Japanese coffee artist Kazuki Yamamoto (previously featured here) is still hard at work in Osaka creating cappuccinos that are almost too cute to drink. Lately he’s been perfecting his 3D creations.
Not content with decorative 2D images, under Kazuki’s skilled hands frothy milk rises out of the mugs to resemble any number of pop culture characters that are sure to put a smile on your face.
Order two drinks and your beverages might be served up appearing to interact with each other. Coffee is already a great pick-me-up, but these kawaii beverages might be verging on over-the-counter anti-depressant territory.
Follow Kazuki Yamamoto on twitter to keep up with his delightful, drinkable artwork.
[via Kotaku]
If there were one American industry that would be particularly worried about climate change it would have to be insurance, right?
From Hurricane Sandy’s devastating blow to the Northeast to the protracted drought that hit the Midwest Corn Belt, natural catastrophes across the United States pounded insurers last year, generating $35 billion in privately insured property losses, $11 billion more than the average over the last decade.
And the industry expects the situation will get worse. “Numerous studies assume a rise in summer drought periods in North America in the future and an increasing probability of severe cyclones relatively far north along the U.S. East Coast in the long term,” said Peter Höppe, who heads Geo Risks Research at the reinsurance giant Munich Re. “The rise in sea level caused by climate change will further increase the risk of storm surge.” Most insurers, including the reinsurance companies that bear much of the ultimate risk in the industry, have little time for the arguments heard in some right-wing circles that climate change isn’t happening, and are quite comfortable with the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels is the main culprit of global warming.
“Insurance is heavily dependent on scientific thought,” Frank Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America, told me last week. “It is not as amenable to politicized scientific thought.”
“And insurers can raise premiums or even drop coverage to adjust to higher risks.”
This is what I don’t get - Women are impure because males have touched them. Who’s the dirty one here?
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| — | Comment on Jezebel article “Female ‘Purity’ Is Bullshit” (via jececilia) |
Several decades ago, political activists on the religious right began to put together an “ideology machine”. Home schooling was a big part of the plan. The idea was to breed and “train up” an army of culture warriors. We now are faced with the consequences of their actions, some of which are quite disturbing.
According to the Department of Education, the home schooling student population doubled in between 1999 and 2007, to 1.5 million students, and there is reason to think the growth has continued. Though families opt to home school for many different reasons, a large part of the growth has come from Christian fundamentalist sects. Children in that first wave are now old enough to talk about their experiences. In many cases, what they have to say is quite alarming.
When he was growing up in California, Ryan Lee Stollar was a stellar home schooling student. His oratory skills at got him invited to home schooling conferences around the country, where he debated public policy and spread the word about the “virtues” of an authentically Christian home school education.
Now 28, looking back on his childhood, it all seems like a delusion. As Stollar explains:
“The Christian home school subculture isn’t a children-first movement. It is, for all intents and purposes, an ideology-first movement. There is a massive, well-oiled machine of ideology that is churning out soldiers for the culture war. Home schooling is both the breeding ground – literally, when you consider the Quiverfull concept – and the training ground for this machinery. I say this as someone who was raised in that world.”
Too frequently, Stollar says, the consequences of putting ideology over children include anxiety, depression, distrust of authority, and issues around sexuality. This is evident from the testimonials that appear on Home schoolers Anonymous, the website that Stollar established, along with several partners.
We are all exhausted. Most of us started the day tired after a long week and I wasn’t the only one planning a low-key weekend.
Worn out though we are, there are few complaints. This is what we are here for after all. And we would do it all again tomorrow if we had to.
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| — | It’s your birthday, you plan to relax, then the call comes in - there are many people wounded by gun shots down the river. Read how MSF nurse Emma and her team in South Sudan leap into action. (via doctorswithoutborders) |
Try out a cool way to separate egg yolks from egg whites!
this is genius.
this is actually lifechanging
