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Watch This Robot Solve A Rubik’s Cube In A World Record 2.39 Seconds

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There are some tasks to which robots and AI are far inferior to humans. We focus on these skills because they separate us from the machines. And when a computer masters one of them, it amazes. But other tasks are, frankly, suited perfectly for machines.

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The Best Holiday Movies To Watch, And Rewatch, This Season

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It's the most wonderful time of the year ... to be inside on your couch next to the fire with a snuggly blanket and TV/Netflix/On Demand (or even a DVD player, if you're old school like that). 


Who doesn't love to tap into their holiday spirit and watch dozens of movies that remind us of how special this season really is? Hot cocoa. Mistletoe. Love. Ahhh, the holidays.


Here's a roundup of the best holiday movies to watch, and rewatch, this month, according to your favorite editors at HuffPost Entertainment. 



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16 Artsy, Adorable Gift Ideas From Indie Illustrators

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What does it mean to be cute? Is it in a gently drawn smile, big eyes, a fluffy animal? What makes one person prefer the cuteness of a googly Pokemon, say, while another prefers the squeezability of chubby baby thighs? Whatever shapes our cuteness preferences, there's something inherently calming about an adorable object, something that allows us to forget the mostly bad parts of a chaotic earth and focus on something uncomplicated and happy, however briefly.


Humans' tendency to like cute things has a good deal to do with the aforementioned baby thighs, actually: it's been posited that it's evolutionarily advantageous. We are drawn to and protect things that seem innocent and helpless -- which human babies are -- as a way of ensuring the survival of the species. Cute babies need time to grow into the independent adults they'll become. 


But not all cuteness is so fleeting. For those of us who need an endearing thing to look at now and then, there are these 16 items -- among many, many more out there -- from artists and illustrators that won't grow up, go to college and leave you with the bill. (Kids, amiright?!)



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24 Artists Ask The Tough Question: Do We Really Want To Work?

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"So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it," Peter Gibbons, protagonist of Mike Judge's "Office Space" memorably states. "So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life." 


Alternately very funny and very sad, the 1999 film chronicles the daily woes of working in a cubicle, including but not limited to being micromanaged, belittled and forced to listen to your boss say "what's happening?" ad infinitum. 


It's been 16 years since Judge's cult classic debuted. Since then, the contemporary office has changed its shape. Clam chowder-colored work stations have morphed into super-modern studios. Happy hours are the new Hawaiian shirt day, Facebook the new Tetris. Once bulky desktop computers are quicker, sleeker, smaller -- so small, in fact, they never have to leave your side. 


An ongoing exhibition in San Francisco, also titled "Office Space," is examining the shape and texture of the contemporary office through the eyes of 24 international artists. "I want to have a conversation about the status of work in the 21st century," curator Ceci Moss explained to The Huffington Post. "I want awareness about where particular management principles are leading us. Do we want to work all the time? Do we want to live at our desks? Is that where we're heading towards?"



The exhibitions exlpores the recent changes in office culture in conjunction with progressing technology and the service and information economy. "I want to look at how the line between leisure and work has changed," Moss continued. "You think about the 24/7 work day, because of our phones we're always available."


Many participating artists toy with the aesthetic of the office space -- the Ikea rolling chairs, the blatantly artificial plant life, the youthful and hip foosball table. One artist playing with the pervasive and absurd office style is Oakland-based Mark Benson. For his piece "Open Field," Benson surfed Staples.com and found the most popular artificial plants used to spruce up the workplace. The plants are shoved beneath a balcony in the gallery space, cramped and broken like a sleep-deprived employee after a 12-hour shift. 


"Looking at it I think you feel somewhat anxious," Moss explained. "He's pulling the lid off the artificiality of the office space, even with the attempts to make it more humane with pretty plants and bright colors."



Like Judge's film, Moss' exhibition features a happy-sad humor that finds beauty in the absurd and amusement in the potentially depressing. As Moss put it: "There are moments when you're laughing and others where you think, 'Oh gosh, that's kind of scary.'"


For example, Cory Arcangel's work "Permanent Vacation," named after the Aerosmith song, features two computers feeding each other out-of-office notifications on an eternal loop. While their users frolic on white sand beaches drinking overpriced margaritas, the machines get a some time off as well, their Inboxes eternally chilling in out-of-office limbo. 


Despite the deadpan disdain many artists display towards office life, there is an equally palpable reverence directed toward the strange breed of spaces, at once mundane and utterly bizarre, their chemical compositions representative of beast whose procreation can't be stopped. 



 "One thing I recognize in the work is the concept of the non-place, which Marc Augé described in the 1990s," Moss said. "He was looking at these airports and hotel rooms and seeing how there is a new form of architecture that's sort of ubiquitous. A Hilton in Dallas is the same as a Hilton in New York is the same as a Hilton in France." Offices have adopted a similar feeling of place-less-ness; step inside the militantly air conditioned, outdatedly futuristic, white-walled spaces and you could be anywhere with WiFi. 


Mika Tajima examines ubiquity in his series "A Facility Based On Change," which takes the uniform box of the cubicle to its illogical extreme. "My works featured in 'OfficeSpace' repurpose and reconfigure the Action Office original cubicle system into irrational, inaccessible forms which renders the spaces functionally absurd or unusable," Tajima explained to HuffPost. "The original cubicle form was the inception of designers making structures for creating and exchanging ideas -- Herman Miller company called this 'a place for transacting abstractions.' The real place now for transacting abstractions is beyond the workplace and in real spaces of life -- the cafe, the airport, the waiting room, the lounge, the gym, the spa, the hotel lobby."



