A. Kachmar

'Talking about some 'Heisenberg,' who owns the market now. No one knows the man, since they've never seen his face' All Walter White had to do to slip into the persona of Heisenberg was slip on a black hat and some sunglasses. All you have to do to capture that persona is snap up one of these Breaking Bad Heisenberg action figures. $19.99

Malcolm Myatt, 68, had a stroke. It affected the frontal lobe of his brain--the part of the brain that governs emotions. As a result, he's lost the ability to be sad:

The retired lorry driver said: "I am never depressed. Being sad wouldn't help anything anyway. I would definitely rather be happy all the time than the other way round. It's an advantage really.

Link -via Glenn Reynolds | Photo: Caters

Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston appeared in an early 1980s commercial for Preparation H hemorrhoid treatment.

via BuzzFeed

Thanks Shelby DeNike!

A cute, fluffy kitten fervently attacks air being blown at him in this video by Jessy Bird.

via TMTketyappu, Daily Picks and Flicks

Norm Lopez is a 26-pound cat that lives in Sacramento with his human, Tyler Lopez. Recently while Tyler was on vacation, a stranger mistook Norm for a pregnant cat and took him to the Front Street Animal Shelter. Staff recognized Norm and returned him to his home. Norm has since received an ID chip (and is also on weight-control food), and a pub crawl to benefit the shelter in his honor is being held on August 31st, 2013. For more photos of the popular fat cat, take a look at this story by The Sacramento Bee and Norm’s Facebook page.

images via Norm Lopez

video via The Sacramento Bee

via Cute Overload

Typical calorie counts ignore how we cook and process food, how gut bacteria interact with food and the overall complexity of human digestion. Scientific American editor Ferris Jabr explains.

Thanks - camarojones.wordpress.com

I’ve met a lot of people and learned a lot while traveling Europe the past several weeks. Of all the things I have had to explain to fellow travels as not only an American – but a Texan – by far the most frustrating thing is our stubborn refusal to embrace the metric system. I can confidently argue the finer points of how the use of y’all and the plural form all y’all are descriptive and have a place in the American lexicon. I take pleasure in explaining the intricacies of chicken fried foods.

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This is boxer Giovanni Lorenzo. He's having a very bad moment. But if you think the GIF of this knockout punch is good, wait until you see what it looks like below, in aggressively slow motion.

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Architects: META – Project
Location: Shenyang, Liaoning, China
Design Team: Wang Shuo, Zhang Jing, Chang Qianqian, Huang Limiao, Lin Changyan, Tang Heng
Client: China VANKE Co., Ltd.
Area: 30 sqm
Year: 2012
Photographs: Chen Su

From the architect. META-Project, a Beijing based research-design studio has recently completed a renovation for VANKE in Shenyang, China that infused new life into the dilapidated water tower in an exquisite manner.

This water tower is located in the campus of a run down military factory, formerly known as the People’s Liberation Army No.1102 Factory, founded in 1959 during the Great Leap Forward. Formerly one of the most important heavy industrial production bases of China, the Tiexi District in Shenyang is now full of miscellaneous industrial relics from that time period. Water towers scattered around the city have become unique symbols of the history of industrialization in this area and the visual anchor points in the ever-shifting reality of this region. The transformation around this particular water tower began starting in 2010.

VANKE, China acquired the campus of this military factory, converting it into what is called the Blue Mountains residential complex project. Along with the decisive construction of the surrounding cities, the water tower has remained well preserved – functioning partially as a reminder of the fragmented memory of the history of industrialization, as well as serving as a projection of unexpected public use in the future.

For META-Project, the water tower, which is re-interpreted as a type of “Public Folly”, has provided deliberate clues. A “Folly” is a highly ambiguous built object that either suggests by its appearance some other purpose or is so eccentric that it transcends the common usage to which it belongs. The definition of a folly “lies in the eyes of the beholder”, and it only makes sense in the precise positioning within its physical and historical context. The water tower is situated in such context: spatially – it is situated on the edge in-between the inherited industrial fabric and an upcoming residential complex development; temporally – it is sitting on the dividing line which separates where Tiexi has deviated from the industrial past and where it is accelerating towards an alternative future.

Setting off from the precise positioning within this context, META-Project started to unfold the concept of the renovation along this space time continuum as opposed to taking it as an isolated event. The renovated water tower pavilion, or the “Public Folly”, on the outside forms an artistic intervention in the urban landscape, and on the inside it offers a space for public activities for the surrounding communities. Even transcending mundane usage, it functions almost as an adaptive device, able to re-create linkages from two removed sides – like a transmission, or a hinge…

While memory is the ineffaceable attribute of a place, like the palimpsest, the original text scraped off will not completely disappear in the overall comprehension of the city. This will also lend to a re-interpretation of the other dozens of preserved water towers scattered around the industrial city of Shenyang. Every night, as the heavy water tower gradually fades into darkness, the bright light boxes will become distinct signals floating in the air symbolizing a quest to seek out the hidden corner of the history and archetypes of architecture. From there, the water tower digests the opposition of history and reality into a completely neutral space – it becomes a simple sensory device of the external world, an ear, or a viewfinder…Through renovation of the water tower, META-Project posts the question again on how to look at the history and how to understand the changing reality?

