Monday, September 30, 2019

Photos of Overworked Japanese Employees

A 60 hour work week is not out of the norm in Japan but the work ethic of the average employee is unhealthy and it takes a toll, both physical and mental. Photographer Pawel Jaszczuk walks the streets after hours, taking photos of exhausted workers asleep on the streets.





Read more: VICE

Ceramics Good Enough To Eat


Brooklyn-based artist Stephanie Shih creates ceramic Asian grocery store items. Her master plan is to someday build a small grocery store filled exclusively with her ceramic bottles and bags and packets of instant noodles. Check out her Instagram account.




Read more about her work: Los Angeles Times

I Wanna Be Your Man(hole)

A manhole cover marking the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' Abbey Road has appeared at the famous London crossing.



More: Londonist

Avian Arrest

Utrecht police arrested a shoplifter who was carrying his pet bird on his shoulder and, since they didn't have a birdcage, they placed the bird in a cell with its owner. The department released a photo on their Instagram account. Even funnier, when news outlet RTV Utrecht covered the story they placed a little black bar over the bird's eyes to protect its privacy.


Via 

Happy Monday!


Leuki

A delightful animation for your delectation.


Leuki from Cataclope Productions on Vimeo.

Via 

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Building A Cruise Ship



Via  Memo Of The Air

Pachelbel's Chicken



Via everlasting blort

Sunday Links

Wilton’s Music Hall © Derry Moore.

Beguiling Images Of London's Iconic Theatres... Totally Empty 

J.D. Salinger’s Spider-Man Hilarious.

251 words you can spell with a calculator.

‘I’m being terrorised by a rat with no face’ Tim Dowling's column always makes me laugh.

This Vancouver urinal has zero privacy and 100 years of history

Photographer removes smartphones to show dystopic, lonely world

For Sale: 19 Frank Lloyd Wright Houses, Including His Last 

Historical Items Unearthed By Surprised Construction Workers: Everything from diamonds to a mummified toddler.

To the patriotic unmarried ladies Any takers?

Photographer Philip Butler traces the surviving iconic Odeon cinemas of the 1930s

Creator of Labradoodles Says He Unleashed 'Frankenstein’s Monster' Via Miss C

1930s-40s in Color The Library of Congress Flickr set Via

Autumnal Views of a Tokyo Suburb by Ryo Takemasa

Let's embark on a 100-year street style journey, shall we? What People Were Wearing the Year You Were Born Via Blort

The Care and Feeding of the Uffington White Horse Through More Than 100 Generations

1890 Thatched Canal House in Giethoorn, Netherlands Would you like to live in a village without cars? I would.

Transform Your Pet's Photo Into a Bespoke Painting In Minutes Using AI

Germany’s tiny geographic oddity Surrounded by Switzerland, but owned by Germany, the tiny enclave of Büsingen am Hochrhein has managed a binational existence for centuries.

Cats Like People! (Some People, Anyway) One of my cats likes me. The other one just uses me to get food.

Isle of Wight to retire its 1938 era London Underground trains 

This mother's letter written moments before her death at Auschwitz may be the only of its kind 

The 25 most important characters of the past 25 years, from movies, TV, books, comics, video games, theater, tweets, and more. Thanks Bruce!

Charles Dickens’ Liquor Log: When guests came to visit, the writer took stock of his intoxicants and recorded the inventory in a clear, firm hand in his household notebook.

When Piano Cat Demands a Lullaby You Play a Lullaby



Via TwistedSifter

Music For Sunday Morning

The newest Song Around The World is “The Weight,” featuring musicians performing together across 5 continents.

 

Via Blort

Saturday, September 28, 2019

Look Who It Is

On October 4, 1963 three Beatles helped 17 year old Helen Shapiro record this song. Paul was  busy in a different Television House studio, judging a singing/dancing contest on Brenda Lee's "Let's Jump The Broomstick".
Although it's hard to believe now, Helen Shapiro was far more famous than the Beatles at that time and she was the one who helped them reach a larger audience. In fact, in 1963, Helen was the headliner and The Beatles were her supporting act on a national tour.




Thanks Mr. Nag!

NASA Black Hole Animation

Not being able to see a black hole up close doesn’t mean scientists can’t simulate what one might look like if it were sitting right in front of us, and NASA has done just that.




Read more here

Thanks Bruce!

Crane Building Itself



Thanks Bruce!

