Luke.stirling

….And if this scene by Grant Davis is any indication, it involves hours of watching television re-runs of Pokémon. Grant’s model is a representation of artwork shared by Deviant Art-user, Nerd-Scribbles. Some impressive-looking techniques were used in constructing Pikachu’s native habitat, including hundreds of dark tan jumper plates used to form the curve of the Poké Ball’s wall. Pikachu looks pretty iconic, right down to the gaping mouth shouting its signature “PIKA!” Grant’s version may be missing the purple Gamecube found in the original artwork, but rumor has it Ash keeps Pikachu on a pretty tight leash now.

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Remember those awesome little buffalo from a short while back? Or these even tinier ones a little further? They were a product from the brilliant mind of Jens Ohrndorf. And now Jens is at it again with another adorable animal: a mole! No buffalo this time, but we are equally impressed with the latest creation.

The best part of this cute build is probably the use of the magnifying glass to make a little ring around the eyes. It works so perfectly it even gives the creature the appearance of whiskers. I wonder if it’s also a play on the fact that moles have pretty poor eyesight.

The post A garden invader of the most adorable kind appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

We’ve always known that Batman has it pretty sweet, with a huge mansion sitting atop a cave for all his toys. But this jaw-dropping creation by Brent Waller shows us the full extent of Batman’s lair, from the gorgeous gothic architecture of the Wayne Manor to the dark depths of the Batcave. Brent has given TBB an exclusive early look at all the details of this incredible creation, so let’s check it out.

Brent is best known for designing the LEGO Ideas Ghostbusters Ecto 1 project, which was turned into an official set. That may change with this project, however, as Brent spent more than a year piecing together the huge superhero hideout, which stands over 6 feet tall. It sits on nine 32×32 baseplates, making the footprint about 2 and a half feet per side, and Brent estimates it uses as many as 100,000 pieces. He built the cave first, then later came back to build the mansion on top. The diorama blends inspiration from numerous iterations of Batman, from the original 1960s TV show to The Dark Knight trilogy, but mostly takes after the grim hero’s hideout featured in The LEGO Movie and The LEGO Batman Movie. The entire creation is rigged with custom lights, lending a unique glow to each area.

Brent has put together a video showing some of the display’s highlights.

The manor is a masterwork of gothic design, making skillful use of the variety of textures that come in light and dark grey elements.

Things aren’t all placid inside the manor, however. The detailed interior features lots of scenes, such as Two Face surrounded by flames as the mansion burns.

Below the cave hangs the Batwing, fittingly serving as the centerpiece and emblem for the diorama. On the next level down is the lab, attended by Robin.

Brent has outfitted the cave with a super cool Batsuit carousel, including the dozens of versions of the Batsuit that LEGO has made. It makes the carousel in 70909 Batcave Break-in look positively tiny.

It looks as though Batman may have a security issue on his hands, as the Batcave is overrun with villains. It’s worth spending some time looking at all the background details throughout the diorama, as you’ll spot most of the various characters LEGO has produced along with a few custom figures. The second-lowest level is filled with water, and Clayface is climbing in.

Of course, all the way at the bottom is where the Batmobile resides. All of them, of course, as Batman likes his cars. From the 1960s open-topped Batmobile from to a sweet-looking Tumbler, Batman’s got them all here, and they sit on a motorized turntable. The Batmobile from Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman and the Batman Animated Series Batmobile are Brent’s custom designs that he was asked to create for The LEGO Batman Movie, and they both appear in the film.

This awesome Tumbler is also Brent’s own design, and Brent has even made instructions for it in the more familiar all-black (and very dark grey) color scheme.Check out all the photos of the Manor and Batcave below, and also be sure to check out Brent’s other amazing LEGO creations on flickr. Brent will be displaying the model at the BrisBricks Strathpine Expo this coming weekend, June 9-10, in Brisbane, Australia.

