Colombia-based artist Diana Beltran Herrera (previously here and here) has been fascinated by birds since she was a child, however it wasn’t until four years ago that she started working with their forms. Her incredibly lifelike depictions are built entirely out of cut paper and imitate a variety of bird species from all over the world. Each iteration of her work we have followed with intrigue, including one of her latest projects which incorporates her sculptural pieces into oversized postage stamps from countries which she has always admired.
“I always felt inspired by postage stamps as they are little windows of the world,” said Herrera to Colossal, “specifically those that contain birds which are often traveling around the word. I have collected a few and I felt that I wanted to open those stamps to a much more realistic scale to learn more about that particular animal and its landscape.”
Interested in wildlife far beyond its aesthetics, Herrera is also concerned with the ethical treatment of animals, especially when it comes to the illegal wildlife trade of birds happening in her country and abroad. You can see more of her paper sculptures of birds, fruits, and flowers on her Instagram and Facebook.
Yeah, I have to agree with the footnote. The standard technique takes me like 5 seconds. Burrito, at least 15?
Here’s a technique for putting a comforter inside a duvet cover that involves rolling the whole thing up “like a burrito” and then two solid pieces of matter somehow pass through each other? I dunno, that is some goddamned witchcraft that defies the laws of physics and topology and is probably related to at least one of the Millennium Prize Problems. I don’t know if it’s easier than doing it the normal way1 but it certainly is more entertaining.
And by “the normal way” I mean getting both top corners of the comforter in the corresponding corners of the cover, stuffing the rest of the comforter inside the cover, and giving it a couple of shakes while holding the top edge until it settles in…and not whatever infomercial-ish head-inside-the-cover shenanigans the woman was attempting in the video. Once you get this down, it doesn’t really take that long.↩
You’re hurrying along the sidewalk on the way to work, running late and not in the greatest mood, when you see a sign in the adjacent field that simply reads “PLEASE WAIT HERE, YOUR FUTURE SELF WILL MEET YOU SHORTLY.” How does that affect your day? Little moments like these can bring some much-needed levity to the world around us, especially in dark times.
Impeccably produced, often enticing you to push a button or take a card, these guerrilla installations look pretty legit until you stop to read what they say. They’re easy to miss, if you’re hustling too quickly and tuning out your surroundings – but if you take a moment to notice them, they might just make you smile.
Artist Michael Pederson (aka Miguel Marquez Outside) creates these little interventions and puts them up all over his home city. Sometimes they’re site-specific, referring to things that can be found in the local environment, like a hole in the curb or a sidewalk that ends abruptly.
The personal space cards would actually be pretty handy, and who wouldn’t be tempted by a time travel pay phone? Check out more of Pederson’s work at his tumblr and Instagram.
It’s all too easy to get stuck in a routine, walking through the city on autopilot without even noticing what’s around you. Urban guerrilla street artists seek to shake things up, force you ...
How much more welcoming would a city environment seem if it were filled with friendly creatures? German artist Timm Schneider is filling Weisbaden with very strange beings that are not only ...
Everyday objects and imperfections in the urban surfaces of Paris become part of strange and unexpected scenes as French artist Levalet incorporates them into life-sized street art. A bull head ...
Donald Trump, who upended American politics and energized voters angry with Washington, was sworn in today as the 45th president of the United States, putting Republicans back in control of the White House for the first time in eight years.
US President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and their families watch a member of the Talladega College marching band perform during the Inaugural Parade.
(Patrick Smith//Getty Images)
Maxime also shows us a section of animated reaction-diffusion patterns, where simple chemical feedback mechanisms can yield complex flowing bands of colour — these forms of system were originally thought up by Alan Turing, and were part of the early seeds of the field of systems biology, which seeks to simulate life with computers, in order to better understand the systems producing the complexity we see in the living world. They were also the starting point of my main research area many years ago before I got lost in music! (where I began with the question of what patterns could be produced via reaction-diffusion forms of system as opposed to gene-regulatory network controlled patterning).
There’s a blue brain coral pattern at the 1:30 mark and a neuron-ish pattern at 2:30 that I wish would go on forever. Headphones recommended, psychoactive drugs optional. (via colossal)
Okay, so this is a couple of years old now, but I'm a sucker for unintentional poetry. Times Haiku is a tumblr created by New York Times senior software architect Jacob Harris, using an algorithm that pulls unintentional haiku-able strings of words from NYT stories. And it is wonderful. As well as exposing lovely snapshots of zen hidden within popular culture, it also serves as an interesting news aggregator – I'd gladly pore over the morning's headlines in this format.
“The man who has just left his wife or his profession or both often stops shaving temporarily. The resulting beard, as it develops, will most obligingly give him the different successive aspects appropriate to the stages of psychological and social development he is about to pass through. That is, first it makes him look like someone caught in a natural disaster—flood, earthquake, fire; then it makes him look like a bum; then like a shipwrecked mariner; and finally like a desperado. Eventually the man either returns to his wife and/or job (or to a very similar wife and job) and shaves off his beard; or else he changes his life permanently, in which case the beard (if allowed to survive) takes its final form and becomes part of his new persona.”
