A. Kachmar

Can you remember the last time you used a floppy disk? I really don't. I'm assuming it was some time in elementary school bringing a single Word document in a computer class or something. Maybe I'm making that up. Whatever, it doesn't matter. Floppy drives don't matter anymore. Unless they're being used to make music.

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Waves look like glass sculptures in the photo series “AquaViva” by French photographer Pierre Carreau. Carreau takes the high speed photos on the beaches of Saint Barthélemy in the Caribbean. He focuses on small waves as they show more detail and transparency than their larger cousins. Prints are available through Clic Gallery.

via Colossal

Mars One, the Dutch company that is looking for a few individuals with the "right stuff" (the "right stuff" being wanting to leave Earth and never, ever return), reports that more than 78,000 people have applied to be chosen for a trip to the red planet.

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Following a brutal 15-year civil war that tore the city apart, Beirut has recovered remarkably; it was voted the number one destination to visit by the New York Times in 2009, and, more recently, received a similar title by Frommer’s. The city is in the second phase of one of the biggest urban reconstruction projects in the world, run by Solidere, which has brought architects like Steven Holl, Herzog & DeMeuron, Zaha Hadid, Vincent James, and Rafael Moneo to the local scene. In less internationalized parts of the city sit the landmarks of the 1960s and 1970s, Beirut’s pre-war glory days, including buildings by names such as Alvar Aalto, Victor Gruen, and the Swiss Addor & Julliard. With a city growing as fast as Beirut it is impossible to have a final city guide, so we look forward to hearing your suggestions and building on this over the years.

Photos and a map of Beirut’s most exciting buildings after the break…

• Zaytunay Bay and Town Quay / Steven Holl Architects
• Beirut Souks / Rafael Moneo
• Gefinor Center / Victor Gruen
• CGM CMA Headquarters / Nabil Gholam
• Starco Center / Addor & Julliard
• Fransabank Headquarters / Alvar Aalto and Alfred Roth
• LAU Fine Arts Building / SKP
• EDL Headquarters / CETA
• Strand Center / Dar Al Handasah
• USJ Campus of Sport and Innovation / Youssef Tohmé and 109 Architects
• B018 / Bernard Khoury Architects
• Interdesign Showroom / Khalil Khoury
• Charles Hostler Student Center / VJAA
• Holiday-Inn / Andre Wogenscky

View Architecture City Guide: Beirut in a larger map

Fusillo isn’t your ordinary wall shelf. In fact, it’s more than just a shelf, it’s a coatrack, a bike rack, and bookends, too.

Handmade in Italy and designed by andViceVersa, Fusillo appears to be a solid piece but in fact, it’s made up of smaller sections that pivot on a central axis and can be moved up and down to be used as bookends or hooks. Each section has a notch out of it so that it can hold a coat, hat or even a bike!

I remember being endlessly entertained by the adventures of my toys. Some days they died repeated, violent deaths, other days they traveled to space or discussed my swim lessons and how I absolutely should be allowed in the deep end of the pool, especially since I was such a talented doggy-paddler.


I didn't understand why it was fun for me, it just was.


But as I grew older, it became harder and harder to access that expansive imaginary space that made my toys fun. I remember looking at them and feeling sort of frustrated and confused that things weren't the same.


I played out all the same story lines that had been fun before, but the meaning had disappeared. Horse's Big Space Adventure transformed into holding a plastic horse in the air, hoping it would somehow be enjoyable for me. Prehistoric Crazy-Bus Death Ride was just smashing a toy bus full of dinosaurs into the wall while feeling sort of bored and unfulfilled.  I could no longer connect to my toys in a way that allowed me to participate in the experience.


Depression feels almost exactly like that, except about everything.

At first, though, the invulnerability that accompanied the detachment was exhilarating. At least as exhilarating as something can be without involving real emotions.


The beginning of my depression had been nothing but feelings, so the emotional deadening that followed was a welcome relief.  I had always wanted to not give a fuck about anything. I viewed feelings as a weakness — annoying obstacles on my quest for total power over myself. And I finally didn't have to feel them anymore.

