THEY LOVED KING GEORGE!! oh my god he got ENTRANCE applause, the response was completely off the scale to what it was in new york. the most telling thing about the british reception to me is that while the actor playing burr won the best actor award in both the US and england, in england, the guy who played george won best supporting actor in a musical (the dudes who played jefferson and, weirdly, laurens were also nominated)
also they got rid of some of the jersey jokes
EDIT: actually the most gorgeous amazing part of it was that when I saw it, which was very early, hamilton (who is played by a dude who’s basically just out of drama school and had never done a musical before) didn’t get entrance applause. he does now, I’m told, but at the time it was absolutely stunning– because there’s really a pause built into the music in the expectation of some kind of response when he first says his name, and for that to just be silent was amazingly powerful– the idea that this kid was going to have to find a way to do something to fill that silence
My excuse is that I can use them for game props. Yeah... gotta have one to coordinate with every possible costume...
A few days ago, a Tweet went by that made me smile: “I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you already have six blank notebooks at home,” Twitter user @TraceOddity wrote. Actually, that smile was more of a grimace, because six notebooks? Try thirty-six. I am a repository of mostly-unused notebooks. And apparently, I’m far from alone.
The Tweet struck a chord, garnering a staggering 181k “likes,” 41k retweets, and thousands of replies. I think I’m a little surprised by this result because I’m a collector by nature, so I rather thought this bottomless notebook hoarding was just another thing I did.
I know a lot of writers, and writers love a good notebook, but I assumed that they were getting more mileage out of them. Yet as soon as the Tweet was dropped in our Mary Sue chat, every staff member said that they felt called out.
I don’t think there’s any one reason why we’re apparently buying more and more notebooks while we have untouched notebooks languishing at home. I certainly don’t think you have to be a writer or an artist to have this affliction. Anyone bent on tackling any sort of project may understand the temporary hope a fresh notebook offers. As far as indulgences go, it feels manageable, a self-selected present that will surely result in increased productivity.
“This time, I’ll use it, and really do [insert project],” you think to yourself, as though this matte cover with the dinosaurs on it has better energy to receive your input than the one with cats or classical art.
Other considerations abound, and contribute to additional purchases: the size of the book, the cover (hard or soft?), the paper quality, the paper ruling (lined or unlined? College-ruled or wide?), what pens will pair best with it. I can’t go on a trip without the perfect-sized travel notebook for whatever bag I’m taking, can I? How can I attend this press event without a notebook of the right consistency and professional appearance? Oh, you’re offering free branded notebooks at your event? Don’t mind if I take one or three.
I can’t speak for others, but I know I’ve been like this for a long time. When I was 12, a “psychic” at a country fair told me to go home, gather up all of my assorted notebooks, and try to consolidate my ideas. I always thought she was incredibly intuitive, but in retrospect I probably told her that I was a writer and she was aware of this all-too-common condition. It’s only worsened with age and a paycheck. I have actual entire bookshelves full of nothing but mostly unmarked notebooks. For every notebook I’ve filled, its many empty brothers are nearby, crying out for ink. But even with an increased awareness of Notebook-Buying Syndrome, I can’t tell you that I’m liable to stop.
I know that I’ll discover notebooks in far-flung locales I simply must have, because how will I ever encounter them again? I know that I’ll be gifted more notebooks, because what safer bet is there for a writer? And I know I’ll have a project or the desire to be inspired to one, and surely this time—surely—this new notebook will do the trick.
Let’s take a look at a few of the Twitter replies that hit just a bit too close to home.
Exactly. The whole point is to buy a new one for a new project only to end up needing to consolidating into 1. But you can’t throw the old 1 out for that random phone number you wrote down.
One day, when we complete the transition to a paperless society, Staples will sell its last notebook, and on that day, we who have routinely bought blank notebooks with no regard for our current stash will be sitting on RICHES.
Whrn the group moves to the left, Gwen is the one who takes her eyes off him to make sure the group roubds the corner. Miles turns his head both times, but not only is he the center of the group, but his leg is one of the few things keeping Peni suspended meaning he needs to pay the most attention to the wall.
Noir and Spidey both keep their eyes completely on chair-guy on the first pass. Noir only looking away when they go back for a split second to confirm where they are going, before snapping back to the “threat”. Spidey however, doesnt look away, which leads to his feet dangling in the air while they round the corner.
And of course Porker is a cartoon and bound to his own Roger Rabbit logic as he squeezes behind them without disturbing them.