Another thread woven throughout the show is the intimation of spirituality, whether presenting the office as a breeding ground of cult activity or a site of religious observance. For his sculpture "Mouse Mandala" artist Joseph DeLappe collected used and discarded computer mice from the '90s, combining them to create a spiritual icon that simultaneously resembles, as Kimberly Chun noted, a "nastily ominous rat king."


"I was intrigued that these mice had each spent a lifetime of use on a desk," DeLappe wrote to HuffPost, "most likely in a Silicon Valley cubicle -- the dirt, the grime, the use -- there was something almost funereal about the mice as relics of work. I wove them together as a kind of comment on the faux religiosity surrounding computing and hi-tech while at the same time giving a wry tribute to the Luddites of 19th century England, some of whom were weavers thrown out of work by the emergence of the industrial revolution."

The combination of reverence and repulsion reflects the ambivalence of the exhibition. The artists of "Office Space" rarely praise nor condemn office life entirely, rather, they gaze in wonder at the current state of the workplace around them, like a zoned out employee staring wildly at a blank wall.


More than anything, Moss hopes to spark a conversation about the way we work now. Of course, the exhibition's being in San Francisco, nestled amidst the tech boom and startup culture, adds an extra layer of understanding local visitors can appreciate. 


"Office Space" runs until February 14, 2016 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. 



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Revisit Drax And Rocket In Deleted 'Guardians Of The Galaxy' Scene

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Thought you'd have to wait until 2017 to see new "Guardians of the Galaxy" footage, huh? Nah, Groot gets separation anxiety, so Disney gave The Huffington Post an exclusive deleted scene that hails from Marvel's new Phase Two box set. And anyway, why not start your week off with a little "Guardians" history lesson? The clip, which comes with unfinished effects, finds a drunken Drax telling Rocket and Groot about the scars that represent his past. Watch below.  





 


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The Most Head-Turning Outfits At Art Basel 2015

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Artists, A-list celebs, socialites and deep-pocketed art collectors flocked to Miami Beach, Florida, this past weekend for the 2015 Art Basel show. While the annual four-day festival is meant to showcase the best-of-the-best in modern and contemporary art, many attendees also use it as an opportunity to party and wear the most head-turning ensembles in the name of fine art. 


This year we spotted the husband and wife artist duo Eva & Adele decked out in matchy-matchy floral frocks, actress China Chow stepped out in a colorful babydoll dress, and street style star Edmundo Huerta (aka Di Mondo) decided that one of Christian Dior's printed jacquard bodysuit would be a hit. 


Bottom line: we can always count on Art Basel to push the sartorial envelope. 


Here are some of the most eye-catching looks of Art Basel 2015. Tell us if you think these folks look like walking works of art in the comments section below. 



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Artist Michael Paul Britto On What It Means To Be A Black Man In America

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Contemporary artist Michael Paul Britto works in a variety of powerful media, including sculpture and video, but his collages cut the deepest.


Addressing the state of black males in America, Britto cuts and pastes the haunting images we've seen shared across mass media and social media into new and jarring formations. In the eerie amalgamation above, Britto juxtaposes images of Michael Brown with those of Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed him. Through the layered images, a silhouette appears of two identical figures staring each other in the face, guns hidden behind their backs. 


In his newest exhibition "Something in the Way of Things," Britto similarly assembled a remixed vision of American life that stands in stark contrast to the one we were promised. His vision is filled with brutality and silence, fear and ignorance. Britto incorporates glamorous images from advertisements and fashion editorials with disturbing images of KKK uniforms, guns and bodies falling through space. The ambiguity of the figures speaks to the unmanageable number of victims of violence, many of whom go unnamed and unseen.


We reached out to Britto in anticipation of his exhibition to learn more about his hopes for the show.




Let's start with the title of your exhibition, "Something in the Way of Things." How does your work in the show relate to Amiri Baraka's poem of the same name? 


The work in this exhibition shows some of the things getting in the way of things. Things like, alcoholism, police brutality, depression, and hopelessness. 



Was there a certain moment, event or streak of inspiration that propelled you to address the current state of blackness in America with your work? 


I became more aware of the state of blackness in America when I became a teaching artist and started working with young adults. I currently work at an alternative high school for overaged and under-credited young people on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I also draw a lot from my own personal experiences of being a male of color in the United States of America. 


Can you expand on some of the misconceptions and assumptions spread by mass media you are trying to address in this exhibition? 


Mass media is really good at demonizing males of color, and reinforcing stereotypes. Nine times out of 10, if a crime is committed by a male of color, the news will let you know that the suspect or perpetrator was a black male. This is rarely the case with any other nationality. Also, with sports figures aside, the news very rarely celebrates black male achievements.    


The exhibition features a variety of media including collage. How do you see the medium of collage relating to the subject matter? 


I like the idea of taking something familiar and using it to respond or comment on a social issue. When It comes to my collages, the image that I use to cut my silhouettes from are in direct relation to the stance or posturing of the subject. 



What do your images communicate that is not accessible through headlines, stories, written language or even video documentation? 


