Luke.stirling

If you’re looking for a full-service gas station and a cozy diner where you can take a break, then Andrea Lattanzio has the place for you. Take a step back in time to this vintage LEGO gas station complete with diner and repair shop — all your roadside needs taken care of. The rounded corners of the building and its smooth red lines reflect the Art Deco style of the era, and there are great details to be found amongst the fuel pumps, road signs, and telegraph poles. Check out the photos on Flickr for interior details and more.

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When creating this digital LEGO model of three different buildings, Łukasz Libuszewski was inspired by the beautiful architecture of Prague. On the right, we have the pub on the ground floor and a museum showing the old town on the first floor. There is a handy cashpoint just outside the pub, so no excuses about running out of cash when it’s time to buy drinks. There is also a slightly abandoned looking tenement building on the left — it’s definitely in need of repair. Access to the lookout tower is via the central steps, but take care as those shadowy stairs look a little eerie to me.

A view from the rear shows some of the interior design with the old town layout in the museum and some cosy looking tables and chairs all set up in the pub below. I particularly like some of the architectural details such as the tan stonework around the window at the back of the pub and the use of the Elves keys in light blue grey within the look-out tower.

While this build is a digital build, it has been beautifully crafted and, although there a few elements that do not exist in LEGO’s official collection, it looks build-able ‘in the brick’

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I'm shocked no's proposed this obvious interpretation of the data.

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Lovely review of Soonish here in Forbes.

 

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Take a moment to appreciate the restful atmosphere around the Dudok Pavilion — a restaurant in a park, put together by Niek Geurts. This LEGO creation has wonderful clean and crisp lines, which the builder says was inspired by the Dutch Modernist architect Willem Dudok.

Sometimes these kind of architecture-led creations can feel a little sterile. I like the way Niek has populated the scene with numerous minifigures, enjoying the pavilion facilities on what looks like a pleasant afternoon…

The restaurant has an interior, but it was the little touches around the outside which really caught my eye. I loved the bicycles leaning against the wall. Such a minor detail, but so sweet, and so Dutch!

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Or you could just have a door that says 'free t-shirts,' but on the other side of it is a hole that goes to the core of Earth.

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EEEE, last full week before the BOOK TOUR OF DOOM. Thanks for your support everyone!

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Socrates would consume hemlock, sure, but what about Arby's?

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Just ten days until our BOOK TOUR OF DOOM kicks off in Seattle. All of these events have limited seating, so make sure to snag a ticket before we sell out!

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I think I might be doing this to my own kids on accident.

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Micropolis is a LEGO building standard which allows for large-scale collaborative builds of microscale cities. The usual module sees a 16×16 base with roads down two sides, leaving a 14×14 “development site”. Tammo S. has used the space to great effect with this 70s-style office block. The curving balconies and the colour scheme are totally retro, and very cool. And don’t miss the little touches like the use of the clock tile, and angled grille bricks as steps — the sort of things that elevate a microscale model out of the ordinary. This office might be beige, but it’s anything but bland.

My only criticism is the lighting on the photo isn’t great. But that doesn’t detract from a lovely model.

The post The height of 70s office chic appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

This stunning scale copy of Mercedes-Benz Actros 4163 by YU KEE LIU is a very smart mixture of System and Technic parts. It’s no secret, brick-built cockpits are much heavier than those built with light Technic panels. Despite the weight of the body, this truck is fully remotely controlled and even features a number of motorised mechanisms attached to the trailer.

The post Delivering cargo with German precision appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

There are dozens of reasons to love both old and modern LEGO City sets, but still not all adult fans are happy with huge molded pieces that aircraft models are built of. Jussi Koskinen presents a very elegant alternative to bulky fuselages. No surprise it took him about three months to finish this brilliant ATR 72-500, which features a very smartly designed body.

Skilfully designed and executed interior holds 28 passengers, 2 pilots and even a flight attendant — enough room for all your City travellers!

The post This is your captain speaking and we’re about to take off appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

From a report at The Guardian:

The true scale of the slaughter of pangolins in Africa has been revealed by new research showing that millions of the scaly mammals are being hunted and killed.

