Rikenography

This might be a tangential Riken’s Links but that doesn’t really matter. I’ve found a few interesting things I’ve wanted to show people so I guess this is the best place to do it.

First up was a really great video of the Trans Siberian Railway that has been matched with Google maps to its location as it travels across the length of the Russian nation. What is pretty great about the Google hosted page linked here, is that you can listen while traveling to the sound of the train, or if you want to put yourself in the position of the traveler, the books on tape of Tolstoy and Gogol. You can start in Moscow and either jump ahead to interesting sections, or travel the length of Siberia until you finally make it in Vladivostok. Also, the videos hosted on Youtube go to an amazingly clear 1080p HD. (Thanks to my brother James)

Next up I have a selection of info-graphics created by some very clever people. Susanna Hertrich has done some great work, but my favorite is one depicting the perception of risk and actual hazards:

Last up is another awesome visualization of the undersea cables that line the ocean’s floor sending the first international telegraphs and hosting current international interweb traffic.

In the US we launch things into space from a beach-side site in Florida and recover them in the Pacific, or in the case of the Shuttle, a landing strip in Texas. The USSR however used a very landlocked region of Kazakhstan as its launch-pad and recovered its own crafts by landing across the steppe. This led to a really sweet (or dangerous) opportunity for space junk to land in your backyard if you lived out in the Kazakh countryside.

Here is a really interesting photo essay of the space program’s presence in Kazakhstan. Sadly this won’t be happening any longer as Russia has decided to launch vehicles from its own territory.

Found thanks to Dangerous Minds

Here we go for a links post #2. Didn’t think we’d make it, but here we are. This time around we got an answer to the eternal question; what do goths do in the summer? Gazprom is the massive oil and gas conglomerate owned largely by the Russian government, and is the creator of a rock epic in ode to itself for being such a great and important company. From there we go to an excellent collection of old theaters in various states of disrepair. I’m not a huge fan of the urban explorer craze. It reminds me of people who think post modernism is the answer to every serious question. And last but not least, the real location of sleepy hollow’s bridge on which the headless horseman reigned his mindless terror. (The link hasn’t been working as the whole site has crashed. I’ll keep things updated when it comes back online. It’s Back)  So until then, we’ll have to make do with WWIII Tweet Propaganda.

• Goths in Hot Weather
• Gazprom’s Rock Epic
• Abandoned Theaters
• Headless Horseman
• WWIII Tweet Propaganda

Part of a Photo series by Anna Skladmann called Little Adults, these photos can help non-Russians look into the modern ostentatious horror, dacha obsessed hilarity, and ideological irony that is extreme wealth in Russia. In doing so we would do well to bask in the awkward middle age of these children.

Mid-Life Crisis:

Not only are these photos worthy of the overall sociological import of their content, but they are especially interesting just for how plain uncomfortable they make me feel.

Horrifying Royalty:

Banks don’t foreclose homes, this girl’s trust fund manager does.