firehose

Milky Joe the corn snake is wearing a pink custom knit sweater made by kacie kim.

images via Stephanie Christine Davidson

via Caroline McCarthy

Canadian train enthusiast Jason Shron recently completed a 4 year effort to make a faithful 1:1 scale replica of a passenger train car in his basement. Shron, who founded his own model train company, Rapido Trains, has been planning the project since he was a child—as a 12 year old in 1987, he sent a letter to Canadian passenger rail service Via Rail asking to purchase train seats (he was rejected). As an adult he began collecting salvaged parts and ultimately bought an entire train car in his pursuit of genuine parts for the project. The completed replica is a 20 foot long section of a Via coach and includes original seats, carpeting and other fittings.

via Retro Thing

No two players experience the world of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in exactly the same way. Gameologist Joe Keiser, for instance, sees it through the lens of the game’s wide-ranging literature. John Teti, on the other hand, lauds the rough “incongruities” you find in the chilly climes of Skyrim—as he wrote, “You might be anointed by an ancient priesthood as the greatest warrior in all the land, only to walk 10 yards down the road and get slaughtered by a stray bear.” As a subscriber to the idea that beers are preferable to bears and that your chances of a random mauling go way down while setting on a barstool, I tend to engage the game through the world’s many watering holes, both the bustling taverns and the remote, windswept dives. The following is a brief survey of my favorite Skyrim bars, where every Nord knows ...

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Perpetually persecuted artist M.I.A. has taken to the Internet to let the world know that the Grammys have done her wrong. According to the singer/rapper/whatever, when the Grammys used a backdrop featuring squares during its Bob Marley tribute, those squares were totally aping squares M.I.A. uses as a backdrop during her own stage show.

Though the photo she offers as evidence isn’t exactly convincing (Because, come on... squares?), M.I.A. says her green and yellow squares were inspired by a Tamil Hindu temple she’s either seen or visited, and that if fans “wanna see the real thing or get it first” (whatever “it” is, maybe "squares"), they should go to an M.I.A. show. She also tweeted the phrase “MIA $500 : Grammys $5000000,” ostensibly to imply that the Grammys paid $5 million for some video screens and graphics for the ...

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meme4u:

http://memeblock.com/

Brandon Bird designed the Nicolas Cage Hairstyle Whiteboard, a fun way to give Nic Cage a new hairdo with your dry erase marker. It’s available to purchase at Topatoco.

via Brandon Bird

In news that threatens to turn Morrissey into one giant bleeding ulcer, the Staples Center has issued a press release to clarify yesterday’s announcement that it would be going completely vegetarian for his March 1 show. And by “clarify” we mean, “completely deny.” Contrary to what Morrissey said, the venue will not be banning the sale of all “flesh for food,” but will instead simply be keeping all of the backstage catering meat-free. The rest of the arena, meanwhile, will remain an omnivore’s orgy—an abattoir of Eden where concertgoers can sway with bratwursts clasped like greasy glowsticks in each fist, clamber atop their hastily constructed cheeseburger forts, spell out the lyrics to “Suedehead” in chili, and slaughter then deep-fry their own beloved family pets should the mood strike.

Or, at least, they can still get a hot dog if they want, though the Staples Center says it ...

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The latest step in his inevitable evolution into Alternative Nation’s wacky uncle, Smashing Pumpkins frontman/tea-shop proprietor Bill Corgan can currently be found selling furniture (and his own professional wrestling promotion) to the TV-viewing denizens of Chicago. The latest in a long series of pop-culture-riffing commercials for custom-furniture dealer Walter E. Smithe (ever seen a home-furnishings sale promoted with a decades-too-late tribute to The Cars’ “You Might Think” video? Now you have) pits Corgan and the stars of Resistance Pro Wrestling against three besuited chair salesman—though it falls to Corgan to make the hard sell. It might come off a little forced, but go easy on the guy: Most of his sales experience is in frozen desserts.

