A 100-year-old church in Spain is hosting pilgrimages of a new sort now that its interior is lined with skate ramps instead of pews, its soaring cathedral ceilings covered in vibrant murals. This stunning mashup of art and sport is known as Kaos Temple, a collaboration between La Iglesia Skate, Red Bull and street artist Okuda San Miguel. Located in the city of Ilanera, this stunning converted space has instantly earned its place among the most creative skate parks in the world.
Okuda transformed the walls and vaulted ceilings with rainbow-hued geometric paintings, while the skate collective built customized ramps running the width of the interior. The columns, ribs and other architectural elements of the space remain as they were before the project began, crumbling in some areas, their lack of polish contrasting with the bright new paint.
Spectators and fellow skaters convene on comfortable couches in the living-room-like lounge that formerly functioned as the pulpit. The artist describes the project as being part of a ‘cultural upheaval’ that will “bring a new era to the spaces for art,” i.e. out of galleries and into common public spaces that everyone can enjoy. Okuda also produced a series of customized skateboards as rewards for the donors who helped crowd fund the project.
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Factoria Joven, a skate park and climbing wall in Spain, sets an example for urban youth centers worldwide with its bright and beautiful architecture.
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The phrases ‘adult toys’ and ‘city blocks’ take on a different meaning when applied to architecturally sophisticated LEGO sets like these, enabling you to make your own miniature replicas of the cityscapes including the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Berlin TV Tower, St. Mark’s Basilica and much more. The Architecture Skyline Series explores the most famous architectural achievements of three cities: New York, Venice and Berlin.
These aren’t your ordinary blank slate LEGO bricks, from which all manner of creations can spring, but rather very specific pieces for very specific structures.
With the NYC package, you’ll get the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Statue of Liberty and Flatiron Building as well as the brand new One World Trade Center. Berlin includes the Reichstag, Victory Column, Deutsche Bahn Tower, Berlin TV Tower and Brandenburg Gate. The Venice model will give you St. Mark’s Basilica and Campanile, Rialto Bridge, St. Theodore and the Winged Lion of St. Mark, and the Bridge of Sighs.
LEGO has been teasing the release of these sets on Facebook for weeks, and has now revealed that they’ll be available on an unnamed date in January 2016. Follow the company’s Facebook page if you want to be among the first to find out so you can snatch up your own box.
These upcoming sets arrive on the heels of a stunning model of the Louvre in Paris, as well as LEGO’s Architecture Studio, which offers 1210 white and transparent bricks to design and build the architecture of your imagination. Check out the LEGO Architecture series for other classic structures, like Rome’s Trevi Fountain and the Lincoln Memorial.
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Everyone loves Lego, but these masterful sculptures prove that it's much more than just a toy. Here, the most famous buildings meet the world's favorite bricks.
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Whether official or fan-created, LEGO architecture sets enable wannabe builders to understand just how some of the world’s most iconic structures come ...Click Here to Read More »»
If you’ve always wanted to design modern buildings, but don’t have any plans to attend architecture school, LEGO has just the tool you’re ...Click Here to Read More »»
1. Baking stone 2. an old pan in the bottom of the oven 3. 1 c. of water 4. Crisp, crackling crust without spending $225 on a unitasker.
Baking bread in a Dutch oven produces a superior crust, but there's one problem: Dropping moist raw dough into a screaming-hot, 500°F Dutch oven is awkward and dangerous. I was surprised at how low-tech the Fourneau Bread Oven was—a simple tool made of three hunks of cast iron—but it neatly solves the problem, making it essential gear for any home baker who's serious about baking a better crust.
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When the weather outside is frightful, there are few things so tempting as calling in sick to work and heading to a natural hot springs spa to soak in warm mineral-rich water – or maybe just watch a bunch of monkeys doing it. Few of us are lucky enough to live adjacent to these earth-heated healing waters, from the Blue Lagoon of Iceland to the crystal-clear Mataranka Springs in Australia, but nobody can blame us for losing an hour or two daydreaming about it.
Grutas de Tolantongo, Hidalgo, Mexico
Mexico’s stunning Tolantongo is a box canyon and resort featuring shady heated pools that overlook the semi-desert landscape as well as two grottos where a small volcanically-heated river emerges from the canyon walls and spill down the sides to the floor below.
The Blue Lagoon, Iceland
Steam rises from the 100-degree waters of Iceland’s Blue Lagoon, beckoning visitors to immerse themselves when the outdoor temperatures dip. One of the nation’s most popular attractions, this man-made hot spring is fed by the water output of a nearby geothermal power plant. The water is rich in minerals thanks to the processes used by the plant to push water to the surface at a high pressure and temperature.
