Link roundup

1. Use Google Alerts as an Identity Theft Watchdog.

2. Relatedly, find out how old Google thinks you are.

3. And here's one more: Ever since the big Google Reader change, the "explore" function has been useless - - I used to find lots of neat links there, but now it just shows me Lifehacker and XKCD posts (and I'm already subscribed to those feeds!). I'm guessing that the Explore feature never points to obscure, cool posts any more because it's now reliant on Google+, and no one uses Google+ to mark blog posts they like.

4. Visit The Village from The Prisoner on Google Maps.

5. Free download of an audiobook version of Cory Doctorow's Martian Chronicles.

Link roundup

1. Like the Prisoner, but with good intentions:

Its detractors may end up dubbing it "Dementiaville", but Switzerland is brushing aside a debate raging among geriatric-care experts with plans to build a mock-1950s village catering exclusively for elderly sufferers of Alzheimer's and other debilitating mental illnesses.

Via.

2. "What do Army junior officers actually recommend reading?: Their own top 10."

3. A hobbyist piloting a drone spotted a river of blood - - a meatpacking plant in Dallas was simply ejecting blood into the river. Via.

4. Sam Wolfe Connelly has a new shop featuring some illustrations I've featured.

5. Paul Pape's having a sale on his custom made stuck in carbonite sculptures.

11 churches (and one minaret)

Reading Between the Lines in Belgium.



Chêne chapelle in France.



Las Lajas Sanctuary in Colombia.



Holy Family Shrine in Nebraska.



Borgund Stave Church in Norway.



Church at Stow-on-the-Wold, England.





Rainbow Church by Tokujin Yoshioka.




Our Lady of the Rocks in Montenegro's Bay of Kotor.




The United States Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel in Colorado.





The Tree of Life Chapel by Imago inside St. James Seminary in Braga, Portugal.




The Green Cathedral in the Netherlands.





The Minaret of Jam in Afghanistan.

Link roundup

1. Christmas comics by Kate Beaton.

2. 58 Joralemon Street in Brooklyn is a brownstone that's actually a disguised emergency subway exit in New York.

3. M.S. Corley illustrated a version of The Jungle Book for the iPad.

4. Will Leitch on his childhood:

The main daydream I had: that there were a vast number of people out there, somewhere, who were just fascinated with my life, who were obsessed with everything I was doing, who needed constant updates on my love life, my grades at school, my stats on the baseball team. This is probably not unusual, or at least I hope not: For a kid in a small town who was neither tall nor short, fast nor slow, cute nor ugly, the most fantastical notion my 12-year-old brain could concoct was that someone in the world might care that I existed. I imagined these people as breathless fans who cheered my successes and mourned my failures. Rather than write a diary, I put together something called "The Will Street Journal," which actually posited my day-to-day existence in newspaper form. Sample headlines included "Nikki From Biology Passed Note To Will Thursday" and "Church Camp Is Next Month: Will Will Find a Girl?" (I balanced out the hard-hitting metro section with a sports page in which I merely copied the current standings from the Mattoon Journal-Gazette.) I'd even give myself little quotes, like, "I'm hopeful camp will work out this year. Last year was a bust, but I'm still looking forward to it." After all, with fans beckoning, you had to release a statement; you had to say something. I actually did this. I don't think anyone ever read it, though if my parents did, they were kind enough to have never told me.

5. io9 has a frame by frame breakdown of the Prometheus trailer.

*Buy Prometheus posters at eBay.

Link roundup

1. "The Shell Grotto is an ornate subterranean passageway in Margate, Kent. Almost all the surface area of the walls and roof is covered in mosaics created entirely of seashells, totalling about 2,000 square feet of mosaic, or 4.6 million shells. It was discovered in 1835 but its age remains unknown." Via.

2. Free font designed to be turned into papercraft letters. Like so.

3. Mike Doyle posted some close-ups showing how he creates his Lego decaying mansions.

Link roundup

(The last batch of starred items saved in Google Reader.)


The Mississippi River Basin Model. Via.




"World champion freediver Guillaume Nery special dive at Dean's Blue Hole, the deepest blue hole in the world filmed entirely on breath hold by the french champion Julie Gautier. This video is a FICTION and an ARTISTIC PROJECT." Via.




Pete Rose via.




"Zuckerberg's Bizarre Facebook Insignia Revealed, And What It Means." Via.




April Fool's prank makes a copier voice-activated. Via.

Alice in Wonderland-esque climbing wall

Nendo:

The second branch of the ILLOIHA fitness club is located on two below-ground floors of a building. Since the gym is spread out over the two floors, we decided to use a studio with an unusual two-story ceiling to unify the space.

To express the original brand concept of "becoming beautiful through movement", we chose the theme "rock-climbing in Omotesando" and developed a design that uses the mismatch between a rugged outdoor sport and Tokyo's fashion district to its advantage. Instead of the usual rough and outdoorsy climbing wall, we came up with the idea of using interior design elements like picture frames, mirrors, deer heads, bird cages and flower vases to create a challenging wall with hard-to-find holds and unusual finger grips. We hope that our uniquely Omotesando-style climbing wall inspires newcomers to try out the sport, and starts a new wave in fitness with style.

Via these sites.

Pool on the beach (right on the beach)

The Bondi Icebergs Club features a salt water pool. There's pool cams if you want to check out the current conditions. Via.

Link roundup

1. Envelope with mysterious styrofoam cube.

2. "A German Ghost Town in the Heart of China." Via.

3. "How to Fix Internet Embarrassments and Improve Your Online Reputation."

Link roundup

1. Kim Jon-Il's exiled grandson is named Han Sol.

2. Hand signals used by restaurant staff. Via.

3. Mysterious Russian radio tower. Via.

4. The Daily seems to be doing terribly, but it does feature a lot of great articles, such as this one about Zach Baron's misadventures in Las Vegas.

