The enemy of my enemy ...

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. 

Charybdis - 21st century style :)

Unlike Charybdis, this whirlpool generates clean power to the max. :)

1178B, 0401.ODY.7 from The Dorian Gallery.

The other crag is lower—you will see, Odysseus—
though both lie side-by-side, an arrow-shot apart. 
Atop it a great fig-tree rises, shaggy with leaves, 
beneath it awesome Charybdis gulps the dark water down.
Three times a day she vomits it up, three times she gulps it down, 
that terror! Don’t be there when the whirlpool swallows down—
not even the earthquake god could save you from disaster.

Studies in B&W

 Glissando 2

Liquid Metal

Moonglow

Glissando 1

Solitude

In winter, beaches are places of solitude where few people interrupt one's quiet connect with nature. 

Quinn

Quinn, the intense Nor'easter, roared through CT with a vengeance with 20+" of snow and howling winds knocking out power to the max. With all this being said, the inherent beauty of Quinn is zen like with extremely heavy snow transforming the landscape into a textured whitespace of delicate beauty. Enjoy.

Can you see what I see? :)

Extremely cool optical illusion. Warning: Click mute before viewing as the music score sucks.

 A 3-D painted zebra crosswalk in Ísafjörður, Iceland

Ísafjörður's optical illusion of a crosswalk is designed to get motorists to slow down. And there's potentially more three-dimensional painted zebra crossings to come in this remote Icelandic town. (Video screenshot: Gústi Productions/YouTube)
Iceland is a place of such dramatic, otherworldly beauty that many visitors have a hard time believing their very own eyes. Over the past several years, the island-bound Nordic nation has emerged, for better or worse, as the world’s preeminent blink twice and rub-your-peepers-to-make-sure-you’re-not-hallucinating destination. Double takes, audible gasps, and veering rental cars off of roads while gawking are all par for the course.

It’s that last reaction — distracted driving while speeding to get to the next awe-inspiring site — that’s problematic. To address this, Ísafjörður, a lively fishing and tourism hub in northwest Iceland’s far-flung Westfjords region, has embraced a novel approach to improving traffic safety: fighting rubberneck-inducing fire with rubberneck-inducing fire.

Dreamt up by town environmental commissioner Ralf Trylla and executed by local pavement marking company GÍH Vegamálun, a traditional, striped crosswalk in the center of town has been transformed into a pedestrian right-of-way that appears to be hovering directly above the asphalt.


To be clear, this shifting 3-D optical illusion doubling as a run-of-the-mill crosswalk is a distraction (and disorienting, to boot). However, the town is confident it will slow traffic, if not bring it to a complete stop, without freaking out too many overwhelmed out-of-towners already dazed by the unreal-looking natural scenery of the Westfjords.

Imagine this in NYC. :) A crowd pleaser or crowd annoyance depending on one's POV. :)

It's all about the money

Again, it's all about the money.

Winter's End

Winter's slowly ending in CT with ice ebbing away, the sun rising higher in the sky and a fierce Nor'easter named Riley notwithstanding. Enjoy.

Update, I may have to add to this bad boy if the weather forecast rings true March 7th & 8th. :)

History lesson :)

Terrific piece on earth's history. The only thing missing, the advent of the anthropocene. 

Pangea lives. :)

Had to post Wikipedia's amazing graphics yet again.. :)

Behavior Modification - Stage 1

Minority Report looms with 24/7 face recognition glasse combined with AI, courtesy the Chinese police.

You’ve probably heard of Transitions lenses that can adapt to changing light conditions. Now, get ready for facial recognition lenses.

Police officers in Zhengzhou, China have been spotted wearing sunglasses equipped with facial recognition software that allows them to identify individuals in a crowd. These surveillance sunglasses were actually rolled out last year, but a recent report from China’s QQ published a series of photos of the glasses in action.

China has consistently been ahead of the curve in terms of utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) for surveillance. The country’s CCTV system tracked down a BBC reporter in just seven minutes during a demonstration in 2017. But this new technology, developed by LLVision, takes China’s surveillance efforts to a whole new level. Not just in theory, either — reports from the official People’s Daily newspaper seem to indicate that it’s improving police work.

Gives you the warm fuzzies, right?