This 1.7-gigapixel image of the Milky Way took J-P Metsavainio nearly 12 years to create. The Finnish astrophotographer estimates that the exposure time for the photo was 1,250 hours. Wow! Metsavainio started the project way back in 2009, and focused on different areas and objects in the galaxy, as PetaPixel details:
To complete the ultra-high-resolution view of the Milky Way as a whole, Metsavainio then set out to fill in the gaps that weren’t covered by his original artworks.
“I think this is a first image ever showing the Milky Way in this resolution and depth at all three color channels (H-a, S-II, and O-III),” Metsavainio tells PetaPixel.
The photo is 100,000 pixels wide and comprises 234 individual panels stitched together.
I wish my slumber was as deep and long as this walrus’s was! A rare walrus was spotted on the western shore of Ireland, and experts assume that the animal most likely fell asleep on an iceberg in the Arctic and managed to wake up on Ireland after its nap. The walrus was first spotted by Alan Houlihan and his five-year-old daughter, as Travel and Leisure details:
"I thought it was a seal at first and then we saw the tusks. He kind of jumped up on the rocks. He was massive. He was about the size of a bull or a cow, pretty similar in size, he's big, big," Houlihan said. "He was right beside us, less than 50 meters away from us. He went off again for a while and he came back and went back to the rocks."
While absolutely adorable, Flannery noted that the animal is likely very tired, and very hungry, after such a long journey. He urged the public to make sure to give the animal plenty of space if they encounter it.
"Hopefully he'll get a few scallops around Valentia. But at this point, he wants to rest. He's come from the North Pole, possibly off Greenland," Flanner said. "He could also be island-hopping and went to Iceland and on to Shetland but that's unlikely. I'd say he came in out of the Atlantic. It's thousands of miles away. If he regains his strength hopefully he'll make his way back up."
Rina Jones' mother often traveled from Vermont to visit her daughter and Rina's husband Brandon in Baltimore. On every trip, they would eat at Ekiben because Mom loved their tempura broccoli. She jokingly mentioned she wanted to eat it on her deathbed. But then Tina's mom fell ill with cancer, and decided to decline treatment. Rina and Brandon prepared for the six-hour drive to Vermont, and wanted to take something that would make Mom happy.
How on earth could they make that tempura broccoli from Ekiben for her? Surely it would turn soggy on the drive.
Brandon, a 37-year-old engineer, emailed Ekiben’s owners and co-founders, Steve Chu and Ephrem Abebe, hoping they could offer some tips. He added one caveat: He’s not a great cook.
Reading his message, Chu thought to himself: “Well … you’re not cooking this.”
Chu wrote back with an offer. He and Abebe would meet them in Vermont. They would cook it themselves.
Vorkuta is a small town in Russia that gets plagued by temperatures as low as -45 degrees Celsius. The city has one of the fastest dwindling populations in all of Russia. Photographer Arseniy Kotov visited the city and was able to snap photos of how abandoned the city is. His photographs show the dilapidated structures covered by feet-long icicles and snow:
Relics from former residents and the chipped, blue paint peek through the frost, much of which clings to the stairs and banisters and climbs the walls.
Kotov tells Colossal that often, buildings are transformed into similarly chilling caves when pipes burst due to lack of maintenance, leading to splashes of hot water, subsequent high humidity, and then ice growth on every surface. At the time of his visit, one family remained in the Severniy-district building, which was still connected to the central heating system that runs through Russian cities, making it easier to pass through some of the walkways thanks to warmth from the radiators. Although Kotov wasn’t able to meet the sole occupants, he did hear that they moved not long after his tour, saying:
As I know, locals said that after one week as I visited this building, he and his wife were resettled to another apartment, and this whole building was cut off from all the communications (water, heating, electricity). This is a usual story in Vorkuta: as less and less people are left, it becomes unprofitable to heat an entire building, and people are gradually moved to others where there are more inhabitable apartments. Local authorities call it a “managed compression strategy.”
The world's only successful slave rebellion was the Haitian Revolution, ending in 1804, which led that nation to be the first on earth to abolish slavery. Haiti paid an enormous cost for its independence from France. Immediately after the revolution, there was a power struggle between the new nation's founding fathers: a president, an emperor, and a king.
Here are the key players to know: founding fathers Jean-Jacques Dessalines (who became Emperor Jacques I), Alexandre Pétion (who became President) and General Henry Christophe, (who later became King Henry I). Like all burgeoning nations throughout history, there was a power struggle between the three, and within just a few years of independence, Haiti’s new Emperor, Jacques I, had been assassinated by his own generals. His death led to the country’s temporary partition, with Henry declaring himself King the north and Pétion, leader of the south. And with that, the building of King Henry I’s Haitian Kingdom in the north began…
Six richly adorned châteaux, a massive citadel and eight beautiful palaces were constructed to rival the most opulent structures in old Europe during his short reign between 1811 and 1820. Haiti’s “Sans-Souci Palace”, meaning ‘Carefree’ – was the largest of the palaces commissioned. Its gardens were immense, complete with artificial springs and a system of waterworks. Inside, there was said to be mahogany floors throughout, flowing silk curtains and at the top of the grand staircase, a fountain with a gilded sun inscribed with the motto “Je vois tout, et tout voit par moi dans l’univers” (I see everything, and everything in the universe is seen by me”).