It May seem silly to point this stuff out, but it informs so much about the individual characters, and really needs to be appreciated ot terms of great animation techniques.
This is also the best shot for showing off the different art designs ie. Noires filter over his image, the cartoon nature of Ham, and even small details in the difference between Gwen and the other two mainline spideys.
IT’S SO GOOD.
One detail I love is Peni.
Like, she’s up there too, and out of all of them she’s the one who technically doesn’t have any of the spider powers necessary to stick to the walls. So how is she staying up there?
Miles and Gwen.
Look at how they’re both positioned: Miles keeps his right leg angled so that Peni has a sort of perch to keep her legs against, even while they’re on the move, while her upper body is being held in place by Gwen’s left hand (Gwen’s entire left arm isn’t visible in the movements, compared to how we see everyone else’s arms).
Peni is being carefully held in place by Miles and Gwen, and I love that detail.
Peni also shifts her eyes to look the direction they’re moving the second time. Just for one second, then she focus on Ganke again. Even though she’s not doing any moving herself, she too pays attention to the wall.
Also the animators of this scene pointed out they specifically shoved them all together like this to make a shape that’s akin to a spider; they even tried to make out all the limbs of the spider during this animation!
fuckin’ this, folks.
and I mean you KNOW I am here for fanfic, now and always, but that is NOT what this nomination is about! do you know how advanced an archival system ao3 is? the ways its indexing and DB structure improve discoverability for MILLIONS of readers?
I know librarians who’d kill for that kind of tech! and this is glued together from cloudsourced specs while training their OWN coders on the way.
and - this is not wordpress, people, they OWN THE SERVERS. they fund and pay wages for sysadmining! there’s rackspace!
no, okay, look, listen, look:
this is my job. I do it for a living. it is the only way I could go to cons, could take time to write.
I only, only, ONLY ever took a programming class because Ao3 existed and showed me it could be done.
think of it this way: if someone nominated twitter (…go with me) for an award, would you immediately conclude they meant the tweets?
pff. no. that’s content. that’s the squishy stuff. tech is the skeleton it rests on.
well, guess what: the Archive of Our Own is Real Tech too.
’s better than Amazon is for providing new content to read.
god, the filters. the freeform tagging (sure, yeah, it’s not Machine Learning, it’s manually wrangled - someone had to go tell the robots ‘AU’ == ‘Alternate Universe’). sort by length!! fuckin’ ratings!!!
and - those of you who haven’t been to ao3, y'know, may I suggest if you’re curious, go take ten minutes and look? I’ll wait. A good place to start might be the fandoms front page. https://archiveofourown.org/media
Go tell me if you can figure out how that works.
Heck, I almost wanna start a scavenger hunt. Find a fic over 100k. Change the font to large. Go print a fic to mobi, or epub, or pdf and load it onto your tablet or kindle. Find me some meta with more than 500 comments.
The UI design is IMPECCABLE. Search box in the top right. fonts all clean and clear. never, EVER see any javascript overlaps or partial loads or slow graphics - they know better than that. you can slap a custom skin on it. heck, there’s a link to the source code in the footer!
How about a fic - here we go, Speranza’s classic, Written by the Victors. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15 There’s a bunch of UI you don’t see if you aren’t logged in - the heavensent ‘Mark for Later’ button, for example - but still. Everything you could click is easy to grok.
Want more like it? Super easy and intuitive to click a tag, or the fandom, or a pairing (or even just M/M if you want to load half the site) and see more fic in that category. Sort by comments or hits or kudos and you get a good idea which ones are worth opening.
These folks REALLY know their UI.
But, okay, hang on, yes they do, and many are trained pros, but many also aren’t! the people building this site just WORK HARD, they try things out, they listen to feedback and iterate -
(how much Big Tech can say as much these days)
- but ALSO, and here’s what’s important to realise, this is a community project, a community space, and it was DESIGNED to TEACH.
(Did you know when it was first proposed, they trialed Ruby and Python to see which was quicker for beginners? I know ‘cause I voted Python 🐍🤷♀️😂)
Do you know how rare it is to find that in Open Source?
Listen, okay, I’m a professional techie and I would NE-E-EVER venture into eg the Linux core with ‘Jennifer’ attached to my sig in any way whatsoever. Aside from that, much of OSS is, hmm, results-oriented.
They expect you to show up fully-functional on day one, w/ a pull request ready to patch.