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The post Incredible, fully lit LEGO Batman Wayne Manor with huge Batcave underneath stands over 6 feet tall [Exclusive] appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

Today at Democratic Design Days, IKEA’s annual press event in Almhut, Sweden, IKEA announced that one of their new partnerships will be with the LEGO Group. Together, they will be producing a line of products aimed at bringing children and adults together. “We have a lot in common. Play is essential to kids, and we both believe that, so together the LEGO Group and IKEA, we really want to enable many more opportunities for play in the homes with children and their parents,” said Lena Dixen, Senior Vice President, Product Development, LEGO Group. In fact, the collaboration began with the toy company. LEGO approached IKEA and “asked if we wanted to play,” said Fredrika Inger, Business Area Manager for Children’s IKEA.

Both companies are keeping mum on the specific details of the products as yet, only saying that further information will be announced soon. Given IKEA’s reputation is built on its furniture line, it’s a safe bet that the partnership will result in either LEGO-themed furniture or storage solutions, for which LEGO currently partners with Room Copenhagen. However, IKEA also dabbles in virtually every other conceivable household item, so they may surprise us with an actual line of IKEA-exclusive LEGO toys. Website Apartment Therapy spoke with the presenters at the conference:

I asked Dixen and Inger after the program . . . if they had any sense of whether the products they developed would focus on children, adults, or the intersection of parents playing with children: “Most likely all of the categories that you mentioned—of course kids, but also parents and adults,” Dixen said.

Watch the on-stage announcement from the event below.

 

The post IKEA announces new collaboration with LEGO [News] appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

From the DataIsBeautiful subreddit.

Trek far enough through the tropical rainforests of South America, and you might be lucky enough to stumble upon the toco toucan. Toucans are widely recognized because of their big, bold, bodacious beaks. It’s a wonder they are able to support the weight of that massive-looking head. For that matter, we are amazed Sven Franic was able to pull off the same feat with his brick-built toucan. By utilizing a wide variety of curved elements, Sven has managed to sculpt out an excellent likeness of this magnificent bird. The wooden perch is also a nice touch, one that probably also helps with supporting bird’s weight. It’s “toucan-tastic!”

The post A toucan of appreciation for a beautiful bird appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Of course, in a realistic scenario, the kids would be sent in to resolve the problem.

Today's News:

Here’s a suitably imposing railway station, styled to fit with the LEGO modular buildings range. bricksandtiles has done an excellent job with this model, capturing a grand European feel with the broad steps and the impressively-ornate tan brickwork. The flowing curves and domes of the roof are particularly well done, capping off the impressive height of the building in style.

The platform at the building’s rear is equally detailed. The use of black lamp-post parts provides an appropriately retro look to the ironwork supporting the glass roof, and the stickers employed as signs create the impression of a nineteenth-century station still in regular modern-day use…

There’s a detailed interior too, with a ticket office and cafe. And don’t miss the smartly-tiled floor making effective use of the still relatively-new 1×1 diagonal tile pieces. Lovely.

The post A rather grand Central Station appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

In April 2014, the Harley Avenue Primary School in Elwood, New York, sent a letter to the parents of its kindergartners, confirming rumors that the school would not be going ahead with its annual play.

Dear Kindergarten Parents and Guardians,

We hope this letter serves to help you better understand how the demands of the twenty-first century are changing schools.

The reason for eliminating the kindergarten show is simple. We are responsible for preparing children for college and careers with valuable lifelong skills and know that we can best do that by having them become strong readers, writers, coworkers, and problem solvers. Please do not fault us for making professional decisions that we know will never please everyone. But know that we are making these decisions with the interests of all children in mind.

These kids, the letter implied, could not spare two days from their regularly scheduled work.

Continued in the June issue of Harper's Magazine.

Apparently this is real, but was banned by the manufacturer for copyright reasons.  Discussed in a post at the Gaming subreddit.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
I'm gonna start a graphic novel about a world where there are no crowds, buildings, bicycles, cars, or horses.

Today's News:

It's a "caption contest" because I can't think of a title for the post, but wanted to share the image.

Designed by Mehmet Ali Uysal, located in Chaudfobtaine, Belgium, via.