They look like shelters for hikers in a national park, but these wooden sheds in Switzerland have a rather less innocent purpose – they provide a discreet location for men to have sex with prostitutes.

In an attempt to "regulate prostitution, combat pimping and improve security for sex workers", Zurich has opened nine "sex boxes" in the former industrial zone of Zurich. The boxes are accessed by drivers following signed routes, where customers will find up to 40 prostitutes waiting to offer their services.

The boxes prominently display posters advocating safe sex, and provide alarms for the prostitutes to trigger if they feel threatened.

Here are some photos of The Blue Planet (2013) in Kastrup, Denmark 3XN, photographed by Ximo Michavila.













To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose

The University of Maryland plans to install 200 bulletproof whiteboards in classrooms to protect professors in the event of a school shooting.

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Spanish photographer Esther Lobo arranged a variety of sauces, ice creams, and other foods into patterns reminiscent of Rorschach inkblots for her photo series “Rorschach.”

via My Modern Metropolis, iGNANT

Currently solar-powered vehicles remain a distant dream for electric vehicle fans. One of the biggest hurdles is the fact that the current on-board solar panels don’t produce enough power to supply the needs of a standard EV – but the new P-Mob electric car prototype may change that. The P-Mob city car prototype is currently being developed by six European companies, and it has been awarded €2.8 million in funding.

Read the rest of P-Mob Solar-Powered Electric Car Receives €2.8 Million in Funding

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Post tags: automotive, electric cars, green car, green transportation, p-mob electric car, p-mob solar powered car, Solar Power, solar powered car

Andrew Hayes is a sculptor who makes beautiful pieces by pressing and deforming thick sheaves of book-pages between rigid hunks of steel. He calls the series "Altered Books."

The book is a seductive object to hold and smell and run your fingers through. I am drawn to books for many reasons; however, the content of the book does not enter my work. The pages allow me to achieve a form, surface, and texture that are appealing to me. The book as an object is full of fact and story. I take my sensory appreciation for the book as a material and employ the use of metal to create a new form, and hopefully a new story.

Andrew Hayes (via That Book Smell)

It's just a coincidence, but the Cyrillic characters look like "homo" spelled backwards.

Here's a larger version of the image shot by Anatoly Maltsev for European Pressphoto Agency, of police detaining a man after an attack on a gay rights activist in St. Petersburg.

The Cyrillic letters indicate that the agents are from ОМОН, Отряд мобильный особого назначения, Otryad Mobilniy Osobogo Naznacheniya, or Special Purpose Mobile Unit. In other words, riot police.

Below, the image flipped. [Thanks, Boing Boing BBS user Picasso8008]:

[HT: alec mackaye, thanks Aileen Graef]

This question, from part of a joke from late comedian Mitch Hedberg, got me really wondering. Where do sesame seeds come from, and what would they grow into if we ever gave them a chance? Turns out the mysterious ol' sesame is more than a street and not just a way to open things.

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My least favorite chore.

Esos otros lugares de exploración continua que se encuentran en el ojo crítico -tanto del artista como del espectador-, plasmados a través de diversas imágenes descontextualizadas de su origen; edificaciones ubicadas en capitales europeas que aluden a un turismo visual y que llevan al espectador a una búsqueda insaciable en sus contenidos. 

A continuación les presentamos la serie “El Otro Lugar”, del arquitecto, fotógrafo y artista, Robert Montilla.

La arquitectura contemporánea, a diferencia de la de siglos anteriores, expone diseños que mucho tienen en común con el hábitat y las edificaciones de la ciencia ficción, quizás en la película “Metrópolis” de Fritz Lang (1927) se presentan esas edificaciones con más fuerza que en cualquier otra película.

Partiendo de esta visión del expresionismo alemán, se presenta esta serie fotográfica, donde la descontextualización y transformación de una ciudad dan paso a otras nuevas ciudades, siendo un ejercicio creativo que al observarse por primera vez evoca edificios futuristas o elementos de ciencia ficción, pero que al detallarse se hacen visibles iconos arquitectónicos de capitales europeas.

Se presenta una arquitectura genérica, transformada a partir de la tecnología, esa misma arquitectura de formas recurrentes que se presentan hoy en día, imágenes que invitan a una reflexión sobre la condición original del propio edificio y su transformación.

Una arquitectura maquinica, adaptada a la revolución industrial, quizás como bautizo Le Corbusier a la Villa Saboye, la máquina de habitar, “Una casa es una máquina para vivir. (…) La casa debe ser el estuche de la vida, la máquina de felicidad” … Acá les dejo algunas máquinas que quizás más adelante puedan ser habitadas….

