Automotive engineer Spencer Rezkalla spent three years building this astounding 19 square foot LEGO model of the just-opened Apple Park. The 1/650th scale model contains roughly 85,000 pieces, including 1647 trees. From Rezkalla's project gallery on Flickr:
I've always wanted to build a horizontal skyscraper. These are sometimes also called "groundscrapers".
In 2014 I came across some drone footage of an enormous circular excavation being dug into the California earth. When I discovered this was the start of the foundation for a new low-rise Apple "spaceship" campus, I knew I had found an interesting and suitable candidate.
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Veterinarians at the Maryland Zoo outfitted an injured Eastern turtle with a wheelchair built from Lego. An employee of the zoo found the turtle whose shell had been injured in a nearby park.
“He had multiple fractures on his plastron, the bottom part of his shell. Because of the unique placement of the fractures, we faced a difficult challenge with maintaining the turtle’s mobility while allowing him to heal properly,” said Ellen Bronson, the zoo's sensior director of animal health.
From Local21News:
Zoo officials say there aren’t devices small enough for turtles to use so they got creative and drew sketches of a customized wheelchair. The sketches were then sent to a friend, who is also a LEGO enthusiast.
“The sketches proved to be a success and the turtle received his very own multi-colored LEGO brick wheelchair just a few weeks after surgery. The turtle is roughly the size of a grapefruit. The small LEGO frame surrounds his shell and sits on four LEGO wheels,” said Garrett Fraess, veterinary extern at the zoo.
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LEGO Han in Carbonite is reason enough for me to buy the LEGO Star Wars Carbon-Freezing Chamber.
While LEGO Lando isn't to be seen, he's clearly still a traitorous jerk! LEGO Han is getting frozen in carbonite! LEGO Boba and an Ugnaught are included to run the operation.
LEGO Star Wars Carbon-Freezing Chamber 75137 via Amazon Read the rest
Agalmatophilia, a sexual attraction to dolls and other human figures, is nothing new: people have been attracted to and humping dolls for as long as there have been locks on doors – not that the practice needs to be kept a secret. Human sexuality is a weird attic to stumble around in. If your kink hurts no one and leans towards watching wee plastic people get it on, I say it's fair game. Apparently so do a lot of other folks.
From Motherboard:
The longer you look for Lego porn, the more you see, and the more you see, the more have you wonder what the odds are that someone near and dear to you is consuming Lego-themed fetishism as their kink. There’s a subreddit dedicated to Lego porn with 725 subscribers, and only 15 posts over five years, but it’s quality over quantity—which makes me think a lot more people are consuming than making Lego porn.
There’s the Big Lego Porn Album, a glorious repository of some of the greatest Lego porn, from New Yorker style cartoons of Lego sex workers to tentacle-Lego crossovers. Several of the images are watermarked with drew.corrupt.net, which now redirects to a Japanese-language blog about someone’s toddler, and definitely not hardcore brick fucking. This album has more than 34,000 views.
r/legoporn features a few crossposts from r/bdsm with bricks, which are actually quite artful. Another crossover fandom: Harry Potter.
Motherboard's Samantha Cole spent a good chunk of time researching the smutty-stop-motion underworld of LEGO pornography, those that make it and the folks that consume it. Read the rest
My eight year-old nephew clicked this X-Wing fighter together in about 3 hours, and then spent two days playing with it, nonstop.
This Luke-era X-Wing, with Luke and R2 minifigs, was the project of choice for my nephew. He said he loves to build LEGO, and attacked this set with gusto. Unlike my daughter's massive collection of Star Wars LEGO, which is all carefully organized on our living room shelves, nephew plays with his LEGO builds hard.
It is fun to watch.
