Saturday, October 31, 2020
A 5-storey building 'walks' to new location
The Lagena Primary School was constructed in 1935 by the municipal board of Shanghai's former French Concession. It was recently moved to make space for a new commercial and office complex. Using the "walking machine" method, 198 mobile supports were installed underneath. The pillars of the building were truncated and the robotic "legs" were then extended upward, lifting the building before moving forward.
The building was rotated 21 degrees and moved 62 meters (203 feet) away to its new location. The relocation took 18 days.
Protection for Unesco-Designated Japanese Villages
Shirakawa-go and Kayabuki no Sato are Unesco-designated heritage villages in Japan. Built in gassho style, these wooden thatched houses are vulnerable to destruction by fire. Many concealed sprinkler systems have been installed in various huts in the villages. They are not overtly obvious but protect the villages in the event of fire.
The video below shows the water hose festival in Kayabuki no Sato:
See the annual water discharge drill at Shirakawago at Pasa Bon!
How Cast Iron Pans Are Made
On this episode of ‘Handmade,’ John Truex and Liz Seru, co-owners of metal casting workshop Borough Furnace in Owego, New York, show us how cast iron pans are made by hand.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Friday, October 30, 2020
Visitors
‘I’ve never seen necessarily an alien but I’ve met some humans that might not be considered born here …’
Visitors from Scott Lazer on Vimeo.
Via Aeon VideosDon't Swallow a Toothpick
Who knew? Apparently there have been incidents of people accidentally ingesting toothpicks. They regretted it.
Via The Awesomer
Crock Of Gold Trailer
Thisfilm is a cinematic exploration of the legendary Irish poet, punk and Pogue Shane MacGowan.
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Under Pressure
Karen O and Willie Nelson unveil their cover of the iconic David Bowie and Queen classic "Under Pressure". I love it.
Walking Wheelchair
Inspired by a man in a wheelchair at the rugby club who couldn’t get to the bar in the Christmas rush, architect Suzanne Brewer and her son Jarvis invented the Walking Wheelchair
They are now looking for someone to progress it and bring to market.
If you think you could help please contact info@suzannebrewerarchitects.com
High -VisibilityHalloween Costumes Designed by AI
It's Halloween and Janelle Shane is up to more AI Weirdness. She used GPT-3 to generate a list of high-visibility costumes for distanced viewing.
She gave this prompt and the neural network had to write the rest of the text:
Some of the costumes are high-visibility; others are maybe just confusing. Here are a few good ones:
Dracula Cha-Cha-Cha
Words and music by Rod McKuen? I remember him as a very popular poet in the United States during the late 1960s. I may have even bought a copy of Listen to the Warm. I did not know he wrote this though.
Via
Via
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Tweet Of The Day
This project embroiders Trump's actual tweets. Apparently he doesn't think much of Canada. Good. If he liked what we were doing I'd know we were definitely doing something wrong.
The Last Stand of the President, rally rambling about 🇨🇦 #tinypricksproject https://t.co/HAzYBdH3WK pic.twitter.com/CxVIKS5A41
— Tiny Pricks Project (@TinyPricks) October 28, 2020
Pumpkin Carver Extraordinaire!
Cupid Escapes!
In this installation by Filip Sterckx of Skullmapping a Rubens angel escapes his painting and flies around Brussels airport.
Vulcan Salute Mittens
Unfortunately these Live Long And Prosper Mittens by Jennifer Symons are sold out on Etsy but they are so cute I had to share them with you. Maybe you could convince her to make more?
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" Sung in Latin
When I was in high school I learned to sing Jingle Bells in Latin and I remember it to this day (Tinniat, tinniat tintinnabulum!). This is much better.
Via Neatorama
DIY Giant Spider For Halloween
In this build log from Paul Jones, you’ll see how he created this extremely convincing giant spider.
More DIY Giant Spiders here
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
This Is What 220,000+ Deaths Look Like
Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg installed over 220,000 white flags in D.C. to represent COVID-19 deaths.