Remind me, what’s the demographic balance in Ye Average compsci program?
And of those, who’s working nights / caring for relatives / otherwise unable to Do Their Time posturing on github?
But the Organization for Transformative Works isn’t here for that.
They know (we know) that Fan is a Tool-Using Animal. idlewords.com/talks/fan_is_a… And the Archive of Our Own is proof of that.
So maybe think on that a little, the next time Patreon has a ToS hiccup. The next time Jack removes like counts.
Think of what Archive coders built, in the face of Livejournal’s hypocrisy, in spite of everyone telling us it was Too Much, we’d bitten off more than we could chew.
That. That’s what this nomination is about.
And yeah, we built it so we could host the smutty Harry/Draco and the conspiracy theories about Sansa and alllll the Naruto time travel fixit fic you could POSSIBLY ever read.
And that’s pretty fuckin’ great, in my book.
The Project Apollo Archive uploaded more than 8,400
high-resolution images the astronauts took during NASA’s Apollo
Missions of the 1960s and 70s. The collection includes every photo shot with the Hasselblad
cameras on the lunar surface, from Earth and
lunar orbit, as well as during the journey between the two. All the
photos are unprocessed versions of the original scans.
Betrayal at House On the Hill is a modern classic board game that’s different every time you play it. Betrayal Legacy is one of those rare sequels that improves on the first, with a generational story that makes the game uniquely yours.
Wow! What a masterful use of color and pattern. She really takes full advantage of the fabric prints.
“The Princess” (cotton, chiffon, lace and satin, 2018, 70 x 46 x inches | 177 x 117 x cm)
Brooklyn-based artist Bisa Butler has a fascinating relationship with fabric. Using fibers derived from Africa, her “ancestral homeland and the cradle of civilization,” Butler crafts kaleidoscopic quilts that tell stories through textiles.
Each of Butler’s contemporary quilts features expressive portraits of everyday people. Using materials that range from vintage lace and satin to hand-painted mud cloth, Butler pieces together exquisite studies that honor black children, adults, and families that have been overlooked by history. “My portraits,” she explains, “tell stories that may have been forgotten over time.”
Though the figures themselves are realistically rendered (Butler works from black and white photographs), the color palettes are fabricated from the artist’s imagination. This avant-garde approach is particularly striking in Butler’s treatment of black skin, which she reinterprets as eye-catching, jewel-toned mosaics.
Both her symbolic choice of fabric and her distinctive use of color characterize Butler’s body of work, which has evolved from mixed-media paintings to her signature storytelling quilts. In each work of fiber art, the artist’s careful consideration of the craft is evident, culminating in pieces that are as thoughtful as they are thought-provoking.
“My stories,” she explains, “are told in the fabrics that I choose, the textures I combine, and the colors that create a whole new composition.”
See a stunning collection of portrait quilts made from African fabric by Bisa Butler.
“The Mighty Gents” (quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon, 2018, 78 x 67 x inches | 198 x 170 x cm)
“The Safety Patrol” (quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon, 2018, 82 x 90 x inches | 208 x 229 x cm)
“Survivor” (denim, cotton, mudcloth, 2018, 48 x 81 x inches | 122 x 206 x cm)
“Southside Sunday Morning” (silk and cotton, 2018, 73 x 109 x inches | 185 x 277 x cm)
“Mannish Boy” (quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon, 2018, 54 x 39 x inches | 137 x 99 x cm)
“Four Little Girls, September 15, 1963” (cotton, silk and lace, 2018, 61 x 78 x inches | 155 x 197 x cm)
“Family” (cotton, organza, chiffon, lace and netting, 2017-18, 95 x 57 x inches | 241 x 145 x cm)
“Les Sapeurs” (cotton & silk , 2018, 42 x 60 x inches | 107 x 152 x cm)
“Black Star Family, first class tickets to Liberia” (cotton, silk and denim, 2018, 85 x 79 x inches | 216 x 199 x cm)
“The Tea” (cotton, silk, lace, netting, 2018, 80 x 54 x inches | 203 x 137 x cm)
“Three Kings” (quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon, 2018, 72 x 95 x inches | 183 x 241 x cm)
Hooray! Awesome that there are finally enough women in space at the same time to even make this possible.
On March 29th, a crew of astronauts will conduct the first-ever all-female spacewalk aboard the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Christina Koch will be doing the spacewalk, with ground support from Canadian Space Agency flight controller Kristen Facciol, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX.
