The artist Galina Bugaevskaya, better known on Instagram as Cat Universe, is the personal court painter of anyone who has a feline at home.
See more royal cats: Cultura Inquieta
Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Einstein's Twin Paradox
Follow two astronauts into outer space to explore time dilation and Einstein’s theory of relativity through the Twin Paradox thought experiment.
via Aeon Videos
They survived nuclear testing. Now they call for justice.
The last nuclear weapons test above ground took place in 1980 and the last underground explosion in 2017. But those impacted by these tests remember those explosions and their lasting repercussions.
Animated Map of the Berlin Subway
Ubähnchen is a transit map which simulates the movement of trains on the Berlin subway network based on the scheduled timetable and allows you to view S-Bahn trains in real-time.
via Maps Mania
Tuesday, August 30, 2022
Africa by Kayak
In 2007, Beau Miles attempted to paddle the 4000kms from one side of Africa to the other.
Tuesday Afternoon
Directed by Pete Quandt and co-produced by Solitary Watch.
I Need You To Listen
John Hendrickson has stuttered nearly his entire life. In this video with the filmmaker James Robinson, he explores the obstacles and emotional burden of his condition and explains the coping strategies and workarounds he has devised to make it through the day in a world that demands that we speak up and speak clearly.
The Painter's House - Chris Thompson
 |
| The Painter’s House © Chris Thompson |
Monday, August 29, 2022
Gucci sets up shop in Detroit
 |
| Image: Brian Berkowitz |
Mr. Nag grew up in Windsor,Ontario, a short hop across the river from Detroit during its glory days. My son and his wife made their home there after it suffered the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. We are all happy to see the city experiencing a tentative revival. Recently high-end Italian designer Gucci opened a permanent 3,500 sq ft store in the city’s downtown in the LB King Building, a 1911 office building designed by architects Rogers and MacFarlane for a china and glassware firm in Renaissance Revival style. It's gorgeous.
 |
| Image: Gucci |
See more: The Spaces
Terrace House
 |
| Image: Derek Swalwell |
A Rare Look at Paris in Colour A Century Ago
Over 100 years ago, French banker named Albert Kahn undertook a massive project as The Archives of the Planet. Between 1908 and 1930, he used his vast personal fortune to generate the most important collection of early colour photographs in the world. Photographers to every continent to collect colour snapshots of everyday life using a new technology known as the Autochrome Lumiere. Spanning 22 years, it resulted in a collection of 72,000 colour photographs and 183,000 metres of film. Here are a few of those taken in Paris:
Animated Currency
This music video by Blake Mills features a kaleidoscope animation of paper money from 23 countries ranging from the 1800s to today.
Sunday, August 28, 2022
Sunday Links
 |
| Image: Lac Blanc, Chamonix, France, August 2021 - Natacha de Mahieu |
Photographer Natacha de Mahieu's collection, Theatre of Authenticity, questions new tourist norms and the impact of overtourism (image above)
Photographer Richard Malogorski captures gorgeous panoramics using an incredibly complex 1915 Cirkut camera that uses 98-feet long film.
Create your own cringeworthy posts with the LinkedIn Viral Post Generator
Rembrandt's Night Watch paint recipe offers clues to the perfect wall filler.
The Richard Glossip case is yet another example of an almost certainly innocent person spending time on death row. Some Republicans are outraged and are seeking to get his death sentence overturned.
Feeling crafty? This DIY smashed can door hanger is cute and easy to make.
I think it would be nice to live on one of London's Beautiful Mews Streets
Cart Narc describes own buttocks in latest parking lot confrontation (I side with the Narcoteer.)
These women must have had neck pain: Ridiculous Hair
Maps Mania: Immerse yourself in an amazing 3D reconstruction of the ancient Persian city of Persepolis.
The problem with keeping lots of books is that you also collect the organisms that feed on books. How do you kill bookworms? Can't send them to the electric chair. Perhaps a gas chamber might work. (via TMN)
I hate it when this happens: Moving an image in a Word document.
Meet Pipsqueak, the dog who is the size of a guinea pig.
In 1859, Thomas Austin received a consignment of 24 wild and domestic rabbits from his brother in Baltonsborough, in south-west England. This did not end well.
