Happy Halloween!

Actress Yvonne Craig in a Halloween-themed photo as Batgirl.

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The White House of Horrors

Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

 

Harris Halloween Carnival Of Curiosities, 2017

Neil Patrick Harris just unveiled his family's 2017 Halloween cosplay, and it's even better than last year.

 

This is not a love song

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A House is Not a Home

Brooke DiDonato

 

Hello or Goodbye

The Anonymous Project’s mission is to rescue collections of slide photography from flea markets and house clearances to digitise them before the chemicals degrade.
 Here is a selection of their favourite salvaged transparencies – photographers and (almost) all subjects unknown.

From missiles to moisturiser

Kim Jong-un may or may not be a regular user of exfoliant scrub and moisturiser, but the North Korean leader was every inch the attentive consumer when he swapped ballistic missiles for bars of soap during a visit to a cosmetics factory.

 

Saponaceous By Fernando Laposse & Federico Floriani

In collaboration with Italian designer Federico Floriani, Fernando Laposse showcases the results of an experimental research on the process of saponification with the aim to transform a raw material into form, colour and texture.
 To create these unique soaps, the duo collected refried oil from fish and chips shops and fat trimmings from butchers in Tottenham, North London.

 

Friction Table

The Friction Table, designed by Heatherwick Studio, is a great example of how furniture can change its proportions and adapt to different spaces and functions. Launched during this year’s Frieze art fair, this unique table is constructed of 61 slats, made out of paper sheets that have been solidified in resin. Each of these slats was slotted onto a mainframe and pinned into place by hand. Afterwards, they were calibrated and aligned so that the lattice opens up. The texture and structure are derived from the fibres of the paper and the alternating orientation of the layers, featuring a rich tactile quality and a naturally mottled colour which ages over time. According to the studio, this type of material originates from the mid-20th century and was developed for industrial purposes.
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Taste

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Ink Drawings of Simon Prades

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I’m afraid it’s very serious

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Meet Zeus - The blind Western Screech owl

The first thing people notice about Zeus are his beautiful eyes.
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White Beauty

 Julie Betts Testwuide

 

Force Majeure

David Avazzadeh

 

Felt everything @itsPeteski

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Calvin and Hobbes

Nothing better than this after coming inside from cold winter day! pic.twitter.com/VoyLPqt8sN

— Calvin and Hobbes (@Calvinn_Hobbes) October 4, 2014

Josh Sundquist's 2017 Halloween Costume

Every year, Josh Sundquist comes up with a delightfully clever Halloween costume that incorporates the fact that he has one leg. For Halloween 2017, he returned to his early love of trampolines by becoming the bouncy Tigger!
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Do moments of wonder make us nicer people?

Towards the end of his life in 1970, the psychologist Abraham Maslow, best known today for his theory of the hierarchy of needs, considered putting self-transcendence at its top, above self-actualisation. Beyond the “merely healthy” individual, he suggested, were those who became better human beings for others as well as for themselves. And a key factor in this transition, he suggested, was what he called “peak experience”. By this he meant “rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality”.
 Recent research appears to bear him out. The psychologists Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner claim to have found that experiences of awe – “in the upper reaches of pleasure and on the boundary of fear” – can lead to significant positive changes in behaviour. They monitored people on whitewater rafting trips and visits to groves of giant trees (this was, after all, California) and found that, compared to a control group, these people afterwards made more ethical decisions and showed greater generosity and compassion. “Even brief experiences of awe,” they concluded, “lead people to feel less narcissistic and entitled, and more attuned to the common humanity [we] share.” Piff and Keltner have become firm advocates of what they call “everyday awe”, and encourage people to actively seek it out.

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Kahlo-mania

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was the ‘original selfie queen’ says Susana Martínez Vidal, author of Frida Kahlo: Fashion as the Art of Being.
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Embroidered Vintage Photos of Artists and Cultural Icons

Working with appropriated vintage photographs of artists, musicians, and politicians, Mexican textile artist Victoria Villasana applies a colorfully whimsical layer of embroidery atop each image.