Anatomical Music Video

Damon Albarn - Everyday Robots

On the Color Mauve

More Torture in the Name of Fashion

For more images of the ridiculous, see CVLT Nation's "It Hurts to Be Beautiful"

Inspiration for Sea Serpents

The oarfish was likely the animal that sparked stories about sea serpents that made their way into maps, bestiaries, and the popular imagination.

From Olaus Magnus's map of 1539 (more info HERE)

Fantastical Giant Worms

We are all familiar with some giant worm or another--particularly the ones from pop culture. But these aren't new imaginations. Some of them are based on much earlier legendary stories of giant worms such as the minhocão. 

And there is new evidence that paleozoic sand worms existed in the soils of England.

The Dead French Menagerie

The New York Times recently released this article about a specific sectino of Paris's natural history museum. Here, the skeletons of thousands of animals are displayed in the 19th-century setting, reminding viewers of great naturalists like Buffon.

Erotic Art, Sexual Aids, etc. etc. from the Wellcome Collection

In a new exhibition, the Wellcome will have plenty of things that society keeps hidden out on full display. A full set of objects here, and some of my favorite examples:

Peruvian, date unknown

Greek, 5th century BCE

Chinese, date unknown

German, 1980s

Color and Urine

The wheel consisted of 20 colours ranging from ‘white as wellwater’ to ‘ruddy as pure intense gold’ and lastly ‘black as very dark horn.’

The Architecture of Game of Thrones

Architizer looks at the basic places where Game of Thrones filmed in order to figure out what places were inspirations for King's Landing, Astapor, "The North", etc.

Le Mag thinks various cities or courts stand for specific places in Europe.

If you can't remember what the places look like, see the various title sequence videos where the cities emerge like automated toys.

Qarth

The armillary sphere that acts as the sun over this sequence is itself taken from Renaissance designs, such as the amazing one in the Museo Galileo.

Intro scene armillary sphere

Museo Galileo armillary sphere

A Woman's Heart...

From HERE

Thanks DCK!

Pareidolia

A term for seeing things where there are none.

Like this pebble, which is a manuport picked up likely for its aesthetic appeal and strange face-like appearance.

From Wikipedia:

"In his notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci wrote of pareidolia as a device for painters, writing "if you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills. You will also be able to see divers combats and figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well conceived forms."

And here, a list of rock formations that look like human beings.