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18 Oct 14:40

Epic Reunion Between a Lost Baby Bat and His Mother [Video]

by Taylor Chambers
Sweet baby bat on my finger

The baby bat was found stranded just two hours before the reunion. A Wildlife Rescue Team reunited the baby bat with its mother!

The post Epic Reunion Between a Lost Baby Bat and His Mother [Video] appeared first on One Green Planet.

16 Oct 13:58

These Illustrations Were “Painted” With Microbes And Bacterias By Microbiologists

by Tamara Akcay

ASM - event 2 ASM - event 1 ASM - event 13 ASM - event 4

Microbes as paint and a petri dish as a canvas. These are the conditions in which biologists and artists collaborated together to create organic and innovative pieces of art. Organized by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), the ‘Agar Art contest’ called all ASM members to demonstrate by a visual expression of their science the beauty of bacterias. The rendering of the contest led to entertaining designs and for some cases, deeper and profound interpretations.

If we look at the end results on the ASM Facebook page, without knowing the origin of the work, we could have guessed it was achieved by drawing and writing with colored sharpies on a gel texture. It’s astonishing and amazingly well done. The winners, microbiologist Mehmet Berkmen and artist Maria Penil won twice.

First with their ‘Cell to Cell’ design, a symmetrical design in orange and fuchsia colors. The captions explain the colors were obtained by isolating ‘yellow Nesterenkonia, orange Deinococcus and Sphingomonas’. Who knew bacteria existed in such superb tones?
The duo also won with ‘Hunger Games’, a 3D skeleton face literally symbolizing life and death. As explained in the description, the main bacteria which forms the textured effect of the eyes, nose and mouth grows in defense to a famine condition within its environment. Death had to be created first to generate life. The examination of the biological world via bacterias not only produced surprising designs, it also created a space for a spiritual introspection. (via Junk Culture).

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The post These Illustrations Were “Painted” With Microbes And Bacterias By Microbiologists appeared first on Beautiful/Decay.

12 Oct 22:36

Here’s the real story of Columbus that people prefer to ignore

by Aura Bogado
A silhouetted Christopher Columbus statue

You’re chatting with your friend, and she says, “Why are people so hung up on this Columbus Day thing? It’s just about this Italian guy coming to America!”

Well, what can you say? Here’s what you can say — some of it, anyway:

After Christopher Columbus stumbled upon the island we know as Haiti 523 years ago, he wrote of the Taíno people who inhabited it, “They never refuse anything that is asked for. They even offer it themselves, and show so much love that they would give their very hearts.”

It was this perceived generosity and goodwill that Columbus thought would make it easier to seize the giant island, with its “fine, large, flowing rivers” and forests “full of trees of endless varieties, so high that they seem to touch the sky.” Years later, the Taíno would be reduced to a tiny fraction of their population of approximately 300,000 — and Haiti would lose 98 percent of those trees Columbus coveted.

There was nothing trivial about Columbus’ violent destruction of Taíno people. While the sailor and his crew are sometimes lumped in with all the other conquest-crazy Europeans of their era, their particular cruelty can’t be so easily exonerated and shouldn’t be ignored.

Natives were regularly whipped for what Columbus considered minor offenses — but stealing a vegetable or animal could result in cutting off a Taíno’s nose, ear, or hand; the offender was sometimes forced to walk around with their severed body part in shame. Columbus took and gifted Taíno women to his crewmen, who would violently beat and rape them. Pregnant Taíno women who were taken captive gave birth to babies who were sometimes thrown to hungry dogs. Columbus established a business in the sale of 9- and 10-year-old Taíno girls for sexual slavery. He also kidnapped and enslaved Taínos themselves — personally initiating the transatlantic slave trade in his voyage back to Europe.

In short, Columbus was a murderous, enslaving, sexual-abusing, treacherous colonizer to the peoples he encountered in the Caribbean. Only two-thirds of the Taíno survived just four years after Columbus’ arrival; some were killed, others succumbed to diseases, and fully half of the dead killed themselves rather than live with his tyranny.

Columbus was also responsible for creating a system in which Taíno land was treated the way Taíno women were. Not that the Taíno didn’t resist: Columbus left behind 39 colonizers in the first European settlement in the Americas, which he called La Navidad, in present-day Haiti. When he returned from Spain several months later, he found that all the Europeans were dead. That didn’t stop him; Columbus’ practice of settling on other peoples’ lands in the Americas sparked the European imagination, and those lands would soon be the backbones of empires.

What followed was centuries of oppression — to the human beings who lived there, and to the land they lived on. Spain cleared land for massive tobacco plantations, beginning a long process of deforestation and soil erosion. After France came into possession of Haiti, it cleared even more land, and brought in enslaved Africans to cultivate sugar to satisfy European palates. The first place Europe settled in the Americas also became the first place that successfully revolted against it — but the destructive practice of monocropping for overseas consumption had already taken hold.

