Photographers who focus on an urban landmark for a photo series usually choose a landmark that either changes over time or is a hub for human activity, so they don't end up with a bunch of static photos of inanimate objects.

That's one of the reasons why Ukrainian photographer Yevhen Kotenko chose to photograph a nearby park bench for 10 years, well, that and the bench was easy to see and photograph from his kitchen window.

Yevhen began the series as a way to document his neighborhood but ended up learning many things about his neighbors and himself:

“I didn’t give myself any time limits or goals, I just went to the kitchen and looked out the window,” Kotenko told RFE/RL. “Usually there was something to see.” Although Kotenko claimed he has fond memories of the neighborhood he grew up in, “there were a lot of bad things, too, that are better not to think about.”

“The worst thing was seeing people I went to school with drinking on this bench, then crawling home like reptiles. I was scared that if I went outside, I’d become one of them.” Kotenko said the subjects he captured were oblivious of his camera.

See more at Bored Panda

Something tells me these aren't real Rolexes. The utility meters on a very plain wall in a Salona Court alley in Long Beach, California, got an upgrade when New York artist Tom Bob was commissioned to make it more interesting. Now it's a classic street vendor in a trench coat! The city boasts quite a few street murals, which you can check out during their monthly art walks, or any time if you know where to find them.  -via reddit

(Image credit: tombobnyc)

Have you ever found yourself eating dessert and thought, "What this needs is more ketchup and mustard"? Me, neither. But if you're looking for something really different that you might serve as stunt, the Ketchup and Mustard Cake will do it. Honestly, if you want people to stop coming to your home just in time for dessert, it's worth a try. This is a real cake, with sugar, flour, butter, eggs, and spices, plus a half cup of ketchup. Well, okay, maybe it's like carrot cake, in that the spices overwhelm the vegetables. But then there's the frosting, made of butter, powdered sugar, and mustard. Really. Find the complete recipe at Shared, along with a video showing how it's made. -via Boing Boing  

We've told you that the most remote place on earth is Tristan da Cunha, because the island is so far from any civilized land mass and difficult to travel to. There is a different way of looking at inaccessibility. What is termed a Pole of Inaccessibility (POI) is the spot on a land mass that is furthest from any coastline. The term was coined in 1920, when even South Dakota had trains and cars, so it may seem like a nonsensical name. But the idea was developed around the exploration of the North and South Poles. The POI of North America is in Bennett County, South Dakota, 1639.623 km (1019 miles) from all three of the nearest oceans. Read about the development of the POI and where it is on all the continents at the ESRI Map Journal. -via TYWKIWDBI   
 

There have been many theories as to why the dinosaurs disappeared millions of years ago, while leaving a remnant behind we call birds. The comic is cute, but nothing earth-shattering (unless you're a dinosaur). However, it sparked a comment thread that posed alternate theories of why dinosaurs became extinct. Take your pick.

I thought this was the real reason dinosaurs became extinct.

I thought this was the real reason dinosaurs became extinct.

I'm pretty sure that was the reason.

but I thought this was the reason.

Nah, this is the reason.

You're all wrong. This is the real reason dinosaurs went extinct.

No no no, you guys have it all wrong, THIS is the REAL reason.

Don't think so, pretty sure this is the real reason.

Actually, this is the real reason.

No... THIS is the scientifically verified reason.

-via reddit

The more futuristic a spaceship looks the harder it is to identify which real life object inspired the design, but at their core all sci-fi spaceship designs are based on something from the real world.

Most concept artists conceal their inspiration by adding detail until the ship looks too complex for our minds to pick apart, but San Francisco-based freelance artist Eric Geusz doesn't care about hiding the truth.

A post shared by Eric (@spacegooose) on Nov 27, 2016 at 10:42pm PST

He's just having fun drawing ships based on stuff he finds lying around his house so he doesn't care who knows where the inspiration for his ship designs comes from.

And his willingness to share this part of his artistic process may open up new worlds for budding artists looking to draw unique and interesting vehicles.