Despite scheduling the walk at the tail end of Women’s History Month, NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz said that the timing and crew make-up was completely coincidental, saying, “It was not orchestrated to be this way; these spacewalks were originally scheduled to take place in the fall … In addition to the two female spacewalkers, the Lead Flight Director is Mary Lawrence, and Jackie Kagey (also a woman), is the lead EVA (spacewalk) flight controller.”
McClain and Koch are both members of NASA’s 2013 astronaut candidate class, which was 50% women. McClain, a graduate of West Point, is an OH-58 helicopter pilot and graduate of U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station, Patuxent River. Koch previously served as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Station Chief in American Samoa.
McClain, who has been stationed on the ISS as part of Expedition 58 since December 2018, is also active on Twitter, where she is sharing her day-to-day tasks alongside a stuffed toy Little Earth:
Earth’s 3rd day started with getting the blood (plasma?) pumping! First the treadmill, then weights – he even got some deadlifts in with me. It is important to exercise every day, not just for our muscles but also to protect our bones from losing density in microgravity. pic.twitter.com/gIsiKt4K8S
Koch is set to launch on March 14, as part of Expedition 59 and 60 that will launch from Russia.
First fit check of our actual spacecraft – the Soyuz rocket! This will be the last time we test the systems while wearing our launch and landing space suits. Great to see the real deal with the crew! pic.twitter.com/H7SdhgFuSn
The spacewalk is set to run for about seven hours, during which the astronauts typically test new equipment and make repairs to the spacecraft. The first woman to ever complete a spacewalk was Russian cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya on July 25, 1984 aboard the Soyuz T-12. The first American woman to spacewalk was Kathryn D. Sullivan on the Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-41-G on October 11, 1984.
Godspeed to these awesome women, we can’t wait to see what they accomplish in space!
I adore geekybibiophile's contribution of the mental image of GoldenRetriever Bingley trying to make his new cat friends Darcy and Elizabeth get along. Ahahahahaha it's so perfect.
We don’t talk enough about how part of Jane falling for Bingley is that he thinks Elizabeth is DOPE AS SHIT and openly loves hanging out with her. Cute nice boy has taken Netherfield at last? Great! Cute nice boy who would legitimately be super stoked if Elizabeth ended up being a spinster aunt who lived with them and taught their children to embroider their cushions very ill indeed as long as she kept laying down sick burns? MARRIAGE MATERIAL.
Post-book Mr. Bingley is ALWAYS excited before parties where Elizabeth will be in attendance, because he knows she is going to make some very unexpected jokes and he will be in STITCHES and also in AWE and yay for loving and supporting at least one of your in-laws.
We've posted a couple of items concerning fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), a rare disease in which one's body tissues turn to bone. Carol Orzel of Philadelphia suffered from FOP, and had visited the city's Mutter Museum, where the only preserved skeleton of an FOP victim, that of Harry Eastlack, is on display. Orzel wished that when her time came, her skeleton could join him in the exhibit. Orzel died a year ago at age 58, and her skeleton went on display this week at the museum.
The Orzel installation comes at a crucial time for the ultra-rare disorder, known to afflict a few thousand people worldwide. When Eastlack died at age 39 in 1973, FOP research was nonexistent. Now, it has spawned an industry. Several potential therapies are in clinical trials, and dozens of companies are racing to exploit new insights that could transform the treatment not only of FOP, but of head trauma, fractures, bone malformations, osteoporosis, joint replacements, and much more.
The turning point came in 2006, when a University of Pennsylvania team discovered the genetic mutation that causes FOP. The team was led by Frederick Kaplan, 67, a Penn professor of orthopedic molecular medicine.
His rise to become a preeminent FOP researcher began with Orzel.
“Although I had read about FOP, I had never seen anyone with it until I met Carol in 1984,” Kaplan said Thursday at the unveiling. “From the moment I met her, she was unforgettable – witty, charming, and in charge.
Vincent Medina spent seven years as a docent at the oldest building in San Francisco, Mission Dolores, one of the 21 missions in the state at which the Spanish tried to convert Native Californians to Catholicism.
A member of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe from the East Bay, Medina (pictured above, at left) was trying to change the narrative schoolchildren heard about the Ohlone people indigenous to the area, who the conquerors enslaved in the missions. But when Medina started to feel locked in at his job at the Mission, he left and started working in the produce department at the popular East Bay grocery store, Berkeley Bowl.
