The State Guest Mansions were envisioned as the palatial homes for the upper crust of society. Now, their only residents are hurdles of cattle and the occasional adventure explorers meandering like ghosts around the arched verandas and stone façades of hundreds of abandoned villas. Located around the hills of Shenyang (about 400 miles northeast of Beijing), the development was originally planned by Greenland Group, a Shanghai-based real estate developer, and broke ground in 2010. But as AFP reports, within two years the project had come to grinding halt, leaving the half-formed skeletons of imitative royalty in its wake. Today the crumbling estates are still abandoned, left in an eerie series of rows appearing like an architectural cornfield.

source: jwz

Friends, I’m excited to offer to you a new poster. Not a map this time around, but something map-related. A 16 × 24-inch tangled web showing how 100+ different map projections are all related to each other.

source: jwz

The use of floppies is hardly some previously unknown fact; for starters, Tumlin explicitly told KQED that his agency has to retain staff with skills honed to what amounts to the programming equivalent of Ancient Babylonian. But Twitter users on Thursday expressed surprise that a city known as a global tech capital would be so reliant on a storage format that lacks the capacity to store a single hi-resolution photograph.

Previously: https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/tech-in-the-tunnels-muni-train-control-system-gets-biggest-upgrade-since-the-90s/article_9e96254c-f8b3-5ee8-b21a-227b3cd6eb2c.html

Relay racks extend down a cramped hallway nearly 15 feet deep, where dozens of 4-inch copper filaments clatter up and down like teeth. The speedy “click, clack” sound signifies a smooth running Muni light rail automatic control system, which commands the J-Church, K-Ingleside, L-Taraval, M-Ocean View, N-Judah and T-Third Street trains through the tunnels. The clapping beat signifies the proper alignment of the railway’s 83 axle (controls) and numerous other track switches.

source: jwz

Bees are wasps that switched to a vegetarian lifestyle, and the vast majority of bees feed on pollen and nectar. Some stingless bee species, however, also collect carrion, and a few have fully reverted to a necrophagous lifestyle, relying on carrion for protein and forgoing flower visitation altogether. These “vulture” bees belong to the corbiculate apid clade, which is known for its ancient association with a small group of core microbiome phylotypes. Here, we investigate the vulture bee microbiome, along with closely related facultatively necrophagous and obligately pollinivorous species, to understand how these diets interact with microbiome structure.

Recap: https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2021/11/23/when-bees-get-taste-dead-things

source: jwz

I watched 《loki》 some time ago, and I really liked the digital styling setting that combines retro and future in the show, so I rendered a detailed enhanced version of a multifunctional computer.

Or: https://www.yankodesign.com/2021/12/04/this-retro-futuristic-computer-from-the-loki-series-is-worth-every-marvel-fans-appreciation/

source: jwz

The goal for this project is to design, 3D-print and assemble the enclosures for several small desktop computers.

source: jwz

The person who types “lol” is never actually laughing; the person who types I’M SCREAMING is silently dabbing at a screen. In the same way, the person who is perpetually shocked and outraged and brimming with righteous fury is almost always lying to themselves. They’re as affectless as the rest of us: play-acting, downloading synthetic emotions, and then passing them on.

source: jwz

Beware the shitty autoplaying videos. Support local news!

But some of the pictures are kinda cool.

source: jwz

When a drilling platform is scheduled for destruction, it must go on a thousand-mile final journey to the breaker’s yard. As one rig proved when it crashed on to the rocks of a remote Scottish island, this is always a risky business

source: jwz

Zhongshuge bookstores, designed by Shangai-based architecture firm X+Living, feature incredible rooms coveted by book and illusion lovers alike. Each location in this chain of Chinese bookstores has uniquely designed spaces with reflective elements that immerse guests in parallel environments. In the Chongqing branch, criss-crossing staircases and a mirrored ceiling double the room for an effect that seems straight out of an M.C. Escher woodcut or an infinite Indian stepwell.

Also: http://www.xl-muse.com/list/?18_1.html

source: jwz

On the western flank of the Hoover Dam stands a little-understood monument, commissioned by the US Bureau of Reclamation when construction of the dam began in 01931. The most noticeable parts of this corner of the dam, now known as Monument Plaza, are the massive winged bronze sculptures and central flagpole which are often photographed by visitors. The most amazing feature of this plaza, however, is under their feet as they take those pictures.

The plaza’s terrazzo floor is actually a celestial map that marks the time of the dam’s creation based on the 25,772-year axial precession of the earth.

source: jwz

Unicode Consortium: 214 characters from legacy computers and teletext that were proposed by the Terminals Working Group were just accepted:

https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19025-terminals-prop.pdf

source: jwz

I can’t believe that this 1994 clown car has still not disgorged all of its passengers, but here we are. I’m running Raspbian 9.6 and if mpg321 is interrupted before it finished playing the file, about 10% of the time the machine gets into a state where it can’t play sound any more and launching any process takes ~5 seconds. At that point, I haven’t found a recourse other than rebooting.

Any suggestions, other than “get a less annoying hobby“?

Starts with an O...

source: jwz

This is an absolutely amazing artifact whose physical existence is difficult to accept. I can barely wrap my head around the fact that this thing is pushing enough electrons through the air that it can not only hold itself up, but also light up a set of Nixie tubes. It’s god damned sorcery, is what it is. This is some Tesla HAARP Weapon Planetary Weather Control shit going on here.

And the way you configure it is... complete lunacy, even compared to the typical UI standards of “how to set the time on a clock or a Microwave”, which was already complete lunacy. You’re used to “press button A to advance, press button B to configure, hope you can guess what the beeps mean?” Ho ho ho, welcome to the next level: the control here is an invisible capacitive touch button, just one, and to toggle, say, setting 3, you gesture near the button until the audio tone changes frequency 3 times... and then you wait a little bit longer and flee quickly. Oops, you advanced to 4! Try again! It’s koo-koo-pants.

source: jwz

How coherent is a city’s spatial organization? How do these patterns help or hinder urban navigation? I recently wrote about visualizing street orientations with Python and OSMnx. That is, how is a city’s street network oriented in terms of the streets’ compass bearings? How well does it adhere to a straightforward north-south-east-west layout?

source: jwz

I have long had a hard time picturing what day, night and the shape of the terminator would look like on Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Map. Well yesterday I wrote some code and now I know! It sort-of feels like two weird spirals turning in opposite directions. Video here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LnO0UiccGs

source: jwz

Mainly GIFs, but pictures are okay too.

source: jwz

No idea how to describe this, but it’s cool.

3 minutes.

source: jwz

Trying something new here on Ye Olde Blogge: animated GIFs are now served as MP4s in a VIDEO tag.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it’s different.

source: jwz

Power stations, control towers etc. Posted mainly for aesthetic reasons.

source: jwz