Two 81-Year-Old Women Set Out on Epic Trip to See the World in 80 Days

Ever since the publication of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days in 1872, the book has lit up the imaginations of travelers for centuries. But to make it even more adventurousand on-brandwhat if those who took up the challenge of circumnavigating the globe in 80 days were actually in their 80s? Meet Sandy Hazelip and Ellie Hamby, two octogenarians inspired by this timeless novel who decided to set foot on all seven continents in a little under three months.

Though this quest is undoubtedly epic, this isn't Hazelip and Hamby's first adventure together. The two women actually met as they were traveling through Zambia over 20 years ago, bonding over their love for adventure and forming a lifelong friendship. I said Ellie, don't you think it would be fun for us to go around the world in 80 days at age 80?' Hazelip recalled in an interview with CBS Mornings.

In honor of their 80th birthdays, they wanted to launch their trip two years ago; but, due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, they decided to delay their trip. On January 11, 2023, they left their home in Dallas, Texas, and traveled to their first destinationAntarticawhich they reached by crossing the Drake Passage on a boat.

We don't travel first class, Hazelip says matter-of-factly. And so when we have other ladies, especially who say, Oh, I would love to travel with you two,' the first thing I always do is look at their hands. If they are well-manicured, they do not want to travel with us.

After Antarctica, their travels took them to the remote Easter Island. After having to cancel a portion of their trip due to the political turmoil in Peru, they chose to give Argentina a shot, enjoying a tango show during their time there. Their route then took them halfway across the world, and after a museum-filled layover in Madrid, they arrived in Lapland, Finland, where they visited the Arctic Circle and marveled at the Aurora Borealis. We saw the Northern Lights in all their beautiful display, even with a full moon lessening some of the Aurora brightness. Again, we stood outside in the snow at -4 degrees Fahrenheit temps, but it was worth it all, they wrote in their...

Two Flight Attendants Let Their Love Story Soar and Got Married in Front of a Plane

A couples wedding venue can help tell the story of their love. For Audrey and Alex Chowbay, their wedding at the Lone Star Flight Museum in Houston, Texas, was a fitting choice. They fell in love during their in-flight training as flight attendants. In gorgeous photos captured by Kelsey Nicole Photography, the couple said their vows just under the cockpit of a plane, making the ceremony as meaningful as it was unique.

The couple met in 2018 at the flight attendant training with over 300 people in attendance. Despite the large crowd, they found each other. Audrey introduced herself to Alex, and the two quickly became friends before realizing there was something more between them.

The training lasted three weeks, and Audrey and Alex spent nearly the whole time together. They were smitten, but at the end of the training found that they were stationed in different cities. Alex and Audrey made the distance workAlex visited oftenand they were eventually placed in Houston together.

Alex had the ring to propose to Audrey for a year and a half, originally planning to pop the question with their families present. Unfortunately, the pandemic nixed that idea, so she waited until Christmas Eve in 2020 to propose in front of her family with Audreys family on FaceTime. The ring was disguised as a gift.

With their wedding slated for September 3, 2022, the women had started to look for venues in the Houston area. They wanted something that felt different from other weddings they had been to. When they finally decided to focus on a shared love of flying, Alex and Audrey landed at the perfect place.

We're both obviously in aviation, but both of our families are also in aviation. We both just grew up with airplanes around us, Alex said. So I was like, How cool would it be if we found a way to pull this off?'

The couple worked with TailoredxTwo Wedding Planning, and the venue provided a conceptual jumping-off point for the rest of the nuptials. This included plane-shaped place cards and a welcome sign reminiscent of a passpo...

All images Pneuhaus, shared with permission

A spectrum of glowing light pulses through 23 inflated columns that ascend from the ground in Pneuhauss (previously) new public installation, illuminating an invisible world just beneath our feet. For Grove, the Rhode Island-based design collective drew inspiration from an ancient biological structure known as the mycorrhizal network. Often referred to as the wood wide web, the underground system is characterized by a complex symbiotic relationship between certain types of fungi and the roots of trees, enabling them to communicate with one another and share nutrients.