But my experiences slowly flattened and blended together until it became obvious that there's a huge difference between not giving a fuck and not being able to give a fuck. Cognitively, you might know that different things are happening to you, but they don't feel very different.


Which leads to horrible, soul-decaying boredom.

I tried to get out more, but most fun activities just left me existentially confused or frustrated with my inability to enjoy them.


Months oozed by, and I gradually came to accept that maybe enjoyment was not a thing I got to feel anymore. I didn't want anyone to know, though. I was still sort of uncomfortable about how bored and detached I felt around other people, and I was still holding out hope that the whole thing would spontaneously work itself out. As long as I could manage to not alienate anyone, everything might be okay!

However, I could no longer rely on genuine emotion to generate facial expressions, and when you have to spend every social interaction consciously manipulating your face into shapes that are only approximately the right ones, alienating people is inevitable.


Everyone noticed.


It's weird for people who still have feelings to be around depressed people. They try to help you have feelings again so things can go back to normal, and it's frustrating for them when that doesn't happen. From their perspective, it seems like there has got to be some untapped source of happiness within you that you've simply lost track of, and if you could just see how beautiful things are...


At first, I'd try to explain that it's not really negativity or sadness anymore, it's more just this detached, meaningless fog where you can't feel anything about anything — even the things you love, even fun things — and you're horribly bored and lonely, but since you've lost your ability to connect with any of the things that would normally make you feel less bored and lonely, you're stuck in the boring, lonely, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is.


But people want to help. So they try harder to make you feel hopeful and positive about the situation. You explain it again, hoping they'll try a less hope-centric approach, but re-explaining your total inability to experience joy inevitably sounds kind of negative; like maybe you WANT to be depressed. The positivity starts coming out in a spray — a giant, desperate happiness sprinkler pointed directly at your face. And it keeps going like that until you're having this weird argument where you're trying to convince the person that you are far too hopeless for hope just so they'll give up on their optimism crusade and let you go back to feeling bored and lonely by yourself.


And that's the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn't always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn't even something — it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. You can't fill it up. You can't cover it. It's just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.

It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.


The problem might not even have a solution. But you aren't necessarily looking for solutions. You're maybe just looking for someone to say "sorry about how dead your fish are" or "wow, those are super dead. I still like you, though."


I started spending more time alone.


Perhaps it was because I lacked the emotional depth necessary to panic, or maybe my predicament didn't feel dramatic enough to make me suspicious, but I somehow managed to convince myself that everything was still under my control right up until I noticed myself wishing that nothing loved me so I wouldn't feel obligated to keep existing.


It's a strange moment when you realize that you don't want to be alive anymore. If I had feelings, I'm sure I would have felt surprised. I have spent the vast majority of my life actively attempting to survive. Ever since my most distant single-celled ancestor squiggled into existence, there has been an unbroken chain of things that wanted to stick around.


Yet there I was, casually wishing that I could stop existing in the same way you'd want to leave an empty room or mute an unbearably repetitive noise.


That wasn't the worst part, though. The worst part was deciding to keep going.


When I say that deciding to not kill myself was the worst part, I should clarify that I don't mean it in a retrospective sense. From where I am now, it seems like a solid enough decision. But at the time, it felt like I had been dragging myself through the most miserable, endless wasteland, and — far in the distance — I had seen the promising glimmer of a slightly less miserable wasteland. And for just a moment, I thought maybe I'd be able to stop and rest. But as soon as I arrived at the border of the less miserable wasteland, I found out that I'd have to turn around and walk back the other way.


Soon afterward, I discovered that there's no tactful or comfortable way to inform other people that you might be suicidal. And there's definitely no way to ask for help casually.


I didn't want it to be a big deal. However, it's an alarming subject. Trying to be nonchalant about it just makes it weird for everyone.


I was also extremely ill-prepared for the position of comforting people. The things that seemed reassuring at the time weren't necessarily comforting for others.

I had so very few feelings, and everyone else had so many, and it felt like they were having all of them in front of me at once. I didn't really know what to do, so I agreed to see a doctor so that everyone would stop having all of their feelings at me.


The next few weeks were a haze of talking to relentlessly hopeful people about my feelings that didn't exist so I could be prescribed medication that might help me have them again.