Pangolins were already known to be the world’s most trafficked wild mammal, with at least a million being traded in the last decade to supply the demand for its meat and scales in Asian markets. Populations of Asian pangolins have been decimated, leaving the creatures highly endangered and sharply shifting the focus of exploitation to Africa’s four species...

A total ban on the international trade in any pangolin species was passed by the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species in September. But Ingram said the enforcement of both international and national laws had to be increased to prevent African pangolins following their Asian cousins on the path to extinction.

The demand in Asia for pangolin meat and scales as delicacies and supposed medicinal uses is a major factor in cross-border trade but a significant proportion of African pangolins are eaten locally. Ingram said that measures are also needed to develop alternative livelihoods for African hunters of pangolin...

More from Wikipedia:

The pangolin trade is centuries old. An early known example is in 1820, when Francis Rawdon, 1st Marquis of Hastinges and East India Company Governor General in Bengal, presented King George III with a coat and helmet made with the scales of Manis crassicaudata [low-res photo at the link]. The gifts are now stored in the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

The pangolins are boiled to remove the scales, which are then dried and roasted, then sold based on claims that they can stimulate lactation, help to drain pus, and relieve skin diseases or palsy. As of 2015, pangolin scales were covered under some health insurance plans in Vietnam.

The scales can cost more than $3,000/kg on the black market.

GIF of a pandolin.

Reposted from 2017 to show this image of a shipping container with the remains of 36,000 poached critically-endangered pangolins:

They sailed into a Singapore inspection port by shipping container, the vessel marked “frozen beef” and bound for Vietnam. Inside, customs officials found the sacks, packed and piled from floor to ceiling. They overflowed with the product of a wildlife smuggling operation so vast, yet so niche, it had conservationists worried about the extinction of an animal that most people haven’t even heard of yet...

Restaurants buy pangolin meat, which is considered a delicacy, an off-menu item that a well-heeled customer might order when trying to impress. Those seeking the new cure-all buy the scales, which are used in traditional medicine to treat everything from rheumatism to cancer, even though there is no known science that supports their remedial properties. And the fashion industry has shown interest in the skin, its diamond pattern making for an attractive leather design. It’s scale-to-tail consumption.

More information at the Washington Post (whence the embedded photo, credit Getty Images, cropped for size)

?The Louvre has withdrawn a large installation by a Dutch art and design collective for being sexually explicit... The piece — “Domestikator” by the collective Atelier Van Lieshout, whose outline depicts copulation — was to go on view on Oct. 19 in the Louvre’s Tuileries Gardens..."

More at The New York Times.

Every year, when Nobel Prizes are awarded in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine, critics note that they are an absurd and anachronistic way of recognizing scientists for their work. Instead of honoring science, they distort its nature, rewrite its history, and overlook many of its important contributors...

The wider problem, beyond who should have received the prize and who should not, is that the Nobels reward individuals—three at most, for each of the scientific prizes, in any given year... The paper in which the LIGO team announced their discovery has an author list that runs to three pages. Another recent paper, which precisely estimated the mass of the elusive Higgs boson, has 5,154 authors.

More at The Atlantic.  If I am awarded a Nobel prize, I'll share the money with my coauthors and fellows and lab techs...

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RULE THE WORLD...

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THIS SUMMER...

GET READY...

FOR...

CURLY RIBBON FEATHER SHARD HORROR HOOVES...

 

 

OF DOOOOOM.

 

Rated W for WTF, coming to bakeries near you.

*****

Thank you for using our Amazon links to shop! USA, UK, Canada.

LEGOLIZE IT MAN enters this year’s SHIPtember building challenge with a stunning spacecraft promoting one of the world’s famous home furniture producers. It’s hard to say whether the assembling process was as hard and exhausting as it is of a some Swedish kitchen table, but at least there are no spare screws lying around.

The post Sometimes a hex key and a ton of patience are all you need to assemble an excellent cargo spaceship appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

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That number might've been even smaller if she didn't stop complaining about my application of stats to our relationship.

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Italian builder Luca Di Lazzaro continues his wonderful series of LEGO buildings — we previously featured his beautiful LEGO street scene and Udine’s Piazza San Giacomo — with another romantic corner of paradise. What I love about each of Luca’s creations is how the buildings are all angled off the grid that LEGO studs enforce on less-innovative builders.

