install theme
German Shop Windows, 1934retronaut.co

whoa. 

oscarraymundo:

Artist Jason de Caires Taylor creates life-size cement sculptures of people and submerges them into the waters of South America. As time passes the sculptures become part of the underwater landscape and slowly become artificial reefs ripe with marine life.

courtenaybird:

Pinterest’s Hype Bubble Has Burst, And Now It Is Actually Losing Users
Monthly active users are down from 11.3 million on March 1 to 11.15 million on April 1 to just 8.3 million today.
wildcat2030:

Manila is one of the world’s five dirtiest cities, but graffiti? That’s not a problem. It’s not that people don’t paint on the walls in the hyper-polluted Philippines capital, because they do. But they do it with a paint that actually eats smog out of the air. The catalytic paint, called Boysen KNOxOUT, reacts with light and water vapor to filter out nitrogen oxides. An environmental scientist interviewed in this BBC video says it can scrub out 20 percent of polluting nitrogen. Manila is deploying the paint in the form of massive murals, which are both beautiful and, because of their size, effective. Eleven square feet of paint-covered surface can absorb as much pollution as a full-grown tree, and these murals are close to 11 THOUSAND square feet. If we could get this stuff into the hands of street artists and taggers, it would be like having an army of energetic teenagers planting trees all over the city all day, every day. (via Super-polluted city tries to clean itself with smog-eating paint | Grist)

FUTURE.

filthyphil:

insooutso:

Jet packs.

I remember when this project first launched. It’s amazing to see how controlled the flight has become.

Jealous.

Imagine using these to get to work, travel, in war, for solo freestyle or synchronized flying competitions?

too much to wrap my mind around.
8bitfuture:

Has life from Earth spread to other planets?
Researchers at the Kyoto Sangyo University in Japan have released a study showing how life-bearing meteorites from Earth could have spread around our galaxy after a massive asteroid impact 65 million years ago. 
The asteroid that created the Chicxulub crater in Mexico could have ejected as much mass from Earth as the asteroid itself. While much of the mass ejected would have ended up on the Moon, almost the same amount is thought to have landed on Europa. That’s because the gravitational field for Jupiter draws in anything passing by, where it can be swept up by orbiting planets.
Estimates for the number of Earth rocks on our Moon and Europa are as many as 100,000,000 individial rocks on each planet. While it’s not known if microbes would be able to survive that long journey and seed life on other planets, there are many planets that would easily support them if they did make the journey intact. For example, a super-Earth planet orbiting star Gliese 581 is thought to have attracted up to 1,000 rocks from the Earth impact event. The journey there would have taken around 1 million years, meaning that if any Earth microbes made the trip, they’ve had 64 million years to evolve.
Toronto becomes first city to mandate green roofs
climateadaptation:

Lovely followers, does anyone have data or a before/after study that shows greenroofs have actually lowered temps in a city? Msg me here.

Toronto becomes first city to mandate green roofs
Toronto is the first city in North America with a bylaw that requires roofs to be green. And we’re not talking about paint. A green roof, also known as a living roof, uses various hardy plants to create a barrier between the sun’s rays and the tiles or shingles of the roof. The plants love the sun, and the building (and its inhabitants) enjoy more comfortable indoor temperatures as a result.
Toronto’s new legislation will require all residential, commercial and institutional buildings over 2,000 square meters to have between 20 and 60 percent living roofs. Although it’s been in place since early 2010, the bylaw will apply to new industrial development as of April 30, 2012. While this is the first city-wide mandate involving green roofs, Toronto’s decision follow’s in the footsteps of other cities, like Chicago and New York.
Under the direction of Mayor Richard Daley the city of Chicago put a 38,800 square foot green roof on a 12 story skyscraper in 2000. Twelve years later, that building now saves $5000 annually on utility bills, and Chicago boasts 7 million square feet of green roof space. New York has followed suit, and since planting a green roof on the Con Edison Learning Centre in Queens, the buildings managers have seen a 34 percent reduction of heat loss in winter, and reduced summer heat gain by 84 percent.
But lower utility bills aren’t the only benefit of planting a living roof. In addition to cooling down the city, green roofs create cleaner air, cleaner water, and provide a peaceful oasis for people, birds and insects in an otherwise polluted, concrete and asphalt-covered environment.

climateadaptation:

Neat.

evanfleischer:

A sloth makes its way through a collection of the press corps following Obama in Colombia — via.

Snackman!

filthyphil:

SNACKMAN! STOPPING SUBWAY FIGHTS WHILE EATING NACHOS! SNACKMAN! HE’S HUNGRY FIRST BUT HE’S ALSO MACHO!

laughingsquid:

Facebook to Buy Instagram for $1 Billion

"I’ve seen SXSW people go by for a generation now, and there’s something different about them, and the most obvious thing about them is the way they dress. It actually indicates something deeper. There’s something semiotic, Gibsonian about people dressing better than musicians. When you showed up at SXSW X years ago, you were meeting guys in [t-shirts, jeans]… they’re still here, but mostly that’s the way your uncle looks now. Now they look put together — not like rich person, not like, ‘ook at my sable fur,’ but like new shoelaces, done hair — they look pretty nice. They’re trying to live up to their products and services, which [didn’t look nice] 20 years ago… but you [interactive people] are not anywhere near the film people — you haven’t yet eaten their industry totally the way you did with music some time ago… But there’s one thing that bothers me. Although SXSW people do look chic, it’s a rather retro look. They don’t actually look very futuristic. I would suggest, when you come back next year… come back in robotvision glitchcore. Man, you would rule the physical universe. It would be like a silent coup, people wouldn’t know what to make of it. And it would outdo the film people."

e-ink flexible displays…boom.
wnyc:

onthemedia:

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re living in the future — flexible e-ink displays are here. Via Kottke

Mmmmm…. bendy……. —A.P.

"Now that every single human being on earth has a camera phone, where are all those UFO pictures? Remember you used to see those pictures. Some guy just happened to have a Polaroid when the UFOs appeared? Either it was all bullshit, or my theory is that the martians have decided, ‘Don’t go down there, man. All those fuckers have cameras now.’"

- George Clooney, cited by James Bridle in Writing in Newspapers and Magazines via booktwo.org (via stoweboyd)

50 words banned from NYC school tests

our version of totalitarianism is far smatter, far more subversive than any state before us.

capitalnewyork:

You know, ones you would expect: “politics,” “homelessness,” “poverty,” “crime,” “divorce,” “evolution,” “religion,” “rap music,” etc.