Glenwood Hot Springs, Colorado
The world’s largest hot mineral springs pool is nestled into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado at Glenwood Hot Springs resort, kept at 93 degrees year-round. A smaller therapy pool full of healing minerals averages 104 degrees, and a spa at the adjacent lodge offers a range of natural mineral-based treatments. The pool is especially beautiful in the winter, when the mountains are covered in snow and the water gives off a steamy glow after dark.
Jigokudani Monkey Park, Nagano, Japan
You won’t get to soak in the water at this particular Japanese hot spring, but there’s another very compelling reason to visit. The warm waters of the natural onsen (hot springs) in the mountains of Yamanouchi in Nagano prefecture have become a snow monkey resort as hundreds of Japanese macaques come down from the steep snow-covered heights to warm up and relax. While they used to only appear in the winter, they’ve now taken to hanging out in their own private spa year-round, since they’re fed by park attendants. What a life.
Pamukkale, Turkey
Terraces of carbonate minerals left behind by flowing water have created a system of natural hot spring tubs in Pamukkale, Turkey. The city is named for this ‘cotton castle,’ which measures nearly 9,000 feet in height and can be seen from the hills on the other side of the valley. In the ‘60s, the Pamukkale pools were a booming tourist spot full of hotels that drained the thermal waters into their swimming pools, but it was all demolished to protect them, and today, bathing is only allowed in the smaller pools (images via: ana raquel s. hernandes, marcel oosterwijk.)
China is set to get yet another quarry-turned-resort in an ambitious project by Coop Himmelb(l)au architecture, transforming an abandoned mining pit into an ...Click Here to Read More »»
If you're feeling flush, these images of luxurious island resorts might incite you to book a vacation; the rest of us will have to settle for photos and dreams.
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Swimming in the lap of luxury, these private pool owners have managed to buy a piece of fantasy not for sale to most of us with less than luxurious means.
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• ‘If you are a big player, and paid like one, you must play like a big player’ • Cesc Fàbregas talking on Facebook in wake of Chelsea’s 2-1 loss at Leicester
Cesc Fàbregas has criticised the attitude and behaviour of himself and his team-mates in the wake of Chelsea’s alarming slide down the Premier League table.
The champions plunged to their ninth league defeat of the season on Monday, losing 2-1 at Leicester City, the leaders, to slip to fifth from bottom.
Whether this saga ends in exit stage left remains to be seen but the Chelsea manager is hardly the leading player in a Shakespearean tragedy
I’m not saying there’s a camply comic element to the poignant posturings of José Mourinho. But the declaration that he felt “betrayed” after Monday’s loss to Leicester recalled precisely for me the moment Nathan Lane’s drag queen in The Birdcage is being given a crash course in acting straight. “How do you feel about that call today?” he is asked by way of a role play. “I mean the Dolphins! Fourth-and-three play on their 30-yard line with only 34 seconds to go!”
“How do you THINK I feel?” declaims Albert, hand to his bosom. “Betrayed, bewildered … ” A fretfully reflective pause. “Wrong response?”
Serious eats is branching out! Now they want to over-complicate cookies! I'm not browning butter and whipping egg whites for a chocolate chip cookie for fuck's sake. I make an amazing chocolate chip cookie, thanks.
What makes my Best Chocolate Chip Cookies so tasty? The ingredients aren't really all that unique. It's the process that does it. Brown butter, whipped egg whites, chopped chocolate, and an overnight rest all contribute to their finished flavor and texture. Sound complicated? Don't worry, the recipe is quite easy, and now it's easier than ever with new step-by-step photos to walk you through the process.
Grab a cocktail inside an oversized rectum and then take in the unsettling sight of a sculptural red building graphically referencing humankind’s dominion over nature. Dreamed into being over a period of nearly twenty years by design collective Atelier van Lieshout, this series of over 20 sculptures and structures became an immersive exhibit at the annual Ruhrtriennale Festival in Bochum, Germany.
Collectively called The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – also the name of a mobile art lab created by the studio in 1998 – this series really lives up to its name, ranging from the aforementioned visual abstraction of bestiality to a pair of giant inhabitable heads placed horizontally on the grass. The Head Claudio & The Head Hermann call to mind an eerie statue at the abandoned ‘Gulliver’s Kingdom’ theme park in Japan.
