Via OM2 Photography.

Spectacular photo from ~EvidencE~.

RUSSIA. Altai Territory. 2000. Villagers collecting scrap from a crashed spacecraft, surrounded by thousands of white butterflies. Environmentalists fear for the region’s future…

photo by Jonas Bendiksen, via @robinsloan

From OM2 Urbx’s photostream.

Raised out of the dust, and lifted out of the dunghill: the abandoned crematorium. Built in the early 1900′s and closed down in the nineties, it served a little over 100.000 cremations.

It was without a doubt one of the most advanced crematoriums from that era, featuring multiple deck ovens, ice coolers, rotating coffin docks, lifts & rails.

When all is lost, who shall praise thee my Lord?

From suspiciousminds’ photostream

This photo, taken with Google’s HUD+ prototype Project Glass, has been circulating around the net over the past few days. It keeps coming back to mind; mostly when I’m at the park trying to get that shot of my dog being super cute, to post on hipstergram.

The shorthand for HUDs has generally been “Terminator vision”, but this powerfully shows its most compelling use is just the opposite.

Remember when we used to call buildings to see if people were in them? Remember when we sent taps along wires to talk to our distant loved ones? Remember when we covered fires with blankets to send signals? We see things differently now.

Via Darkly Euphoric

(Photo: David Mercato, Reuters)

A caravan of about 50 adults and children ended a 1,000-mile, 100-day trek through Bolivia at the protest near government offices in La Paz on Thursday. Scuffles broke out and pepper spray was used after the group were blocked by riot police, who stopped them reaching the legislature and presidential palace to petitioning MPs and the presidential palace for a tripling of the £91 monthly state subsidy for disabled people. The protesters tried to break through the lines using their crutches and wheelchairs but were forced back in a melee in which several people were injured and four detained. The protest organisers then declared a hunger strike by 10 adults and a round-the-clock vigil by the rest.    (Via:  The Guardian)

Your new mission in life (mine included) is to surpass this moment:

and if you already have, tell us all about it!

via Empire of Dust, actual source unknown (possibly taken at wat pha luang ta bua, in thailand).

These four photos aren’t from a Worth1000 competition, they’re just some of the striking images of Thailands ongoing, slow-moving flood hitting Bangkok.

See if you can guess the captions before checking out the full gallery.

I got your Bright Green Future right here:

(high rez)

via Justin Pickard

Forgive me some gallows humor, but sometimes a smile is the best weapon against despair. Texas may be in the middle of its biggest ever recorded wildfires, but that didn’t get this water tower down. Here it is, despite the futility of its existence, putting on its happy face.

You can see more stark photos of our present of environmental collapse at the Austin American-Statesman’s photo blog, but remember the example of this lone piece of infrastructure, gifted to us from the past; the power of nightmares may have ruled our lives since the 1980s, but the future can belong to those who buy into it with a currency of optimism; it’s there waiting for us, we just have to take ownership of it.

via Bruce Sterling

via Gabriella Coleman

Via ~EvidencE~’s photostream.

From Gentle Apocalypse, via @Dymaxion.

…is the title Tim Maly gave to this photo of the recent Space Shuttle launch, taken by Trey Ratcliff:

Via ~EvidencE~’s photostream.

That’s just edge of the reactor plant, taken from Martyn Williams’s posterous blog. More photos there and a translation of an appendix released from the investigation into this tragedy; key sentence being: “We did not consider the effect of disastrophism.”