And every direction was bullshit for a really long time, especially up. The absurdity of working so hard to continue doing something you don't like can be overwhelming. And the longer it takes to feel different, the more it starts to seem like everything might actually be hopeless bullshit.


My feelings did start to return eventually. But not all of them came back, and they didn't arrive symmetrically.

I had not been able to care for a very long time, and when I finally started being able to care about things again, I HATED them. But hatred is technically a feeling, and my brain latched onto it like a child learning a new word.


Hating everything made all the positivity and hope feel even more unpalatable. The syrupy, over-simplified optimism started to feel almost offensive.


Thankfully, I rediscovered crying just before I got sick of hating things.  I call this emotion "crying" and not "sadness" because that's all it really was. Just crying for the sake of crying. My brain had partially learned how to be sad again, but it took the feeling out for a joy ride before it had learned how to use the brakes or steer.


At some point during this phase, I was crying on the kitchen floor for no reason. As was common practice during bouts of floor-crying, I was staring straight ahead at nothing in particular and feeling sort of weird about myself. Then, through the film of tears and nothingness, I spotted a tiny, shriveled piece of corn under the refrigerator.


I don't claim to know why this happened, but when I saw the piece of corn, something snapped. And then that thing twisted through a few permutations of logic that I don't understand, and produced the most confusing bout of uncontrollable, debilitating laughter that I have ever experienced.


I had absolutely no idea what was going on.


My brain had apparently been storing every unfelt scrap of happiness from the last nineteen months, and it had impulsively decided to unleash all of it at once in what would appear to be an act of vengeance.


That piece of corn is the funniest thing I have ever seen, and I cannot explain to anyone why it's funny. I don't even know why. If someone ever asks me "what was the exact moment where things started to feel slightly less shitty?" instead of telling a nice, heartwarming story about the support of the people who loved and believed in me, I'm going to have to tell them about the piece of corn. And then I'm going to have to try to explain that no, really, it was funny. Because, see, the way the corn was sitting on the floor... it was so alone... and it was just sitting there! And no matter how I explain it, I'll get the same, confused look. So maybe I'll try to show them the piece of corn - to see if they get it. They won't. Things will get even weirder.


Anyway, I wanted to end this on a hopeful, positive note, but, seeing as how my sense of hope and positivity is still shrouded in a thick layer of feeling like hope and positivity are bullshit, I'll just say this: Nobody can guarantee that it's going to be okay, but — and I don't know if this will be comforting to anyone else — the possibility exists that there's a piece of corn on a floor somewhere that will make you just as confused about why you are laughing as you have ever been about why you are depressed. And even if everything still seems like hopeless bullshit, maybe it's just pointless bullshit or weird bullshit or possibly not even bullshit.

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

Massive power outages give us rare glimpses of darkened cities, but in normal conditions, there is simply no way to see the starry skies above the typical urban metropolis – but one photographer has found a way to simulate them.

Thierry Cohen uses a multi-step process to create stunning visualizations (dubbed Darkened Cities) of would-be, could-be sights from New York to London, Shanghai to Sao Paulo … ones that the ordinary eye will rarely or never see naturally.

Cohen takes a series of shots of each of the cities themselves, and carefully removes illumination from the equation. Night sky photos from the same latitudes (adjusted for time and angle) are then layered into the background, creating a seamless illusion.

The results are at once mesmerizing, revealing the unseen potential for views of space right where we live, but also somewhat depressing – these are scenes that no one can actually ever see outside of deserts, at least unless disaster strikes.

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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

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In his free time, linguist Rick Aschmann collected a treasure trove of information on the English dialects of North America on his website, North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patterns. The centerpiece of the site is a hugely detailed interactive dialect map of North America. The map is linked to a huge collection of audio samples of local dialects.

via Digg

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I don’t know about your but I hate alarm clocks. I hate setting them to get up at ungodly hours. I hate the blaring alarm sounds that won’t stop as you struggle to find your clock on your bedside table and proceed to knock every single thing off it. I hate that super bright light staring at me all night long reminding me how little sleep I’m going to get. Mostly, I just hate how alarm clocks look. Years ago, I switched to using the alarm on my cell phone so when I spotted Victor Johansson’s Tangible Alarm, I woke right up (heh).

