Design note: The magic ingredients here are a) a bland, vaguely patrician old-world name, b) hints of the mid-century corporate models unfit for competition with the likes of Microsoft, and c) the genre of typeface that might be described as Business Futuristic.
Mark Erickson is well known for his castle and medieval-themed builds and his latest creation is a grand one. Entitled ‘The Grand Bazaar’, Mark has created a beautiful, bustling, colourful market scene packed with details and nice techniques. This bazaar has an exotic feel of the east with a camel, trees from warmer climes and a rare sighting of a yellow parrot. The architectural details are lovely, with arches constructed from bricks and slopes and a great combination of colours.
There are a great many details that require a closer look, but for me the combination of colours is the highlight of this build. I love the blue tiled roof with hints of sand and olive green on the more official ‘town hall’ looking building on the right. The use of the Belville oriental carpet as a canopy adds a lovely flash of bright red, while sand red makes a rare appearance on the sloped roof of the building to the left. A really captivating scene.
What is a Catbus? Well, it’s a cat that’s a bus of course! This particular Catbus has been crafted by CK Tsang and is an excellent depiction of Catbus at this scale. Catbus is a character from the classic anime movie My Neighbor Totoro by legendary Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki. The wide grinning smile and bright ‘headlight’ eyes are perfectly captured in this build. Don’t worry about the lack of a door, as one of those windows will elongate should you want to climb aboard for a ride.
legostrator has built a very nicely detailed interior belonging to a banker. The scene is loaded with all sorts of cool bits but my favorites are the chair and the fireplace. I love the ornate nature of the chair. It’s a design that I may borrow in the future. The brickwork on the chimney is particularly nice, as is the arch above the fire. Everywhere I look in this small scene, I find more to like. This scene really has a lot going for it.
If you ever find yourself wondering what happened to No-Face after Spirited Away, we have an answer for you. Japanese Twitter user @lionifuly spotted the lonely spirit now spends its time riding a motorcycle around Japan, both delighting and spooking fellow travelers.
Builder LEGO 7 brings us a beautifully modern two-gate airport. Look closely, because this model is impressively large and very thoroughly detailed with all the hustle and bustle of real aviation.
The first minifigure-scale LEGO airport, 6392 Airport, released in 1985. Since then LEGO has produced about a half dozen more, most recently 60104 Airport Passenger Terminal. They’ve all been fantastic sets, and the planes have grown larger and more detailed with each iteration. However, they all suffer from one flaw: the terminals just aren’t big enough, even for very small airports, and none includes a jet bridge. Not so with LEGO 7’s stunning creation, which features not one but two jet bridges so jetsetters in this airport don’t have to step outside to disembark. Check out more photos below.
The gorgeous art-deco emblem emblazoned on the runway-side of the terminal adds instant class.
Dozens of busy minifigures keep the airport humming by directing incoming aircraft and performing maintenance.
Two-toned letters on the vehicular side let passengers know they’re in the right spot.
The view from the vehicular side, with an arrival/departure lane for VIPs.
For any minifigs on the run after stealing $40,000 from their boss, there is finally some good news! The members of Brickstons Group (Pepi Blas, Emiliano Martinez, Jose Luis de la Fuente, and Alfonso Abeger) have created a LEGO Bates Motel from Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic film Psycho and it is open for business. What a perfect place to lay low and avoid the police.
The builders based the design of the house off of the original drawings used in the film. And the Brickstons Group even built furniture for each motel room and the office. I wonder if there are any taxidermied birds in there? Of course, the recreated shower scene in black and white looks great. Check out even more photos of this great build on Flickr.
The last one is probably the weirdest, because sometimes people are being nice to me and will pour me a glass of something but then pour it more than halfway up the glass and i’ll quietly be all like (nooooooo).
Milan Sekiz has mixed up all the ingredients required for a perfect little bakery. This scene is packed with detail for such a tight footprint, and the color choices represent a refreshing change from a lot of City building.
Cakes are obviously the main reason to visit any bakery, and Milan’s display counter doesn’t disappoint. Check out the tempting selection on show (and don’t miss the detail of the ventilation slits in the refrigeration units under the counter — nice).
And then through in the back-of-house, Milan has made great use of “brick bricks” and kitchen unit pieces to create a smart prep area. I particularly like the unbaked croissants sitting to the left. However, unless there’s another oven lurking off-scene somewhere, I’m not convinced this store has quite the baking capacity it requires — the visible oven provision seems somewhat lacking. But kitchen efficiency concerns aside, this is a wonderful little model.
