Perhaps one of the most intriguing books of the Christian Bible is its last, Revelations, a collection of visions and prophecies about the end of the world. It talks of multi-headed beasts, nations falling, Christians being persecuted, and the final judgment.
In 1047, Facundus presented King Ferdinand I of León, Castile, and Galicia and his wife Sancha with his take on the Beatus Of Liébana, an eight-century commentary on the Apocalypse made by a fellow monk named Beatus, resident at the Monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana. The Revelation of John was now freshly illuminated in luminous colours for the King and his court to browse at their leisure.
The odd bit, of course, is that the illustrated end of all things has outlasted the myriad tales told over the last 2000 years that the end is nigh.
Any fiction, any story, any narrative has the power to transport us from our current situation into a different world into which we can escape and while away the hours without realizing how much time has already passed.
For Elka Ray, crime fiction helped her not just to take her mind off of her homesickness but it also helped her connect with people and places through the stories she read and wrote. It gave her that sense of belonging, the feeling of being home.
As a kid, homesickness felt as much a part of me as blood or bone, whether a product of my nomadic childhood or inherited from my Ray ancestors, sailors and barkeeps—i.e. drunks and adventurers, obviously searching for something beyond their small English village.
Home sick. In German it’s Heimweh. Home hurt. The French describe it as a pain too. In Vietnam, where I’ve spent my entire adult life—it’s Nho nha. Miss home. Note how simple and evocative these terms are—words screamed by toddlers. This is a basic human emotion.
The climax of a courtroom drama lies in the verdict. With all eyes fixed on the twelve members who hold the power to change lives in their hands, we eagerly wait to see the decision which could only go one of two ways, either of which could spell disaster for someone.
In books and movies, authors have relished that heart-clenching moment, the moment that the jury files in and says “We have a verdict, Your Honor.” They hand a piece of paper to the judge. The judge opens it. Reads it. That’s the instant the judge knows something that no one else but judge and jury know. The fate of another human being.
In books and movies, the verdict may come at the beginning, at the middle, or at the end. Whichever way, it’s the moment we wait for, the moment we can’t predict, and the moment we wonder: what would we do if we were on the jury? Is it fair, is it right, did the good guys win? And who are the good guys anyway?
In this list, Crime Reads compiles some of the most suspenseful verdict moments in which the jury gives their decision and the judge hands it down.
The way the Netherlands is depicted in images and paintings usually include idyllic scenery filled with windmills, cows, and tulips. But Dutch photographer Reinjan Mulder thought that this wasn't what the Netherlands really looked like.
As 26-year-old Dutch photographer Cleo Wächter explains, Mulder was interested in the way landscape paintings were rich in clichéd images. “In the Netherlands, that often meant windmills, cows, a small road leading to the horizon,” says Wächter. “So Mulder said, ‘This is not what the Netherlands looks like.’”
Just one year out of school, her work caught the eye of landscape architect Berno Strootman, the Dutch government’s Chief Advisor on the Built and Rural Environment, who had seen Mulder’s original Objective Netherlands at the Rijksmuseum.
Strootman commissioned Wächter to update Mulder’s original project, following in his footsteps to show what had changed in the Netherlands’ landscape in 43 years. It became, as Wächter puts it, “a conversation between two moments in time.”
There was once a Dutch settlement on an island in Svalbard called Smeerenburg which derived most of its trade on bowhead whales, known for having a lot of blubber. And so it became known as Blubber Town.
Despite only existing for over 40 years after which it was abandoned by its founders, tales of its bustling streets lined with churches, shops, and bakeries circulated and were inflated until it became a myth of its own.
Smeerenburg began with a happy accident. Searching for a Northeast Passage in 1596, famed navigator Willem Barentsz (1550–1597) stumbled upon the Svalbard islands. Here, along the rocky coasts, he found countless bowhead whales and saw an opportunity. The Dutchman planted a flag and claimed the lucrative waters for the United Provinces.
In 1619, having gained a near monopoly in whale trade, the Dutch established a foothold in the Arctic and founded the town Smeerenburg.
Word of a booming Blubber Town spread among whalers in the Arctic. There was no agreement on how large it had grown and when it was deserted. Most believed it was a bustling place.
By the eighteenth century, written accounts make clear that Smeerenburg was abandoned, but the myth of its former grandeur continued. In reality, Smeerenburg was never more than a desolate outpost.
Now, Smeerenburg has become kind of a tourist destination for those going on Arctic cruises.
In 1973 its ruins became part of Norway’s Nordvest-Spitsbergen national park. Visitors are warned against walruses and then invited to wonder at the brick foundations of the tryworks.
