There is a new Hood Internet mixtape

It is free and it is a party.

House SH

Designed by Hiroshi Nakamura in Tokyo, this house has a lot going for it: clean lines, beautiful colors, and as required in Tokyo, creative use of limited space (including a tight spiral staircase). Uniquely, the architects built more space in the house by creating a huge bulge in the facade. It makes your place easy to spot I guess. For more pictures of that little girl just going nuts inside this house, the architect's site is here.

Two quick things

I wanted to put these up before I went to sleep and forgot about them...

"Did you know that trashed batteries were useful enough to light up LED?" An average "dead" battery has .08 to 1v of power remaining, meaning that two will illuminate a bulb. In order to make recycling batteries more appealing, designer Sungwoo Kim came up with this Energy Seed concept. Each dead battery you place in the receptacle, the brighter the light. The batteries will have to be disposed of once it fills up, but it would be great to have interesting centralized locations for what is right now a very inconvenient and unglamorous recycling process.

And for while it's still up, this cam feed I saw posted by Ana Marie Cox:

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The Village Pet Store and Grill

On Wednesday Sarah and I happened to stop by Banksy's storefront in the West Village. He's been in town for the past few weeks, and it's hard to miss his handiwork. This store was pretty inconspicuous though, and it took us a while to find. 

I read about it online before I went, and I thought it would be sort of humorless political installation art, so I kept my expectations low. The actual experience was in reality pretty fun and really accomplished technically. I hadn't seen many animatronic animals outside of the Tiki Room at Disney World, and it was pretty amazing. I wish I took a camera with me, but this video is a good summary of the thing:

NOTCOT: Banksy's Village Petstore & Charcoal Grill from Jean Aw on Vimeo.

It'll close in less than a week so if you can try to see it for yourself.

fired up, ready to go

Just attended the SEIU general members meeting and heard a lot of emotional support for Obama. After all this time and after everything that's happened the past year, it was still very moving to see this:

This election really is all about hope vs. fear.