The alarm is a simple panel of wood with three notched out sections that serve specific purposes. When you’re ready to go to sleep, plug your phone in with the attached cord, and using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, the design becomes your new alarm clock.

Place your phone in the middle slot to set the alarm.

Alarm goes off but not ready to get up yet? Slide your phone to the snooze slot.

When you’re finally ready to face the day, place your phone in the off slot.

The shape of the new headquarters of the People's Daily, the Communist Party's main propaganda machine, has sparked heated discussion online for looking a bit too phallic. Most photos posted on Sina Weibo, the mainland's most popular microblogging site, were removed by censors, and attempts to search for " People's Daily building" in Chinese were met with a message that read: "According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, search results cannot be displayed."

If China's bird flu acquires the ability to spread between people, we don't have the drugs or vaccines to tackle a pandemic, warns Debora MacKenzie

by Maciej

If you can make it through this stunningly gorgeous animated short without weeping, congratulations -- you are a robot.

Stop everything you're doing, because you can't continue with your head blown. That's right, because this is one of the freshest things you'll see around the web these days. For any of the gamers out there who've been in love with fighting games for a long time, this is for you!

Redditor RudeBootie has made an album consisting in 125 fighting game backgrounds as GIFs. That's right... remember all the arenas where you defeated your foes in the past? Well, they're back in a glorious way. In my opinion these below are some of the best you'll find in the collection, but don't be mistaken: they're all great! Check it out. Cheers! ;)

Tags:  gif games illustration

Today, while working and sketching, I decided to deviate a little bit and draw something different than UIs and logos like I've been doing for the past 15 years. It's amazing how terrible I am at that, not saying that at my best I was any better, but I was definitely able to draw different things. With that in mind I've decided to practice a little bit every day, especially after looking at the drawings of A-D-I--N-U-G-R-O-H-O on his DeviantArt page.

So in this post I want to share with you the work of Adinugroho, an illustrator from Indonesia. I hope his work inspires you to make an effort to draw more and have more fun without the computer :)

Tags:  drawing basics inspiration

Starving colonists resorted to cannibalism to survive harsh winter of 1609, according to a recent find.

Specht Harpman have renovated a micro-loft in Manhattan, New York.

From Specht Harpman

This apartment was one of the most unusual residential renovation projects we’ve ever been involved with. Located at the top of a brownstone on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the footprint was a tiny 425 square feet, but the space stretched vertically for approximately 25 feet, and had access to a roof terrace. As it existed, the arrangement was so awkward that there wasn’t even a reasonable place to locate a bed or a couch.

Our solution created four separate “living platforms” inserted within the space that provide room for all the essentials and still allow the apartment to feel open and light-filled. The lowest level is an entry and kitchen space, and a few steps up is the main living area. Above the living area is a cantilevered bed pavilion that projects out into the main space, supported on steel beams. A final stair leads up to a roof garden. All the spaces flow into one another and the idea of distinct “rooms” is dissolved; in fact, the only door within the space is the one into the bathroom.

Given the miniscule size of the apartment, every inch of space is put to use. Stairs are not merely for circulaton through the apartment, but feature built-in storage cabinetry and drawers below. The main bath and shower, in fact, are also built below the primary staircase. The kitchen featured fully concealed appliances, flip up high storage units for easy access, and a countertop that wraps into the main living space, becoming a virtual “hearth” with built-in entertainment system. There are no traditional closets in the entire apartment.

Materials throughout are selected to emphasize the spatial characteristics of the project. The perimeter is light, with painted (existing) brick, glass backsplashes and shelving, and white lacquered kitchen cabinets, stair cabinets, and fittings. The cantilevered bed pavilion is clad in dark wood, and anchors the space – a central object around which everything revolves. A dark wood floor and wood stair treads lead through and around the apartment, spiralling up onto the wood deck at the roof. Given the number of built-in features, furnishings are minimal in number, with only a couch, coffee table, bed, and a side chair necessary.