Antarctica is unique in a lot of ways, like being cold, hard to put on a world map, and fairly uninhabitable. It defies successful colonization for a variety of reasons -even mapping the continent is difficult because every direction is north. In this video, comedians Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones go into the sticky question of continent "ownership," but also the history and geography of Antarctica, in a rather entertaining way. The video is less than seven minutes long; the rest is an ad. -via Laughing Squid
What's the definition of a musical instrument? That's a question with an open answer if you consult Spanish musician Xavier Lozano. He specializes in turning everyday objects, such as rifles and bicycle wheels, into playable flutes. In the above video, he's performing with an old street barricade better than I've ever seen anyone else do.
Through most of the 20th century, the Barbizon Hotel in Manhattan was a place where single women, mostly those new to New York City, could live in safety. Historian Paulina Bren has published a book on the history of the Barbizon and its illustrious residents, The Barbizon, The New York Hotel That Set Women Free, for which HBO has already secured the TV rights.
In the 1920s and 30s the Barbizon advertised its role in protecting young working women from predatory men, the “wolves of New York”, capitalising on the influx of women to Manhattan after the First World War, but after the Great Depression it offered a different kind of sanctuary. “Working women were considered deeply suspect for taking a job away from a ‘real breadwinner’,” explains Bren. “If you were walking around New York and you looked like you were going to work, it could be a pretty hostile environment.” Nevertheless, some persisted. The respectable Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School took over three floors of the hotel for its students, as it filled up with young women “determined to type their way out of small-town America”.
But it was the 1950s, the hotel’s “dollhouse” era, when hundreds of young, aspiring models and actresses found their way to the Barbizon, that Bren most enjoyed exploring. “It was an era when women were supposed to be so prim and proper, but there was a bubbling sexuality,” she says.
Notable Barbizon residents included Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion, Liza Minnelli, Ali MacGraw, Jaclyn Smith, Grace Kelly, Joan Crawford, and Tippi Hedren. While the hotel opened to men in 1981 and was converted to apartments in 2007, there are five women from the hotel's mid-century heyday still living there. Read an overview of the Barbizon's history at The Guardian. -via Damn Interesting
Covehithe is a village on the coast of Suffolk in the UK. It's been there a thousand years, but is doomed to be completely washed away by the sea somewhere between thirty and eighty years from now. But there are no plans to save the village. Imagine being a landowner there and trying to get insurance! But practically, what you'd really be looking for is a new home. Tom Scott explains, and single-handedly turns Covehithe into a tourist attraction against its will.
While it's not true that pasta first came to Italy from China with Marco Polo, it did travel across the world due to its portability. It was in Italy that pasta was made into an art form, and there are way more pasta shapes than most Americans have ever heard of. Each of these pasta shapes has a story, although some are old and historically murky and others are recent and well-documented, such as Celentano and cavatappi.
Cavatappi didn’t arrive on the scene until the 1960s. That’s when the Italian pasta brand Barilla introduced a new tubular, corkscrew-shaped pasta called Cellentani. The name is a reference to Adriano Celentano, an Italian pop singer whose energetic stage presence earned him the nickname moleggiato, or “springs.” Barilla writes on its website: “As the shape resembles a coiled spring, it all made sense.” The name cavatappi was actually coined later as a generic term for the pasta shape because Celentano was trademarked by Barilla.
You are probably already familiar with Adriano Celentano. Read the stories behind 14 other pasta shapes, and a brief history of pasta in general at Mental Floss. While the list will introduce you to new pastas, the origin stories are not totally comprehensive. For example, Wikipedia tells us exactly how Cellentani came about.
This particular shape was born in the 1970s at Barilla in Parma[2] when a set of pasta dies had been mistakenly made with a spiral (instead of straight) set of lines. These produced pasta in a spiral or spring (molla in Italian) shape.
So consider the list at Mental Floss to be a portal that may take you down the internet rabbit hole. That's what happened to me.
Milan-based architecture firm LCA Architetti designed a simple farmhouse-style home in a small village in Italy. The home, called The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork, is a two-story building that exhibits modern sustainable architectural design. The farmhouse has an exterior made of cork, and is insulated with straw, as Yanko Design details:
The home is further insulated through the use of straw, which is traditionally used as an insulator for other rural dwellings like barns and henhouses. The straw insulation consists of repurposed discarded rice plants handed over by nearby farmers in the area.