I feel like my images speak to a truth, or a true feeling. Many people don't like to discuss alcoholism, depression, drug addiction or feeling hopeless. Those are some of my truths, and I'm glad I have art to help me work through my experiences with many of those issues. 


What role do you think art plays in the current political moment? Do you think an artist has a responsibility to take on an activist role? 


I don't think art is playing a big enough role in our current political moment. We could be doing more. I believe an artist has the right to be as responsible as he or she wants to be, but for myself, I believe art should take on an activist role. I want my work to spark conversation and enlighten people.  


What do you hope to communicate through this exhibition? 


My hope for this exhibition is to give people who have experience with some of the issues addressed in my work hope, by letting them know they are not alone. And, to hopefully get others to be a little more empathetic to people who might be going through similar experiences expressed in the exhibition.


Britto's "Something in the Way of Things" runs through Dec. 19 at Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art, in Newark, New Jersey. 



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Abandoned 'Wizard Of Oz' Theme Park Opens Its Doors Just For You

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During the summer of 1970, North Carolina's Land of Oz theme park welcomed a whopping 400,000 visitors in a matter of months. For a time, it was the second most-visited amusement park in the eastern United States, playing runner-up to Disney World, according to a local magazine.  


So what happened, and why have you almost certainly NEVER heard of this place?





Land of Oz was constructed on North Carolina's Beech Mountain to keep local ski employees busy during summer months. In its heyday, visitors traveled far and wide to visit Dorothy's farm house, take hot air balloon rides and stroll the legendary Yellow Brick Road.


But after just 10 years of operation, the park fell on hard times, according to its website. Its emerald gates closed, and vandals and trespassers became its only visitors.


Now, Land of Oz is legally open to the public once per year for an "Autumn in Oz" party to celebrate the magic that once was -- and still lives on -- at this eerie spot. It's also available to rent for weddings, gatherings and private tours.


Most of the time, though, the park sits completely empty. Photographer Seph Lawless captured the haunting location for his new book, "Bizarro," which focuses on abandoned amusement parks around the world. 


Oz was an otherworldly place to visit, he told HuffPost.


"It sits hidden on top of one of the highest mountain peaks in the eastern U.S., so being there was almost like entering another planet," Lawless said. "It was surreal and completely beautiful."


We have to agree.





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The Bottom Line: 'The Visiting Privilege' by Joy Williams

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Reading a Joy Williams story is an exercise in self-control for anyone averse to marking up her book. Most pages beckon to be dog-earned; most sentences, containing within them both specific details about their subjects and universal sentiments evoking empathy and amusement, call to be underlined. If you can resist, and read on, you’ll find  in her latest collection a career’s worth of funny observations and misanthropic critiques.


From her first published story -- “Taking Care,” about a doting pastor’s dismay with his wife’s hospitalization and his resulting assertion that he’ll live a less passive life -- a thread is formed that ties together her long collection, which is marked by its consistent voice and themes. There’s a big, awing rift between how the pastor speaks and how he actually feels, between how he hopes to be and how he actually is. Most of Williams’ writing lives in that odd space, the space between optimistic wants and blunt realities.


She brings dreams and subconscious desires to life in “The Lover,” a story about a young mother who listens to a radio host’s beguiling life advice, and accepts his wild tips without much skepticism. The so-called Answer Man dishes out wisdom on the number of hours of sleep one should get, and the best way to make a lemon meringue pie. His answers are always jargon-filled and borderline nonsensical, calling attention to the insufficiency of straightforward facts.


Williams herself isn’t one for the concrete. In an interview with The Paris Review, she neatly described her own approach to fiction: “Can we incorporate and treasure and be nourished by that which we do not understand? Of course. Understanding something, especially in these tech times, seems to involve ruthless appropriation and dismantlement and diminishment.” The anecdote, for Williams, is writing about that which can’t be understood, and embedding it within our quotidian routines, where the surreal so often lives.


In “Summer,” a couple and their children share a vacation home with a writer who’s holed up working most days, but nevertheless invites a different woman to stay with him each weekend. Here, Williams mocks the idea that good writing should wrestle with broad theories we’ve deemed important, rather than the strangeness and beauty of everyday life. The writer in the story is working on “writing an aesthetically complex response to hermetic currents in modern life.” Jabs the narrator, Constance: “This took time.” She, on the other hand, whiles away her time interacting with the writers’ girlfriends and watching neighbors behave strangely when they think they aren’t being watched. As a result, she, immersed as she is in the ennui of wifehood and womanhood, ends up witnessing more honest human interactions than the writer, who’s cut off from his own social group.


Williams has more in common with Constance than with the story’s resident writer. She’s less inclined than most writers to assign lofty or romantic meanings to storytelling, and in fact has called a story not useful but “devious.” As a result, her stories are rarely political (in the sense of promoting change), with the exception of the few that suggest her preference of animals over humans. In “Shepherd,” a woman grieves the loss of her pet, while doing her best to evade conflict with her newly serious partner. The dog, for her, symbolized independence, and her earlier, more self-sufficient life. It also reminded her of how simple emotions like loyalty can be when they remain untarnished by the dull, difficult realities of human relationships. Williams is a thoughtful cynic when it comes to the knotty, often dishonest lives of adults. But through her almost-fantastical observations, her childlike characters and her whimsical descriptions of animals, she finds something to love in the uncanny.