“It was so fun to be able to work with these beautiful peaches and apples instead of having to think about slavery,” he said. “I just remember how much I enjoyed being around the food.”
Working at the grocery, Medina began thinking about serving the food native to the area, an idea he talked about with his partner, Louis Trevino (pictured above, right), a member of the Rumsen Ohlone tribe, which originated in the Monterey Bay area.
Now the two run Café Ohlone by Mak-’amham—meaning “our food” in Chochenyo, one of several native Ohlone dialects—where they serve up traditional foods such as acorn soup, chia seed pudding, venison meatballs, and acorn-flour brownies.
Located outdoors in the backyard of University Press Books in Berkeley, the tribe’s aesthetic runs throughout the café. “Ohlone Land” spans the fence in capital letters, tribal baskets decorate shelves, bay laurel—important medicinally and in food—hangs from the balcony, and the space features a large table made from a fallen redwood. The café uses a pop-up model, opening one or two afternoons a week and the occasional evening—announcing all the dates and times beforehand on social media.
Louis Trevino (left) and Vincent Medina (right) cooking at Café Ohlone by mak’amham. (Emily Wilson)
Trevino and Medina are among a number of Indigenous chefs around the country working to preserve and celebrate their heritage in hopes of keeping their culture alive and vital.
“For both of us, the café is bringing something to our people we’ve been lacking for too long,” Medina said of Café Ohlone. “Growing up, both Louis and I wanted to go to a place outside of our homes and see our culture, especially in our homeland. The café space is helping repair damages from colonization.”
Grounding the Work in the Ohlone Culture
Trevino and Medina met at the University of California, Berkeley, at a conference for Breath of Life, an organization that works with California Indians to strengthen and revive their languages. Reading old documents from their tribes, they found stories, history, and jokes—as well as loving descriptions of the foods their ancestors ate, such as venison and acorns.
Ohlone territory covers about 120 miles—from Vallejo in the east to Big Sur to the southwest, roughly—and Medina guesses the tribe has about 6,000 members. While many remember stories from their families or old dances, Medina said, the Ohlone people were hit hard by colonization—with the Spanish coming first, followed by the Mexicans and Americans—so they couldn’t keep their culture intact.
Before opening the café, Medina and Trevino held an event for their families and other Ohlone. For two nights, they camped out in a secluded area in the East Bay hills, where they practiced language lessons, traditional gaming, and tribal bingo. They had books printed for everyone there with old stories translated to Chochenyo and English, as well as family histories and tribal heroes to make their culture more accessible.
Then they shared stories around the fire and had a feast of traditional foods—venison, mushrooms, native berries, acorn soup, and acorn brownies. The next morning, they served acorn flour pancakes with honey, blackberries, and hazelnut butter.
Because of the cultural loss due to colonization, tasting foods of their tribes meant a lot to participants. “Whether an elder or a young person, when they ate the acorn for the first time, there was this look people had: of feeling proud, of being able to eat that and to know it was something familiar, even if it was their first taste of it,” Medina said.
A sign at Café Ohlone by Mak’amham reads “Ohlone Land” (Emily Wilson)
The goal, he added, was to “center the work on returning our food and our culture back to ourselves and our families and recognize the sacrifices of people before us” with the eventual hope of “making sure the future is brighter for [Ohlone] people to come.”
Dispelling Stereotypes with Conversation
Trevino and Medina forage in the hills of the East Bay for ingredients for their café—gathering herbs, seeds, and tea in the same place Medina’s ancestors did. During the meals, they talk with their guests about their Ohlone history and culture.
“We’re making people responsible for what they know and where they live and what they’re implicated in by their presence here,” Trevino said. “We’re dispelling stereotypes, and it’s a very powerful way to do it—in conversation.”
One of the most persistent stereotypes is that the Ohlone no longer exist. Sita Bhaumik, who was eating at Café Ohlone on a recent afternoon, says the food reminds her to think of Indigenous people in the present and future tense, rather than in the past.
A co-founder of the People’s Kitchen Collective, Bhaumik teaches a class, “A Taste of Resistance,” at California College of the Arts; Trevino and Medina have spoken to her students about their work. She’s been inspired by the thought-provoking way the two speak about the food they’re serving.
“In their presentation, [they say that] flavor is really active—you can’t say, ‘This is what Ohlone people were like, if you’re tasting food in your mouth at that moment,” she said. “That is something colonialism has really done over time—to say either, ‘These people don’t exist,’ or ‘They were here,’ in the past tense.”
