The GSA has approved NASA’s deal with Google subsidiary Planetary Ventures LLC, to reskin Hanger One and assume control of air operations at Moffett Field.
I guess this means Larry, Sergei, and Eric get their garage. At least, us plebes still have our landmark to look at.
The Senate violated their own rules on renaming structures after living people, so they could name it after a politician that did nothing for the bridge, instead of naming it after the man who first proposed he bridge.
The colors, the curved shapes, and the recessed circular bookcase in the ceiling are all very attractive, but this is clearly a very small area, so small that it is impractical to reach the bookcase. It doesn’t even have a dedicated ladder, but rather a some portable metal thing is propped up and taken down every time a book is required. The ladder can’t be left in place, otherwise you lose access to half the desk. Also, this office is completely windowless save for the square skylight. It’s an interesting design, and it’s decorated well (even if its a bit too trendy by half.
Here’s an article I’ve sitting on for a while. These reclaimed NYC subway lights from Jeff Mayer and 718 Made in Brooklyn These were originally sold through >Voos with the hand lights being $150 each, but now they’re gone.
The light up bench never really interested me. I know it’s iconic signage, but whatever. The shape of hand lamps is what was cool to me. There’s something about the flare at the base and the big loopy handle that appeals to me.
The desk isn’t what interests me in this photo. It’s the cabinet to the left of it. I like the colors on the front of the drawers, and how the dull grey corroded metal and the bright colors of the wood collide. However, when I envision actually owning the cabinet, I can’t help but think about how the corroded metal probably is just ugly and not something I want to touch.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA supported abstract expressionist art.
“Regarding Abstract Expressionism, I’d love to be able to say that the CIA invented it just to see what happens in New York and downtown SoHo tomorrow!” [former CIA case officer Donald Jameson] joked. “But I think that what we did really was to recognise the difference. It was recognized that Abstract Expressionism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylised and more rigid and confined than it was. And that relationship was exploited in some of the exhibitions.
“In a way our understanding was helped because Moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of non-conformity to its own very rigid patterns. And so one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticised that much and that heavy-handedly was worth support one way or another.”
Essentially, the CIA secretly funded traveling art shows, such as 1958’s “The New American Painting”, in order to highlight the freedom of expression in the Western world compared to enforced conformity of the communist block. No artists were paid for work, and artists that were exhibited, along with the American people and congress were specifically kept in the dark. As Tom Braden, head of the International Organisations Division of the CIA at the time said, “It was very difficult to get Congress to go along with some of the things we wanted to do – send art abroad, send symphonies abroad, publish magazines abroad. That’s one of the reasons it had to be done covertly. It had to be a secret. In order to encourage openness we had to be secret.”
During the Spanish Civil War, Spanish Anarchists used surreal prison cells for torture.
The cells, built in 1938 and reportedly hidden from foreign journalists who visited the makeshift jails on Vallmajor and Saragossa streets, were as inspired by ideas of geometric abstraction and surrealism as they were by avant garde art theories on the psychological properties of colours.
Beds were placed at a 20 degree angle, making them near-impossible to sleep on, and the floors of the 6ft by 3ft cells was scattered with bricks and other geometric blocks to prevent prisoners from walking backwards and forwards, according to the account of [French anarchist Alphonse] Laurencic’s [Franco military trial in 1939].
The only option left to prisoners was staring at the walls, which were curved and covered with mind-altering patterns of cubes, squares, straight lines and spirals which utilised tricks of colour, perspective and scale to cause mental confusion and distress.
Lighting effects gave the impression that the dizzying patterns on the wall were moving.
A stone bench was similarly designed to send a prisoner sliding to the floor when he or she sat down, Mr Milicua said. Some cells were painted with tar so that they would warm up in the sun and produce asphyxiating heat.
Laurencic told the military court that he had been commissioned to build the cells by an anarchist leader who had heard of similar ones used elsewhere in the republican zone during the civil war, possibly in Valencia.