The bottom line


The uncanny and the everyday exist side-by-side in Joy Williams’s collection of funny, thoughtful stories old and new.


Who wrote it?


Joy Williams is the author of four novels, including The Changeling and The Quick and the Dead. The Visiting Privilege is her fifth short story collection. She has been nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.


Who will read it?


Those interested in wry critiques of American culture, in funny dialogue and strange, almost surreal scenes.


What other reviewers think:


The New York Times: "If the human race were ever put on trial -- for crimes against the planet, animals and one another -- it would be hard to think of a more ferocious prosecutor than Joy Williams. Is there a writer whose condemnations are more convincing, whose vision is more godless and bleak? And in case this all sounds too punishing for you, is there a funnier nihilist in the ranks of American writers?"


The Washington Post: "The superb new stories don’t mark a radical departure in style or subject matter from previous work, although the characters tend to be older, and the structures a little looser, more meditative."


Opening lines:


"Jones, the preacher, has been in love all his life. He is baffled by this because as far as he can see, it has never helped anyone, even when they have acknowledged it, which is not often. Jones’s love is much too apparent and arouses neglect."


Notable passage:


"The shepherd was brown and black with a blunt, fabulous face. He had a famous trick. When the girl said, 'Do you love me?' he would leap up, all fours, into her arms. And he was light, so light, containing his great weight deep within himself, like a dream of weight."


The Visiting Privilege
by Joy Williams
Published Sept. 8, 2015
Knopf, $30.00


 


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Transgender Actress And Warhol Superstar Holly Woodlawn Dies At 69

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Holly Woodlawn, transgender actress, star of the 1970s underground film scene and notable Andy Warhol Superstar, died on Sunday night in Los Angeles at the age of 69.


Woodlawn's cultural impact on the queer underground was far-reaching, having starred in Warhol's seminal films "Trash" and "Women in Revolt." What she will perhaps be remembered best for, however, is Lou Reed's iconic 1972 "Walk on The Wild Side," which immortalizes her story of leaving her home in Miami Beach, Florida, and hitchhiking to New York City at the age of 16.





With Woodlawn living in assisted living in Los Angeles prior to her death, New York City artist and fellow Warhol superstar Penny Arcade began a GoFundMe page earlier this year in an effort to provide 24-hour nursing care for the star. In the words of Arcade, "Holly gave visibility long before it was comfortable to do so and also gave thousands of people both hope and pleasure." At the time of Woodlawn's death, the GoFundMe has raised just short of $70,000.


Woodlawn, like many of the people who rose to prominence through Andy Warhol's factory, continues to give inspiration to young, queer artists and creatives today. In a 2007 interview with The Guardian, she reflected on her time with the late NYC legend: “I was very happy when I gradually became a Warhol superstar. I felt like Elizabeth Taylor! Little did I realize that not only would there be no money, but that your star would flicker for two seconds and that was it. But it was worth it, the drugs, the parties, it was fabulous. You live in a hovel, walk up five flights, scraping the rent. And then at night you go to Max’s Kansas City where Mick Jagger and Fellini and everyone’s there in the back room. And when you walked in that room, you were a STAR!”


You'll always be a star to us, Holly. Rest in power.


Check out some photos of Holly Woodlawn from over the years below.


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5 Christmas Songs That Will Add A Dash Of Sexism To Your Holidays

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'Tis the season to spend time with family, reflect on the past year and listen to (subtly offensive) holiday music.


While it's always fun to blast holiday cheer into your home during the winter months, there are a few outdated Christmas songs that are a bit insulting, sexist and just downright creepy. Even if you still listen to these classics -- and, hey, most of us probably will this holiday season -- it’s good to be informed.


Here are five songs that don't do women any favors during the holidays -- or ever:



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42 Gifts For Anyone With Wanderlust

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Have you been bit by the travel bug? Is your sister, or best friend, a globe-trotting fairy person? Whether you're looking for stylish décor for yourself or practical travel gadgets for others, this is the ultimate gift list for explorers. May we just add, bon voyage!



 


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Swoon Over 18 Of This Year’s Most Beautiful Book Covers

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It's a designer's job to make sure that a book can be fairly judged by its cover. A scholarly book about gender fluidity might have two geometric shapes merging into one on its jacket; a dense plot about marital entanglements might be illustrated by a thick bouquet of roses and wildflowers. Our favorite covers this year -- aside from those that were just plain pretty -- were those that best communicated the books' contents. 


The cover for Matteo Pericoli's collection of drawings illustrating writers' window views had a translucent, window-like jacket wrapped around a sketch of the Hagia Sophia. The cover for Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed covers a man's eyes and mouth with florescent spray paint, resulting in an alluring yet disturbing image. 


For the prettiest, most clever, and most communicative book covers of the year, see below.


Windows on the World by Matteo Pericoli



Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum



The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford-Smith



The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson



Satin Island by Tom McCarthy



So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson



Is Shame Necessary? by Jennifer Jacquet



Sphinx by Anne Garréta



The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North



Imperium by Christian Kracht



The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector



Broadcast Hysteria by A. Brad Schwartz



The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro



All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews



Hold Still by Sally Mann



The Art of the Publisher by Roberto Calasso



Discontent and its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid



The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson



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Artist Plants 'Virtual Forests' On Eiffel Tower To Encourage Reforestation

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Belgian-Tunisian artist Naziha Mestaoui transformed the Eiffel Tower into a virtual forest for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21).