Food Thief
He thought he'd catch his girlfriend stealing his food but he got a surprise. Creepy AF.
When he saw the video he called the police. He had no idea who she was or how she got into the storage area above his apartment.
Via Messy Nessy
A New York Story
Fashion designer Marc Jacobs spent 70 days as one of three residents at the Mercer hotel during the pandemic. His personal assistant, Nick Newbold, made a 28-minute film titled "A New York Story", beginning with Mr. Jacobs checking in and ending with him checking out and driving off with his husband when the lockdown is lifted.
Via bookofjoe
Monday, October 26, 2020
Tweet Of The Day
Over 500 Vintage London Transport Maps And Photos Just Became Available To Browse Online | Londonist https://t.co/ErYPsISd66 via @365posterblog1
— GRAFIX: A fix of Vintage Graphics (@365posterblog1) October 26, 2020
Bread of the Dead
Are you looking for a super creepy Halloween recipe and ghost shaped cookies just won't do the trick? This recipe for Bread of the Dead from Castellon's Kitchen might be exactly what you're looking for. It's squid ink flatbread with skull shaped mushrooms on top.
Via Messy Nessy
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Woman Destroys Edinburgh Busker's Guitar. Jack White Bought Him A New One.
I'm a long time Jack White fan. Love him even more now.
Tweet Of The Day
Rare photo of the staff at Stonehenge putting the clocks back. 😂#clocksgoback pic.twitter.com/jYQubbGXgq
— You Had One Job! (@_youhadonejob1) October 24, 2020
Sunday Links
Amuse yourselves: Digital Jigsaw Puzzles: Fall Edition
Little Peek This week's house envy.
Where can I get one of these?
I really like this: Gloria Steinem 1965 Interview with Dorothy Parker Gloria Steinem was 30 and Parker was 71 when they met in the winter of 1964-65 for a long chat that ended up as a Ladies Home Journal article.
Massive landslide in Nara Prefecture 2004
Merriam Webster's Time Traveler is a fun tool that reveals when words first appeared in its print dictionary.
A website exploring the bath houses of Japan. Via Present &Correct
This cycling trip along the Seine from Paris to the Sea looks like fun. We went from Amsterdam to Bruges by bike two years ago.
"Even the Bathwater is Dirty" The Notting Hill neighbourhood in London has become gentrified but it was once very different.
This ad for a pencil sharpener came up on my Facebook timeline. Now I really want one, even though I have no pencils.
Trailer for American Selfie: One Nation Shoots Itself
Revisiting 'The House That Dripped Blood'
A Graphic Guide to Cemetery Symbolism
These Mid-Century Beverage Posters by Telegramme Paper Co. would look great in your kitchen.
This Segregated Campground was built for racist reasons but it became a refuge for Black families.
Dammit all! Thanks Bruce!
Analyzing the Design of Unusual Japanese Butter Tableware Via Everlasting Blort
Headline of the day: Escaped cloned female mutant crayfish take over Belgian cemetery " It's impossible to round up all of them. It's like trying to empty the ocean with a thimble." Via MeFi
The Perfect Hex Sign-Inspired Corporate Logo: The eye had its premiere on CBS on Nov. 19, 1951, overlaid on a photograph of a cloud-filled sky. The logo was not just a mark of distinction, it symbolized the strength of all things ocular. Via Perfect For Roquefort Cheese.
And here are a bunch of Halloween links:
A Graphic Guide to Cemetery Symbolism
Saturday, October 24, 2020
Dublin Grocery Shares Medieval Viking History
A new Lidl store in Dublin literally opened a window into medieval history. During construction, archaeologists discovered a 1,000-year-old home of Hiberno-Norse Dubliners and decided to share it with their customers.
How Helen Keller Learned to Speak
The story of Helen Keller and her brilliant teacher, Annie Sullivan, has awed me since I saw "The Miracle Worker" when I was a child. Little Helen overcame overwhelming challenges and went on to become an author, political activist and lecturer.