Enchantments, potions and magic! What else would one need? César Soares sure knows what is important in life – who cares about all that pointless real stuff, right? Joking aside, this is a pretty impressive creation. The builder says he has wanted to build in this scale for quite some time, and I can totally agree. Minifig utensils and the thicknesses of some bricks are often out of proportion with the minifigs they are made for, and that often looks very cartoony. This is not a bad thing on its own, but some times, it is nice to see more realistic Miniland scale creations like this one.

I have said that this creation is impressive, and just being built in Miniland scale is obviously not enough to achieve that. The scene is filled with unique part usage, most notably cloth pieces. Just look at the broom and the unrolled scroll! And still there is more to see, like legs of the chair and table that are tilted off right angles, clever use of the log minifig costume under the table on the right and the wall texture, which uses a technique most often seen as floor, due to how unstable it would be when set upright. I wonder what kind of magic César used to keep it in place!

The post The right place to practice your mystical arts appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

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Hovertext:
I found out about 'lant' on the lovely podcast, Lexicon Valley, by the always-brilliant John McWhorter.

New comic!
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Look it up.

Some people call them streetcars. Some people call them trams, and other people call them trolleys. Whatever you know them as, Nouvilas’ version of a Peter Witt is so nice it’s “off the tracks.” A Peter Witt is a type of tram car, named after the man who designed the first one back in 1914. Nouvilas built his streetcar for a collaborative diorama representing Harlem, New York, in the 1930s. I really like the way the cheese slopes flare out to create the curve of the “bumper,” and the chocolate brown and tan color scheme feels authentic for the period….almost makes me hungry for a Nestle bar!

Built by the Brickstons group, this cool layout shows a few blocks of Harlem, New York, making the trolley look perfectly at home.

The post A streetcar named Peter Witt appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

Found at the Pareidolia subreddit.

Excerpts from a rant at Earther:

Americans devote 70 hours, annually, to pushing petrol-powered spinning death blades over aggressively pointless green carpets to meet an embarrassingly destructive beauty standard based on specious homogeneity. We marvel at how verdant we manage to make our overwatered, chemical-soaked, ecologically-sterile backyards...

“Continual amputation is a critical part of lawn care. Cutting grass regularly—preventing it from reaching up and flowering — forces it to sprout still more blades, more rhizomes, more roots, to become an ever more impenetrable mat until it is what its owner has worked so hard or paid so much to have: the perfect lawn, the perfect sealant through which nothing else can grow—and the perfect antithesis of an ecological system.”..

Up until the 1940s, we at least left odd flowers like clovers—which actually add nitrogen back to soil—alone. Then we figured out how to turn petrochemicals into fertilizer, Windhager said. “The new goal became to have a full monoculture.”..

According to the EPA, we use 580 million gallons of gas each year, in lawnmowers that emit as much pollution in one hour as 40 automobiles driving— accounting for roughly 10 to 18 percent of non-road gasoline emissions...

All America’s farmland consumes 88.5 million acre feet of water a year. Lawns, with a fraction of the land, drink an estimated two-thirds as much. Most municipalities use 30-60 percent of drinkable water on lawns.

Suggestions at the link regarding how to cope with neighborhood associations.

My son (5y) asked me today: If there were a kind of a fireman's pole from the Moon down to the Earth, how long would it take to slide all the way from the Moon to the Earth?

Ramon Schönborn, Germany

First, let's get a few things out of the way:

In real life, we can't put a metal pole between the Earth and the Moon.[1] The end of the pole near the Moon would be pulled toward the Moon by the Moon's gravity, and the rest of it would be pulled back down to the Earth by the Earth's gravity. The pole would be torn in half.

Another problem with this plan. The Earth's surface spins faster than the Moon goes around, so the end that dangled down to the Earth would break off if you tried to connect it to the ground:

There's one more problem:[2] The Moon doesn't always stay the same distance from Earth. Its orbit takes it closer and farther away. It's not a big difference,[3] but it's enough that the bottom 50,000 km of your fire station pole would be squished against the Earth once a month.

