Why honey is the only food that doesn’t go bad
From io9.com: Honey is magic. Besides its delicious taste, it’s pretty much the only food that does not spoil while in an edible state. But why, exactly, doesn’t honey go bad? Honey has a lot of pretty incredible properties. It’s been used and investigated for medicinal properties for a long time, especially as a treatment […]
Artist Creates Body Designs with Her Sensitive Skin Disorder
From mymodernmet.com: For artist Ariana Page Russell, a light scratch on her body turns into swollen, reddish, raised skin. This allergic reaction is due to a medical condition known as dermatographia. Rather than shying away from her affliction and seeking to conceal it, Russell exposes her skin disorder in a visually arresting way for her […]
Inspiring and Intense Soviet Space Propaganda Posters
From io9.com: The twentieth century Soviet space program will always be remembered as one of the greatest in the world. And these posters reveal that it also came with one of the world’s most beautifully-designed propaganda campaigns, too. Above: Homeland, your mission is accomplished! Science and Communism Are Inseparable, 1959 (via LiveAuctioneers) Praise to the […]
Seeds of Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness,” in His Terrifying, Tightly-Packed Notes
By Rebecca Onion from slate.com: HP Lovecraft, notes on “At the Mountains of Madness,” 1931. The John Hay Library, Brown University. This is one of seven pages of plot notes that horror author H.P. Lovecraft produced while planning his 1936 novella “At the Mountains of Madness.” The writer, who had fallen on hard times, used […]
Incredible paintings of sci-fi suburbia will make you wish you were Swedish
By Dante D’Orazio from theverge.com: Welcome to rural Sweden, sometime in the late ’80s. Citizens go about their mundane lives and children explore the countryside. But something isn’t quite right. Robots and hovercrafts are commonplace, and decaying science facilities sprout from the harsh Scandinavian landscape. There’s even a rumor circulating that dinosaurs have returned from […]
This 1,600-Year-Old Goblet Shows that the Romans Were Nanotechnology Pioneers
Researchers have finally found out why the jade-green cup appears red when lit from behind By Zeeya Merali from smithsonianmag.com: The colorful secret of a 1,600-year-old Roman chalice at the British Museum is the key to a supersensitive new technology that might help diagnose human disease or pinpoint biohazards at security checkpoints. The glass chalice, […]
A Photo Album for My Cousin Arthur
My beloved aunt Anna Grace passed away several years ago, but before she died I promised I’d look out for her son Arthur, who has some trouble making his way in the world. He lives in Menlo Park, CA, just an hour away from San Francisco, so my husband Richard and I visit him, help […]
How 500 Years Of Weird Condiment History Designed The Heinz Ketchup Bottle
From Co.DESIGN: From a 17th-century fish sauce, ketchup evolved into a patent medicine, a carcinogenic health hazard, and eventually, a non-Newtonian fluid. Here’s how ketchup’s rich history is reflected in the design of a bottle of Heinz. What do you think about when you see a glass bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchup on a table? […]
A collection of playing cards, circa 1470
From The TYPOLOGIST: collector of collections: Collection of playing cards, circa 1470. Metropolitan Museum collection. The Typologist is Diana Zlatanovski. Museologist at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston + Photographer at The Typology. This blog is a curation of interesting object and photo typologies I’ve found out in the world. To learn more about me […]
“Hanging by a serif” by John D. Berry
A big shoutout to my friend John D. Berry, whose book Hanging by a serif has just been released. Click on the pages for a closer look. Hanging by a serif A few words about designing with words Text & design by John D. Berry A small book of epigrams, insights on the […]
The First Antarctic Sunrise After Months of Night is Breathtaking
From gizmodo.com: The sun just rose in Antarctica. And that’s kind of a big deal since it set back in May. It’s beautiful, sure, but it must also be a huge relief. The photo comes by way of the European Space Agency, and features the Antarctic base Concordia. During that long, –112°F winter, its inhabitants […]
Vanish from the Internet with This One-Stop Website
From wired.com: Even if you’re not Edward Snowden, there are times when excising your social media presence is necessary. Companies usually don’t make it easy, though, often hiding the delete button inside myriad confusing menus and settings. Save some time and bookmark justdelete.me, a new page that collects direct links for killing various accounts dead […]
The Weirdest-Looking Time Machines in All Science Fiction
From io9.com: If you’re going to travel through time, you’ve got to do it in style. Here are some of the most eye-poppingly great time machine designs from pop culture history. The Project Tic-Toc, a secret experimental time machine of the U.S. Army in Time Tunnel (1966-1967) (via Friday87central and xtimeline) The Time Sled from […]
19 Cool Design Features Hidden On Stuff You Use Everyday
From cracked.com: It turns out that there are awesome easter eggs hidden on items you use every day. We asked our readers to shed some light on these hidden gems.