Consider this poll out today from Politico and Morning Consult, which asked whether respondents agreed with Donald Trump’s assertion that, as the poll read, “the issues around Clinton’s emails are worse than Watergate.” Eighty-two percent of Republicans said they agreed. Eighty-two percent.
So that’s become an almost universal belief among Republicans: Clinton’s use of a private server for her emails is worse than the worst political scandal in American history, in which an entire panoply of crimes was committed by dozens of people, including break-ins and money-laundering and document-forging and obstruction of justice, in which those who went to prison included the attorney general, the White House chief of staff, and the president’s chief domestic policy adviser, in which the president of the United States resigned after his own party informed him he was about to be impeached and would surely be convicted. The email story is worse than that.
This is not merely wrong or ahistorical. It’s lunacy. It’s like saying, “This paper cut I got on my finger? Worse than pancreatic cancer.”
While I’m more of a fan of LEGO space vehicles, I do know an amazing building creation when I see one, and this Classic Space tower by Wami Delthorn has all the right notes of a brilliant, detailed build. As a control tower for your Classic Space astronauts, it’s complete with classic grey colouring and the yellow translucent window panels.
The build sits on a hexagonal base, giving a different twist to your usual 4-sided box. The picture is a bit deceiving, but this thing is quite tall! You can see the little space minifig at the bottom for a better sense of scale.
Just as impressive is the inside rooms and the working lift, both of which you can see in this short video:
Yesterday, it was apparently Rian Sygh and his email inbox’s turn. Sygh, an illustrator and comics artist, found himself the recipient of one of the most entertainingly bizarre proposals I’ve ever seen, from a self-professed “ally” called Red Jerry with some advice on how
you may continue pursuing yourself [???] in a manner advantageous to your self-purported goal of “becoming a cool comics guy :sunglasses emoji: (Twitter, Aug 2016)”.
As you can see, Mr. Jerry’s literary pretensions exceed his literary capabilities.
The tl:dr of the advice is that Sygh should stop “pandering” to the “feminest [sic], or colloquially known as ‘SJW’, crowd” and start producing some good old-fashioned red meat comics with the help of … the writer of the proposal.
But this is one wall-o-text it’s worth reading in full. It’s glorious.
And of course he’s got a vaguely Pepe-looking little frog in his sig and one of those (((echo))) thingies. Unless Red Jerry is literally a Jewish frog, which seems unlikely, I’m guessing he’s one of those chan-dwelling alt-right anime Nazi Trump fans.
@RianSygh I PRAY this is just a random troll but a tiny piece of me wants to BELIEVE IN THE GIFT
Online harassment of women and marginalized people in multiplayer gaming has been and continues to be a massive problem. The fact that the newest tech in gaming was built without taking into consideration the fact that it could be used to harass and the fact that anti-harassment functions weren’t built into it from the ground up is a travesty. These conversations need to be a central part of the development process, period.
It is as Bernie Sanders has foreseen it, you might say.
With its publication of thousands of less-than-flattering emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta over the past two weeks, Wikileaks has done much to undermine Hillary Clinton in her ongoing effort to appeal to millennials who see Washington as a corrupt town where big business and big government are deeply intertwined.
Excerpts from various six-figure speeches that Clinton made in 2013 and 2014 reveal a politician who is not only quite friendly with Wall Street in private, but somewhat resentful of the American public for constantly attacking and scapegoating big banks for the financial crisis...
Although these leaks don’t reveal anything new about Clinton, they do vindicate many of her critics on the left who have long criticized her ties to Wall Street and maintained that she is too comfortable with the neoliberal status quo. On both the progressive left and libertarian right, Clinton is largely seen as a symbol of “crony capitalism.”
Of course, crony capitalism — a term used to describe an economic and political system in which government officials and big business are closely connected, and thus promote each others’ interests over the public good — was the main target of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.
Excerpted from a Salon op-ed. Lots more at the Wikipedia entry.
The term "crony capitalism" made a significant impact in the public arena as an explanation of the Asian financial crisis. It is also used to describe governmental decisions favoring "cronies" of governmental officials. In this context, the term is often used interchangeably with corporate welfare; to the extent that there is a difference, it may be the extent to which a government action can be said to benefit individuals rather than entire industries...
Crony capitalism exists along a continuum. In its lightest form, crony capitalism consists of collusion among market players which is officially tolerated or encouraged by the government... The term crony capitalism is generally used when these practices come to dominate the economy as a whole or to dominate the most valuable industries in an economy...
