Annie Ronan

Welcome back to the workweek with the most beautiful gift of all: bears! This week the Katami National Park in Alaska has started streaming videos of brown bears in their natural habitat. The first one’s live at Brooks Falls; so far, we’ve watched brown bears looking for salmon, brown bears catching salmon, and brown bears eating salmon. Adorable. There’s also this cam on the lower river but it’s basically a bunch of water right now. We expect more bear action to start anytime now.

GIF by Paddy Johnson; hat tip from The Awl

The letter above goes to show two things. George Raymond Richard Martin, otherwise known as George R.R. Martin, or simply as GRRM, had fantasy and writing in his blood from a young age. Decades before he wrote his fantasy novel series A Song of Ice and Fire, which HBO adapted into Game of Thrones, a 15-year-old George R. Martin sent a fan letter to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the legendary creators of Spider-Man, the Hulk, Thor, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four (called “F.F.” in the letter). When you read the note, you can immediately tell that young Martin was steeped in sci-fi and fantasy literature. He could also string together some fairly complex sentences during his teenage years — sentences that many adults would struggle to write. But here’s the cool part for me. Wunderkind Martin lived in good old Bayonne, NJ, the town where yours truly has deep family roots. You can find the cover of the much-praised F.F. #17 below.

via HuffPo

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15-Year-Old George R.R. Martin Writes a Fan Letter to Stan Lee & Jack Kirby (1963) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

The post 15-Year-Old George R.R. Martin Writes a Fan Letter to Stan Lee & Jack Kirby (1963) appeared first on Open Culture.

The Badlands are a type of parched, sunbaked terrain characterized by jagged rock, cracked earth and, of course, minimal vegetation. It’s a harsh environment of lifeless wasteland but there is also good news to be found in the badlands. For the patient observer, like photographer Guy Tal, there is a delicate beauty that reveals itself only so often. “On rare years,” says Tal, describing his series of photos taken in the American West, “wildflowers burst into stunning display of color, transforming the desert into a veritable garden for just few precious days.” The reason, apparently, is that vegetation in the region has adapted to the climate. With just a tiny bit of moisture the desert can transform into a colorful garden of bright purple and yellow. You can see more photos on Tal’s website, or purchase his book More Than a Rock. (via Bored Panda)

Update: According to @happyhillers these are Scorpionweed and Beeplant flowers.

The Overview Effect is a cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts and cosmonauts during spaceflight, often while viewing the Earth from orbit or from the lunar surface. From this perspective, pattens in nature and human development emerge and you see the world in an entirely different light.

Daily Overview is a new project that was inspired by the Overview Effect. Each day they provide a new satellite image of our planet in an attempt to, “fully appreciate the beauty and intricacy of the things we’ve constructed, the sheer complexity of the systems we’ve developed, or the devastating impact that we’ve had on our planet.”

Using satellite imagery from Apple Maps (powered by DigitalGlobe), Daily Overview has already amassed a fantastic archive. To see the latest, check them out at the links below.

Bourtange is a village with a population of 430 in the municipality of Vlagtwedde in the Netherlands. The star fort was built in 1593 during the Eighty Years’ War when William I of Orange wanted to control the only road between Germany and the city of Groningen. Bourtange was restored to its mid 18th-century state in 1960 and is currently used an open-air museum. [source]

Central Park in New York City spans 843 acres. That’s 6% of the island of Manhattan. [source]

Eixample – a district in the city of Barcelona, Spain – is characterized by its strict grid pattern, octagonal intersections, and apartments with communal courtyards. [source]

Vineyards swirl on the hills of Huelva, Spain. The climate there is ideal for grape growing with an average temperature of 64 degrees and a relative humidity between 60% and 80%. [source]

Luecke Farm in Smithville, Texas, USA uses a selective clearing of trees to spell out the surname of its owner “LUECKE.” The distance from the “L” to the “E” is just short of 3 miles. Consequently, NASA uses the text to focus and optimize photographs taken by the Hubble Telescope. [source]

Seaweed farms on Nusa Lembongan – a small island located southeast of Bali, Indonesia – have an average harvest of 50,000 pounds per month. Once the seaweed is extracted from the water, it is dried by the sun for 3-7 days, depending on the season. [source]

Our Lady of Almudena Cemetery in Madrid, Spain is one of the largest cemeteries in the world. The number of gravesites – estimated at five million – is greater than the population of Madrid itself. [source]