Groves inflatable, branching arches invite visitors to gather and wander through a colorful, forest-like installation, drawing parallels between the web and the support networks communities rely on to nurture unity and growth. Nature builds in relationships, Pneuhaus says, (and) for Grove, we followed that lesson to create a transportive space designed to excite and support community gathering.

To construct the complex, organic shape, Pneuhaus utilized a unique algorithm inspired by the way slime molds move around in search of food. Integrating this kind of living logic enabled us to design a form that expresses a truly root-like connectivity, they say.

Grove was designed for BLINK Cincinnati to mark the festivals return followi...

10 Useful Gifts for Mom That Shes Sure to Cherish

Want to get your mom something that will make her life a little bit easier? If that's the case, then maybe you're looking for a thoughtful gift that she can incorporate into her life. Whether it's a new utensil to help her out in the kitchen or a stationery set that organizes her office, these practical products can make her routine much more efficient (and hopefully more fun, too!). Fortunately, My Modern Met Store has put together a special selection of useful gifts for moms that yours is sure to love.

If your mom is someone who spends a lot of time in a kitchen, then we recommend taking a look at OTOTO's products. The Splatypus, for instance, is an ideal companion for anyone who enjoys jam on toast. Its flexible design will make it easy to scrape the last bit of marmalade from any jar, sparing your mom's wrist from the struggle, and making sure that no food goes to waste. Similarly, if your mom enjoys baking, the Mon Cherry set of measuring spoons is a great little tool. It includes four cherry-shaped measuring spoons (1 tablespoon, 1/2 tablespoon, 1 teaspoon, and 1/2 teaspoon) with a leaf that doubles as an egg separatorideal for anyone with whimsical taste.

On the other hand, if your mom needs some organization in her office, the Classic Characters: Women Trailblazers page flags set is as nifty as it is inspirational. Featuring the portraits of four famous women (Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman,...

It doesnt take long to learn how to pull a shot of espresso. Search for that phrase on Youtube, and youll find hours worth of sound instruction, most of it in the form of brief and easily digestible videos. All of them cover the same basic stages of the process: grinding, dosing, tamping, and brewing. When examined closely, each of those stages reveals a formidable body of knowledge to master. If any one Youtuber can lay claim to having mastered all of them, it must be James Hoffmann, previously featured here on Open Culture for his videos on subjects from deep-fried coffee to the classic Bialetti Moka Express. In the six-part series above, he offers viewers an overview of all they need to know to achieve a true understanding of espresso.

Episode by episode, Hoffmann explains how to choose the right dose of coffee, ratio between the amount of ground and liquid coffee, brew time, grind size, brew temperature, and pressure. Of course, there is no single universally correct setting or amount of any of these things: each is a variable with its own range of effects on the shot of espresso ultimately yielded.

Working in the service industry is tough, no doubt about it.

Youre on your feet all day and night, you have to put up with a lot of BS, and sometimes you get ripped off by bad tippers who waste your time.

And a woman named Courtney shared a video on TikTok where she shared a story about a particularly bad experience she had while waiting tables.

Customers stayed at a table for SIX HOURS and only left her a $3 tip.

@courtneyxsekeres Thx !!! #waitressproblems #serverproblems #server #fyp #thanks Bejeweled Taylor Swift

Folks shared their thoughts on TikTok.

One person said,

Honestly there shouldnt be tips. They should just pay [their] s...

Creative Commons image by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin

Long ago, in the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia, Akkadian was the dominant language. And, for centuries, it remained the lingua franca in the Ancient Near East. But then it was gradually squeezed out by Aramaic, and it faded into oblivion once Alexander the Great Hellenized (Greekified) the region.

Now, 2,000+ years later, Akkadian is making a small comeback. At Cambridge University, Dr. Martin Worthington, an expert in Babylonian and Assyrian grammar, has started recording readings of poems, myths and other texts in Akkadian, including The Epic of Gilgamesh. This clip gives you a taste of what Gilgamesh, one of the earliest known works of literature, sounds like in its mother tongue. Or, you can jump into the full collection of readings right here, courtesy of the University of London.