The LEGO model is full of little scenes at varying heights, including a couple thowing a coin into the “Well of Desires”.

There’s also a lovely rooftop where a woman tends to her brightly colored birds.

Naturally, Luca’s new buildings fit together with the street scene we featured previously.

The post Cast a coin into the Well of Desires appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

On 22 Sept, LEGO House opened it’s doors to over 600 adult fans of LEGO and their families, allowing advanced access to this  world of creative experiences. The official public opening is on the 28th Sept, but The Brothers Brick flew over to Billund to attend the preview opening to give you a closer look inside the Home of the Brick.

LEGO House exterior is certainly striking, designed by Danish architect, Bjarke Ingels to look like a stack of bricks from the outside with the keystone white 2×4 LEGO brick on top. The 21 colourful interlocking bricks contain four playful Experience Zones, with tons of creative fun, a Masterpiece Gallery inside the Keystone at the very top, a LEGO History Museum in the basement, three restaurants, and a LEGO Brand Retail Store. Lets step inside.

On entering LEGO House, you find yourself in the main foyer. A cavernous area that reaches from the floor to the Masterpiece Gallery in the roof. The foyer is known as LEGO Square and is where the LEGO Retail Store, two restaurants, Brickaccino cafe and elevator access to the roof terraces can be found.

Also in the foyer are machines to scan your advanced purchased tickets and  the code is converted into a wearable wristband that grants you access into the Experience Zones.  Tickets for the experience zones cost 199DKK/US$31/£23 each for adults and children (free for accompanied children under 2) and are purchased online in advance for an arrival time but you can stay as long as you wish until the House closes at 8 pm. The genius part about this is that the wristband can be scanned throughout the experience zones to allow your creations and experiences that day to be saved and accessible via the LEGO House app at a later date.

Once inside, the central staircase grants access to all the levels of LEGO House (NB there are elevators too of course for prams, those with limited mobility etc) which winds around the awesome  Tree of Creativity standing at over 15 metres tall. Upon the branches, there are scenes representing themes and ideas that have been developed by the LEGO Group over the years.

The base and roots of the tree represent the LEGO Group foundation in wooden toys, and up at the very top LEGO minifigure workers are building new branches using a giant crane. The branches in between are decorated with lovely dioramas, each evoking a different theme.

There is a lot to see and do in LEGO House so here is  The Brothers Brick Top 10 activities to experience at LEGO House:

1. Visit the Masterpiece Gallery. At the top of the Tree of Creativity Staircase located inside the keystone oversized white 2×4 brick,  you will enter the Masterpiece Gallery. Within this huge gallery space the three massive T-Rex dinosaurs, made from Duplo, System and Technic bricks require that you immediately stop and stare. The concept and the design of each T-Rex was developed with a huge amount of input from fans worldwide.

In the display cases around the outside of the room, there are models from 18 different fan LEGO builders around the world and in time, these models will change to feature other artists. All of the fan artists with models installed in the Masterpiece Gallery have been featured on TBB previously and will be familiar to many of our readers;  Chris McVeigh, Peter Reid, Ian Hou, Imagine Rigney, Jared Chan, Jarek Książczyk, Marin Stipkovic, Rafal Piasek, Samuel Pister, Sean Mayo, Tyler Clites, Cristiano Grassi, Elspeth De Montes, Djordje Dobrosavljevic, Sachiko Akinaga, Jonas Kramm, Martin Redfern.

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2. Create a minifigure character in the Red Zone. There are a numerous stations set up,  with over-sized minifigures surrounded by a moat of LEGO minifigure parts and accessories.  The Character Creation area is an Aladdin’s cave for fans of minifigures and mini-dolls,  build as many variations as your heart desires.

The volume and variety of minifigure and mini-doll parts and accessories available to chose from is really quite phenomenal. The amount of time some adults spend perfecting their minifigure characters will pale in comparison to the love children have for creating these little people.

Your completed minifigure can be scanned and then a selection of optional backgrounds allows you to instantly become a style icon, rockstar, superhero or even get your mini-self on the front of TIME magazine!

