After we posted about Calvin Trillin’s imagined “sling contraption” for a walk-in tub, we started hunting for images of what that might look like. Maybe there was such a thing already. Instead we found a tub that has made the rounds on design blogs: an elegant, sleekly-shaped fiberglass tub modeled after a hammock (a sling, of sort).…
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At Design Boom, we stumbled on an art installation called Third Eye by the band, the Krrrrr, and artist Anya Muangkote. Barbarians that we can be, we couldn’t really wrap our heads around the art, but are smitten with the paint-splattered jumpsuits. Now there’s a swell outfit that would also be quite thrilling to make.
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When we saw the image of a person sitting on the very edge of Norway’s Trolltunga, we thought: THAT’s how we feel 14 days after having launched our Friends with Benefits Subscription program and charging a tiny amount after our readers have enjoyed ten free reads per month. We’ve likened it a LEAP as we risk finding out whether our many readers will pay 5 or 6 cents a day to keep what they say they love going. The gist: we can’t live without you.
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We recently stumbled on a wondrous painted wall in the Bowery, the work of Bronx graffiti artist Cope2. We felt as though we’d suddenly walked into a different gravitational field, due to the riot of seriously joyous color. It is on the same concrete slab wall that artist Keith Haring and a number of other artists decorated over the years, to change the view.
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Over the years, we’ve come across chair frames and carcasses — the structure without soft back or seat in place — and wondered what we can do with them. Recently we came across a compelling idea for transforming chair frames: wrapping them with a layered, intersecting network of suspenders to form the pan and backrest. The elastic framework provides comfortable, lightweight seating.
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Looking for a skillet to fry some eggs in at Maria Robledo’s house, we opened a drawer to find a brilliant idea we never would have thought of: line a drawer with a cloth, such as a dish towel instead of the usual paper. It cuts down on clatter and the cloth can be easily…
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Recently, our friend Jane Lear wrote us to say “This great tip stuck in my head, and I finally had a chance to reference it in this week’s food advice column for TakePart about ways to use less water.” The tip that stuck in her head —YAY! we LOVE that— was wine and spirits writer Anthony…
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When inspiration comes: you have to go to meet it… From one of our favorite, endlessly-yielding books: The Gary Snyder Reader: Prose, Poetry, and Translations. Open it anywhere to find a nugget.
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On the way to the airport ten years ago, He Liangcai, a Chinese farmer-turned-amateur inventor lost his luggage. That loss gave him the idea for a transportable suitcase that could come with him to the terminal. He spent the next ten years developing his drivable suitcase using the frame of an electric scooter with a suitcase wrapped…
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Some time ago, I spent a week at Omega Institute, a non-profit educational retreat center located in Rhinebeck, New York. It’s kind of like a summer camp for adults who want to retreat, take workshops, be in nature, mull over where they are in their lives. Since Omega was originally a summer camp for kids so…
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Early on in planning the Laboratory renovation, we started thinking of ceiling lights. Since the ceiling was only eight-feet-high, we were trying everything we could to give the illusion that they were higher, achieved mostly by replacing the squat doors with tall ones that created floor-to-ceiling vertical lines that made the ceilings appear higher. In…
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It took National Geographic photographer Michael Nichols 32 days to photograph the President, a 3200-year-old, 247-foot-tall giant sequoia in California. (Click on the image twice to get a full measure of BIG.) One of the oldest trees in the world, the President has stood witness to millennia of history. We spent quite a bit of time trying to find out just what exactly those 3,000 years might have entailed. Here’s a bit of the story.
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We’re ten days into our Friends with Benefits subscription program and heartened by the response. After an initial surge, subscriptions have leveled off, with an unexpected increase in readers. What is most surprising is that about a third of our subscribers gave MORE than the base price. Each subsription is like a gift. It was WONDERFUL to receive some revenue just as the…
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I’ve never tired of the classic Italian formula of a raw vegetable — most commonly arugula, thinly sliced fennel or raw baby artichoke hearts — dressed with olive oil, lemon and thin shavings of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. One day when I was looking around my market, I thought, “Why not try not making it with sugar snap…
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We USED to wear high, wild high heels. Over the years, the heals have slowly come down in height as we find ourselves unable to walk tilted forward…and because we really want to WALK, far and fast. Footwear designer Silvia Fado put her creativity to work solving the problems of unwearable heels, that, while they make…
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When we were starting to think about planting our 50-square-foot terrace, we hunted around for low-profile, minimalist planters that would keep it looking as spacious as possible. It proved no mean feat to find something good-looking and affordable…here’s what we found.
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When I was presented with a beautiful net bag recently, something made me loop it like a scarf around my neck so I could wear it. It is one more surprising use for a net bag, which, I’ve discovered you can make yourself.
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We were very moved by both this tree that is over 2000 years old and Anastasia Pottinger strangely similar photographs of people 100+-years-old, nude. We found some haiku to accompany them.
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Cy Kuckenbaker compressed one hour’s worth of surfing footage into a two minute film. Ahhhhhh, such a nice break, especially viewed full screen. We were going to find some music to go with it, and then realized the music is built in: the ocean’s surf. via Design Boom
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When we renovated the Laboratory, moving and installing our 25-year-old kitchen cabinets for the 3rd time, we indulged our minor obsession in the realm of dish drying accoutrements, hacking and customizing at will.
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