If you would like to sign up for Open Cultures free email newsletter, please find it here.

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Well, I guess I can understand why a comment like this would upset someone, couldnt you?

But before we jump to conclusions and condemn this man, lets get all the details, shall we?

Read on to see what happened in this story from Reddits Am I the A**hole? page.

AITA for calling my moms treatment of my dads mistress gracious and upsetting my fiancee?

A few years ago my dad had a pretty public affair (they thought they were being discreet but everyone knew) with a woman about 15 years younger than him. My father was up until this point a very stoic unemotional person and this was totally out of character, and everyone was talking about it. He ended up leaving my mom for her.

My mom was totally ice cold during all of this and even as her son I cant gauge if it hurt her or not. She had zero reaction. Shes never said anything bad about him. Even when I tried getting her to open up she just wouldnt (but this is around the time I began dating my fiance and she doesnt like her and began to ice me out as well)

My dad married his affair partner recently, and I proposed to my fiancee. We had an engagement party and it was probably the first time we were all together. MIL and her friends h**e my dad and his fiancee, because I think they worry about their husbands getting ideas.

MIL made a snarky comment about how when men leave for a younger woman isnt she supposed to be prettier, and my dad might have done it wrong because my mom is much more attractive. All of her friends laughed and my dads wife looked like she was d**ng inside.

My mom told my MIL to stop and she doesnt like women who pit women against each other, and said his wife is beautiful. When we walked away, I told my mom th...

Would you like to double your salary?

What a dumb question! Of course, you would!

And a woman named Mayssa Chehata said a random conversation with a friend led to her doubling her salary and how transparency about salary is important.

Chehata was only 26 when this happened and she said the job change that resulted in the huge bump in salary made changed her brain chemistry.

Check out what she had to say.

And be sure to watch the whole thing because its very important.

@mayssachehata My money dont jiggle jiggle, it folds. #salarytransparency #salarynegotiation #getrich #womeninbusiness #successmindset #neuroplasticity #man...

Koo Jeong-a, known for her conceptual work centering ungraspable elements such as scent, silence, and luminescence, has been chosen to represent South Korea at the Sixtieth Venice Biennale, to take

I am a drag queen performer from Florida. I was born in Winter Haven Hospital and lived and studied in the state for 17 years before I finally got out in 1993. I left because I had the drive and passion to pursue musical theatre for a living. I did, however, have an incredible education and opportunities to excel before leaving. I went to a performing arts high school, where I worked with and was mentored by some of the best people in the musical theatre industry, including Anne Reinking. I also felt comfortable with myself and the world that I existed in to come out as gay when I was 15 in 1991. But I was so ready to get out and see the world.

I was later accepted to every college program I auditioned for, including schools in New York, Boston, Florida, and Ohio. I settled on the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and its illustrious musical theatre BFA program. Four years later, I began working in New York. I sustained myself in musical theatre for 17 years. Somewhere during that time, I discovered drag. It became an outlet for me that combined my talents and education, while branching into a whole new form of entertainment that focused on my own work and my ideas, instead of those of a theater director. I fell in love with drag and the character I created, Beneva Fruitville. I got my drag name from an actual intersection in Sarasota, Florida. The first time I heard of it, I thought it would be a perfect drag name. I worked as Beneva for 13 years. I loved her, and being her taught me how to love myself.

I was on the board of directors for an LGBTQ+ youth organization when Floridas Dont Say Gay bill was proposed. I was working with youth and helping the organizations programming in various...

LOS ANGELES  The Fisher Museum of Art at the University of Southern California has been swallowed by the sea. 

The Indonesian fiber artist Mulyana has taken over the museum with colorful, hand-knitted and crocheted aquatic life. Mulyana: Modular Utopia features two room-sized installations, three-dimensional fiber wall sculptures, colorful costumes, and soft, inviting pillows.