A post shared by Eric (@spacegooose) on Sep 18, 2016 at 11:04pm PDT

-Via Laughing Squid

What's worse than being rejected in favor of a pet? Being rejected in favor of someone else's pet! Yes, it's true that dogs won't break your heart the way a person will. The internet allows us to enjoy relationships from afar. Even relationships that are unrequited, and with a dog. Dogs on the internet come with a bonus in that you don't have to feed, walk, or entertain them. Just like internet boyfriends. This is the latest comic from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble.

Super Bowl ads are really big business, and companies pay millions for the chance to get millions of people talking about their ads, but this year Skittles is skipping the Super Bowl and going ultra exclusive with their ad.

Skittles has decided to change things up a bit by creating "the most exclusive Super Bowl ad ever made" which will be seen by only one person- a 17-year-old from Canoga Park named Marcos Menendez.

(YouTube Link)

So marketing VP Matt Montei- WTF and why?:

“We’ve been a big part of the Super Bowl and continue to be a big part of the NFL," Matt Montei, marketing VP, fruit confections at Mars Wrigley Confectionery explained. “We really felt like we wanted to continue to reinvent ourselves around this timeframe and one way to do it is to just try a completely new way in.”

Montei elaborated that Menendez was chosen because he’s a true Skittles fan. Menendez will get to watch this “exclusive” commercial during the Super Bowl, while everyone else will just get to see Menendez’s reaction to the ad, streamed on Facebook.

-Via DesignTAXI

(Image credit: Flickr user Travis)

Six destinations where getting there is all the fun.

1) ALASKA’S DO-IT-YOURSELF TRAM

In the winter, hikers at Alaska’s Chugach National Forest have to walk across Glacier Creek. But when the water is high in the summer, a hand tram dangling above is a safer alternative. Hikers climb into the cable-suspended box and pull ropes to get across.

2) LONDON’S ROLLING BRIDGE

Action star Liam Neeson has a new movie in theaters now called The Commuter. The very premise of the movie reminds us of the many films where Neeson travels, and people die. He is the world's worst commuter.    

Liam Neeson is very bad at being on a plane. He’s the worst at it, maybe. He was on a plane in 2011’s The Grey, and the plane crashed and people died. (The ones who didn’t die in the crash were eaten by wolves, which I’m not sure is worse than dying in a plane crash or better than dying in a plane crash.) (Probably worse.) (It just seems like you’d die faster in a plane crash than you would by wolves chewing on you.) He was on a plane in 2014’s Non-Stop, and it was taken over by terrorists and people died. (His one job in that movie was to make sure it did not get taken over by terrorists and that nobody died, FYI.)

There actually aren’t many modes of transportation that Liam Neeson isn’t bad at using, turns out. His new movie, The Commuter, is out now, and in that movie he’s on a train, and guess what happens: Without spoiling anything, I can tell you that people die on the train.

The list goes on until it sounds like Green Eggs and Ham. You do not want him on a plane, you do not want him on a train, you don't want him in a car, 'cause you won't travel very far. You do not want him on a ship, or or any way you take a trip. And there are a few movies like Leap of Faith in which Neeson does not travel, and everyone survives the movie. Read about the many cinematic troubles Liam Neeson has with transportation at The Ringer.

We all want to feel special, and we also long for others to acknowledge how special we are and recognize the qualities that make us unique in the world, in other words acknowledge what makes us one-of-a-kind.

You know what else is unique and one-of-a-kind? A snowflake, and even though some people have tried to use snowflake as a derogatory term we know it's really a compliment and an acknowledgement of our unique beauty.

And there's something else you should know about "snowflakes"- we can be ice cold as needed, and if you try to diminish our specialness we'll cut ya! Figuratively speaking, of course...*wink*

-Via JHALLCOMICS

It always seems like a shame to throw out avocado pits, especially given how easy it is to grow an avocado tree from a pit, and yet if you eat avocados like I do then you're bound to end up buried in pits if you save them all.

But now that I've seen the amazing avocado pit sculptures created by Jan Campbell I'm thinking it's time to whip out the old carving knives and sculpt those "stones" into scary monster faces.