Passing Forgotten Traditions to the Younger Generation
Elsewhere in the Bay Area, Crystal Wahpehpah runs a catering business, Wahpehpah’s Kitchen, at which she cooks traditional Kickapoo food from her ancestors in Oklahoma. Like Medina and Trevino, Wahpehpah loves cooking her native foods; it connects her to her family and their traditions, as well as knowledge and experience she wants to pass on to the younger generation.
Chef Crystal Wahpepah’s Kickapoo Chili. (Civil Eats)
While Wahpepah grew up in Oakland, she’d go every summer to Oklahoma, where she and her aunts and grandma would cook foods traditional to their Kickapoo tribe, like sweet corn.
“It was one of the special moments I had with my grandmother and aunties of harvesting sweet corn and drying it and having it in winter,” she said. “We would go back in the summertime and harvest it and have family dinners. I thought that was the most beautiful thing, and when we’d come back to the city, I always wondered why we never had indigenous food at a restaurant.”
The first Native American chef to be featured on Food Network’s “Chopped” TV show, Wahpepah started her own catering business, Wahpepah’s Kitchen, in 2012, cooking those foods.
At the time, Wahpepah was attending Cordon Bleu, a cooking school in San Francisco, when a friend told her about La Cocina, the San Francisco-based organization that helps low-income people, mostly women, start food businesses. La Cocina supported her in building her brand, Wahpepah said.
When she first started, Wahpepah went to the Oakland library to read about Indigenous food. Now she travels all over the country meeting Indigenous chefs and talking about reviving the cuisine. In the fall, Wahpepah appeared at an event at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco, “Keeping the Seed,” along with Trevino and Medina, where she served her food and discussed her mission to make people aware of Native American cuisines as a means of cultural preservation.
“When I was growing up, I didn’t get to see Indigenous chefs or our food in stores,” Wahpepah said. “I take pride in knowing I’m building the foundation for youth to see our foods all over.”
Wahpepah wants to keep meeting other Indigenous chefs and one day, to have her own restaurant and write a combination cookbook and memoir. Like Medina and Trevino, she wants everyone to know Indigenous people and their culture are still alive.
Eating Indigenous food opens people up to hearing about the culture, Trevino says. “The foods are just inherently delicious—it’s completely inarguable—and as they’re eating these delicious things, and we talk about our truths, they’re extremely receptive,” he said. “They’re walking away with a really strong memory.”
“It’s true,” Medina added. “How could people who create such delicious foods be lying about anything?”
Some really unusual angles and focal choices. Also the models are older and darker skinned than I usually see in ad-spreads like this and they look faaaabulous.
And that grey dress in the last photo... I wants it.
Couples, sweethearts, and people who want to express their love for someone give chocolates, flowers, and all the sweet, merry gifts you can think of on Valentines Day. If you didn't have someone to give something to, then you just go on with your life. But back in the 1800s, people were more up front with their feelings, even to those they hate.
If you detested someone so vehemently, then you would give them the opposite of what you would send your lover or a sweetheart. These are called vinegar valentines or comic valentines. People did not hold back what they thought of their sworn enemies. From subtly rude to downright, blatant cruelty, these vinegar valentines are relentless. Whether it be rejection or creative, verbal insults, they don't hold back on anything.
From the black sands of Iceland to the bioluminescent coastlines of the Maldives, we’ve seen many unusual beaches around the world that showcase Mother Nature’s most beautiful phenomenons. If visiting these weird and wonderful beaches is on your bucket list, you might want to add one more destination to your list. Situated in Corralejo, a town on the Canary island of Fuerteventura, there’s a coastline that looks like it’s paved with popcorn.
Aptly known as Popcorn Beach or Popcorn Bay, from afar it looks like any scenic beach on the Spanish island, but up close you’ll see what looks like millions of popcorn pieces. The strange, irregular fragments are actually pieces of white coral that have washed ashore. Mixed with the volcanic rocks and sand on the beach, the coastline looks like a delicious sweet and salty combination of popcorn and black pepper—just don’t be tempted to take a bite!
The phenomenon isn’t new to the area, but Popcorn Bay has become popular amongst Instagrammers recently, who have been posting images of themselves with the endless supply of popcorn-shaped coral. Some have even posed pretending to eat the beachy kernels, but trust us, they won’t taste good.
Popcorn Bay in the town on the Canary island of Fuerteventura looks like it’s paved with popcorn.