They can gape at the so-called “blubber cement” that still outlines the place where enormous cooking vessels once stood. The result of mixed whale oil, sand, and gravel, the asphalt-like substance is the most tangible remnant of Blubber Town.
For a lot of people, food is life but within the range of choices, pizza is the best. Nothing beats a slice of pizza when you're just chilling at home, taking a break from the world, or just simply stress eating. But the new art collaboration between Think Tank and Meow Wolf, Nothing Cheezy, takes the concept of pizza up a notch and immerses us into the world of pizza.
You get pizza. You get art. You get games. You get kitsch. You get nostalgia. You definitely get selfies. And then you get more pizza.
It all happens in a very small space that has been transmogrified into something from the outer limits — as if aliens had been listening in on our radio and television transmissions and come to the conclusion that pizza was the dominant culture on planet Earth. As if.
From the moment you enter the gallery, you’re given a plethora of opportunities to include yourself in the proceedings. You immortalize yourself in endless self-portraits — you’ll need to, because while the pizza will be gone in 24 hours, your cheesy memories last forever.
In an effort to feature local artists, Sterling Bay has commissioned local graffiti artist Merlot to create street art in preparation for the development of their Lincoln Yards mixed-use project.
As such, when you wander through the area, you might find letters of the alphabet painted on murals. This is part of Sterling Bay's rotating public art programs and expect to see more as the area gets developed.
Local graffiti artist Merlot is in the process of creating “Alphabet Monsters,” a series of 26 murals featuring each letter of the alphabet, commissioned by developer Sterling Bay. She has painted four murals thus far, and the interactive art project will be completed in early September, according to the Chicago developer.
The large murals will be on buildings and manufacturing artifacts throughout the formerly industrial site, which once included businesses such as the A. Finkl & Sons steel plant.
It's good to take a step back for once and spend some time just looking up at the night sky and staring in awe of how beautiful each passing second is. In a two-hour session of stargazing and pondering, Bates photographer Theophil Syslo captures a stunning timelapse video of the sky at night over Maine.
All the while, the sky appears to rotate, due to the Earth’s rotation. (The camera itself is moving and rotating, too, thanks to Syslo’s three-axis setup.) The 22-second video comprises hundreds of still images taken 40 seconds apart. The night images were taken with a 30-second exposure to effectively capture starlight.
There's no better person to ask how one can protect themselves from identity theft than someone who knows the intricate details on how it's done. Frank Abagnale, the famous con man featured in the film Catch Me If You Can who later became part of the FBI, shares his thoughts on how people can safeguard their identities and credit.
I get asked a lot about how do you protect yourself from identity theft, which is a big issue. And probably everybody in this country has had their identities already stolen because we've had over a billion identities stolen. We only have 340 million people in America, including babies and children. So I always tell people, "I just do a few things."
First of all, I do freeze my credit. I do still use a monitoring service because I like to check my own credit. So for $14, $17 a month, I can go online and look at all three credit bureaus. I can look at inquiries being made on my credit. If something's not accurate; I can fix it.
Other steps one can take is to avoid writing checks because it gives your information to fraudsters and other people with the intent of using that for illegal purposes or criminal activity. He also suggests that the best mode of payment is through credit cards.
I asked myself a simple question, what truly is the safest form of payment, not only in this country but in many countries around the world? And that is a credit card—Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover Card. Every day of my life I spend their money. I never spend my money. My money sits in the money market account, earns interest, and it's exposed to no one.
In a new biopic of the music icon, Johnny Flynn will be playing the role of David Bowie in the film "Stardust" which will show Bowie's life in the early '70s as he embarks on his journey to America in search of fame. The cast includes Jena Malone, Marc Maron, and Angie Jones with Christopher Bell writing the screenplay and Gabriel Range directing it. Filming started early July of this year.
It was because of our misuse of technology and human greed that nature was abused and slowly depleted. But we can also use that same technology to arrest nature's decline. We can't undo the damage but we can at least salvage what is left. And that's one of the primary goals of the DNA Zoo Initiative which was also recently awarded a Microsoft AI grant.
DNA Zoo is a global initiative that involves more than 55 partners in eight countries, and UWA is the leading arm in Australia that collects, sequences, and analyses animal DNA as part of the initiative.
The funds from the grant will be used by DNA Zoo to develop the concept of using scat retrieval drones (SRDs) to collect genome samples of more than 40 threatened mammals in Australia, before using Microsoft cloud computing to democratise the analysis for DNA-based species monitoring.
The collected samples through the DNA Zoo program will be open source so it can be integrated with other open source data with machine learning applied to allow researchers to look for patterns of why some animals appear to thrive to slow or reverse the decline of endangered species.
