SHOUTOUT TO ARIANA GRANDE FOR ACKNOWLEDGING THE FACT THAT NOT EVERYONE WITH A DICK IS A MAN GOD BLESS
Um…let’s not assume she knows this….let’s just assume she used some good phrasing…..please…
^^ I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s aware but..
nope! ariana is close friends with agender activist tyler ford and she periodically posts tyler’s videos about proper pronoun usage and correcting cissexist language. she’s really well-educated about this stuff and this was totally intentional.
okay awesome that is so good to know and makes me happy
[Image: An otherwise unrelated shot of rebar used in road construction; via Wikipedia].
A quick news item from last month seems worth mentioning: "approximately 3,400 confiscated firearms" are being melted down and turned into rebar to be used for bridge and highway construction projects throughout the American Southwest.
As Global Construction Review reported, "The weapons will be melted into steel reinforcing bar, better known as ‘rebar,’ and transformed into elements of construction for upgrades in freeways and bridges in Arizona, California and Nevada."
The event where this occurs is known as the "annual gun-melt," and its future byproducts will be coming soon to a highway crossing near you: former armaments, from swords to plowshares, embedded in our everyday landscape.
I almost said I would take this over my impending Street Triple, but then I realized the perfect number of bikes is always N+1, and shall say in ADDITION to the impending bike.
In the mid-70s, Suzuki was reeling from the disastrous RE5 rotary episode, and bet the house on a new 4-stroke inline four. The GS750 was an immediate hit with journalists and riders alike: “The quickest and best-handling 750 on the market,” raved Cycle World.
So why don’t we see more of them on the custom scene?
Lukas and Sylwester of Poland’s Eastern Spirit Garage are fans. “We think it’s a very underrated model,” they told us. “We hope this build will change the view within the café racer scene.”
It’s a stunning creation, with classic café lines and a sumptuous black finish throughout. Eastern Spirit wanted a clean, minimalist look to showcase the air-cooled DOHC motor, and they’ve absolutely nailed it.
They started from the back. After stripping the 1977-spec donor down to its core components, they grafted on a new subframe and tail unit, which sits just perfectly above the rear wheel.
The seat came next, flowing neatly into the stock tank—which shows that Suzuki’s designers got the proportions just right some 40 years ago.
Up front is the headlight from an old Polish motorcycle, restored and modified to hide the ignition system and a compact analog speedo.
To get the stance of the GS750 just right, Eastern Spirit have shortened the front suspension a notch. A new exhaust system adds to the visual ‘bulk’ and aggressiveness—it’s a 4-into-1 setup from the larger Suzuki GS850.
The GS750 engine is a gem—smooth and reliable—so this one was simply overhauled and fitted with new piston rings and a fresh timing chain. Nearly everything else went off to the powder coater—from the frame to the wheels and the swing arm. The deep, glossy black looks sublime.
The final touch was an upgrade to the braking system, which is a mix of later-model GS750 parts and the rear system from a GSX, connected with steel braided hoses.
It’s a sharp looking alternative to a Honda CB750 custom—and dynamically superior. If Eastern Spirit’s fine work throws the spotlight back onto the GS750, that’s no bad thing.
Reportedly inspired by a divine message, the architect of this poultry-shaped church initially set out to create a place of worship in the form of a giant dove, but the locals quickly dubbed his creation the Chicken Church (Gereja Ayam in the regional language).
Indeed, despite the best intentions to craft it otherwise, it is impossible not to see a domestic egg-laying bird when looking at this open-beaked architectural creature.
In a remote Indonesian forest, this creation of Daniel Alamsjah was once a place of prayer as well as a rehabilitation center for children and drug addicts, but finishing the building proved too costly and the place closed down over a decade ago.
Covered in graffiti and crumbling at a structural level, the Chicken Church is likely not long for this world. For now, though, travelers (sometimes with romantic partners) can be found inside at times, cooped up away from prying eyes, but eventually the building will doubtless be either demolished or perhaps simply collapse on its own (story via Colossal and images via uzone.id, Punthuk Setumbu and Alek Kurniawan).
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Mixed feels. Laughed a lot, but also don't see how this changes anything at all.
One Internet legend shared his amazing story of how he joined a white pride Facebook group, gained admin power, and eventually changed the name to 'LGBT Southerners for Michelle Obama.' It sounds like a hack, but it's actually a lot easier than you would ever imagine.