Jan is an Irish artisan with a healthy love of Celtic mythology, so she doesn't carve the stones (what she calls the pits) to look like scary monsters- she turns them into figurines of forest spirits, mythic beings and the occasional Venus of Willendorf.

Jan sells her amazing pit carvings through her Etsy shop and her website Avocado Stone Faces, and she posts her latest creations via Instagram in case you want to see what she comes up with next.

I find Jan's sculptures to be truly inspirational and a great excuse to eat more avocados!

See more from This Artist Carves Avocado Pits Into Magical Forest Creatures here

Languages are different, and use sounds that are different from each other. But people who learn a new language often retain an accent from their original language. How does that happen? Folks tend to retain bits and pieces of their original language when operating in a new one. This happens at such an elemental level that we don't even realize it. You don't see it in people who learned two or more languages in their early childhood, because they are both his "native language."    

(YouTube link)

Linguist Arika Okrent gives us examples that illustrate this concept, while an artist shows us what's happening on a whiteboard.  -via Mental Floss

Watch an exceedingly pleasant time-lapse video of a guy building an entire log cabin by hand. Canadian outdoorsman Shawn James shows how he did it, then explains more.

(YouTube link)

I'm glad he got the exterior done before winter set in! From the YouTube page:

At the beginning of the video, I show a winter drone photo of the cabin in the snow in December. Then I flashback to the first balsam fir tree I cut down with a saw and axe near the cabin. I drag the trees into place and clear the cabin site. All summer, I cut the notches in the logs as I built the cabin up, offsite. Once I was finished notching the logs with a log scribe, saw, axe, adze and wood carving gouge, I loaded up the entire cabin of logs and moved them to my land near Algonquin Park, Ontario Canada.

Once on site, I spent a month reassembling the cabin on a foundation of sand and gravel. Once the log walls were up, I again used hand tools to shape every log, board and timber to erect the gable ends, the wood roof, the porch, the outhouse and a seemingly endless number of woodworking projects.

For the roof, I used an ancient primitive technology to waterproof and preserve the wood - shou sugi ban, a fire hardening wood preservation technique unique to Japan and other areas in northern climates.

Because the cabin is offgrid, I have used handtools for most of the build and without power, I have no options on site regardless. The tiny house will continue to be operated with power, not even renewable energy for now, so I'm heating the cabin with a woodstove fire place, which I also cook on.

The cabin is made of cedar fence posts, twelve feet long and the cabin measures 10 feet x 20 feet inside with a one hundred square foot sleeping loft on the second floor. The floor is made of two inch thick pine planks, torched to help repel water and to give them a rustic barn board appearance.

If you are really interested in the details, James has plenty of other videos about the cabin at his website. -via Digg

Taxing salt in India was a lucrative activity for the British East India Company, and the British Crown afterward, but it was onerous for Indians. To prevent smuggling of untaxed salt, the British created the Inland Customs Line, and eventually built a physical hedge made of trees and shrubs along most of it. It took years to get it to grow properly, considering the variations in soil, weather, and wildlife in the subcontinent.

But as the British do, they kept working at it. They dug ditches and brought in better soil. They built embankments to resist floods. They experimented until they found the best trees for each of the many climates that the hedge passed through. Eventually it grew long and tall and wide.

It was, in the words of Sir John Strachey, a lifelong civil servant in British India cited in Moxham’s book, “a monstrous system,” that had few parallels “in any tolerably civilised country.” Each mile required 250 tons of thorny brushwood and other organic material to create, and in one year the patrols might carry 100,000 tons of this plant matter to shore up stretches of dry hedge. In most places, the barrier was at least 10 feet tall and 6 feet thick, but it grew bigger in some areas. It became “a standing monument of the industry of our officers and men and an impervious barrier to smugglers,” another commissioner wrote.

But there were problems. White ants infested the hedge and could bring whole sections down. Bush fires incinerated miles at a time. Storms and whirlwinds could sweep parts of it away. Locusts invaded. Parasitic vines blighted the hedge, the trees died of natural causes. One sections had rats living in it, and the patrol there introduced feral cats to combat them.

Nevertheless, the hedge was worked for forty years. Read about the Great Hedge of India at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Dumelow)