Mulyana crafts a tactile, mystical world in which fish, whales, and coral reefs coexist with sea monsters. A multi-hued green figure made from yarn, Adikara (2020), emerges from a bright bed of seaweed and coral. Mulyana, pulling from Indonesian tradition, often creates masks and costumes to explore other dimensions of his personality, usually a heroic, nonhuman creature. A ruffled, yellow costume, Si Koneng (2022), sprouts from patches of dull gray coral, contrasting the subdued sea life with its sunny energy.

The duality of life and death is a recurring theme in Mulyanas deceptively cheerful art. Much of the plush, gray coral tha...

LONDON In Serge Attukwei Clotteys exhibition, Crossroads at Simon Lee gallery, the Accra-based multidisciplinary artist uses found materials to explore Ghanaian culture and identity. Several of his large-scale pieces are brightly colored mosaics Clottey created by bounding together square pieces of plastic from Kufuor gallons. Named after Ghanas then-president John Agyekum Kufuor, these jerrycans were used to collect and store water when the country was suffering from severe short...

The organizers of the Eighteenth Venice Architecture Biennale have bestowed the Nigerian-born architect, designer, and artist Demas Nwoko the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Nwoko was in the

For artist Liz Cohen, photography initially seemed well-suited to serve her natural curiosity about the lives of others, but she quickly had to reckon with a sense of voyeurism that left her standing apart from her subjects. Her first big project, CANAL, was a four-year work of street photography and portraiture in Panama City, where Cohen ended up meeting a group of trans sex workers.

They taught me about performance, she told Hyperallergic. They started having me pose and showing me how they got poses from, like, storefront windows, and they started to dress me up. And then I did a photo shoot where I was on the street with them.

But there was a problem. There was a moment I realized I was participating in a masquerade because there was a fundamental, essential difference in our experience Im not a street sex worker, there was a class difference, Cohen said. There was a difference that I wasnt in a trans body, going through a trans exp...

LOS ANGELES Arriving at the newly renovated Hammer Museum, I was politely redirected from the garage entrance to the doors facing the busy corner of Wilshire and Westwood Boulevards. After decades of mildly confused visitors arriving through a generic office building elevator bank, its no wonder the museum is excited to welcome people through its airy new entrance lobby, currently bedecked with 800 pounds of red yarn by the artist Chiharu Shiota and a team of UCLA students to create the eye-catching installation The Network (2023).

Despite the museums location at the heavily trafficked intersection near the 405, it has been an invisible building for all these years, Director Ann Philbin explained to Hyperallergic. People drive by it [and] they have no idea theres a museum here. And as a result,...

An AI-generated image series depicting Pope Francis in a white puffer jacket went viral on social media over the weekend, spawning a myriad of nicknames including Dope Francis, Pope Smoke, and Pontiflex. The image set was originally posted to the r/midjourney subreddit but gained traction when an unrelated Twitter user posted one of the images without context, effectively tricking enough people i...

Archaeologists have revealed a new trove of painted murals within Paamarca, a pillared hall on a rock outcrop in the lower Nepea Valley of northern Peru. One series of murals features a two-faced man wearing a golden headdress and elaborate belt holding a fan of red and yellow feathers. In the upper painting, the figure holds a goblet of flowers feeding four hummingbirds in one hand. The figure carries a weapon or a quipu, an Indigenous numerical accounting device, in the lower portion, and his feathered fan is bent. Historians hypothesize that the images, which date back nearly 1,400 years, could represent artists attempts to experiment with portraying movement or narrative.

Lead researchers Jessica Ortiz Zevallos, the Peruvian director of the Archaeological Research Project (PIA); Michele Koons, archaeology curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science; and Lisa Trever, professor of Pre-Columbian Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University discussed their teams work at a January 2023 annual meeting at the Institute of Andean Studies in Berkley, California.

What grabbed our teams attention, though, was the pillar painted with this person with two faces, never before seen in Moche art or any other pre-Hispanic tradition of the Andean region, Zevallos told Hyperallergic of t...

