Russian Sledges

On his radio show, Jones speculated that it may have to do with the sudden drop in the price of gold, a favorite commodity of paranoids everywhere. “With gold plunging, what could this signify?” he asked rhetorically. He also noted that Boston has special significance in American history, and because it’s where one of the planes took off from on 9/11. “I said on air that they’re getting ready to blow something up. To fire a shot heard round the world like at Lexington and Concord, and then they do it at this same place on the same day!” he said.

American Vogue delivers an editorial that is inspired by Hitchcock’s Rear Window. “Window Dressing” stars Tobey Macquire and Carolyn Murphy doing their best JImmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. Peter Lindbergh photographs the editorial which features garment Marc Jacobs and others.

Rear Window-Like Editorial by Peter Lindbergh for Vogue April 2013 is a post by Jeff Carvalho on Selectism.

ridingwithstrangers:

Architectural Density in Hong Kong

With seven million people, Hong Kong is the 4th most densely populated places in the world. However, plain numbers never tell the full story. In his ‘Architecture of Density’ photo series, German photographer Michael Wolf explores the jaw-dropping urban landscapes of Hong Kong. He rids his photographs of any context, removing any sky or horizon line from the frame and flattening the space until it becomes a relentless abstraction of urban expansion, with no escape for the viewer’s eye. Infinite and haunting.

Editor’s Note: Co-signed.

wasp33:

There are two types of squirrels

Richard Nixon and Robocop

Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick says no unexploded bombs were found at the Boston Marathon. He says the only explosives were the ones that went off Monday.

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. (AP) — The driver of an armored truck that struck and killed a bicyclist in Northampton more than seven years ago has been found not at fault in the woman's death.

BOSTON (AP) — Investigators appealed to the public Tuesday for amateur video and photos that might yield clues to the Boston Marathon bombing as the chief FBI agent in Boston vowed "we will go to the ends of the Earth" to find whoever carried out the deadly attack.

MFA admission will be free today. We hope the Museum will be a place of respite for our community. The Museum’s galleries and special exhibitions will be open. Drop-in programs, including art-making activities, tours, and story hours for families and children, will also be available.

The Accidents of Youth, consisting of short histories, calculated to improve the moral conduct of children, and warn them of the many dangers to which they are exposed : illustrated by engravings; 1819; Jas. W. and Chas. Adlard, London. Through a series of short stories and wonderful engravings, this book is aimed at keeping young people out of trouble and “calculated to improve [their] moral conduct”. As the author declares in his/her brilliantly earnest preface addressed to the child reader of the book: My Dear Children, The inexperience and thoughtlessness natural at your age exposes you to many dangers : I have therefore pointed out some of them in this book, which contains several instructive little histories, in which you will behold the misfortunes that arise from disobedience and want of thought. When your parents desire you not to climb upon the chairs, or touch the fire, or play with knives, or pins, it is not because they wish to prevent you amusing yourselves ; they are only anxious to keep you from harm. If you were allowed to do whatever you pleased, many accidents would happen through your own indiscretion : for instance, when climbing on the furniture you [...]

Shrove Tuesday is a day to be remembered by strangers in New Orleans, for that is the day for fun, frolic, and comic masquerading. All of the mischief of the city is alive and wide awake in active operation. Men and boys, women and girls, bond and free, white and black, yellow and brown, exert themselves to invent and appear in grotesque, quizzical, diabolic, horrible, strange masks, and disguises. Human bodies are seen with heads of beasts and birds, beasts and birds with human heads; demi-beasts, demi-fishes, snakes’ heads and bodies with arms of apes; man-bats from the moon; mermaids; satyrs, beggars, monks, and robbers parade and march on foot, on horseback, in wagons, carts, coaches, cars, &c., in rich confusion, up and down the streets, wildly shouting, singing, laughing, drumming, fiddling, fifeing, and all throwing flour broadcast as they wend their reckless way.

– James R. Creecy, Scenes in the South, and Other Miscellaneous Pieces, 1860

Drunken revelry. Beaded necklaces. Doubloon throws. Zulu coconuts. Today is Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), the culmination of weeks of Carnival celebrations that end on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. It is a time when hundreds of thousands of tourists stream into New Orleans and treat the city like one huge frat party. Many local New Orleanians will avoid the French Quarter ,just as New Yorkers stay away from Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Yet, like New Year’s in New York City, Mardi Gras is an institution.