The first step of the troll begins with befriending a large amount of racist Facebook "friends," which is actually quite simple, according to Virgil Texas (our protagonist in this story).
These tickets have sold out early every year so far, and the student tickets (available to students from any university) usually sell out very quickly. So, if you want to guarantee a spot, and see people like Rosemary Mosco, Abby Howard, and Max Tegmark, please book soon!
ok so i love steven’s universe for a lot of reasons, but I just noticed something:
everyone who watches the show knows that Rose is seen as beautiful, and elegant and likely the most attractive character in the show.
But then we also see stuff like:
Mayor Dewy thinking Pearl is beautiful, and even calling her “hot”
Jamie thinking Garnet is literally the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
Stevonie, a non-binary but mostly female appearing character, being seen as very attractive by multiple other characters, and Sadie finding her attractive instead of being catty.
Then we have these two. Saphire is a tiny blue one eyed ice smurf and is also seen as beautiful. Ruby is a tiny red angry square with almost no traditionally female characteristics and is also seen as attractive enough to find true love.
Vedalia even says Greg is hot. A+ body positivity despite gender and body type.
What I haven’t seen EVER in Steven’s Universe though is any of the characters being portrayed as ugly or physically unappealing to anyone. Fat characters get body positivity, skinny characters get body positivity, curvy characters get body positivity, tiny characters get body positivity. You know what else? No two characters have the same body type just like real life. It teaches you that there are endless different ways to look and still be beautiful.
No one gets left out. No one gets called ugly. The only “bad” characters arn’t bad because of the way they look, but the way they act. Fat characters are never seen as ugly because they are fat.
This is so important for little kids to see.
And I know the counter argument to children being taught that it’s “ok” to be fat will always be “well being fat is unhealthy and they should feel bad about being fat so that they will work on loosing weight”. But guess what, that kind of thing leads to eating disorders, and kills children’s self esteem, and makes them hate their bodies. Some people do need to loose weight if it actually does affect their health but a lot of the time they really don’t, or they can’t for whatever reason. Some people feel more comfortable being on the heavier side. But even if you are concerned for a person’s health, the stress and depression that comes along with having a poor image of yourself is much more unhealthy and limiting than a little belly fat.
It also shows you that the Gems choose their appearance, which is also supper important. Pearl, and Lapis choose to be skinny, Amethyst and Rose choose to be fat, Garnet chooses to be a giant curvy square, and all of those things are completely accepted and ok.
Love yourself.
Man, I wish I had been shown this as a child.
Children are seeing it now, though, and this is important.
Keep it popular, keep it safe for kids, and it can change the world.
Waves of rainbow color cascade down a hillside neighborhood in Mexico’s drug capital as a street art collective paints over 200 houses. ‘German Crew’ enlisted the help of youth living in Las Palmitas to transform the town, brightening the facades of almost every single building in continuous swoops of fuchsia, orange, yellow, green and blue.
The muralists covered 20,000 square meters (225,280 square feet) with powerful pops of color. Commissioned by the Las Palmitas municipality, the project is five months in the making, and these photos only show completion of the first stage. The aim is to revitalize the town, which is located in the state of Sinaloa, where most of the country’s drug cartels are based.
According to the German Crew Nuevo Muralismos of Mexico, the project involved the participation of 452 families, or 1,808 people living in the neighborhood. Keeping kids and teenagers busy painting all of those houses nearly eradicated violence among youths while it was in progress. Lots more photos can be found on the crew’s Facebook page and Instagram.
Previously, street art duo Haas & Hahn transformed 34 buildings in a Rio de Janeiro favela (above), with the similar effect of creating jobs, bringing the community together and making a place that’s often feared by outsiders feel more welcoming. These large-scale mural projects can bring attention to under-served neighborhoods and help boost residents’ sense of pride.
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A Circularly Disposed Antenna Array, he explains, was "sometimes referred to as a Circularly Disposed Dipole Array (CDDA)" and was "used for radio direction finding. The military used these to triangulate radio signals for radio navigation, intelligence gathering and search and rescue."
While discussing the now-overgrown landscapes found on old military sites in Hawaii, the post's author points out the remains of old antenna set-ups still visible in the terrain.
A series of photos, that you can find over at the original post, show how these abandoned circular land forms—like electromagnetic stone circles—exist just below the surface of the Hawaiian landscape, thanks to the archipelago's intense militarization over the course of the 20th century.