With its lumpy beige textures mottled with red, a fleshy, human-fat-mimicking structure called Hagioscoop could very well be the answer to the question, “What’s the most viscerally disgusting material that a building could be made of?” The ‘Barrectum’ isn’t exactly pretty either, covered in veins and ending in a tangle of intestines that lead to a stomach and finally, a tongue.
But it’s the Domestikator that’s really the star of the show, even if you don’t particularly want to look at it too much. “Domesticator symbolizes the power of humanity over the world,” say the designers. “It pays tribute to the ingenuity, the sophistication and the capacities of humanity, to the power of organization, and to the use of this power to dominate, domesticate the natural environment.”
“The act of domestication, however, often leads to boundaries being sought or even crossed. Only a few taboos remain, and it is these taboos that the Domestikator seeks to address.”
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Fantastic feats of ingenuity and structural engineering that range from pragmatic to artistic building moving and moving buildings.
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I met MyThy at Sister Pie, where she works prepping pie filling and mixing dough for cookies, scones, crumbles, and pie crust. Plus, she has a killer Instagram account and blog. Like Lisa, who owns and operates Sister Pie, MyThy also has a creative culinary mind and bakes amazing cookies and breads. This is why I asked her to submit a recipe to Michael’s blog. When she is not in the kitchen you can find her saving lives as an ER nurse at a local hospital in Detroit. She cares for people during the day, saving lives on- and off-hours. She nourishes people by feeding them her latest concoctions. MyThy then takes leftovers back and feeds her coworkers baked goodies to boost morale for those with grueling ER shifts. The staff call them “Mighty Treats!” MyThy is a Southern Californian native, transplanted to Michigan, aka the Mitten State (which plays Read On »
The German’s feisty side came out at Anfield on Sunday, and while West Bromwich Albion’s physicality was an issue, so was the way his team failed to deal with it
Jürgen Klopp called it an “explosion”, and the surest thing to say about the first monumental combustion of his Liverpool career – considering neither he nor Tony Pulis divulged the background details of Sunday’s outburst against West Bromwich Albion – is that it will not be the last. It would be hypocritical to suggest we are appalled at the prospect of more.
Klopp certainly crossed a line in goading the Albion bench following Divock Origi’s 96th-minute equaliser for Liverpool. Performing a passable impression of a gorilla beating its chest, the German coach confronted Pulis and West Brom’s backroom team in a frenzy that transferred to the Anfield crowd for the remaining minutes and fuelled Liverpool’s push for an unlikely winner. Having expressed bemusement at a lack of belief among the Anfield crowd against Crystal Palace only five weeks previously, that in itself was a small victory in Klopp’s eyes and reason for acclaiming the Kop with his players after Sunday’s final whistle.
• Pair face Fifa ethics hearing over £1.3m payment in 2011 • Blatter and Platini expected to avoid lifetime bans
Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini are likely to escape lifetime bans for corruption but investigators expect the pair to receive lengthy suspensions of at least seven years when their hearings take place this week, according to insiders.
Blatter and Platini will have disciplinary hearings before the Fifa ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert in Zurich on Thursday and Friday, over a £1.3m payment made to Platini by Fifa in 2011 and signed off by Blatter.
As the old joke goes, these Russian tea cakes might not be Russian, but at least they’re not cakes. No one knows exactly how these came to be known as Russian tea cakes, but nevertheless, they are quite delicious, very simple to make, and visually ideal for holiday entertaining.
And when I say “easy,” I mean really easy. You dump everything in a bowl, and mix it with your hands until combined. Professional pastry chefs will lose their minds, since we’re forgoing their precious “cream the butter and sugar” step, but the final product is identical, no matter which technique you use.
The only tricky thing here is the baking time, since there are so many variables. Things like the size of the dough balls, whether you use a silpat or parchment, how light or dark the sheet pan is, etc., can all effect the final time significantly.
I think this cookie tends to get under-cooked, and some recipes call for as little as 12 minutes at 350 F. I like these fairly golden, so I get that nice brown-butter flavor, and that took me about 20 minutes or so, which is why I gave such a wide range. Start checking at 15 minutes, and proceed from there.
Thanks to their snowy appearance, these “cakes” would be perfect for your holiday dessert spread, don’t feel like you have to wait for a wedding, or for some Russians to come over for tea. I really hope you give these a try soon. Enjoy!