Points: Smart Robotic Street Sign Rotates towards Direction of Content
From infosthetics.com: Points by futuristic product development studio Breakfast is a new kind of street sign that dynamically rotates towards the direction of the real-time content it is showing. The directional street sign consists of 3 separate arms pointing in different directions, each containing a LED display that shows specific text or graphics about a […]
Magical Miniature Worlds by Matthew Albanese
By Kaushik from amusingplanet.com: Matthew Albanese creates small-scale meticulously detailed models of outdoor scenes and landscapes using everyday, simple, mundane materials and transform them into an image through the lens of his camera making them look hyper-realistic. Albanese has used ordinary household items such as spices, cotton, colored paper, ink, steel wool and glasses to […]
Fingers Font Friday – A Handy History of Typography
This charming and informative overview of type from Gutenberg to the computer uses letterforms meticulously cut from red, black and white paper. A pair of hands introduces the type, moves it into place, then whisks it offscreen. Truly a labor of love. [Click for video]
Map of Where 29,000 Rubber Duckies Made Landfall After Falling off a Cargo Ship in the Middle of the Pacific Ocean (#19), and 39 Other Informative Cartographies
Amazing and unusual maps from twistedsifter.com: If you’re a visual learner like myself, then you know maps, charts and infographics can really help bring data and information to life. Maps can make a point resonate with readers and this collection aims to do just that. Hopefully some of these maps will surprise you and you’ll […]
Guillermo del Toro’s Sketchbook
Here is a fantastic collection of Guillermo del Toro’s gorgeous concept art that he draws in his sketchbook. It covers every film he’s made since 2001, including his failed adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness. “The Devil’s Backbone” “Blade II” “Hellboy” “Hellboy” “Pan’s Labyrinth” “Pan’s Labyrinth” “Pan’s Labyrinth” “Pan’s Labyrinth” “Pan’s Labyrinth” “Hellboy II” […]
A Lovely English Garden Full of Deadly Poisonous Plants
By Atlas Obscura View The The Alnwick Garden on a map — More on the Alnwick Poison Gardens can be found on Atlas Obscura — Some rights reserved by tölvakonu To enter the poison garden of Alnwick you must fetch a guide to unlock the black iron gates, which are decorated with a white skull and crossbones and […]
xkcd on Google Glass countermeasures
The delightful xkcd strikes again:
The Entire History of the World—Really, All of It—Distilled Into a Single Gorgeous Chart
By Rebecca Onion from slate.com: This “Histomap,” created by John B. Sparks, was first printed by Rand McNally in 1931. (The David Rumsey Map Collection hosts a fully zoomable version here.) (Update: Click on the image below to arrive at a bigger version.) This giant, ambitious chart fit neatly with a trend in nonfiction book […]
How Koilos, a giant monster, ended up on an Ontario island dock
By Alina Seagal from Daily Brew: Koilos, a 900-kilogram giant sculpture by San Francisco artist Michael Christian. Andrew Cumming photo Until recently, this 900-kilogram giant guarded Toronto’s Distillery District. Koilos sat there without Michael Christian, its creator, even realizing just how many people appreciated his steel monster. “I didn’t realize it was appreciated so much […]
Resurrected protein’s clue to origins of life
By Simon Redfern from BBC News: The earliest life would have survived at more than 100 C New reconstructions of ancient proteins have provided clues to the habitat and origins of life on Earth. The resurrected protein is thought to have existed almost four billion years ago in single-celled organisms linked to the earliest ancestor […]
Rarely Seen Maps From San Francisco’s Quirkiest Hidden Library
By Greg Miller from wired.com: << Previous | Next >> Have you ever gone to a place you’ve always wanted to visit and found out it was even more awesome than you thought it would be? That’s how I felt last week when we visited […]
The World’s First Banner Ad
In anticipation of The Mashies, Mashable is running a weekly series celebrating some advertising “firsts.” Watch for new installments in the series every week. As opposed to other advertising “firsts” like the first TV ad or the first print execution, bringing banner ads into the world seems like a dubious accolade. …the first banner seems […]
Nooooo! It are my birthday!
