radiodark

baltimore-based artist, acrobat, & puppeteer indexing my inspirations here. formerly milkcratetheft

[periodinteriors]

Gerhard Munthe (Norwegian, 1849-1929), Interiors from Leveld, the Living Room, the Entrance Hall, A Corner of the Dining Room, 1902, pencil, watercolor, and gouache.

[aorish-deactivated20251222]

[kedamono-dreams]

the name of the piece is "Replica of a Chip", and it was woven by Marilou Schultz. here is a good blog post about the piece, the weaver's current work, and a history of the Navajo nation's involvement in the semiconductor industry:

The Pentium as a Navajo weaving

Hurrying through the National Gallery of Art five minutes before closing, I passed a Navajo weaving with a complex abstract pattern. Suddenl

[cherryjams]

‘Hands weaving magnetic-core memory, IBM, Poughkeepsie, New York,’ 1956. Photograph by Ansel Adams.

[bladespark]

My mother used to make computer cores as a "work from home" side business. As a child I got spending money via un-winding the ones that failed testing so that the magnetic center could be re-used. I got between $0.05 and $0.25 per core depending. Mom got more for the finished ones, of course, though I don't know how much. Her sister was an expert, and did the more complicated kind, some of which ended up in satellites and/or were used by NASA!

They were all done by hand using a kind of treadle-operated frame with a little (crochet!) hook to pull the wires around the cores. The people making them were mostly housewives who did this as a side-job in the 80s and 90s. I don't know if it's still done that way anywhere in the USA today, but the history of computing and space exploration is littered with "women's work" like this.

[peaceinthestorm]

Max Kurzweil (1867-1916, Austrian) ~ The Artist’s Wife (Martha Kurzweil, Sleeping on a Divan), 1902

[Source: schirn.de]

[herpsandbirds]

Purple Glossy Starling (Lamprotornis purpureus), family Sturnidae, order Passeriformes, Jos, Nigeria

photograph by Kim Choji

[growrotten]

a brief catch up between a hawk and a sparrow

[electronicgallery]

Art by Yinka Shonibare

1-2. How to Blow Up Two Heads at Once (Ladies) 3-4. The Age of Enlightenment: Adam Smith 5-6. The Age of Enlightenment: Gabrielle Emile le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise de Chatelet

[4-5-25]

band of lace made from human hair, likely worn as a bracelet, 17th century, from V&A

[blueiscoool]

Pompeii Roads

Ancient Romans embedded reflective white stones (sometimes called "cat's eyes" or "tiger's eyes") into the roads of Pompeii. These pale stones caught and reflected moonlight and torchlight, helping pedestrians and cart drivers safely navigate the city streets at night.

These reflective stones highlight how Roman engineers blended practicality with ingenuity in everyday infrastructure. Before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried the city, Pompeii’s streets formed a well-organized network, complete with drainage systems, pedestrian walkways, and nighttime visibility features uncommon in many ancient cities.

[frostedmagnolias]

Anklet

c. 1898-1899

by René Lalique

Musée des Arts Décoratifs

[allthedesiredusernamesaretaken]

... marvellous marble ...

Francesco Queirolo worked at ' Release from Deception' (Il Disinganno) for 7 years - it was all carved from a single block, including the delicate net. So intricate was the work that the 18th-century philosopher Giangiuseppe Origlia described it as “the last and most trying test to which sculpture in marble can aspire.”

[chirasul]

we got a full redbox and now we're playing go fish with the redbox movies

[chirasul]

I would never pay money for a redbox. if you ask politely and are very very persistent (i.e. annoying) they will let you take it away

here's my dad and i taking it away

a redbox makes a wonderful addition to your patio

[fishmech]

for those wondering why they're free to take now, it's because the company that made those "chicken soup for the soul" books bought them a few years ago and then completely collapsed so bad they couldn't afford to dispose of or even take the blu rays and dvds out of their kiosks all over.

so any of them is free game because they're all located on other business' property and they usually don't want to have to pay to get rid of them either. so asking the store manager usually gets you the ok to pull it out and keep it.

[chirasul]

there was a period of time right after their bankruptcy where you could put in any debit or credit card and it would spit out movies without charging you. you could even put in like an expired or deactivated card, or a visa gift card with a $0 balance, didnt matter, they'd just start spitting discs out. a lotta people raided redboxes for movies for a couple months, with some people doing what me and my brother and my dad did here, taking the whole box and signs and marquees as well. because managers sure as hell don't want a big abandoned piece of trash on their sidewalk disappointing customers. BUT they're also often too cheap to pay someone to remove it. so they just sit there.

luckily there are no shortage of freaks like us who will just take them away on our own volition. we did it all "by the book", too: we set up cones and caution tape, disconnected electricity properly, used an angle grinder to grind down the bolts in the concrete so nobody would trip on them, then cleaned everything up afterward and sealed off the electrical panel so the store would know everything is safe and tidy. though they were hesitant when we were first contacting them, they were honestly very relieved and grateful when we finally took it away, especially once they saw that we "knew what we were doing" (we don't) and look like we've "done this before" (we haven't).

the fun part: the reason why this redbox, in particular, was completely full and unraided is because the computer hardware inside had failed some months before the bankruptcy, and a failing company sure as hell wasn't gonna send a tech out to our podunk dipshit city to fix it, so it was impossible to rent movies or take any discs out. plus, for who knows how long, people were returning old redbox discs to this machine and not taking any out, leading to a much higher variety of movies than your average redbox.

there is a thriving community of redbox hackers and modders out there, as well, creating open-source software for repurposing the machines and not letting their very interesting and robust disc-management hardware go to waste. this one belongs to my brother (who was very annoying persistent and did all the legwork of contacting managers and securing permission) who is a programmer by trade and will be hacking it into a family-access movie library, with whatever discs we want. i mean the machine is completely weatherproof and has a built-in AC unit, it would be such a waste to not try to turn it into something cool.

if we get another one, i'm gonna try to mod it into some sort of art or zine vending machine. the disc boxes are just the right size for small print art or stickers. would make a great "little free library" too.

remember: the rules are made up. act like you belong there and you can get away with anything. this applies to your own life

[periodinteriors]

Aleksei Alekseevich Bobrov, Interior, c. 1873-1879, oil on canvas.

[ymutate]

JETTE STOLTZ

[aratinganana]

My personal opinion: of all the literary adaptations of Sun Wukong, the most visually beautiful version is Zhang Whang's.

[nickifortunati-warren]

I made this illustration a couple of years ago. And yes - It’s based on The Strawberry Thief by William Morris haha 🍓

Ink drawing - Colored digitally in Procreate.

Purchase the print here:

This is a gallery-quality giclée art print on 100% cotton rag archival paper, printed with archival inks.

[heyyoufriendthere]

This new fish species is called Snuffleupagus. You can probably guess why | CBC Radio

S. snuffleupagus, a newly described species of fish, is named after the beloved Sesame Street character, Mr. Snuffleupagus, to which it bear

SNUFFLEUPAGUS REAL

[brightnessrandom]

Fantastic article!! The guys looking for it were fish researchers who saw it one time, knew instantly it was an undescribed species, and then tried for nearly 20 years to find and document it!

It's a type of ghost pipefish, related to seahorses, and it floats around coral reefs looking like a piece of algae and hunting unsuspecting prey

They are, of course, named after Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street!

Later on it the project, they got citizen science involved, and people across the Pacific started reporting sightings of snuffy fish from all over!

Hooray for science and hooray for S. snuffleupagus !