Russian Sledges

invisiblestories:

Giovanni Battista Nazari, Three Dreams on the Transmutation of Metal, 1599 (via deathandmysticism)

but of course - it’s so clear to me now - there are six heads stemming from winged-head-point C, how can I not have known it before, fool that I was? heads fourteen through nineteen face the king off a single stem originating in winged-head-point C

honestly this changes everything

Laser-cut stainless steel creates an intricately patterned surface on the walls of this upgraded metro station in Amsterdam by architecture firm Maccreanor Lavington (+ slideshow).

Maccreanor Lavington's Rotterdam studio overhauled the 1970s Kraaiennest station in the Bijlmermeer neighbourhood of Amsterdam, increasing its capacity and modernising its facilities.

The decorative steel screens surround the new ground-level entrance, allowing natural light to filter inside during the day. After dark, lights glowing from within transform the structure into a glowing beacon that makes it easy for locals to find.

"At night time the design allows the station to be a lantern for the local neighbourhood," said the architect in a statement.

As well as the laser-cut panels surrounding the base of the station, the opaque upper walls are also made from stainless steel. The architect says this material will age well and need little maintenance.

Unlike the old station, which only offered stairs, the new facility incorporates a series of escalators to transport passengers up to the platform. This will help it offer regular transport to around 100,000 local residents.

The upgraded Kraaiennest station is the latest in a series of infrastructure improvements underway in the 1960s neighbourhood. It follows the 2008 completion of Grimshaw's Bijlmer Station, which was shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize.

Photography is Luuk Kramer.

Here's a project description from Maccreanor Lavington:

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New €14 million Metro Station completed in Amsterdam

London and Rotterdam based architecture firm, Maccreanor Lavington has completed a major new metro station in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The new 550m² station and 1,880m² platform in the neighbourhood of Bijlmermeer started on site in 2010 and sits on the site of the original station, built in 1970.

The metro station features a ground level entrance with new escalators to take passengers up to the platforms, a major improvement for citizens as the old station only had stairs. The ground level entrance provides the main focal point of the station with an elegant stainless steel facade with a floral design. The laser cut design allows plenty of natural light to flow through the entrance, helping the passenger journey to seamlessly flow from the external surroundings into the station.

At night time the design allows the station to be a lantern for the local neighbourhood, creating a sense of warmth on street level and creating an instantly recognisable feature for the station. The architects' chose stainless steel for the external facade due to its durability and low maintenance enabling the station not to need constant upkeep.

Since the beginning of the late 1990s the area has seen massive investment transforming it from its previous negative public opinion and now making it a thriving suburb of Amsterdam.

Now completed, the station will be in use by over 100,000 residents in Bijlmermeer, a vast increase on the number of users from when the station first opened and completes one of the biggest urban regeneration projects in Europe in recent history.

Architects: Maccreanor Lavington Architects
Contractor: Strukton Bouw
Client: Dienst infrastructuur Verkeer Vervoer, GVB, Stadsdeel Zuidoost
Interiors: Maccreanor Lavington
Structural engineer: Ingenieursbureau Amsterdam
M&E engineer: Arcadis
Lighting Consultant: Sjoerd van Beers, Beersnielsen

The post Maccreanor Lavington overhauls Amsterdam's
Kraaiennest metro station appeared first on Dezeen.

Back in 2007, Paris' Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain held a David Lynch retrospective titled The Air is on Fire, which was the first major exhibition avant-garde director's paintings, photographs and drawings. For it Lynch and collaborator Dean Hurley created an interactive soundscape that guided visitors through the exhibition. That soundscape is now getting a vinyl release for Record Store Day (4/19) via Sacred Bones (who have put out Lynch's recent albums). You can listen to an interview with Hurley about the project below.

Meanwhile, Lynch himself will appear at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House on April 29 where he'll be in conversation with New York Public Library's Paul Holdengräber. Tickets for this event go on sale Friday (4/11) via BAM's website.

Continue reading "David Lynch releasing Record Store Day 12", will be "in coversation" at BAM this month" at brooklynvegan

Walter Potter (1835-1918), a country taxidermist of no great expertise, became famous as an icon of Victorian whimsy. His tiny museum in Bramber, Sussex, was crammed full of multi-legged kittens, two-headed lambs and a bewildering assortment of curios. Closed in the '70s, the museum was variously re-established before being auctioned off in 2003. It was reported that a £1M bid by Damien Hirst to keep the collection intact was refused, but in 2010 many of Potter's key pieces were exhibited by the artist Sir Peter Blake at London's 'Museum of Everything', attracting over 30,000 visitors in 6 weeks. The subsequent dispersal of Potter's works has meant the loss of a truly unique Victorian legacy. Here, perhaps for the last time, the collection is preserved and celebrated with new photographs of Potter's best-loved works.

artbooksnat:

Background art and architecture in sketched and finished forms by Shichirou Kobayashi (小林七郎) for the film Revolutionary Girl Utena: Adolescence Apocalypse.

londonphile:

What is this cuteness?! :) (via @greenofrichmond and @SarahIngeParker)

Got a Benedict Cumberbatch interview in High Life tomorrow, driving Jaguars on ice. If you’re flying BA take a look

@greenofrichmond @MsSilT@starhiku Personal enjoyment, no ad. He’s a Jaguar brand ambassador and drives an XK-R sports car

First of 30 daily facts gleaned from my Cumberbatch BA High Life interview #bahighlife 1. His favourite city is London

Cover http://t.co/XbjMXbbuFX

I had an email question about setting patch pockets by machine.

