians David Gale and Lloyd Shapley showed that stable marriages can always be found for any equal number of men and women.

Read More: Futility Closet

The Hindu Bagpipers of New Jersey

Affiliated with the Shree Swaminarayan Temple in Secaucus, New Jersey, this unique bagpipe troupe blends Indian, Scottish and American music to spread a message of peace and unity.


The Hindu Bagpipers of New Jersey from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

In Therapy - Three in the room

In this 8 part web series ventriloquist Nina Conti and her cynical puppet, Monk, are in therapy. *Warning: strong language*



Via  MetaFilter

Seal slaps man with octopus


A kayaker off Kaikoura in New Zealand was filmed being slapped in the face with a large octopus thrown by a seal.

Collagin


No, this is not a typo. Gintrepreneurs, Young In Spirit, have combined gin with pure collagen. It apparently tastes like "a universal fear of getting old mixed with a collective desire to mask that fear by getting smashed."
In 2017 the company got its knuckles rapped by industry watchdog, The Portman Group, who upheld two complaints alleging that labelling wrongly implies it has “health and beauty benefits.” At US$48 this gin is a bit pricey and if you're looking for the Fountain of Youth I'm 99.9% sure this is not it.

More here

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

MEOW!!!!!


A performance of Duetto buffo di due gatti

Via Mr. Nag

Damn Spam!

I just decided to empty my gigantic spam folder and, lo and behold, I found concrete evidence that my readers had not abandoned me! The folder had numerous comments that had bypassed my inbox and gone straight to spam. I don't know how long this has been going on because emails in spam are automatically deleted after a period of time. My apologies to all who think I've been ignoring you; I've posted those I could retrieve. I do appreciate all your comments because they let me know that I'm not blogging into some huge void.

1,600 Men for Anita Hill & Christine Blasey Ford


27 years ago, 1,600 black women came together to place a full-page ad in the NYT to support Anita Hill. Today The Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign, in support of Futures Without Violence, is leading a campaign for 1,600 MALE signatories to take out a full-page ad in the NYT this Monday in support of Prof. Anita Hill and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.


More here

Dance revolution 1

The Litas

The Litas is the world's largest female biking collective and provides a inclusive community for female riders globally. Gevin Fax is its oldest member.


The Litas from Stept Studios on Vimeo.




Artist Creates Optical Illusions Using Found Objects

Rhode Island-based artist, Thomas Deininger, assembles discarded toys and other found objects into three-dimensional sculptures that fool the eye.


Thomas Deininger / Eyes from Colossal on Vimeo.



See more: Colossal

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

On This Day

On this day in 1957, under escort by federal troops, Carlotta Walls and eight classmates walked up the front steps of Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas and into history.



More: Time

Cartoon Cafe

The interior of Cafe Yeonnam-dong 239-20 in Seoul, South Korea makes customers feel as though they’ve stepped into a cartoon world.




More here 

Designing a Flying Carpet

The code name of the project was Flying Carpet. See How Herman Miller's Brand New Cosm Chair Came to Life


Designing a Flying Carpet: Cosm (long) from studio 7.5 on Vimeo.

101-Year-Old Tattoo Artist

In the mountains of the Philippines 101-year-old tattoo artist, Whang-Od, is the last master of the thousand-year-old trade that first began as a way to honor warriors in battle. Using a hammer and thorns, Whang-Od taps coal ink into skin.



Link

Via Boing Boing

The American who bought London Bridge

The amazing story of how a Victorian bridge from London was shipped across the world and rebuilt in America.

Monday, September 24, 2018

Lives of The Downtrodden in Early America

Townsends makes reproduction 18th and early 19th Century clothing and also has a YouTube channel. Below Jon Townsend gives us details from the travel journals of Sarah Kemble Knight and surveyor William Bird, who wrote down the things they saw and the people they met.