My birthday today! I get cake, even if kitties don’t.
Walter Koessler project: An extensive personal look into World War I
Walter Koessler Project by Dean Putney (@deanputney, deanputney.org); Kickstarter project link: As I was getting ready to leave home after Thanksgiving, almost two years ago, my mom said she had something to show me. She pulled out a big black photo album from under our coffee table, casually laid it out in front of me, […]
The Royal Hand Ballet Presents “Swan Lake”
The Royal Hand Ballet presents ‘Swan Lake’ from milly bruce on Vimeo. “Swan Lake” program (sadly, shown without interior view) from multidisciplinary artist and designer Chris Godfrey. Other gems from Mr. Godfrey: All In One: 12 course meal in a can Contemporary culture means on every trip into town; you’re bombarded with gimmicks galore. Gimmicks […]
The Hiroshima Bombing, Visualized
Even viewed as abstractions the data have a forceful impact. By Kelsey D. Atherton from popularscience.com: Hiroshima Mushroom: Mathew Lucas In the whole of human history thus far, nuclear weapons have been used in anger exactly twice. Sixty-eight years ago today an American B-29 bomber named Enola Gay dropped Little Boy, the first atomic bomb […]
Xerox scanners/photocopiers randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (original report)
[Ed. Note: After this post, Mr. Kriesel had a follow-up call with Rick Dastin, Corporate Vice President Office and Solutions, and Francis Tse, Imaging System Architect at Xerox Corporation. His post about it is here. My previous post, Confused photocopiers randomly rewriting scanned documents, concerns an article by Peter Bright from arstechnica.com about Mr. Kriesel’s […]
Confused photocopiers randomly rewriting scanned documents (short version)
Scans can’t be trusted as Xerox machines switch numbers around. By Peter Bright from arstechnica.com: Photocopiers exist to produce close enough replicas of original documents. Traditionally, they just spit out the result onto paper. Most copiers these days can operate as (generally rather large) scanners, generating PDFs, TIFFs, or other electronic representations. But some Xerox […]
93 Photos of Brilliant Packaging Design
Jam Matchsticks Condoms Condoms Muffin or something obeestus from Reddit: (afro dude) is ‘black melon pan’, tastes nothing like melon though. Butter Cutlery Gum Earphones Teabags Meat freshness sticker Cigarettes Honey Hand lotion CD Detergent Detergent Pills Yarn Coconut Water Bread Energy drink Many many more!
Exhibition showcases artist’s highly intricate, hand-drawn maps
Incredible maps take on subterranean London, Thomas More’s 1516 book Utopia. By Olivia Solon from wired.co.uk: Artist Stephen Walter has a solo exhibition [in London] showcasing his intricate hand-drawn maps, including two of London and one that revisits Thomas More’s fictional island state of Utopia. In addition to cartography, Walker has created a series of […]
A Second Life in a Second Language: A Change of Language for a Writer Is a Dangerous Thing
By Costica Bradatan from newyorktimes.com: In her exploration of the Catholic religion, “Letter to a Priest,” written the year before her death in 1943, Simone Weil noticed at some point that “for any man a change of religion is as dangerous a thing as a change of language is for a writer. It may turn […]
Thumbs-up from reviewers of first lab-grown burger
From IrishTimes.com: Taster says in-vitro food cultured from cattle stem cells tasted ‘close to meat’ A lab-grown meat burger made from Cultured Beef. Photograph: David Parry/PA Wire Cooking doesn’t get much weirder than this. The round, pink mass sizzling in the frying pan looked like any other burger, and probably one from the cheaper end […]
Parasites are little-understood, and they are everywhere. WARNING: Ick factor photo
By Rachel Nuwer from slate.com: This digitally colorized micrograph shows the underside of a bedbug, Cimex lectularius. From this view you can see the insect’s skin-piercing mouthparts it uses to obtain its blood meal, as well as a number of its six-jointed legs. Photo by Media for Medical/Haney Carr J./UIG via Getty Images Parasites are […]
What Is the Icelandic Word for “Four”? Fjórar. No, fjórir. No, fjögurra. No, fjarki. No …
By Daniel Tammet from slate.com: Illustration by Alex Eben Meyer The following is an excerpt from Thinking in Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math, by Daniel Tammet, out now from Little, Brown. Ask an Icelander what comes after three and he will answer, “Three what?” Ignore the warm blood of annoyance as it fills […]