We shouldn’t forget that Columbus is responsible for launching an ecocide as well as a genocide. The wealth from resources like sugar, tobacco, and cotton ushered in the start of the Industrial Revolution, which began emitting carbon at an unprecedented record level.

Haiti remains the poorest country in the all of the Americas; the European Union region remains one of the wealthiest in the world. This isn’t because of some innate curse on Haiti. It’s because its peoples, their labor, their lands, and their resources have long been embezzled without reparation. The insidious nature of the colonization of the Americas, which started in Haiti, not only terrorized the people who lived there at the time; it also created a system that kept indigenous peoples in slavery or perpetual poverty, while Europe basked in wealth.

And that, you can tell your friend, is why so many of us roll our eyes at the idea of celebrating Columbus Day.

Editor’s Note: Because of an editing oversight, we originally posted this article without links and information about sources. In addition to the links now included, sources for the information in the article include: Atrocities, Massacres, and War Crimes: An Encyclopedia, by Alexander Mikaberidze; The Rediscovery of North America, by Barry Lopez; Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World, by Paul Hawken; The Spanish Frontier in North America, by David J. Weber; Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504, by Laurence Bergreen; A History of Jamaica from Its Discovery by Christopher Columbus to the Present Time, by William James Gardner.


Filed under: Article, Living, Politics
30 Sep 11:57

Love Elephants? Here’s Why You Should Always Avoid These 3 Popular Tourist Attractions

by Kayleigh Barber
Love Elephants? Why You Should Never Do These 3 ThingsAs Green Monsters, we are always looking for ways to reduce our impact on the animals around us. In an effort to reduce our impact on elephants in the tourism industry, here is what you need to know about how these animals are trained and three major attractions you should always avoid.
29 Sep 13:45

Article from 1975: The World Will Be Out of Oil by 2015

by Matt Novak

The idea of peak oil has haunted us for decades . I say haunt because the concept that sooner or later we’d run out of the stuff has contributed to some terrible public policy in the United States.

Read more...

26 Sep 20:30

Touching Portraits of Dogs Taken Years Apart, from Puppyhood to Old Age

by Ellyn Kail

Lily_8months

Lily, 8 months

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Lily, 15 years

Although Massachusetts-based portrait photographer Amanda Jones has been working with dogs for two decades, the first canine she could call her own was a longhaired Dachshund named Lily. As Jones’s first-born, Lily was there for it all— various relocations, the arrival of the photographer’s human baby— until she passed away after sixteen years of friendship. Lily, says the photographer, was the companion who ultimately led her to create Dog Years, a book for which she captured dogs in mirrored photographs of their youth and old age, taken years apart.

Seeing Lily grow from rowdy pup to thoughtful old lady motivated Jones to get back in touch with dogs (and their humans) whom she had photographed years earlier. Some of the sessions took place in the studio, and she visited some at home. There were plenty of treats involved for everyone. Throughout the process, the photographer has learned to understand and communicate with dogs, to tap into their psyches and speak their language. In her eyes, they are “the most beautiful creatures on earth.”

Although some of the dogs whose humans Jones had contacted have since been lost, most have gone on to live into ripe old age. It seems cruel that dogs’ lives pass more quickly than our own, that one human year is equivalent to seven for a dog, and yet while Dog Years acknowledges the passage of time, it also gives us a way to hold fast to our furry friends, to treasure each instant and every shared memory. Dogs, suggests Jones, relish the everyday in ways humans can barely grasp, and although we might never be as open-hearted as our canine counterparts, we can certainly try.

Says the photographer of her own best friend, “Lily Jones taught me that there is beauty and joy at every age. Even when you get old and your skin starts to sag, you can still run on a sunny beach or chase a squirrel, maybe just not as fast.”

Dog Years: Faithful Friends, Then & Now is published by Chronicle Books. Find the book here.

Abigale_4months

Abigale, 4 months

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Abigale, 8 years

Fred_2years

Fred, 2 years

Fred_10years

Fred, 10 years

Poppy_1year

Poppy, 1 year

Poppy_7years

Poppy, 7 years

Audrey_3y

Audrey, 3 years

Audrey_10y

Audrey, 10 years

Briscoe_1y

Briscoe, 1 year

Briscoe_10y

Briscoe, 10 years

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Maddie and Elle, 2 years

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Maddie and Elle, 8 years

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Sidney and Savannah, 1 year

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Sidney and Savannah, 10 years

Maddy_7

Maddy, 7 years

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Maddy, 10 years

All images © Amanda Jones

via PetaPixel

The post Touching Portraits of Dogs Taken Years Apart, from Puppyhood to Old Age appeared first on Feature Shoot.

