Creepy and super well-produced. Yowza.

Pretty cool animation by Donato Sansone. At first, I was a little bugged by the inclusion of the animators hands, but now I kinda dig it.

In 1974, artist Gordon Matta-Clark operated on a two-story home in New Jersey slated for demolition, effectively splitting it down the middle with a chainsaw. More here.

Here’s a taste:

Between one immediate peer and another, some contagious behaviors — like smoking — seem pretty commonsensical. If lots of people around you are smoking, there’s going to be peer pressure for you to start, whereas if nobody’s smoking, you’ll be more likely to stop. But the simple peer-pressure explanation doesn’t work as well with happiness or obesity: we don’t often urge people around us to eat more or implore them to be happier. (In any case, simply telling someone to be happier or unhappier isn’t likely to work.) Instead, Christakis and Fowler hypothesize that these behaviors spread partly through the subconscious social signals that we pick up from those around us, which serve as cues to what is considered normal behavior. Scientists have been documenting this phenomenon; for example, experiments have shown that if a person is seated next to someone who’s eating more, he will eat more, too, unwittingly calibrating his sense of what constitutes a normal meal.

Yup, you hippies out there have been saying this for a while: we’re all connected, man. Right you are.

Check out Converse’s latest campaign for their mass customizeable shoes. Made by Anomaly of course.

Maybe this stuff is made of clay or maybe, since she’s a character designer, Meredith Dittmar makes super awesome computerey work. Either way, it’s damn beautiful.

Check out Ukrainian artist Kseniya Simonova’s super amazing and beautiful sand illustrations of the the Ukrainian political/cultural climate. Wow.

Found at popeater.

When I left for my honeymoon, we had just finished another restaurant project, but it hadn’t opened yet. And since I was traveling, I missed the opening party, so it’s super gratifying to come back and find it open and looking good and getting all kinds of good reviews. It’s called Starbelly (no, not after the sneetches, but it’s a nice reference all the same) and if you’re in SF, you should get lunch or brunch or beers there. Maybe we’ll see eachother.

(Disclaimer: we did not take these photos, we only designed the restaurant.)

So I thought I’d mention an obvious tip for reviving creativity that always deserves mention: take a fucking vacation. I mean a real one: Not a weekend in the woods. Not a day off. I mean go somewhere for a few weeks and do not think about what you do for a living. Spend your time—I don’t know, say—jumping off boats into the Aegean Sea, or walking 4 stories down into ancient underground cities.

Give your mind a rest. Yes, I know you love your work, and that the balance between it and the rest of your life is good, because they’re so integrated that work doesn’t even feel like work at all. But do it anyway. I promise, you’ll come back into your work super energized, super grateful for the privilege of doing what you do, and super psyched to get back to it.

So I know it’s been slow here for the past few weeks. Sorry about that. But you’ll be happy to know that I’m getting married tomorrow and then going honeymooning. After which I’ll be all recharged and ready to give you the awesomest shit ever. See youse here soon.