when I grow up I want to live near the sea

So, so so so, so many things. Let's make this one march.

Making street art more surreal? Apparently we can do that. Technology continues to improve by leaps and bounds.

Have some incredibly well-done planet cakes, hand-carved pearl skulls, and read why cats purring can be so healing. Enjoy Hanavo Jackova's mermaids in real life, the next brilliant move from the Alamo Drafthouse to stop texting and talking, and Matthieu Bourel's beautiful, and unnervingly disturbing, digital overlay art.

If you, like me, are frequently unaware when Google makes weird and sweeping changes to how their service behaves, don't worry, we're in luck: someone else is watching. While not all of us can do everything on that list (as a YouTube content creator, even if I create very limited amounts of content, I am apparently required now by YouTube law to have a Google+ account), at least we'll know where the changes are.

It's been moved now, to a permanent installation site, but for two years there was a giant aluminum snake skeleton coiling out of the river just outside Nantes, France. At one hundred and thirty meters long, Huang Yong Ping's sinuous creation seemed to match the curves of the Saint-Nazaire bridge and looked pretty darned impressive year-round. See pictures here; they're phenomenal.

What a time for your superpowers to kick in. I hope they weren't seriously injured.

In Indonesia, there are sulfur mines. And the miners who work there engage in brutal, backbreaking work to mine out sulfur by hand, to assuage our need for components and medical ingredients. It's harrowing enough work on its own, but as photographer Olivier Grunewald discovered, there can be a horrifying beauty to the process. When these miners drop their torches--the only sources of light in the deep caves and caverns--the sulfur can light on fire in incredible displays of glowing blue.

Did you know scientists have developed glowing plants? Currently the bioluminescent broadleaves are very fragile, and have a total life expectancy of three months, even if given immaculate care, but it's a start. Next: biolamps, bioluminescent fashions, and bioluminescent jewelry and adornments, bet me,

Radionomy has extended an offer to both WinAmp and Shoutcast to purchase the companies, and that offer's been accepted. I don't so much miss WinAmp--I literally haven't used it in over five years--but Shoutcast, I would miss. Not the least of which because so much SL DJ traffic goes over Shoutcast, so the loss of that service was potentially devastating to many performers on SL. Now, folks don't have to worry: Shoutcast (and WinAmp) will be sticking around.

In net neutrality news, the outlook is not so favorable. A DC appeals court has struck down the FCC's Open Internet rules for controlling how companies behave with their client tiers. The court rules that the FCC has no authority to compel Verizon (and thus, by extension, other telecommunication companies) to treat all net traffic over their networks the same.

What this means is that, because the FCC has never needed these powers before, they shouldn't thus be granted them now. Even though the world in which the original FCC rules were written is substantially changed from the world we have now, the appeals court still decided in favor of the ISPs, and not the end consumer. It's a blow.

More when I track down more!