Heavy metal: Life at the world's largest shipyard

How South Korea has become a global leader in shipbuilding.
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Eight Films to Watch in June

From Al Pacino as a depressed locksmith to Melissa McCarthy as an undercover spy,eight movies to watch this month.
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Officer rescued from floodwaters in Sachse

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Books, Gadgets, and Freedom

In this essay from 1987, Mario Vargas Llosa reflected on freedom’s intimate connection to literary imagination.
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Soccer ball armadillo

Biologist Rodrigo Cerqueira holds an armadillo, named Ana Botafogo in honor of the Brazilian dancer, at the Rio Zoo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 21, 2014. The three-banded armadillo is in danger of extinction, largely because of deforestation and hunting in its habitat in the shrub lands of northeastern Brazil. Those risks in large part are why the armadillo was chosen as the World Cup mascot. Another is that when it's frightened, it rolls up into a ball small enough to fit into one hand.
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There Will Be Spice

It doesn’t matter how many times you tell the cook to go easy on the hot peppers, anything you order in Chongqing is going to be mouth numbing and spicier than you’ve ever tasted before. It will be good, but it will be hot. The food of Chongqing is a subset of Sichuan cuisine, though there are probably a few places where saying that would be an invitation to a fight, or at least a lengthy debate.
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Ramy Essam Needs To Stay Famous So He Doesn't Get Killed

It’s a cold, damp March night in Malmö, Sweden, but Ramy Essam props open the balcony door to his third-floor apartment to let a little of the outside in. “I like to hear the street,” he says. Truth be told, there’s not much to hear on this Wednesday evening: car tires rolling over the slick road, the click-clack of pedestrians’ heels on the sidewalk, the odd squawk from one of the rather large pigeons that live precariously balanced on the bare branches of the trees that abut the building.
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Why one of the world’s most wanted suspected Nazis never faced justice

Vladimir Katriuk, accused of being "a particularly active participant" in the brutal Khatyn massacre, died in Canada at the age of 93.
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Spiegelhalter's: The ultimate symbol of holding out

A shabby old shop that became an architectural landmark has evaded the bulldozer.
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Not Your Mother's Catholic Frescoes: Radiant Portraits Of Queer People Of Color

Inspired by Mexican religious art, photographer Gabriel Garcia Roman portrays queer people of color as saints and warriors.
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The Voyager Golden Records

The Voyager Golden Records are phonograph records which were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft, which were launched in 1977.
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These Stunning Photos of New Zealand's Largest Gang Will Give You Sleepless Nights

In the 1960s, a gang of variously disaffected youth sprang up in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. They didn't ride bikes, but they quickly developed all the trimmings of an outlaw motorcycle club: patches, club colors, and a fiercely violent process of initiation. They came to be known as the Mighty Mongrel Mob and today they're the largest gang in the country, with around 30 chapters across both islands.
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Modernity Has Come to China’s Countryside. Modern Garbage Disposal Hasn’t.

When I first rode into rural areas in northern Hebei province, I was immediately impressed with the scenery. It was not flashy, like Guilin, or some such mountainous region covered by mist. Instead, it was wide, flat, and empty. There were a few skinny...
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Direct train to Europe

You can now get a direct train all the way to the Mediterranean from the UK. But not to many other places.
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Germany passes Japan to have world's lowest birth rate

A study says Germany's birth rate has slumped to the lowest in the world, prompting fears labour market shortages will damage the economy. Germany has dropped below Japan to have not just the lowest birth rate across Europe but also globally, according to the report by Germany-based analysts. Its authors warned of the effects of a shrinking working-age population. They said women's participation in the workforce would be key to the country's economic future.
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Mary Ellen Mark And The Caged Prostitutes Of Mumbai

The photographer, who died this week, turned her lens on the marginal people of the world. One of her most acclaimed projects was her series of photos taken in the brothels of Mumbai.
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Edith Wharton Reviews the Starbucks Located at Her Childhood Home

It's exactly what it sounds like.
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Understanding Tesla’s Potemkin Swap Station

The return of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) to the US market nearly a century after internal combustion technology swept them aside is one of the most compelling automotive stories of the last decade, bringing a much-needed injection of fresh ideas and enthusiasm to an increasingly mature and commodified industry. Though BEVs remain less than 1%…
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Earthworm Herds

Rangers at Eisenhower State Park near the Oklahoma border found these clumps of earthworms in the road. Recent flooding may have brought out this herding behavior.
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Louise Gluck, “Cousins”

When I consider my friends I’m overcome with pride. They are accomplished, interesting women who are also funny, empathetic, and inspiring. And yet among those who gravitate towards men, few have partners. This is both by choice—we’re all reaching an age at which we’re unwilling to compromise—and by circumstantial compulsion. Why aren’t there more men...
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Keeping Quiet: Sylvia Boorstein Reads Pablo Neruda’s Beautiful Ode to Silence

An lyrical reminder to break the momentum of busyness that fuels "the sadness of never understanding ourselves."
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Art on a whimsy

Mia Hamilton is a mixed media artist holding her debut Manawatu show at the Zimmerman Art Gallery.
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Pilgrimage to the Mountains

Photographer Timothy Allen climbs high into the Peruvian Andes for Qoyllur Rit'i - the Snow Star Festival.
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'in this story...' by Lisa Marie Basile

in this story, there is the me but not me
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Bird Feeders

Abderazak Tissoukai was near Xingping in China’s Guanxi region when he captured this picture of a cormorant fisherman on the Li River at sunset. “Xingping is definitely one the most beautiful places in China, with its scenic karst landscapes [and] traditional and genuine people,” he writes. (See more at source links.)
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A Slender Geothermal Cottage in London

On an eight-foot-wide site in London, architect Luke Tozer cleverly squeezed in a four-story home equipped with rain-water-harvesting and geothermal systems.  
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Student from Yeovil spends 375 hours knitting for art project three-quarters of a mile long

A student from Yeovil has created a piece of art by knitting solidly for the equivalent of more than two weeks day and night. Student Sandra Charles, 22, who now attends Nottingham Trent University's School of Art & Design, spent 375 hours knitting together recycled material for her final year degree show this week.
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Pop music’s biggest sellout: How many brands paid for product placement in your favorite songs?