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Having enjoyed great success with turning Sherlock into Elementary while Britain could do nothing but stand there, cheeks flashing at the churlish impropriety, CBS is claiming another British detective drama for America—this time the Clive Owen-starring Second Sight. The somber series, about an investigator who begins going blind in a cruelly ironic twist of TV writer-engineered fate, will be transposed from London to America’s current, most inherently dramatic city New Orleans, while Owen will similarly be replaced by fellow disaster survivor Jason Lee.

It’s the second detective show for Lee in recent years, having previously wrapped two seasons on TNT’s Memphis Beat as a cop who solves crimes by forcing suspects to listen to his band’s Stevie Ray Vaughn-influenced blues-rock until they cave (or something). Here Lee’s equally effective, equally maddening secret weapon will be his ocular disorder, “which causes him to have horrifying ...

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China’s Ministry of Finance has announced that the country will levy a tax on carbon emissions, reports Xinhua. Policy experts in the United States and Europe have long argued that a carbon tax is the most effective way to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses, but implementing one in most large industrialized countries has always seemed politically infeasible.

In the same announcement, China’s Ministry of Finance said that direct taxes on resources, including coal and water, will also be forthcoming.

Details on the carbon tax are scant, but previous reports indicated that it would come into force by 2015 and might start at 10 yuan ($1.60) per tonne of carbon, rising to 50 yuan ($8) per tonne by 2020. Notably, the tax would be collected by local tax authorities, and not municipal environmental protection bureaus.

Aside from concerns about climate change, China’s carbon tax could be an effort to stem the country’s enormous appetite for coal, which is now nearly as large as the rest of the world combined.

Global coal consumption US Energy Information Administration

The country’s coal imports are projected to reach 400-500 million tonnes (440-550 tons) by 2015, an increase of between 71% and 113% over China’s 2012 imports of 234.3 million tonnes of coal. But domestic production of coal in China dwarfs imports, at 3.66 billion tonnes in 2012. For comparison, the world’s second largest coal producer, the US, produces about a third as much coal per year.

Proposals for a direct tax on carbon are also being discussed in Europe as an alternative to the continent’s ailing cap and trade system for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. In the US, Senators Barbara Boxer and Bernie Sanders have proposed a carbon tax of $20 a ton.

“Heartwarming” isn’t a word you normally associate with industrial design, but I dare you to watch this clip from beloved UK children’s show Blue Peter without cracking a smile.

When asked how he would design a combination pencil case, backpack and lunch box, Apple’s lead designer, Sir Jonathan Ive, drops some knowledge straight from the Apple playbook.

“If we’re thinking about a lunchbox, we’d be really careful about not having the word box already, to give you a bunch of ideas that could be quite narrow,” said Ive. “Because you think of a box as being square and like a cube. So we’re quite careful with the words that you use, because those can be narrow and can determine the path that you go down.”

Ive has apparently been a fan of Blue Peter since childhood, and he talks about watching it as a little boy with the reverential tones he normally reserves for Apple’s promotional videos. “It was fantastic, I remember it ever so clearly,” he recalled. Perhaps it’s where he learned to think outside the lunchbox.

People in India are now kissing each other in public, the New York Times reported last week. The story—which began with the requisite “India may be the birthplace of the Kama Sutra…”—was mocked among many Indians and described by at least one outlet as a “real stop the press moment.” The website, Firstpost.com, wrote a biting piece ridiculing the New York Times for not just insinuating that Indians previously didn’t kiss in public, but also in private. With a population of a billion people and counting, Indians seem to be doing just fine with kissing—and everything thereafter.

In fact, the real story in India is that sex is being embraced like never before. The best proof of this is in our most mainstream of institutions—Bollywood.

We’re not just talking about scintillating plot lines and showcasing more flesh. Consider that Sunny Leone, Penthouse Pet of the Year of in 2003 and a hardcore porn star, has found wide acceptance in India. For a porn star to cross over into mainstream cinema is hard enough in the US, but few would have believed possible in India. Leone’s break came when she starred in the Indian version of the globally syndicated reality show, Big Boss, along the way helping drive ratings. She then earned a starring role in Jism 2, a Bollywood movie, making front-page news almost weekly. Quickly, Leone became a household name and her porn-star past didn’t seem to hurt her a bit. Jism 2, made on a shoestring budget of approximately $1.5 million, grossed more than $4 million in its first weekend alone.