The planned city of La Plata, the capital city of the Province of Buenos Aires, is characterized by its strict grid pattern. At the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, the new city was awarded two gold medals for the “City of the Future” and “Better performance built.” [source]

These circular patterns occur as crops are watered by overhead sprinklers, which are mounted to motor-driven, rotating towers that distribute water evenly throughout the fields. [source]

Brøndby Haveby, or Brøndby Garden City, is a community located just outside Copenhagen, Denmark. Houses with large front yards are centered around cul-de-sacs, providing cramped urban dwellers the opportunity to live outside the city and grow small subsistence or hobby crops during the summer months. [source]

Svetlana Petrova is the proud owner of a fat cat by the name of Zarathustra. According to Svetlana, only the great artists can appreciate the “generous body and sublime soul” of the chubby feline, who weighs about 22 pounds (10 kg).

At fatcatart.ru, Petrova photoshops her muse into famous artworks, from classics like the Mona Lisa to the contemporary work of Dali. You can see the complete 75+ picture gallery (and growing) here. If you’re interested in prints or canvases, check out their recently launched online store here.

[via Ignant]

On 23 August 1975 the Pontiac Silverdome officially opened its doors. For 22 years it was the largest stadium in the National Football League (NFL). The stadium complex, which sat on 127 acres (51 ha) of land, had a capacity of 80,000+.

The Silverdome hosted the Detroit Lions of the NFL (1975–2001), the Detroit Pistons of the NBA (1978–1988), the Detroit Express (for both outdoor and indoor soccer) of the NASL (1978–1980), the Michigan Panthers of the USFL (1983–1984), the NBA All-Star Game (1979), Super Bowl XVI (1982) and four first-round games during the 1994 FIFA World Cup. [source]

Here’s a brief list of notable performers who played at the Pontiac Silverdome over the years:
 

December 6, 1975 – The Who (attended by 75,962 fans)
December 31, 1975 – Elvis Presley (his first New Year’s Eve show, attended by 62,500 fans)
April 30, 1977 – Led Zeppelin (attended by 76,229 fans)
March 5, 1978 – Kenny Rogers and Dottie West (attendance of over 60,000 fans)
August 17-19, 1984 – The Jacksons performed three concerts during their Victory Tour
September 4, 1985 – Bruce Springsteen performs to record crowd for “Born in the USA” tour
August 7, 1987 – Madonna’s Who’s That Girl World Tour with 56,000 attendance
July 21, 1992 – Guns N’ Roses/Metallica Stadium Tour with Faith No More as opening act.
July 15, 1994 – Pink Floyd perform Dark Side of the Moon in entirety for 1st time since 1975

On 29 March 1987, the World Wrestling Federation’s WrestleMania III set the record for the largest attendance for a live indoor sporting event in North America with 93,173 spectators. That record stood until 14 February 2010 when the NBA All-Star Game broke the indoor sporting event record with an attendance of 108,713 at Cowboys Stadium.

The record-setting 93,173 attendance was the largest in the Silverdome’s history. However that record only stood for 4 months as on 7 August 1987 Pope John Paul II held mass at the Silverdome with an attendance of 93,682. To this day it is the largest attendance in the stadium’s history. [source]

When the USS Enterprise was hit with an enemy attack, it would rock the entire starship, throwing crew members over equipment and to the floor. Most people know the effect on the old Star Trek television series didn’t have the budget to put the set on a shaker, and the old school movie magic effect was created simply by shaking the camera and have the actors throw themselves around the set as if the room was in sudden movement. Of course, the internet is having fun with this, creating a new reddit subreddit called r/StarTrekStabilized where they put the old television footage through image stabilization software to show you the funny truth behind the filming. Hit the jump to see more Star Trek motion stabilized gif images.

Star Trek Motion Stabilized

Someone compiled a bunch of the image stabilized clips in a music video called “Turn Down for Spock”, which features the song “Turn Down for What” by DJ Snake and Lil Jon:

You can see more motion stabilized Star Trek gif images on r/startrekstabilized

Here is a tutorial on how you can join in on the fun and use motion stabilization on your own Star Trek video footage.

via: GammaSquad

The post LOL: Star Trek Motion Stabilized Ruins The Space Attack Illusion appeared first on /Film.

It is my habit, when travel looms, to case the Internet for obscure museums my destination might have to offer. Once loaded, I fixate. Chat me up about my itinerary, and you will definitely come away with the impression that these offbeat locales are the trip’s primary raison d’être.

It’s shocking how rarely I actually make it to one of these off-the-beaten path gems. Time flies and I rarely travel alone these days.

