firehose

Korean Coffee shop / Camera

Historical Map: Proposed Cincinnati Rapid Transit System with Subway, c.1912

And here’s where Cincinnati’s long, troubled history with public transit began…

This map shows early route plans for a proposed rapid transit system, roughly corresponding to the modern Alternatives Analysis process. By 1917, a modification of Scheme IV as shown here was chosen and put to a public vote to procure $6 million worth of bonds for construction. The vote passed convincingly, but the United States had entered World War I just eleven days previously – and the federal government had forbidden the issuance of bonds for capital works programs.

The project was put on hold.

When the war ended, estimated construction costs had more than doubled. Work began, but by the time money ran out in 1927, only a short 7-mile section had been dug or graded, and no actual track had been laid. The emergence of the automobile in the intervening years contributed to the project’s final downfall. Despite attempts to restart the project in the 1930s and 1940s, it remains uncompleted.

Four underground stations still remain in the short stretch of completed tunnel, while three at-grade stations were demolished in the 1960s when Interstate 75 was constructed. In the 1950s, a water main was laid through the tunnel, simply because it was already there and obviated the need for expensive tunneling. The original bond was finally paid off in 1966 at a total price of $13,019,982.45 – a lot of money for nothing.

More recently, the tunnels were proposed to be used as an integral part of the MetroMoves transit plan that was convincingly voted down in 2002.

Cincinnati’s transit woes continue to this day with the drawn-out and controversial Cincinnati Streetcar project, which has finally started construction.

Read more about the Cincinnati Subway here.

(Source: allensedge/Flickr)

Sara Herranz

Magritte / Nolan

Space-Age Buildings in Africa | Via

More than 30 years ago, Robert Farquhar stole a spacecraft.

Now he’s trying to give it back.

The green satellite, covered with solar panels, is hurtling back toward the general vicinity of Earth, after nearly three decades of traveling in a large, looping orbit around the sun.

If Farquhar, a former mission design specialist for NASA, gets his way, the agency will command the spacecraft to fire its thrusters, veer close to the moon, and slip back into the spot where it was intended to be when it was launched in 1978 — and where it was when Farquhar and his accomplices “borrowed” it.

Back in the 1980s, space agencies were racing to Halley’s Comet. But NASA wasn’t going — officials said a comet mission was too expensive. That did not sit well with Farquhar, who had dreamed of achieving the first comet encounter ever.

So he figured out how to divert an existing satellite, called the International Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE-3), that was stationed between the Earth and the sun in an innovative halo orbit that he had pioneered.

Farquhar came up with a complicated trajectory that would let this spacecraft intercept a different comet called in September of 1985, months before the armada of other space probes would arrive at Halley’s.

"We beat all the other countries of the world," recalls Farquhar. "The European Space Agency. The Russians. The Japanese."

President Reagan even sent him a congratulatory letter.

But some of the scientists who’d been using ISEE-3 to study things like solar wind were not amused by the comet caper.

"They thought that — it was in the newspapers, even — that we stole their spacecraft," says Farquhar. "We didn’t steal it; we just borrowed it for a while! That’s what I tried to tell them."

Read more: "Space Thief Or Hero? One Man’s Quest To Reawaken An Old Friend"

photo by Frank Relle


photo by Frank Relle


photo by Frank Relle


photo by Frank Relle


photo by Frank Relle

American gothic, NOLA by streetlight

Colors versus inks, from a page in Rocket Girl #4, out today.

This would be why I currently color myself…there are moments like these I leave a lot of the art to the colors, because I feel like it can look better that way.  Here’s what it looks like without all that Photoshoppy fun.  I’m always unsure whether I’ll be able to pull it off in the final product!

fastcodesign:

“The small ones, they specialize in cuteness. They try to be small and nice and cute.” - Tiny, 3-D Printed “Strandbeests” Are Like Pets You Never Have To Feed

Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper | Mies van der Rohe | Via

Perhaps inspired by photographs of the “high-reaching steel skeletons” of American skyscrapers under construction Mies van der Rohe’s vision of a tower more transparent than solid first became apparent with his entry for the Berlin Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper competition of 1921–22. As Detlef Mertins’ new book Mies reveals, the visionary project (although unbuilt) became the architect’s first major post-war design.