Not to be outdone by the Canada-raised Leone, homegrown Indian starlets are getting bolder as well. Poonam Pandey became instant tabloid fodder by announcing she would strip if the Indian team won the cricket World Cup. When India did win the World Cup, Pandey tweeted a picture of herself with no clothes on, private parts strategically covered. Pandey’s Twitter following has just crossed 300,000 followers. The Hindustan Times estimated her earnings to be greater than a $1 million a year.

And then there’s Sherlyn Chopra, who was supposed to appear nude in the November issue of Playboy. That didn’t happen, but she garnered headlines across India nonetheless when she tweeted pictures from of herself at the Playboy mansion. Chopra, like Pandey, is a struggling Bollywood actor. According to news reports, she wrote to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner directly asking if she could pose nude. Hefner, sensing a publicity coup readily agreed; the pictures are yet to be published.

It’s not just starlets that are pushing boundaries in Bollywood. Vicky Donor, one of the top grossing films of 2012, tells the story of a down-on-his-luck twenty-something named Vicky, who encounters a down-on-his-luck doctor who works at a sperm donation clinic. Vicky has super sperm, and he and the doctor become a huge hit in the sperm donor business. They are truly the Breaking Bad Walter and Jessie of sperm donation, keeping their business dealings secret from their families (though the business is entirely legal). Made with a budget of less than $1 million, the movie earned more than $10 million. Sex sells in Bollywood.

It’s obvious why this is happening. The internet has allowed young Indians to become global citizens; they are seeing and wanting the same things as people in New York or London or Rio. So Sunny Leone may not have appeared in any television series or movies in India before 2011, but plenty of Indians knew her work online. India’s infamous censors can only block so much. Compared to what Indians are consuming in public and private, kissing is downright tame.

Follow Prashant Agrawal on Twitter @agrawalprashant. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

The new Yahoo.com Yahoo

Yahoo has a new homepage, but you’d be forgiven for not noticing, since fewer people than ever are visiting it. In December 2012, for example, traffic to the domain Yahoo.com was down 24% from a year ago.

Like other titans of another tech age, Yahoo is facing an existential threat against which it may be defenseless: People just don’t surf the web the way they used to. It is now the rule, rather than the exception, to share links over Facebook, Twitter and “dark social“ (e.g., email or text messages), which means that most people are arriving on pages buried deep within websites, and may never go near the homepage.

This is especially true of outlets like Yahoo, which is nominally a search engine but keeps users clicking with copious amounts of news and other media. As journalist Ann Friedman noted in an essay on the end of the homepage,

Less than half of visits to nytimes.com start on the homepage. More than half of Buzzfeed’s visitors come from search and social. And a mere 12 percent of visits to The Atlantic start with the homepage.

Of course, we may be a little biased: This is part of the strategy behind Quartz itself, where, depending on how you look at it, either there is no homepage, or every article is a homepage.

Chuck is an awesome shelving concept by German designer Natascha Harra-Frischkorn. The flexible shelving unit is made from six 4mm thick planks of wood that can be adjusted to hold small collections of books and other objects in a beautiful organic shape. Really wish this was actually a thing. (via soft shock)

wine bottle + poster tube

(fit found by weknowtoomuch)

Lawmakers are looking at a new law that would allow customers to fill bottles directly from a wine keg at a restaurant or grocery store.

Kirschwasser, vermouth and raspberry make a romantic combination.

(Still thirsty? See Liqurious)

Hahaha, how about I do a submission correctly this time?  Sorry, I’m the original artist for Syleah and I feel real silly for the bother I caused.  Have another character finished and properly sourced!

Character:Crims

Series: Double Edged Crown, http://double-edged-crown.tumblr.com/

Original Artist: Megan Lloyd

Source Blog Post: http://thirdchildart.blogspot.com/2013/02/crims-and-round-3-of-voting.html

By Andrew Douglas [tumblr | twitter]

Curves in spacetime violate Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle

If an object traveling through spacetime can loop back in time in a certain way, then its trajectory can allow a pair of its components to be measured with perfect accuracy, violating Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. This new finding involves a particular trajectory called an open timelike curve (OTC), which is a special case of a closed timelike curve (CTC), a theoretical concept that has previously provoked controversy because it raises the possibility of traveling backwards in time.