From walks in the rain to waiting for the train in the snow, there’s beauty to be found in even the most ordinary, everyday moments. San Francisco-based illustrator Pascal Campion captures these moments, celebrating the joy of simply being alive. Each digital illustration is like a snapshot of a precious memory with loved ones, pets, or simply a tranquil moment of solitude.
Although Campion’s distinct style appears textured and painterly, his illustrations are in fact rendered using an iPad and the Procreate app. The talented artist starts each piece by first digitally sketching out a rough composition, complete with any figurative subjects. Campion explains, “My characters are always part of the landscape so I see them as integral part of the structure.” He then works on creating the lighting within the composition—many moody nighttime scenes are lit from street lamps or the glow from a window, while daytime scenes are warm and vibrant. “Then I start painting from the back to the front and I think very much as if I was building a house,” reveals Campion. “I start with the ground, the walls and build up from there.”
Campion’s use of color allows him to perfectly capture the mood of the moments he depicts. In one piece, titled A day at the park, the artist shows how three different color palettes can transform the narrative of the same scene. The first image, rendered in dark purple hues, suggests a quiet summer night, while the second image is warmly lit in sunrise hues, allowing the viewer to imagine the same scene at dawn. The third image depicts an entirely different time of day again—the park’s trees and grass are colored in hues of vibrant green, suggesting a beautiful sunny afternoon.
You can see more Campion’s portfolio on Instagram.
San-Francisco-based illustrator Pascal Campion captures the magic in everyday moments.
Each digital illustration is like a snapshot of a precious memory with loved ones, pets, or simply a tranquil moment of solitude.
The artist’s clever use of color allows him to perfectly capture different moods.
the trouble with making things for fun is that they start to stack up, and i start to feel weird about keeping them all out of sight in a box somewhere. it’s kind of a waste! and freelancing is a little slow right now, so i figured i’d experiment with selling some of my stuff.
the details
all my pieces are polymer clay, and have already been hardened in an oven. shipping and handling not included. the pennies are for size reference, and also to subtly brag about owning ten whole cents. drop into my inbox to call dibs (first come, first served) and we’ll go from there.
if you have some leftover holiday money, maybe consider picking up some tiny pug dog earrings ($10)?
“but wait, my dog isn’t a pug, it’s a brown lab!” friend i got u (also $10):
“but jess what i really want is tiny sparkly cthulhu figurines!” well that’s uh very specific, but never fear ($5 each, $12 for the set): SOLD
“do you have anything for fans of cartoon penguins?” friend DO I EVER ($5 each, $30 for the set) (crown penguin and medal penguin are spoken for!)
“ok but what if what i want is a set of chinchillas and rabbits dressed up like mafiosos? i bet you don’t have that, huh?” CHECK AND MATE ($5 each, $24 for the set, it’s a long story)
Pretty! Reminds me of the gorgeous papercut work of Lotte Redinger.
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Inspired by the endless possibilities of paper art, French artist Aline Maire creates intricate paper-cut light boxes—which she calls Abracadaboxes—that bring mythical stories to life. Each compact, 3D composition is made from layers of hand-cut paper silhouettes, meticulously arranged inside wooden box frames. Softly lit using LED lights, the enchanting scenes glow and cast rich shadows, taking on an extra magical quality.
Maire first began working with paper when she was searching for new ways to create art other than drawing. She came across the paper-cut light boxes of Hari & Deepti and was instantly struck by their beauty. “They really are, according to me, today’s masters of this paper cutting technique,” Maire tells My Modern Met. “It took me a long time to show my own creations because I have a lot of respect for these incredible artists and their wonderful universe.”
When coming up with the themes for her magical scenes, Maire takes inspiration from nature, films, and her personal feelings. She begins by basing the design around a particular motif or idea, but never plans out the entire piece. Instead, she allows her instinctive creativity and imagination to flow as she cuts and assembles each light box. “It’s like a call, like a whisper in my ears,” she explains. “Making a Abracadabox is a way for me to give power to my inner child and contact the child that is within you!”
From mythical dragons to forest creatures, Maire’s incredible paper creations look like something from a fairytale. In one piece, whales glide through stormy seas and in another, turtles and seahorses swim through a sunken ancient city. Maire admits, “I’m totally bewitched by whales and the seabed!”
You can see more of Maire’s paper lamps on Instagram and buy your own on Etsy.
French artist Aline Maire creates intricate paper light box art that bring mythical stories to life.
