Friday, November 10, 2017

Jen's Gems: Bubble Worlds & Automatons!

Some of my favorite finds this week:

This "South Asian Wonder Woman" by Deepica Mutyala is absolutely stunning:

Found via the RPF group, where Susan always shares the best stuff.

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Over on Instagram I've started following Lady Arcoiris, who makes some of the most incredible clay and resin jewelry:


She hand-sculpts the tiny figures, then embeds them in resin to form her "Bubble Worlds." (And yes, the sell out fast, ha.)

Dying over this Zero pendant, plus look at little Luna!


Go follow her for so much more.

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I'm endlessly fascinated by antique automatons - always have been - and some great ones passed through my feed this week. First there's the Joueuse de Tympanon, built for Marie Antoinette in 1772,  which STILL PLAYS TODAY:



Then I stumbled across some videos by Robo Theater, a German puppeteer doing an apprenticeship in Japan, I think? Anyway, she took these at Susumo Higashino's Karakuri Ningyo exhibition. (Google tells me "Karakuri Puppets" are what the Japanese call their automatons, so look up that term for more goodies.)

This one paints different pictures:


And this one does a many-stepped magic trick:


If you check out Robo Theater's other videos you'll find two more automatons that pick up arrows, draw them, and shoot! Again, all clockwork, every motion driven by gears. Blows my mind.

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Speaking of mind-blowing, Mental Floss has a short article on the newly discovered physical cause of dyslexia - it's not in the brain, it's in the eyes! - plus a description of a "magic lamp" that seems to cancel out some of the effects. Seriously cool stuff.



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For a good belly laugh, you must watch this "Thor Ragnorak 4D" sketch from James Corden.


SO FUNNY.

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And possibly my favorite this week, Dustin from Stranger Things (aka Gaten Matarazzo, the most adorable human ever created) did THE best performance in Lip Sync Battle. I can't embed it since Spike pulled it off Youtube, but you can watch it here on their website. WHICH YOU SHOULD. 

SO CUTE. Plus I like the song.

(How long 'til we can talk about Stranger Things 2, btw? Because I thought it was all awesome except for that one part, which was COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY and made me mad. Anyone else? You know what I'm talking about.)


Happy weekend!

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Now, let's give away a dragon rocker!

It was really hard to choose, gang, so in the end I narrowed down my top picks and then had a random number generator do the rest. And the odds were in Elan Auman's favor! So please shoot me an e-mail, Elan, and we'll arrange a time for you to pick up your new dragon. :)

17 comments:

  1. Only one unnecessary part of ST2? What about all the unnecessary PEOPLE?? So many red herrings that turned out to be....red herrings. I feel like they rushed the storyline this season, too. Having said that, I physically missed Eleven after I was done bingeing. :*( (See, no spoilers!)

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    1. I agree. You could have taken those characters out and not much would have had to change, if anything.

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  2. I know the part you're talking about, and I hated that too. But otherwise it was a completely awesome season. Farrah Fawcett spray. :)

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  3. The dyslexia discovery is sadly a poorly made study :(

    A nice and well explained critique of it.
    http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=35144

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    1. Good to know, my kiddo is dyslexic and I am always on the iffy side about news stories like this.

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  4. I didn't mind that one episode. It seemed like an homage to a different type of 80s' movie. Plus cool to at least have another strong female character (yes Kali is flawed, but so is everyone). I was happy to at least see El on the screen - I really felt keeping her out of the main group this year was poor decision; for me it was her relationship with the boys that made season 1 special. I get why the Duffer Bros kept her away, but still...

    I could have done without that scene with Mews though. :( Wait - is that the part you were talking about?

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  5. I tried to keep this spoiler free for Stranger Things, but I refer to another show, and don't want to inadvertently spoiler something by another reference...

    Assuming I'm thinking of the same thing you are, I luckily guessed what was coming from the lead up, so I left the room and would not come back until my bf said it was ok, and it still upset me. Related: I really enjoyed the show the "Magicians" overall, but there is an awful scene in one of the episodes of season 2 that is sort of along the same lines but worse/different, that I did not leave the room in time for, and I almost stopped watching the show because of it. If you have not watched Magicians and are thinking about it, I would recommend trying to figure out ahead of time when in which episode it happens so you can skip over it. I am very sensitive to certain things, and the scene in Magicians was extremely upsetting to me even though I didn't even see all of it... assuming we are talking about the same thing.

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  6. Whenever I think of autometa, I think about this swan.

    http://thebowesmuseum.org.uk/Collections/Explore-The-Collection/The-Silver-Swan

    There are doubtless some videos of it in action. It's absolutely fascinating - I watched a television show where they took it apart to rebuild it in a museum in London. The thing just gets more and more amazing. Even the water is animated - it's made out of hundreds of rotating glass rods.

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  7. I don't know what you're talking about, but when we're able to actually talk about it, I might agree. I enjoyed the whole thing and the best thing of all is, my granddaughters and my daughter watch it too, so we have 3 generations getting together and talking about our favorite parts and people (my granddaughter looks like Mike, except she's blonde) and the Halloween costumes we've seen and the shirts that are available...it's a great thing, in addition to Stranger Things! I just wish there was more to watch. My husband hasn't watched it yet, so maybe today we'll start watching together.

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  8. I think you might have to tell us what you're talking about because I see some different ideas! There was one part that I really did not enjoy and thought went way too far, and it really made me dislike the character involved for the rest of the season.

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    1. Ohhhh. I think I know what you're talking about now. That plot point was very telegraphed, so I knew it was coming, and it didn't cross the line for me.

      I'm surprised that no one seems as bothered by the thing I was bothered by. I just really thought it went too far, even though there was an apology later. I didn't like it.

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    2. Wait. I think I'm still wrong.

      Delete
  9. Automatons = Nightmare Fuel.

    Also, NO ONE likes that one part and it seems completely unnecessary. All you have to do is say "Spoilers ahead. Stop reading now if you haven't watch it yet. Scroll down to past the rainbow unicorn to not be spoiled" and then spoil away so we can talk about it!! [You will need to insert a pic of rainbow unicorn so that those-who-shall-not-be-named-because-they-take-too-long-to-watch-stranger-things-2 know when they can jump back in.] Just sayin'.

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  10. Regarding Stranger Things 2, I know EXACTLY which part you mean!! I may have screamed at my TV in outrage. They didn't have to show that.

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  11. So... how long do we wait in order to talk about it? Is there a proposed timeline? Because I'm confused about which part you could have done without and now I really want to talk about it!!

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  12. I've spent the past 24 hours trying to figure out what parts you're all talking about. Jen, please spoiler away!!

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