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Hackney-based Studio Weave has constructed a network of listening pipes in a back courtyard of London's Great Ormond Street Hospital to create a secret factory of lullabies for children (+ slideshow).

The enclosed space was created by the construction of a new building at the historic children's hospital and will remain until its neighbour is eventually demolished. Studio Weave designed the installation to occupy the space in the interim and has named it the Lullaby Factory.

The architects were inspired by the messy pipes and drainage systems that already cover the surface of the brick walls. Instead of covering them up, they chose to add to them with a wide-spanning framework of pipes and horns.

"We have designed a fantasy landscape reaching 10 storeys in height and 32 metres in length, which can engage the imagination of everyone, from patients and parents to hospital staff, by providing an interesting and curious world to peer out onto," explain architects Je Ahn and Maria Smith.

Different types of metal create pipes of silver, gold and bronze, and some of the taps and gauges were recycled from a decommissioned hospital boilerhouse.

Sound artist Jessica Curry composed the soundtrack of lullabies, which are played out through each of the pipes. To listen in, patients and staff can place an ear over one of the listening pipes beside the canteen.

The music is also transmitted via a radio frequency, so patients on the wards can tune in too.

Studio Weave previously designed a set of pipes to amplify the sounds of the countryside. Other projects by the architects include a latticed timber hut on stilts and a 324-metre-long bench.

See more architecture by Studio Weave, including an interview we filmed with the architects at our Designed in Hackney day.

Here's a project description from Studio Weave:

Lullaby Factory, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children
Studio Weave with Structure Workshop, AB3 Workshops and Jessica Curry

Studio Weave has transformed an awkward exterior space landlocked by buildings into the Lullaby Factory – a secret world that cannot be seen except from inside the hospital and cannot be heard by the naked ear, only by tuning in to its radio frequency or from a few special listening pipes.

The multi-phased redevelopment of Great Ormond Street Hospital, in London's Bloomsbury area, means that the recently completed Morgan Stanley Clinical Building and the 1930s Southwood Building currently sit very close together. The latter is due to be demolished in 15 years, but in the intervening period large windows in the west elevation of the MSCB look directly onto a pipe-ridden brickwork facade, with the gap between the two less than one metre in places.

In our competition entry we proposed that the Southwood Building, with its oodles of mysterious pipes and plant is not really the Southwood Building, but the Lullaby Factory, manufacturing and releasing gentle, beautiful lullabies to create a calming and uplifting environment for the young patients to recover in.

Our aim for this project was to re-imagine the Southwood façade as the best version of itself, accepting and celebrating its qualities and oddities; and rather than hiding what is difficult, creating something unique and site specific.

We have designed a fantasy landscape reaching 10 storeys in height and 32 metres in length, which can engage the imagination of everyone, from patients and parents to hospital staff, by providing an interesting and curious world to peer out onto. Aesthetically the Lullaby Factory is a mix of an exciting and romantic vision of industry, and the highly crafted beauty and complexity of musical instruments.

The Lullaby Factory consists of two complimentary elements: the physical factory that appears to carry out the processes of making lullabies and the soundscape. Composer and sound artist Jessica Curry has composed a brand new lullaby especially for the project, which children can engage with through listening pipes next to the canteen or from the wards by tuning into a special radio station.

Our design is mindful of the fact that the space between the two buildings is very tight and any attempt to tidy it up too much would have resulted in significantly reducing the sense of space and the amount of daylight reaching inside the surrounding buildings.

Above: concept sketch

We hope the project will inspire engagement in a variety of ways from children's paintings to a resource for play specialists to a generator for future commissions.

Our design incorporates old tap and gauges reclaimed from a hospital boilerhouse that was in the process of being decommissioned.

The post Lullaby Factory by
Studio Weave appeared first on Dezeen.