It’s a bit to early for roasting chestnuts, though I suppose you could go for roasting pumpkin seeds near the fire. Heikki Mattila has given us this glorious little fireplace, complete with a stand for wood and kindling. The fireplace itself is lit with LEDs, which adds a very nice touch to the presentation. I particularly like the spindly tree off to the left, though I daresay it looks like it should be a bit further away from the heat source.
Serbian builder Djordje, who is at his best when creating large action figures, surprises us with this tiny sparrow. There’s nothing complicated in its structure, yet it looks so lively it could take flight the moment its creator was taking the picture. My favourite touch is the sparrow’s legs; I guess from now on I won’t be able to look at droid arms without thinking about birds…
Featured Image from SurlyAmy. You can get it on a shirt (or other product) here. See her awesome new Red Bubble shop for other designs!
A few days ago, we got a question about the third presidential debate sent to us through the contact form. With permission from the author, I am providing the question and answer I gave below, slightly edited for grammar and my answer is slightly edited to elaborate and include some links.
Feel free to chime in with your view in the comments!
My husband and I have had a lot of debates about the presidential debates. He himself is not sexist, our relationship is 50/50 and he never does sexist things himself, but as a white male, he doesn’t see the privilege he lives under. In fact, he feels like he has to walk on eggshells while minorities are granted more “freedom of speech.” Specifically, the “nasty woman” comment was difficult to explain why it was wrong and sexist. He said if Trump had said “nasty person” would it have been ok? Why is stating the fact that she is a woman sexist? I had a hard time explaining what that meant to me as a woman, a woman who has been talked down to in such a way.
How can I adequately explain why that was a sexist remark to someone who’s never known bias like that? How can I help me open-minded husband see that it really is a problem and why?
I’m not a woman and I don’t face sexism and misogyny like women do, but I can give you my take as a person who is eyeballs deep in gender studies and feminist theory.
It seems to me that the issue isn’t as much with “nasty woman” itself, but with the intended effect of “nasty woman” as well as how it fits into broader patterns of sexism. When Trump made that comment, Clinton wasn’t actually doing anything nasty. She was a politician engaged in politics, she made a sarcastic comment about Trump not paying taxes:
CLINTON: Well, Chris, I am on record as saying that we need to put more money into the Social Security Trust Fund. That’s part of my commitment to raise taxes on the wealthy. My Social Security payroll contribution will go up, as will Donald’s, assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it. But what we want to do is to replenish the Social Security Trust Fund…
TRUMP: Such a nasty woman.
It was a zinger, meant to highlight hypocrisy. If you compare Clinton’s remark to the things Trump was saying at the debate and has been saying for months, Clinton’s comment is really mild in comparison, not to mention it highlights an actual problem with Trump rather than an imagined one like Hillary’s failure to single-handedly changing the tax code. Why did Trump call her a “nasty woman”? Well, it plays on the gender normative trope that any time a woman isn’t being “sugar and spice and everything nice,” she’s a bad person who lacks character. It’s a double-standard. Men are allowed to be nasty—in fact, as we see with Trump, men are given the benefit of the doubt and their nastiness gets chalked up to being “boys just being boys” while women are expected to maintain their composure at all times and even the slightest hint of going off the normative gendered script is met with disdain and scorn.
Of course Trump says all kinds of awful things to all kinds of people, but the thing about sexism is that it’s not so much about the individual instances as it is about the patterns, such as how powerful men insult powerful women in an effort to play up our society’s sexist discomfort with powerful women (h/t Courtney for the link). I’m guessing the reason that “nasty woman” bothered you is because you instantly recognized it for what it was: an insult that was meant to have the particular effect of disparaging a woman’s character when she was doing something men do without comment all the time. Even if he had said “nasty person,” it still would have been sexist because the issue isn’t whether he called her a woman or a person, but his insulting of her character is typical misogyny that women, both in and out of positions of power, are subjected to all the time.
I would encourage your husband to stop thinking of such things in isolation and start trying to recognize patterns. It is, of course, more difficult when one isn’t subjected to these things constantly, but if he’s open-minded and believes you when you say it’s sexist and it bothers you, he should try to see why it’s part of a larger ongoing pattern and not fall into the trap of thinking it’s just women being oversensitive to one specific comment (which would be a sexist response).
Featured Image from SurlyAmy. You can get it on a shirt (or other product) here. See her awesome new Red Bubble shop for other designs!
