12 of the World's Most Mysterious Monuments & Ruins
12 of the World’s Most Mysterious Monuments & Ruins Article by Steph, filed under Abandoned Places in the Architecture category. Around the world, in places as diverse as Homestead, Florida and Yonaguni, Japan stand monuments and ruins whose origins are shrouded in mystery. Nobody knows exactly why Stonehenge was built, how a set of manmade ruins came to be submerged deep in the ocean or who commissioned a giant carved granite set of post-apocalyptic instructions for rebuilding society on a remote hill in Georgia. Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse (images via: Wired) On a barren knoll in northeastern Georgia stands one of the world’s most bizarre and mysterious monuments. Lake Michigan Stonehenge (image via: io9) A group of researchers using sonar to look for shipwrecks at the bottom of Lake Michigan got quite a surprise when they found what appears to be an ancient Stonehenge-like structure 40 feet beneath the surface of the water. Underwater Ruins in Japan (images via: Hottnez)
Everything You Need to Know About “Click and Drag”
If you’re a regular reader of the brilliant xkcd, then you probably got lost in today’s comic, “Click and Drag.” It features three short panels sitting above a seemingly larger, finite panel. However, when you perform the comic’s titular action, click and drag, the larger, bottom panels seems to sprawl on forever in various directions, revealing amusing quips, sad stories, and what is essentially an entire world. Comic Size We have some pretty interesting numbers regarding the xkcd comic. Different Ways to View the Image In this image, you can treat the comic like Google Street View, zooming in and out until the actual bits and pieces of the comic are indecipherable. Over on WickedGlitch, the entire panel has been scraped and shoved into one image. If you want to navigate Click and Drag at a later time without the Internet available, check out every individual image available for download here, or you can grab a torrent of it all directly from here. Different Ways to Navigate the Image
Catherynne M. Valente – The Boy Who Lost Fairyland – SFF Book Reviews
I drew it out as long as humanly possible, I really did. Any new Cat Valente novel is like Christmas to me, and the only reason I gave in and finished this book (at 4 in the morning, mind you) is the knowledge that two new Valente books will arrive in my mailbox sometime this year. Thanks, Cat, for being prolific and brilliant and full of magic. THE BOY WHO LOST FAIRYLANDby Catherynne M. Published by: Feiwel & Friends, 2015Hardcover: 256 pagesSeries: Fairyland #4My rating: 8,5/10 First sentence: Once upon a time, a troll named Hawthorn lived very happily indeed in his mother’s house, where he juggled the same green and violet gemstones and matching queens’ crowns every day, slept on the same weather-beaten stone, and played with the same huge and cantankerous toad. What? Hawthorn is a troll. Fore more than half the novel, we don’t get to see September at all, but we do meet new characters. But this wouldn’t be a Fairyland book if we didn’t go to visit Fairyland. Other reviews: Like this:
How self driving cars might change our cities, and when
When I was a kid, I loved Arthur Radebaugh's wonderful series Closer than we think, with its predictions of what he thought was the relatively near future. It seems that we are living through an era of significant change that is closer than we think, particularly when it comes to issues like self-driving cars or autonomous vehicles (AVs). The role they will play in our cities is one of the most contentious issues in urban planning these days. Will they save cities, ruin them or just be a big bust? And are they closer than we think? Peter Walker of the Guardian talks to Anand Babu of Sidewalk Labs, a google spinoff, who “believes cities could be fundamentally reshaped by the mass arrival of shared, driverless cars, something he forecasts to happen sooner than many people think.” The trouble is, there usually isn’t much around that is useful that suburban residents can actually get to on a bike. As Walker notes, there are also other ways to look at it.