An hilarious album of panoramic dog photos gone wrong (via Boing Boing)
Saturday, August 27, 2022
New Orleans Jazz Landmark Lost
Friday, August 26, 2022
Moshe Safdie donates his Habitat 67 apartment to McGill University
McGill-trained architect Moshe Safdie designed his iconic Habitat 67 for Montreal's hugely successful Expo 67 World Fair. It was Safdie's first project and was seen by scores of international visitors. The architect is donating his personal unit at the brutalist-style housing complex and his professional archive to his Montreal alma mater. Link
I was a teenager living in Montreal back then and when I see photographs of the building I'm reminded of that bright, optimistic summer.
The World's Oldest Known Song
Hurrian Hymn No. 6h was discovered on a clay tablet in the ancient Syrian port city of Ugarit in the 1950s, and is over 3400 years old.
Read more: Open Culture
Casa Katana
Casa Katana is "a crooked line engraved in the Cretan Landscape"
Images: Konstantinos Stathopoulos / KRAK Architects
(more: Plain Magazine)
Pete Davidson Explained with a Sandwich
My blogger buddy Cinema and Sandwiches knows how to make a sandwich. He also knows why women love Pete Davidson.
Thursday, August 25, 2022
"Marmot Homes"
A mother and son without any experience in underground construction built two underground homes using books and online forums for reference. They excavated a knoll behind their farmhouse and used 45 acacia trees from the property to shore up the walls and roof. After a waterproofing layer of asphalt fabric, they covered the homes with dirt and waited for the native grasses to grow back.
The World's Most Remote Camera Store?
Read more: PetaPixel
When Glaciers Go: Life Without Water
via The Chawed Rosin
How Insects Become Airborne
I love Ant Lab's videos of insects in flight in slow motion (previously). In this video biologist Adrian Smith captures different winged insects as they propel into flight at 6000 frames per second, and are slowed down roughly 200 times.
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
The Sound Of a Black Hole.
Since 2003, the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster has been associated with sound. Now a new sonification — that is, the translation of astronomical data into sound — is being released for NASA's Black Hole Week this year.
Why Japanese Iron Kettles Cost So Much
For centuries, Japanese artisans have made kettles by pouring molten iron into molds and hammering them out once they’ve cooled.
Tuesday, August 23, 2022
210 films sing MIA's "Paper Planes"
The Unusual Suspect stitched together hundreds of movie scenes to recreate lyrics to MIA's Paper Planes.
Monday, August 22, 2022
Venice Through the Eyes of Monet
Claude Monet first discovered Venice in 1908 when he was 68 years old. The two months he spent there are documented in letters he and his wife Alice sent to friends and family in France.
Link
(via everlasting blort)
 |
| Mercury as a Cookie |
Space and astronomy journalist Fraser Cain imagines the Solar System as food in this Twitter thread.
 |
| Jupiter as a Sandwich |
 |
| Venus as Soup |
(via everlasting blort)
The Weirdest, Frigging Carrot You'll Ever Seen
A breakdown of azorella compacta narrated as if David Attenborough was from "Goodfellas."
Link via Memo Of The Air
Land's End by Christopher Grabowski
"The resource towns along the west coast of Canada—those that have survived, and those that haven’t—tell a story of land’s end, as a place and as a possibility."
In 1999, writer/photographer, Christopher Grabowski, read that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans had released a sanitized version of a study of economically devastated West Coast fishing communities. He set out to document the fading industrial towns of the British Columbia coast.
(Previously posted here in 2009)
Ancient Buddhist Statues Revealed
The Yangtze river’s water levels have been falling rapidly due to a drought and a heat wave in China’s southwestern region, unearthing a trio of 600 year-old once submerged statues from the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Sunday, August 21, 2022
On This Day
OTD in 1911 Rosie Hackett helped to organise more than 3,000 women working at Jacob's factory. They withdrew their labour and the women received better working conditions and an increase in pay. Rosie was just 18 years old at the time.
In 1970, she was awarded a gold medal for giving 60 years of her life to the trade union movement. She passed away in 1976, aged 82.
Sunday Links
The macabre story of 16th Century Rocket Cats (image above) via everlasting blort
My garden is lacking one thing: This Fountain
Oh my! Cinetimes has free movies from YouTube, Archive.org, DailyMotion and Vimeo with a Netflix like interface.
They didn't always look so glamorous: Giving the Kardashians their old faces back
I'd like to do this: The island walk is a new 700km route that circles Prince Edward Island, Canada's smallest province.
