George Hendrik Breitner was a Dutch Impressionist painter, a contemporary of Van Gogh, who he painted alongside in France for a while. Breitner began taking photographs to use as a reference for his paintings, but also used photography itself as an art medium.
Like his paintings, Breitner’s photos are concerned less with sharpness and fidelity than with motion and atmosphere.
The haphazard snaps never seem still, recording huddled and hurried pedestrians in the rain, the play of light on cobblestones, and the endless rush of working people from one task to another.
The latest video from AsapSCIENCE gives us some tips on how to learn something faster. The secret is to knwo what is meant by "learning." Sure, you can study in a hurry, but you want to understand the subject, or master the task, not just get through the book. You want to make that knowledge your own.
Lucky for us, there has been quite a bit of research on the subject of effective learning. Quite a few tips are about involving your whole body, not just your eyes and brain. Study and practice efficiently, and you'll find it comes faster than it would otherwise. -via Geeks Are Sexy
When his younger brother assassinated President Lincoln, Edwin Booth's career as an actor was over. He immediately retired at the height of his popularity, but more than 20 years later, he found another claim to fame when he founded The Players, a private club in New York City. The Players drew the elite of the art world: actors, authors, artists, and celebrities of other stripes. Along the way, the building where it all began has become an archive of relics from the many members who joined during the different eras of the club's long life. It started out as an ambitious project in the exclusively posh area of Grammercy Park in New York City when Booth bought a building in 1888.
The other, well heeled residents of Gramercy Park were less than thrilled at the prospect of a club for actors being on their doorsteps. For the acting profession in the 1800s was not quite the same as it is today; actors were often seen as louche second class citizens, often not well paid, and involved in a somewhat bawdy profession of dubious morals.
But this was one of Booth’s main aims : to raise the profile and respectability of the acting profession. For number 16, Gramercy Park South was not just to be his home, but a sparkling new, private club for actors set right in one of Manhattan’s most prestigious addresses.
The Players wasn’t created to be a seedy, drinking den for actors; from the beginning, Booth opened membership to all those in society who loved the arts. It was to be a lavish but comfortable clubhouse where actors might mingle with elite Victorian society. It was to be a certain club as Booth put it, “for the promotion of social intercourse between the representative members of the dramatic profession and the kindred spirits of literature, painting, sculpture and music, and the patrons of the arts.’ Founder members included such high calibre names as Mark Twain to General Sherman.
The club is still thriving in the same place it opened more than a hundred years ago. Take a look inside The Players, including Edwin Booth's private apartment, which is kept under lock and key, and exists exactly as it did when he died there in 1893, at Messy Messy Chic.
(Image credit: Beyond My Ken) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Players_Club.jpg
The folks from You Suck at Cooking prepare a delicious Italian meal for a date while cranking out one double entendre after another about said date. There's also advice about keeping your expectations low. Not about the food, but about the date.
While enjoying the video, I was a little bothered by the fact that he finished the pasta dish before he even started on the salad dressing. That's not the way you make a meal come together in real life. I understand that each recipe should be shown in its entirety so that the viewer understands, but the hot food should be finished at exactly time to put it on the table. You do the cold food while you are waiting for the hot food to cook. Maybe that's why he needed to keep his expectations low.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, when we heard the first radio reports of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center, many people assumed it was a small private plane, as that had happened several times before. We were completely shocked to hear it was an airliner big enough to damage the building. But it wasn't the first time a large plane crashed into a New York skyscraper. On the morning of July 28, 1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber was looking for Newark Airport, but was lost in the fog. It crashed into the Empire State Building, at the time the tallest building in the world.
Eleven people in the skyscraper died. The three crew on the plane also lost their lives. Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver, 19, survived despite falling 75 stories to the basement in her ‘office’.
Weegee, aka Arthur Fellig (June 12, 1899 – December 26, 1968) knew what to do: photograph the crowd looking up.
The movie It is officially the top grossing horror film of all time now, and is expected to the the number one film again this weekend. Going into October, it's becoming clear that the It clown character Pennywise will be the most popular Halloween costume of 2017. The look can be easy or difficult depending on how much work you want to put into it. The character will be recognizable with just white face, red hair, and a couple of well-placed red lines. A mouth full of sharp teeth is a bonus, and a red balloon is an easy way to complete the look. But there's so much more you can do with it! If you want to go with illusion makeup, like artist Jordan Hanz does here, you can dispense with fake teeth, but remember you won't be able to turn it off around small children. She has a Pennywise tutorial at YouTube.
The man in this video is not real. He never existed. He is completely computer-generated by Snappers Mocaps. The designer can control him completely with a mouse: his expression, his gaze, and his lip movements.
The features of this software are listed at the YouTube page, including, "Compatible with all game engines and animation packages." Soon, video games will look this real, and you know humans in movies will follow quickly. If he stood still, or even moved without the cursor in a way that didn't indicate it was a demonstration, it would take you a while to realize who he is. But as soon as that realization sinks in, you enter the uncanny valley. -via Digg
Tunnels don't get any rain, but they get plenty of car exhaust, which leaves grime behind. How do you wash a tunnel? With a truck built especially of that purpose. The Swiss road construction company Colas Suisse has those trucks. They resemble a car wash turned inside-out, with plenty of arms ending in whirling brushes. See one of these machines in action.
