by Marcus Coates

[via Vvork]

“Objectum sexuals” are people who find themselves in sexual and/or romantic relationships with inanimate objects — read: being in love with the Golden Gate Bridge, being in love with fences, etc.  I find it an interesting development/divergence in light of the current fetishization of industrial design.  While the items identified as “lovers” tend to lean more towards architecture, they still fall in the realm of designed objects.

The full documentary can be found in two parts: 1 / 2

[via Jezebel]

Projects like this are great examples of why art appeals so much to me.  In basic terms this is a very simple idea, but the photo documentation of the whole thing yields such complex, intimate reactions.  I think these photos are incredible.

Richard Renaldi

[via Cool Hunting]

Modern Mechanix: Playgrounds in the Sky

Polar Inertia: “an outlet and a resource for on going research into the networks and patterns that define the contemporary city. The journal began with the idea that the understanding of a culture requires immersion into the instruments of media, technology and infrastructure that have molded its growth.” This bi-monthly publication provides an incredibly fascinating look at the minutae of cities, societies, and culture.  Polar Inertia is without a doubt one of my favorite finds in the last year or so.  There’s no RSS feed, but make sure to add yourself to the mailing list.

“‘The so-called ‘melting pot’ has happily failed, Bourne wrote, and he called the “English-American conservatism” which would demand it the ‘chief obstacle to social advance.’ Without the cultural variety brought by immigrants, [...] America was doomed to stagnation.”

“‘What we emphatically do not want is that these distinctive qualities [of immigrants] should be washed out into a tasteless, colorless fluid of uniformity. Already we have far too much of this insipidity. . . .The failure of the melting-pot, far from closing the great American democratic experiment, means that it has only just begun. Whatever American nationalism turns out to be, we see already that it will have a color richer and more exciting than our ideal has hitherto encompassed. In a world which has dreamed of internationalism, we find that we have all unawares been building up the first international nation. ”

The Rustbelt Intellectual on Randolph Bourne’s 1916 essay “Trans-National America”

[image via Columbia]

by Chris O’Shea

[via Make]

Looks like us Yanks just aren’t fans of social niceties — things like line forming and chivalry.  For the Americans on the Titanic this may have been a fortunate thing.  Turns out, according to research, polite Brits may have suffered for their endless courtesy — their love of queues actually accounted for a proportionately higher rate of death.  Smoking cigars, waving at their families, many Brits watched ended up jovially watching the life boats as the ship hit the drink.

[picture via Miss Hartwell]

BBC News

Fat Goon

In other interesting news, Fidel Castro sends his praise to Obama.  No word on if the Cuban leader is in reality, actually still alive.

A little while back, Quinn over at Anthropophagous picked up a lengthy, but incredible article about Detroit.  Chronicling the bits of humanity left in the city it covers everything from the shattered records of Motown, and persevering hometown journos, to the firemen cum superheroes and bizarre phenomena such as “the flight of the dead.”  This article articulates so many of the reasons why I find the rust belt inspiring.  Despite the hardships and tragedies of these weather and time worn cities, there’s still a spark left.  Detroit’s motto says it all — these people just won’t give up.

“Detroit has always been a city of fire. Nearly all of it was destroyed by fire in 1805, more of it burned in the Detroit Race Riot of 1863, and over 2,000 buildings were consumed in the Twelfth Street Riot of 1967. Even its flag contains fire; its Latin motto translates, “We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes.”

The City Where Sirens Never Sleep

[picture via Paul Thomas]