Giant Fish Sculptures Made from Discarded Plastic Bottles in Rio:





As part of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) an enormous outdoor installation of fish was constructed using discarded plastic bottles on Botafogo beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The sculptures are illuminated from the inside at night creating a pretty spectacular light show. Love this. See much more over on this Rio+20 Flicker set. (via hungeree and razor shapes)

June 21, 2012:

Whee!

Watercolor animation of Blade Runner:

Swedish artist Anders Ramsell animated 3,285 watercolor paintings to recreate this sequence from Blade Runner. “Blade Runner Aquarelle Edition, Part 1 (Teaser)“

G4S boss predicts mass privatisation of UK police forces:
G4S, the scandal-haunted private security firm, is one of the world’s largest companies, with 657,000 staff. It’s about to get bigger, according to G4S’s UK/Africa chief David Taylor-Smith, who predicts that the UK’s police forces will begin to privatize, turning duties over from public employees (who are, theoretically, accountable to the public) to private mercenaries and security staff, who will be accountable only to G4S’s shareholders.
Matthew Taylor and Alan Travis report in The Guardian.

Taylor-Smith said core policing would remain a public-sector preserve but added: “We have been long-term optimistic about the police and short-to-medium-term pessimistic about the police for many years. Our view was, look, we would never try to take away core policing functions from the police but for a number of years it has been absolutely clear as day to us – and to others – that the configuration of the police in the UK is just simply not as effective and as efficient as it could be.”

Concern has grown about the involvement of private firms in policing. In May more than 20,000 officers took to the streets to outline their fears about pay, conditions and police privatisation. The Police Federation has warned that the service is being undermined by creeping privatisation.

Unite, the union that represents many police staff, said the potential scale of private-sector involvement in policing was “a frightening prospect”. Peter Allenson, national officer, said: “This is not the back office – we are talking about the privatisation of core parts of the police service right across the country, including crime investigation, forensics, 999 call-handling, custody and detention and a wide range of police services

G4S chief predicts mass police privatisation

G4S boss predicts mass privatisation of UK police forces:
G4S, the scandal-haunted private security firm, is one of the world’s largest companies, with 657,000 staff. It’s about to get bigger, according to G4S’s UK/Africa chief David Taylor-Smith, who predicts that the UK’s police forces will begin to privatize, turning duties over from public employees (who are, theoretically, accountable to the public) to private mercenaries and security staff, who will be accountable only to G4S’s shareholders.
Matthew Taylor and Alan Travis report in The Guardian.

Taylor-Smith said core policing would remain a public-sector preserve but added: “We have been long-term optimistic about the police and short-to-medium-term pessimistic about the police for many years. Our view was, look, we would never try to take away core policing functions from the police but for a number of years it has been absolutely clear as day to us – and to others – that the configuration of the police in the UK is just simply not as effective and as efficient as it could be.”

Concern has grown about the involvement of private firms in policing. In May more than 20,000 officers took to the streets to outline their fears about pay, conditions and police privatisation. The Police Federation has warned that the service is being undermined by creeping privatisation.

Unite, the union that represents many police staff, said the potential scale of private-sector involvement in policing was “a frightening prospect”. Peter Allenson, national officer, said: “This is not the back office – we are talking about the privatisation of core parts of the police service right across the country, including crime investigation, forensics, 999 call-handling, custody and detention and a wide range of police services

G4S chief predicts mass police privatisation

Digitally Assembled Paintings by Russ Mills:






Artist Russ Mills creates these astonishing images using a wide variety of traditional methods including painting and drawing with ink and pencil, but also utilizing scanned textures including splotches of paint (or “painting disasters” as he calls them) as well as photography. The resulting paintings are sparse in color but seem to contain explosive amounts of energy as displayed in the rough brushes of paint and the almost perfectly manic pencil strokes. Of his work Mills says:

My work dwells in a netherworld between urban fine art and contemporary graphics, a collision of real and digital media it is primarily illustration based with a firm foundation in drawing, I focus mainly on the human form particularly the face, interweaving elements from the animal kingdom often reflecting the absurdity of human nature.

You can see many more paintings on Behance and limited edition prints are available in his shop.

If politics in Game of Thrones featured attack ads:

Mike Mechanic from Mother Jones sez, “So, basically, the folks in our DC office were sitting around shooting the shit, and someone asked: What would it be like if they had Super-PACs in Westeros? Well, it turns out somebody knew somebody who knew someone, which allowed us to professionally produce these ‘Game of Thrones Super-PAC Attack Ads.'”

Game of Thrones Attack Ads