Sustainability was a top priority in constructing The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork, and the house’s commitment to energy-efficiency is exhibited through the recycled material used for insulation, as well as the cluster of solar panels found on the home’s roof. Coupling the use of recycled straw and cork for insulation with photovoltaics for solar energy, The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork stands as a self-powered home, decreasing the overall consumption of energy and emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2.
Building and cultivating a personal art collection can be a difficult and tedious feat. From picking the real (and right) art pieces for your collection to finding the right platforms or access to purchase these artworks, the processes involved in creating a collection can be intimidating. An art buying and discovery platform aims to make the job easier for young art enthusiasts, as Apartment Therapy details:
That’s essentially the ethos behind Salon 21, an art buying and discovery platform for young art enthusiasts with a focus on democratizing art by providing access to makers through digital artist talks and curated events. Founder Alex Bass knows a thing or two about building a collection with limited resources; she outfitted her prewar West Village studio with a mixture of her own artwork and personal pieces by friends, artists she admires, and even a piece from the famous street artist Trevor Andrew, aka Gucci Ghost, which she won in an Instagram contest… but more on that later!).
To see tips on starting your personal art collection, you can check the full piece here.
How does one make a human face from a huge number of pipes? Well, Korean sculpture Yi Chul Hee is known for using tightly stacked metal pipes cut at interesting angles to create stunning pieces. The artist is basically amazing! From human forms, to life-sized animals, to abstract art pieces, the sculptor utilizes the material and light and shadows that breathe life to his artworks, as My Modern Met details:
“Pipe sculpting does not consist of sculpting the pipe but the cylindrical space in the pipe,” the artist explains. “This space takes on a new shape each time the surface or the cutting line of the pipe changes and the different shapes thus created give rise to the creation of unique works with a black hole pattern. They are called pieces of pipes but in reality they are pieces of space (the black hole) in the pipe. The charm of my work lies in these pieces seen in three dimensions which give an original and refined rhythm, variable according to the angle of view.”
This insight into Yi’s work may help one better appreciate the incredible detail made of a single material. It is interesting to think that the void is more important than the solids as he describes his process. As you scroll through the photos of each incredible structure, try to focus on the void, or black hole as he describes them, and the range of shadows you can find within.
Hermes’s Birkin Bags, which sell for $200,000 each at auctions, have a possibility of getting devalued. Material science company MycoWorks has revealed that it spent three years collaborating with Hermes to create Sylvania, a sustainable material that looks and feels like leather. Sylvania, made from mushrooms, is the company’s attempt at swapping traditional leather with eco-friendly alternatives:
For thousands of years, people have used leather to create everyday objects like footwear and bags, prizing the material for its durability and beauty. But over the past century, the fashion industry has mass-produced leather to churn out billions of shoes, purses, and accessories, with the global market for leather goods valued at more than $400 billion. This has come at a terrible cost to the planet.
Cows generate methane, a greenhouse gas significantly more potent than carbon dioxide, thereby accelerating climate change. Tanning and dying leather requires chemicals that go on to pollute waterways. Then there’s the animal rights component: Last November, Hermès came under fire from animal rights activists for its plans to build one of the biggest crocodile farms in Australia to produce exotic leathers for its bags.
Scientists and fashion companies have spent decades developing sustainable and humane alternatives to leather. Some brands have created “vegan leather” from plastic, but this is also problematic since the material does not biodegrade and sheds microplastics that end up in our food chain.
Researchers have discovered that a seafood fraud is happening on a global scale. From an analysis of 44 studies, 36% of seafood samples from restaurants and supermarkets in more than 30 countries were mislabelled. Thankfully, no ‘fake’ fish was made from plastic or other materials. The Guardian has more details:
Sometimes the fish were labelled as different species in the same family. In Germany, for example, 48% of tested samples purporting to be king scallops were in fact the less coveted Japanese scallop. Of 130 shark fillets bought from Italian fish markets and fishmongers, researchers found a 45% mislabelling rate, with cheaper and unpopular species of shark standing in for those most prized by Italian consumers.
Other substitutes were of endangered or vulnerable species. In one 2018 study, nearly 70% of samples from across the UK sold as snapper were a different fish, from an astounding 38 different species, including many reef‐dwelling species that are probably threatened by habitat degradation and overfishing.
Still other samples proved to be not entirely of aquatic species, with prawn balls sold in Singapore frequently found to contain pork and not a trace of prawn.
Fish fraud has long been a known problem worldwide. Because seafood is among the most internationally traded food commodities, often through complex and opaque supply chains, it is highly vulnerable to mislabelling. Much of the global catch is transported from fishing boats to huge transshipment vessels for processing, where mislabelling is relatively easy and profitable to carry out.
