Sunday Links

Zimmerman House and Kalil House - Currier Museum Manchester

The  Currier Museum in Manchester, New Hampsire is the only art museum in the world with two Frank Lloyd Wright homes (image above). Accessible by guided tour, they are the only Wright buildings open to the public in New England. A road trip in the New Year?

Wild Ride: Quarrymen in North Wales used to hurtle down a mountain on a homemade toboggan thingy.

Titans, countercultural icons, and rebels, a playlist of Musicians We Lost in 2023  (NYT link)

Hitchcock's Bomb Theory

Did you know that baby scorpions are called scorplings? In the spirit of Tom Whitwell, Jason Kottke has kept a record of 52 Interesting Things he learned over the past year.

To Żubrówka and memories: A magical story-within-a-story framed by Zubrowka bison grass vodka. Read it. You’ll be glad you did.

Someone is jealous. (via Memo Of The Air)

I’m tempted to make this fancy feta tapenade tarte soleil because it looks so beautiful. One of the first cookbooks I ever bought was The Cuisine Of The Sun by Mireille Johnston and it had a similar recipe but, at the time, my culinary confidence was weak.

Signs That You’re Ready to Wear Taupe: You’ve been on the lookout for a cardigan in a colour that’s less edgy than “fawn” or “heather oatmeal.” Read more

How well do you know your cities? 2023 Cities Quiz

The 100 Best Bourbons Of 2023 I like a bit of bourbon but I would not pay $23,000US for a bottle, no matter how good someone says it is.

Just a macaw going for a ride

A fridge but in reverse I have one of these in my new home but I have no idea how it works.

Wow! Jasmine Rae de Lung makes cakes that are as much about process as they are the final product. (NYT link)

 Members of this family all have a 50-50 chance of inheriting a cruel genetic mutation — which means disappearing into dementia in middle age. Living with those odds.

Year’s End A poem by Richard Wilbur

Creative napkin folding.

Novelist Hanif Kureishi sustained life-changing injuries when he collapsed and landed on his head on Boxing Day last year. He has become a reluctant dictator

“Oh God, I don’t feel good. Look, my thumbs have gone weird! My heart’s beating like a fucked clock! I feel dreadful, I feel really dreadful,” to which Withnail responds, “So do I, so does everybody. Look at my tongue; it’s wearing a yellow sock.” The 10 best Fictional hangovers (a repost from 2010)

Music For Sunday Morning

  

 (Thanks Marco)

Factory Makes 100,000 Pounds of Ramen Noodles Every Day

Sun Noodle is a family-owned business that produces and delivers more than 300,000 portions of Japanese noodles each day to dining establishments around the nation.

Read more: The Awesomer

The Lion King

Happy Caturday! Loki, King of the Jungle, is adorable.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Loki Show (@loki.doestricks)

Amazing Jesus - Rowan Atkinson

 And they said unto the Lord, “How the hell did you do that?”

via FB pal Hal

Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen

György Pálfi’s Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen is a simple yet timeless love story between a man and a woman, told using iconic scenes edited together from hundreds of other films.

It’s age-restricted and can only be viewed on YouTube
(Runtime: 1 hour 24 minutes)

Via TYWKIWDBI 

Hangover Whopper: your hangover face determines the discount!

Burger King Brazil is rolling out a ‘Hangover Whopper’ campaign to cater to those who may have over-indulged in holiday festivities.

Read more

The Story of a Black Holocaust Survivor

José Carlos Grey-Molay was one of the only Black men known to have been imprisoned at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. His daughter tells his story.

  
via  Aeon Videos

Green House

Photographer: Kilian O'Sullivan/Royal Institute of British Architects/PA

A greenhouse-inspired home by Hayhurst and Co. Architects is the winner of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) House of the Year 2023. Located in the Clyde Circus Conservation Area in London, the house has a roof terrace and surrounding greenery, as well as roof-lights in the atrium, and was “built on a very tight budget”. (I’m inspired by the garden layout. My new yard looks like a soccer pitch.)

Hypnotic Animation

Trace Loops builds trippy animations with layers of paper.

More: Kraftfuttermischwerk

Photograph Of The Day

 

Akron, NY

“Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’”

via FB friend Florie 

The Ironclads of Reykjavik

How do Reykjavik's sheet-metal homes beat the Icelandic winter?

Ironclads in Reykjavik's Old Town.Photographer: Santiago Urquijo/Moment via Getty Images

Streets in Reykjavik’s downtown are often lined with rugged, cottage-like timber-framed houses clad top to bottom in a material that (roofs aside) is used elsewhere almost exclusively for industrial, non-domestic purposes: corrugated sheet metal. 

Read more: Bloomberg

Motion extraction

Dutch filmmaker Michiel de Boer introduces an innovative digital effect he’s created called ‘motion extraction’, which draws out the movement in scenes, sometimes making it the only thing visible.