But let's ignore those problems! What if we had a magical pole that dangled from the Moon down to just above the Earth's surface, expanding and contracting so it never quite touched the ground? How long would it take to slide down from the Moon?

If you stood next to the end of the pole on the Moon, a problem would become clear right away: You have to slide up the pole, and that's not how sliding works.

Instead of sliding, you'll have to climb.

People can climb poles pretty fast. World-record pole climbers[4] can climb at over a meter per second in championship competition.[5] On the Moon, gravity is much weaker, so it will probably be easier to climb. On the other hand, you'll have to wear a spacesuit, so that will probably slow you down a little.

If you climb up the pole far enough, Earth's gravity will take over and start pulling you down. When you're hanging onto the pole, there are three forces pulling on you: The Earth's gravity pulling you toward Earth, the Moon's gravity pulling you away from Earth, and centrifugal force[6] from the swinging pole pulling you away from Earth.[7] At first, the combination of the Moon's gravity and centrifugal force are stronger, pulling you toward the Moon, but as you get closer to the Earth, Earth's gravity takes over. The Earth is pretty big, so you reach this point—which is known as the L1 Lagrange point—while you're still pretty close to the Moon.

Unfortunately for you, space is big, so "pretty close" is still a long way. Even if you climb at better-than-world-record speed, it will still take you several years to get to the L1 crossover point.

As you approach the L1 point, you'll start to be able to switch from climbing to pushing-and-gliding: You can push once and then coast a long distance up the pole. You don't have to wait to stop, either—you can grab the pole again and give yourself a push to move even faster, like a skateboarder kicking several times to speed up.

Eventually, as you reach the vicinity of the L1 point and are no longer fighting gravity, the only limit on your speed will be how quickly you can grab the pole and "throw" it past you. The best baseball pitchers can move their hands at about 100 mph while flinging objects past them, so you probably can't expect to move much faster than that.

Note: While you're flinging yourself along, be careful not to drift out of reach of the pole. Hopefully you brought some kind of safety line so you can recover if that happens.

After another few weeks of gliding along the pole, you'll start to feel gravity take over, speeding you up faster than you can go by pushing yourself. When this happens, be careful—soon, you'll need to start worrying about going too fast.

As you approach the Earth and the pull of its gravity increases, you'll start to speed up quite a bit. If you don't stop yourself, you'll reach the top of the atmosphere at roughly escape velocity—11 km/s[8]—and the impact with the air will produce so much heat that you risk burning up. Spacecraft deal with this problem by including heat shields, which are capable of absorbing and dissipating this heat without burning up the spacecraft behind it.[9] Since you have this handy metal pole, you can control your descent by clamping onto it and controlling your rate of descent through friction.

Make sure to keep your speed low during the whole approach and descent—and, if necessary, pausing to let your hands or brakepads cool down—rather than waiting until the end to try to slow down. If you get up to escape velocity, then at the last minute remember that you need to slow down, you'll be in for an unpleasant surprise as you try to grab on to the pole. At best, you'll be flung away and plummet to your death. At worst, your hands and the surface of the pole will both be converted into exciting new forms of matter, and then you'll be flung away and plummet to your death.

Assuming you descend slowly and enter the atmosphere in a controlled manner, you'll soon encounter your next problem: Your pole isn't moving at the same speed as the Earth. Not even close. The land and atmosphere below you are moving very fast relative to you. You're about to drop into some extremely strong winds.

The Moon orbits around the Earth at a speed of roughly one kilometer per second, making a wide circle[10] every 29 days or so. That's how fast the top end of our hypothetical fire pole will be traveling. The bottom end of the pole makes a much smaller circle in the same amount of time, moving at an average speed of only about 35 mph relative to the center of the Moon's orbit:

35 miles per hour doesn't sound bad. Unfortunately for you, the Earth is also spinning,[11] and its surface moves a lot faster than 35 mph; at the Equator, it can reach over 1,000 miles per hour.[12]​[13]

Even though the end of the pole is moving slowly relative to the Earth as a whole, it's moving very fast relative to the surface.