He then cleverly juxtaposes these madala-like technical diagrams with what he calls a "Polynesian guidance system for navigating the Pacific" (bringing to mind our earlier look at large-scale weather systems in the South Pacific and how they might have guided human settlement there).
The idea that Polynesian shell map geometries and the antenna designs of Cold War-era military radio sites might inadvertently echo one another is hugely evocative, albeit purely a poetic analogy.
Finally, I couldn't resist this brief passage, describing many of these ruined antenna sites: "Their exact Cold War era use, frequencies and purpose isn't yet known but were most likely for aircraft radio navigation, direction finding, intelligence gathering and for search and rescue."
You can all but picture the opening shots of a film here, as concerned military radio operators, surrounded by the arcane, talismanic geometries of antenna structures in the fading light of a Pacific summer evening, pick up the sounds of something vast and strange moving at the bottom of the sea.
Calculated correctors, this team of vigilante street art fixers patrols for grammatical mistakes then regroups to decide on edits before hitting the streets of Quito, Ecuador, to deploy them.
Known as Acción Ortográfica Quito, the group consists of a trio who share a strange set of common interests including street art copy editing. Like rogue professors, they use red to highlight their changes or suggestions, but their good intentions do not render their actions legal, hence their strictly maintained anonymity.
“There’s a big difference in saying: ‘No quiero verte’ (I don’t want to see you) and ‘No, quiero verte’ (No, I want to see you),” notes one of the members in an interview with COLORS, “Many times, someone does not realize how a comma or an oversight can completely change the meaning of a sentence. It can change your life.”
The task can be daunting – their first fix had thirteen errors in two lines of text. Whether serious or silly, they suggest “it’s a public service and a moral obligation. We’re against spelling vandalism and we won’t break nor give up until we see a society free of spelling mistakes.”
Above, the phrase: “If in your kisses I met the essence of life, then not kissing you would be the worst sin I could commit,” for which these graffiti activists turned the verb into conditional, added and deleted commas, turned ellipsis into full stop and capital letter into lower case.
The group is also broadening its scope and mandate over time; they are aiming to add a hotline where people can phone in mistakes they spot and have begun correcting grammar on Twitter posts as well. When time permits, they also leave their name stenciled at the scene in red, like a grader signing their work for students.
Meanwhile, a similarly unconventional yet equally geeky German street artist is out to fix tags, turning them into tag clouds – it would seem this group is not alone in its quest to clean up yet preserve the essential meaning of everyday graffiti.
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If you're looking to install a new sound system in your house, consider burying a horse skull in the floor.
According to the Irish Archaeological Consultancy, the widespread discovery of "buried horse skulls within medieval and early modern clay floors" has led to the speculation that they might have been placed there for acoustic reasons—in other words, "skulls were placed under floors to create an echo," we read.
Ethnographic data from Ireland, Britain and Southern Scandinavia attests to this practice in relation to floors that were in use for dancing. The voids within the skull cavities would have produced a particular sound underfoot. The acoustic skulls were also placed in churches, houses and, in Scandinavia especially, in threshing-barns... It was considered important that the sound of threshing carried far across the land.
They were osteological subwoofers, bringing the bass to medieval villages.
It's hard to believe, but this was apparently a common practice: "the retrieval of horse skulls from clay floors, beneath flagstones and within niches in house foundations, is a reasonably widespread phenomenon. This practice is well attested on a wider European scale," as well, even though the ultimate explanation for its occurrence is still open to debate (the Irish Archaeological Consultancy post describes other interpretations, as well).
Either way, it's interesting to wonder if the thanato-acoustic use of horse skulls as resonating gourds in medieval architectural design might have any implications for how natural history museums could reimagine their own internal sound profiles—that is, if the vastly increased reverberation space presented by skulls and animal skeletons could be deliberately cultivated to affect what a museum's interior sounds like.
Like David Byrne's well-known project Playing the Building—"a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument"—you could subtly instrumentalize the bones on display for the world's most macabre architectural acoustics.
[Image: An otherwise unrelated shot of rebar used in road construction; via Wikipedia].
[Image: Via the Pacific Cold War Patrol Museum].
[Image: Via the Pacific Cold War Patrol Museum].
[Image: Via the Pacific Cold War Patrol Museum].
[Image: Horse skull via Wikimedia].
[Image: Inside the Paris Natural History Museum; photo by Nicola Twilley].