 

via Aeon Videos

Frog makes a pie for a toad

Frog makes a pie for a toad

📹 India Rose Crawford/ indiarosecrawford
pic.twitter.com/slRxOErsg5

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) December 23, 2023

Canapé Recipes

Grilled Cheese Wedges With Tomato Jam

Some of you may be wanting to make some small bites with a glass of something before years end. The New York Times offers 3 delicious-looking canapés from chef Yann Nury that you might want to try (there are step-by-step videos to make it easy)

More here 

Making a 3D-Printed Roller Coaster Clock

Link

via Memo Of The Air

EL AFTER DEL MUNDO

Mankind no longer exists, only Fluor and Carlix, two ghosts in sportswear, remain.They wander among the ruins of an extinct civilization, one in search of a Wi-Fi connection, the other in search of the head of a giant cetacean. 

EL AFTER DEL MUNDO from Florentina González on Vimeo.

Edith Pritchett’s week in Venn diagrams

Cartoonist Edith Pritchett takes a circular look at how the week pans out: Hamsters, Tories and the Mariana trench.

See more diagrams by Edith Pritchett

Inside the world's largest earthquake simulator

More than 6,400 people were killed and hundreds of thousands lost their houses in the Kobe earthquake that struck the western Japan port city of Kobe on January 17, 1995. Shortly after the earthquake the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention began construction of the world’s largest 3-D Full-Scale Earthquake Testing Facility in the Miki Earthquake Memorial Park in Japan. 

via bookofjoe

Photograph Of The Day (a repost from 2012)

It seemed really Grinchy to post this on Christmas so I waited until Boxing Day.

Diane Arbus - Xmas Tree In A Living Room In Levittown,Long Island, 1963

It looks like they don’t have snow tires

 It’s been a green Christmas here. Hopefully a safer holiday season for everyone. 

This is why it’s best not to drive in the snow😂 pic.twitter.com/SAo7Hz89ud

— Ross McCulloch (@Rossmac212) December 11, 2022

Via Tacky Raccoons 

Glass Harp Model Cumulus

This glass harp G2 Glass Instrument Makers consists of 30 handblown stemmed glasses that are precisely tuned. They are arranged in three rows with a scale of 2 and a half octaves. All the glasses are the same shape, they only differ in size and thickness of the glass.

More here

(Thanks Bruce)

Christmas Tree Croissant

I prepared a make ahead breakfast for Christmas. Not croissants, because I know from experience that they are not as easy as he makes it look.

Watch on Instagram

via everlasting blort 

Peaceful Japanese snow scene

Hasui Kawase (1883-1957) designed almost one thousand woodblock prints over a career that spanned nearly forty years. Towards the end of his life the government recognized him as a Living National Treasure for his contribution to Japanese culture.

Saisho Temple, Hirosaki - Woodblock 1936

See many more:  'Kawase Hasui snow' - Ukiyo-e Search 

via Memo Of The Air

Cunk Does Die Hard

Philomena explains why Die Hard is the most Christmassy film of all time.

Christmas Walk Through Porto

As the Christmas chaos winds down, heave a sigh of relief, pour a glass of something, put your feet up and take a virtual walk through Porto.

Driving Home For Christmas - Chris Rea (1986)

Via Tacky Raccoons

Santa Claus is coming to town - by gondola.

 

Santa Claus is coming to town by gondola.

Dozens of Santas swapped their beloved sleighs for boats decorated with Christmas motifs as they paddled along the famous canals of Venice. It's the 12th edition of the colourful Christmas regattapic.twitter.com/EKA6s4STvG

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 23, 2023

A young boy has just seconds to come to terms with the fact that he is going to sing live to a global audience of millions.

 

24th December 2023

Every Christmas Eve just after 3pm, a small choirboy steps up to a BBC microphone and sings the first verse of Once in Royal David’s City.

This tradition of opening the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge with a lone boy treble… pic.twitter.com/Oh84toVSs6

— A Cambridge Diary (@acambridgediary) December 24, 2023

Sunday Links

Published in the January 4, 1957, edition of Collier's magazine, "Christmas Party" was a murder mystery novella written by Rex Stout where oddball detective Nero Wolfe has to figure out who killed an esteemed furniture designer. PUBLIC DOMAIN

How Christmas Murder Mysteries Became a U.K. Holiday Tradition 

“In a case in Paris in the seventeenth century of a conjoined twin stabbing a man to death, the sentence of death was commuted rather than executing the innocent twin.” - Futility Closet brings us a few interesting facts from Christine Quigley’s Conjoined Twins (2003)

Good news: The Shrimpmas Tree is back.

