Petrit Halilaj’s first solo exhibition at the Reina Sofía's Palacio de Cristal is beautiful and deeply personal. The artist was inspired by the elaborate courtship rituals of bowerbirds, who are known for decorating structures to attract a mate. Halilaj strung up enormous flowers inside the glass conservatory, wanting to turn Palacio de Cristal into a place for the celebration of love, as My Modern Met details: 

This time, the artist uses nature to construct a highly personal narrative. The large forsythia, palm seeds, cherry blossom, poppy, carnation, and lily flowers that dangle from the roof were constructed from steel and canvas in collaboration with Halilaj's life partner, Álvaro Urbano.

”I wanted to conceive Palacio de Cristal as a place for the celebration of love,” Halilaj declared. And by publicly demonstrating their love, the couple is making a big statement about acceptance, particularly when neither the artist's family nor Kosovar society fully embraces them. This call for acceptance also extends to the artist's own nation, as Kosovo is not a fully recognized state. In fact, Spain does not recognize Kosovo and is one of its biggest opponents in entering the European Union.

As a secondary concept, the nesting space that Halilaj has created within the Palacio de Cristal is tied to its environment. It cannot be separated from its surroundings and together they function as a whole. By opening windows and setting up feeding areas for birds to enter the space, he blends indoors and outdoors seamlessly. And by inviting viewers to wander among the enormous structures, he asks them to consider their own place in nature.

Image via My Modern Met

Did you know that water can turn into a disinfectant if electrolyzed? Regular tap water turns into a non-toxic disinfectant that’s capable of instantly neutralizing any microorganism or volatile organic compounds. Electrolyzed Water is capable of killing bacteria and viruses, and is certified by the FDA. Now you can get your hands on it through a small spray can. The EO Mini turns water into the solution, as Yanko Design details: 

Just fill its vessel with regular tap water and the EO Mini’s tiny electrolyzing system creates electrolyzed water in a matter of seconds. Most tap water comes with trace amounts of chlorine in it, which the EO Mini’s internal electrolyzer breaks down to create Hypochlorous acid – which gives the electrolyzed water its disinfecting abilities. A single button on the EO mini allows you to electrolyze the water (by holding it down for 3 seconds) and spray the EO Water solution on your hands, cutlery, handles, spectacles, smartphones, laptops, and even out in the air.

By shrinking the technology into something that’s small enough to fit in your pocket, the EO Mini allows you to carry your safety with you. It can be used at home to clean surfaces, or even outdoors, allowing you to quickly sterilize your hands, your mask, and even frequently-touched objects like the handle on the shopping cart or the keypad on an ATM. By eliminating the use of off-the-counter sanitizers, the EO Mini does two noteworthy things… It provides a healthier and more potent alternative that’s safe for humans and animals, all along while using any regular tap water, saving you money on sanitizers down the line!

Image via Yanko Design

Listen, it’s alright to be creative when it comes to designing your home. Sometimes though, there’s a limit to how creative you can be. Reader’s Digest shares some epic fails when it comes to DIY bathroom projects. From backwards toilet tanks to a showerhead tub faucet, scrolling through this compilation will either have you laughing so hard, or cringing. Check the full piece here. 

Image via Reader’s Digest

If you want to feel the thrill of action movies where protagonists would hack and program a moving vehicle, well this robot vehicle might be for you! While it isn’t like the big cars featured in films, the Sphero RVR is made for everyone ages 8 and up. The mini robot car can help level up anyone’s programming skills, from coding to hacking! 

Image via AutoBlog 

Artist and designer Sean Brown has created a collection of hand-tufted acrylic rugs that emulate the round disc shape of a CD. The Toronto-based artist included designs based on different albums such as   Lil’ Kim’s Hard Core, The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine,” and Jay-Z’s Vol. 3… Life and Times of S. Carter. The rugs are available for $250 each, as Apartment Therapy details:  

Brown initially shared the designs on Twitter in April, and the tweet has since amassed over 90 thousand likes. In an interview with Vogue earlier this month, Brown cited the serendipitous “happenstance” of coronavirus quarantine as the inspiration behind the collection. “I don’t think it would have gone the same way if it was something I had deliberately set my sights on,” the designer said. “I think being at home allowed me to get in touch with my space, and how I could utilize that in my creativity in my art.”