Each piece is made from layers of hand-cut paper silhouettes, meticulously arranged inside wooden box frames.
When softly lit using LED lights, the enchanting scenes take on an extra magical quality.
OOOoooooo!! I mean, I don't know if it will be as awesome without Saoirse Ronan, but I really loved Kinnaman in Altered Carbon and drawing the story out more could be a lot of fun.
Amazon Studios has dropped the first teaser trailer for Hanna, a television adaptation of the 2011 Joe Wright thriller starring Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird) as a teenage assassin. The film followed Ronan as the title character, a genetically enhanced girl who was trained from birth by her father Erik Heller (Eric Bana) to be a ruthless killer. Once on her own, Hanna goes after senior C.I.A. officer Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett).
The teaser is set in the newborn unit of a hospital, which is guarded by security cameras. As a haunting lullaby plays, we see baby Hanna disappear from her crib. British actress Esme Creed-Miles will play the teenaged Hanna, with Joel Kinnaman (Altered Carbon) starring as her father Erik and Mirielle Enos (The Catch) as the steely CIA agent Marissa Wiegler. Enos and Kinnaman both previously starred together in AMC’s broody murder mystery series The Killing.
The series was created by David Farr (The Night Manager) who co-wrote the feature film screenplay with Seth Lochhead. The pilot episode was directed by Sarah Adina Smith (Legion). Farr said of the series, “Hanna aims to be both a raw-knuckle ride and a deeply touching family drama. It has the visceral excitement of a genuine conspiracy thriller but also the simple humanity of a rites of passage drama. Hanna is in a very unusual family. She’s a very special teenager. But all teenagers think they’re abnormal. She’s just a little more abnormal than most.”
Hanna has the potential to be another strong entry to the Amazon fold. The film was anchored by strong performances and haunting fairy tale imagery. I have high hopes for the pilot, as Sarah Adina Smith directed the 2016 trippy mystery film Buster’s Mal Heart which starred Rami Malek. It’s incredibly stylish and well worth a watch.
Hanna premieres on Amazon Prime in March. What do you think of a Hanna television series? Will you be tuning in?
concept: after a few meetings, miles’ dad finally realizes that spiderman is like. a kid. and not even like a college kid, an actual, legitimate, “thinks dropping his voice actually disguises it” child. after his freak out (he went up against king pin but he’s so small?? rio he said he loved me he’s a baby-) he becomes very determined To Stop Spiderman (From Hurting Himself), but since the kid’s so slippery he mostly just… dads at him from the sidelines, yells encouragements and backs him up in fights and asks him if he’s okay afterwards between lectures on vigilantism and also do your parents know where you are young man? and at some point the double parenting starts to confuse miles and he accidentally calls him dad to his face while in the spiderman suit without even noticing. but jefferson notices and is like. Ah. My Child Now. and Operation: Stop Spiderman turns into Operation: Adopt Spiderman. so anyway he’s currently trying to figure out how to ask miles if he’d be okay with having a brother and miles is currently trying to figure out how to tell his own father that he can’t actually adopt him
OMG more awesome paper popup toys from Haruki Nakamura!
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Japanese designer Haruki Nakamura brings his artwork to life through the time-honored tradition of paper crafting. Using his masterful understanding of paper engineering, he constructs whimsical creatures and dolls that move in surprising ways. By the simple act of tipping, poking, or dropping them on a table, they reveal their true selves. Sometimes, they become something brand new, expose several more legs, or retreat to the comfort of their protective shells. You don’t know how they’ll react until you play with them, which is all part of the fun.
Nakamura is a self-taught paper crafter whose primary goal is to entertain people with his work. He has been doing so since 2000, just a few years after he first picked up a book called Paper Craft Techniques Encyclopedia. He used that text to hone his skills, but he really began pursuing the field in earnest after he saw the joy that his paper toys brought people. Nakamura continues to keep this in mind when he builds his recent creations, coupling the engineering with witty character design to add an even more playful edge to his work.
In keeping with his desire to make others happy, Nakamura sells his paper engineering as kits on his website. Unfortunately, the designer only sells in Japan, but there is hope for those abroad—his popular Penguin Bomb toy is available on Amazon.
Japanese designer Haruki Nakamura creates engaging paper toys that move in delightfully unexpected ways.
You can watch more of Nakamura’s papercraft portfolio in action via his YouTube channel.
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Aline Maire / Abracadabox Light: Website | Instagram | Etsy