Mardi Gras made landfall in the United States back in the 17th century when the French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville set up camp 60 miles from New Orleans on the day that the holiday was being celebrated in France. He called the location Point du Mardi Gras. But, Mardi Gras and the accompanying masked balls associated with the holiday were outlawed when the Spanish governor took control of the area in 1766 as well as when it came under U.S. rule in 1803. But by 1823, the Creole population convinced the governor to permit masked balls. By 1827, wearing a mask in the street was legalized in New Orleans. (They’re now only legal to wear on Mardi Gras Day.) When the first official “krewe,” or elite social club, was established in 1857, the Mardi Gras parades that they organized became formalized annual occasions, which meant that parade participants donned masks and colorful regalia with greater frequency.

Taking cues from masquerade balls that made their way through Europe as early as the Middle Ages and Venetian carnival celebrations, the now-familiar face covers we see on Shove Tuesday (as Fat Tuesday is also known) mimic variations that have been around for centuries. The Bauta (full-faced mask shaped for ease of eating and drinking), Columbina (half mask), and Medico della Peste? (the beak-like steampunk-esque mask that is familiar to anyone who’s attended the interactive, immersive theatrical performance Sleep No More), but thankfully not the Moretta (a terrifying blank-faced mask held in place by biting a button inside the mask, thus inhibiting speech), all frequently associated with the Venice Carnival, are on grand display during the festivities (and legally to boot, as the law prohibiting mask-wearing, which is in effect throughout the year, is suspended on Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans). Today, the feathered, sequined, glittering disguises use the now-universal Mardi Gras colors originally established by the krewe of the Rex parade in 1872: purple symbolizing justice, green for faith and gold for power.

A mask is a funny thing. Slide one over your face and, with its exaggerated expression, the mask immediately transforms you into someone else (say, Richard Nixon) while also making you expressionless under a frozen guise. It’s also the manifestation of one’s id. According to Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, “in Robert Laffont’s A Dictionary of Symbols masks do not hide the persona, but reveal and liberate the lower tendencies of the true personality of the one who wears the mask.”  Think Tom Cruise as doctor-by-day, sexual escapader-by-night in Eyes Wide Shut. Mardi Gras masks provide the freedom to hide behind, or embrace, the creature of our choosing, real or made-up—even, in James R Creecy’s words, “manbats from the moon.”

But not everyone celebrating Mardi Gras will follow the mask tradition. Tomorrow on Facebook you might see “Frat” Tuesday photos of girls exposing themselves wearing only beads and dudes drinking ’til they’ve vomited.  Sadly, these revelers will wish they’d chosen to disguise themselves with “heads of beasts and birds” before taking those photos.

 

phantomofthecity:

salvadorolliesout:

kolkolkola:

has anyone even noticed how hot the dude on the ten dollar bill is

I mean look at this fucker

you mean alexander goddamn hamilton??

hell yeah he was a stud

RAVISH ME LIKE YOUR TREASURY

jesus christ founding father more like founding hottie  CAN I GET AN AMEN

okay its official

we are swooning over alexander hamilton

we need to get off of this website

All y’all need FuckYeahHistoryCrushes -stonybnatural

Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean, 1955

Historical Map: Washington, DC Metro Map, 1977

As you know, I’ve had a lot to say about recent iterations of the Washington, DC Metro Map (Rush+ map review, draft Silver Line map review), but how about a look at where it all began?

This is a Metro map from March, 1977 – about a year after the system first started carrying passengers. At first glance, it looks very similar to today’s modern map… but then you realise that the only section that’s actually in service is the Red Line between Dupont Circle and Rhode Island Avenue, denoted by black outlines around the station circles, rather than the plain white circles used for future stations.

The uncanny resemblance to today’s map comes about because the whole system shown here – up to and including the opening of the Green Line segment to Branch Avenue in 2001 – was planned for right from the start of the project. If you look closely, there are actually quite a few differences: the Blue and Yellow Lines south of Pentagon are reversed from today’s configuration, and a number of station names have changed from these initial plans. Bigger visual differences include the lack of the kink in the Yellow/Green line around Columbia Heights and a much greater sense of visual clarity: short station names (note that it’s only “U Street” here!) and no secondary information like cross streets, hospitals or timetable/routing callout boxes give the map room to breathe. While not quite the mimimalist classic that Massimo Vignelli’s New York Subway map is, this version of the map is definitely far more deserving of the “iconic” tag than its modern descendants.