Here are the meanest lines from the Times review of Jared Kushner's book.
Ways to reduce waste: these shoes dissolve in boiling water when baby has outgrown them
This is magnificent: One of the most important church buildings of the 20th century, The Mariendom in the pilgrimage town of Neviges in Germany, is one of the most famous works of architect Gottfried Böhm.
OneLook Reverse Dictionary and Thesaurus Enter a word, phrase, description, or pattern to find synonyms, related words, and much more. (Thanks Bruce!)
Video essay: What Made Better Call Saul a Master Class in Visual Storytelling
Against the Tide is a short documentary about Gill who decided to move to a small Scottish island after a relationship breakup.Bulletproof Ointment: Inventor Percy Terry of Los Angeles believed that he had perfected an ointment that would toughen the skin so much that it would become bulletproof.
The Best Way to Cook Salmon I love salmon and my favourite way to cook it is in a parchment envelope. This article suggests a better way.
There is a Japanese belief that people who are destined to meet are united by a red thread tied with an indivisible knot to the little finger. A married couple discovers they were photographed together 10 years before they met.
Foods we like now that were once considered gross (via Miss Cellania)
Walter Crane's lovely children's book illustrations (Thanks Bruce!)
I'm loving this old home in Somerset, UK.
The heat of summer always makes me more aware of the trees around me as I seek a bit of cooling shade. Mona Chalabi’s site-specific installation at the entrance to the Brooklyn Museum brings a smile to my face.
Seal breaks into New Zealand home, traumatises cat and hangs out on couch
Tears Of A Cloud A short video that mocks the use of designer water. (Previously posted here in 2008)
Saturday, August 20, 2022
Props From 'Better Call Saul'
Like so many of our favourite shows Better Call Saul has finally come to an end. In this video Adam Savage examines some of the props used on the show:
via Laughing Squid
Allison Russell on “You’re Not Alone” featuring Brandi Carlile
"Every child deserves to be loved and protected. Our families with LGBTQIA+ parents are just as precious.
No one should be forced into the sacred role of parenthood against their will.
Human Rights are worth fighting for.
We’ve come a long way, but we must go farther still."
Orinoco Flow (Bardcore Version)
I always enjoy a bit of bardcore. This perky piece is Enya's Orinoco Flow performed as a bardcore sea shanty:
Friday, August 19, 2022
An Abandoned Florida Resort
Shortly after the opening of Walt Disney World in 1971, the Carolando Corporation opened a motor inn and entertainment facility nearby. The $100m project was poised to be a destination in and of itself. Once it was a luxury tourist destination. Today it is a boarded-up ruin that draws urban explorers.
Matchstick Cookies
Matchboxes used to be given out free in any cafe, bar or restaurant in Japan and many customers became collectors of the tiny boxes. Earlier this year Nittosha, Japan’s largest manufacturer of matchboxes, announced that they were shutting down their business line after fulfilling existing orders. Kanon, a confectioner in Hokkaido, Japan decided to keep their tradition alive by making matchstick cookies in tiny boxes that are replicas of those created by the Kobe match company.
Read more: Spoon & Tamago
Stop-Motion Vegetables
Via Twisted Sifter
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
Human-Sized Dog Bed
 |
| Image source |
It looks like my dream to have a bed as comfy as the one belonging to my dog is one step closer to becoming a reality! Plufl is the world’s first dog bed for humans.
See more on Instagram
Tokyo's Do-Nothing Guy
Shoji Morimoto runs a rental service where clients can hire him to do nothing at all.
Via Boing Boing
Ai Weiwei covers historic Quebec City rampart in refugee life jackets
Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has fastened 2000 life jackets to a 17th-century stone fortification in central Quebec City for Passages Insolites, an annual art festival in the city. The jackets were used by Syrian refugees attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea. Having been a refugee himself, the artist has produced many works that illustrate the refugee experience as part of our shared humanity.
Your Birthday at the Huntington
Ed and Pauline: At The Movies With Pauline Kael
Ed and Pauline (2014) is a short film about controversial film critic Pauline Kael’s early writing life and partnership with Edward Landberg, with whom she ran the Berkeley Cinema Guild and Studio in California.
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
Snakes With Legs. Yay or Nay?
Maker Allan Pan felt sorry for our legless reptilian brethren so he made a prosthetic exoskeleton for snakes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)