Evan Robertson is an illustrator based in New York. Working with design studio Obvious State (previously at Neatorama), Robertson has expanded his series of black-and-white posters featuring compelling quotes by revered authors.
View the full series and purchase poster prints of the collection at The Bazaar.
Lisa Marcus's Blog Posts
Image: Netflix
Ever since House of Cards Season One premiered on Netflix streaming service February 1, 2013, the series has been a hit. In honor of today's release of Season Three, let's mark the occasion with 21 facts about the celebrated series.
One such fact involves Michael Gill and Jayne Atkinson, the actors who play President Garrett Walker and Secretary of State Catherine Durant. The pair is a married couple in real life, yet House of Cards director David Fincher (who also directed Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network and Gone Girl) and the rest of the staff were some of the last to know. Gill told the New York Post,
"I had four auditions. All on tape. Never met Kevin, never met David [Fincher]. We both got it within four or five days of each other. And then towards the end [of the audition process], they realized we were married. When we got to set, none of the cast knew we were married.”
Read 20 more facts about House of Cards at Mental Floss.
Photographer Jonathan Nimerfroh has been documenting these nearly frozen waves washing ashore on Nantucket island, Massachusetts, approximately 30 miles south of Cape Cod. One publication, Stay Wild magazine, dubbed the fascinating photos "Slurpee waves."
See Jonathan Nimerfroh's photographs of this icy phenomenon on his Twitter and Instagram accounts, and on his website. Nimerfroh's photos are absolute eye candy, particularly for fans of nature and landscape photography. -Via Buzzfeed
Adam Savage‘s most recent Tested project is an impressive accurate scale model of the Overlook Hotel's hedge maze from Stanley Kubrick's film presentation of Stephen King's novel The Shining.
See a gallery of 40 excellent images of Savage's maze model here. -Via Laughing Squid
KFC (and much of its fast food competition) is no stranger to gimmicks. Before the publicity on the infamous Double Down is even dead, it seems their team in charge of special promotions has revealed the latest odd offering designed to reel them in: edible coffee cups. The product, which they've dubbed the "Scoffee Cup," is designed to coincide with the launch of Seattle's Best coffee in KFC's stores across the United Kingdom.
The Scoffee Cup is a cup-shaped cookie coated in white chocolate and sugar. In a corporate explanation that makes my mind scream "What Could Go Wrong!?" the cups are designed to "slowly" soften after the coffee is poured inside them. But perhaps the strangest thing about this new offering is the fact that it's scented with various fragrances, including coconut suntan lotion, freshly cut grass and wild flowers, scents that a representative of the designer told Grub Street,
"[The smells] have a natural ability to evoke the positive memories we associate with warm weather, sunshine and summer holidays. Things that make everyone smile."
Read more about KFC's Scoffee Cups here.
Doni’s Custom Guitars has made two fully functional guitars out of Millennium Falcon models. The Han Solo Guitar is a standard six-string electric guitar, and what they call the Rebel Bass Guitar is a four-string bass. Both guitars are available for purchase on Etsy. The maker says,
"The original Millennium Falcon bodies are always in good condition, some even perfect – it varies considering they’re from anywhere between 1979 and 2004. Some also never had any lights included and so plenty of blue LEDs are expertly installed by myself and are run from a handily concealed battery pack that is easy to get to.
A custom-built flight case can be added to the order to not only give it a perfect home, but to also safeguard it during shipping."
See additional pictures of the guitars, including photos of the lit LEDs and the custom case, at the Doni Guitars Etsy shop. -Via Laughing Squid
Jeffrey Linn, a designer and urban planner, made a series of maps illustrating how cities might appear if sea levels rose dramatically. The maps are also filled with tongue-in-cheek name changes for the waterlogged areas, such as "Central Shark," "Middrown" and "Flushwick" instead of Central Park, Midtown and Bushwick.
See the rest of the series, which includes Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, London and other cities here. The artwork can be purchased in poster form, and can be ordered with and without the place names. Follow the artist on social media via Twitter. -Via Laughing Squid
Image source
If ghosts existed, particularly angry spirits embittered about the unfair ways their lives ended, I imagine they'd be huge fans of forensic science. It's easy to picture ghostly victims of murder and injustice cheering for such scientists in the process of obtaining revelatory findings as if watching a playoff game on which they had bet a large sum.
One such historical mysterious death surrounds 17 skeletons at the bottom of an old well. The remains were discovered in 2004, when an area in Norwich, England was excavated in preparation for building a shopping center.
The skeletons were initially thought to be plague victims, yet carbon dating of the remains placed them between the 12th and 13th centuries, before the time of the plague in England.
Analysis by DNA expert Dr. Ian Barnes revealed a DNA sequence in five of the skeletons that traced them to a single family of Jewish descent. While exact circumstances surrounding the deaths are impossible to learn so long after the fact, experts who worked the case believe the deaths were linked to religious persecution. They are thought to be the result of either mass execution or mass suicide, as the possibilities of natural deaths were scientifically discounted. The remains were eventually laid to rest in a Jewish cemetery.
Read about eight other cases of mysterious deaths of old that have been clarified thanks to modern forensic testing here.