The project, dubbed One Heart One Tree, projected "virtual forests onto the Eiffel Tower in order to encourage the reforestation of the planet,” Mestaoui told HuffPost Tunisia.


The interactive digital installation turned the Eiffel Tower green from Nov. 29 to Dec. 3. Participants around the globe downloaded the One Heart One Tree app, which could detect their heartbeats and used them to create the flora projected onto the Paris landmark. Also projected on the tower were the names of the app users, along with personal messages they wrote. 



There is no conflict between nature and technology; quite the opposite, they can go hand in hand.
Naziha Mestaoui


But the initiative doesn't end with the simple virtual projection. With a charitable donation, users could pick a location to plant actual trees -- in Australia, Brazil, Senegal, India, France, Peru or the Ivory Coast. They will be able to follow their tree's growth for three years, thanks to the app.


"So far, we've counted 52,000 trees that are going to be planted," Mestaoui said. This has significantly surpassed the artist’s exceptions; she had hoped to plant at least 180 trees, to cancel out the carbon footprint left by the large-scale digital installation.



The artist's objective is "using technology to reconnect with nature," she said.


This marriage of technology and nature is a way for the artist to help us understand that contrary to "preconceived notions that would prefer environmentalists to be anti-technology, there is no conflict between nature and technology; quite the opposite, they can go hand in hand," she explained.


"It's up to us to build bridges to connect the different sectors," Mestaoui said. "Art serves above all to connect, to show us the world, to stimulate the imagination, and to expand the realm of what's possible."


The planet's future is at the center of the COP 21 debates, but for Mestaoui, beyond political decisions, it's social decisions that can bring about change. "We are creating the future that we're heading toward, the future that we want,” the artist said.


 This story originally appeared on HuffPost Tunisia and has been translated into English. 

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18 Geeky Gifts For The Biggest 'Star Wars' Fan You Know

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As the loathsome Watto once said, "Your Jedi mind tricks don't work on me, only money." So, get ready to cough up some cash this holiday season.


This is a huge year for "Star Wars" fans -- "The Force Awakens," the first major "Star Wars" movie since 2005, opens Dec. 18, and there's no end to the product tie-ins. Want some Chewbacca-inspired Coffee-Mate? It's yours. (Gross!) "Star Wars" AA batteries? Sure.


Like a vibroblade through womp rats, we cut through the chaff and picked 18 gifts "Star Wars" lovers will actually appreciate. And if these aren't enough, our colleagues on HuffPost Lifestyle picked out the best "Star Wars" kitchen gadgets


This piece is adapted from a 2014 feature.


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Adam Grant's 'Originals' Book Tour To Feature Sheryl Sandberg, Malcolm Gladwell

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Nonfiction fans, mark your calendars: Adam Grant's Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World hits bookstores next February, and this week, the publisher has released details of the author's book tour. Viking, which is publishing the acclaimed Wharton professor's follow-up to the bestseller Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, announced tour dates across the U.S. next spring.


At several stops, Grant will be joined in conversation by celebrated public thinkers and bestselling authors. In New York, Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers, will appear in conversation with Grant, and in Mountain View, California, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author of Lean In, will take the stage with him. Anyone eager to know more about the workings of the corporate elite, and the forces that underlie economic and artistic success, may want to take note.


See full details of the book tour below:



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This Author Says We've Lost Some Sense Of Wonder, And He Has The Cure

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Gordon Grice was asked to help with a practical problem: An acquaintance's kid kept bringing home crab shells from the beach.


"And she wished there were a book to teach him how to preserve them without stinking up the house," Grice told The Huffington Post by email.


Now there is. It's called Cabinet of Curiosities, and it's more than just a how-to guide to de-smellifying marine samples.


The book extols the connections between all the intriguing critters, plants and animals that live on Earth -- an awareness of which will hopefully help shift readers' perspectives, Grice says. 


He said he hopes the compendium inspires others to take a tactile interest in the environments' beauty, stories and interconnectedness -- and our role, as cataloguers, participants and stewards.


"I do see nature as wondrous, and I admit that’s a pretty old-fashioned attitude," said Grice. "I’m afraid we’ve lost some of the sense of wonder, partly because we don’t spend as much time as our ancestors did getting out hands dirty outdoors."



The book begins with a history of exploring -- warning: a strong sense of wanderlust might ensue -- followed by descriptions of different kinds of natural history collections.


A reviewer on BoingBoing laments that Cabinet of Curiosities doesn't emphasize collecting in ways that minimize harm, but Grice tells HuffPost he does intend to "steer folks toward an environmentally friendly kind of collecting."


Then come the facts, photos and illustrations about fascinating bits and pieces of nature like claws, owl pellets or horseshoe crabs -- which aren't actually crabs at all.


"They get their name from what they look like," Grice writes in the book. "They are actually related to scorpions and spiders, although they are in a separate class. A horseshoe crab has a round shell, nine eyes, ten left, and a long tail. It almost never comes out to dry land, except to mate."


On the next page, you'll find instructions for a couple of ways you can prepare a dead horseshoe crab to be preserved and collected, with minimal odor. One suggested technique: burying it for a week, so that hungry bugs can do much the hard work for you.