Never Take Selfie With A Walrus (I shouldn’t have to tell you this)

Christmas Wrapping: The 'anti-Christmas' song that's become a festive favourite (via perfect for roquefort cheese) 

What a year it’s been! 2023 in Photos (NYT link)

 Edward Gorey's Illuminated Envelopes I’d like it if everyone decorated their envelopes. Opening the mail would be much more fun.

A repost from 2010: Rudolph (You Don't Have To Put On The Red Light)

Toilet Brush Christmas Trees  and other evergreen decor evolutions.

“Heartwarming Christmas story” was not the first thought that came to mind when I read the title of this book. 

This Same AI Image Keeps Getting Shared How Facebook is being increasingly overrun with stolen, AI-generated images that people think are real.

John Waters' Hand-Made Christmas Cards over the years are as weird as you might expect (via perfect for roquefort cheese)

Pat Hobby’s Christmas Wish - a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Up for auction:1960s radar training station in Fleetwood, Lancashire. The perfect place to listen to that long-unplayed Doc At The Radar Station album? (Via Things Magazine)

“Yank the restrictor out of your Peychaud’s bottle and pour it freely. Ice, shmice! Heard of mezcal, Cynar? They’re your new best buds.” The book that rewrote the rules of modern bartending

“Other men in history have fathered children in four decades, but all my children are with the same woman” - The Bluebird, a short Christmas story by my friend Kate.

Card dominos Wow!

On Christmas Eve of 1974, Jean Shepherd reads from the story that would later become the movie, "A Christmas Story", live on his long-running WOR-AM radio show. Listen to it while you’re doing some Christmas bustling.

   

 If I Must Die On December 7, Palestinian poet and activist Refaat Alareer was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike that also killed his brother, his sister, and four of her children. He pinned this prophetic last poem to his Twitter profile on November 1.

Vince Guaraldi, the jazz composer who created the best seasonal album ever, A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Hurray for the Riff Raff - Alibi (Official Video)

Cutlery Placement Etiquette

So you know

via FB pal Hal

Happy Caturday

Thunyapong Jaikum's field seen from above (Napat Wesshasartar/Reuters)

To lure tourists and cat lovers a Thai farmer creates cat-themed art in a field in the northern province of Chiang Rai. The process relies on GPS coordinates to position the seedlings as designated in an initial artist’s sketch, with the plants changing tint as they grow.

More here

Happy 20th Anniversary FactCheck.org!

In December 2003, then-FactCheck.org Director Brooks Jackson published the first articles on their website, making it the first independent political fact-checking site in the United States. They saved me from drinking bleach (just joking). Don’t know what I’d do without them in these days where truth is often stranger than fiction.

Now I Know Where to Find You

This short film by Diego Berakha Otal tells his childhood story with images from Google Maps.

Little Monkeys

They are way more patient than my babies were.

Two baby monkeys rescued from flood. ❤️

The other one sucks his thumb while waiting for his turn to eat, just like babies do.pic.twitter.com/EujcWsgOnq

— Figen (@TheFigen_) December 21, 2023

Gift of the Magi (a repost)

We were young and broke, but we didn’t care
You had your pocketwatch, I had my golden hair
We were just scraping by, waiting to make it big
I was an ingénue, you were just a kid
But it was Christmas eve, didn’t know what to do
How could I hope to buy some kind of gift for you
Ain’t got no trust fund hon, ain’t got no savings bond
Just got my student loans, the clothes that I’ve got on 

Singer-songwriter Ellia Bisker aka Sweet Soubrette accompanies herself on ukulele in this delightful musical version of O. Henry’s iconic short story, Gift of the Magi 

More: Open Culture

All the Santas From Sea-To-Sea-to-Sea

Nunavut Santa

A Santa Claus from every province, from west to east and through the territories.

2. Alberta pic.twitter.com/xxpijFDnCi

— Craig Baird - Canadian History Ehx (@CraigBaird) December 21, 2023

Link 

Perpetual Stew

“I bought the domain perpetualstew.club for $13 and ordered a Crockpot and declared it the first day of the rest of my life.” - Annie Rauwerda

Perpetual stews can continue cooking for decades or longer, if properly maintained. Annie Rauwerda teamed up with her boyfriend David Shayne, 27, and friend Hajin Yoo, 23 — they call themselves the “three stew-ges” — to make their own perpetual stew. They started it on June 9, 2023 and kept it going for 60 days with contributions from many others. The event morphed from a casual potluck into a large-scale alimentary operation. They had stew parties, kept a stew log and made up corny stew puns. Sounds like fun. I enjoyed reading about it.

Read more about the project.

via Kottke

Comparing the Smallest to the Largest Thing in The Universe

You are in the middle of everything in the universe. Think of yourself as halfway between a hummingbird and a commercial aircraft.

 

via The Kid Should See This

California town has become an emblem of the new urbanism movement.

