Bridget

Awesome street art by Alexis Diaz at @powwowhawaii Honolulu,Hawaii.

Street art by Alexis Diaz

The incorporation of modern art into tattoo design is gaining steam world-wide, and one of the tattoo artists at the forefront of this movement is Chaim Machlev, whose beautiful line tattoos often look like complex geometric simulations that we’d normally expect to see on a computer screen.

Though he also creates beautiful geometric tattoos and tattoos with traditional artistic elements, the Berlin-based artist’s signature tattoos are broad and sweeping ribbons and lines that trace the bodies of their clients like trails of cigarette smoke. He previously worked as an IT manager, beginning his tattoo work in 2012, so we’re wondering if his designs might have been influenced by coiled cabled or bouncing screensavers.

For other great modern tattoo work, check out these cubist tattoos tattoos by Expanded Eye!

More info: dotstolines.com | Facebook | Instagram (h/t: mymodernmet)

Allen Barton’s absorbing new drama, Disconnection, spun from his experiences with Scientology, looks at the fallout from a regime change at a self-improvement church, when that church, under a new administration, devolves into an abusive cult. When amateur pianist Landon (Bo Foxworth) resumes his musical hobby with the help of...

aegisandy:

Mariya Prokazina

yessss, i want to learn how to do this

blixa doing the german rendition of the bunny hop I assume

for earth-oddity

Hendy Mp, a talented wildlife photographer based in Indonesia, has captured what is probably one of the weirdest spectacles we’ve ever seen – a tree frog going for a wild rodeo ride on the back of a giant horned wood-boring beetle. The tree frog is a Reinwardt’s Flying Frog, a threatened species that can glide down from trees with the skin between its fingers and toes.

The wild and adorable scene was captured not far from Mp’s home in Sambas, Indonesia. Mp is a fan of macro photography, and uses it to capture beautiful larger-than life photos of the many different beautiful insects, reptiles and amphibians native to Indonesia.

If you love having a close-up look at the tiny world of frigs, lizards and insects, then you’ll definitely love these photos by Vyacheslav Mishchenko and Miki Asai as well.

More info: 500px | Facebook | Twitter (h/t: dailymail)

Vanitas Vanitatum, Agostino Arrivabene

I think the best ad campaign of all time might be The Incredible Edible Egg. Not only because it rhymes, which is always the best way to present something, and is about food, which is always the best thing for something to be about, but also because it is actually true. Eggs are incredible. How can the same ingredient that makes meringue and angel food cake what they are also make mayonnaise and hollandaise sauce what they are, plus fry, scramble, poach, baste, and boil for breakfast? I think if I had to pick one single food to eat exclusively for the rest of my life, I would pick eggs. Eggs with a side of Shreddies fart-filtering underwear.

And now for something else incredible you can do with eggs: shape them into skulls with delicious yolk brains. This Egg-A-Matic skull egg shaper squishes and reconfigures your standard hard boiled egg into a perfectly creepy (but not so creepy you can't let the kids have a bite) victim of the voodoo. Check out the video for a step-by-step demo, but the process is pretty simple: boil an egg, peel off the shell, and place it in your skull mold. Then snap the shaper shut and plunge it into a vat of cold water. Minutes later--voila! You have your very own incredible edible dead man.

Today the Department of Teeny-Weeny Wonders is marveling at a tiny object dating all the way back to 16th century Flanders (by which we mean the geographical territory and not an ancestor of Ned Flanders, though he’d probably get a big kick out of this too). Measuring just a couple inches in diameter when closed, this awesomely ornate object is a “prayer nut" or rosary bead, a very small and spherical boxwood carving that opens to reveal incredibly detailed relief carvings of biblical events.

Extraordinary objects such as this were prized possessions of the wealthy during the Middle Ages, carried around and used for private devotion. They were status symbols as much as symbols of faith.

"The decorative items are small, measuring only a few inches in diameter. When closed, the object resembles an elaborately carved nut that could be worn on a belt or a rosary. Once opened, the interior reveals incredibly detailed, religious scenes like the Crucifixion. Aromatic fragrances were often inserted into the woodwork with the intention of enhancing the emotional experience for the user. Delicate and complex, prayer nuts were highly prized as works of art and can be found on display in many of the world’s leading museums today."

This particular prayer nut belongs to the British Museum and is one of the most elaborate prayer nuts in their collection. Click here for additional images.

Head over to My Modern Metropolis to view more examples of these amazing objects.