I'm OK by Elizabeth Hobbs

It is 1915, Expressionist artist Oskar Kokoschka’s tempestuous love affair with Alma Mahler ends dramatically and he volunteers to fight in the First World War.




NFB

Uukiyo-e Takes a Contemporary Turn

Japanese artist Ukiyoemon Mitomoya blends ukiyo-e tradition with contemporary politics.






See more: Hi-Fructose Magazine

Via

Friday, September 27, 2019

Géométrie Variable

How about a little bit of geometric dancing from French dance group Géométrie Variable? Amazing choreography!



Via Pasa Bon!

Agile Frog Applies Sunscreen



Via

People Have The Power

On April 13, 2019, Patti Smith and Stewart Copeland  joined  Choir! Choir! Choir! at Onassis Festival 2019: Democracy Is Coming.


Via

Octopus Dreams

A documentary shows an octopus changing colour while sleeping. Dr. David Scheel, the marine biologist involved in Octopus: Making Contact thinks that it was dreaming about hunting, causing a colour shift to a camouflaged shade.



Via  Colossal

A Language Of Their Own

A very idiosyncratic language that the couple Bill and Tanya Martin have created.


(SHn(y)o͞of) from Sam Davis on Vimeo.

Via perfect for roquefort cheese

50th anniversary of ‘Abbey Road’ marked with the first ever video of The Beatles' 'Here Comes The Sun'

The Beatles Abbey Road was released 50 years ago yesterday (!!!)  and the half century anniversary reissue of ‘the album  arrives today. To celebrate the occasion, a video for Here Comes The Sun has finally been made.



More here

How The Beatles Got Their Logo

Have you ever thought about the origins of this iconic logo?

Thursday, September 26, 2019

Revenge Of The Duck Army

Stolen from my hilarious friend Mike Erskine-Kellie:
“Abandoned by His Family

Raised by An Army of Ducks
Returning Home and Ready for Revenge”

Loving Lofoten


Loving Lofoten from Video Bros. on Vimeo.

Stairway to Heaven?

It's actually a fire escape for Oscar Niemeyer's Edifício Copan apartment building in Sao Paolo Brazil. It contains 1,160 apartments on 38 storeys and has so many residents (2000+) that it was given its own postal code.

Image: Tacky Raccoons
This building terrifies me.

Via Tacky Raccoons

When it comes to buying cars, apparently the sky's the limit.

RM Sotheby's (formerly RM Auctions) recently celebrated its 40th birthday in Chatham-Kent, the Canadian town where it started almost half a century ago. During that time there have been some some crazy prices paid for cars on its auction floors.
This1962 Ferrari 250 GTO is the most expensive car ever sold at an auction. It sold for a stunning $48 million. The sale was part of a Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance held By RM Auctions in California in August 2013:


This 1968 Ford GT40 Gulf/Mirage was the first car to roll out of the assembly line in 1968. It was snapped up for a record $11 million in 2012:



Boston Dynamic's robot dog is for sale

Early customers are already testing Spot to monitor construction sites, provide remote inspection at gas, oil and power installations, and in public safety.
 

The initial sales, described as an “early adopter program,” is targeting businesses. Boston Dynamics wants to find customers in select industries and help them deploy Spots in real-world scenarios.

Link

Via Boing Boing

Tweet Of The Day

A forest in a football stadium

For Forest is replica of a European forest that has been transported to a football stadium in Austria where visitors can enjoy the leaves changing and falling during autumn.

Photo by Unimo

The installation is Klaus Littmann's realisation of a dystopian vision of artist Max Peintner, who imagined a world where trees would only exist like species of animals in a zoo.

More here 

Via PfRC

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Marcel Duchamp's "mini-museum in a box," the Boîte-en-valise.


Marcel Duchamp: Boîte-en-valise from Smart Museum of Art on Vimeo.

Via bookofjoe

Fingers of Fury (1999)

Fingerboarders Darin Langhorst, Damien Bernadet and Tony Pauthex showcase their skills on a variety of obstacles, such as a mini railing, a wooden box and, well, more railings and boxes.



Via

A CT Machine Spins at Max Speed

This is a Canon Aquilion going at full speed with its cover off. Wow!



Via TwistedSifter

Cookies Teach Edible Lessons In Asian American History

Afong Moy is often cited as the first Chinese woman to step foot in the United States.
Beginning in the 1830s, Moy was put on display before crowds as a curiosity.
Jasmine Cho

Pittsburgh-based cookie artist Jasmine Cho creates hand-drawn cookie portraits of Asian American figures that raise awareness of Asian American history and identity.

