Peter Kogler projects or applies patterns to the surfaces of rooms that can be quite disorienting for anyone who enters. Most of his work uses warped black and white lines to distort the size and shape of floors, walls, and ceilings. He also makes a lot of cool creations involving images of mice and ants. • Peter Kogler site (via Colossal )
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Dizzying designs by Peter Kogler seem to warp space
If you end up at some fancy event this month where gold leaf decorates the food, that gold leaf will be far thicker than traditional Japanese hand-pounded gold leaf, which can be as thin as 0.0001 millimeters. See how it’s made in the fascinating video. (more…)
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Watch how incredibly delicate Japanese gold leaf is made and applied
“Replicants are like any other machine. They’re either a benefit or a hazard. If they’re a benefit, it’s not my problem.” In theaters October 6, 2017.
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First look at Blade Runner 2049!
Ghost sharks, aka chimaeras, are elusive relatives of sharks and rays that live in the black depths of the ocean, as far down as 2,600 meters. The Ghost Shark was captured on video by a remotely operated vehicle deployed on a geology expedition by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in waters off Hawaii and California. The scientists who analyzed the video think that it’s a pointy-nosed blue chimaera (Hydrolagus trolli) that usually calls the waters off Australia and New Zealand home. This is the first time researchers have known this species to swim in the Northern Hemisphere. From National Geographic : Unlike those more well-known sharks, chimaeras don’t have rows of ragged teeth, but instead munch up their prey—mollusks, worms, and other bottom-dwellers—with mineralized tooth plates. A pattern of open channels on their heads and faces, called lateral line canals, contain sensory cells that sense movement in the water and help the ghost sharks locate lunch. And perhaps most fascinating, male chimaeras sport retractable sex organs on their foreheads.
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First ever video of Ghost Shark, with sex organ on its head, alive in the ocean
I’ve had these beautiful antique glasses for well over a decade. Retrospecs & Co. , the folks who sold them to me, have also taken fantastic care of getting me lenses, and an upgrade, over the many years. (more…)
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Authentic early American eyewear
An “authorized” reproduction of the legendary Voynich Manuscript is finally available in print form , published by Yale University from new photographs taken for the purpose. Yale’s Beinecke Library owns the document and has taken its sweet time putting out a decent art book. The quality is better than the popular “unauthorized” edition published last year; that one uses older scans widely available on the web, but I suppose was good enough to force the university’s hand. The first authorized copy of this mysterious, much-speculated-upon, one-of-a-kind, centuries-old puzzle. The Voynich Manuscript is produced from new photographs of the entire original and accompanied by expert essays that invite anyone to understand and explore the enigma. Many call the fifteenth-century codex, commonly known as the “Voynich Manuscript,” the world’s most mysterious book. Written in an unknown script by an unknown author, the manuscript has no clearer purpose now than when it was rediscovered in 1912 by rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich. The manuscript appears and disappears throughout history, from the library of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II to a secret sale of books in 1903 by the Society of Jesus in Rome. The book’s language has eluded decipherment, and its elaborate illustrations remain as baffling as they are beautiful. For the first time, this facsimile, complete with elaborate folding sections, allows readers to explore this enigma in all its stunning detail, from its one-of-a-kind “Voynichese” text to its illustrations of otherworldly plants, unfamiliar constellations, and naked women swimming though fantastical tubes and green baths. The Voynich Manuscript [Amazon]
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New Voynich Manuscript reproduction uses new photos, looks great
Skier Mathieu Bijasson didn’t think it was insane enough to ski down the steepest faces of the French Alps during the day, so he rigged up some skis and poles with LED lighting and did it at night. The result is visually beautiful and teeth-clenchingly terrifying all at once. (more…)
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Freeskiing. At night. On LED-covered skis.
Muckrock has been sending Freedom of Information requests to state police forces to find out how they’re using “cell-site simulators” (AKA IMSI catchers / Stingrays ), and they hit the motherlode with the Virginia State Police. (more…)
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Virginia State cops have blown a fortune on useless cellphone spying gear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwvjZGKwKvY In Does The Online Card Payment Landscape Unwittingly Facilitate Fraud? , a new paper in IEEE Security & Privacy , researchers from the University of Newcastle demonstrate a technique for guessing secruity details for credit-card numbers in six seconds — attackers spread their guesses out across many websites at once, so no website gets enough bad guesses to lock the card or trigger a fraud detection system. (more…)
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Crooks can guess Visa card details in six seconds by querying lots of websites at once
Last week, the San Francisco Municipal Light Rail system (the Muni) had to stop charging passengers to ride because a ransomware hacker had taken over its network and encrypted the drives of all of its servers. (more…)
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The hacker who took over San Francisco’s Muni got hacked