Via Miss Cellania

OK, ew and qapik


Scrabble players will now be able to use words such as "OK" and "ew" after US dictionary company Merriam-Webster announced it was adding 300 new words in the latest edition of the game's dictionary.
"Qapik", a unit of currency in Azerbaijan, is one of 20 words in the Scrabble Dictionary beginning with q that does not need a u. This is a big deal in the Scrabble universe.

Read more: BBC News



Pastry Chef Attempts To Make Gourmet Twizzlers

Claire Saffitz, senior food editor at Bon Appetit, attempts to replicate everyone's favourite chewy licorice confection, the Twizzler. Can she do it?



Via MeFi

Photographer Created a 1,400-Pound Camera to Take a Picture of a Train


In 1900, when the Chicago & Alton Railway wanted to promote their brand-new Chicago-to-St. Louis express service, photographer George R. Lawrence knew the whole train wouldn't fit in one picture. He knew he needed a bigger camera - really, really big. He designed a camera that held a glass plate measuring 8 feet by 4 1/2 feet. The camera alone weighed 900 pounds. With the plate holder, it reached 1,400 pounds.



Read more: Open Culture

Red Velvet Cinnamon Roll Guts


Does the thought of chowing down on sugary intestines make you salivate? Then these cinnamon roll “guts” from Kitchen Overlord’s cookbook: Dead Delicious! are the perfect Halloween dessert for you.

Recipe here

Via Foodiggity

Release Your Inner Beast!

The Hybridizer allows you to create species you've only imagined before - in your nightmares. Kajetan Obarski (animation), Igor Hardy (code) and digital collection expert Tukasz Kozak have digitized and split in half the 17th century illustrations of Swiss-born engraver, Matthaus Merian, to create this interactive app.



Play around with it

Read more about the Digital Cultures conference.

Thanks Bruce!

Nico Before The Velvets

Nico before the Velvets backed by the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page (1965)



Read more

Sunday, September 23, 2018

Body discovered after tree 'unusual for the area' was found in a cave

Remains and samples which were found at the scene
where Ahmet Hergune was killed

Ahmet Hergune was murdered during the conflict between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots in 1974, but his body remained undiscovered for decades. More than 40 years later he has been found - after a seed from a fig in his stomach grew into a tree.

Read more

Music For Sunday Morning

Sunday Links

Image Credit

Modernism in Miniature (above): Custom-built mid-century modern buildings in 1:24 scale. Via

Podcasts That Will Make You Smarter 

As grey as the vent coverts of white rump Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours

Make a Hotdog Log Cabin!

Origami Simulator Via

I Quit! Quotes on the Luxury of Giving Up 

I was astonished to learn that one in 20 Britons have not eaten any green vegetables in the past month. I hope you're not one of these people but, if you are, here's an adult guide to eating more greens – even if you hate them.

What Soldiers Carried To Battle Through The Ages 

The Gorgeous Typeface That Drove Men Mad and Sparked a 100-Year Mystery Via

How to Seal Foods Without Using a Vacuum Sealer

“Don’t worry,” farmers would call at the sight of me in the middle of the road, slowly backing away from their snarling mastiff or German shepherd. “He doesn’t bite.” “You,” I’d always shout back. “He doesn’t bite you.”- David Sedaris on walking

What Does Hell Look Like?

Who would wear this?

Tilting House Shifts and Spins Based on its Inhabitant’s Movements

Then and now: female members of New Zealand's’s legislature posed to recreate a photograph from 1905 to illustrate how democracies can evolve.

Londonist: Old safety posters from the British Safety Council designed to warn UK citizens of the dangers that may lie around the corner.

Inside Disneyland’s $15,000 21 Royal Dining Experience 

Driverless cars of the future: Ideas on what to do with time not spent on driving.

Extraordinary Gas Stations From John Margolies’ Archive of Americana Architecture  Via 

The World's Lightest (3.3 Pound) All Graphene Wheelchair 

Came home to some minor tornado wreckage, so I decided to recruit some of the pups for a clean-up party.  Via

Anaana's Tent is a Canadian children's show that broadcasts in Inuktitut. Via

Saturday, September 22, 2018

This is Peckham

Director Shane Duncan takes a look at the gentrification that is spreading throughout London.