Makes about 28 to 32 Russian Tea Cakes:
1 cup (2 sticks) room temperature unsalted butter
1/3 packed cup powdered sugar (plus much more to coat finished cookies)
1 cup finely chopped walnuts (very lightly toast nuts in dry pan first for best results)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- Roll into just slightly larger than 1-inch balls, bake at 350 F. for 15 to 25 minutes, or until lightly golden
Finally, someone found a way to make Tarantino films interesting.
From the minute the multiplex curtains pulled back on his first feature, director Quentin Tarantino has ignited the interest, and occasional ire, of critics for his films’ strong language and frequent violence. The New York Times called his first film, “Reservoir Dogs,” “aggressively brutal.” About his next film, “Pulp Fiction,” the Los Angeles Times wrote that there was “something wearing and repetitive about the film’s reliance on shock value and bad-boy posturing to maintain our attention.”
Tarantino’s eighth feature film, “The Hateful Eight,” comes out on Christmas, and it’s the story of bounty hunters seeking refuge from a Wyoming blizzard after the Civil War — so basically “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” meets “Frozen.” To get ready, I spent a week on the couch with Tarantino’s oeuvre, watching people die and swear a blue streak. When someone was killed by a gun or a sword or a venomous snake, or someone was called a “motherfucker” or a “cocksucker,” I made a note of the event and the time. Then I did it all over again a few seconds later. What resulted was hard-won data that showed me the essential tempos of Tarantino’s films, and how they’ve changed over time.30 The guy’s getting bloodier in his old age.
Some mild assumptions were necessary for this project. For one, I’m not a medical doctor, but I assumed that if, say, someone had numerous limbs cut off or took a direct blade to the torso in a samurai sword battle, that person would indeed bleed out and die.31 And for profanity in foreign languages — mainly in Chinese and Japanese in the “Kill Bill” films and French in “Inglourious Basterds” — I relied on the theatrical subtitles.32
Also, it’s occasionally difficult to make out the profane language precisely. If you recently had your one remaining eyeball plucked out, for example, I may not have understood every word you screamed in horror. But I did my best to count all the curses, from the mild hells and damns and asses to the more potent shits, fucks and n-words. (You can find the full data set on GitHub.)
FILM
CURSES
DEATHS
CURSE/DEATH RATIO
Jackie Brown
368
4
92.0
Pulp Fiction
469
7
67.0
Reservoir Dogs
421
10
42.1
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
69
11
6.3
Django Unchained
262
47
5.6
Inglourious Basterds
58
48
1.2
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
57
63
0.9
Total
1704
190
9.0
Every Tarantino film features plenty of R-rated language33 and at least a few deaths, but they’re not all created equal. Tarantino has been trading fucks for deaths as he “matures.” “Reservoir Dogs” features “just” 10 on-screen deaths, but 421 profanities. “Django Unchained,” on the other hand, has “just” 262 profanities but 47 deaths.34
Part of this is probably his films’ growing budgets — it’s much cheaper to drop a dozen f-bombs on celluloid than to drop a dozen samurais. If you want to jolt audiences on the cheap, you do it through swearing. If you want to do it with a budget, you slice some people in half. “Reservoir Dogs” was made for about $2 million in today’s dollars, per IMDb. The “Django Unchained” budget was just more than $100 million. “The Hateful Eight” cost $44 million.
WORD
COUNT
% OF ALL CURSES
fucking
407
23.9%
shit
221
13.0
fuck(s)
216
12.7
n—–(s)
179
10.5
goddamn(ed)
114
6.7
motherfucker(s)
85
5.0
bitch(es)
73
4.3
hell
45
2.6
damn(ed)
40
2.3
motherfucking
27
1.6
It does appear that, by some measures, Tarantino has chilled out since the salad days of “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction.” In 2004’s “Kill Bill: Vol. 2” there’s a remarkable 16-plus-minute stretch with no death or profanity at all. Just regular talking and driving and stuff. Some of it does take place with a pimp in a brothel and a facially scarred prostitute, but still. And when it comes to curses, we’re in the quietest era of his filmography.
Although Tarantino is an eclectic profaner, using healthy doses of words from the carnal to the scatological, he’s especially fond of expletives of the “F” variety. Tarantino doesn’t give a fuck — he gives hundreds.
“Fuck” is a fantastic word. It might be the very best word. It might be the single most useful word in the English language. It’s a transitive verb and an intransitive verb. It’s a noun and an interjection. “Fucking” can be an adjective and an intensifier and a gerund.35 “Fucked” can also be an adjective, with an altogether different meaning. And “fuck,” with all of its deliciously vulgar varietals, is Tarantino’s favorite.