Grice himself began filling shoeboxes full of curiosities at the age of six. He tells HuffPost he's still at it.


"Shoeboxes, CD cases, cluttered tables in my garage. There’s an alligator skull sitting on my desk at this moment," he said.


Grice recalls discovering a "fresh and smoking" meteorite on his family farm as "one of the coolest things that ever happened to me."


He'd still like to find a feather from one of the 60 European starlings released into Central Park in 1890, which turned into 200 million birds -- and "provided one of the earliest clear lessons in the danger invasive species pose to an environment," Grice said.


Ultimately, his life and work exemplify his overarching message to simply roll up our sleeves and dig in to nature.


"The more we remove ourselves from the system, the more troubles we have," he said."The key is putting your hands on things."


 



Get in touch with HuffPost's animal welfare editor at arin.greenwood@huffingtonpost.com





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'Mario Bros.' Lyrics Will Make You Think You've Eaten A Mushroom

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If you played video games as a kid, you've heard the original "Mario Bros." theme song a thousand times. But unless you're a bona fide Nintendo nerd or you lived in Japan in the '80s, chances are you never knew the song has lyrics.


We're not talking about the song from the short-lived TV show. We're referring to the authentic, Nintendo-sanctioned version that is now available for the masses to slay at karaoke nights all over Japan.


Only the super geeks among us knew that in 1985, a Japanese radio show called "Takao Komine All Night Nippon" asked listeners to submit their "Mario Bros." lyrics ideas, as RocketNews24 reported last week. These submissions would eventually lead to the the official, Nintendo-approved words to the "Mario Bros." theme song.


The song -- titled "Go Go Mario!!" -- even appeared on vinyl at one point, according to Kotaku.





The lyrics are strange and surreal -- but then, it's not like a video game about two plumbers who explore the sewer system to rescue a princess from a fire-breathing monster is grounded in reality.


The ditty has been in the news recently after Nintendo announced the song is coming to Joysound, a karaoke platform for Japanese cafes as well as devices like the Wii, Wii U and 3DS. People who opt to sing "Go Go Mario!!" will be treated to a montage of scenes from 18 different Mario titles during their performance.





For most of us, this will be our first exposure to the "Mario Bros." theme song lyrics -- unless you were lucky enough to catch "Mario and Zelda Big Band Live" performing the song on Sept. 14, 2003, in Tokyo.





Unfortunately, since the Joysound is a Japanese platform and the song is only available in Japanese, English speakers may need to brush up on their foreign pronunciation skills if they want to sing along. But that won't stop anyone from enjoying the bizarre lyrics through the magic of translation.


Via Destructoid:



Today, full of energy, Mario is still running, running
Go save Princess Peach! Go!
Today, full of energy, Mario runs
Today, full of energy, jumping!
Today, full of energy, searching for coins
Today, keep going, Mario!

Get a mushroom - it's Super Mario!
Get a flower - it's Fire Mario!

Goomba! Troopa! Buzzy Beetle! Beat them all!
Mario is always full of energy and strong!

[Spoken] The only one who can reverse the spell that has captured the Mushroom People is Princess Peach. But Princess Peach is hidden underground, in a far-off castle. Ah, the days of peace... if we could once more return to those days... to save Princess Peach and bring peace back to the Mushroom Kingdom, that is why Mario is on his journey today.

Today, full of energy, Mario is still running, running
Go and beat the Koopa tribe, go!
Today, full of energy, Mario runs
Today, full of energy, jumping!
Today, full of energy, searching for coins
Today, keep going, Mario!

Get a star - become invincible!
Quickly, go save Princess Peach!

Lakitu! Blooper! Cheep Cheep! Beat them all!
Mario is always full of energy and strong!

Today, full of energy, Mario is still running, running
He's made it to the castle and gets fireworks!
Lightly sidestepping the Hammer Bros.
Show the last of your power, Mario!
It's been a long journey but it's nearly at an end
You've done it, you've done it! You've defeated Bowser!

Princess Peach says "Thank you"
Mario's got a great big heart!

Mario's adventure is over for now, but
Mario's dream lives forever...



One important note: Don't confuse "Go Go Mario!!" with the version of the theme song from the "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show," the television program that aired in 1989. 


In case you don't remember the TV program, this highly entertaining outro sequence featuring Lou Albano as Mario may jog your memory.





H/T Kokatu


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Lady Gaga Sings 'New York, New York,' Is Basically Sinatra Reborn

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Some of the world's biggest music stars -- from Sam Smith to Celine Dion -- paid tribute to Frank Sinatra by performing in "Sinatra 100" on Sunday, a few days before Dec. 12, which would have been the crooner's 100th birthday. But Lady Gaga, who performed last, stole the show


The "Bad Romance" singer, who's currently starring on FX's "American Horror Story: Hotel," donned a Sinatra-esque black tux, hat and bow tie before belting out a stellar rendition of "New York, New York"  -- it was almost uncanny how perfectly she got into character. 


At one point in the rollicking performance, Gaga tossed her hat into the air, revealing a tight, short hairdo not so far from Sinatra's own hairstyle. 


CBS broadcast the concert, which was held in Las Vegas, at 9 p.m. Sunday night. 






Other highlights from the show included Carrie Underwood and Seth McFarlane performing a medley of Sinatra hits as a duet and Zac Brown doing a classic rendition of "The Way You Look Tonight."