Take a recent family trip to London. Every time I brought up the Museum of Brands, my husband expressed reservations. “But what is it, exactly, other than a bunch of old labels?” he’d press.

I hemmed and hawed, realizing on the cellular level that neither he nor the kids could see the beauty in old labels. Dinosaurs, maybe. Vespas, no doubt. But old labels? This is how I found myself giving the British Museum nearly three times the Museum of Brand’s admission charge to join a mighty throng of pensioners, squinting at a handful of boring button fragments and a chunk of wood that no longer resembled a Viking Ship.

Next time, I swear…

How fortunate for me and my ilk that Chicago design firm Coudal Partners is committed to laboring far outside its expected scope. In addition to championing Stanley Kubrick and poetry, they’ve taken it upon themselves to consolidate a panoply of digital collections into the Museum of Online Museums. (The preferred acronym is MoOM, FYI.)

Unlike that of certain of my traveling companions, Coudal Partners’ definition of what constitutes a museum is democratic. Generous, even. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum, and the Musée d’Orsay share space with such non-brick-and-mortar companions as the Busy Beaver Button Museum, the Grocery List Collection, and Toaster Central.

Like any major institution, MoOM touts their current exhibitions, a seasonal sampling of five. This spring brings together the Rijksmuseum’s Studio Project, NASA’s Space Food Hall of Fame, a collection of Dutch safety posters from 50 Watts, 40 retro-groovy Japanese ads compliments of Voices of East Anglia, and a photographic survey of eggnog cartons. (That last one really deserves a brick and mortar home. Location is immaterial. I’d just like to fantasize about visiting it someday.)

Meanwhile, the talk of the town here in New York City is the reappearance of Mmuseumm, an eclectic, non-profit housed in a 60-square-foot Tribeca elevator shaft. MoOM, take note.

Find more online exhibitions at the Museum of Online Museums.

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Ayun Halliday wrote about her experiences as a museum guard in her 3rd book, Job Hopper. Follow her @AyunHalliday

Visit The Museum of Online Museums (MoOM): A Mega Collection of 220 Online Exhibitions is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

The post Visit The Museum of Online Museums (MoOM): A Mega Collection of 220 Online Exhibitions appeared first on Open Culture.

here are some bad-ass women to inspire you this Friday, who flew in the face of convention (pardon the pun) and trained as airforce pilots in 1943. despite the magazine describing them thusly, “girls are very serious about their chance to fly for the Army, even when it means giving up nail polish, beauty parlours and dates for a regimented 33 weeks.” can you even. you can read the original article in LIFE magazine here.

photos by Peter Stackpole for Life Magazine in 1943.

Back in January 2013, Benjamin Berg spent some time on his blog discussing “ghost frames,” a term he uses to describe “video frames which do not actually exist in a video file but which are sometimes revealed when using damaged data and/or glitch processes.” This GIF is just one example of the many “ghost frame” glitches he’s found over the years. Go on and check out some more over on his blog.

Feast your eyes on this phenomenal geometric paper sculpting from Estudio Guardabosques, a multidisciplinary design studio out of Buenos Aires, Argentina consisting of Caro Silvero and Juan Elizalde. The duo have collaborated on numerous papercraft projects for both editorial and artistic purposes, much more of which you can see over on Behance. (via Fubiz)

For centuries artisans have been crafting white porcelain dishes and decorating them with intricate cobalt blue patterns, from floral designs to swirling landscapes. Enter graphic designer Don Moyer who is turning the tradition on its head with his wildly successful line of Calamityware dinner plates. Moyer expertly mimics several Eastern motifs in his plates with one major addition: flying monkeys, a UFO assault, and giant gurgling sea monsters.

Two plates have already been created and are available in his shop, while a third is currently doing quite well over on Kickstarter. He says next up is a bonafide pirate invasion plate which you can keep an eye out for (ba dum!) later this year.

The Mincing Mockingbird Guide to Troubled Birds is new from Penguin next month. It’s a handsome little book. Amusing.

I suppose it should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the band that the new Woods album is great. After all, they’ve developed a reputation for both consistency and exceptional songwriting. With more full length albums than you can count on one hand, they haven’t released a dog yet. Perhaps more surprising then, in light of their exceptional back catalog, is that their latest release, With Love and With Light, is their best album to date.

Everything here is sharper, tighter and more refined than anything they’ve previously released: the production, the songwriting, the recording, and the band’s performances. And, best of all, they’ve managed these improvements without sacrificing any of the things that made them unique in the first place. Woods still demonstrate an unmistakable affinity for off-kilter melodies, psych-folk experimentation, and woozy open-road jamming.