* Robert Montilla. Arquitecto de profesión, egresado de la Universidad Central de Venezuela, (2005), gira su mirada por pasión hacia la Fotografía y las Artes Plásticas, cursando estudios en la Escuela de Artes Plásticas Marín Tovar y Tovar (2009), y en la Universidad de Buenos Aires,(2011). En su desempeño dentro de los talleres de la UCV como docente sus trabajos estuvieron orientados a la concepción vinculada a la fabricación, reinterpretando y explorando nuevos usos a materiales nobles y convencionales. Su dedicación por vocación a la investigación plástica y a la experimentación crea un fuerte compromiso con su época y su realidad. Esto se percibe en la fidelidad de sus conceptos y en el carácter sensible y personal de sus obras.

[ By Steph in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

A white sculpture of a dandelion becomes infinitely more interesting the closer you look, as you begin to pick out the tiniest of paws, vertebrae and tufts of fur. Petals are made up of rib cages, stems of spines. Skulls come together to form the base of the flower. Tokyo artist Hideki Tokushige produces these honebana, or bone flowers, in honor of the cycles of nature.

Tokushige procures (already-dead) carcasses of rodents and keeps them frozen so the flesh can be picked off the skeletons more easily without causing damage to the delicate bones.

Once he’s finished completing and photographing the sculptures, Tokushige disassembles them and buries the remains. Using these mice, which are kept in cages throughout their short lives and then frozen to feed to other animals in the least grisly way possible, reflects “a sense of our modern view of nature and life.”

“Some might think it weird,” says Tokushige of using bones. He states that proximity to bones was normal throughout much of human history, but we’re not as used to seeing them anymore. “Still, someday we all go back to bones and back to soil.” The artist crafts the bones into flowers as a means of paying respects to the dead, our cultural customs and the realities of the life cycle. Flowers are temporary, but bones can last millennia.

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[ By Steph in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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“My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.” -Orson Welles

I just completed my 35th trip around the Sun yesterday, which was a great time! But, it got me thinking, has my time in this world resulted in a build-up of toxic substances in my body? Is there any way to get rid of them? Is there anything, as Olenka & the Autumn Lovers might sing, that can get me

Clean?

Well, maybe there is, if you look in the right place!

Think your kidneys and liver aren’t doing a good enough job of removing harmful toxins from your body? Tired of fads that don’t work? Worried that changing your lifestyle and food habits is just too hard and expensive?

Then you need these sugar-free gummi bears!

Made with five real fruit flavors and coming in crystalline, jewel-like, sparkling clear colors, you’ll delight at the taste of these delicious candies, all without any sugar at all.

Instead, of sugar, these are sweetened with Lycasin, a hydrogenated glucose syrup. And what a deal: this five-pound bag of deliciousness contains over 1,000 individual gummi bears!

And unlike other detox diets that only cleanse one organ in your body and require you to starve yourself, the Haribo sugar-free gummi bears will clear out your entire digestive tract, and do so in a splendidly violent manner!

But don’t take my word for it; let’s hear some real customer testimonies from Amazon:

With sixteen pages of customer testimony, you know you can’t go wrong with the Gummi Bear Detox Cleanse!

And if you’re ever in in Phoenixville, PA, make sure you stop by Andrew Schaefer’s office for a rollicking good time.

It’s even a selling point on the product itself!!!

Warnings are features, too! Remember, folks, intestinal distress isn’t a bad thing, it’s just your body’s way of undergoing purification. Not since the Onion have I seen such a spectacular promise of weight loss and detoxification. So what are you waiting for? Order yours today!!

(Warning, the above post may contain satire. Also, toxins don’t actually work the way the “cleanse” image indicates; the wikipedia page on detoxification is fascinating. If you actually have serious problems with sugar and are looking for a tasty, sugar-free snack, these are apparently delicious. Just know what you’re getting yourself into.)

Image via Shutterstock

Shanghai is currently experiencing a record-breaking heat wave that has already claimed 10 lives as temperatures climb to 105 degrees Fahrenheit. The Chinese city is experiencing its highest temperatures in over 140 years as a result of faulting drought and a subtropical high pressure system.

Read the rest of Shanghai Heat Wave Hits Record High of 105 Degrees Fahrenheit, Killing at Least 10

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Post tags: China heat wave, eco design, green design, shanghai, Shanghai heat wave, Shanghai Municipal Centre for Disease Control, sustainable design

The head of the U.S. Postal Service says the exterior of billions of pieces of mail are photographed and that the information is sometimes shared with law enforcement.

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We love two-ingredient recipes because you can make awesome food quick and easily. We've made ice cream, but you can make it a party with pizza. This incredibly simple pizza dough recipe only requires self-rising flour and Greek yogurt for a fresh pie in minutes.

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Coffee Extract Tower by Kitbashive - expands cold coffee brewing into a sculptural performance.

(Want more? See NOTCOT.org and NOTCOT.com)