wskent

Sweden is so good at waste management, it imports trash.

Boy Carrying Horse, Maxwell Street, 1988, Chicago. Jay Wolke

bigblueboo:

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Every single one of these is a gem. Read the rest

From Kevin Kelly, a collection of photos he took of Katmandu, Nepal in 1976.

Nepal was recently affected by a 7.8 earthquake, which resulted in the deaths of more than 6000 people and much property damage.

Katmandu was an intensely ornate city that is easily damaged. The carvings, details, public spaces were glorious. My heart goes out to its citizens who suffer with their city. As you can see from these images I took in 1976, the medieval town has been delicate for decades. Loosely stacked bricks are everywhere. One can also see what splendid art has been lost. Not all has been destroyed, and I am sure the Nepalis will rebuild as they have in the past. Still, the earthquake shook more than just buildings.

If you look carefully you may notice something unusual about these photos. They show no cars, pedicabs, or even bicycles. At the time I took these images, Katmandu was an entirely pedestrian city. Everyone walked everywhere. Part of why I loved it. That has not been true for decades, so this is something else that was lost long ago. Also missing back then was signage. There are few signs for stores, or the typical wordage you would see in any urban landscape today. Katmandu today is much more modern, much more livable, or at least it was.

Quiksilver designed a wetsuit that looks like an actual suit.

If you’re a surfer, and you love the feel of salty sea mist on your skin, and the threatening billow of a forming wave, and the rush of gliding on water, but your preferred look is business formal, this is great news for you. 

"You see this goblet?" asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master. "For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, 'Of course.' When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious."

From Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective by Mark Epstein.

For months Jeff Wysaski has been covertly placing fake installations into everyday society. He is the creator of the subversive product remixing project, tumblr site, and sometimes fake company, ‘Obvious Plant’ (just think about that name…). At first glance his work seems like everyday book covers, warning signs or wine recommendations – but take a closer look and the jokes on you.

Need a bottle of wine and don’t know what to pair it with? Jeff left wine recommendations at his local liquor store. They pretty much tell it like it is…

Has that wine buzz brought up some personal issues you need to deal with? Don’t worry, grab one of Obvious Plant’s fine self-help books at Jeff’s local bookstore. Seriously, who understands kids these days?

Ok, you are an adult, how about reading like one. Here are Jeff’s new (and honest sections) at the same store.

You aren’t even safe from Jeff’s trickery in the parking lot (even when he’s doing his “best to prevent crime“). Here he gives some sage advice on how to keep your car safe while you’re shopping at the mall:

Clearly Jeff is on a roll here. Check out more of his consumerist subversions on his site (and once you’re inspired, go make your own).

Using this thumbnail trackpad is like playing the world’s smallest violin.

As Boing Boing's "king of typos," I can appreciate this howler from The Vocabulary of East Anglia, Vol. 1 of 2.

Many thanks to Rob for antiquing this scan of the public domain book. We are releasing the image to the public domain. Have fun with it!

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When Google pulled the plug on Google Reader, I looked around for a replacement. I found Feedly and thought it was almost as good as Google Reader.

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From New York Magazine, a big feature on NYC after midnight. Several people shared their stories, including Bebe Buell:

In 1974, I was on Hudson and Horatio -- it was still pretty shady over there at the time - and I could not get a cab. This big giant Cadillac pulls up, and a guy and a girl were in it. It was obviously a pimp and his girl. And the guy goes, "My name is Magic. Do you need a ride?" Who in their right mind would get in that car? But I did. His name was Magic, her name was Angel, and it was like a scene out of a Scorsese movie. I just remember the tranny girls yelling, "You go, girl!" They thought I had gotten a trick or something. I don't know what made me think it was going to be okay. Angel let me know, "Don't worry, honey, we're not serial killers." And for some godforsaken reason, I believed them.

