Related to constant photography is an Phone app called Heard that buffers five minutes of audio, allowing you the option to save if anything interesting happens. (thx, andy)

Papa Francesco wearing Will Fry ” Portrait of Ian Connor “

Artwork by Stefano Carloni

doctordonna10:

al-bayyinah:

ahhjibbliejibblie:

WHAT IF other planetary bodies orbited our world at the same distance as the moon?

whoa Jupiter kinda in my personal bubble thanks

Jupiter would actually be terrifying.

Is that Earth orbiting Earth

Alan Taylor recently investigated where Google Maps' Street View coverage ends -- "whether blocked by geographic features, international borders, or simply the lack of any further road" -- and compiled a photographic look at the ends of the road.

(via @faketv)

Nicky and Max via Architizer

John Brownlee traces the ubiquitous @ symbol from its obscure beginnings:

Ever since the 1500s, and for hundreds of years after, the only people who used @ were bookkeepers, who used it as a shorthand to show how much they were selling or buying goods for: for example, “3 bottles of wine @ $10 each.”

Since these bookkeepers used @ to deal with money, a certain degree of whimsical fondness for the character developed over time.

In Danish, the symbol is known as an “elephant’s trunk a”; the French call it an escargot. It’s a streudel in German, a monkey’s tail in Dutch, and a rose in Istanbul. In Italian, it’s named after a huge amphora of wine, a liquid some Italian bookkeepers have been known to show a fondness for.

Even with such cute names to recommend it, though, @ languished in obscurity for three and a half centuries, only ending up on a new invention called the typewriter when salesmen realized that accountants and bookkeepers were buying them in droves. In 1971, however, a keyboard with a vestigial @ symbol inherited from its typewriter ancestors found itself hooked up to an ARPANET terminal manned by Ray Tomlinson, who was working on a little program he’d come up with in his goofing-off time to send messages from computer to computer. Tomlinson ended up using the @ symbol as the fulcrum of the lever that ultimately ended up lifting the world into the digital age: email.

Previous Dish on the origins of Internet symbols here.

(Image: Evidence of the usage of @ to signify French “à” (meaning “at”) from a 1674 protocol from a Swedish lower court and magistrate, via Wikimedia Commons)

Toe shoes…AND sandals.

...and rainbow socks.

Via: reddit.com

I’m guessing that when technology permits us to design and produce our own clothes as easily as we do our websites, we’ll go beyond jeans and start making our outfits a little more distinctive. These one-at-at-time items will be supremely personalized, unique. And a return to the way wardrobes of past were once also made one-at-a-time into distinctly personal items. When that moment comes, you might want to lose yourself in this massive 600-page archive, which catalogs the full diversity of costumes from around the world. Over 1,000 glorious illustrations, in astounding ethnographic variety. Tribal, royalty, folk. Outerwear, footwear, headgear, armor. It is the best one-volume summary of Fashion on Earth I’ve seen. (It’s expensive, so check it out at your library.)

-- KK

The Worldwide History of Dress
Patricia Rieff Anawalt
2007, 608 pages
$67

Available from Amazon

Sample Excerpts:

A circumcision waistcoat possibly from the Hebron Hills during the British Mandate period, or earlier. The groundcloth is Atlas satin, a luxury fabric woven with a silk wrap and a cotton weft. The front of the waistcoat is thickly covered with a variety of coins, the better to express the high social value of the boy wearing it. Length 11 7/8 in. (30cm).

*

The 19th-century tall hats and enveloping cloaks of certain of the Welsh peasantry were markedly behind the times. These garments bear a decided resemblance to the popular image of a witch precisely because they were the characteristic wear of the time of witchcraft persecutions of the 1630s.

*

Above her richly patterned sleeveless coat, worn over an ornate red silk dress with high shoulder pads, a stand-up collar and blue turned-up cuffs–an outstanding example of the festive dress of the 19th-century Mongolian nobility–this Chalka tribeswoman models the “sheephorn headdress.”

*

Front and back views of a Micronesian warrior suit made of knotted coconut-palm fiber. The accompanying upper-body armor is sturdily constructed of plaited bast fiber. Length 32 1/2 in. (82.5cm), width 15 in. (38cm).

*

A walrus-gut kamleika made by the Yup’ik people of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, in the mid- to late 19th century. It is adorned with beaks and small feathers of the crested auklet. Length 43 in. (109.2 cm), width 54 in. (137 cm).

*

This 1950s Conibo man is clad is a cushma, a long, wide, poncho-like cotton tunic that has been worn in the area since prehispanic times. The brown to black dye used in decorating these garments is obtained by boiling mahogany bark.

