Google Home Google has a secret design library. Here are 35 of its best booksFast Company - Mark WilsonThe company’s industrial design team shares a handful of titles from its studio library, which is curated by team members. For just over a year, Google’s hardware design team has been working inside a
Culture Oxford’s Library Once Branded Its Sauciest Books With a Greek LetterAtlas Obscura - Matthew Taub For more than a hundred years, deep in a dusty enclave of the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries, there sat a restricted collection—2,100 …
Wizard of Oz The subversive messages hidden in The Wizard of OzBBC Culture - By Nicholas BarberIt’s easy to mistake the 1939 classic as traditional family entertainment – but 80 years on from its release, the musical is more radical and surreal than ever, writes Nicholas Barber. In December 1937,
Identity How Social Media Shapes Our IdentityThe New Yorker - Nausicaa RennerThe Internet constantly confronts us with evidence of our past. Are we losing the chance to remake ourselves? Last year, I had a strange dream. My father and I were wading in an industrial canal, reminiscent
Popular Fiction The Tale of Genji: The world’s first novel?BBC CultureWritten 1,000 years ago, the epic story of 11th-Century Japan, The Tale of Genji, was written by Murasaki Shikibu, a woman. Written 1,000 years ago, the Japanese epic The Tale of Genji is often called
Libraries Oliver Sacks on LibrariesBrain Pickings by Maria Popova - Maria PopovaIn praise of intellectual freedom, community, and the ecstasy of serendipitous discovery. “Knowledge sets us free, art sets us free. A great library is freedom,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote as she celebrated
Windmill Nashtifan WindmillsAtlas Obscura The vertical-axis windmills of ancient Persia have been grinding flour for 1,000 years and counting. Located on the arid and windswept plains of …
I wrote the book on user-friendly design. What I see today horrifies meFast Company - Don NormanThe world is designed against the elderly, writes Don Norman, 83-year-old author of the industry bible Design of Everyday Things and a former Apple VP. More people than ever are living long, healthy lives.
Dries van Noten Dries Van Noten on How His Garden Inspires Himanothermag.com - Belle Hutton Dries Van Noten has been gardening for almost 30 years. “For many years, I separated my work as a designer and a gardener as much as church and …
The Arts (Australia) How can art touch your soul when your soul is busy posing on Instagram?The Guardian - Brigid DelaneyAustralian Chamber Orchestra’s most recent show, Luminous, opens with a moving image. It’s dusk and there’s a wooded road, partly lit. The trees are moving and fluttering in the wind and the camera moves
Neil Gaiman Neil Gaiman on Why We Read and What Books Do for the Human ExperienceBrain Pickings by Maria Popova - Maria Popova“Truth is not in what happens but in what it tells us about who we are.” The question of why we read and what books actually do for us is as old as the written word itself, and as attractive. Galileo reading
Henry David Thoreau 22 books that will expand your mind and change your life, according to a productivity expertBusiness Insider - DariusForoux.comFor the past few years, I've formed a habit of asking everyone for book recommendations. It's one of the habits that has truly changed my life. Reading is my favorite way to develop my mind because it's
Airbnb Why Airbnb, Target, and Walmart are betting on the experience economyFast Company - Claire MillerThe experience economy is redefining retail environments. Here’s a look at how, by the numbers. Consumers are increasingly choosing to spend their money on experiences rather than material goods. To keep
Celebrated Writers on the Creative Benefits of Keeping a DiaryBrain Pickings by Maria Popova - Maria PopovaReflections on the value of recording our inner lives from Woolf, Thoreau, Sontag, Emerson, Nin, Plath, and more. “You want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads,
10 Inspiring Bookshops around the Worldmessynessychic.com If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. Just some shops …
Soviet Union The Stylehunters of Soviet Russiamessynessychic.com In communist Russia of the 1950s, members of a provocative subculture put their own original twist on street style. Labeled “Stilyaga” or “Stilyagi” …
Blackpool Photographs of Britain’s Long Forgotten Seaside Sheltersanothermag.com - Daphne Milner British weather, particularly British summer weather, is notoriously temperamental: a heavy downpour followed promptly by beaming rays of sunshine is …
20th Century Bullet Bra: The Indispensable Underwear for the Sweater Girls in the 1940s and 1950svintag.es Bullet Bra is a full-support bra with cups in the shape of a paraboloid with its axis perpendicular to the breast. The bullet bra usually features …
The Mirny Mine is one of the most productive diamond mines in the world and one of the biggest holes ever madeinterestingengineering.com - Christopher McFadden Mirny Mine, otherwise known as Mir Mine, is one of the larger man-made excavated holes in the world. It is an enormous open-pit Kimberlite Diamond …
American Philosophy 50 Sociology Books to enhance your Sociological Imagination - The Sociological Mailthesociologicalmail.com - Literature W. E. B. Du Bois – The Souls of Black Folk Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Utopia "The Struggle For Utopia": Everyday Soviet Life In Magnificent Photos By Semyon Friedlanddesignyoutrust.com Сontroversial Portrait Photos Of Jane Birkin And Serge Gainsbourg In The 1970s Australian Photographer Pat Kay Captures Magical And Cinematic Photos …
Lessons in Historical Male Peacocking, from Lord Gaga to the King of Afrofuturismmessynessychic.com They’re performers. Dandies. Men with a streak of the mad poet. Writers, dancers, and professional party boys. Though these eccentrics span across …
Botanical Gardens The Most Beautiful Greenhouses and Conservatories Around the WorldArchitectural Digest - Hannah MartinPeople have been trying to outsmart the seasons by growing plants in controlled environments since the Roman Empire. As methods grew more sophisticated and successful, the structures also became more and
This Tiny Traveling Bookstore Wanders the French CountrysideArchitectural Digest - Emma JacobsJean-Jacques Megel-Nuber’s first drawing of his imagined bookstore on wheels had little in common with its final design. “It looked like the cabins in a Christmas market," says Megel-Nuber, who is from
Avant-garde Juxtapoz Magazine - 1972 Rothschild Illuminati Balljuxtapoz.com In December of 1972, Marie-Hélène de Rothschild threw a "Surrealist Ball" at the Château de Ferrières, one of the large mansions owned by her family. …
Philosophy Iris Murdoch on Storytelling, Why Art Is Essential for Democracy, and the Key to Good WritingBrain Pickings by Maria Popova - Maria Popova“A good society contains many different artists doing many different things. A bad society coerces artists because it knows that they can reveal all kinds of truths.” “One of the functions of art,” Ursula
Tour de France Fantastic French Publicity Caravans of Yesteryearmessynessychic.com My wormhole began with this photo of the world’s first (possibly only) vehicle-shaped pen, the BIC mobile, photographed at the Tour de France in …
Play button The 20 most beautiful libraries in the U.S.Curbed - Megan BarberFrom museums to churches, architecture in U.S. cities ranges from jaw-dropping modernist masterpieces to historic gems hidden on side streets. But an oft-overlooked category of Instagram-worthy architecture
Hermann Hesse on Solitude, the Value of Hardship, the Courage to Be Yourself, and How to Find Your DestinyBrain Pickings by Maria Popova - Maria Popova“Solitude is not chosen, any more than destiny is chosen. Solitude comes to us if we have within us the magic stone that attracts destiny.” “No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you,