It's not complicated, but requires precision and a little bit of practice. It's also best to get the heavier, stiff pattern paper, not the usual brown stuff.

Traditionally, patch pockets are assembled and then sewn on to the coat by hand; this is fairly easy, especially when dealing with a check that needs to be matched, but is not as strong as a pocket that was set by machine.

The first step is to draw out the finished shape of the patch, and cut a hard paper template, and add notches on each straight edge plus at each rounded corner.



Next, determine what width of seam allowance you will use- I suggest 3/16", which, aside from being a decent size, is also the width of the standard presser foot on an industrial machine so you can use the edge of the foot as a sewing guide. Trace the finished patch on to another piece of hard paper, then add the seam allowance around the edges that will be sewn down, then add another 1/8". This extra 1/8" will help the patch to lay smoothly over the hip without being tight. Transfer notches; this is now your cut patch pattern.



The industrial method would be to fuse a block of cloth larger than the patch, then sewn a piece of lining , right sides together, to the top edge of the patch block. Fold down the cloth so that one inch of cloth is turned to the inside and the lining covers the inside of the patch. Using the cut patch pattern, mark the cut shape on the block, then baste or machine stitch the lining and cloth together so they don't move. Now cut the patch and overlock the edges.

Using more hard paper, retrace the finished patch again, but this time, measure inside the finished shape the width of the seam allowance, transfer notches and cut out. You will use this smaller pattern to mark the position on the front of the coat. Be precise, using very sharp chalk, and mark notches carefully- these are crucial. You can usually use wax for this as it will be concealed by the pocket.



Now place the patch on the coat, right side to right side, butting up the cut edge of the pocket to the marked line on the coat. Using the edge of the presser foot as a guide along the cut edge of the patch, sew 3/16" from the cut edge.Since the marker was 3/16" smaller than the finished size of the pocket, your seam line will now fall exactly on the finished edge line of the pocket. The first side of the pocket is easy, but as you approach the curve it gets a bit trickier- you need to lift the pocket up and use both hands to turn the pocket and the front as you come around, being very careful to match the placement notches. Keep sewing in one go all the way around the pocket. If you need to stop sewing for whatever reason (such as notches not matching) it is usually best to rip the whole thing and start again.



So Aaron, I hope this is clear. Let me know if anything is still confusing to you.

The Innovation Economy is moving to where the cost of living is reasonable. The anecdotes and data points are piling up, putting the squeeze on talent-starved Silicon Valley companies. Tale of the domestic migration tape:

“It’s a kind of middle-class flight—a bright flight,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, D.C. “People are moving to where the cost of living is reasonable.”

The shift holds some long-term implications for the economy. The clustering of workers with advanced degrees has been a driver of America’s growth, economists say. That is because skilled workers are more productive when they collaborate with similarly skilled colleagues. Consider Silicon Valley, for example, or Detroit’s Motor City in the 1950s, where innovation and industrial-scale operations drove economic development.

However, if professionals young and old fan out to more places, that could spread the nation’s talents more widely. A broader dispersal of America’s skilled workers eventually could mean more jobs and new businesses, boosting the economy’s dynamism.

Emphasis added. Detroit’s Motor City in the 1950s is today’s Silicon Valley. Then manufacturing fanned out to more places, at home and abroad. Government labs attracted the best and brightest to new knowledge hubs. Detroit slipped into the cul de sac of globalization. Now it’s Silicon Valley’s turn.

Before we stick in fork in the geography of innovation, not every place will benefit from Silicon Valley’s decline. Finding cheaper digs is easy. Attracting highly mobile talent to some forgotten corner is another story. Can Buffalo compete with Barcelona?

Another attraction Barcelona holds for fledgling tech companies, aside from its warm climate, location and cultural appeal, is its relatively low cost base for anyone looking to build a start-up in its early stages.

While high competition for engineers in Silicon Valley means that talented engineers can demand ever higher salaries, the lower wages that are paid in Barcelona to workers who want to stay in Europe and enjoy the city’s lifestyle can allow new ventures to flourish. …

… “Lots of people want to live in Barcelona, and this helps companies to have a much lower cost base than other places, but still operate out of Europe in an attractive location,” he says.