Asking how fast the pole is moving relative to the surface is effectively the same as asking what the "ground speed" of the Moon is. This is tricky to calculate, because the Moon's ground speed varies over time in a complicated way. Luckily for us, it doesn't vary that much—it's usually somewhere between 390 and 450 m/s, or a little over Mach 1—so figuring out the precise value isn't necessary.

Let's buy a little time by trying to figure it out anyway.

The Moon's ground speed varies pretty regularly, making a kind of sine wave. It peaks twice every month as it passes over the fast-moving equator, then reaches a minimum when it's over the slower-moving tropics. Its orbital speed also changes depending on whether it's at the close or far point in its orbit. This leads to a roughly sine-wave shaped ground speed:

Well, ready to jump?

Ok, fine. There's one other cycle we can take into account to really nail down the Moon's ground speed. The Moon's orbit is tilted by about 5° relative to the Earth-Sun plane, while the Earth's axis is tilted by 23.5°. This means that the Moon's latitude changes the way the Sun's does, moving from the northern tropics to the southern tropics twice a year.

However, the Moon's orbit is also tilted, and this tilt rotates on an 18.9-year cycle. When the Moon's tilt is in the same direction as the Earth's, it stays 5° closer to the Equator than the Sun, and when it's in the opposite direction, it reaches more extreme latitudes. When the Moon is over a point farther from the equator, it has a lower "ground speed," so the lower end of the sine wave goes lower. Here's the plot of the Moon's "ground speed" over the next few decades:

The Moon's top speed stays pretty constant, but the lowest speed rises and falls with an 18.9-year cycle. The lowest speed of the next cycle will be on May 1st, 2025, so if you want to wait until 2025 to slide down, you can hit the atmosphere when the pole is moving at only 390 m/s relative to the Earth's surface.

When you do finally enter the atmosphere, you'll be coming down near the edge of the tropics. Try to avoid the tropical jet stream, an upper-level air current which blows in the same direction the Earth rotates. If your pole happens to go through it, it could add another 50-100 m/s to the wind speed.

Regardless of where you come down, you'll need to contend with supersonic winds, so you should wear lots of protective gear.[15] Make sure you're tightly attached to the pole, since the wind and various shockwaves will be violently battering and jolting you around. People often say, "It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end." Unfortunately, in this case, it's probably going to be both.[17]

At some point, to reach the ground, you're going to have to let go of the pole. For obvious reasons, you don't want to jump directly onto the ground while moving at Mach 1. Instead, you should probably wait until you're somewhere near airline cruising altitude, where the air is still thin, so it's not pulling at you too hard—and let go of the pole. Then, as the air carries you away and you fall toward the Earth, you can open your parachute.

Then, at last, you can drift safely to the ground, having traveled from the Moon to the Earth completely under your own muscle power.

(When you're done, remember to remove the fire pole. That thing is definitely a safety hazard.)

[1] For one, someone at NASA would probably yell at us.

[2] Ok, that's a lie—there are, like, hundreds more problems.

[3] You may occasionally see people get excited about the "supermoon," a full Moon that appears slightly larger because it happens at the time of the month when the Moon is closest to Earth. But really, the full Moon always looks surprisingly large and pretty when it's near the horizon, thanks to the Moon illusion. In my opinion, it's worth going outside and looking at the Moon whenever it's full, regardless of whether it's super or not.

[4] Of course there's a world record for pole climbing.

[5] Of course there are championship competitions.

[6] As usual, anyone arguing about "centrifugal" versus "centripetal" force will be put in a centrifuge.

[7] At the distance of the Moon's orbit and the speed it's traveling, centrifugal force pushing away is exactly balanced by the Earth's gravity—which is why the Moon orbits there.

[8] This is why anything that falls into the Earth hits the atmosphere fast enough to burn up. Even if an object is moving slowly when it's drifting through space, when it gets close to the Earth it gets accelerated up to at least escape velocity by that final segment of the trip down into the Earth's gravity well.