Mies used the competition to break with the past and boldly begin again at the beginning, for him personally and for his architecture. It was the architect’s first chance to explore a building type other than the country house and to develop his own ideas about modernization and metropolitan architecture. As Mertins points out, it was his first engagement with a metropolitan program (the high-rise office building) and a metropolitan building site (which adjoined a major train station), as well as new materials and technologies of construction.  

The program for the competition was itself unprecedented: a high-rise office building on Berlin’s major commercial street. The jury awarded prizes to a range of approaches represented in the 144 submissions. Whereas many entries attempted to assimilate the new scale and program to familiar organizational types and old styles (Gothic, classical or both), others sought to devise a new style. 

Dark Park

Gary Barnett, the founder and president of Extell Development Company, likely knew what he was getting into when he showed up to a recent town hall on super-tall skyscrapers rising in New York. The hundreds of people who crowded into a room at the New York Public Library were not there to praise these soaring towers. They were there to see what could be done to stop more from rising.

The town hall, which was organized by Manhattan Community Board 5, was focused on the long, dark shadows that these new buildings will cast deep into Central Park. Barnett’s company is behind two of the projects, but on the rainy February night, he was the face of all of them.

One of Extell’s towers is the nearly completed Christian de Portzamparc–designed One57, which is already blocking sunlight in Central Park. A panelist at the event, journalist Warren St. John, has experienced this firsthand. He told the crowd about the shadows that fell across the park as he tried to play with his daughter on a recent afternoon.

	Courtney shared this story from The ToastThe Toast:
	"Every morning, Quentin cradles in his arms and kisses a little trophy he made himself that says “I SCREAMED THE N-WORD AT SAM JACKSON”"

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Hey you! Do you like movies? Have a couple you love? Great, have a seat. I’ve got some news. Movies are trapped here on Earth and made by us awful humans, and they’re all bad. Yeah. Even the good ones.

1. GHOSTBUSTERS (1984): DAN AKROYD HAS A SEXUAL ENCOUNTER WITH A GHOST FOR SOME REASON

INT. Ghostbusters Writer’s Room

RICK MORANIS: Okay, so what do we have here?

HAROLD RAMIS: Well, my idea here is a montage, where we show the Ghostbusters’ business picking up after they capture the ghost in the hotel.

RICK: Alright, standard stuff. Casey Kasem mentions them on the countdown or whatever, you see their commercial on the tv-

DAN AKROYD: alright what if i’m asleep and a ghost sucks my dick

HAROLD: Wait, wh-

DAN: no no, stay with me here. Like, i’m snoozing, yeah? Fast asleep. And then WHAMMO, a ghost just undoes my belt, whoopsie-daisy, and goes to town and I make a “WAZOOO!!!” face or whatever, right at the camera

*

2. THE DEPARTED (2006): EVERYONE IS A RAT

Yeah, yeah. So the point of the movie is everyone is a big rat, right? Rats everywhere. They say the word “rat” 40 times a minute in this movie. So what if, after the final scene, a RAT just walked right in front of the camera! To stand in front of the Massachusetts state house? GET IT?! Great. I was going to put a photoshopped image of Marty Scorcese with hams for fists here, but I think that might be too subtle.

Oh, is that not your favorite Scorcese? Fine, it’s a little late in the game and it’s not his strongest. How about:

*

3. GOODFELLAS (1990): JOE PESCI SHOOTS YOU WITH METAPHORS

Henry Hill made it out alive right, but he’s really dead, you know? BLAMMO! Does Marty know how to end a movie? I’m worried.

And screw Sid Vicious and all, but that cover of “My Way” rules.

*

4. LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS (2002): LEGOLAS INVENTS SKATEBOARDING

This is fine when Marty McFly does it because he is FROM SKATEBOARD TIMES. I’m not comfortable with the idea of such radical elves.

*

5. PULP FICTION (1994): QUENTIN TARANTINO GETS AN ENTIRE 120 SECONDS OF SCREEN-TIME

This actually might have been a merely outdated scene with a better actor? It’s got that soft ‘n comfortable dialogue cadence that makes Tarantino movies special. But it’s beautiful QT, begging for us to love him.

Every morning, Quentin cradles in his arms and kisses a little trophy he made himself that says “I SCREAMED THE N-WORD AT SAM JACKSON”

*

6. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980): VADER’S DINNER PARTY

how was he eating

*

7. THEY LIVE (1988): THE WHOLE DARN THING

They Live is a really extraordinary movie, in which it’s the greatest movie of all time and yet is composed of the worst scenes ever put on film. I love it .