Brown also said of the sentimental aspect of the collection, “I was talking to a friend and we were discussing how we don’t think it’s fair to judge art so harshly in the moment, because it can mean something so different to the following generations.” Musing on the always-changing landscape of music and hip-hop culture, Brown added, “You look back now, and people who are older now want things to go back to that, and they have a problem with all the Lils and the face tats and the dyed hair.”

Image via Apartment Therapy

Warning for major amounts of cuteness! Watch as a British Shorthair kitten sweetly sleeps with a tiny chicken. You might think it’s a waste of almost two minutes of your time, but no, it won’t be. Watching two different animals getting along and becoming cuddly with each other is totally not a waste of time.

Tourism chiefs can drive business to their towns or cities by simply updating or editing their Wikipedia page. Who could have known that that method is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote tourism? Economists at the Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin, Italy, and ZEW in Mannheim, Germany, found that a few simple edits to a Wikipedia page could lead to an extra £100,000 a year in tourism revenue, as the Guardian detailed: 

The researchers randomly selected cities across Spain to receive targeted improvements to their Wikipedia pages, adding a few paragraphs of information on their history and local attractions, as well as high-quality photos of the local area.

It didn’t take an expert, either. Most of the content added was simply translated over from the Spanish Wikipedia into either French, German, Italian or Dutch.

Doing so had an immediate and remarkable effect: adding just two paragraphs of text and a single photo to the article increased the number of nights spent in the city by about 9% during the tourist season. In some instances, the increase was even larger. For cities with barely anything on their Wikipedia pages, a minor edit could raise visits by a third.

“If we extend this to the entire tourism industry, the impact is large,” write the authors, Marit Hinnosaar, Toomas Hinnosaar, Michael Kummer and Olga Slivko. “Its impact could be in billions of euros.”

Image via the Guardian 

Most institutions are now investing in online journals or platforms for accessibility. Sure, it’s easier to find research papers and academic journals that can aid us in our studies, but what happens when institutions stop paying for web hosting or the platform’s service? There’s a high risk that the research stored within those services or platforms will disappear. Archivists at the Internet Archive are hard at work preserving open-access journals permanently, as Vice details: 

Between 2000 and 2019, nearly 200 open-access journals and the research papers they published have vanished from the internet, according to a new study published on arxiv preprint server. Nine-hundred more inactive, open-access journals are also at high risk of vanishing in the near future, the researchers found. 

Of the 176 journals they identified, around one-third vanished from the web within one year of the last publication, taking their articles and research down with them. 

Since 2017, archivists at the Internet Archive have worked to preserve open-access journals permanently. "Of the 14.8 million known open access articles published since 1996, the Internet Archive has archived, identified, and made available through the Wayback Machine 9.1 million of them," Brian Newbold at the Internet Archive wrote on Tuesday. 

To expand those efforts, IA launched the Fatcat editable catalog with an open API for anyone to contribute open-access scholarly works, as well as a new platform for searching through those archives

Image via Vice 

Well, that’s what Wilhelm Reich thought. The psychoanalyst believed he had discovered “orgone” energy, what he believed was the cosmic source of all sexual energy. Reich even went as far as building and selling “orgone accumulators,” items that he claimed could concentrate a person’s energy when they sat inside them. Would you believe such a thing if it was presented today? I wouldn’t, and neither did the psychoanalytic community during the time he released his outlandish claims. Check out Popular Science’s podcast, The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, to hear more about this cosmic sex source! 

Image via Popular Science 

The Internet has provided us with accessibility and efficiency when it comes to sharing information with other people. With a few clicks, we can now easily obtain the information we need. More people can also easily upload and share their original content, and more people can also easily steal their content. Most don’t think twice before copying content or downloading and using images without the original poster’s permission. Light Stalking provides details on how we can prevent people from stealing our content online. Check their full piece here.  