[9] People often ask why we don't use rockets to slow down, to avoid the need for a heat shield. You can read this article for an explanation, but the bottom line is that changing your speed by 11 km/s takes either a tank of fuel the size of a building or a tiny heat shield, and the tiny heat shield is a lot easier to carry. Thanks to heat shields, slowing down is much easier than speeding up—which requires the aforementioned giant fuel tank. (For more on this, see this What If question).

Heat shields only work for slowing down; if there were a way to use the same heat shield mechanism to speed up, space travel would get a lot easier. Sadly, no one's figured out a practical way to build a "reverse heat shield" rocket. However, while the idea seems silly, in a sense it's sort of the principle behind both Project Orion and laser ablation propulsion.

[10] Yes, I know, orbits are conic sections which in the case of the Moon is technically not exactly a circle. It's actually a pentagon.

[11] I mean, unfortunately in this specific context. In general, the fact that the Earth spins is very fortunate for you, and for the planet's overall habitability.

[12] It's common knowledge that Mt. Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth, measured from sea level. A somewhat more obscure piece of trivia is that the point on the Earth's surface farthest from its center is the summit of Mt. Chimborazo in Ecuador, due to the fact that the planet bulges out at the equator. Even more obscure is the question of which point on the Earth's surface moves the fastest as the Earth spins, which is the same as asking which point is farthest from the Earth's axis. The answer isn't Chimborazo or Everest. The fastest point turns out to be the peak of Mt. Cayambe, a volcano north of Chimborazo. And now you know.

[13] Mt. Cayambe's southern slope also happens to be the highest point on Earth's surface directly on the Equator. I have a lot of mountain facts.

[15] For aerodynamic reasons, this gear should probably make it look like you're wearing a very fast airplane.

[17] If it helps, people have survived supersonic ejections before—and even a supersonic aircraft disintegration—so there's hope.

I was listening to a segment of the PBS series "Civilizations" and was startled to hear an art historian mention in passing that the word "miniature" is used by professionals to refer to the colors used in a work of art rather than to its size.

An Oxford University Press webpage explains:

It only makes sense that this word miniature would derive from the Latin word minimum, meaning “the smallest.”  It only makes sense, but it’s wrong.

Miniature is one of those strange words that has an etymology that defies logic. The actual truth is that before things that were tiny were called miniature, a certain kind of small portrait was called a miniature.

Before that, the art of illuminating those beautiful letters and figures in hand reproduced .
ancient books was called miniaire in Italian.

This miniaire art was in turn named for the red color that was especially popular for use in producing this art.

The red color was usually produced by use of a red kind of lead and it was the Latin name of this red lead that gave the color its name because the lead was called minium.

Thus etymologically, miniature and minimum actually don’t even have a small relationship with each other.

Lots more at Wikipedia.

The word miniature, derived from the Latin minium, red lead, is a small illustration used to decorate an ancient or medieval illuminated manuscript; the simple illustrations of the early codices having been miniated or delineated with that pigment. The generally small scale of the medieval pictures has led secondly to an etymological confusion of the term with minuteness...

Excerpts from a longread:

Lately, most Americans, regardless of their political leanings, have been asking themselves some version of the same question: How did we get here? How did the world’s greatest democracy and economy become a land of crumbling roads, galloping income inequality, bitter polarization and dysfunctional government?

.. the celebrated American economic-mobility engine is sputtering. For adults in their 30s, the chance of earning more than their parents dropped to 50% from 90% just two generations earlier. The American middle class, once an aspirational model for the world, is no longer the world’s richest... too few basic services seem to work as they should. America’s airports are an embarrassment, and a modern air-traffic control system is more than 25 years behind its original schedule. The power grid, roads and rails are crumbling, pushing the U.S. far down international rankings for infrastructure quality. Despite spending more on health care and K-12 education per capita than most other developed countries, health care outcomes and student achievement also rank in the middle or worse globally. Among the 35 OECD countries, American children rank 30th in math proficiency and 19th in science...

