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The Making Of: @PhloemStudio’s Hand-Built Furniture

Phloem Studio (@phloemstudio)—named after the vascular structure of plants—is the Portland, Oregon-based creation of furniture designer and craftsman Benjamin Klebba.

From its North Portland workshop, Phloem produces beautiful, hand-crafted furniture and documents the process through Instagram. Says Ben, “I post pictures of designs coming together, furniture parts in process, the finished pieces, as well as things that catch my eye in everyday life.” Instagram is also a source of daily inspiration. “I’ve found many creative types out there who I admire,” Ben says.

To add a regular dose of furniture envy to your feed, follow @phloemstudio on Instagram.

What you should know about the Black Swan unpaid intern case

The ballerinas weren’t the only tortured souls on the set of Black Swan. Some of the unpaid interns on the set found themselves doing the kind of menial labor (i.e. grabbing coffee) that they didn’t go to school for. And on Wednesday, a court agreed, ruling that 1) the interns should have been paid for their time and 2) opened up the company behind the film, Fox Entertainment Group, up for a class-action lawsuit. “Judge [William H.] Pauley’s ruling might still symbolize the tipping point in the battle over unpaid internships. Unless a higher court steps in, some judges might choose to follow his lead in the future,” The Atlantic’s Jordan Weissmann writes, noting that the case could scare some companies off from using unpaid interns for liability reasons. (Side note: We’ve been following the unpaid internship issue lately, and I wrote a Medium post about the topic you should read.)

(thanks Sara Schwartz)

bonging:

mermaid bowling

For the first time, the

As the Prism/NSA leaks story unfolds, many Americans are left with a cynical "are you surprised?" response that rather misses the point. Recent American history is full of stories of spies using surveillance to target civil rights heroes like Martin Luther King, who was heavily surveilled during the Kennedy administration, culminating with the FBI sending him an anonymous package with evidence of his adultery and a note telling him to kill himself.

Here's a video and transcript of an excellent Chris Hayes editorial on MSNBC in which Hayes reminds us that America's spooks can and do use intelligence to attack causes that are later seen as being on the side of justice:

In 1964, after Hoover called King the most "notorious liar in the country" in a press conference, a package was sent to King in the mail, a package the House select committee ultimately traced back to the FBI. Inside this package, one of the most remarkable artifacts in American history was an anonymous letter addressed to Martin Luther King and a copy of an electronic surveillance tape apparently to lend credence to threats of exposure of derogatory personal information made in the letter. We don't know to this day for sure what was on that tape. The heavy speculation throughout the years it was of personal and sexual nature recorded by a device planted in Dr. King's hotel room.

The letter that came with the tape read in part, "you know you are complete fraud and a great liability to all of us negroes. The American public will know you for what you are, an evil abnormal beast. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation." The committee considered it highly likely that Director Hoover had before the fact knowledge of the action.

So that's a letter encouraging Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to kill himself, sent to King from the FBI. This happened in American history. It's just one example out of many of how the full weight of the surveillance state constructed to fight the cold war was used against the people working for racial equality. It may have been constructed to defeat the Russians and the genuine threat of global communism, but it was deployed on people like Carmichael and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Chris Hayes: "It's not some Orwellian abstraction. It's America's history" (via Making Light)

Trevor Moore of Whitest Kids U’ Know tells us what we can do about the NSA wiretapping our phones in this parody PSA brought to you by Funny or Die.

via http://fuckyeahdementia.com/

via http://onlycoolstuff.tumblr.com/post/11775328857/skate

obscuruslupa:

catsnorfle:

Photos of Patrick Stewart doing things.

(All photos: @SirPatStew)

Ha ha, the Picard one.

If you happen to be in New York this weekend stop by Art of the Brick, the upcoming solo show by artist Nathan Sawaya at the Discovery Times Square museum. The collection of LEGO sculptures is being billed as “the world’s biggest and most elaborate display of LEGO art ever and will feature brand-new, never-before-seen pieces by Sawaya.” The show opens tomorrow and runs through January 5th, 2014.

Side note: Sawaya is trying to get enough votes over on LEGO CUUSSOO to have one of his orignal artworks turned into an actual LEGO set. All imagery above courtesy Discovery Times Square. (via laughing squid)

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i’m placing my bet on needing some celebratory champagne.

whenever the ruling does come through, i hope that you, regardless of location, join this california girl in a toast to what i’m sure will be a celebration for equal rights, as well as the proud day when my state can finally reenter the 21st-century.

slowly but surely. slowly… but surely.

Above, A Basic Demonstration of Optical Cloaking. Cloaking is a term for hiding an object from view at specific frequencies, but evidently one can cloak things DIY-style with four mirrors and their precise placement.

So before reading further, how is the illusion above happening? Any guesses?

Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester John Howell and his 14 year-old son Benjamin built three uni-directional optical cloaking devices with everyday materials. For around $150, they put together “one made of Plexiglass and water, another of inexpensive lenses, and a third constructed using ordinary mirrors.” The video demonstration above shows one of the devices and two of his sons… sometimes. 

What might this small feat of optical engineering be used for? Since it’s uni-directional it has limitations, but in theory, it could hide satellites orbiting Earth. You can read more about how Professor Howell’s devices work in the videos notes, here on arXiv.org, or on MIT Technology Review.

There are also a few more videos with mirrors in the archives.

Thanks, @AmebaCuriosa.

A customer closed out his million-dollar account after his bank refused to validate a 50-cent parking ticket.

Conceptual artist Lisa Park has been experimenting with a specialized device called a NeuroSky EEG headset that helps transform brain activity into streams of data that can be manipulated for the purposes of research, or in this case, a Fluxus-inspired performance art piece titled Euonia (Greek for “beautiful thought”). Park used the EEG headset to monitor the delta, theta, alpha, and beta waves of her brain as well as eye movements and transformed the resulting data with specialized software into sound waves. Five speakers are placed under shallow dishes of water which then vibrate in various patterns in accordance with her brain activity.

While the system is not an exact science, Park rehearsed for nearly a month by thinking about specific people whom she had strong emotional reactions to. The artist then correlated each of the five speakers with certain emotions: sadness, anger, hatred, desire, and happiness. According to the Creator’s Project her hope had been to achieve a sort of zen-like state resulting in complete silence, however it proved to be ultimately unattainable, a result that is actually somewhat poetic.

It’s important to note that artists have long been using EEG devices to create “music with the mind”. Composer and experimental musician Alvin Lucier had a somewhat similar performance called Music for Solo Performer back in 1965. Read more about Euonia over on the Creator’s Project. (via booooooom)

nevver:

Poorly drawn lines

24 more days to get in on the new gamebook!

I’m enjoying these spray painted birds by Brazilian artist L7m. The mix of realism that morphs into more frenetic strokes of spray paint is really fun. Some of the photos you see here were taken on the streets, while others are works on canvas. See much more over on Facebook. (via street art utopoia)

A Ladydrawers History of Women's Rights, Part VI: "The Crazy Cat Lady":

via http://www.soup.io/friends

Sushi Yasuda, an upscale restaurant in New York City, is attracting attention for its decision to get rid of tips for waitstaff. Instead of a line for diners to write in a tip amount on their receipts, Sushi Yasuda has printed the following statement: “Following the custom in Japan, Sushi Yasuda’s service staff are fully compensated by their salary. Therefore gratuities are not accepted.”