Let’s go on a journey together, sheeple.

Either put on these glasses, or start eating that trash can.

*

Read more Awful Scenes in Otherwise Great Movies at The Toast.

popular shared this story from xkcd.com.

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Turn Lists into Maps in Google Docs [Link] MindMeister is a really great web app for creating context maps. Now you can generate a map from a bulleted list in Google Docs without ever leaving the document. Here's a demo video of the process: MindMeister also integrates with Google Drive to store, create and access maps directly.

In my research for yesterday's history of ice cubes I looked into the various companies that are making cocktail-specific ice, but didn't write much about them so I thought the least I could do is list them here. Some are scultpure ice companies that end up delivering to cocktail bars, while others are bartender-created start-ups. Feel free to add others that you know about in the comments, noting that we're looking for companies that create cocktail ice, not solely ice sculpture companies. Image: Chisel-It Mammoth Ice - Sydney, Australia (Ships to Australia) On the Rocks Ice – Vancouver, Canada Eskimo...

[Visit Alcademics.com for the full post.]

submitted by therefore4 [link] [48 comments]

submitted by endomorphosis [link] [29 comments]

Startup notebook maker Baron Fig last year far surpassed its goal to crowdfund a first manufacturing order. Last week it opened an online store to sell its flagship notebook, “The Confidant.”

Co-founder Joey Cofone sat down with Quartz to walk through how that product differs from other notebooks. Cofone also discussed how his two-man company is different than its competitors in the $4.3 billion US stationery industry. (pdf)

Quartz: Let’s start off with the most basic notebook, the regular spiral. How is this different than your notebook?

Joey Cofone: Yeah so there’s a lot of stuff to take a look at with this book. I’ve used a few of these. Right off the bat, spiral falls apart pretty quickly. I’m not a big fan of spiral in that sense. The construction is weaker. But you can fold it all the way back, and that’s something we’re paying attention to in terms of version two and how to kind of bring this awesome functionality to the Confidant’s awesome structure.

Quartz: Do you think you can achieve that in a hard-bound, closed-spine, type of book?

Cofone: Yes, I believe there’s a way. I don’t know that way yet but I do know already that [the Confidant] gets really close to getting there. What we did was, we took out the board that’s in most spines. The boards are great because they protect it, but it’s harder to open flat because you don’t have a lot of flexibility with the signatures [the folded packets of bound paper.] We added more signatures and took out the boards. Basically more signatures means more joints and the more joints you have the more you can flex. There’s 12 signatures in the Baron Fig. I think standard in the books we’re looking at in comparable size and price have eight signatures.

Quartz: And do you have the same number of pages as similarly sized and priced books?

Cofone: They actually have slightly more pages. We have 192. I believe they have 220, but they have thinner paper. We went with a thicker, better-quality paper and cut down the pages a bit. People are loving our paper. There’s a ton of great reviews from fountain-pen enthusiasts. That was a surprise. A happy accident, but it wasn’t the goal.

Then using the cloth instead of straight cardboard to cover the book, people loved that too.

Quartz: Did you consider using leather like this book?

Cofone: We did. I’m not a big fan of leather.

Quartz: Is the plan for the Confidant 2 to be a second product or will it replace the first?

Cofone: We’re treating it like it’s in the middle between a tech product and an analog product. A product like Facebook or Nike Fuelband, they just iterate. We’re going to go that route and keep things simple and see what happens.

Quartz: Why is thinking of Baron Fig as a ‘tech company’ and treating the Confidant like a ‘tech product’ important?

Cofone: We’re expected to put this book out into the world and for it to stay static. Moleskine put their book out in 1997 and their flagship book has stayed the same the whole time. I think that’d be a missed opportunity for us and for people who use it to see a product they love grow and develop over time.

Quartz: Here is a pocket-sized version of a Moleskine—what are your thoughts?

Cofone: If you check out moleskine.com, you’ll see they advertise their books with zero humans, number one. And the other thing, is that they really feature visual art.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs, teachers, all sorts of non-visual artists, carry Moleskine and they don’t do visual art in their Moleskine. So there’s this separation, this disconnect, between how Moleskine is displaying their brand and how people are using them. And it’s vast.

