[life]Try Beautiful News … Need a lift? Try this site.

[map] Just time zones … The world mapped by time zone (by Cartographers without Borders).

[world] The place furthest from land is known as Point Nemo … A look at the most remotest place on earth – the “oceanic pole of inaccessibility” … ‘Despite writing 66 years before its discovery, science fiction author HP Lovecraft chose a site eerily close to the oceanic pole of inaccessibility for R’lyeh, the home of his legendary tentacle-faced creature Cthulhu.’

[tide] High Tide / Low Tide Pictures … some pictures of the UK coast contrasting high tide with low tide (by Michael Marten).

[life] How Astronaut Chris Hadfield Showed Berlin’s Ongoing Struggle For Unification … ‘[Hadfield’s] snap of Berlin, taken from about 200 miles above the Earth, clearly shows the line of the old wall as expressed by the difference in streetlighting between the former east and west.’

[water] All the Water on Planet Earth … picture showing what would happen if all the water in the world was collected into a ball on the surface of the Earth.

[japan] Tetrapod beaches of Japan … I’d never heard of Tetrapods – and this article includes some evocative photos of them on the Japanese shore … ‘Hit the beach anywhere in Japan, and you are likely to see endless piles of tetrapods — enormous four-legged concrete structures intended to prevent coastal erosion. By some estimates, more than 50% of Japan’s 35,000-kilometer (22,000-mi) coastline has been altered with tetrapods and other forms of concrete.’ [via As Above]

[apocalypse] Bullets That We’ve Dodged As A Species … Philip Greenspun provides a list of predicted catastrophes that didn’t happen … ‘Famine – Environmentalist Lester Brown predicted imminent famine in 1974, 1981, 1984, 1989, 1994, and 2007, in a 1967 book titled Famine, 1975!, and by MacArthur genius Paul Ehrlich in a 1968 book The Population Bomb (repeated, but without a predicted date, in a 2008 book, The Dominant Animal).’ [via Jorn Barger]

[world] The Most Alien-Looking Place on Earth … some amazing pictures from Socotra Island. ‘…for this island, which is part of a group of 4 islands, has been geographically isolated from mainland Africa for the last 6 or 7 million years. Like the Galapagos Islands, this island is teeming with 700 extremely rare species of flora and fauna, a full 1/3 of which are endemic, i.e. found nowhere else on Earth.’ [via Sore Eyes]

[curtis] Dubai 1975 … Adam Curtis digs up some intriguing footage of Dubai in 1975 from the BBC Archive … ‘It is a glimpse of Dubai just before it started to become the strange fantasy world it is today. It has a great creepy British under-secretary for foreign affairs, plus very good tartan fashions.’

[world] Like Dallas policed by the Taliban — inside Saudi Arabia … ‘[Saudi Arabia] is a country of astonishing contrasts. Riyadh is a hyper-modern city with ancient social customs. It is Dallas, Texas, policed by the Taliban. Women entirely shrouded in black abayas , with even their eyes covered, go shopping at a Harvey Nichols inside a Norman Foster building. Men pour into the mosque under an enormous neon sign advertising Sony, as if they were entering an electrical goods sale rather than a place of worship. McDonald’s is seemingly on every street corner, and yet it closes its doors five times a day for prayers – making Saudi Arabia unique as a country where the most powerful franchise on earth bends its knees in front of an even stronger brand: Allah.’

[fashion] Shopping Rebellion — The New Yorker on Japanese Fashion … ‘One of the striking things about spending any time among fashion-conscious Japanese kids is how utterly nerdy they can be in their pursuit of cool. In Europe and the United States fashion falls decisively into the category of the frivolous and playful; in Japan the right T-shirt or cap is sought with a kind of dogged intensity, and not just by a fringe group of fanatics. Japanese boys in particular seem to treat fashion in a manner appropriate to stamp collecting or train spotting. Entire magazines are dedicated to the subject of teen boys’ haircuts.’