Thought-Provoking Exhibit Explores Fictional Archaeology With Modern-Day Relics for the Future

Installation view: Daniel Arsham: Wherever You Go, There You Are, 2023. Orange County Museum of Art. (Photo: Yubo Dong, ofstudio)

Understanding the past is vital to our future. Its why, even millions of years later, archeologists are enthralled with pre-historic discoveries. As we sort through them, it can help bring the present into focus. Artist Daniel Arsham creates works that are inspired by the practice of archaeology, but he considers it from an alternative perspective. Instead of sorting through the past, Arsham is interested in digging into the future. His solo exhibition Wherever You Go, There You Are at the Orange County Museum of Art explores the notion of fictional archaeology by way of sculpture, photography, and painting.

The pieces featured in the exhibitionhis first major museum show in the U.S.are recognizable figures in contemporary popular culture. They are cast to look like relics that future generations will excavate and study in the same way we have with Egyptian mummies or centuries-old shipwrecks. Arsham's works are constructed from geological materials like sand, pyrite, and volcanic ash.

One of the most identifiable pieces is a replica of the 1981 DeLorean, the time-traveling car from the Back to the Future film franchise. Its patinated to show its age and looks like its been dug up. There are even chunks missing from it that show its inner structure. An astronaut space suit has a similar treatment with part of it showing decay. These striking elements are placed alongside other future ruins including sports equipment and the telephone.

At its core, Arshams work te...

This is the kind of post that I go into ready to judge OP, but once I heard the details of their story, I couldnt help but be on their side.

OP and her husband have money saved and have a comfortable life. Now that their children and grandchildren are grown they love spreading it around, and have gifted 4 of their 5 grandchildren a check for $40k on the eve of their weddings.

They asked their grandchildren to keep the amount quiet so that others dont expect the same, and all have obliged.

First of all, this is my first post on here ever, I wanted an objective opinion and I have read a lot of these kinds of posts on Facebook. If I do anything wrong please tell me.

I(70s F) am the grandmother to 5 wonderful grandkids (3 women and 2 men). The last of my grandkids got married last October. My husband (70s M) and I usually get them a small gift (usually the cheapest thing on the registry), then the day before the wedding, we privately gift them a check for $40k, we prefer that they use it for a house, but we dont force them to do so.

We also ask them to keep it private (we have a big extended family, and we dont want them to expect it from us). They all honored this request.

When their youngest granddaughter received a cheap gift from her grandparents she called to rudely complain, saying that she knew they had money and accusing them of being cheap.

When it came to our youngest granddaughter, we bought her an air fryer (that was the cheapest thing on the registry) and sent it in advance.

Then she called us furious, she went off on us for being cheap and how she knew we had money, but that we did not love her enough to show it by getting her something more expensive.

They privately decided to get her a bigger wedding gift but to keep the $4...

Ambiguities arise when a detail is effective in several ways at once, William Empson wrote in his foundational work of literary criticism Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930). The narratively cryptic

Dozens of French demonstrators blocked the entrance to the Louvre Museum on Monday, March 27 and stormed the institutions halls in protest of President Emmanuel Macrons decision to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. Some protesters were reportedly employees of the museum, which announced it was closed for the day.

Protests over Macrons pension reform plan have swept France for months, and labor unions have called for the tenth round of nationwide strikes tomorrow, Tuesday,...

Photographer Uses Simple Illusion To Capture Giant Moon Hovering Over New York City

Photographer Nina Wolfe grew up in a home that had a view of the New York City skyline, and from a young age, she was inspired by that view. She often wandered the streets of Manhattan to look for inspiration and eventually fell in love with landscape and cityscape photography. But it was the Moon that really captured her imagination and has been her muse for many years. Her Moon photography shows this celestial body hovering over the city skyline or behind familiar monuments like the Statue of Liberty.

In particular, Wolfe enjoys photographing the Moon in a way that shows off its size. In most of her images, it looks like a giant glowing orb that dwarfs the architecture. This gives her work a surreal touch that makes it stand apart from typical moon photography.

The Moon is roughly a quarter million miles away. Any place you stand on earth, the Moon will always be the same size, she shares. If you take a building such as the Empire State Building and you stand right next to it, its huge!