Architect: Specht Harpman
Photography: Taggart Sorensen

At first glance, a couple appears to be kissing near the beach in the short video “Raf’s Perfect Girlfriend” by DeathEater365. But the end of the video reveals the couple to be a simple but convincing illusion.

via Viral Viral Videos

After wondering why everything they printed kept disappearing, a music class watched the printer in action in this video uploaded by James Prescott. The class discovered that all the pages were falling straight into the crack of the filing cabinet drawer below.

via Daily Picks and Flicks

Hope you weren't planning on going to sleep ever again, because now there is a fish than can survive out of water for days (days!), has teeth, and can grow to three feet long. It is a slimy, slippery horror that is waiting for you in Central Park.

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One of the things I miss most about being in art school was... the casual graffiti. Students of all stripes have a tendency to make flyers, deface signage and scribble on bathroom walls, but no student does it with the flair of an art student. From the relatively lowbrow "Pratt Industrial Design Diplomas - Take One" drawn over the toilet paper roll in the men's bathroom, to more intricate fare like a flyer in the dorm stating "I lost my keys - they look like this" hovering over a photorealistic drawing of their entire keychain, there was plenty of creativity going on outside of the classrooms.

As for in-classroom creativity: While these may or may not be from art students, Student Beans has compiled a list of the best textbook and exam-paper defacements they could find from around the globe.

They vary in quality, but they all have that twisted art school vibe. Click here to check them all out, but beware that some are outright disturbing—we've posted the tamer ones here—and many are NSFW!

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The much-studied Drosophila fruit fly reveals cannibalistic behaviour for the first time, devouring companions when food is scarce

Canada announces their latest Polymer Series Notes, adding a new 5$ and 10$ note. Love the robotics theme on the back of the 5!

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

Architects: Had Architects
Location: Harbin, Heilongjiang, China
Design Team: Tang Jiajun, Wang Conglong
Area: 515 sqm
Year: 2013
Photographs: Tang Jiajun

As the office space as an architectural design company, the interior design of HAD office space shows continuous concepts of architecture design, that is, integrating the space by the logic of “construction”, and then showing characteristics of the environment on the basis of space shaping. Designers try to reveal the most original frame of interior space, with the link of “logic”, to create a pure environment.

HAD building is an addition of an overall building, but also has a relatively independence. The main fan-shaped space with a ceiling of 6 meters high, gives us an opportunity to reconstruction, finally a flexible steel mezzanine space was achieved. Steel columns and steel beams were integrally connected, independent of their original structures. Steel beams were supported by profiled steel sheets, then poured by concrete surface, forming a mezzanine floor. On the basis of the structural system, we make a new part inside the building through walls and ceiling, which highlights the characteristics of “construction”.

The fan-shaped space has a subtle relationship with the original rectangular main part, so visual guidance and spatial continuity should be emphasized. Starting from the hallway, designers tried to break the limit of the horizontal and vertical interface, and combined all types of shape in space composition. Throughout a fold line, various functional spaces were connected, and a visual index was also guided. From the background wall of the hallway, the shaping method goes through the ceiling, the reception desk, the bar, and even extending to the main space. Green and orange shuttled from ceiling to wall back and forth, so as to reinforce the sense of interior space.

The materials in this space show their original features. We use many materials to strengthen the character, such as white paint, Fluorocarbon, concrete, concrete floor paint, steel components, metal plates and others. The overall atmosphere reflects freshness of the office building, also shows artistic feelings with the use of rough materials and structures.

HAD Office / Had Architects originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 30 Apr 2013.

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Pablo Picasso

Flavorwire has posted a photo gallery of famous artists posing with their feline friends. Among the top cat fiends in the art world: Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei owns 40 cats, and Andy Warhol once owned 25 cats all named Sam.

Ai Wei Wei

Henri Matisse

Edward Gorey

Andy Warhol

Georgia O’Keeffe

Salvador Dali

You know, there's nothing quite like finding the perfect writing instrument. It's a wordsmith's holy grail of sorts. And we love these elegant new pens from Japanese brand Miidori.

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Well, the name kind of gives it away, but for some reason it's still surprisingly delightful... probably because the small purse is a dead ringer for the office supply it's based on.

Designer Peter Bristol—whose work we've seen before—notes that the Clip Bag is a case where "new scale creates new purpose."

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