For example, the album opens with the springy alt-country jam “Shepherd.” It’s constructed from warm slide guitar (courtesy of Mr. Presley), bright honky tonk piano, and a gently strummed acoustic guitar line. It’s upbeat and opens the album with a swaying easiness. Compare that to the title track, a 9-minute long epic, that unravels from verse to verse into a series of extended free-wheeling instrumentals of snarling guitar riffs, shuffling percussion, and wide-open spaces. It may sound unnecessarily indulgent, but I assure you it’s anything but. In fact, it sounds sharp, muscular, and mesmerizingly focused. It’s a song that you can get completely lost in. And, of course, they follow it up with their cleanest, most pop-affected track yet, “Moving To The Left.”

With Love and With Light also features contributions from several of their friends. For example, White Fence’s Tim Presley and Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado each appear on a pair of tracks. Nonetheless, the best bits are 100% Woods (singer/guitarist Jeremy Earl, multi-instrumentalist Jarvis Taveniere, drummer Aaron Neveu, and pianist/organist John Andrews) simply being themselves and doing what they do best.

This is my choice for a Musical Pairing for Kasey’s recipe for Shakshuka. Combining harissa paste, bell peppers, garlic, cumin, tomatoes, and eggs, the recipe – like the album – is earthy, fiery, and savory. It’s a versatile recipe that you could enjoy for either breakfast or dinner. Likewise, With Light and With Love is one of those albums that’s perfect for a long commute, a lazy afternoon, or day in the office. You can score this on vinyl, cassette, or CD from Insound.

The Motherland Call, Volgograd, Russia, 285 ft, built in 1967

African Renaissance Monument, Dakar, Senegal, 161 ft, built in 2010

Ataturk Mask, Buca, Izmir, Turkey, 132 ft, built in 2009

Christ Blessing, Manado, Indonesia, 98.5 ft, built in 2007

Christ the King, Świebodzin, Poland, 120 ft, built in 2010

Grand Byakue, Takazaki, Japan, 137 ft, built in 1936

Guan Yu, Yuncheng, China, 262 ft, built in 2010

Mao Zedong, Changsha, China, 105 ft, built in 2009

Mother of the Fatherland, Kiev, Ukraine, 203 ft, built in 1981

Dai Kannon, Sendai, Japan, 330 ft, built in 1991

Towering above cities and carved into mountainsides, the gargantuan statues captured in Fabrice Fouillet’s series Colosses were designed to dwarf everything in proximity, to stand as timeless monuments of religious and political icons. Though unlike the tourists and pilgrims who travel great distances to witness these towering structures up close, Fouillet is more interested in how the landscape around each monument has been transformed. He shares via his artist statement:

The series “Colosses” is a study of the landscapes embracing those monumental commemorative statues. Although hugeness is appealing, exhilarating or even fascinating, I was first intrigued by the human need to build gigantic declarations. Then, I asked myself how such works could be connected to their surroundings. How can they fit in the landscapes, despite their excessive dimensions and their fundamental symbolic and traditional functions?

That is why I chose to photograph the statues from a standpoint outside their formal surroundings (touristic or religious), and to favour a more detached view, watching them from the sidelines. This detachment enabled me to offer a wider view of the landscape and to place the monuments in a more contemporary dimension.

Fouillet references a wave of “statuemania” in the 1990s in locations mostly around Asia where many more sculptures are still under construction. The world’s tallest monument, a tribute to the the independence hero Sardar Patel in India, will soon reach a soaring height of 182 meters, nearly twice that of the Statue of Liberty. You can see much more of the series over on his website. All photos courtesy the photographer. (via Slate)

Open Slideshow

Yesterday I showed you the Mother's Day brunch I threw for my mother and grandmother. This was a pretty simple party — just Sunday lunch at home with family. But as a special touch I did a project I've been wanting to try for a long time: I made big black and white posters out of old family photos.

This was surprisingly easy and inexpensive! It just cost me a few dollars, and it was a fun, special touch that could work for so many parties, from birthday celebrations to wedding receptions. Here's exactly what I did so you can try it too, if you like.

READ MORE »

From The Unknown University, the complete poems of Roberto Bolaño. From New Directions and translated by Laura Healy.