12 Aug 03:34

11 Classic Examples of Design for Political Protest

by Margaret Rhodes
Museums often show graphic design work used for political activism. Tear-gas masks and lock-ons haven’t gotten the same treatment.
10 Aug 22:24

Accidental Renaissance Paintings

by Matt
A great piece here from the Guardian on accidental Renaissance composition in news pictures. 

The following is a treated version of the Ukranian Parliament image shown in the piece.





10 Aug 20:14

justfeelfreeintheworld: I watched this like 5 minutes



justfeelfreeintheworld:

I watched this like 5 minutes

10 Aug 19:59

omgitsbrilliant:livindavidaloki:redhjedi: The Hulk ain’t...









omgitsbrilliant:livindavidaloki:redhjedi:

The Hulk ain’t never lied.

I can’t even express how much respect I have for Mark Ruffalo.  The dude’s on the US terrorism watchlist for fuck’s sake.

Omg, it’s true

17 Jul 18:54

David Skazaly’s Mesmerizing Catalog Of Psychedelic GIFs

by Eric Torres

Psychedelic GIFs

Psychedelic GIFs Psychedelic GIFs david skazaly

David Skazaly is a Hungarian/German graphic designer who has been creating hypnotic, mind-warping GIFs since 2008. Working under the name Davidope, Skazaly’s psychedelic GIFs and warped images have set the standard for animated GIFs across the internet. Even if you haven’t heard his name before (or his online pseudonym, Davidope), you probably recognize some of Skazaly’s technicolor, organic forms, pulsing in infinite loops, whether on art blogs or the annals of Tumblr. Skazaly’s animations are strangely hypnotic and entrancing, pushing a format that is now primarily used for cat memes and celebrity reactions into successful, technically adept artistic territory.

Skazaly got his start experimenting with animation program Macromedia Flash in the 90s before focusing on his own motion graphics. Looking at his Tumblr now, it’s clear Skazaly has mastered the art form of creating technically perfect GIFs, from trippy, twisting shapes to black and white worms perpetually moving forward. Skazaly’s mind-bending GIFs are dizzying, satisfying works of art, elevating a now common internet trend to a mesmerizing new level.

david skazaly david skazaly david skazaly david skazaly david skazaly

 

The post David Skazaly’s Mesmerizing Catalog Of Psychedelic GIFs appeared first on Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design.

16 Jul 00:27

Juliane Springsguth & Florian Weil: “Travelling Plants”

by *A

Juliane Springsguth und Florian Weil schicken mit ihrem Projekt “Travelling Plants” Pflanzen mit den öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln durch Berlin. Via

flattr this!

16 Jul 00:16

1week1project proposes alternative use for brazil’s world cup stadiums

by 1week1project

brazil's housing deficit can be counteracted by placing prefabricated modules of color along the perimeters of stadiums, where residents can enjoy soccer games whose profits can finance the maintenance of the structures.

The post 1week1project proposes alternative use for brazil’s world cup stadiums appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

14 Jul 20:02

Conheça os superpoderes da biomassa

by Elaine
O purê preparado com a banana verde enriquece receitas sem alterar o sabor, regula o colesterol e emagrece.

Conheça os superpoderes da biomassa
O que é a biomassa?

Trata-se de um purê preparado com a polpa da fruta ainda verde e usado como espessante em diversas preparações. Tem gente que faz brigadeiro, molho de macarronada e até estrogonofe com biomassa.

E o gosto? "Não muda nada", garante a nutricionista funcional Carolina Borghesi, de Londrina (PR). "Como a banana ainda não amadureceu, o amido da fruta não se transformou em frutose. O sabor é neutro."

Por que faz bem

O tal amido que ainda não virou frutose - o açúcar natural das frutas - é um nutriente fabuloso para as bactérias do bem que vivem no nosso intestino. Isso faz dele um alimento prebiótico, importante para manter a saúde, prevenindo doenças como o câncer de cólon. Esse amido, conhecido como resistente, não é absorvido pelo organismo. Ele passa direto pelo estômago e, no intestino, além de alimentar as bactérias, funciona como fibra, estimulando o bom funcionamento do órgão. "A fermentação desse amido no intestino ainda gera um subproduto, o ácido butírico, que atravessa a parede intestinal, cai na corrente sanguínea e, no fígado, ajuda a diminuir a síntese do colesterol", diz a nutricionista Gisela Savioli, de São Paulo, autora de Alimente Bem Suas Emoções.

Como ela ajuda na perda de peso

"O amido resistente aumenta a saciedade", explica Gisela, que prescreve a biomassa para pacientes obesos e diabéticos - também nesses casos, ela tem um efeito positivo, pois deixa o esvaziamento gástrico mais lento e, com isso, evita picos de glicemia.

