Shortly after the attacks in Paris hit the news, an image of the Eiffel Tower as peace symbol was tweeted and posted on Instagram. It is the creation of French graphic designer Jean Jullien, who described how it came about in a moment. “It was a reaction…The first thing that came to me was the…
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We have the word phallic in our repertoire, an appropriate word we can use at museums when pointing out that the artist was clearly obsessed with dick, but what about its counterpart? When you look at something and the folds are just so familiar and we all know what we’re looking at…What’s that called?
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The Wall Street Journal has a series called “My Week” and we can think of no better to way to start off our week than a week in the life of artist Maira Kalman.
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Over the past months, we’ve been collecting an illuminating array of chair images over at the great site Aqqindex. Each one has made us think, look into its structure, opened our mind to the many possibility of “chair”. All are so startlingly simple, it makes us think we could make them ourself:
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(Video link here.) At the consistently wonderful The Kids Should See This, we found kinetic artist Joseph Herscher‘s machine for getting himself out of bed and dressed on a sleepy morning. The chain-reaction is astonishing for its creativity, imagination and mesmerizing practicality, everything that Rube Goldberg‘s own inventions embodied. We love (and share) Herscher’s view of the world,
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(Video link here.) At Things Organized Neatly, a website about exactly THAT, we found this terrific except from Ten Bullets, artist Tom Sachs‘ essential principles — “his code” — for employees working in his studio. Here he outlines something he called “knolling”, an action we’ve always done but never had a word for. Sachs’ interpretation is…
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I’ve been bowled over by raft of new Friends with Benefits subscriptions and the most astonishing, deeply-heartening praise from readers in response to my writing about Improvised Life’s Illusory Wealth. Well, not completely illusory. I should have qualified it.
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(Video link here.) Open Culture’s The Best Music To Put You To Sleep: Minimalist Composer Max Richter, Pop Phenom Ed Sheeran & Your Favorites put us onto some great resources for relaxing music that would be great for working, winding down at the end of the day or to help you fall asleep. We’ve been listening as…
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Recently, a reader left us a query in Tinypass, our membership platform, and included this comment: “I paid for a subscription to support the writer and I think she has enough support at this point so she doesn’t really need mine.” Yikes!
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(Video link here.) NASA recently released beautiful enhanced color images of Pluto‘s largest moon Charon taking during the New Horizon mission’s approach to the Pluto system last July. They used the images create this astonishing flyover video of Charon. It definitely gives us an expanded view…
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Lately we’ve come across two compelling photographers whose images boldly portray an essential message about Instagram: the pretty picture you see is not the WHOLE picture. They show the unpleasantly real context from which the pretty photo was plucked, to become an aspirational ideal that messes with our heads. They help to antidote social media’s portrayal of the perfect lives we don’t have.
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(Video link here.) We found this lovely video at The Cloud Appreciation Society’s website. We’ve long been a fan of Cloudreporter, where people post wondrous sightings of clouds from all over the world. Who knew there was a SOCIETY, with a very wise and useful Manifesto?:
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Inspired by Alain de Botton’s idea that Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall be adapted in new ways for modern times, digital storytellers Alan Donohoe and Steven Parker created “The Waiting Wall” in a busy English train station during the Brighton Digital Festival. The huge display projected the deepest fears and most personal confessions of travelers who submitted them anonymously for…
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At illustrator Monica Ramos‘ website, we stumbled on a section called 🙁 “Sometimes I want to fall off the face of the Earth” A solo show about about feeling overwhelmed and lost. Overwhelmed and lost is a feeling we know well, and hear about frequently from friends. Ramos’ image vividly describes the dual nature of…
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In this surprising video, Tommy Edison, a film critic who has been blind since birth, talks about his favorite things to touch, which reminds us to tune in to our own senses.
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Amy Pence-Brown, a 40-year-old Idaho mother of four and founder of the Boise Rad Fat Collective Facebook, stood stripped down to a bikini in a busy Boise market, blindfolded herself and invited people to write on her body. Her mission statement was scrawled in chalk on the board beside her: “I’m standing for anyone who has struggled…
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After a very busy LAST week, we let a few things slide over the weekend, and they will, no doubt, pile onto Monday’s to-do list, which will make it…daunting.
What to do?
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When my 5-year-old-laptop bailed on me, I reacted like any strong independent woman with a brain and an alarm clock; I handed it off to my husband and said “This is broken, please fix it”. Seriously. Being the feminist my husband is, he said NO…….
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Lucky Peach, David Chang’s food magazine and site’s archive is chock full of compelling recipes and the thinking-behind-them from some of today’s most creative chefs. It makes for sublime food porn, as well as really exciting summer cooking, included our favorite: corn or fennel- infused whipped cream.
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“Girl prisons” are publications so full of notions of “the right way to be a girl”, so fierce with implicit “shoulds” and shame as to become a”prison” in the reader’s mind. Girl and other kinds of Prisons are so woven through our culture, we are always on the lookout for ones that liberate rather than imprison. Our new favorite: MAN REPELLER.
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