Arctic Merfox by Emi Slade

The 3rd Biennial Taxidermy Show is a group art show at the La Luz De Jesus gallery in Los Angeles featuring unique taxidermied pieces of artwork. The show opens today Friday, May 2nd from 8-11pm and will run until June 1st. There will be a live taxidermy demonstration on Saturday, May 3rd from 2-5pm.

This is not your granddady’s taxidermy: road kill is a central part of the “recycled” philosophy of this unusual and enlightening exhibition, as are discarded livestock, destroyed nuisance animals, casualties of the pet trade and animals that have expired from natural causes. Other sculptures utilize taxidermy techniques in an unorthodox way to fashion fantastic beasts from everyday materials–even the recycled pelts of toy stuffed animals. Elements of technology and decoration combine to create ornaments that approach high art, not only in craft, but in concept.

Jonas Denver by Brooke Weston

Yutu by Divya Anantharaman

Civil Disobedience by Jeremy Johnson

Don’t Take Reality Too Literally by Cindy Cronk

images via La Luz De Jesus Gallery

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Experimental electronic musician and inventor Bruce Haack’s compositions expanded many a young consciousness, and taught kids to dance, move, meditate, and to be endlessly curious about the technology of sound. All of this makes him the perfect guest for Fred Rogers, who despite his totally square demeanor loved bringing his audience unusual artists of all kinds. In the clips above and below from the first, 1968 season of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, Haack introduces Rogers and a group of youngsters to the “musical computer,” a homemade analog synthesizer of his own invention—one of many he created from household items, most of which integrated human touch and movement into their controls, as you’ll see above. In both clips, Haack and longtime collaborator Esther Nelson sing and play charming songs as Nelson leads them in various movement exercises. (The remainder of the second video mostly features Mr. Roger’s cat.)

Although he’s seen a revival among electronic musicians and DJs, Haack became best known in his career as a composer of children’s music, and for good reason. His 1962 debut kid’s record Dance, Sing & Listen is an absolute classic of the genre, combining a dizzying range of musical styles—country, classical, pop, medieval, and experimental electronic—with far-out spoken word from Haack and Nelson. They followed this up with two more iterations of Dance, Sing & Listen, then The Way Out Record for Children, The Electronic Record for Children, the amazing Dance to the Music, and several more, all them weirder and more wonderful than maybe anything you’ve ever heard. (Don’t believe me? Take a listen to “Soul Transportation,” “EIO (New MacDonald),” or the absolutely enchanting “Saint Basil,” with its Doors-y organ outro.) A psychedelic genius, Haack also made grown-up acid rock in the form of 1970’s The Electric Lucifer, which is a bit like if Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice had written Jesus Christ Superstar on heavy doses of LSD and banks of analog synthesizers.

While Haack’s Mr. Rogers appearance may not have seemed like much at the time, in hindsight this is a fascinating document of an artist who’s been called “The King of Techno” for his forward-looking sounds meeting the cutting edge in children’s programming. It’s a testament to how much the counterculture influenced early childhood education. Many of the progressive educational experiments of the sixties have since become historical curiosities, replaced by insipid corporate merchandising. What Haack and Nelson’s musical approach tells me is that we’d do well to revisit the educational climate of that day and take a few lessons from its freeform experimentation and openness. I’ll certainly be playing these records for my daughter.

via Network Awesome

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness.

Mr. Rogers Introduces Kids to Experimental Electronic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nelson (1968) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

The post Mr. Rogers Introduces Kids to Experimental Electronic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nelson (1968) appeared first on Open Culture.

You know when you’re horsing around at the beach and accidentally swallow a nasty gulp of salt water? Well I hate to break it to you but that foul taste wasn’t just salt. Photographer David Littschwager captured this amazing shot of a single drop of seawater magnified 25 times to reveal an entire ecosystem of crab larva, diatoms, bacteria, fish eggs, zooplankton, and even worms. Read more about what you probably don’t want to know at Dive Shield. We do admit the little crab larva in the lower right-hand corner is pretty darned cute. (via Lost at E Minor)

Update: Prints of this photograph are available at Art.com.

Rope Cypress, standing in canoe shooting bow and arrow, clouds above, The Everglades, Florida, 1910

The American Museum of Natural History’s Research Library has launched a digital special collections archive that includes at least 7,000 images that had previously only been accessible in person on the museum’s fourth floor in New York City. The museum hopes to eventually digitize up to one million images from the research library’s collection. The current set includes archival photographic images, art and memorabilia images, and illustrations from their Rare Book Collection.