This is a great solution to a vexing problem – drilling round stock exactly in the middle using a drill-press. The round stock fits snugly in the V-shaped channel so there’s no need to clamp it down. I’m sure there are other solutions like this, but this is the only one I have used.

Center the V-Block by lowering your drill (with the power off), then clamp the V-block off and you are ready to drill.

-- Les Hall

Center-It
$16

Available from Amazon

Submitted by: yandim

Miloslav Druckmüller, a Czech photographer from the Brno University of Technology, created this stunning image. The photographer chose a remote location to get more clarity, and shot over 40 pictures he assembled to achieve this wonderful effect. Via Colossal.

The Peregrine Falcon is the world's fastest animal¹; it can reach speeds of more than 240 mph during dives. It uses that speed to kill other birds in mid-air. Here's a video of a Peregrine diving and killing a duck, shot with a camera mounted on the falcon's back.

It's cool watching her fly around, but the exciting part starts right around 2:45. The acceleration is incredible. The same bird does a longer and faster dive in this video (at ~0:55):

Here's what the Peregrine's dive looks like from an observer's point-of-view:

Our family had a lively discussion about Peregrine Falcons around the dinner table a couple of weeks ago...I can't wait to show the kids these videos when I get home tonight. (via @DavidGrann)

[1] Although Joseph Kittinger and Felix Baumgartner might quibble with that. ↩

A fairly bland-looking woman, which is quite apropos.

Blatantly stolen from ANIMAL New York, which is New York City's best culture website.

The print, by artist and world's most famous photography appropriator Richard Prince, is titled Jerry's Girl.

Prince says: "This a composite of all of Jerry Seinfeld's girlfriends. There were 57 over the course of the show."

It will be available soon, for all you Jerry groupies.

Biologist and blogger Joe Hanson writes about an interesting custom among some marine biologists and ocean scientists, who "spend weeks and months in cramped conditions aboard research vessels, doing science that’s a bit unlike any other science, and drinking enough to make Jack Sparrow proud." Some of them like to send styrofoam cups to the bottom of the ocean, where pressure converts them into fabulously smushed and small-ified souvenirs:

When exploring deep ocean trenches and thermal vents, it’s usually a robot or a high-tech manned submersible doing the dirty work. The Cayman trough (where the top cup went) is home to some of the world’s deepest hydrothermal vents. At around 5,000 meters deep, the cup experiences nearly 500 times the pressure we experience at sea level. And since styrofoam is a foam made of air pockets inside a hydrocarbon polymer, it compresses under the added weight!

More pix here. [itsokaytobesmart.com via @edyong209]

This 2007 profile of Hubert Duprat's work with caddis fly larvae is a tiny, entomological miracle. The larvae build their cocoons with whatever material is at hand; Duprat forces them to build with gold and precious gems, making spectacular bio-organic jewelry.

Duprat, who was born in 1957, began working with caddis fly larvae in the early 1980s. An avid naturalist since childhood, he was aware of the caddis fly in its role as a favored bait for trout fishermen, but his idea for the project depicted here began, he has said, after observing prospectors panning for gold in the Ariège river in southwestern France. After collecting the larvae from their normal environments, he relocates them to his studio where he gently removes their own natural cases and then places them in aquaria that he fills with alternative materials from which they can begin to recreate their protective sheaths. He began with only gold spangles but has since also added the kinds of semi-precious and precious stones (including turquoise, opals, lapis lazuli and coral, as well as pearls, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds) seen here. The insects do not always incorporate all the available materials into their case designs, and certain larvae, Duprat notes, seem to have better facility with some materials than with others. Additionally, cases built by one insect and then discarded when it evolves into its fly state are sometimes recovered by other larvae, who may repurpose it by adding to or altering its size and form.

Artist Project / Trichopterae (via Neil Gaiman)

(Photos: Jean-Luc Fournier)

Ancient Romans did everything from drinking gladiator blood to washing clothes in urine.

Gladiator blood was recommended by Roman physicians to aid various ailments, including epilepsy and infertility.

Purple clothing was a status symbol and reserved only for emperors or senators. To achieve the color, a dye was made from Murex seashells. It was treason for anyone other than the emperor to dress completely in purple.

Emperor Claudius' third wife, Valeria Messalina, was a nymphomaniac. According to ancient historians, she once competed with a prostitute to see who could have the most sexual partners in a night.

Phalluses were considered good luck charms. They were worn as charms on necklaces or hung in doorways as wind chimes as a way to ward off evil spirits.