The other side of the Silicon Rust coin is the cost of talent. Start-ups can’t compete with Google or Apple for employees. Places such as Barcelona comprise the minor leagues for tech. Thus, proximity to the largest markets matters. A town can’t just be cheap and wonderful. It also has to be connected.

Barcelona has another asset going for it. It’s a tourist destination. Restaurant workers and housekeepers already have an economic rationale to be there. Furthermore, returning to the original concern about the rent being too damn high, Barcelona has a long way to go before it bubbles over with Silicon Valley-like gentrification pressures:

East Palo Alto is the last haven of low-rent housing in a region where companies like Tesla, Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. have minted at least two dozen billionaires and thousands of millionaires. Woodland Park is where Silicon Valley’s cooks, janitors and housekeepers live, often working second jobs to hang on to their homes as rents soar and wages stagnate.

The service class can’t afford to work in Silicon Valley. The foreign born usually fill that void. But California has reached peak immigration and is rapidly sliding into demographic decline. Better opportunities await elsewhere, including in the homeland. With plummeting birth rates worldwide, the absolute number of potential workers is constricted. The supply crunch is hitting Silicon Valley at both ends of the labor market. Get out while getting is good.

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Bright Flight From Silicon Valley was first posted on April 8, 2014 at 2:00 am.
©2013 "Pacific Standard". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at njackson@psmag.com

Mother by Stefanie Myr on Flickr.

roachpatrol:

birdcagewalk:

lindasinklings:tucked in. via (onceuponawildflower)

ALL HAIL THE BIRD ORB

eeee look at the little bird ball!

fat-birds:

Pygmy Kingfisher by D&R IMAGES on Flickr.

If you are an archivist or special collections librarian, please take a few minutes and complete this survey, which part of an academic study by a postgraduate student at the University of Dundee: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/socialmediasurveyforarchivists.   It is designed to establish to what extent literary authors use social media and have considered its long term preservation, and to what extent archivists are actively or considering preserving an author’s social media content.

Thanks!

Giovanni Battista Nazari, Three Dreams on the Transmutation of Metal, 1599 

Recorded circa March 1930 in Grafton, Wisconsin. Don Kent has described "Last Kind Words" as "one of the most imginatively constructed guitar arrangments of its era...."

The blues becomes transparent about itself

15.99 USD

This is 'Kussman' by Liberty of London 100% cotton Tana Lawn made in England. 53 inches wide.

'Kussman' is one of the Autumn/Winter 2013 Art Fabrics collection inspired by William Morris's poem 'Earthly Paradise'. The Liberty design studio travelled to Iceland where the dramatically changing scenery was the source of inspiration for the Fall collection of Liberty fabrics.

The 'Kussman' design is a miniature jigsaw of Icelandic horses.

Beautiful saturated colors and lightweight, finely woven, cottony drape are the characteristics of Liberty of London Tana Lawn fabrics. These durable cotton fabrics are excellent for making garments, accessories or for quilting projects.

This listing is for 1/2 yard (18 inches) of fabric. Additional fabric purchased will be cut as a continuous length.

Thanks for Looking!

In a rare interview, Keytar Bear opens up about his time spent busking, his favorite tunes, and more.

The Tilda Stardust 2.0 design features a few added pictures of Bowie covering up a few of the more boring faces in the design. The new pattern is more colorful, vibrant, and a healthy chunk louder. The 2.0 leggings also feature a reinforced center seam.

This year, married same-sex couples can file their taxes jointly, possibly saving money. What you may not realize is that you can also amend your taxes from past years—and TurboTax has a calculator that tells you how much you'll get back.

Read more...

Mexican criminals are making a shortage worse.

If you live in New York City and smelled smoke this morning, don't worry, your building probably isn't on fire: Late Sunday and early Monday, smoke from a forest fire in New Jersey wafted into parts of Manhattan, Staten Island, and Brooklyn

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Sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. To my mind, there’s something missing from the old motto. Wine. So, what better way to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of rock and roll legends, The Rolling Stones, than – ahead of their sadly postponed Australian tour, their first in almost a decade – team up with Dan Murphy’s and Warburn Estate to create The Rolling Stones 50th Anniversary McLaren Vale Shiraz.

Available online and in Dan Murphy’s stores nationwide, the smooth yet bold and peppery Shiraz, ripe with fruit flavours, follows the previous successful release of an AC/DC counterpart, and is a true collectors’ item for Rolling Stones fans, housed in a striking bottle bearing the iconic tongue and lips logo for which the Stones are most famed.

The post One for the cellar: The Rolling Stones 50th Anniversary Shiraz appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

"Sherlock Homes and Intelligent Design" is the title of an actual article published in the September 2012 edition of The Quarterly Review of Biology. It traces how the two sides of the Intelligent Design/Evolution debate each invoke Sherlock Holmes in a proxy war over reason.

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More wealthy Chinese parents are sending their children to American parochial schools, where they pay a premium to receive an American education and religious instruction but do not have to convert.