kontextmaschine

futures:

Skydiving, scuba diving, mountain climbing: all are an adrenaline junkie’s dream, but they’re also part of the day-to-day duties of Air Force Reserve Pararescue Jumper (known as a PJ) Matthew Gaddy. In the simplest terms, a PJ helps people, whether it’s hikers who’ve lost their way or campers who’ve run into trouble.

this is the first ad I’ve ever seen to cross the (special ops elite) and (everyday reserve/guard) appeals

which makes sense for 2016 and not bad

Matthew preps for rock climbing training. As a PJ, it's important to be prepared for any scenario. Matthew uses all sorts of skills in his mission to help people, like rock climbing to reach an injured hiker. Matthew participates in a rock climbing exercise with a team of fellow PJs. Matthew skydives as part of his job in the Air Force Reserve and in his downtime as well. Matthew lands after a successful jump.

freiraum-blr:

architectureandfilmblog:

Nordic pavilion, Sverre Fehn 1958.

2016 VENICE BIENNALE: “REPORTING FROM THE FRONT”

Short feature from Monocle on this year’s Biennale. The curator, Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, has given the festival a more social focus than usual, looking at methods for using architecture to improve quality of life. Specifically it seeks to expose new ways of overcoming the bureaucratic resistance often met (the titular “Front”) when trying to implement unconventional architectural solutions to social problems.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI9E3R_55xc

bloodandhedonism:

hazel-the-space-ace:

imagine being a totally random dude and all you want to do is catch some fish and then you get stranded in this weird, gigantic foreign kingdom and they make you the utmost authority on your language and literally all you wanted was to catch fish

Stranger scenarios and situations regarding this issue have happened in history, tbh. 

This is still pretty cute though. 

During and after the Cold War, Russians were known for speaking Japanese with a Korean accent, because that’s where they got their language instructors from.

In turn, the Norks are accused of just picking their Japanese instructors up off the goddamn street.

debuting 9/22/1982

Congratulations Jeremy Corbyn

I prefer the angular muzzle of American domestic cats to the rounded face of Japanese AND IM NOT AFRAID TO SAY IT

Hell, the main character is practically you, a middle aged white guy who moved to Portland from L.A.!

First off fucking oof on “middle aged”, second off never heard of it.

So that makes two sitcoms with protagonists who moved to Cascadia to be radio call-in hosts?

Here, check this, Pillars of Portland, a locally produced TV show from 1983 (the height of the Dallas/Dynasty primetime soap boom) based on a newspaper column with characters broadly representing (and named after) different neighborhoods.

It never got past the pilot because that’s a terrible idea.

diarrheaworldstarhiphop:

comixology:

ORIGINAL PEPE

The megahilarous comic that started a billion memes.  Boy’s Club by Matt Furie is new today from @fantagraphics

FATHER OF SHITPOSTISTAN

(((Feels Goodman)))

Why Do Tourists Visit Ancient Ruins Everywhere Except the United States?

slatestarscratchpad:

ilzolende:

another-normal-anomaly:

spiralingintocontrol:

This article’s assertion: Because tourists feel bad about being reminded that they genocided the people whose ancestors built those ruins. :-/

*Modern tourists* did not genocide anybody. Some of their *ancestors* may have genocided somebody. Others of them didn’t have any ancestors in the country at the time. It’s more likely that tourists are more interested in European ruins because 1) things outside your own country are always more interesting and 2) European and Asian ruins get a lot of coverage in history classes relative to North American ruins, and people want to go see the shit they’ve read about. 

Also, what metric is this using for “larger than London in 1250″? The article says Cahokia had ten to twenty thousand inhabitants; the closest data point I have for London in 1250 is this wikipedia page, which says London had fifty thousand inhabitants in 1300. So it was more like half the size of London. Which is still awesome! Ancient cities=damn cool. But don’t make that your page quote factoid when it’s fucking wrong. 

…wait, do we now have to feel bad that we would feel bad about visiting? Because if so, then ugh.

I visited Cahokia. I guess that makes me a sociopath.

Anyway, the reason more people visit Machu Picchu than Cahokia is because Macchu Pichu looks like this:

And Cahokia looks like this:

I’m not deliberately using a bad picture of Cahokia. Google image search it - this is the center of the site, the famous landmark that everyone takes pictures of.

In Ireland, there’s a site called the Hill of Tara, which was the center of the ancient Irish culture and super-sacred to the ancestors of the modern Irish. Today it just looks like a random hill. The Irish built a motorway through it, and it gets fewer visitors each year than Cahokia.

I’ve been to Mesa Verde, it’s cause they’re in the middle of goddamn nowhere.

advertised on Facebook, Oregon is doing this

never met a New Yorker who climbed the Statue of Liberty without a tourist and who’s toured to St. Louis since 1904

Between Miss Saigon and Andrew Lloyd Weber musical theater was cruising on actual deus ex machinas for a while there, huh.

2 years.

I dunno, I was pulling weeds.

vintagepales2:

Manchester Town Hall.

vintageeveryday:

Y1B-17s over NYC, 1938.  

swampgallows:

rasec-wizzlbang:

sleazenation:

“ozfest” photographed by rebecca lewis for sleazenation, june 2002

why do they all look like they’re about to cry

this is so fuckin sick. so fuckin sick

Bottling hipness

vzx:

baroquespiral:

polyaletheia:

Portland is big in Japan. I had no idea.

imagine when this hits anime

@kontextmaschine

Portland’s the closest mainland airport to Tokyo Narita (beating Seattle by 5 minutes) and the exchange rate has been favorable lately so we’ve got a decent stream of tourists coming through. I guess they like what they see.

(the absurd lines at the city’s more gimmicky food chains - Voodoo Doughnuts, Pine State Biscuits, Salt & Straw ice cream - are always polyglot and there’s a mall downtown that as far as I can tell exists to sell luxury goods to asian tourists. I was there yesterday and the designer handbag places by the entrances were still going but past that was grim though they did a good job of disguising it - empty storefronts dressed as displays, filling the highly visible atrium floor with a mall operations office and a few national chains at least one sub-class level below what they would’ve had before and given way too much square footage - never seen a Gap with that much open space. I don’t know if that reflects a downturn in the tourist trade - more likely the Chinese economy than Japan, in that case - or just losing a big draw when the Apple store moved to its own temple across the street.)