The tunnel-cleaning machine uses no soap, because that would be bad for the environment. It gets the tunnel walls squeaky-clean purely with water and whirling brushes. -via The Kid Should See This
Reverend Jacob S. Harden was only 22 years old and trying to establish himself as the pastor in Andersontown, New Jersey. He had married Louisa Dorland under pressure from her parents and rumors about him that Harden suspected they started. It was not a happy marriage, and they weren't even living together. But Louisa visited her husband at a parishoner's home where he was staying, and there died after a short illness. An autopsy revealed she had ingested arsenic, and suspicion turned to the young pastor. So he fled.
In March 1859, the coroner’s jury indicted Jacob Harden for the murder of his wife, but he was still at large. A month later there was still no sign of Hardin until the editor of the Warren Journal received a subscription request that caught his attention. A man named James Austin in Fairmount, a small village near Wheeling in what was then western Virginia, requested a subscription to the paper as he was “… very anxious to learn whether Jacob S. Harden had been indicted for the murder of his wife at the approaching term of court.” The editor was immediately suspicious and sent a copy of Harden’s photograph, along with a copy of the governor’s proclamation offering $500 for his arrest to the police in Wheeling. Before long Jacob Harden was in custody and on his way back to New Jersey.
The question is: Whodunit? It's possible that pointing the finger will make you look guilty, so I don't want to appear too sure about it. But the odds are that the only insane killer clown in the room might be the perpetrator. This is the latest comic from John McNamee at Pie Comic, taking the mystery out of the murder mystery.
Brian is a single sheep farmer in an isolated area. He gets lonely, particularly when he's snowed in. During one of those winters, he built himself a robot for companionship. It's not a good-looking robot. And it's not very smart, either, but Brian now has someone to talk to. He calls his robot Charles.
As Brian and Charles go about their daily lives, you have to ask yourself: Is it better to be lonely, or to be constantly annoyed? That question could be applied to nearly every relationship, at least every now and then. This short film was produced by Jim Archer. -via io9
Sooner or later, everyone has an exercise machine of one sort or another in their home. It was that time you really, really had every intention to get into shape. The truth is, even after making a financial commitment, exercise is not as fun as it looks on TV. However, there's that period of time between giving upon exercise and finally getting rid of your expensive equipment. That's what this video is about, since that workout equipment can be used for many different things. Contains some NSFW language.
Even people who cannot or will not make a big financial investment in equipment will eventually have an exercise machine in their home, because you can get one for almost nothing at any garage sale. -via Tastefully Offensive
When Bill Murray replaced Chevy Chase in the Not Ready for Primetime Players in 1976, no one knew he would go on to movie stardom. But he took his quick wit and willingness to go the extra mile for a laugh that made Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, and Groundhog Day the classics they are. And he's had quite a few dramatic roles as well, like The Razor's Edge and Lost in Translation. And he's not slowing down at all.
You have to wonder what Coppolla would have done if her contractless leading man had decided not to do the movie when she already had the rest of the cast and crew assembled. Murray's IMDb page lists 85 acting credits, but the trivia in this illustrated list at TVOM focuses on the Bill Murray movies you've most likely seen.
The term "flash fiction" is used to describe a writing prompt in which people are challenged to write a story using very few words. It may have been inspired by the six-word story "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." ascribed to Ernest Hemingway. Still, "flash" connotes a story written quickly, while the word limit indicates brevity, and they don't always go together well. Yesterday, Richard Wiseman posted a flash fiction prompt on Twitter.
Now, you can write "They lived happily ever after," but that's not much of a story. The challenge is to write five words that will prompt the reader into filling in the blanks according to their understanding of the world, which results in a narrative. Wiseman got a ton of responses so far. Here are some of them.
She loved him. He knew. The test came back negative I just won the lottery. SELLING: Baby shoes. Too small. There were exactly zero corrections. She is no longer hungry. And the dinosaurs rose again. Rain, music, bath, dinner, fire. Her? Now? No! Really? YES! And it started raining Chocolate PhD done in three years! And it finally stopped itching! Mommy, Daddy, Santa Claus came!!! Once upon a time, beer Then Richard Wiseman retweeted me
The small ads in the back of magazines used to make all kinds of outlandish promises. In the 1950s, Body-Tone offered the “World’s Fastest Strength and Muscle Building System.” The image hinted that you could become a real muscleman with a course that took just four weeks. It cost $20, or $25 if you paid in installments. The materials you received are available on the internet now, so Beth Skwarecki decided to try it out to see what the folks who bought it actually got.
After you wrote to this address, you’d get an envelope in the mail with three things. (Somebody saved theirs and it’s available with original envelope on Etsy; God bless you Etsy.) First, there is a letter from Tom Buckley himself, who appears on his own letterhead, smiling and beefy. Then, nine pages of questions and answers on orange paper, slyly selling you the system. Finally, an enrollment form. You are to take fifteen body measurements, write an essay on your current exercise routine and health status, and decide whether you want to pay all at once or in installments. Translated into 2017 dollars, the program cost $169 all at once, or $42 in five installments for a total of $211.
For that kind of money, you got encouragement, a recipe for a protein shake, and a detailed course on isometric exercises in which you contracted muscles for a mere six seconds a day each. But did it work? You can follow Skwarecki's experience with the course at Lifehacker. -via Digg
