I’m really enjoying these miniature assemblages by sculptor J. Shea whose pinball piece, Magical Machine, was just on display here in Chicago at a videogame themed exhibit at OhNo!Doom. Tim Burton would approve. (via super punch)
An Airborne Village of Stacking Vertical Homes at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum
Sky Villages, designed by James Paulius, is an interactive installation at the SPARK Brooklyn Children’s Museum. The play center features several stackable modules that can be rearranged as expanding homes—wooden dwellings floating between clouds in an aquamarine sky. The imaginative play area aims to educate children about our planet’s constantly evolving population, offering a space for airborne ideas.
“As Earth’s population increases, we may look to the atmosphere for inhabitable space,” said Paulius. “Sky Villages presents the possibility to dwell in the sky in modular architecture that can be added or removed as populations increase or decrease. Dwelling units are prefabricated with the intent of reuse rather than discardment. When a unit no longer fits the particular needs of its location, it can be moved elsewhere for a new family to reside in. Constantly evolving, these structures accommodate the ever-changing tendencies of humanity and nature.”
The toy homes for Sky Villages were fabricated from wood reclaimed from water towers in Manhattan. You can see more of Paulius’ block-based projects on his portfolio site and Instagram. (via Colossal Submissions)
Source: An Airborne Village of Stacking Vertical Homes at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum
Photos from Austin (mostly art)
Photos from Austin trip, 12/2016. Most photos from the Mexic-arte art museum’s show “Icons & Symbols of the Borderland” (http://
Antonio Castro, “El Último Arcoiris” (“The Very Last Rainbow”)
Antonio Castro, “Las Armas del Terrorista” (“The Terrorist’s Weapons”)
Xu Bing: “Book from the Sky”
Xu Bing: “Book from the Sky”
Richard Armendariz, “Tlazolteotl as a Horse”
The Robot Revolution Will Be the Quietest One – The New York Times
In 2016, self-driving cars made inroads in several countries, many of which rewrote their laws to accommodate the new technology. As a science-fiction writer, it’s my duty to warn the human race that the robot revolution has begun — even if no one has noticed yet.
When a few autonomous test cars appeared on the roads over the last few years, we didn’t think of them as robots because they didn’t have the humanoid shape that science-fiction movies taught us to expect. In 2016, they were adopted widely: as buses in the United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands, taxis in Singapore and private cars in the United States and China. There was a fatal accident in Florida involving an autonomous car, which caused some concerns, but this did not significantly affect our embrace of this technology.
Instead of arming ourselves against this alien presence, as some of my fellow science-fiction writers have fearfully suggested, we gawked as the vehicles pulled up to the curb. The driverless vehicles, some of which had no steering wheels or gas pedals, merged into traffic and stopped at stop signs, smoothly taking us to our destinations. We lounged in comfort, occasionally taking selfies.
Source: The Robot Revolution Will Be the Quietest One – The New York Times
Inside The NFL’s Tobacco-Style Strategy To Hook Your Kids
[Well, this is gross. -egg]
A few years ago, Josh Golin, the executive director of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, was sitting in his office near South Station in Boston when he got a call from a friend of his, a public health attorney. “Have you seen what is going on with the NFL?” she asked him. He didn’t know what she was talking about, so he started to poke around and came across the league’s use of SEMs. “You hope teachers would see these for what they are and toss them in the recycling bin,” he told me. As Golin and his team of four dug deeper into what the league was doing, “the more we were like, ‘Oh my God, the NFL is using every trick in the book to market to kids.’ Junk food promotion, fantasy football, promoting sedentary screen time. They were using mobile, a TV property, live events, online, getting into schools. It was a 360-degree marketing approach to children.”
Source: Inside The NFL’s Tobacco-Style Strategy To Hook Your Kids
What President Trump Will Mean for Climate Change – The Atlantic
[This is my single biggest concern about a Trump presidency. -egg]
Source: What President Trump Will Mean for Climate Change – The Atlantic
President Trump’s First Term – The New Yorker
[Extremely good, in-depth analysis, written in late September. -egg]
His campaign tells us a lot about what kind of Commander-in-Chief he would be.
Pimp my bike: Detroit’s custom cycles – in pictures | Cities | The Guardian
[Pics came out low-res, sorry. -egg]
‘We take rusty old junk and we put love into it.’ The old Motor City has a unique style in bicycles these days: from fat wheels and fake fuel tanks to stretched cycles with powerful sound systems – and even a family-sized BBQ.
Source: Pimp my bike: Detroit’s custom cycles – in pictures | Cities | The Guardian
Overview: High-Def Satellite Images Capturing The Earth — and How People Have Changed it Visually
[These are just so good! I highly recommend clicking through to the full Instagram account. -egg]
In December of 2013, an Instagram account called Daily Overview began to catalog a wide spectrum of satellite images that capture the many ways people have transformed the face of Earth, for better or worse. The account is run by Benjamin Grant who uses imagery taken from DigitalGlobe, an advanced collection of Earth imaging satellites that provide data to services like Google Earth. The project gets its title from a phenomenon experienced by astronauts who spend extended periods of time in space and what they describe as a “cognitive shift in awareness” as they continuously view the world from above dubbed the overview effect.