What began as a pilot project of 1,000 images is a long term effort to create comprehensive access to the rich and varied collections of photographs, rare book illustrations, art and memorabilia held in the Library. Images are being scanned and cataloged by teams of staff, interns, and volunteers and new images are added as they become available.

Portunus reticulatus from Herbst’s Versuch einer Naturgeschichte der Krabben und Krebse

Huichol Indian authorities at Guadalupe de Ocotán, Mexico, 1895

American Museum of Natural History exterior, view from roof of Dakota Apartments, 72nd Street and Central Park West, 1880

Roy Chapman Andrews and George Olsen at nest of “the even dozen dinosaur eggs”, Third Asiatic Expedition, Mongolia, 1925

images via The American Museum of Natural History

via The New York Times

Here's a great reason to keep active dry yeast in your cupboard (or your, um, handbag) even if you never plan on baking a single thing in your life: eating yeast before you start drinking could help stave off drunkenness.

Yes, it's true -- at least, according to Jim Koch, the founder of the Boston Beer Company, who eats some active dry yeast (in yogurt) before he drinks. Ratio? One teaspoon for every beer you plan on consuming.

The science behind this quirky hack is simple. According to Esquire, Dr. Joseph Owades, who had a PhD in biochemistry, figured out that active dry yeast has ADH in it -- that's alcohol dehydrogenases, an enzyme that breaks alcohol down into its component elements. Having the yeast in your stomach helps break down the alcohol before it hits your liver, and thus, your bloodstream and brain.

Do you practice any drinking tricks? Share with us in the comments!

Each Thursday, Emily Vikre (a.k.a fiveandspice) will be sharing a new way to love breakfast -- because breakfast isn't just the most important meal of the day. It's also the most awesome.

Today: Normal people of the world -- try this.

If you have never tried it before, let me introduce you to one of life’s great pleasures: the bagel with butter and salami. It’s the simplest things that are the best, right? A bagel with butter and salami takes three basic components and layers them one upon the next into a whole that is so much more than the sum of its parts. It hits many of the same notes as a classic French jambon beurre (ham and butter sandwich), combining chewy bread with salty butter and lacy, fatty slices of cured meat. I don’t fully understand why it is so good, but it is.

Bagels with butter and salami were a staple in my family. Versions of salami -- sliced paper thin -- are a pretty popular topping for bread or crispbread in Norway, and my family is particularly committed to our salami (and other sausage) eating because, I kid you not, my dad’s family owns the largest sausage factory in Northern Norway. Anyway, after my mother discovered bagels in the US, I guess she just kind of assumed that they should be topped with butter and salami, like a crispbread, and thus was born one of the all-time favorite breakfasts and snacks of my brothers and me.

We don’t eat bagels with cream cheese in my family, we eat them with salami. My husband, however, tells me that “normal people don’t eat bagels that way.” But, normal people of the world, if you don’t ever eat bagels this way, I really think you’re missing out. Give your cream cheese the day off and give it a try!

Bagels with Butter and Salami 

Serves 1 to 2

1 bagel, whatever savory flavor you prefer (I like plain or sesame)
Good salted butter
A few very thin slices of salami

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here. 

Photos by Emily Vikre

We're all well-familiar with the glories of food porn -- stunning, beautiful close-ups of your favorite yummies that make your tummy growl on sight.

But what's the opposite of food porn? Unattractive photos of revolting-looking dishes, probably. If you're into that sort of thing, here's a website just for you.

Say hello to Someone Ate This, a gory monstrosity of a Tumblr blog that features some of the most unappetizing creations we've ever seen -- like this brown, uh, whatever it is, above.

"Someone Ate This is a food blog that celebrates the hilarity of cooking mishaps, bad food photographer, and the grossest things people shove down their throats," says the site's description.

It's brilliant. 

Like. What is this, even?

Kind of makes me pause and think about my own, uh "food photography." Duckor is always shaming me about it -- he says I'm bad at it. Okay, okay, I'm no food photo expert, but surely my pics aren't as bad as the ones on this site.

What are some of your favorite shots from the Someone Ate This Tumblr? Have you ever had any of your friends tell you to just. stop. taking. photos. of. your. dinner?

Top photo: Shutterstock

Madrid-based industrial designer and art director Emilio Gomariz has appeared before on GIF of the Day, and that’s because his approach to GIFS is like none other. “RGB Landscapes” are part of a series of 52 windy GIFs made with a symphony of RGB dashes. You can’t experience them in their full horizontal-scroll glory on WordPress, so if you like what you see here, you gotta check out his site.