 


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Dane DeHaan On Playing James Dean And The Diverse Landscape Of Fame

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You might not be familiar with his name, but surely you recognize Dane DeHaan.


The 29-year-old actor has been climbing his way up the Hollywood ladder, appearing in the TV series "In Treatment" before landing roles in movies such as "A Place Beyond the Pines," "Kill Your Darlings" and "The Amazing Spider-Man 2." DeHaan's performances say it all: he's an actor who's eager to challenge himself, no matter how big or small the project. 


Currently, he's starring as the iconic James Deanalongside Robert Pattinson's Dennis Stock in the Anton Corbijn-helmed film "Life." The movie tells the story behind Stock's now infamous Life magazine photo shoot of Dean, which took place as the "East of Eden" actor was on the verge of superstardom in 1955. The images showcased Dean as the epitome of cool, giving his rebellious, free-spirit aura leverage. Dean tragically died in a car accident in September 1955, before two of his most beloved and celebrated films, "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Giant," were released. He became the first and only actor to receive two posthumous Academy Award nominations for "East of Eden" and "Giant," and rightfully became an on-screen legend. 


DeHaan was unsurprisingly nervous to portray the actor, not only because of his iconic status, but because so little is known about who Dean truly was. He spoke about the role and his idea of fame in an interview with The Huffington Post. 



Tell me about the casting and how you got involved in "Life"?


I was sent the script, I read it and I was like, "I don't really want to do this." I just kept saying that because he's always been one of my favorite actors and, to me, it's really holy material. But they kept coming back and I started to take meetings with everybody and I listened to what they had to say and I realized that I was just operating out of fear. I do all these interviews and I say, "I want to do the role that's the most challenging or I want to do the role that scares me the most," and then that opportunity legitimately came around and I was running away from it. It was really my wife [Anna Wood] who pointed that out to me in the end, and I realized that if I want to practice what I preach, this is it, this is the opportunity. Why not do this? It's a great script, it's a great director, it's a really challenging part -- it ticks off every box. It's just, to me, it was kind of personal so it took me a while to come to that. 


You must have been a little flattered though, this is James Dean. Great actor, good-looking guy ...


Yeah, totally flattered! And also, to be honest, kind of confused.


Why? 


I don't know, honestly, I just didn't understand. Like, why do they keep coming back to me? I had to go through a lot, even physically, to try to look like him. It wasn't just a show up on set, 15 minutes of makeup thing. It was three months of training and an hour and a half in the makeup chair every day. So, I didn't really understand why they wanted me, but I was flattered. In the end, especially at this point of James Dean's career that he's at in this movie and what's going on and the relationships he has and how he feels about his work, I think I have a lot more in common with James Dean than I do almost any other character that I've played.


This movie takes place when James was on the cusp of stardom, so how did you mimic him? How did you study his mannerisms -- the way he looked, the way he walked -- since there wasn't much out there of him? 


I worked with a dialect coach named Nadia Venesse, who's really amazing, to help get the voice down. She actually found a recording of when he went back to Indiana to visit his family. He had bought one of the first-ever Spy recorders, just because he thought it was a cool toy, and he taped conversations that he had with his aunts and uncles and cousins -- and [Nadia] found it. And it was really invaluable because, it's not like he doesn't sound like he does in movies, but that's him acting and this was him in a real environment; it was a direct source. So I listened to that over and over again, and I studied the time period. As for the mannerisms, it was important for me to match that specific moment [with the Life magazine shoot]. And mostly, the physicality was more about who he was on the inside. Who was James Dean? Not what people think he was, but who was he actually as a person? And I think as I started to delve into that, I feel like the mannerisms came along with it. 


Did you study those Dennis Stock photos inside and out?


I was pretty familiar with the photos already, but in many ways, they're staged. Although they're amazing photos, in a way, they're somewhat responsible for the myth of James Dean. Because James Dean is not that cool ... I mean, he's cool! But that photo in Times Square, he looks like the epitome of cool, and then there are really interesting photos where he's sitting behind a desk reading a book which show a different side of him. When I was in college, those were the ones that I thought were the most interesting -- it was the first time I saw James Dean and he didn't look cool. With the role, it was about reading the most I could about him. There are a lot of biographies about him and that was a bit of a problem too because it becomes more about, "Who wrote this? What was their relationship to him? What exactly are they trying to do and why does this information contrast with this information? And what information is undeniably true? And of the information that is undeniably true, what does that show you about who he was?"


It must have been so strange for you to step into that world and recreate these images you love. 


Yeah. We definitely had the book on set and I was probably the most annoying with, "Bring the book out! We have to make sure it's exactly like it was!" I think it was fun to look at the images and see those moments -- it was an interesting way to make a movie, for sure. 


What did you and Robert Pattinson do to create that bond James and Dennis shared? 


It's an interesting bond because I don't really look at them as friends. I look at them as two artists who were both struggling in different ways, because they work in different ways, and they come across each other and they influence each other as artists. So while a lot of people are calling it a friendship movie, I don't really see the friendship part of it. It's not like Rob and I weren't friends, it's just I felt like that was the relationship we had probably because of the film. We hung out a couple of times outside of set, but other than that, it would be show up on set and really get to know each other through the process of making the movie as two artists who go about things in two different ways. And I think in that way, you don't have to "act" the relationship, you just allow it to happen on screen. 