[via Neatorama and My Modern Metropolis]

Hollywood's big ole party to itself is happening next Sunday, so get ready for sidewalk and road closures in the area as they prep for the 87th annual Oscars, happening on February 22. [ more › ]

mall-goths:

hot topic’s website circa 2001

So Microsoft's Kinect was a video gaming bust. Whatever. It's still got its uses. Like...helping police work on their "use of force options" against suspects. You know, whether to shout or shoot at a guy.

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The Apple 1 is the most sought after collector piece of computing hardware. It is the Action Comics No. 1 of retro computing. The first appearance of Superman. The one that started it all. But if there was to be a No. 2, it would be this guy—the Commodore 65.

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The scariest causes of death — war, murder, car accidents — are also some of the least common ways that we die. This fact is made abundantly clear in a graphic from Britain's National Health Service, which displays the leading causes of death in the United Kingdom:

(National Health Service Atlas of Risk)

Much more mundane things, like circulatory and digestive disorders, are much more common causes of death murders or car accidents. While this data comes from the United Kingdom, the leading causes of death in the United States look pretty similar: heart disease, cancer, and chronic respiratory disease are the most common killers in America.

"Every day we are told of lethal new threats to our health and lives," the NHS writes in an explanation of the graphic. "Food additives, knife crime, pollution, terrorism ... It's not that these threats are not potential killers, but in this blizzard of health warnings it's easy to lose perspective and worry about small or insignificant risks while ignoring, or being unaware, of major threats."

The NHS has also put together a set of "risk" factors that looks at some of the leading behavioral decisions that cause death, whether that's smoking too much or consuming too few fruits and vegetables:

(National Health Service Atlas of Risk)

You can also use an interactive version of the Atlas of Risk, which lets you break down the risks and causes of death for different demographics. For example, that data shows that traffic accidents are a much higher cause of death for people between the ages of 1 and 19 than for other age groups. This is what that chart looks like:

(National Health Service Atlas of Risk)

You can find the Atlas of Risk here. (And thanks to Peter Ubel for pointing it out on Twitter.)

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this man chose the right profession. You know, just based on his reactions to multiple instances of thundersnow. Follow your arrow if you can, folks: Find something in your life that makes you geek out even 1/5th as thoroughly as this man does here. Find the thundersnow to your Jim Cantore.

(via Daily Dot)

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It’s becoming trendy to offer selfies as a feature in video games now. Just weeks after World of Warcraft added self-portraits through a new patch, the classic first-person-shooter Doom is getting the same treatment — albeit unofficially.

There’s a new mod for the game called “InstaDoom” that adds a selfie stick and 37 Instagram filters to the game, opening the door to some strange in-game photo ops.

The mod, created by a modder named Linguica, swaps the chainsaw and BFG weapons in the game for a selfie stick with a representation of your character on the other end.

With a filter (e.g. Valencia, Ashby, Lo-Fi, Mayfair, Rise, Inkwell, and more) applied to your view, all it takes is a quick screenshot to save an in-game selfie with the monsters you encounter.

The mod is available as a free download over at Doom World.

(via Doom World via GameSpot)

Mary is doing God's work. She takes between one and four appointments a week, scheduled 48 hours in advance. She subsidizes sessions for her disabled clients, one of whom is a 28-year-old with multiple sclerosis. She gets down on all fours and curls up into a ball to show me the only position he can use.

Mary isn't her real name. But in her line of work, no one has real names.

Mary is beautiful. She's 41 years old and has the nicest skin I've ever seen. She's not wearing makeup when we go out for breakfast (eggs Benedict with fruit, no hash browns), and she's pulled her hair up into a small bun that sits on the top of her head.

Before Mary became a sex worker, she was a corporate accountant. "My joke is that then I felt like the biggest whore of my life," she says. Before that, she toured with the Grateful Dead, sold hair wraps and ganja goo balls, and stripped for a few months. Mary grew up in Tacoma at a time when dealers sold heroin at all-ages punk shows. She left home when she was 13, but stayed in school.

In her 30s, after discovering a community of sex-based spiritual healers, Mary came to sex work. Hers is not the stereotypical street-based prostitution horror story, but she's far from the only person with a story like this. "One of the reasons we're dismissed is that there's this belief that we're so out of touch with the harms of the industry," Mary says. "And so it really can be a fine line to walk to say, 'No, I am empowered, I am making choices, and not only am I making choices, but these choices have been the best decisions I have made in my life.'"

No one actually knows how many people like Mary are in Seattle.

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There's a reason the internet becomes one, big, flaming yule log on Christmas Eve; there's something indescribably soothing in that cleansing, all-consuming blaze. And this flaming Rubik's cube is just like that yule log. If the yule log had spent five years pissing you off.

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By Breaking Bits

_{Vintage Valentines: weird valentines cards}

rohl5:

Do you ever just feel like Ted Mosby?

Because i do.