Como consumir

Você pode congelar a biomassa em forminhas de gelo para usar no dia a dia. Bastam duas colheres de sopa por dia para ter acesso a todos os benefícios. Pode-se juntar um cubinho no preparo do feijão, do arroz, do molho de macarrão. Cada colher de sopa cheia (equivalente a um cubinho de biomassa congelada) tem 11 calorias. "A biomassa é maravilhosa, mas sozinha não faz milagres", observa a nutricionista Carolina Borghesi. "Ela deve fazer parte de uma alimentação saudável e equilibrada para que seus benefícios sejam ainda mais destacados."

Faça você mesma

1. Primeiro, lembre-se de que a banana verde não deve ter passado por aclimatação - pergunte ao seu fornecedor.

2. Separe as bananas do cacho com uma faca ou tesoura, com cuidado para que se mantenham íntegras e bem fechadas. Lave com esponja, água e sabão, enxaguando bem.

3. Em uma panela de pressão, ponha água até a metade. Espere ferver, acrescente as bananas e tampe. Quando começar a soltar o vapor pela válvula, abaixe o fogo e cozinhe por 10 minutos.

4. Desligue o fogo, mas não abra a panela nem a coloque sob a água da torneira. A pressão deve ser liberada naturalmente.

5. Rapidamente, descasque a fruta ainda quente com ajuda de um garfo e bata sua polpa no liquidificador ou no processador até obter uma pasta. Se estiver difícil de bater, junte um pouco de água fervente (não use a água do cozimento). Utilize a biomassa em seguida ou congele. Dura de três a cinco dias na geladeira e até três meses no freezer.

6. Descongele a biomassa em banho-maria (para não talhar) e só então junte-a às receitas. Pode ser usada congelada apenas em sucos e smoothies.

Fonte: M de Mulher - 10.07.2014
14 Jul 19:03

Cash Rules Everything Around

by Regine
126k
This year's edition of the GLITCH festival in Dublin examines how artists use new media to investigate social and political systems to find their position within and in relation to these larger systems. In this fuzzy zone of information production, where boundaries and roles are increasingly blurred, the exhibition deploys humour and critique to reconfigure our ideas about our current digital economic climate continue
12 Jul 02:04

Megan Bogonovich’s Ceramic Sculptures Of Oversized Coral Reefs Are Detailed Fairytales

by Eric Torres

 ceramic coral reef  ceramic coral reef Megan Bogonovich - ceramic Megan Bogonovich - ceramic

In New Hampshire-based artist Megan Bogonovich’s magical ceramic sculptures, well-dressed women and men peek into gigantic anemones and castle-like coral reefs, plunging headfirst inside like Alice in Wonderland. Looking at the sculptures is similar to reading an enchanting fairytale, with each ornate detail given the attention and intricacy usually afforded to the illustrations in a children’s storybook. Bogonovich’s eye for detail is perhaps most evident in the underwater creatures poised to swallow their small-scale human counterparts. Made colossal in comparison, they foster the sense of wonder and impending adventure that Bogonovich is so adept at creating for each of her sculptures. There’s no end to the number of details one can glean looking at just one of Bogonovich’s sculptures, from the little girl peering into the rose-like openings in a slab of coral to the woman on the cusp of falling headlong into a multicolored anemone that, with its open valves, strongly resembles a human heart. Bogonovich’s sculptures are painted in vivid pastel colors of yellows, pinks, and greens, which lends them an even stronger storybook aesthetic. This serves them well in conjuring up all of the magical scenarios to follow the spellbinding scenes her sculptures capture. (via Hi Fructose)

Megan Bogonovich - ceramic Megan Bogonovich - ceramic Megan Bogonovich - ceramic Megan Bogonovich - ceramic Megan Bogonovich - ceramic Megan Bogonovich - ceramic

 

The post Megan Bogonovich’s Ceramic Sculptures Of Oversized Coral Reefs Are Detailed Fairytales appeared first on Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design.

12 Jul 02:03

alfredo barsuglia sites social pool in remote area of the mojave desert

by andrea chin I designboom

the sculpture is sited in an isolated area as to require its visitors to make the physical effort to get there, in order to enjoy the little piece of paradise.

The post alfredo barsuglia sites social pool in remote area of the mojave desert appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

12 Jul 02:03

Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture

by Regine
166k
What makes the city of the future? How do you heal a divided city? In Radical Cities, Justin McGuirk travels across Latin America in search of the activist architects, maverick politicians and alternative communities already answering these questions. From Brazil to Venezuela, and from Mexico to Argentina, McGuirk discovers the people and ideas shaping the way cities are evolving continue