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Screens and curtains are alright, but sometimes you want a real wall. Solid, substantial and offering some privacy. And if bricks and cement blocks are too boring, you can always turn to repurposed household items. Right? Artist Fumiko Kobayashi used about 300 chairs to create “1000 Legs, Cultivating Fruits,” a huge wall built entirely out…
Drawing on an Etch A Sketch is hard. Well, it is if you want to do more than just make a horrible mess of angularity. But the squarish beauty of the line-drawing toy is put to great use in this clever little animation that tells the story of André Cassagnes, its inventor. Put together by…
The best aesthetic for pretty much any dish is a pile of delicious food. If you’re a proud member of the clean plate club, however, revealing a purdy pattern beneath your meal is a nice touch at the end of dinner. Dutch designer David Derksen used an acrylic paint-filled pendulum to give his Oscillation series…
Just because you had some time off this week doesn’t mean the internet stopped churning out awesomeness. From mind-boggling imagery to more fake “fun facts,” and a ton of advice on all those new gadgets you unwrapped, here’s the best stuff we wrote this week. Feast your eyes! The 20 Best Movies Disappearing From Netflix…
The Colosseum in Rome is being cleansed of car exhaust that has built up over decades, ever since Mussolini’s ill-advised decision to build a major road nearby. The exhaust, however, is just part of an overall mixture known as “black rust,” CBS News reports: “Exhaust, pollen, algae and fungus growths form a coating the restorers…
This would be roughly the week of December 23 through December 29. 5 Years Ago (2008): A feature collected this site’s readers’ favorite albums of 2008. … The quote of the week collated material from Fringe, among it: “Was I humming? I thought it was in my head. … Nothing sings like a kilo volt.…
Christmas shipping snafus, the black market of stolen credit card numbers, Snowden claims “mission accomplished,” and more: it’s this week’s Tech Reads. Laura Stevens, Serena Ng and Shelly Banjo do a post-mortem on UPS’s failure to deliver online shoppers’ gifts promised to arrive by Christmas Eve [The Wall St. Journal] Dustin Volz examines the underground…
Okay, history buffs. We’ve got a challenge for you: Learn as much as you possibly can from the 700 odd maps just uploaded to the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab. Your brain will thank you later. The maps come from Charles O. Paullin’s 1932 Historical Geography of the United States—and they’re enthralling. The history…
You know how when a guy courts a girl, sometimes the right move is a grand gesture? A bouquet of flowers to say you’re sorry. A surprise weekend getaway to mark an anniversary. How about a giant Transformers replica to pop the question? That’s what this guy did. According to Chinese news site Jinyang, he…
Check out this wildly animated history of, I think, human history? I dunno, my Spanish is pretty rusty.
It looks like Call of Duty. It’s not. It looks like a movie. It’s not. Instead it’s an incredible photograph of a Marine Corps Super Stallion Helicopter taking off with a M777 howitzer in the California desert. In real life. What a powerful image. The helicopter is lugging the 7,500 pound 35 foot long monster…
Flat. Like a streak across space. Thin. Stretched out. How come whenever we see galaxies, they always look like this? NASA has the answer. And it has something to do with how a ball of dough becomes pizza. This image of spiral galaxy ESO 373-8 was captured by NASA with the Hubble telescope. It shows…
Discovering music is a way different game in the digital age, when new artists and tunes are a mere mouse click away. Before algorithms were responsible for instantly introducing new faves into the mix, recording demos and hustling for radio play was a key factor in building buzz and gaining new fans. A Band Called…
Shanghai is, unfortunately, seeing record levels of smog lately, but there’s no sign of dull toxic haze in this neon display by artist Lu Xinjian. “City Light” is a glowing part of I Love Shanghai, an exhibition at the local Art Labor gallery; here, pop stylings and primary colors actually show the real-life urban grid—with…
Christmas is over! The year is almost up! And in days like today when there’s not much going on, it’s always fun to look back at the year that was. Who did something stupid? What silly things happened? What do you remember? ADHD sums up the entire year of 2013 in under a minute in…
Well, one holiday week has drawn to a close, and another is nearly upon us. Frankly, that means a slow-ish week for apps. And yet! There were still some notable newbies to the app scene. Download these babies and let your phone feel as bloated as you do. Multi-Platform Updates Translate Powered by Translate.com, this…
In this illusion, a toy car seemingly appears from no where. How is that possible? Well, the car was always there. Really. It’s a simple but masterful trick, the toy car is programmed to travel along a designated route while the red cards are shown off as a distraction. As one card is shown to…
2013 was a good year for drinkin’. We investigated boozy superstition, we traveled the earth to see how your favorite spirits are made, and we drank cognac out of a bone. We had a great time, and we were glad you came with us. Here now are our favorite Happy Hour episodes from 2013, including…
Here’s astronaut Mike Hopkins taking the selfie to end all selfies. It’s over, you cant’ beat it, give up, return your camera, become a horse jockey. Hopkins snapped a photo of himself in full astronaut suit outside of the ISS as he was spacewalking on Christmas Eve with the beautiful blue Earth in the background.…
Walkers are making L.A. unsafe for cars, a ban on a crucial spice won’t be very nice for Denmark, and tourists flocking to Detroit’s urban ruins are ruining Detroit even more. It’s our final look at What’s Ruining Our Cities this year! Jaywalking is ruining Los Angeles Police have mounted a jaywalking sting in downtown…