Last year, Edwin Turner, the mastermind behind the Biblioklept blog, assembled a fine photo gallery that captured Ernest Hemingway posing shirtless. Big, burly and barrel-chested, Papa projects the masculine image that he carefully cultivated for himself and for the world to see.

Hemingway’s photos seem right in keeping with his public persona (we’ll have more on him later today). But this 1883 portrait of Mark Twain will perhaps give you pause. To be sure, Twain cared deeply about his public image. The writer carefully crafted his public identity, giving more than 300 interviews to journalists where he reinforced the traits he wanted to be known for — his wit, irreverent sense of humor, and thoughtfulness. Twain also loved having his picture taken, posing for photographers whenever he had a chance. The camera offered yet another way to fashion his own personal myth.

Of course, the author is best remembered for one set of iconic images — the one where he dons a white suit in 1906, upon traveling to Washington D.C. to lobby for the protection of authors’ copyrights. But, as The Routledge Encyclopedia of Mark Twain explains, the novelist also let his image be used in countless advertisements — in ads for restaurants, pharmacies, dry goods and cigars too. The encyclopedia gives the impression that the shirtless photo was perhaps taken within this commercial context. It’s not clear what product the portrait helped market (care to take a guess?), or precisely how Twain saw it contributing to his public image. The details are murky. But one thing is for certain: The 1880s image is authentic. It’s the real shirtless Mark Twain.

This vintage pic comes to us via Wired writer Steve Silberman. Follow him on Twitter at @stevesilberman.

Mark Twain Shirtless in 1883 Photo is a post from: Open Culture. You can follow Open Culture on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and by Email.

nimbuspub:

 

Has your cat ever walked across your keyboard? Well, it’s not a new problem. Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel recently Tweeted this photo of a 15th century book with… you guessed it… cat paw prints in ink on the pages! We’re part of a long and glorious historical movement, friends. (Source: Dr. Marty Becker)

Ah this is the best thing!  Those medieval cats!  

Cats gon’ be cats

Vice President Biden sounded skeptical Tuesday after he got a question at an online town hall hosted by Parents Magazine that once again led him to opine about the best gun to own in case of home invasion or social meltdown.

"Is this Parents Magazine?" Biden said. "I have Parents Magazine in my home. I've never heard anybody in Parents Magazine ask these kinds of questions."

The question that Biden was attributed by the moderator of the online town hall to someone named Kate Earnest:

"Do you believe that banning certain weapons and high capacity magazines will mean that law-abiding citizens will then become more of a target to criminals as we will have no way to sufficiently protect ourselves?"

Biden chuckled, expressed his doubts and urged as he has in the past for home defenders to arm themselves with shotguns. Biden said he's told his wife, Jill, to "fire two blasts outside" from one of the family's double-barrel shotguns should there be any signs of trouble. (As a practical matter, Biden's Secret Service detail would likely be on top of the situation.) Overall, the moment was indicative of the role Biden has been playing since he White House began selling its gun violence reduction package to the public. Biden can often be found talking up the guns he owns and his personal ties to the Second Amendment.

The question closely echoed a recent web video from the NRA that questioned the call for a limit on the capacity of magazines. It's a policy Biden and the White House supports. According to Parents Magazine, Biden's doubtful tone may be right. The person who asked it may not actually read Parents Magazine.

"We had multiple posts on our Facebook page calling for questions to be submitted," said Colleen Schwartz, spokesperson for Parents. "So every single question came from our Facebook page. And if you go back in the video, they were all attributed to whomever asked them."

Anyone who visited Parents Magazine's public Facebook page could post a question that might be read on the town hall. Schwartz said the question from Earnest was not a rare one.

"Having looked at our Facebook page, there are multiple questions about that," she said. Asked if she thought gun rights groups had made a concerted effort to takeover the forum, Schwartz said "not that I know of at all."

Biden may have been skeptical of the question, but Schwartz said the magazine was thrilled with the online town hall.

"I think everybody was thrilled," she said. "It's a huge opportunity to sit down with the Vice President and ask him basically any question that you want."

BOSTON (AP) — The University of Massachusetts-Boston has announced plans to open an on-campus food pantry, not as part of a student service project, but to feed hungry students having trouble making ends meets.