...many of the most talented, driven Americans used what makes America great–the First Amendment, due process, financial and legal ingenuity, free markets and free trade, meritocracy, even democracy itself–to chase the American Dream. And they won it, for themselves. Then, in a way unprecedented in history, they were able to consolidate their winnings, outsmart and co-opt the forces that might have reined them in, and pull up the ladder so more could not share in their success or challenge their primacy...

The result is a new, divided America. On one side are the protected few – the winners – who don’t need government for much and even have a stake in sabotaging the government’s responsibility to all of its citizens. For them, the new, broken America works fine, at least in the short term. An understaffed IRS is a plus for people most likely to be the target of audits. Underfunded customer service at the Social Security Administration is irrelevant to those not living week to week, waiting for their checks... On the other side are the unprotected many. They may be independent and hardworking, but they look to their government to preserve their way of life and maybe even improve it. The unprotected need the government to provide good public schools so that their children have a chance to advance. They need a level competitive playing field for their small businesses, a fair shake in consumer disputes and a realistic shot at justice in the courts...

The protected need few of these common goods. They don’t have to worry about underperforming public schools, dilapidated mass-transit systems or jammed Social Security hotlines. They have accountants and lawyers who can negotiate their employment contracts or deal with consumer disputes, assuming they want to bother. They see labor or consumer-protection laws, and fair tax codes, as threats to their winnings–which they have spent the last 50 years consolidating by eroding these common goods and the government that would provide them.

That, rather than a split between Democrats and Republicans, is the real polarization that has broken America since the 1960s. It’s the protected vs. the unprotected, the common good vs. maximizing and protecting the elite winners’ winnings...

 “American meritocracy has thus become precisely what it was invented to combat,” Markovits concluded, “a mechanism for the dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. Meritocracy now constitutes a modern-day aristocracy.” 

Much more at the Time magazine source.

Something you don't see every day.  Credit embedded as a watermark, via.

What I particularly love about building in microscale is that it makes you value every single piece and every spare stud of space. When a tiny 1×2 slope becomes a very huge section of the building’s roof you become very careful with planning your creation. And Marco De Bon‘s tiny quarter is a brilliant example of careful planning and very nice execution. Despite a very limited variety of pieces and colors, this neighbourhood looks both elegant and surprisingly diverse. My favourite part would be those small balconies of the white apartment building; the use ofplate 2 x 4 wedge‘s shape is just stunning.

The post An exercise in microscale appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

Mediteranean aesthetic, both architectural and otherwise, is not very often portrayed in LEGO, but when it is, builders tend to capture it very well. Mouseketeer111 has done one of these renditions as a modular-style building, and I can say from first-hand experience that this scene reproduces the spirit of an old Italian town perfectly.

There are some simple elements that are important to conjure up the Mediterranean feeling, namely a barrel-tiled roof and Italian flags, but other details like bright colours, overgrown walls and the ice cream shop are what make this creation stand out. My favourite part, however, is the balcony. Not only is it well built, but it is photographed so that the shade looks even more inviting!

The post An Italian restaurant built from Danish bricks appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

When it comes to building LEGO maritime creations, one artist stands out as being a foremost authority. Arjan Oude Kotte has graced us with several of his masterpieces over the years. They include a Rotterham Harbor Tugboat, and a massive 1930’s Danish ship, among others. All his creations are packed with magnificent attention to detail and incredible personality. His latest build, Finnian’s shipyard, is another superb addition to his collection, and we love it! The colors and details are truly impressive.

The shipyard features a dry dock, where workers build and repair large boats. An unfinished tugboat sits inside, with workers busy building.

The workers in the materials yard are busy carting wood and steel into the shop to use during construction.

Lots of effort went into making everything line up just right. A story is told with every shift in angle. Scale replica models used in hobby train layouts, which are made using various forms of completely customizable material, really couldn’t have done this better.

The interior is fully decorated and this creation is also completely fitted with indoor and outdoor lights. Even the welder’s torch in the front flickers, thanks to special lighting.

The post A shipyard above all shipyards appeared first on The Brothers Brick.