In 1948 diver Sammy Lee was the first Asian American to win an Olympic gold medal.
Jasmine Cho


More: NPR

Via Blort

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Scottish Witchfinder


Nearly four thousand people were accused of witchcraft in Scotland between 1563 and 1736; nearly 85 percent were women. The University of Edinburgh’s online Witches Map is an internship project that visualizes where the accused lived, where they were detained, where they were put on trial, and where they died, when that data is available.

Via The Map Room

Niche Restaurant Ideas


Wrong Hands

Space Story Mashup



A mashup of scenes from 25 science fiction classics by Zapatou.

Via Awesomer

Winter in Holland 1917



Guy Jones corrected the speed of the video and added sound.
Via MeFi

The Glass House

British photographer David McCabe steps back in time to one of his most memorable commissions—photographing a year in the life of Andy Warhol.


The Glass House forms part of A Walking History, an ongoing series collaboration between Placek and the National Trust for Historic Sites.

NOWNESS

Handling a Fractious Cat



Via  MetaFilter

Crocheted Freddie Mercury

Moji-Moji has created a whimsical downloadable Freddie Mercury pattern. It's free butyou are encouraged to make a donation to The Mercury Phoenix Trust, a charity that has given away over 15 million dollars in Freddie's name and funded over 700 projects in the global battle against HIV/AIDS.




Link
More: Open Culture

Monday, September 23, 2019

Leonard Cohen Stamps

Canada Post has honoured Leonard Cohen on what would have been his 85th birthday. The stamps pay tribute to the singer/songwriter’s career, by focusing on three standout periods of his musical life.

More here

Tweet Of The Day

What If Vangelis Did a Dr. Who Theme?



You can find a lot more of this sort of thing at GeorgeCMusic 

Via



Time-lapse Journey to Scotland

Photographer Casper Rolsted takes us on a time-lapse journey through the Scottish Highlands.


SCOTLAND in motion from Casper Rolsted on Vimeo.

Via 

The Museum of Four in the Morning

Does your internal clock have a life of its own? you might enjoy a visit to The Museum Of Four in the Morning.

Sunday, September 22, 2019

Staple Portrait Of A Doxie



Via 

This Blob Of Fat Has Its Own Memorial


This memorial manhole cover in London commemorates "the defeat of the Whitechapel fatberg". A fatberg is a huge accretion of grease, wet wipes and other unsavoury matter that really shouldn't be put down the drains. The Whitechapel fatberg was a 130 tonne blockage discovered beneath Whitechapel in 2017. A fragment of the 'berg later went on show at Museum of London

More: Londonist

Music For Sunday Morning

Sunday Links



O ̊˚C  (image above) is a creative collaboration between artist Tharien Smith and photographer Bruce Boyd, featuring unique images of flowers, fynbos and found objects encapsulated in ice.

'Very wretched indeed': Horrible historical reviews of Scottish cities – a quiz  I'm in Edinburgh right now and am finding it very pleasant indeed.

Dead bodies keep moving for more than a year after death Something I didn't really need to know.

19 Tiny Dudes in Tuxedos Play  Beethoven’s Fur Elise on a grand piano.

Enjoy the sounds of natural rainfall and city ambience on an evening walk in midtown New York City in the rain.Via Das Kraftfuttermischwerk

The Building of the World Trade Center Restaurant Windows on the World : How legendary restaurateur Joe Baum created Windows on the World atop the World Trade Center. Good story. Thanks Bruce!

Ekbom Syndrome aka delusional parasitosis

Told you I am not at all interested in all that food.  Via Miss C

French 75 Cocktail Recipe 

Bacardi wants to turn plastic straws into vinyl records

Literary Paper Dolls 

Futility Closet: According to local folklore, the village of Nigg, Scotland vanquished cholera in a singularly direct way.

Very cool: Porcelain figurines are dropped on the ground, and the sound they make when they hit trips the shutter release. Via Blort

An interesting story of a small hidden community of Japanese who were living on the margins of Vancouver.

Vintage decorating tips Thanks Bruce!

He made this town the world's 'sex-change capital,' but he's not honored here

Music to Get Lost to: Songs About Maps

Art Trips: Visit the Art of Cities Around the World, from Los Angeles and London, to Venice and New York 

"I wish I were a dog, so you could photograph me." Vincent J. Musi's photographs. Via

Roadside America Via

First Sight: In 1728 English surgeon William Cheselden removed the cataracts from a 13-year-old boy, producing the first known case of full recovery from blindness. I cringe imagining this surgery without anesthetic.