Mr Milicua has claimed that Laurencic preferred to use the colour green because, according to his theory of the psychological effects of various colours, it produced melancholy and sadness in prisoners.
This reminds me of how in The Men Who Stare at Goats &endash; the book, not the slapstick movie &endash; the ideas of psychology, mind-body connections, neuro linguistic programming, and the other ideas introduced to the military through the 1st Earth Battalion, ended up as Barney songs played painfully loud for days straight.
Christopher Schwarz is a big fan of tool chests. He’s such a big fan, he built a single chest, and then sold off all his tools that didn’t fit in the box and wrote a book about it. I certainly admire the discipline involved. He now makes all his furniture by hand using preindustrial tools. I only recently discovered him, but he’s apparently somewhat well known in the woodworking circles.
I’ve looking at toolboxes recently, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Henry O. Studley’s toolchest. Built in the 1920s, and designed to hang on the wall, it is 40 inches square and 4.5 inches deep when open (39 x 20 x 9 closed). Made of mahogany, rosewood, walnut, ebony, and with ivory and mother of pearl accents, it features fitted slots for each tool, and multiple lifting trays to store even more tools. (See video below for a better idea on how the tools fit inside.)
The part of me that loves secret panels and unfolding compartments, but I can’t help but think that it’s a bit cumbersome. To get to some tools you have to move three panels just to reach them. It’s more “art” than “tool”, but that does not diminish craftsmanship or beauty of the piece.
BART Strike Shows Privatization’s Dark Side:
Just compare these two reactions to the BART strike. One is from an executive of a ride-share company called Avego, which allows drivers to open up their cars (for a fee) to strangers looking for a lift:
“All you need to do is book a trip from San Francisco to wherever you’re going home for tonight or every day this week there’s a strike,” Paul Steinberg, director of Americas for Avego, said in an interview on “Bloomberg West.”
And another is from a working-class Oakland resident who uses BART to get to work every day:
Ilysha Kipnis of Oakland expected limited BART service, not zero service. Because buses and ferries were jammed, she decided to take a bus back home to wait out the traffic.
“We’re so reliant on public transportation,” said Kipnis, who works at a salon in San Francisco. “Hopefully, (BART directors) understand how much we need the trains to run. … I really need it.”
Notice the split here. The tech executive assumes that people who are stranded by BART can simply arrange for an alternative way of getting to their destination. (Incidentally, his company is also the one running a helicopters-for-commuters promotion to take advantage of the BART strike.) But the Oakland resident doesn’t work at Google or Facebook, where free shuttle service is provided, and she can’t easily get herself around by car. For the tech executive, a BART strike is an annoyance. For the salon worker, it’s a threat to basic existence.
“Loren” (no last name given) of Canada designed and built his own electric lift standing desk, with integrated computer. I do like this. He’s mostly managed to create a desk that I like, while at the same time doing some tricks that I normally think are cringeworthy.
It’s a corner desk, which I don’t tend to like because of they’re inflexible layout, but I do appreciate how they maximize of surface area that’s in reach. It has a glass top, which always seems a bit cold (both physically and aesthetically), to reveal an embedded computer. I’m kind of torn about the embedded computer. Part of me thinks that it’s a bit too gamery, yet I do like how it frees up floor space, and it does simplify the cable runs when raising and lower the desk. Even with all these touches that I don’t really like, the top does look nice. It’s the the legs that I can’t stand.
The legs are very amateurish. He’s using very thin (what half inch, if that?) single board trestle style legs. They’re absolutely horrible. They are literally two boards nailed together in the shape of a tee. The desk just doesn’t look stable. He’s added some simple boards for mounting some linear actuators, but the mechanisms are still exposed on the other three sides. The legs are really a disappointment.
The real find for the desk are the linear actuator arms. HARL-3616+ arms from SuperPowerJack. 18 inch extension and can lift 500 pounds on 36 volts. The real feature is that he could find them on eBay for $50 to $100. They don’t have limit switches though, but those are simple to wire up.
Still, an electric lifting standing desk for mere hundreds of dollars instead of several thousand is a huge win!