LEGO Star Wars X-Wing Starfighter 75218 Building Kit (731 Piece) via Amazon Read the rest
My 11 year-old paid more attention during Solo than I did. She insisted on Moloch's Landspeeder as her latest Star Wars LEGO. Read the rest
In this charming stop motion animation, YouTubers BrickBros created a lovely children's toy, shooting it in a way that makes it seem as if their woodshop consisted only of LEGO-based items. Some very clever uses of small pieces throughout. Read the rest
As part of its efforts to source its materials more responsibly, LEGO is launching a line of plant forms made from sustainable sugarcane plastics instead of petroleum-based plastic. Read the rest
David Aguilar Amphoux (aka Hand Solo) just built an upgrade to his original LEGO prosthetic arm. Very ingenious! Read the rest
Grant Thompson of YouTube channel “The King of Random” has devised a way to clean up a pile of LEGO bricks quickly using a special vacuum attachment, and he shows you how you can build one for yourself.
(The Awesomer) Read the rest
Both my daughter and I love The Incredibles. The new movie is wonderful! Naturally the film is matched with a pixel-perfect LEGO video game adaptation. Read the rest
Photographer and designer Helen Sham of Taiwan has constructed a Hasselblad 503CX film camera with LEGO blocks. As if that wasn't impressive enough, it's functional. No, it doesn't take actual photos but watch this video to see what pieces move just like the real thing.
She writes:
I made this in about 2 hours, consisting of 1120 parts. It includes a mirror, a spring-loaded shutter button and a running counter had the camera have actual film.
The build is an entry in LEGO Ideas contest, which means, with enough supporters, it could become a real product in the future. The project currently has 700 supporters and needs 10,000 to be considered for review by LEGO.
Previous LEGO Ideas' builds on BB
(PetaPixel) Read the rest
A post shared by Jason Weisberger (@jlw) on May 6, 2018 at 5:28pm PDT
My daughter has sculpted our likenesses as LEGO Brickheadz.
The LEGO Brickheadz Brick Me kit is fairly awesome. My 11 year-old spent an hour or so on each of these, and was excited to point out she put a cool surfer logo on my hat.
Amazon currently has these 708 piece sets for $24, which is below list price.
LEGO BrickHeadz Go Brick Me 41597 Building Kit (708 Piece) via Amazon Read the rest
One of the great things about YouTube is the vicarious pleasure of watching someone do something satisfying that you may not have time or inclination to do yourself. Case in point: this cool speed build of a LEGO ship in a bottle. Read the rest
40-year-old Raji Afife Azar ran a LEGO theft and fencing operation in Portland, Oregon. Aided by the Fred Meyer market's Retail Theft Unit, Portland PD put a stop to this brick bandit.
Via the Portland PD's statement on the arrest:
This investigation began in early 2018 when Fred Meyer's Organized Retail Theft Unit Investigators learned Azar was the leader of a fencing operation that involved the theft and sale of merchandise from multiple stores in the Portland metropolitan area. During the investigation, the Fred Meyer's Organized Retail Theft Unit worked with the Northwest Organized Retail Crime Alliance and learned Azar had solicited multiple people to steal from various business throughout the area.
During this investigation, undercover investigators were contacted by Azar on multiple occasions. The undercover investigators posed as theft suspects that would sell stolen merchandise to Azar at a fraction of the manufacturer's retail suggested price. On Thursday, April 26, 2018, Azar requested undercover investigators, who he believed were theft suspects, sell him approximately $13,000 in stolen merchandise. The undercover investigators met Azar in the 10300 block of Southeast Washington Street with the supposed stolen merchandise. After Azar purchased the stolen merchandise from undercover officers, he was taken into custody without incident.
Once Azar was taken into custody, a search warrant was served at his family's residence in the 2000 block of Southeast 102nd Avenue. During a search of the residence, investigators located a large quantity of stolen Legos and other stolen merchandise (photograph provided with press release). Investigators with the Fred Meyer's Organized Retail Theft Unit estimate the recovered stolen value of the Legos and other toys taken from Portland area Fred Meyer stores to be approximately $50,000 -- this estimate does not include merchandise that was recovered at the residence that came from other retail stores.
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While light on rocks, you can certainly lift a box with Luke and the Force at LEGO Yoda's Hut. Read the rest