This is Peckham from Shane Duncan on Vimeo.

Via

Autumn's Here!


Photo taken in Jordan, Ontario last year

The constant heat this summer knocked the stuffing out of me and my garden so I'm glad to see the back of that season. Here are a few autumn music links to get you thinking about pumpkin spice:

Billy Holiday: Autumn In New York

Eva Cassidy: Autumn Leaves

Neil Young: Harvest Moon

John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman: Autumn Serenade

Van Morrison: When The Leaves Come Falling Down

Fiona Apple: Pale September


There's still some colour in the garden amid the weeds and mold


Son Doodles, Dad Illustrates

Animator Thomas Romain uses his adult ability to turn his young sons' drawings into finished, professional pieces.



Via MetaFilter

Friday, September 21, 2018

Good grief!

You Can’t Break This Illusion, Even When You Know How It Works

How the Ames Window works and why.



Via TwistedSifter

Reinvigorating a Neglected Main Street With A Retractable Storefront Theater


Artist Matthew Mazzotta designed an unassuming storefront to reinvigorate the neglected main street in Lyons, Nebraska. It flips down to become a 100-seat theatre. Hydraulic cylinders on either side push down the awning and false frontage over the sidewalk, revealing stepped seats with room for 100 spectators. A screen can be wheeled in front by a tractor, then driven away again when necessary.

Thursday, September 20, 2018

OmniSkins Bring Inanimate Objects to Life

Yale University researchers have developed a kind of “robotic skin” that transforms ordinary objects into multifunctional robots.


Eventually, the electric skin could be used to create more effective search-and-rescue robots, enable locomotion in everyday objects, and improve wearable or assistive devices.

Link
More here

Woman in iconic 9/11 Photo Hires the Same Photographer for a Happier Occasion 17 Years Later


On September 11th, 2001 street photographer Phil Penman captured an arresting image of  Joanne Capestro as she stumbled away from Ground Zero. 17 years later he photographed her again,  this time for her wedding.





More here 

Which is real and which is the drawing?

Gateshead artist Howard Lee creates illusions out of everyday objects.



Let's Just Put A Happy Little Slice Of Bread In There



The Bob Ross Toaster displays everyone’s favourite television artist on the outside and produces toast with Ross’s iconic face on each slice.

More: Foodiggity

Do Not Waste Life

Last year the Argentinian Foundation of Liver Transplant  and advertising agency DDB collaborated on a campaign and took it to the streets of Buenos Aires. It had two main objectives: to raise awareness about organ donation and to let people express their willingness to become organ donors.



More: Dioniso Punk

Restoration of a Hot Wheels 1971 Bye-Focal

Watch baremetalHW restore this Hot Wheels wreck to its original pristine condition.



Via Boing Boing

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Your Cat Needs A Custom Electric Skateboard



More here

Hand Drawn Geometric Gifs

German artist Benjamin Zimmerman creates geometric gifs, drawn by pencil or marker on paper and animated using the Blender 3D creation suite.







More:  Cross Connect Magazine

On This Day

On this day in 1982 Carnegie-Mellon computer scientist Scott Fahlman first proposed the use of the emoticons :-) and :-( to mark tone in electronic communications, posting his recommendation to the university’s bulletin board. But long before this, in 1881, humour magazine Puck used punctuation to denote emotions:


More: perfect for roquefort cheese



Camper fits in a Sprinter and expands to four times its size

ioCamper turns any van to a motorhome. No need to modify the van. Full comfort for 4 people.



Via Curbed

On This Day

On 19 September 1893 a new Electoral Act was signed into law making New Zealand the first self-governing country in the world in which women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections. Suffrage campaigners, led by Kate Sheppard, compiled a series of massive petitions calling on Parliament to grant the vote to women.



Most other democracies did not grant women the right to the vote until after the First World War. In the early 21st century women have held each of the country’s key constitutional positions: prime minister, governor-general, speaker of the House of Representatives, attorney-general and chief justice.