It's been a growing trend over the past five years or so: living "small." Clutter-free. Tiny houses in which everything is compact and/or capable of being folded and hidden away. It looks so cute and delightfully sparse in the design layouts, but what would day-to-day life in such a structure be like? Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein give us a sneak peek at micro living, from an upcoming Portlandia episode that airs on IFC this Thursday. -Via Gizmodo
Redditor Toastedchillies posted a story of lunch theft and revenge to Justice Porn subreddit. The poster explained that, since he loves to cook, he packs his wife a bag lunch every day for her to take to work. But after awhile, his wife informed him of her lunch being stolen once every couple of days. He writes,
"I’m a bit of a chilli head. Love my hot sauces. I also love to cook. I also cook my wife a delicious lunch each day, She kept complaining that someone was stealing her lunch every couple of days out of the fridge at work. So I made her some buffalo wings for lunch to put in the fridge. They are really popular with her colleagues, but I spiced them up just a little with some Blair’s 4am Reserve. (I note you are meant to dilute it with 1 drop per 5 litres of liquid.)
So I added a couple of drops of Blairs 4am Reserve per wing with nice dusting of Ghost chilli powder for good measure. I did eat a couple to make sure it didn’t kill anybody, they were real hot. Even cream doesn’t cut the heat: and Ghost chillies keep getting hotter for about 5 minutes.
Needless to say just before lunch, there was a shrill from the kitchen, a young male colleague decided to help himself the my wife’s lunch which was clearly marked with her name. He ran to the toilet and vomited over and over. Apparently the moans sounded like he was dying. My wife just sat there innocently pretending nothing was wrong. Needless to say she has not lost a single lunch since."
Read more about Blair’s 4am Reserve — which is more than 7,000 times spicier than Tabasco and one of the hottest substances that exists — here. See a video about Blair's below.
When a Boston man who had been drinking dozed off behind the wheel at 6:21 Sunday morning, he hit a snowbank and then drove his Toyota Tacoma off of the upper northbound deck of I-93 onto the southbound deck of the highway below.
The man survived the accident without serious injury and was charged with DUI. Luckily, the roads had very little traffic on them at the time of the crash. See three views of the car's fall in these videos. Learn more on the story at MyFoxBoston.com.
Eidfjord, Norway | Source: christianpondella.com
These breathtaking photographs of frozen waterfalls from all over the world make up a collection that is worth the short time it takes for readers to peruse it. When such powerful forces of nature — flowing water and freezing temperatures — meet, it makes for some awesome sights (and treacherous exploring).
See the entire collection, as well as brief descriptions of each location, in this article.
Starved Rock State Park, La Salle, Illinois | Image: Todd Rybaum / flickr.com
Louise Falls, Alberta, Canada | Source: flickr.com
One old adage that's certainly true is "One man's trash is another man's treasure." One person sees an ugly hunk of metal, another sees a sculptural work of art. One woman's Pollock is another whose Kid Could Paint That.
Most collectors are well aware what the ultimate prize of their type of collection would be. But people who aren't familiar with collectors' items may be completely oblivious to the value of such items. That's why flea markets, garage sales and the like will always have their treasure hunters.
The article linked below lists what the author estimates to be the most valuable items for ten different types of collections. For example, the book in the photo above is the most valuable printed book, the Bay Psalm Book. Said to be the first book printed in English in North America, this volume is the interpretation of the original Hebrew script of Psalms by the Puritans. Publication began in 1640, with approximately 1,700 copies printed. Eleven copies are thought to be currently in existence.
Old South Church in Boston once owned two copies of the Bay Psalm Book, one of which they sold in order to pay for ministries and repairs. The book sold for $14,165,000 on November 26, 2013 to David M. Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group.
Read about nine other most valuable collectibles of their types here.
Shortlist, Lifestyle, Professional Category
©Ramil Gilvanov/Rimma Gilvanova, Russia
The World Photography Organization has announced the shortlist for the 2015 Sony World Photography Awards. The shortlist was compiled from a record number of submissions for the competition: 173,444 photographs from 171 countries. Competition winners will be announced April 23, 2015.
Use the following links to view all shortlisted photos in three categories: Professional, Open, and Youth. -Via Colossal
Shortlist, Smile, Open Category
©Simon Morris, United Kingdom
West Bengal, India. Blind girls Sonia, 12, and Anita Singh, 5, are born into poverty with congenital cataract blindness. They must accompany their parents everywhere as they cannot be left alone without risk. The surgery to cure this is simple and takes 15 minutes but because of the level of poverty in this family they have been unable to pursue the necessary operation. India has more than 12 million blind, the majority of which suffer from cataract blindness. Poverty is the main reason these millions of people are trapped in this condition. Donor funding has recently enabled both sisters to finally go for this operation. This essay is an attempt to tell the story of their lives before surgery, during the operation to regain their sight and after as they begin to discover light.
© Brent Stirton, South Africa, Shortlist, Contemporary Issues, Professional Category
Photographer Roger Kisby, in his second year shooting the Adult Video News Awards, decided to go a different route in covering the event. Kisby said in an interview with Refinery 29,
"I wanted to do portraits of the performers, to do something that was authentic and honest that would strip away — no pun intended — their outer performer aspects and [get at] who they are.
It was a challenge. I only had a few minutes with the performers, and I was trying to do a lot in that time — introducing myself, telling them what I do, and making them feel comfortable, so I could grab a real, natural moment. A lot of them have go-to 'porn poses' or 'porn faces' for lack of a better term, and that was something I tried to get them to not do."
To achieve his goal, Kisby used a simple light setup and traditional, "face-to-face" shooting angle, which presented the subjects' features in a way that was genuine.
See all 25 of Kisby's portraits here, and visit his website to see more of his work.
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