So, how does she accomplish the illusion? It's not as difficult as you might think. All it requires is shooting with a long lens.  That will make the building look really close and, voila, youve captured the illusion!

Wolfe adds, You could also replicate this illusion if the Moon were high in the sky, and you were zoomed in and caught a jetliner passing by in front of the Moon.

As with all astrophotography, it requires careful planning to get the creative opportunities Wolfe craves. She finds the apps Planit Pro and Ventusky to be particularly useful for determining the position of the Moon and the weather c...

Pratt Institutes Department of Fine Arts is delighted to invite the public to the two-part 2023 MFA Thesis Exhibition, Making Place, curated by Sofa Shaula Reeser-del Rio. Student work is on view in Brooklyns Pfizer Building at 630 Flushing Avenue. Visitors can register to attend opening receptions and the gallery hours are MondaySaturday, 126pm (ET).

Each of the 41 graduating artists is presenting a body of work as the culmination of their time at Pratt. Those in the exhibition have worked in disciplinary and interdisciplinary ways over the course of their study in painting and drawing, sculpture, printmaking, and integrated practi...

All images Janny Baek, shared with permission

Ive always been drawn to art in different ways, but sculpting clay by hand seems to come most naturally to me. I think it is my most effective means of communication, says Janny Baek, whose playful, abstract ceramics blur the line between form and function. Drawing on fundamental compositional elements like color, line, and volume, she creates characterful shapes from clay that advocate for the strange, uncategorized, undefined, changeable, hybrid, multiple, alien, and pleasurable.

After studying ceramics in college, Baek worked as a sculptor for animation and toys before pursuing graduate studies and a career in architecture. As an architect, she used digital tools like parametric 3D modeling, which employs computer algorithms to create advanced designs, and while she enjoys the possibilities of technology, she was pulled toward working with her hands. As life becomes increasingly screen-based, I also made an intentional choice to engage in a physical mode of making. Im learning a lot about sculpting with each piece I make, she says. Even though I do it a lot, I still find it very intriguing and mysterious.

...

First Look at Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn in the Upcoming Joker 2

 

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It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal.

There is an ineffable comfort that our non-human companions bless upon our lives those beings whose daily task it is to bite every sorrow until it fled and with their loss comes an ineffable species of grief.

Two centuries after the young Lord Byron tried to put it into words in his soulful elegy for his beloved dog, the poet and novelist May Sarton (May 3, 1912July 16, 1995) captured it in stirring prose in the wake of her beloved cats death, reflecting on the emotional rollercoaster of loss the syncopation of grief and relief that is any death.

Honestly, there are probably more historical figures that belong off their pedestals than on, because listen theyre human beings. And most of us are a fine blend of good, bad, ugly, and really trying.

People say if were knocking down statues today, though, these 14 folks should be the first to go.

13. A handful of war crimes.

Erwin Rommel is hailed as some clean innocent saint by some people despite his unquestioning loyalty to the NSDAP and his actions against minority populations in North Africa and France.

He even committed quite some war crimes such as ki**ing of POWs, however. His name was cleared mostly by the americans at the end of the war. This was due to the fact that america needed the german army as a kind of buffer against the communist ussr, so america started painting the picture of rommel being one of the good ones.

They did this as well for all the other germans, making the point that not all germans were bad or nazis.

12. A money-hungry slouch.

Thomas Edison. He was nothing more than a money hungry guy who stole the ideas of him competitors.

He burned down Teslas laboratory and ki**ed an elephant to show people how dangerous Teslas idea was.

Funnily enough the electricity we use today is the one that Tesla was vouching for.

11. Par for the course.

Andrew Jackson. Committed full-on genocide of Native American, but remembered as a rags-to-riches and valiant president and general.

Also, Lyndon B Johnson. He dragged his feet through the civil rights movement and only signed it when it was politically beneficial to him and his party. Plus, he contributed the most...