It's been three months since the last episode of Game of Thrones aired and I have moved on. And it seems that George R.R. Martin has also moved on.
In a recent interview, he spoke about what he felt after the show ended and he said that it was "freeing". Admittedly, many fans have been hounding on Martin to finish the last installments of A Song of Ice and Fire. He has received flak for taking too long to write them but now, it seems with the show finally wrapped up, he is able to focus more on writing.
“I don’t think [the TV series] was very good for me,” Martin said. “The very thing that should have speeded me up actually slowed me down. Every day I sat down to write and even if I had a good day … I’d feel terrible because I’d be thinking: ‘My God, I have to finish the book. I’ve only written four pages when I should have written 40.’”
He also shared his sentiments about the show and the books becoming popular, and laments that he could no longer enjoy the simple things in life.
I mean, I can’t go into a bookstore any more, and that used to be my favourite thing to do in the world... Now when I go to a bookstore, I get recognised within 10 minutes and there’s a crowd around me. So you gain a lot but you also lose things.
Bakery owner Naomi Suen hopes the cakes will bring about positivity during a time of political unrest. Suen’s mooncakes carry messages including “No withdrawal, no dispersal” and “Hong Kong people.”
Other versions say “Be water,” referring to the protesters’ philosophy, inspired by martial arts star Bruce Lee, of taking a fluid approach to their demonstrations.
Eating shaved ice or kakigori is one of the popular ways to cool off and refresh oneself in Japan especially during the summer. With machine-made ice, vendors can easily sell these refreshments at any time during the year without worry of running out of supplies.
But this gave Yuichiro Yamamoto an idea, whose business as an ice farmer has been threatened by these artificially processed ice. In order to compete with others in the market, Yamamoto decided to market his kakigori as a high-end artisanal product.
"When I started making natural ice, I wondered how I should market it. I thought I needed to transform kakigori," Yamamoto tells AFP at his ice-making field in the town of Nikko, north of Tokyo.
"My predecessor used to sell ice at the same price as the fridge-made one, which can be manufactured easily anytime throughout the year," the 68-year-old says.
The situation made it "impossible" to compete he explains, as producing natural ice is labour intensive.
Instead he decided to transform cheap kakigori into a luxury dessert, made with his natural ice and high-grade fruit puree rather than artificially flavoured syrup.
After transforming his kakigori and marketing it as a high-end dessert, his business boomed and they were able to sell the kakigori for a much higher price than the ordinary kakigori. Even his natural ice was able to sell at six times the price of what his predecessor charged for it.
To learn more about kakigori and how ice farmers in Japan made natural ice, check out the article on AFP.
Anybody who has been spending a lot of time online has probably already noticed by now that we see almost the same kind of content, the same kind of issues, and the same kind of influencers online. At some point, it gets bland and uninteresting. The internet has lost its flavor and novelty from when it started out.
Big sites dominate the internet. With their sophisticated algorithms, they shove content, sponsorships, and other forms of advertising onto us. At times, it gets tiring. Not to mention the numerous toxic spaces that spew out negativity. The internet, as we know it, has become a cesspool and it's high time for changes.
Facebook, and a few other companies like Google and Amazon, control nearly our entire online existence at this point. It’s time to agitate for a new version of the internet, one where our only choices aren’t boredom or fear, one where the internet isn’t a joyless place run by billionaires. It’s time to think small.
Gab and 8chan are prime examples of small networks at their worst, of what happens when a platform is unable, or has no interest in, moderating for healthy speech. But the bad press they attract shouldn’t dissuade us from pursuing a smaller internet. People have already built better social networks, and many of them are small successes.
Certain sites like Ello, Mastodon, and other niche blogs and forums already exist on the internet. Though they don't have the kind of reach that giants such as Facebook and Google have, but they have become sizable communities which focus on the content that's most important to them and not the revenues that come with it.
In fact, that may be the issue why small blogs and sites don't have as much staying power as Big Tech. It would be best to keep these platforms small which makes it easier to maintain them in terms of the type of content being published but more difficult in terms of finances.
Though these communities exist for nearly every topic, they’re of limited size, and constantly at risk of failing because they don’t bring in enough users, or revenue. Much of that has to do with the sheer size of Facebook and a few other companies’ power. It’s the same economic reality that prevents small stores from growing or even staying open when a Wal-Mart moves into town.
And there are other ways of making the internet more convenient for smaller platforms as well. Lawmakers can try to step in and regulate Big Tech even further although admittedly that may take a lot of time and effort without any guarantees. Still, we can hope for a better future on the internet.
