Art historian and curator Catherine McCormack has released a photo book, called "The Art of Looking Up," showcasing the forty finest ceilings in the world. McCormack divides the photo book into different categories based on a structure’s purpose; religion, culture, power, and politics. Core77 shares some photos of the ceilings featured in the photo book. The featured ceilings are grand and very detailed. Truly worth an art curator’s time and attention!
Image via Core77
Australian artist Jasper St Aubyn West (aka Tailjar), hilariously inserted fun cartoon monsters into historical works of art and old photos. The colorful yet slightly creepy illustrations add a sense of discomfort (or if you’re being positive, shines a new light to the original piece) as it alters the context of the original. From his modern flair to “The Creation of Adam” by Michaelangelo and other old reinterpreted pieces, check Laughing Squid’s full piece here.
Image via Laughing Squid
Yes, the rapper and the famous fast-food chain collaborated on a meal that was sold in the USA. The high demand for the Travis Scott Meal, which consists of a Quarter Pounder with cheese, bacon and lettuce, a medium order of fries with BBQ sauce and a Sprite, caused some restaurants to run out of the ingredients needed for the meal! USA Today has more details:
"We’ve created a program that’s so compelling to our customers that it’s stretching our world-class supply chain; and if demand continues at these levels, more restaurants will break supply," McDonald's said in the memo sent to employees, owners and operators across the country.
The promotion will continue but, starting Sept. 22, to get the Travis Scott Meal for $6 it will have to be ordered through the McDonald's app.
McDonald's confirmed the supply shortages were due to overwhelming demand, the upcoming promotion shift to app-only and other details outlined in the memo to USA TODAY.
Image via USA Today
Kettle-cooked potato chips are now common on grocery store shelves, and some prefer them over the classic ridged Ruffles. Kettle chips are offered as free office snacks, airplane snacks, and as a wellness product! When the chips were revived in the 1980s, they were reintroduced as artisan chips, produced through a different process from mass-produced chips. However, kettle chips are produced in a similar cooking method, just without the aid of technology. Even with the artisan appeal of these chips, are they actually bad? Eater’s Jenny Zhang thinks so:
While some might find it a sensory pleasure to chew on handfuls of spud shards that jab at their gums, I confess I do not. Kettle chips are too hard, too edged, too committed to a brutality of texture to deliver a balanced gustatory experience. No matter the flavor of the chips, the taste nearly always smacks overwhelmingly of oil. Eating a small bagful feels like coating one’s mouth in grease, almost like a salve left over to make up for all the vigorous chomping that tooth and tongue and gums had to engage in to facilitate consumption. All that work, and for what?
Classic thin chips are just as greasy, as evidenced by the shine of one’s fingerprints after reaching into the chip bag one or five or 20 times, but here, the oil is offset by the lightness of the crisp, dissolving on the tongue like a cloud of potato-perfumed air. These are the gentler cousins of the kettle chip, their ethereality of form and flavor miraculously born of industrial manufacturing. When it comes to snacking, there are fewer choices finer than a wholly intact sour-cream-and-onion chip, better yet one whose circumference is roughly that of a hockey puck, its delicate crunch giving way to an allium tang as salty as it is sour.
Image via Eater
How can you make a store bought baby food fancy? You also need to consider that it should be palatable to a baby’s taste buds, right? Tasty producer Rie is put to the test as she attempts to make baby food fancy. Watch to find out if she successfully does so!
People who love going to pumpkin patches will have a blast attending Ontario’s Pumpkinferno! Visitors can visit the Upper Canada Village in Morrisburg to visit the glowing Halloween town. With thousands of glowing jack-o-lanterns, and other colorful installations, a visit to Pumpkinferno is certainly worth your time!
Image via Narcity
This Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory-esque museum gives its visitors the privilege of unlimited chocolate tasting. If you’re an avid chocolate lover, then this place might just be your new favorite! Lindt’s new Home Of Chocolate museum, located in Zurich, Switzerland is every sweet tooth’s dream. Visitors will learn more about Lindt’s chocolates, from the creation of, to the history and cultural significance of Lindt’s products, and follow the process of creating their signature chocolates. The museum also hosts the world’s highest free-standing chocolate fountain. The fountain is over nine metres tall, and holds 1,500kg of flowing chocolate!