How do you see fame when James Dean was around versus now? He lived at a time when Hollywood was starting to become this huge fascination for people and now it's reached a whole other level. 


Back then, it was almost more creepy because studios would draft actors almost like a basketball team drafts players. And then they would live on the studio lot and, literally, the studios would have pictures of them and say, "Now this guy we're going to show as our rebel and this woman is our blonde bombshell and this is our ingénue and this is our leading man." And so, you had no control over your image, your image was controlled by the studio. You did the movies that they wanted you to do and it was only with one studio. Today, there's a lot more freedom because that's not how it works. You can do a studio movie, but then you can shoot an independent movie and navigate your career in that way. That was interesting to me because you would have thought back then it was more free, but I actually think it was more controlled. 


Even looking at your own resume -- you've done a big blockbuster with "Spider-Man 2" and a quieter movie like "A Place Beyond the Pines." You've selected a variation of roles. How did you get started? 


My whole life I knew I wanted to be an actor. I went to acting school and to college at North Carolina School of the Arts and they do a showcase in New York and one in LA and I was lucky enough to get an agent out of that. Then I started working in theater in New York for a couple of years and that turned into me doing this show "In Treatment" on HBO, and then I moved to LA after that. I've been really lucky, it's been like seven or eight years that I've been doing it professionally and it's been crazy madness. 


Do you still audition or are you finding people call for you to be in their films, and if so, how does that make you feel? 


Yeah, now that's what's been happening lately. It's way preferred, definitely! [laughs] Listen, I would audition, and I think there's always going to be 10 people at your level and when all of those 10 people want to do a role and the director doesn't know who they want, you audition. But the last film I did ["A Cure for Wellness"] was in Germany and Gore Verbinski directed it and he was kind of like, "Do you want to be in my movie?" And I was like, "YES!" And Luc Besson kind of did the same thing. And it's a really surreal thing. But it is important to me to not allow people to typecast me, if that's the right word? I really want people to look at me as an actor and not as a person who does THAT thing. 


So with Luc Besson, you're in "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets." How's that going?


It starts next year and we film in Paris for six months. It's a really big movie, for sure. Tons of special effects -- I'll be acting to a lot of tennis balls for the first time, which I'm really excited about! I mean, "Spider-Man" had special effects, but there's also a lot of humanity in "Spider-Man," a lot of intertwining between actual human relationships. But this movie takes place in outer space. So, I'm really excited and I think it will be interesting to do a movie like that. I don't really know what that means -- right now all I know is that I have to be in really good shape [laughs] ... which is a lot of work. 


You're working with Cara Delevingne on that, who's getting into the film world lately. Have you gotten to know her well? 


I've met her like two times and sometimes we text each other. I just feel like she's sooo much cooler than me. [laughs] Her life when she's not making a movie seems so exciting and she's at concerts and flying here and there and I'm just on my couch with my dog and my wife, like, checking her Instagram: "Oh, she got the most amazing puppy ever! Oh, now she's in Mexico at a concert!" She's really cool, in a way that I've never been that cool. But I've been thinking about how that could play into the movie because there is an aspect to it that we work together, but I want us to be together, so maybe there's some fun to be had with how much cooler she is than me.



You've worked with some actors with huge fan bases, like Daniel Radcliffe and Rob Pattinson. Did you see all that come into play when you were on set with them? And are you fearful of that kind of fame yourself going forward? 


I've worked with Shia LaBeouf too, and it manifests itself differently for all those guys. It's interesting because all those movies have a different target audience. People love Dan in this way where they want to hold him close, where with Rob, they just want to jump on him and make out with him -- there's this sexuality that goes along with Rob's fans where they're just sooo into him as a sexual being. And then Shia's fans are like, "You're the Transformer hero!" They all handle it different ways. Their lives are all more crazy than mine is. But am I scared of that happening? 


Yeah, like for example, can you walk around without people noticing you?


Yeah, well, they don't not notice me but ...


It's not like you're attacked.


Right. I can go to the grocery store and people are like, "Hi, I really like you." And I'm like, "Thank you!" ... When we were filming "Life," I remember one day on set Rob was like, "I went to the grocery store for the first time in so long." And I was like, "OK?" I don't know. I don't really think about that stuff that much because it's sort of out of my control and I’m just really grateful that I get to do what I do. 


Do you think it's different in New York versus LA?


I know Dan calls New York his "head-up city," because he feels like it's the only city where he can walk with his head up. [laughs] Which I think is probably a good way of putting it.


This conversation relates back to James Dean, and sort of idolizing people. 


Yeah. People look back on James Dean and think he must have been the coolest, most interesting person. But in the movie, you see that it's not like they take the Times Square photo and say "I got the shot!" It's like, "All right, I got another photo, let's move on." It's not until after the fact that it shows a normal person can be turned into an icon. Mostly, everyone is just going through everyday life and maybe even in a mundane way. 


That speaks to the whole aspect of fame. 


Your work is how people know you. People know me from the roles I've done or the photo shoots I've done, so they probably think I'm ...  I don't know what they think of me! [laughs] But it's not really me. That's what I love to do, that's what I'm most passionate about and I love that I've been embraced the way I have, but I'm so much more boring than any character I've ever played. Maybe that should be my little secret. 


"Life" is now in theaters and on demand. 


This interview has been edited and condensed. 


 


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