Our rating: An unadulterated look at the far superior original concept. Four stars.

(Source: Subchat.com thread about the map: the thread originally dates the map to March 27, 1976, but later revises it to March 17, 1977 because of the stations that are shown as being open – Dupont Circle and Gallery Place stations opened after the rest of the Phase I Red Line stations)

Back in 2009 artist Roa (previously here and here) painted this amazing lenticular street artwork on Curtain Road in London. Depending on the angle of viewing the art shifts between the fuzzy exterior of a rabbit to an illustrated interior of its circulatory system, a trick he used late last year here in Chicago to pretty gruesome effect. You can see much more of Roa’s work over on Flickr which seems to be updated most frequently. (via twisted sifter)

Why almost everything we think we know about the iconic photo from Robinson’s first game is wrong.

Keith Olbermann | MLB.com | Apr 2013 [Full Story]

Fuck your alphabet wall.

Otters Have a Sweet, Cuddly Nap

Via Das Otterhaus

Otter Loves His Tree

Via tomosuke214

Otter Examines a Seashell

Via Devon Photographic

Now for some very important otter news: Buzzfeed Animals is hosting an Animals March Madness tournament, and otters are up against red pandas in the final four. If you’d like to vote, check here later today for their voting post. Go otters! [Thanks to Chaucea for the heads-up!]

Shy Haku Peers Out from Behind Human’s Legs

More on Haku here; via Beginners’ Blog Otter

Cheeky Sea Otter Pup Sticks Her Tongue Out for a Photo

Via Monterey Bay Aquarium

Otter Sweetly Nuzzles Her Friend

Via tomosuke214

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who recently took over as the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told a national television audience yesterday that a "person of interest" in the Boston Marathon bombings "is in custody." That was incorrect, and law enforcement officials went out of their way last night to explain there is no one in custody.

Shortly before his appearance, McCaul held a brief press conference on Capitol Hill, telling reporters, "We've been quite fortunate that this type of attack has not happened before in the U.S." This, too, is incorrect.

Rachel spent some time last night detailing the series of bombings we've seen on U.S. soil over the last 20 years, including the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the Unabomber in 1994, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the pipe bombs at the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996, the bomb at an Alabama abortion clinic in 1998, the arson attack at a Syracuse temple in 2000, the 18 pipe bombs planted in mailboxes in five states in 2002, the 2008 bomb planted in front of a military recruiting center in Times Square, the bomb at a San Diego courthouse also in 2008, the fire bombs targeting researchers in 2008 at UC Santa Cruz, and in 2011, there was an attempted bombing of an MLK parade in Spokane.

And that's just the last 20 years. If we go back further, let's not forget the series of anarchist bombings in 1919 and 1920, including the wagon bomb that killed 38 people on Wall Street, which were terribly deadly.

The tragic truth is this type of attack has happened before in the U.S., and it's not helpful for the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee to argue otherwise.

~Jean Baudrillard

I was gonna answer this ask privately, but my answer kind of spiraled a bit and I want to talk about something.

((This isn’t aimed at you I promise, but this made me think of something that’s been bugging me since my post went viral.))

Yes, geek girls are an untapped and unappreciated group. But we’re not ashamed of coming out of the geek closet; we’re afraid to. 

I wasn’t the one who put my post up on other sites (like Imgur and 9GAG). That was done by other people who thought it was funny and wanted to share it. And yet I still managed to get messages calling me an attention whore or about how it probably wasn’t even my sword or to go use it to make them a sandwich. Some people even commented that it wasn’t funny and I only got as big as I did because I was hot.

I never expected for my post to blow up like it did and even still I wouldn’t have spammed the internet with it myself. 

I made it to make people laugh. I didn’t make it for attention. Hell I only had around 100 followers when I made that post. If you liked my post because it genuinely made you laugh, thank you. That was why I made it. 

I certainly can’t speak for the experiences of other female geeks out there, but this was mine. 

UPDATE: A Crime Scene Perimeter has been established in and around Boylston Street and community members are asked to please take note the following street closings: • Clarendon Street from Huntington Ave to Newbury Street • Newbury Street from Clarendon Street to Hereford Street • Huntington Ave from Belividere Street to Clarendon Street

Otter Uses His Friend for a Pillow

Via yasa_