TYPE OF FUCK
COUNT
% OF ALL FUCKS
fucking
407
52.7%
fuck
213
27.6
motherfucker
70
9.1
motherfucking
27
3.5
fucked
25
3.2
motherfuckers
15
1.9
fucker
8
1.0
fucks
3
0.4
fuckup
1
0.1
fuckhead
1
0.1
fuckface
1
0.1
fuckers
1
0.1
Total fucks
772
100.0
The table next to this paragraph breaks down all the inflections of fuck uttered in Tarantino’s films, from the earliest utterance in “Reservoir Dogs” — “She’s been fucked over a few times” — to the last in “Django Unchained” — “You done fucked up.” “Fucking,” with its evergreen, yogic flexibility, earns the top spot. A typical Tarantino deployment of the word, courtesy of Vincent Vega in the back seat of a brain-and-skull-spattered car in “Pulp Fiction”: “Right now I’m a fucking race car, and you got me in the red, and I’m just saying that it’s fucking dangerous to have a race car in the fucking red, that’s all.”
“The Hateful Eight” may not continue this proud tradition. A leaked script for the movie reportedly had, as Esquire magazine put it, “a paltry 18 fucks.” (My search of the script revealed 23 versions of the word.) If the theatrical release is consistent with the leaked script, and there’s no guarantee that it will be, “Hateful Eight” will nearly be the most fuckless Tarantino film. 2003’s “Kill Bill: Vol. 1” had 17 versions of the f-bomb, according to my tally. By my count, the leaked “Hateful Eight” script also contains 11 versions of “shit,” 14 of “bitch,” 16 of “hell,” 21 of “ass,” 44 of “damn” and 49 n-words. On the profanity gauge, this would be a significant downtick from his last film, and a far cry from the early days of “Reservoir Dogs,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Jackie Brown.”
Given how Tarantino has eased back on his obscenities, one could be forgiven for feeling nostalgic for Tarantino’s early, hyper-potty-mouthed days. “Dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick,” the character Mr. Brown, played by Tarantino himself, explains over coffee in the very first scene of Tarantino’s very first feature, “Reservoir Dogs.” “How many dicks is that?” Mr. Blue deadpans. “A lot,” says Mr. White. Or, to be exact, nine out of the 20 dicks in Tarantino’s full catalog.
And the award for "Most ridiculous look of the year" goes to... Saido Berahino, for his "homeless guy wearing a sweater on his head with Beats by Dre earmuffs"
West Brom's out of favour striker takes to Twitter to vent his frustration - again
I have to start making stuff like this to get Avie to eat vegetables.
This unapologetically cheesy, creamy appetizer gets its flavor from sweet and nutty roasted butternut squash, caramelized onions, garlic, crispy sage, and a generous amount of melted cheddar. Cream cheese and a bit of sour cream join the mix to make sure everything stays smooth and scoopable.
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What could go wrong I can’t count the number of ways You could be mauled or burned for starters You could still drown in knee deep waters That’s enough to hold up and hide in this cave...
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Yes, if you asked me right now, this salted caramel custard would be my favorite dessert. These easy “pots de crèmes” are just sweet enough, just salty enough, and just drop-dead gorgeous enough.
I used Maldon sea salt to garnish, which has quite large, but very light crystals, so we’re not adding as much salt as it may appear. Think of a big, fluffy snowflake, floating down onto your warm palm. Stay with me here. As soon as that huge flake lands, it melts into a tiny drop of water. It’s sort of the same thing here.
This recipe will make exactly six (6.5 ounce) ramekins, but you can use any size you want, as long as you monitor the cooking time. Speaking of which, there are many variables effecting how long yours will take, such as ramekin size/shape, and how close they’re packed together, so the times given here are just a guideline.
Simply bake until the custard is just set, and you get that signature “jiggle” when you wiggle. By the way, I wasn’t kidding about eating these cold. I know it’s very hard not to eat a little bit before they’re chilled, but these are so vastly superior in taste and texture when cold, we’re going to need you to be strong. I really hope you give these a try soon. Enjoy!
Ingredients for six (6.5 ounce) ramekins:
9 large egg yolks
2/3 cup white sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (or 1/4 teaspoon fine salt)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup whole milk
flaky sea salt to garnish
- Bake at 300 F. about 45 min to an hour, or until set.
I like Jurgen Klopp. Klopp is an exciting young manager who isn’t afraid to take chances and introduce new ideas to football. He beat the juggernaut Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga with a team...
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