Maskingtape

Blood Falls located in Taylor Glacier, Antarctica | Atlas Obscura | Curious and Wondrous Travel Destinations

Roughly 2 million years ago, the Taylor Glacier sealed beneath it a small body of water which contained an ancient community of microbes. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, they have remained there ever since, isolated inside a natural time capsule. Evolving independently of the rest of the living world, these microbes exist in a world with no light or free oxygen and little heat, and are essentially the definition of “primordial ooze.”

“ Some people might laugh at the idea of a pre-boiled egg, but how many people insist on shelling their own peanuts? Peeled cloves of garlic may seem a little lax, but who currently wants their chickens with the heads still on and covered in feathers. The whole idea of buying your food has an intrinsically “lazy” element. You didn’t kill it or grow it yourself.

— BBC News - The rise of lazy foods

ken garland & associates:graphic design:galt toys

” We had to build an image for Galt’s virtually from scratch, and decided to base it on linking the company name at all times with the word ‘Toys’ which proved so successful that soon everyone was calling them ‘Galt Toys’ “

Murmur Study on Vimeo (via Vimeo) This installation consists of 30 thermal printers that continuously monitor Twitter for new messages containing variations on common emotional utterances. Messages containing hundreds of variations on words such as argh, meh, grrrr, oooo, ewww, and hmph, are printed as an endless waterfall of text accumulating in tangled piles below.

Arkitekturfotograf Rasmus Norlander

“ What he gets right is to worry about the state codification of euthanasia. It’s the direction being pursued in Scotland: having an ‘Authority to Die’ certificate from some government body before proceeding to assisted suicide. It seems a tidy way of ensuring against malign pressures. But it’s concerning, not just because from there it is only a short step to state sanctioned killers - who are trained, expert, humane - but also an ‘Authority to Live’, a certificate those drawing heavily on state funds for their health care will require, to ensure they stay lying unconscious in a hospital bed.

— Authority to live or die - Philosophy and Life

This round-headed man’s ubiquitous presence on the visual landscape belies his very particular origin. He was born in the 1920s to Austrian philosopher and social scientist Otto Neurath. (via The Smart Set: Symbolic Gestures - July 25, 2009 )

English Russia » The Baikonur Cosmodrome

Dezeen » Blog Archive » House in Nagoya by Suppose Design Office

While from a very narrow specification point-of-view ‘they do their job’, what utter contempt for users these two seating examples demonstrate! The benches on Cornmarket Street are clearly intended to prevent anyone lying down on them (armrests, small radius of curvature) or indeed sitting for very long at all in comfort (height off the ground, vertical backrest, small radius of curvature). Why? Why despise the public so much? The designer must have been given a specification requiring all the above features: I can’t believe they just arose out of aesthetic or manufacturing considerations. That bench has been engineered to restrict, control and discipline users. Was it really necessary? Does forcing the homeless to lie on the ground instead, or preventing people sitting comfortably and watching the world go by really ’solve’ any problems? (via Design with Intent | Anti-user seating in Oxford )