Via: christies.com

View Entire List ›

First used in 1994 with the beta release of Netscape, the "broken image" icon has become a staple of web browsing. In this Quora question, Netscape's original UI designer gives credit to Marsh Chamberlin of DataGlyph for creating the first, literally-iconic rendition of a shattered frame containing a sphere, pyramid, and cube. Since then, some browsers have used variations of the theme while others, like Safari, have gone with their own idea like a question mark for Apple's own browser. Until earlier this year, Google's Chrome browser had been using its own take on the original but one thing we know is that you can't contain Google to the status quo. A new broken image icon has started appearing across users' Chrome browser this year and since we've covered Google's favicon, not once but twice, I thought it would be relevant to cover this minor yet significant change.

The above is a broken image on purpose. Depending on what browser you are reading this in you will see Chrome's icon or you will be stuck with one from the competition.

Detailed view.

How other browsers render broken images: Safari and Explorer use graphic icons while others simply spit out dashes. And, of course, there is the granddaddy of all broken image icons, Netscape's.

The icon is built on a strict pixel grid and forefront circular and diagonal planes.

The icon has a limited, 3-color palette.

As much as I am used to not just Chrome's old broken image icon but the overall shattered-sphere-pyramid-cube approach I never found it particularly attractive. Effective? Sure. Something's broken and it ain't fixed. But in terms of elevating the genre of communication through iconography, most browsers have opted for the path of least resistance and have simply regurgitated the first idea that someone came up with 19 years ago. And as usual, Google is showing us the way to a better future where broken image icons are not some abstract-futurist-dadaist thingamajig but something that the larger population of the world will understand and appreciate the fact that something's missing: the uplifting image of a mountaintop with a striking blue sky behind and a lone white cloud floating accross it signal the loss of something meaningful, something universal, something… that is not there. No more. Chrome's new icon retains the equity of depicting a shattered image, maintaining a thread of continuity with the previous icon and with the broader language of image brokenness.

Google didn't stop at just making a more humane broken image icon, it's making sure that the icon is targeted, personalized, and highly localized as shown in the variations below.

Not yet implemented, the icon will eventually change depending on each user's time zone and it will recognize whether it's day or night.

Since Google is already using your location every time you search in their Maps application, the icon will also be able to change depending on where you are.

Google's technical superiority on the web is unquestionable and its interest in other ventures like self-driving cars demonstrate that the company's ambitions extend beyond their ability to control online search and targeted advertising and the broken image icon is currently being developed as a proxy in real-world applications. Most of it is pie-in-the-sky thinking at the moment but lest you forget that not too far off people will have a browser/camera in their glasses, Google's experiments may arrive quicker than the jetpacks we've all been waiting for.

At Google X Lab, a team is working on embedding the icon's functionality into applications outside the browser. Like an image in a magazine that didn't make it to press.

Or when the graphics team at local news channels do not load the proper image.

And, of course, it will also work on Google Glass.

As the last few images below attest, Google has also made sure that the new broken image icon is embraced by users to wear, customize, and, simply, have fun with it. Make it their own. This is especially meaningful as the presence of a broken image icon means that something has been taken away from the user, Google is giving back a little bit of the internet back to them by making the icon an image with global appeal for them to embrace. Overall, this is a fantastic evolution and we'll see if other browsers feel pressure to, as it were, mend their own broken image icons.

Understanding the importance of cross-generational and hobbyist appeal, the icon will appeal to grandmothers and DIY hipsters as is evidenced by this cross-stitch application.

One can never underestimate the power of badges (or pins or buttons, no matter what you call them), below, to rally people.

To conclude, however, in a note of pessimism, I do have to wonder if Google's choice of image is nothing more than a jab at Microsoft and how they have overtaken them as one of the premier tech players. If so, well played Google. The message is loud and clear: All your image are belong to us.

Is it just me or does the new icon resemble a little too much Window XP's ubiquitous "Bliss" wallpaper?

WHAT.IN.THE.FUCK?

I saw this fucking thing from Saveur in my inbox today nominating Thug Kitchen as one of the best new food blogs for 2013. I was responding to fan mail when I saw this shit and my ass thought it was spam for sure.

Thug Kitchen wouldn’t have been noticed for this award without all you guys so… shit, thanks. I’m honored as fuck for the nomination especially since I share it with some real talented motherfuckers.

If any of y’all feel like showing some love with a vote, click here (it’s legit I promise). Honestly, if we can just get “FUCK” up anywhere on their site I will consider this a huge win.