Lancaster, California's Blvd Transformation Project won EPA's 2012 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement.

Lancaster, CA transformed its downtown in just 8 months by redesigning its main street from a mini-highway to a tree-lined boulevard.

For the cost of just $11.5M, the project has generated $273M in economic output since 2010, creating 800 jobs, and nearly doubling tax revenue! pic.twitter.com/kS3E4dpjGq

— Coby (@Cobylefko) July 20, 2023

 And there’s a video explaining how the project created community benefit.

Twin TikTok Stars

San Diego-based twin TikTok stars Kiran + Nivi have over 2 million followers. They've been singing together since they were 3 and are proof that practice makes perfect.

More videos: My OBT

Via Memo Of The Air

"The 12 Days of Christmas" A Tale Of Avian Misery ( a Repost)

Narrated by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, this video is one of my seasonal favourites.

The Moment A Volcano Erupts

After a month of increased seismic activity, this volcano on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula has finally erupted. It is spectacular.

The Hole, NYC. Is this the land that time forgot?

This 12-block community just 10 miles from Manhattan’s glittering towers has been forgotten for decades. The neighbourhood is best known for constant flooding, vacant cars and a mob graveyard.  City officials call this place the “Jewel Streets” after the street names like Ruby, Emerald, Amber and Sapphire but most people know it as “The Hole”.

The 50 people who live there don’t have political clout and have learned to be self sufficient when dealing with problems that most big city residents can solve with a call to a city department. Plans to make improvements over the past two decades have been proposed by the city only to be forgotten soon after.

Read more

(Edited by Timothy Coulter. Photo editing and production by Marie Monteleone)

Architecturally Inspired Gingerbread Houses

A lovely gingerbread house roundup, from a vintage Airstream to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.

Ted Scutti and Adam Starkey of Sugar Sugar Cake Studio invested 500 hours to build a 1:12 scale midcentury home composed of 210 gingerbread breeze blocks.

Inside are Noguchi coffee table and a George Nelson–inspired sun clock.

This gingerbread Fallingwater took over 12 hours to design and 40 hours to build and decorate.

 

This one doesn’t look too challenging. Maybe I’ll give it a try.

See More: Dwell 

Two Chairs, Not One

George sold the wrong chair to the wrong person. How far will she take it? 

Two Chairs, Not One from Benign Delusion on Vimeo.

The Bloody Olive - a repost

A bit of Christmas noir, directed by Vincent Bal in 1996 and based on a comic strip by Lewis Trondheim. It has more twists and turns than a cheap garden hose. (English subtitles)

Link via Memo Of The Air

He didn’t want him to die alone

This made me cry. I love the old dogs.

 

Guy adopts a 16-year-old shelter dog so he doesn't end up alone..🥺

Thank you..🙏❤️

📹 : IG | SeniorDogHenry pic.twitter.com/VxHewDOo2E

— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) December 19, 2023

Donna and Blitzen - a repost

This song by Badly Drawn Boy becomes an earworm every year. Its time has come around again. Previously posted in 2009.

How to draw Christmas

American artist, Edward Randolph Emberley, was best known for illustrating children's picture books. His drawing books for children feature clear step-by-step instructions employing numbers, letters, and shapes graded to the early elementary school level (or people like me who can’t draw). 

His Christmas Drawing Book presents step-by-step instructions using a minimum of line and circle combinations.

 

More here

Via everlasting blort

Figs (2023)

In this documentary US director Sterling Hampton IV shares the life story of Bonnie Sharpe, an 81-year-old Black American woman, set against scenes from a family reunion with her four remaining siblings. Her life has been lived with dignity amid inescapable systems of oppression.

Via AeonVideos

Homemade Irish Cream

I was going to post this in my Sunday Links but you might want to make this tipsy beverage as a gift so I’d better post it now. This decadent Irish cream liqueur is easy peasy and takes just five minutes to whip up for holiday sipping. Enjoy!

Old School Special Effects

 

Before the age of CGI, movies used props and makeup to create special effects and we had to make use of our imagination. 

How special effects were made before the heavy use of CGI pic.twitter.com/6u7HInZ2fG

— Wonderful Moment (@Xudong1966) December 10, 2023

Link 

Via Memo Of The Air

The Family Circus

A Vietnamese-American family's plan to cover up a drunk driving accident begins to unravel when their emotional baggage spills out in front of the police.

Flowchart of the Complex Relationships of Aquarium Penguins

Two aquariums in Japan, Kyoto Aquarium and Sumida Aquarium, keep obsessive tabs on their penguins and maintain an updated flowchart that visualizes all their penguin drama. This can include serious crushes and heartbreaks but also adultery and egg-stealing. Penguins may even develop crushes on their caretakers.

Read more: Spoon &Tamago