Link roundup

1. Video from 1967 showing a baby gorilla frolicking in a bathtub.

2. A commenter at Gawker:

I hate to sound like a Republican here, because I'm a lifelong liberal Democrat, but...

You can't expect to get a liberal arts degree, move to New York, find a great job and a great 1-bedroom apartment, and have enough money left over to eat out once in awhile. You never could. My parents were artists in New York in the 50s and 60s and they were broke ALL THE TIME.

You don't need that new iPod. You don't need to eat out 4 times a week. You don't need a new car every 3 years. You don't need the fucking designer clothes. The true "middle class" people of a generation ago never lived like that.

You know how you rebuild the middle class? You stay in the community you grew up in. You and your smartest friends have to go to college, and then go back to your shit town with your shiny new degree and be what used to be called a "community leader." You have to get married, have kids, raise them with good manners, and encourage them to stay in the community and take over the family business.

Republicans and Democrats conned us all into believing that we could have it all, get any degree we wanted, go and live like the cast of "Friends."

Well fuck that, because its not true. Its a pernicious lie that both parties and the media foisted on us. Live frugally, find a partner, get involved in your community, start a family. Families and strong communities are the way out of poverty, Republicans got that much right.

3. Corpse hotel with refrigerated coffins in Japan. Via.

4. Portal is apparently a free download from Steam for the next few days.

Link roundup

1. Diem Chau is accepting commissions for her crayon sculptures.

2. Worse Nintendo news yet, Skyward Sword will feature "more than 100 minutes of cinematic cutscenes." (I've really enjoyed several of the Zelda games, but always been bored to tears by the cutscenes. Has any Nintendo game had great cinemas?)

3. Grantland's picks for new tv shows most likely to fail.

4. "Dozens of Americans who claim to have been made ill by wi-fi and mobile phones have flocked to the town of Green Bank, West Virginia."

5. "Sections of Hitler's Atlantic Wall are being restored by French enthusiasts. But should the Nazi fortification be fully embraced as part of the country's heritage?" Via.

Link roundup

1. "Private cities are growing throughout the developing world and some of them are quite large."

2. Serpent cars.

3. Real-life wood elves - - training trees to form bridges over a river. Via.

4. James Cameron's Avatar reimagined as an Atari-era game. Via.

Link roundup

1. "This is Sylan Terrace, one of those wonderful hidden New York enclaves like Grove Court or Washington Mews that feel worlds away from the city as it is today." Via.

2. "New app lets cops use graffiti recognition in their war on gangs."

3. Free remix of M83's Midnight City (my favorite recent song).

4. Apparently people in the Diablo 3 beta are (lawfully) posting livestreams.

Link roundup

1. A Gizmodo writer went on two dates with a guy she met on OK Cupid and then wrote a post about how he was a loser for being a world class Magic The Gathering player and not mentioning it in his profile (or maybe she had a different motivation for going on the dates). He participated in an interesting q&a at Reddit. Also funny: Top Signs You’re on a Date With a Gizmodo Writer, including "refers to post-dinner plans as 'occurring after the jump'."



2. Hotel elevator with separate buttons for staff and guests.



3. How to report scraper sites to Google. Via.



4. Lime green couch wallpaper. Via.

Link roundup

1. "A huge underground river appears to be flowing thousands of feet beneath the Amazon River, Brazilian scientists said Thursday." Via. UPDATE: Or maybe not.



2. "A Jewish charity co-founder who claimed he crisscrossed the globe rescuing Torahs as a 'Jewish Indiana Jones' surrendered Wednesday to face mail and wire fraud charges after authorities said he duped benefactors by fabricating dramatic stories about sometimes dangerous trips, including to concentration camp sites in Poland and Germany."



3. On Monday, I'm going to give away $25 Threadless credits to three of my Tumblr followers. (Most of the content I post there does not appear here.)

Suicide showers and Holly Beck's swim school

I watched a terrific episode of House Hunters International last night, focusing on Holly Beck's quest to find the perfect spot in Nicaragua for her swim school/yoga retreat. The two rejected houses were magnificent inside and out, but she ended up picking the one that promised the most adventure and best surfing.



I learned that in Nicaragua (and apparently throughout Central America), you're only going to have a hot shower with a "suicide shower" - - the water is heated with electricity and the wires are typically exposed like this:











Here's a well-edited video showing off her school/retreat:







And here's a few more videos showing that the retreat really deserves its own tv show:

Image roundup

Escher bunk beds.







Teamwork.







Distant cousins.







Sweet picture, but this is better: Prince Philip quotes: Relive 90 classic gaffes to mark his 90th birthday.







Terrifying stairs.

Link roundup

1. Walt Disney Animation Studios chief technical officer Andy Hendrickson, in a talk at the Siggraph conference Sunday:

People say 'It's all about the story,'" Hendrickson said. "When you're making tentpole films, bullshit." Hendrickson showed a chart of the top 12 all-time domestic grossers, and noted every one is a spectacle film. Of his own studio's "Alice in Wonderland," which is on the list, he said: "The story isn't very good, but visual spectacle brought people in droves. And Johnny Depp didn't hurt."

Via.



2. Praise for the free typing game Type Hard.



3. "Glass Beach is a beach in MacKerricher State Park near Fort Bragg, California that is abundant in sea glass."

Link roundup

1. "[I]n South Asia, millions remain victims of a wicked form of slavery known as peshgi, or bonded labour. Human Rights Watch estimated as far back as 1999, that India was home to some 40 million bonded labourers. In Pakistan, over one million bonded labourers are currently enslaved in the brick kiln industry alone." Via.

2. Knock-off Ikea store in China. Via.

3. Monastery at dusk. Hell's escalator.