The New York Times Magazine visits the Gulf Coast International Jousting Championiships, a new old extreme sport spun-out of Ren Faires. “This is the real deal. There’s a real possibility of getting hurt.” A member of the Chukchansi tribe in California, with tattoos of his spirit animals ringing his thick biceps. He doesn’t joust because he’s attracted to romantic notions of honor and chivalry or because he has an affinity for the medieval period. (“I don’t know jack about history, nor do I care”.) He does it because he considers jousting one of the most extreme sports ever invented, and he likes doing things that most other people can’t or won’t do.
Month: July 2010
Growing Fashion
Suzanne Lee can conjure clothing out of a couple of bathtubs, some yeast, a pinch of bacteria, and several cups of sweetened green tea. Lee is the brains behind BioCouture, an experiment in growing garments from the same microbes that ferment the tasty caffeinated beverage.
bacterial cellulose -> grown garments
Tencent
a portrait of dst, naspers and tencent. it is very interesting to see how internet empires outside of the us are being built.
Faces of Our Ancestors
amazing reconstructions. No idea how credible those are but they are striking.
2019-02-27: 2 different projects to make emperor sculptures:
Césares de Roma is a project to make hyperrealist sculptures of Roman emperors using existing portraits and sculptures as references. The latest creation is a silicone bust of Nerón Claudio César Augusto Germanicus, aka Nero, who wreaked havoc from 54 to 68 AD.
Using the neural-net tool Artbreeder, Photoshop and historical references, I have created photoreal portraits of Roman Emperors.
Working from remains discovered during archaeological excavations, sculptor and archaeologist Oscar Nilsson combines his 2 disciplines to reconstruct the faces of people who lived 100s, 1000s, and even 10Ks of years ago. This Neanderthal woman lived 50 ka ago:
Researchers have reconstructed the torso of a woman of the Únětice culture whose remains were unearthed in a Bronze Age cemetery in eastern Bohemia. She had been buried sometime between 3880 and 3750 BP with 5 bronze bracelets, 2 gold earrings, a 3-strand necklace made of beads of amber imported from the Baltic, and 3 bronze sewing needles.
Municipal Art Society
interesting walking tours
Overclocking SSL
ssl is now fast enough for general use if you are careful.
NYC Cultural Walking Tours
private walking tours, $60 / h
NoshWalks
Noshwalks Bubbly epicure Myra Alperson uses food—and lots of it—to draw crowds to out-of-the-way neighborhoods in all 5 boroughs. A typical Noshwalk tempts you with treats from bakeries, groceries and restaurants; on past jaunts, Alperson has taken tour goers to a kosher matzo factory in Brooklyn and a Sri Lankan market in Staten Island. Oh, and there’s some walking, too.
Decibel
NYC History Tours
After teaching English in NYC public schools, Joyce moved to the computer field and became a systems analyst. While working at the Federal Reserve Bank in the Financial District, she came across a 100-year old book that opened her eyes to the layers of time visible as she walked the historic streets of Lower Manhattan.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 