When you’re displaying it a certain way then you tend to design it that certain way. You tend to appeal to that certain crowd.

Quartz: How did you decide on the size?

Cofone: Trial and error. It had to be small enough that I could throw in my bag but big enough that I could work in all day.

The ratio of the page is really important. I like Moleskine—they’re not bad—but I greatly dislike how tall they are. When I started showing people some of the early prototypes, they would pick it up and go, ‘Wow, this is wider, this is awesome.’

Quartz: Why not a book sized for throwing it in your breast pocket?

Cofone: It’s definitely something we’ve considered. And we can only do one thing at a time being so small. But it’s something we are considering. I used to have a Field Notes that I would keep in my breast pocket all the time and I love that size.

We found that the size of the Confidant is the most preferred and also the most versatile. This is something you can jot quick notes down and also use to do some more detailed work. Whereas with Field Notes, I pulled it out to take notes in it and put it back.

Quartz: Here are some books made from reused paper and other materials. Is the Confidant all-new materials? Is there any effort to create a less environmentally impacting book?

Cofone: It’s not as optimized as it can be right now and that’s unfortunately because we’re so small we can’t afford to do it the way we wish we could. We’re aiming to do that as soon as it makes sense financially. So right now we just at standard environmentally impactful. It’s not the best that it could be.

Quartz: Do you want to sell in stores?

Cofone: Right now, online only. I don’t have a lot of interest in doing retail. It’s just right now it doesn’t seem that useful.

Quartz: Not that useful to you as a business, or to you in the landscape of selling notebooks?

Cofone: More in the landscape of new products. We’re a tech company that sells an analog product and we want to do more technically interesting things on our website and take a step up. Right now people have no problem with e-commerce. When Moleskine launched in 1996 e-commerce was non-existent.

Quartz: If you look at books like Field Notes, they started on a similar trajectory, online only, but now you see them in stores. Is there no value in that?

Cofone: Yeah, you see them everywhere. I think there is value. But there’s not a lot of interest by me or my co-founder Adam in going that route right now. The way we figure it is, if we build our site, we build our presence online that reaches as far as the internet reaches.

We have a limited amount of cash as well, so that restricts our options on how many things we can do simultaneously.

Quartz: So why not get an investor to give you more cash or have another Kickstarter project?

Cofone: I would love to just have all the time in the world, all the money in the world, and make everything I’ve ever dreamed of with Baron Fig. You have to first make sure what you’re doing right now has your full attention and make it good, because if I don’t do this right it doesn’t matter.

Quartz: How big was your first production run?

Cofone: With our Kickstarter we sold—in 30 days—8,760. We ordered three times that, roughly.

Quartz: Your first goal was just shipping the books people bought on Kickstarter on time. What’s your next goal?

Cofone: We have a daily goal of selling X-number of books. We’re just trying to figure out how to sell books now steady.

Quartz: Do you expect to sell through your inventory this year? You have about 20,000 books left?

Cofone: Yeah, I think that we’re going to sell them all sooner rather than later. Maybe I’m just being positive but we’re placing an order in two days for more books.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity

Read this next: The complete guide to taking notes effectively at work

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Researchers know that high-voltage power lines have some strange influence on animals. Creatures from reindeer to elephants to birds tend to avoid the areas around power lines. This was mysterious because the structures seem passive and simple to walk or fly past. However, scientists now say this may be because power lines emit ultraviolet light, invisible to human eyes, that appears as frightening flashes to animals that can perceive ultraviolet light. This paper is the first to offer a

Original Source

pilgarlick:

I made this a while ago and I don’t know when I’d ever use it so I’m just gonna post it whatever man

unatheblade:

biscuitsarenice:

We Can’t Get Out Of The Bedroom Now.

Shirley Maclaine on Parkinson in 1975

Mind. Blown.

Knits For The Chill 117.

Carl Sagan.

theonetruenators:

gentlemanbones:

ghostanime:

1998 Gaming Magazine

Hindsight is hilarious.

playstation: how long does it have?

into eternity and forever

Project X: is it for real?

no

Dreamcast: can it be stopped?

in its tracks

nintendo 64: can it survive

it could survive the seventy-fifth annual hunger games armed with nothing with a mildly rotten cantaloupe and a set of assembly instructions for an ikea desk

with a mildly rotten cantaloupe and a set of assembly instructions for an ikea desk