Via Miss Cellania
Brutally Finnish
This ad for Kyrö Distillery features one of the company founders, naked in a sauna.
Friday, October 23, 2020
Mini Treehouses
These DIY treehouse kits for your houseplants are adorable. They even come with LED lights!
Via BoingBoing
Alice Smith: Black Mary
Alice Smith is a Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter and producer.
"Kahlil Joseph notes the oddity of her lack of fame and her "odd beauty" and then effectively explains both oddities when he says that Alice was willing to show up for a couple of days of filming for no money, and that he 'shot a ton of shit' and whittled it down to this one performance. "
Via 3 Quarks Daily
Autochromes by Franklin Price Knott (c. 1916) Now Deemed Sensational and Exploitative
Franklin Price Knott (1854 - 1930) is remembered for taking some of the first color images to appear in National Geographic magazine. In 2018, National Geographic issued the following statement: “For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It.”
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| A Geisha poses in Kyoto, June 1927 by Franklin Knott |
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| Franklin Price Knott, Nine-year-old dancer, Bali. Photographed on Autochrome, via US Department of State. |
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| Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis in performance, 1916 |
“People of colour were often scantily clothed, people of colour were usually not seen in cities, people of colour were not often surrounded by technologies of automobiles, airplanes or trains or factories. People of colour were often pictured as living as if their ancestors might have lived several hundreds of years ago and that’s in contrast to westerners who are always fully clothed and often carrying technology. [White teenage boys] could count on every issue or two of National Geographic having some brown skin bare breasts for them to look at, and I think editors at National Geographic knew that was one of the appeals of their magazine, because women, especially Asian women from the pacific islands, were photographed in ways that were almost glamour shots.”
– John Edwin Mason
Tweet Of The Day
Gwen John's 'Girl With a Cat,' is filled with restrained emotion, and has something of the tranquillity of a Vermeer coupled with the intensity of a Rembrandt portrait. It was painted when she was living in Meudon, sleeping in what was virtually a garden shed with her cats. pic.twitter.com/IEQLDQVTwS
— Richard Morris: Art History in a Tweet (@ahistoryinart) October 22, 2020
Dorothy’s new cutaway print celebrates some of the greatest moments in the history of the modern sneaker, all hidden inside this iconic shoe.
Thursday, October 22, 2020
Tweet Of The Day
A short thread of colorized old photographs (this one from New York, 1910s) pic.twitter.com/26Oxs5xrE4
— Iasonas (@greekchungus) October 21, 2020
The Last Bird of Its Kind, Singing for a Mate That Will Never Come
This is awfully sad. In 1987 the last Kauaʻi ʻōʻō was male, and his song was recorded for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The male was recorded singing a mating call to a female that would never come.
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Five minutes to sea
A memorable moment from childhood, juxtaposed with the theme of old age and the difference in perception of time at the end and the beginning of life.
Five minutes to sea from Natalia Mirzoyan on Vimeo.
Virtual Forest Walk Throughs
This YouTube channel will take you on walks that are perfect for deep relaxation and meditation like this one through a mossy rainforest in Olympic National Park, USA
Platform Cedar
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| Image: Yusuke Narita |
Daisugi or "platform cedar"is a horticulture technique developed in 15th century Japan. It produces a tree that resembles an open palm with smaller trees growing upright on it.
Weather
AccuWeather partnered with the Royal Meteorological Society on their Weather Photographer of the Year 2020 Awards. Here are a few of the winners:
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| “Blizzard”. The winning shot of a snowstorm in New York City. (Photo by Rudolf Sulgan/Royal Meteorological Society’s Weather Photographer of the Year Awards) |
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| “Baikal Treasure”. This shot of snow hummocks with the ice backlit by the midday sun at Lake Baikal in Siberia was voted the public’s favourite. (Photo by Alexey Trofimov/Royal Meteorological Society’s Weather Photographer of the Year Awards) |
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| “Tea Hills”. Early-morning mist over the tea hills of Phu Tho province in Vietnam. (Photo by Vu Trung Huan/Royal Meteorological Society’s Weather Photographer of the Year Awards) |
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
The Star Feminine Band
The seven members of Femme Africaine from Benin are all between 10 and 17 years old. They believe that making activist music is a road to emancipation for women.
