On

Hot Rock, Lost Rock, Router

This past summer, Aram Bartholl installed a project called Keepalive in the woods of Neuenkirchen, Germany. Keepalive was a hollow boulder that contained “a thermoelectric generator which converts heat directly into electricity.”

Visitors are invited to make a fire next to the boulder to power up the wifi router in the stone which then reveals a large collection of PDF survival guides. The piratebox.cc-inspired router which is NOT connected to the Internet offers the users [an opportunity] to download the guides and upload any content they like to the stone database. As long as the fire produces enough heat the router will stay switched on.

Every Photo From NASA’s Apollo Missions Are Now on Flickr

Daniel Handler (who wrote the excellent “Series of Unfortunate Eventsbooks under the name Lemony Snicket) and his wife, Lisa Brown, announced the $1 million gift to Planned Parenthood on the eve of a possible Congressional shutdown over funding to the agency.

Planned Parenthood is primarily a women’s health provider, and in many places, the only one available, providing breast-cancer screening, pap smears and other life-saving clinical tests and interventions. They also provide abortions on demand to informed, consenting women.

Planned Parenthood was the victim of a frame-up by the Center for Medical Progress, which released a misleadingly edited video that suggested that Planned Parenthood sells foetal remains as a revenue stream. Planned Parenthood does no such thing.

The video was a perfect storm in the American right, appealing both to low-information voters and opportunistic politicians who saw the opportunity to throw red meat to their base. The Tea Party’s plan to use the video as a pretense for shutting down Congress altogether triggeredthe resignation of House Speaker John Boehner.

Congress held hearings on Planned Parenthood yesterday, and Handler’s announcement was timed to coincide with them.

Woah, these Soviet-era bus stops are insane.