Apologies for 2016, let’s say it was a rebuilding year (and i did do a lot of building…). 2017 will make up for it by seeing the release of all the stuff i was working on last year (including this new comic), so stay tuned, and thanks sincerely for waiting– i’ll try and make it worth your while…
Mini signal boost. Sigh. I haven't used LJ for years, but I was a big ol' permanent user in the day. Probably time to hit delete. :(
Signal-boosting this news as I know a few people still maintaining a LiveJournal who might choose to delete it, or change their use of LiveJournal after learning about this.
LiveJournal is now hosted in Russia
As of late December 2016, the LiveJournal servers (computers) are now hosted in Russia. While LiveJournal has been owned by Russian company SUP since 2007, the servers had until now been hosted in the US and access to them somewhat controlled by Californian law.
SUP has, to the best of my knowledge, not announced or commented on this themselves, but there’s more information at rahirah’s Dreamwidth journal with links to different evidence of the new location of the servers.
A Russian-language LiveJournaller appears to report that Russian law then allows that all the confidential information of [LiveJournal] users is available for [Russian] domestic security services in real time [note though that that’s a automated translation].
A new law imposing restrictions on users of social media has come into effect in Russia.
It means bloggers with more than 3,000 daily readers must register with the mass media regulator, Roskomnadzor, and conform to the regulations that govern the country’s larger media outlets.
Internet companies will also be required to allow Russian authorities access to users’ information.
if you’re in Russia or vulnerable to Russia, and a political opponent, you could now be more easily identified by Russian security
regardless of where you are, your LiveJournal could be possibly be deleted without notice for expressing opposition to Russia or its interests or for other content censored in Russia (eg LGBT-related content)
the flight of LiveJournal users from LiveJournal following this news could simply kill the business and cause everyone’s journals to disappear without notice (Archive Team is storing public entries, regarding it as an at-risk site)
Readers’ connections to LiveJournal aren’t private
What this means is that the content of any entries you read, including locked ones by both you and other people, are trivially visible to anyone who can eavesdrop on your net connection, including (often) other people on your local network, and anyone on the path between you and LiveJournal such as your ISP and anyone with access to the data flowing across international cables or access to the data as it enters the Russian hosting facility, whereas https connections are encrypted in a way such that those people can see that data is flowing but can’t read it absent considerably more niche and intensive technical measures. (Even if HTTPS were turned on by LiveJournal, you wouldn’t be safe from the Russian law, since they can ask LiveJournal itself to turn over your data in addition to whatever nation-state attacker level techniques they can employ.)
Given my experience with LiveJournal RSS feeds, I’m fairly sure this has been true for some time, predating the move of the servers to Russia. (Here’s one other report that this was already true as of September 2016.) Regardless of timing, this speaks of, at best, disregard for the privacy of their users’ explicitly private (because friends-locked!) information. It’s 2017, mandatory HTTPS for transmission of any data that is sensitive or might, conceivably, somehow, maybe, be sensitive is an absolute minimum standard for user safety. LiveJournal doesn’t even have optional “if you have HTTPS Everywhere installed” or “if you remember to stick the s into the URL yourself” HTTPS (which would still be insufficient as you cannot control whether your readers use HTTPS when reading your journal).
Getting your content out of LiveJournal
If based on this you choose to delete your LiveJournal, here are some options to keep your entries. This list isn’t comprehensive.
If you want to move the content to another website, here’s some blogging platforms that provide imports from LiveJournal:
If you want to download your entries for private use, you can:
use LiveJournal’s own export tool but rather painfully (you’ll have to do one download per month), and without comments
use ljdump on the command line, which worked for me as of 2015 when I deleted my LiveJournal, but will require that you’re an experienced command line user
use BlogBooker to export it to a Word or PDF file (disclosure: I haven’t used this site in quite some time, and would appreciate hearing if it works, but I suggest people at least try it because it exports to a non-programmer friendly format that people could keep as a private archive, and claims to include comments and images)
If your LiveJournal made use of their photo hosting, I am not sure which backup solutions will import your photos or how they will be stored. I am also not aware of any import tool that replaces LiveJournal entries with a “this entry has moved to URL” message or similar. If anyone is working on a competing LiveJournal import/export tool, photo export and redirection text are both features that my friends and I would have found useful at various times.