Macro Photography Captures the Delicate Dance of Mantises in Malaysia

Macro photographer Pang Way captures the delicate dance-like movements of a variety of mantis species. From an up-close point of view, he depicts the insects as they balance on their long legs with wings splayed in a fan-like fashion. Were able to admire all of their incredible characteristics, from the brilliant coloring to the delicate webbing over their wings. It offers a new appreciation for these elegant creatures that live throughout the world.

Although mantises are everywhere, Way is based in Malaysia and focuses on the species there. Because Malaysia is a rainforest country, he tells My Modern Met, we can easily find lots of special subjects in the forest. Most of his photos are snapped in the wild, but there are times when hell use studio lighting to get a special effect for his larger subjects.

Regardless of whether on site or in studio, the results are as illuminating for him as they are for the viewer; education is one of the primary goals of his photography. My aim is to shoot and document as many species of insects, bugs, and spiders as possible to improve my knowledge in terms of basic entomology, identification, and habitat study.

Scroll down to admire Ways work. To see what hes photographing next, follow him on Instagram.

Macro photographer Pang Way captures the delicate dance-like movements of a variety of mantis species in Malaysia.

Torii Kotondo, Hair Combing (1932)

From Katsushika Hokusais unmistakable views of Mount Fuji to contemporary landscapes by Asano Takeji, Ukiyo-e Search collects a wide variety of Japanese woodblock prints. Programmer John Resig built the online database back in 2012, and the archive now boasts more than 223,000 individual artworks from the early 18th century to today. Encompassing an array of styles, subject matter, and aesthetic impulses, the database is organized by artist and time period, and the system facilitates easy comparison of copies held at museums and institutions around the world

Find some of our favorite works in the database below, and head to the archive to dive into Ukiyo-e history. (via This Isnt Happiness)

...

Hyperrealistic Oil Paintings Explore What We Hide and Share

Since the introduction of social media, there has been more New York-based artist Tigran Tsitoghdzyan explores this phenomenon in his ongoing series of hyperrealistic portraits, titled Mirror. Rendered in a limited grayscale color palette, these paintings depict different women covering their faces with their hands. Except, rather than hiding their features, we are able to see through their hands.

Tsitoghdzyan was inspired to embark on this series after seeing the rise of selfies among young people, particularly younger women. The filters became so popular that many girls can't imagine posting a selfie unfiltered, he tells My Modern Met. The cellphone cameras even have algorithms and recognize the selfie through a filter on your face. The young generation doesn't like camera pictures anymore as they are so used to seeing themselves through their phone.

This idea of what people filtered and embellished on their faces led Tsitoghdzyan to Mirror. Each of these black and white paintings focuses on the head of an individual, which has been blown up to an extremely large scale of at least 7 feet, and sometimes bigger. Using traditional techniques, Tsitoghdzyan portrays each figure in an idealized wayhiding the texture of their skin, and enhancing their makeup where necessary so they seem naturally perfect. Covering the face with your hands is the most natural movement we do to hide anything since our childhood, but I still wanted to see the faces throughquestioning what we hide and what we share, he explains.

Scroll down to see more of Tsitoghdzyan's paintings and keep up to date with his latest projects by following the artist on Instagram.

New York-based artist Tigran Tsitoghdzyan creates hyperrealistic portraits.

How to Easily Multiply Your Indoor Jungle by Propagating Your Existing Plants

Photo: MarianaMes/Depositphotos
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Once you have a plant or two, it's tempting to want to cultivate an entire indoor jungle. But you dont need to go back to the plant store to do so. You can propagate your existing plants and multiply what you already have. Plant propagation is an easy DIY project for a beginning plant parent and can reproduce a variety of plants without much trouble.

But first, what is plant propagation? Its the process of reproducing flora from a single-plant parent. There are multiple ways to do it. Here, we'll go over which approach is the easiest for beginners, the steps to take, and the stations you can set up in your home to make propagation work for you.

Before you know it, youll have many plant babies ready to grow into mature flora.

Photo: Nanihta/Depositphotos

Why should you propagate your plants?

Plant propagation is the act of reproducing a plant from a single parent. Its the best way to get more plants without having to buy additional flora for your home. And by pruning plants in this way, your current plant population will refrain from being too ov...