Presidential Decay (No, I'm Not Referring To Trump)
In 2004 Everette “Haley” Newman, inspired by Mount Rushmore, built Presidents Park in Williamsburg, VA. But apparently tourists did not want to walk among 20-foot tall busts of the presidents and the park closed in 2010. Howard Hankins suggested moving them to his farm in Croaker, Virginia. It took a week and $50,000 to move the 43 colossal presidents, each weighing between 11,000 and 20,000 pounds, to a field ten miles away where they are monuments to impermanence, succumbing to the ravages of time.
Giant Steps by Michal Levy
This short animation is a window into the sensory world of a person with synaesthesia. Director Michal Levy possesses one of the most common forms of the condition, chromaesthesia, in which sounds and music provoke visuals.
Giant Steps by Michal Levy from Csongor Fabian on Vimeo.
See More: Aeon
Monday, October 19, 2020
The Building of the Obra Dinn
"A vessel washes up in England in 1807, an abandoned ghost ship, and you're the insurance adjuster sent in to figure out what became of its cargo, crew and passengers." This video shows the building of the ship from Lucas Pope's game The Return of the Obra Dinn. Three years of modeling are time-lapsed into 50 minutes.
Via Boing Boing
The face of an Egyptian mummy reconstructed in 3D
How well do the painted portraits affixed to mummies in the Fayum region of Lower Egypt represent the features of the person? In this video researchers reconstruct in three dimensions the face of a young dead child and compare it to his portrait.
Images That Changed The World
Time magazine's 100 Photographs project is a collection of the most influential images of all time accompanied by videos that tell the stories behind the individual photographs.
Below: Dalí Atomicus, Philippe Halsman’s portrait of his friend and collaborator, surrealist painter Salvador Dalí.
Via Open Culture
Building a bridge in the 14th century
Charles Bridge crosses the Vltava river in Prague, Czech Republic. Its construction started in 1357 under the auspices of King Charles IV, and finished in the beginning of the 15th century.
Link
Link
Scream Of The Bikini
Two glamorous undercover bounty hunters plumb the seedy depths of high fashion and international espionage.
Sunday, October 18, 2020
Pic Of The Day
Faculty of Architecture, Minsk Polytechnic UniversityReply with an image of your favourite piece of Soviet architecture 👇 pic.twitter.com/oYQiTLGxaW
— Soviet Visuals (@sovietvisuals) October 18, 2020
Sunday Links
Baker Jessica Clark-Bojin from Pies Are Awesome has shared some of her best Halloween-themed pies and they are fabulous. Via Everlasting Blort
The 22 Best Bob Dylan Covers By Roots Artists Some of these are wonderful. Fairport Convention's Percy's Song has always been a favourite of mine.
GQ: Nobody exactly asked Sean Penn if he would help set up one of the country’s most impressive coronavirus testing programs. But that’s what he did at L.A.’s Dodger Stadium.
Pedestrians First measures the walkability of the world's cities.
This is good: In the Dark Season 2 (podcast): Curtis Flowers, a Black man from Winona, Mississippi, was tried six times for the same crime. Flowers spent more than 20 years fighting for his life while a white prosecutor spent that same time trying just as hard to execute him.
Where are the ships? Cruise Ship Tracker, Itineraries, Schedules, Deck Plans Via Things Magazine
This is lovely: A Glance at Daily Life Among the Caretakers of Britain’s Small Islands
The Ring Finders will find your lost ring. If you don't believe me, check out their Book of Smiles. Via MeFi
Illustrator Andreas Samuelsson has created the emojis you always wanted including a cafetière, a perfect green olive and a few sex toys.
