Blue is the Warmest Colour won at Cannes

Blue Is The Warmest Colour, by the Franco-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche, is a devastatingly emotional film about a love affair between two young women, with unforgettable notes of sensuality and sadness. The award today undoubtedly has a political dimension, whether or not it was intended that way. Same-sex marriage was made legal in France on 18 May, during the festival. This prize happened to coincide with an anti-gay-marriage march in Paris on Sunday. Fundamentally, what captured the jury's heart in this movie was the same thing that captured every festivalgoer's heart. Quite simply: it was passionate film-making. 

 By Peter Bradshaw

 

Can You Get Through This Post Without Tickling Your Screen?

It’s scientifically proven there’s nothing better than a pink puppy belly. If you can get through this post without touching your screen, you might want to get your soul checked.

 

Knitted Alien Autopsy

Emily Stoneking, an artist in Vermont, makes delightfully macabre knitted works, often of dissections. Here's an alien who had the misfortune to experience a breakdown while passing through our solar system.

 

Beautiful Ring Nebula

In this composite image, visible-light observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are combined with infrared data from the ground-based Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona to assemble a dramatic view of the well-known Ring Nebula.

 

Happy Towel Day!

On Towel Day, we celebrate the life and work of the incomparable Douglas Adams, the author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.

Don’t panic, grab your towel and celebrate.

 

How to draw... a bear thinking about something by Jon Klassen

Paws at the ready, king of the bears Jon Klassen has got the bear necessities you need to draw your own cute cub. 

 

Occupy Cannes and Blood Ties

The noisy contingent from B-movie studio Troma is an unusual sight amid the glamour and high fashion of the film festival. In costumes that recall the studio’s bad taste classics like The Toxic Avenger and Redneck Zombies, Troma’s rabble-rousers are in Cannes to promote their documentary, Occupy Cannes. The studio says the demonstrations and media stunts aim to highlight “the disparity in opportunity between mega-media conglomerates & independent artists”. Blood Ties is the English-language debut of director Guillaume Canet, who had a hit with the 2006 French thriller, Tell No One. BBC Culture meets him and star, Clive Owen to discuss the film, a tough crime drama set in New York in the 1970s.

 

I’m a mean kitty!

Cute baby lynx shows she’s REALLY got claws.

 

Ricasol Bra Dryer

A groundbreaking new device has been launched to quickly dry expensive bras without damaging their delicate wire and intricate detailing. The Ricasol Bra Dryer, sells for £115, was created by Alexander Farennikov after a frustrated female friend told him about the perils of drying her underwear.

 

Could 3-D-printed food fuel a mission to Mars?

NASA can send robots to Mars, no problem. But if it’s ever going to put humans on the Red Planet, it has to figure out how to feed them over the course of a years-long mission. So the space agency has funded research for what could be the ultimate nerd solution: a 3-D printer that creates entrees or desserts at the touch of a button. Yes, it’s another case of life imitating “Star Trek” (remember the food replicator?). In this case, though, the creators hope there is an application beyond deep-space pizza parties. The technology could also be used to feed hungry populations here on Earth. Texas-based Systems and Materials Research Corp. has been selected for a $125,000 grant from NASA to develop a 3-D printer that will create “nutritious and flavorful” food suitable for astronauts, according to the company’s proposal. Using a “digital recipe,” the printers will combine powders to produce food that has the structure and texture of, well, actual food. Including smell. 

By Amrita Jayakumar /continue reading

 

Animal portraits by Joseph Zammit-Lucia

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Diane Keaton: five best moments

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May I kiss you then?

via

 

First interview with a dead man

"When I was in hospital I kept on telling them that the tablets weren't going to do me any good 'cause my brain was dead. I lost my sense of smell and taste. I didn't need to eat, or speak, or do anything. I ended up spending time in the graveyard because that was the closest I could get to death." Nine years ago, Graham woke up and discovered he was dead. 

By Helen Thomson / continue reading

 

House of God

By Davide Valenti

 

Little hopes in the stormy sea.

by `dragonfly-oli

 

Pope Francis says atheists can be good

Atheists should be seen as good people if they do good, Pope Francis has said in his latest urging that people of all religions, and none, work together.

 

Meerkat Cub

Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

 

Giddy up

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Think Twice

Andy Clover - Think Twice, 2010 / via my mixture

 

Tweet of the Day

via Cynical-C

 

Zenata

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Hey, have you heard the good news?

There was a baby ring-tailed lemur born in the Bristol, England Zoo!

 

Amazon Is Planning a Massive Biodome HQ So No One Ever Has to Leave

If you work for Amazon, you might soon have the option to feel like you're working outside every day. Proposed earlier this week at Seattle City Hall's Design Review Board, this trio of interconnected glass domes is the company's plan for a space where employees could work and hang out. Here are the details: it's a 65,000 square-foot, five-floor structure, filled with plants chosen for their ability to thrive in a microclimate comfortable for humans, too. There will be a variety of botanical zones modeled after mountain ecologies from around the world arranged amid places to work, eat, lounge, and so forth. Think of it of like the movie Biodome minus Pauly Shore. And all the science experiments gone wrong. And the pot smoking. 

via Gizmodo / more

 

A couple of frogs cuddling on a branch.

Lessy Sebastian's photos of frogs taken in his back garden in Jakarta, Indonesia.