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3. Build a fish and let it virtually swim. The digital under-the-sea zone is full of interesting looking, rare fish and sea creatures.  There are plenty of bricks to make your own fish which you can then scan and admire as your brick creation transforms into a digital fish going on some aquatic adventures.

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4. Become a movie director and create a stop motion movie that premiers in the LEGO House cinema. There are fantastic little stop motion movie booths all ready for your movie directing début.  With the scene set, lots of minifigures available and the camera ready, all you need to do is sit down and start getting creative. Once you have finished, the stop motion movie will première at the cosy cinema  in LEGO House with an audience made up of other LEGO House visitors.

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5. Set your imagination free with a waterfall of LEGO bricks. If you fancy just having all the bricks and parts you could ever imagine at your fingertips, head over the the Waterfall of bricks.  There’s no limit to what you can build, and the colour and volume of parts available is really phenomenal.

Younger fans, or perhaps adults who just fancy using some bigger bricks, have not been forgotten as there is an equally impressive Duplo waterfall and pool of parts. We spotted so many awesome Duplo animals relaxing in this pool just waiting to become part of a child’s LEGO House experience.

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6. Take on the roles of city architect and town planner in the Blue Zone. I loved this LEGO meets Sim City area in LEGO House.  City layouts have been created that interact with the red, green and yellow and blue 8×8 plates to become part of a interactive city.  The little digital people will flock to the local stadium to watch a game when they are happy or walk in circles waiting for you to create some services when they are unhappy.  It’s all about building what the little people want and utilising your cognitive skills for creativity and understanding the interactions within the city. It is worth pointing out the fantastic 1:1500 scale Copenhagen build in the background of the image, this was built by fan builder, Ulrik Hansen.

Once your creation has been built onto the 8×8 plate using the parts available everywhere around the city zones, you can place your 8×8 plate onto the city layout and watch as the little people start to interact with your build, changing the rhythm of the city and expanding the interactive area.

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7. Become a hero with an Arctic adventure rescue mission in the Robo Lab. The mission start with the setting the scene as you are told the story of a polar expedition who have been sent to find and rescue an ancient mammoth.Unfortunately all of the explorers have become frozen in Arctic ice and now you have to find and rescue them. Each team member commands a bot,  a Mindstorms EV3 programmable robot, controlled via a touch screen. You can program your bot to move forwards, backwards, turn 90 degrees, freeze water to move on the ice surface or use a flamethrower to free a minifigure  from its frozen cage.

The mission is a collaboration, not a competition so everyone needs to work together to save all the minifigures around the map.  There are all sorts of interactive changes that can occur in game and  it is entertaining to see how the bots are integrated with the map and the minifigures react to situations. Each game lasts around 10 minutes before the bots are charged and another team takes control. You can take part as many times as you wish by simply scanning your wristband to join the team.

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8. Order lunch in the Mini Chef restaurant and have it prepared by minifigures and served by robots. Mini Chef is one of two restaurants in LEGO House that are open to the public (remember that access to the restaurants and Brickaccino cafe does not require tickets) and is more family focussed and relaxed.

Starting with the menu, you make your selection from the polybag of bricks supplied at your table and then pop your build into a scanning machine. A quirky fun animation film is then played which shows your brick selection being turned into a meal. The LEGO chef is not happy if you try to add to sides of fries and ignore your greens – one of each colour must be chosen!

The meal costs 169DKK/ US$27/£20 for adults and 98DKK/US$15/£12 for children. Select the children’s menu by placing the yellow brick into your order and a LEGO House chef minifigure is supplied with your meal. Once your table order is ready,  the console signals the imminent arrival of your stack of boxes and it’s time to head over to the Mini Chef robots who will cheerfully pass your meal brick box to you.

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9. Create a Critter and watch it dance or slither. In the Nature-themed area, there is ample space and bricks for plenty of building fun.  Younger LEGO fans can build Duplo brick-built people with emotions in response to an interactive story about Catherine the Caterpillar while the older fans amongst us will probably prefer the slithery race track and the ‘bopping’ lily pads.