And Alec Baldwin, who has always been interested in Saturday Night Live:

I was told that there was a place called Louis's Toy Bar on the Upper East Side. And it was this narrow sliver of a shop that obviously had sold antique clothes or something. And this guy Louis who owned it would put out plates of, like, Velveeta cheese and crackers and very modest kinds of canapes. I was told, back then, that all the cast of the original Saturday Night Live went there after the show; this was their haunt, this was their after-party-after-party Copacabana. And I went there countless times, eating Velveeta cheese, waiting for them, and they never came. They never showed up.

And Lydia Lunch:

I made money by standing on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 8th Street, shaking down women with children, saying I worked for the Cancer Foundation, until I got $10. I could live on that. The rent at my apartment on 12th Street between A and B was $75 a month.

And Dr. Jason D'Amore, formerly a resident at Bellvue:

One night, we got this guy in who was riding his Harley down the FDR at high speed, and he got run over by a semi, and he comes in and is very close to death. [...] So this guy, he was covered head-to-toe in iron crosses and swastikas and white-power tattoos. I'm looking around, and I'm D'Amore, and the ortho guy was Schwarzbaum, and we had to call neurosurgery, and that was Goldberg, and we intubated him and we got him stabilized and into the operating room, and he's totally sedated, and I leaned down and said, "Dude, I just wanted you to know a bunch of Jews just saved your ass."

And Colin Quinn:

It's easier to be nostalgic now. It's easier to look at it now and say, "Oh, I miss Taxi Driver." Suddenly, we're all like French film students who romanticize New York, even though when you lived it, it was bad. There were so many heroin dealers. If you were on, like, Avenue B and C, and somebody goes, "You want heroin?" and you said no, they'd get mad at you, like you were going browsing in a store and not buying anything. "You're wasting our time! Trying to make money here."

And Alexis Swerdloff:

The hand-delivered invite was a velvet-wrapped VHS tape. Five minutes and 42 seconds long, the video had Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres, Ananda Lewis, Todd Oldham, Veronica Webb, Ben Stiller, Pauly Shore, Derek Jeter, and dozens of other '90s luminaries hyping Puff Daddy's 29th-birthday party on November 4, 1998. Chris Rock said to leave your posse at home, Magic Johnson instructed guests to arrive at 10 p.m. on the dot, and Will Smith directed people to a 212 number in order to RSVP for the secret location. "It's gonna be all that," cooed Tyra Banks.

And there's so much more...go read the whole thing. The photos are great too. Look for the one with Edith Piaf singing at a club; it's just her in 1950 on a tiny stage with no microphone singing to people while they eat dinner. Man, if I had a time machine...

Devin Graham shot this high-energy race down a New Zealand mountain with a boulder-sized Zorb ready to roll over anyone in its path. The key is to dive before it catches you, or plan on a pretty heavy faceplant as it rolls over. Read the rest

Google Search thinks the most important female CEO is Barbie.

The University of Washington just released a preview of a study that claims search engine results can influence people’s perceptions about how many men or women hold certain jobs. One figure quoted in the preview is that in a Google image search for CEO, only 11 percent of the people returned were women (by comparison, the university says 27 percent of CEOs in the US are women). That’s pretty crazy, so I decided to fire up incognito mode in Chrome and search Google Images as an Anonymous Internet Person to see the authentic, natural results. And, uh, the results are insane. 

Meet the enormous machine that refreshes railroad tracks (rails, ties, gravel) with minimal human involvement. Fun to see the infrastructure behind the infrastructure.

Not even John Henry would stand a chance against this behemoth.

Street artists Ella & Pitr painted this amazing massive piece in a Lyon, France rail yard. (Street Art News via Laughing Squid)

Chicago: please watch this important video, and don’t forget to vote on April 7th.

(via Chicagoist)

Today a renegade sculptor mounted a bust of Edward Snowden in a Brooklyn park — only to have it removed by the Parks department.

(GIF from a Vine shared by Jeremy Cabalona)

Someone has been keeping an incredible fictional Instagram account of Drake twins.

(images via draketwins)

Artist Julien Knez designed VHS covers for current movies and shows that make us nostalgic for the present.