Image via Light Stalking 

You don’t have to use heavy and massive DSLRs for full-frame photography, because Sony has now created the market’s smallest and lightest full-frame camera! The Alpha 7C can still give photographers the performance they need despite its small size, as it carries a 24.2 megapixel 35mm full-frame back-illuminated Exmor R CMOS sensor that gives its user all the image definition and low light performance they’ll need. The camera is also powered by a good image processing engine. Hypebeast has more details: 

The camera is powered by a BIONZ X image processing engine, with 15 stops of dynamic range and support for ISO sensitivities up to 51,200, expandable up to 204,800. Other performance features include artificial intelligence-driven auto-focus with real-time tracking, burst modes of up to 10 frames per second, and 4K video shooting. Its external hardware comes in the form of a tilting three-inch LCD touchscreen, a 2.35 megadot XGA OLD Tru-Finder electronic viewfinder, built-in Wi-FI connectivity, and USB-C support.

For the avid photographers out there, Sony’s new full-frame Alpha 7C is now available for pre-order over on Adorama, going for $1,800 for the body.

Image via Hypebeast 

An archaeological site is hidden beneath one of Rome’s most notable tourist attractions. Vicus Caprarius, commonly known as the “City of Water,” is an ancient Roman apartment complex hidden underneath the Trevi Fountain. The archaeological site was discovered during the late 1990s when the Cinema Trevi theatre was being expanded. A huge number of artifacts were obtained from the city, such as terracotta figurines, African pottery, and a hoard of over 800 coins. If you’re interested to see more photos of the hidden city, check out Atlas Obscura’s piece here. 

Image via Atlas Obscura 

Madurai City is bustling with life all hours of the day. From markets that are considered as a hub of old legends and trades to temples that depict colorful stories of the land through its art and architecture, the city is a great place to visit (once this pandemic is over, of course). The city’s Meenakshi temple is the finest example of Dravidian architecture. The 2000-year-old temple holds a legendary golden tank that supposedly drowned unworthy manuscripts. Check out more reasons to visit Madurai City via the Lonely Planet’s piece here. 

Image via the Lonely Planet

Paleontologists discovered the world’s oldest animal sperm in Myanmar. The sperm was found frozen inside a tiny crustacean in a blob of tree resin dated 100 million years old! It was found in the body of a female specimen, indicating that she must have been fertilized shortly before being trapped in amber, as Rappler details: 

To make the find even more special, the sperms were also described as "giants," measuring up to 4.6 times the size of the body of the male. 

"This is equivalent to about 7.30 meters in a 1.70-meters human, so it requires a lot of energy to produce them," Renate Matzke-Karasz of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, co-author of the study, told AFP. 

The ostracod was also a new species that the scientists have named "Myanmarcypris hui."

Image via wikimedia commons

The oldest example of religious graffiti was found at Vindolanda, an ancient Roman fort in Northumberland. Researchers uncovered the shards of a chalice decorated with angels, crosses, and other symbols of Christian iconography. The 1,400-year-old artifact was found in poor condition, but thanks to technology, the researchers were able to discover the dozens of symbols etched on the chalice, as Artnet details: 

“It is genuinely exciting,” David Petts, a post-Roman specialist at Durham University and project researcher, told the Guardian. “When we think of graffiti, we tend to think it’s unauthorized vandalism. But we know from many medieval churches that people would put marks and symbols on buildings. What is unique about this is finding them on a vessel.”

The 14 pieces of the chalice, which was once the size of a modern-day cereal bowl, were discovered by a volunteer who signed on to help with the Vindolanda excavations last year. 

Among those identified were letters in Latin, Greek, and an ancient medieval script, as well as images of a fish, a whale, members of a church congregation, and a “chi-rho,” the monogram representing Jesus Christ.

“This is a really exciting find from a poorly understood period in the history of Britain,” Petts added in a statement. “Its apparent connections with the early Christian church are incredibly important, and this curious vessel is unique in a British context.”

“It is clear that further work on this discovery will tell us much about the development of early Christianity in the beginning of the medieval period,” he said.

Image via Artnet