A young woman builds an underground house from scratch. Mighty impressive. Via Memo of the Air
There is indeed a Sing along with Khrushchov coloring book (Yes, they have spelled his name with an 'o' instead of an 'e')
Do you like reading as much as I do? Here are 48 literary social media accounts you might want to follow. (Includes @hotdudesreading!)
12 Sunsets: Exploring Ed Ruscha's Archive street views of the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.
This Portuguese pet hotel is nicer than some places I've stayed.
Baking Bad by heyjupiter: "Jesse Pinkman and his former home-ec teacher Walter White are co-owners of Heisenbrew's Uncertainty, an up-and-coming food truck. The business is going great, but local chain Hermanos Cafecitos wants to buy them out, Jesse's girlfriend got into art school in New Zealand, and Mr. White won't let Jesse buy organic ingredients for his muffins. On these and other pressing concerns, Jesse seeks advice from his NA sponsor Mike." Via MeFi
This blew my mind: His face out of his own fur Via
Another dog wool story: Dogs Once Made Pretty Nice Wool Blankets, Too
The Irish in Cleveland: A history in photos I actually have a Cleveland Irish connection. My mum came to Canada from Ireland with her family when she was a baby. Her younger sister married an Irishman and moved to Cleveland as a young woman. The Irishman was John O'brien Sr. who went on to found the Cleveland Irish Cultural Festival in 1983.
A New Brunswick couple are discovering new recipes and rediscovering others as they cook their way through the Victory Cook Book. CBC News
Future Tents: 1959
"With the "pushbutton camper," a specially equipped experimental Ford station wagon, a traveling couple could pull into a parking area, lower a boat from the roof top, pitch their tent and set up a kitchen unit protected by an overhead awning -- almost without getting out of the car."
More: Shorpy
Saturday, October 17, 2020
Here Be Sea Monsters
How To Escape From An Exploding Rocket
I hope you never have to use this knowledge...
Via FB pal Hal
Spooky Halloween Pizzas
See more: Pee-wee's blog
Sisyphus Table Time Lapse
Sisyphus is a line of kinetic art tables that come in a range of sizes and materials. A computer controlled magnet pulls a steel ball through the sand, creating unending patterns. This 11 hour time lapse illustrates the complexity of the designs. I had to mute the music though because it's annoying.
Puppy Photo Booth
Simone Giertz, aka the Queen of Shitty Robots, has created a paw-operated selfie booth for her dog.
Via
Via
Tweet Of The Day
Thanks Bruce!These ‘Beach Animals’ were created by Theo Jansen as a fusion of art and engineering. The kinetic structures walk on their own and get all their energy from the wind.
— Scott Kerr (@scott_kerr) September 8, 2020
That's one way to clear people off a beach. pic.twitter.com/Vdu9QtydkS
Friday, October 16, 2020
The etiquette school for China’s super-rich
Guided by a French instructor, a growing number of Chinese spend $541 (£418) a session to learn the fine points of western culture.
Artist-Chef Has Drawn Every Meal He’s Eaten Over The Past 30 Years
More: Flashbak
For Sale: Dave Brubeck's Estate
Take a tour of jazz musician Dave Brubeck's Mid-Century Connecticut Estate. It's a knockout.
Tweet Of The Day
Reverse perspective is a form of drawing where the objects depicted in a scene are placed between the projective point and the viewing plane. "Reverspective" is an optical illusion on a 3-dimensional surface created by Patrick Hughes using this principle https://t.co/YZZMHLGca6 pic.twitter.com/yRhXwMYA8J
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 15, 2020
Pizza Box Foosball
Pizza Hut has created a fully playable pizza box foosball table for football fans in lockdown. As the soccer season in Europe gets underway Pizza Hut along with Ogilvy Hong Kong has just launched its “12th Player Club.”
1000 Mile Dream
Liza Dietzen has dreamt of competing as a dog sledder since learning about the Iditarod in kindergarten. This video follows Liza and her team's journey to compete in the UP 200, a qualifying race for the Iditarod.
1000 Mile Dream from Taproot Pictures on Vimeo.
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