Your ad is now a song, and vice versa, thanks to opaque backroom deals
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This Concrete Library on a Deserted Chinese Beach Is Utterly Beautiful and So Creepy

As far as unapologetically concrete buildings go, this new library in the coastal region of Nandaihe, China, is pretty spectacular: The tiered reading hall with wall-to-wall ocean views. The curvy ceilings juxtaposed with rectangular small openings of light. A bonafide crowd-less Zen. But wait a minute—is this a community institution or an (unusually splendid) ghost town?
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How Sushi Became an American Institution

Ever wonder how the refined Japanese art of raw fish and rice became one of America's favorite go-tos for takeout? Here's the inside story.
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Inside Don Draper’s Big Sur Nirvana: The Esalen Institute

How fitting that questing Don wound up at Esalen, still a mecca for the human-potential movement, the counterculture, and the intersection of Emersonianism and Eastern thought.
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Abandoned: The Rise, Fall and Decay of Disney’s River Country

Dive into the most detailed history ever written of Disney's River Country, the abandoned water park that sits decaying on the shore of Walt Disney World's Bay Lake.
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Theatre - by Alok Dhanwa

There is no end to a park bench. it only touches the park while its presence continues outside the city.
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Czech reality show recreates life under Nazi occupation

In a remote mountainside village, a frightened Czech family struggles under the privations of Nazi occupation, with food rationed and Gestapo spies everywhere as German soldiers patrol the streets. The scene is not a costume drama but the first episode of a new Czech TV reality show that features a modern-day family living among actors who play Nazi soldiers and the hamlet’s other residents, in an attempt to recreate life under the Nazis during the second world war.
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The Forgotten Houseboat Hotels of Kashmir

There was a time when these floating hotels that have rested on the lakes of Kashmir since the 1800s, were host to movie stars, artists, writers, famous music
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Torrential Floods in Texas

Images of the Torrential floods in Texas
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Wealthy Chinese 'Star Trek' fan builds company headquarters in shape of USS Enterprise

If you long to work on the Starship Enterprise, send your resume to NetDragon Websoft. The online game developer run by an avid "Star Trek" fan has built its headquarters in China in the shape of the legendary spaceship that Captain Kirk used to "boldly go where no man has gone before."
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California scientists test Ecstasy as anxiety-reducer for gravely ill

California scientists are testing whether the illegal psychoactive drug commonly known as Ecstasy could help alleviate anxiety for terminally ill patients, the trial's principal funder said.
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Possible Vaccine Could Lower Blood Pressure for Six Months

Researchers have designed a vaccine that lowered hypertension in lab rats for six months and may replace daily pills for humans with high blood pressure.
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Too Different and Too Familiar: The Challenge of French-Canadian Literature

Dialogue between Quebec and the rest of North America is practically nonexistent. Raymond Bock’s “Atavismes: Histoires” is the latest work of fiction that could help improve the situation.
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Do women write women’s writing?

When I was a teenager, I showed a boy some prose I’d written and he praised me for my style: “You could tell it had been written by a woman,” he said, appreciatively – not in a patronizing way. I still remember this because it made me feel accomplished.
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Tarka the Rotter

He wrote animal stories of exquisite prose, yet Henry Williamson ended up as an overt, unapologetic Nazi.
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Freak Out: The Body as a Canvas

A far cry from bespectacled, retro-inspired geek chic – or the homogenized ‘normcore’ look, is the trend for increasingly extreme tattooing and body piercing.
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The War Nerd: Doing the math on Alawite casualty numbers

The Sunday Telegraph said recently that Assad’s Syrian Arab Army (SAA) will collapse soon, because one-third of Syrian Alawite “males of military age” have already died fighting the Sunni. Lack of ...
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Why We'd Be Better Off if Napoleon Never Lost at Waterloo

On the bicentennial of the most famous battle in world history, a distinguished historian looks at what could have been
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A Few Good Reasons to Drop Out of Art School

Nestled among the exhibition reviews and auction reports in contemporary-art journalism last week were scattered items about the Roski School of Art and Design, at the University of Southern California. On Friday, the first-year students in the school’s M.F.A. program announced that they were all dropping out.
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Friedan's Village

A look back at Parkway Village, the birthplace of The Feminine Mystique
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Crossrail's excavated earth used to make nature reserve

Where do the millions of tonnes of earth go that have been excavated during the cross rail project?
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Victor Serge, The Unconquered

In 2004, Susan Sontag opened her essay “Unextinguished” with this query: “How to explain the obscurity of one of the most compelling of twentieth-century ethical and literary heroes, Victor Serge?” A self-educated and unwavering Russian Marxist who fought in the Bolshevik Revolution, Serge was born in Belgium (in 1890), wrote in French, lived mostly in European exile, and died in Mexico (in 1947).
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Heat Wave Kills More Than 700 in India

More than 700 people have lost their lives in the past week in a sustained and severe heat wave in India.
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