Mapping the Monsters of a Northern Irish Childhood : Growing up amid the political conflict in Northern Ireland, a 16th-century map that blended real and mythical monsters spoke to my fears and fascinations.

Seventy years of highs and lows in the history of machine learning



Saturday, September 21, 2019

Otherworldly Animated Music Video

This animated music video by Hideki Inaba is mesmerizing.



Via Colossal

Tops

In 1969, visionary designers Charles and Ray Eames directed this cinematic ballet of more than 100 spinning tops from around the world. The score is by famed Hollywood composer Elmer Bernstein.



Via Boing Boing

Fujian Tulou

© UNESCO
Fujian Tulou is a property of 46 buildings constructed between the 15th and 20th centuries over 120 km in south-west of Fujian province, inland from the Taiwan Strait. These remarkable structures are examples of a building tradition and function exemplifying a particular type of communal living and defensive organization.



Read more



Friday, September 20, 2019

What would your cat do if you suddenly died?

Carmen would probably eat me.



Via my very entertaining FB friend Hal.

Aerial Firefighting Drop Safety Video



Via Doobybrain

What Monet Ate In A Day

French Impressionist artist Claude Monet took food very seriously.



Via MetaFilter

Four notes that are used in countless movies

“Day of Wrath” is a 13th-century Gregorian chant describing judgement day and was often sung at funeral masses. It's played in many films to create drama.


Via Boing Boing

Ambient Animations

 Sandro Tatinashvili , a graphic artist from Tbilisi, Georgia, has created a series of GIFs that portray darkly futuristic environments.





See more of his work here.
Via

Thursday, September 19, 2019

Architect Breaks Down 6 NYC Luxury Apartments That Appeared In Film





Via

'Disappearing social customs of English life' in the 1960s

In the late 1960s, British photographer Tony Ray-Jones travelled across the country to document English social customs and what he saw as a disappearing way of life.




The English Seen by Tony Ray-Jones will go on show from 16 October until 21 December 2019 at the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol.

More: Creative Boom

Freediving Under Ice

Freediver Petr Kapoun swims under the surface of frozen Lake Milada in the Czech Republic.



Thanks Bruce!

Creating the UK acid house music scene

Everybody in the Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992 is a documentary about the role society and politics played in creating the UK acid house music scene.

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Real-time visualization of a cellist’s brain activity

Changes in a musician's generated brain activity are seen in real time as he performs.



More here 
Via 

The Hand Of India

At the height of the Cold War, amidst growing tensions between the US and Russia, Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi traveled to Washington D.C to deliver a pragmatic speech on the subjects of communication, understanding and friendship.


The Hand Of India from Simon Mulvaney on Vimeo.


Shot, cut and directed by Simon Mulvaney
Words by Indira Ghandi

Feline Erectus

Swiss photographer Alexis Reynaud created the series Standing Cats, in which gorgeous felines pose upright on two feet.





Prints are for sale here

Via My Modern Met

La Dans Apache

The Apache dance from Charlie Chan in Paris, 1935.



Via Miss Cellania

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

The Deep Sea

Kurzgesagt dives down from the surface of the ocean to the deepest known point in the Earth's seabed hydrosphere, Challenger Deep.

 

Via

How you can get your hands on one of the rarest trees in Canada

Carolinian Canada is a charity dedicated to preserving, protecting and restoring Ontario's Carolinian forest. They coordinate one of the largest and most ambitious Ecosystem Recovery programs in Canada. 
Hundreds of years ago pawpaws grew in abundance in the Carolinian. Indigenous people planted them near their communities and along many of their trade routes. Today, the tree only grows in about a dozen places and is one of the rarest species in Canada. An ecologist and a retired teacher are bringing 100 pawpaw trees to communities across Southern Ontario

These are just a few of the 100 pawpaw seedlings ecologist Ben Porchuk
is giving away with a little help from his neighbour Steve O'Neil.
(Colin Butler/CBC News)

More: CBC News

Miniature Worlds

Miniature artist Gregory Grozos has a studio in Cyprus where he creates tiny detailed environments in steampunk, fantasy and whimsical style.

Library in a pocket watch

Laboratory of the mad inventor



More here
Via

The New Past

Dutch artist Tamara Stoffers creates surreal collages crafted from Soviet-era books.