Image via Stylist UK
This expensive private residence sits in a forest outside of Moscow. The futuristic-looking “spaceship house” is the only residence designed by legendary architect Zaha Hadid. Commissioned by 57-year-old billionaire real-estate developer and owner Vladislav Doronin, the 36,000-square-foot house features a master bedroom set at the top of a 100-foot tower, as well as a 65-foot underground pool, spa, and nightclub. Business Insider shares details on the million-dollar home. To find out more details about the lavish home, check the full piece here.
image via Business Insider
The next time that you pack your bags and explore other parts of the world, you might wanna check the destinations that don’t attract a lot of people. Fewer tourists means you can get the accommodations and reservations you want, right? Tour agency Undiscovered Destinations analyzed Google search data to find the least-searched-for countries around the world when looking to travel and compiled them in a list. The UK-based company looked at the search volume for the phrases "[country name] vacation" and "[country name] holiday" during a 12-month period from the end of July 2019 through the end of July 2020. Check the locations that made it to the list here.
image via Newsweek
Microsoft’s new “Video Authenticator” tool can analyze photos and videos and provide a “confidence score” that can tell you if these photos or videos have been altered. If a video is being analyzed, the tool can provide the “confidence score” on each frame as the video plays. The tool works by detecting the blending boundary of the deep fake and subtle fading or greyscale elements that might not be detectable by the human eye.
Image via PetaPixel
Sacha Jafri is using his art to raise funds for kids in need. His upcoming piece, The Journey of Humanity, will be the world’s largest painting on canvas. The artwork will also be used to raise $30 million to fund health and education projects for children living in poverty. The painting is approximately the size of two soccer fields, and will be unveiled to the public in November to be evaluated by the Guinness Book of World Records to certify that it is, indeed, the world's largest painting on canvas. My Modern Met has an exclusive interview with Jafri about his goals for this project and what it feels like to complete the world’s largest painting. Check the full piece here.
Image via My Modern Met
Pools from Above is a collection of swimming pools shot from the air by aerial photographer Brad Walls. Walls was inspired by Annie Kelly’s book Splash: The Art of the Swimming Pool, and started the collection by documenting a pool’s shape, size, shape, texture, and color from a bird’s eye view. Viewing the photos in the collection can give you an urge to jump into a nearest pool, or just gaze in awe at how much detail can be seen at a bird’s eye view.
Image via Plain Magazine
This artist repurposed vintage railway tracks to create an outdoor pavilion. The Interchange Pavilion is a 350-square-meter outdoor pavilion can be found in Sydney, Australia. The rails in the Interchange Pavilion were crafted to go in several paths upwards, where they converge at a central point. This repurposing project isn’t the first from the artist. In 2017, Chris Fox, the artist, reused old wooden escalators to create a sculptural ribbon above Sydney’s Wynyard Station.
Image via Colossal
This glass bridge in China’s Guangdong province has broken a Guinness World record for the longest glass-bottomed bridge. Have fun admiring the view from all possible angles when you manage to visit this place! Alternatively, you can be scared or in awe at how high you are by seeing through the glass floor, as Hyperallergic details:
The work of Zhejiang University’s Architectural Design & Research Institute (known as UAD), the bridge measures 1,725 feet and connects two ends of a narrow valley in the Huangchuan Three Gorges Scenic Area. Its floor is made up of three layers or about 1.7 inches of tempered laminated glass and can hold up to 500 people.
Previously holding the number one spot for most terrifying — err, longest — glass-bottomed suspension bridge was the 1,600-foot-long Hongyagu footbridge in China’s Hebei province, which was reportedly built to have a slight but unnerving sway. The vertiginous structures are not uncommon in China, which had an estimated 2,300 glass bridges as of last year, many constructed as tourist attractions.
The Three Gorges Scenic Area bridge, described by UAD as “a transparent corridor in the air,” took three years to build at a cost of 300 million yuan (~ $43 million).
Image via Hyperallergic
If genetically-engineered mice can keep their muscle mass in space, does that mean we don’t have to worry about our weight when we go up to space? Assuming we get a chance to do so, of course. Microgravity can make people’s muscle mass and bone density wither away. It can take months for astronauts to recover their muscle density after a six-month stay on the International Space Station. Bone density? It can take years to recover that. Ouch. In an experiment done to find a way that astronauts can avoid those problems, genetically-engineered mice, called “Mighty Mice” spent 33 days aboard the ISS and was able to retain more muscle and bone density than the control mice that were not tinkered with, as ScienceAlert detailed:
"These findings," the researchers wrote in their paper, "have implications for therapeutic strategies to combat the concomitant muscle and bone loss occurring in people afflicted with disuse atrophy on Earth as well as in astronauts in space, especially during prolonged missions."
The target of the engineering was a protein called myostatin, which plays a significant role in regulating muscle growth. Mutations in the myostatin gene can produce something called myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy, resulting in mega beefcake muscling: this has been observed in some cattle, and this viral whippet.
Image via ScienceAlert