It's in Casey, Illinois.From Atlas Obscura:........................................................The otherwise unassuming town of Casey, Illinois is home to an outsized number of the world's largest things.The odd collection of giant objects includes a rocking chair, wind chime, mailbox, golf tee, and pitchfork — all located downtown.With chimes suspended 49 feet above the ground, the massive wind chime (located at 109 E Main St.) stands 55 feet tall and is a sight to behold.The longest of the five chimes is 42 feet long — nearly double that of the previous world record holder.The chimes sing gentle and deep as they strike the clapper.On display across from the huge wind chime (at 100-198 E Main St.) is the world's largest rocking chair (top).The chair, which was topped off on August 25, 2015, is 56.5 feet tall and weighs 46,200 pounds.It beats the previous largest chair (42 feet, 1 inch tall) in Fanning, Missouri, which held the record for over seven years.A supremely impressive construction effort, a massive mailbox (1-79 W Main St.) features a door that opens and closes by means of a cable winch.The world's largest golf tee was placed behind the clubhouse at the Casey Country Club (203 NE 13th St.) in 2013.The golf tee measures more than 30 feet from the ground to the top, with a head diameter of 6.26 feet and a shaft diameter of 2.1 feet, and is constructed with yellow pine boards held together by 60 gallons of glue and 120 pounds of screws.The total structure weighs 6,659 pounds.Things just keep getting bigger and bigger in Casey as the latest installment is a large pitchfork at Richard's Farm Restaurant (607 NE 13th St.).At 60 feet long and weighing 1,940 pounds, this creation is one of the new items in Casey vying for the Guinness World Record.
source: hundreds of amazon reviews for fire extinguishers
transcript:
i like to be prepared for anything from fire to burning and i think everyone should own a lot of these extinguishers.
we needed one for my husband who had been unable to use any of the fire extinguishers in his work truck and i bought two extinguishers for my car and then i bought 4 extinguishers for my daughters of the road and i ordered several thousand of them for my different trucks and cars.
i have tested it on the highway and i am somewhat concerned that the status of the jeep is on fire but i feel safer knowing that i have this extinguisher.
for my son’s new truck i bought multiple extinguishers so he could have them around just in case a fire breaks out in his life or property. he said that this will be very important because he says that it seems like a fire can kill him in a matter of minutes. classic example of a guy who has become fascinated with the wood of his mind.
that was about 10 years ago when i was crazy but i was very effective.
later we were remnants of a lot of space but i have one of these babies strapped to my husband and he is the perfect size. it takes a fire to grab my husband and he says ‘no way to keep the chemicals from burning you to the ground.’ thank goodness i do not have a reason to deploy this device on my father who is on fire oops.
one of my kids is training to be a fire extinguisher and he says that this product gives him a fire in his head and that he would like to keep it. i decided it was recommended to be here with the results of my life. i hope to never need to replace another of the kids.
Two of the best dressed 1/6th scale action figures you’ll ever see. Clothing designed by Monika Hegedus Strada of Hegemony77.
If you follow my posts here on Dangerous Minds you know that I’m kind of a huge freak when it comes to action figures. But even with my extensive experience...
Honestly…It makes me really uncomfortable when people draw Leia’s Episode 4 Dress as being really tight with a big slit up the leg, because that’s not how it was at all??
It doesn’t even cling to her breasts or anything?? There’s like…a Small knee length slit, I guess, if you look hard enough. But this, and most other outfits of Leia’s, strike me as incredibly modest and professional. In fact, Lets take a look at that for a second.
Look at what she chooses to wear on Cloud City in Episode 5.
Like…It’s a dress with pants? And I think this was probably an outfit she either A.) Packed for the trip on the falcon or B.) Was provided to her by Lando, And I find it hard to believe that Lando would force an outfit on her, considering he was very nice to her in previous scenes. She would have chosen it out of several different options.
I won’t add pictures, but her White Hoth outfit also consists of a jacket and pants. It’s sensible. They’re in the freezing cold. Why would she wear something sexy. She Wouldn’t.
There are honestly only two instances over the course of three movies where she /kind/ of shows skin. Instance 1 is at the end of Episode 1 where she…Kind of, I guess, Has some cleavage showing?
Like Barely. Keep in mind as well that this dress is floor length and has long sleeves. The second instance is at the end of Episode 6 on Endor
This slit is definitely more revealing, but to be honest, I can’t remember a single time in Episode 6 where it was apparent? They Honestly may have just done this for promotional material? Other pictures of the dress come off as much more modest
I’ve worn dresses shorter than this, so, I wouldn’t exactly consider this revealing by any means.
So when does Leia put on something a little sexier? There’s gotta be one instance right?
Yeah, Against her fucking will.
What I’m getting at here is that I hate the weird sexualization of Leia in Nerd Culture. It’s literally so rampant. It’s not surprising to me whatsoever, but it still makes me mad.
Leia Organa, a 19 year old Freedom Fighter personally fucking chose to dress modestly and people still depict her as this oversexualized Male Gaze Fantasy Being and it’s really disappointing tbfh.
(Please note: Leia strangled the motherfucker who put her in that bikini. Just sayin’.)
Design projects by
Yuichiro Katsumoto
are inventive robotic display systems for alpha-numeric characters:
A number or letter is a two-dimensional symbol. Also,
it is a static image. But we cannot write a letter without moving our
bodies and spending time. Thus, we can consider that each number or
letter potentially has a time axis. In order to reveal this time axis,
the device called Mojigen and Sujigen were created.
Mojigen and Sujigen are also called as “One-Stroke” in English and “一筆” in Chinese.