Via Blort


Monday, September 16, 2019

Slow-Mo Hornets

German nature photographer Lothar Lenz captured this amazing slow-motion video of hornets going about their daily business.



Via 

No Straw Hats After September 15! Consider Yourself Warned.

In the early 20th Century men switched from straw hats to felt ones on September 15th. If a man ignored this edict hooligans were free to smash his hat to bits.


The article above describes a hat smashing incident in 1922. A group of 1000 from the notorious Five Points neighbourhood prowled the streets of New York City, beating men who refused to remove their straw hats.

Via Dr. Caligari's Cabinet

Foot Fetish


Artist Gwen Murphy creates sculpture from ash clay, acrylics, and found objects. Her Foot Fetish series uses discarded shoes with faces peering out from inside.




Via 

A Cat Experiment

If the head passes through can the body follow? The owner of internet cat sensations, Mara and Hana, decided to test the limits of feline flexibility.



Via Neatorama

House On An Ultra-Skinny Lot

This house illustrates that "where there's a will there's a way". When Cyril Borovsky bought a 16-foot-wide strip of land in Toronto sandwiched between two bungalows, he knew the only way to fit more than one bedroom on the tiny footprint was to think cubically.



It's an interesting use of space but has raised a lot of controversy in the area where it was built. The neighbours hate it. It is currently on the market for $3m CAD which is a helluva lot for that 'hood. Your visitors would have no problem finding you though. Just tell them it's the place that sticks out like a sore thumb.

Via *faircompanies

If you’re noticing the props, you’re doing your job wrong


Prop masters are versatile, flitting between genres and centuries. And they all adore period pieces, when the prop master’s job becomes an exercise in preventing anachronisms. In this article prop masters talk about the hardest props of their careers:

  • Cast Away (2000), Wilson the volleyball
  • Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), the newspaper on 9/11
  • The Blacklist (2013–2015), a dog
  • Airplane! (1980), the fish skeleton
  • Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), the breakaway bottles
  • The Social Network (2010), Mark Zuckerberg’s personal laptops
  • The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), the pastry box (above) 
  • Apollo 13 (1995), assorted Mission Control accessories and flight manuals 
  • Angels & Demons (2009), the ring 
  • Rush (1991), the drugs 
  • The Addams Family (1991), the dinner 
  • Cocoon (1985), the “aliens’ box”


See movie clips with the props and read  more about them here

Thanks Bruce!

Sunday, September 15, 2019

This Butterfly is a Jays fan.


via Gfycat

A monarch butterfly landed on Guerrero's leg, helped Britton throw a pitch and later landed on another player's glove in the dugout.

Hydrofoiling on the Seine

Philippe Caneri combines foilboard and tidal bore surfing.



Via TMN

Sunday Links

The Oil Paintings of Pavel Guliaev
Country Music doc series by Ken Burns I know what I'll be doing tonight.

Burning Man Through the Eyes of an Army Sniper

This is a good story: Living By Marble Arch In 1978 And Wearing Joe Strummer's Creepers 

Beautiful, Remote and So Instagrammable. Looking forward to our visit there in March!

Back in vogue: revisiting Paris Is Burning in 2017: Walking the streets of New York with voguers past and present, revisiting the parts of the city featured in the cult 1990 documentary. Via

An infamous serial killer is the voice behind many audiobooks 

The signature film of every major city : Trot around the globe to 50 cities and attempt to determine which fictional films best exemplify their real-life setting.

Albums I Wish Existed He finds rare cuts from great artists and creates new free for download albums. Via MeFi

X Shore electric boats: Engine noise, fumes and carbon emissions are all nonexistent.

Online Tone Generator  Hearing test Via 

From mind control to murder?  Frank Olson died in 1953, but, because of clandestine US government experiments, it took decades for his family to get closer to the truth.

The Many Requirements Of Hold Music, A Genre For No One 

What Not to Put in the Dishwasher 

The Book of Prince He had grand plans for his autobiography, but only a few months to live.

Holy Bluetooth Speaker, Batman! Sound has a new super hero.

Dulux names Tranquil Dawn as Colour of the Year for 2020

Dub remixes of the Beach Boys, David Bowie, the Clash, and more.

Amy Sedaris’s 5 Dinner Party Tips 

Marx for Cats Via MeFi

My Prison Reading by Kian Tajbakhsh

10 Of The Worst 'Food Hacks' On The Internet  Via Miss C


Friday, September 13, 2019