The creatures built can be placed either on a 8×8 round tile lily pad or use car wash rollers for legs. The slithery race track and the water surface start to bounce and move in time to some fun music which results in a surprising amount of movement from the creatures on the surface. This seeming simply method is actually a lot of fun and, as always in LEGO House, there are more parts and bricks available than you could ever dream of.

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10. Become part of LEGO House with your own 6-brick ‘dna combination’. Your wristband serves another purpose as it supplies you with your own LEGO dna. An actual moulding maching sits at the bottom of the Tree of Creativity within the ticket-required part of the LEGO House foyer. This moulding machine is making red 2×4 bricks in real time and you can watch as the bricks are born, collected and popped into a polybag ready to become part of your LEGO House memory.

There are 915,103,765 different combinations to connect the six 2×4 bricks, and LEGO House is using this mind boggling piece of creative mathematics to give a unique take home memory of your experience.  There is a display of some combinations on the wall at LEGO House and, as I had the honour of being one of the builders currently in the Masterpiece Gallery, my own unique LEGO combination is up on display.

Every wristband can be scanned to supply a plastic card with your name, visit date, code to access all of your saved builds and experiences on the LEGO House app and a unique build using the six 2×4 LEGO bricks.

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Phew! Time for a coffee at Brickaccino. Although we have limited our LEGO House experiences to 10, there is clearly more to do within LEGO House as we haven’t told you about the racing track areas, the graffiti Castle, Creativity Labs or the been outside yet onto the terraces nor into the depths of the basement.

There is also the opportunity to pop into the LEGO Retail store to buy the two exclusive Pick-A-Model sets (see the Fish tank model instructions to build your own ) or the awesome updated LEGO House 21037 Architecture set.

There’s more to come…so stay tuned.

The post Exclusive TBB guide to the LEGO House experience [News] appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

We’ve seen a lot of LEGO batcaves over the years, but what of the stately mansion the Dark Knight calls home during the daytime? After all, LEGO Bruce Wayne needs a place to kick up his feet. Never fear! KW_Vauban has built an impressive minifig-scale LEGO Wayne Manor. According to the builder, over 150,000 LEGO pieces went into this massive creation.

The outside of the building is encrusted in beautiful architectural details like columns, molding, and even gargoyle-like relief sculptures. And the inside might be even more detailed than the exterior. Vauban’s bat mansion includes dozens of fully furnished rooms such as bedrooms, dining rooms, a billiards room, kitchens, a spa, art galleries, gyms, and more. To peek inside for yourself, click through to the gallery below.

For even more photos of this massive LEGO creation, check out Vauban’s Flickr page.

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Seriously though, if someone could invent a baby confinement chamber, I'm prepared to pony up.

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The Rainbow Lorikeet is a species of parrot found in Australia — unmistakable with its bright red beak and colourful plumage. Gabriel Thomson has built this fantastic LEGO rendition, complete with a tree branch to perch upon, and a little avian friend, a Superb Wren. I love the bright blue plumage of the Wren, a display of colour designed to attract the ladies in real life. Both birds have been well-shaped to give an accurate, natural appearance — no mean feat with plastic bricks instead of feathers.

If you want to see this model ‘in the brick’, it is on display in LEGO House — the new LEGO experience over in Billund, Denmark.

The post Somewhere over Australia, rainbow birds fly appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

I apologize for my supercilious vocabulary, but Swedish builder o0ger has named his most recent YT Corellian Light Freighter-inspired spacecraft “The Nadir” which, by definition, pretty much means rock-bottom. Either the owner of this ship has very high expectations, or nadir means something else in Swedish, because this ship is quite remarkable, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t be the crown of any space shipping fleet. The integration of the cockpit into the side wing is superb, and there is just the right amount of color throughout.

If you feel inspired by this sublime spacecraft, feel free to check out our contest where you can build the Millennium Falcon herself.

The post Though she’s called The Nadir, she looks like the acme appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

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In a perfect relationship between economists, every time their preferences are slightly violated they make a microtransaction with their partners.

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In which Jerry Wang posits a way to finally get some utility out of babies:

 

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Well, I guess there are plenty more comatose fish in the sea.

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Hey geeks! You can enter for a chance to win an early copy of Soonish here!

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It's so easy to get adults to give in to peer pressure.

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