The Tungurahua volcano, Ecuador. Photographed by Patrick Taschler. 

Via Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Via Coudal, the photography of Igor Siwanowicz.

Related. And. Also. 

Via Cognitive Daily, here’s the famous Dragon Illusion, one of the more potent variations of the Hollow Face Illusion. 

Make your own. Thrill your friends. Impress women. More.

Here’s Jonathan Ross’ excellent BBC4 documentary about his personal hunt for Spider-Man co-creator, Steve Ditko.

Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.  More on Ditko’s art and politics here.

If the YouTube clips disappear again, try via here, here, here or here. 

Gianni Schiumarini’s sand sculptures.

More. And. Also.

If you disregard the rather creaky text, Martin Waugh’s gallery of ‘liquid sculptures’ is worth a visit. Any photographers among you may find the technique of interest.

Related: Ferrofluid. 

Little soap hands. 

“Actual soap, shaped like little hands.” In a bag. $12.00 

Or, slightly larger soap hands. $10.00

Busy today, but feel free to browse some short films or peruse the greatest hits, or just rummage around in the archives.

Here’s Philip Hunt’s 6-minute animation based on William Burroughs’ rambling text, Ah Pook is Here.

More at Studio AKA. Click ‘short films’. Back Friday with more ephemera.

Busy today, but this made me laugh.

By. Related. And. 

A form of ‘content-aware’ image manipulation has been developed by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir of Israel’s Efi Arazi School of Computer Science. Their prototype software allows images to be dramatically resized without scaling or cropping. By assigning levels of importance to component parts of an image, the software is able to shrink or stretch images while leaving key features intact and in proportion, and all in real time.

More. And. Related. Also. (H/T, Protein Wisdom and The Thin Man.)