Read more 

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Guillotine earrings from the Reign of Terror

Guillotine earrings c.1793

These macabrey bits of gilded bling from 1793 depict the Phrygian cap on top, and the crowned, decapitated heads of the king and queen dangling below. The  royal couple were among 16,594 executed  between June 1793 and July 1794 during the French Revolution.

More here

Via

Stones


Woods Davy assembles stones into precarious sculptural combinations that appear weightless.




Thanks Bruce!



Fire Tornado

Firefighter Mary Schidlowsky shot this video of a 60 metre high fire tornado pulling the hose of a B.C. wildfire crew into the air. 



CBC News

Mon Œil

"My Eye" is a web-series for children from the age of five from the Pompidou Centre in Paris.



See more episodes 

Via everlasting blort 

Concrete Reverie

Designers and creatives across the New East are now reclaiming socialist-era Brutalism as a driving force behind their work. This raw concrete architecture has been demonized by many but others draw inspiration from its bare essence and uncompromising form.

St Petersburg-based artist Katia Tolstykh draws inspiration from the
Brutalist cityscapes that surround her. Decorated with pastel hues,
her MEME vases showcase unfinished surfaces and the
 unusual use of conventional forms.

Slovak designer Marián Laššák's Panelák furniture is inspired by the country’s
pre-fab  tower blocks which sprouted up across communist Czechoslovakia
after the Second World War

Artist Guido Zimmerman fuses the traditional cuckoo clock with post-war buildings.
(Previously) 

Read more: The Calvert Journal

Monday, September 17, 2018

Baby squirrels freed from tail tangle


Five baby squirrels squirrels became fused together when their tails become entangled with grass and plastic strips their mother used as nest material. Squirrels require their tails for balance and luckily the Wisconsin Humane Society's Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre anaesthetized the young rodents and were able to cut them free with scissors.

More: BBC News

Seven Species So Endangered that Their Remaining Members Could Fit in a Single NYC Subway Car

Poignant depictions by Mona Chalabi of the remaining members of seven endangered species fitting into their own NYC subway car.






More illustrations here
Via 

4D-Printed Hydrophytes Come Alive

Industrial designer Nicole Hone created  futuristic aquatic plants, or Hydrophytes, as part of a research project focussed on designing and choreographing movement through 4D printing.

Hydrophytes - 4D Printing from Nicole Hone on Vimeo.

The functions of each plant were inspired by the effects of climate change on marine species. The film is true to life with no effects created in post-production.

See more: Colossal

The Photographs of Cristina Garcia Rodero


Cristina García Rodero (b. 1949) is a Spanish photographer and photoreporter who started taking photographs in 1974. She captures the rural traditions and rituals of her own country and those of Mediterranean Europe.




More:  lamono magazine

Thanks Bruce!

Make Techno With Moritz

Moritz Simon Geist makes robotic constructions, combining sculpture, recycling, and sound.



More here


Via everlasting blort

Why we say “OK”

 How a cheesy joke from the 1830s became the most widely spoken word in the world.

How the Grateful Dead Changed Live Music Forever

The "Wall of Sound” was a 600-speaker sound system that was was free of  distortion. It was a feat of engineering that served as its own monitoring system and solved many of the technical problems that sound engineers faced at that time.

.

More: Open Culture

Artist shows what it’s like to be nearsighted

Soak - Oil on Canvas - Philip Barlow

South African artist Philip Barlow's series of hyperrealistic paintings captures what the world might look like for people suffering from myopia. His work looks like out-of-focus photographs but, on close examination, brushstrokes become visible.



Thanks Bruce!

Sunday, September 16, 2018

The Bride And Groom Of The Revolution



Human rights lawyer Noura Safadi’s husband was a famous activist. His name was Bassel Khartabil Safadi.The couple met at a demonstration, quickly falling in love before Bassel was detained.Yet they became known as ‘the bride and groom of the Syrian revolution.’