Guinness beer goes vegan by ditching unsavory fish bits

Good news for ethical eaters (and drinkers) who like to relax with a cold one. Guinness beer is now suitable for vegans, as the Irish beer giant recently stopped using fish bladders for filtration in its keg beer.

On its website, the beer company explains that all Guinness Draught in keg format is now brewed without using isinglass, meaning it is suitable for those who eschew consumption of any part of any animal. Cans and bottles will follow suit by the end of 2017.

Every day around the world, approximately 10 million glasses of Guinness stout are consumed. That equates to 1.8 billion pints a year, as TreeHugger points out. With this new move, far fewer fish will be harvested for their precious glands.

Related: San Diego brewery unveils beer made of 100% recycled wastewater

According to a 2015 article published by Popular Science, Guinness has been striving to make its products vegan-friendly for several years. A spokesperson for the company said, “We are now pleased to have identified a new process through investment in a state-of- the-art filtration system at St James’s Gate which, once in place, will remove the use of isinglass in the brewing process.”

Without changing the recipe, the company has succeeded in developing a new filtration method which does not alter the product’s quality or taste – a win for everyone.

Via Treehugger

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Dreamy summer retreat built of salvaged materials sends eclectic vibes in Austin

Austin-based Andersson-Wise Architects designed a unique boathouse that blends into its surroundings and, according to the firm, “appears softly in a state of natural decomposition.” Set on the shore of Lake Austin, the Bunny Run Boat Dock is a breezy two-story building constructed from different species of wood for textured effect. Reclaimed materials hailing from different regions of the world punctuate the interior and give the boathouse an electric and worldly vibe.

The 2,563-square-foot Bunny Run Boat Dock features two boat slips on the ground level and an outdoor bar and living area on the upper level. The steel frame superstructure is clad in vertically oriented cedar planks irregularly spaced to allow for views and natural light. The sense of openness and connection with the outdoors is a theme throughout the design, with only a few moveable screens dividing the living spaces from the landscape. The railing that wraps around the terrace, for instance, can be removed so the space can be used as a diving platform.

Related: Gorgeous Flathead Lake Cabin is a Minimalist Home for the True Adventurer

Different timber species were used in the construction, from the cedar patchwork cladding and interior cedar boards to the Douglas fir ceiling and sinker cypress flooring. The summer retreat’s fun and eclectic atmosphere comes from the selection of reclaimed materials that add texture and color. “The architectural palette is complemented by several reclaimed items: antique doors from India, a timeworn butcher block from England and a steel structure that weathers naturally,” the architects said to Dezeen. “The experience is intended to be an inviting homage to the beautiful climate and setting – a place to become connected to and surrounded by nature.”

+ Andersson-Wise Architects

Via Dezeen

Images via Andersson-Wise Architects,

by Andrew Pogue

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This amazing shipping container hotel can pop up anywhere in the world

Prague-based firm Artikul Architects has managed to combine two of our favorite things: shipping containers and wanderlust. The ContainHotel is a small boutique hotel made out of three repurposed shipping containers that can be easily disassembled and transported to different locations.

The eco-hotel is made out of three large shipping containers, but has a total of five rooms that can accommodate up to 13 guests at a time. A horizontal row of four rooms was built into a 40-foot high cube container, which is supported by two perpendicular 20-foot containers on the bottom level. The ground level containers house the sanitary facilities, a technical room, a storeroom on one end and a four-bed guest room on the other.

Related: Luxury Hotel Made from 35 Recycled Shipping Containers Opens Next Month in China

Although compact, the rooms are open and airy, with minimal, but elegant features on the interior. Large windows provide tons of natural light for all of the rooms. The interiors are clad in birch plywood, which was also used for the custom-made furniture. All of the rooms open up to an elongated shared balcony that provides great views of the surrounding nature.

Currently located in in Treboutice, Czech Republic, the hotel was designed to be a self-sufficient, eco-friendly hotel that can be easily demounted and transported to multiple locations. The structure was built on railroad sleepers to leave minimal footprint no matter where it is assembled. The building is connected to a local electric power source and has an integrated water reservoir that supplies the showers and sinks, all installed with water saving taps. To save on heating and cooling, the hotel awnings, which were made of reclaimed wood planks from a local sawmill, insulate the roof and provide shade in the summer months.

+ Artikul Architects

Via Contemporist

Photography by Michal Hurych

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Explore incredible worlds inside these landscapes carved into books

Laramée, who has an extensive background in the arts, is best known for his topographical literary sculptures that take anywhere between days to months to complete. His sculptures have depicted breathtaking landscapes from iconic Petra in Jordan to China’s emerald karst mountains. In an interview with yatzer, Laramée say that these works of art aren’t so much about nature as they are about capturing and evoking the feeling of the sublime and spirituality inspired by extraordinary landscapes.

The sculptures are all made by hand without computer modeling. Laramée uses a vast array of tools from band saws and chain saws to flexible shaft rotary tools and sand blasters to carve small magical worlds from tightly bound book pages. Mountainous landscapes, icy glaciers, canyons, and underground caverns are all masterfully represented in his prolific series. Laramée applies oil paints, inks, dry pastels, crayon, adhesives, and beeswax to bring the landscapes to life.

“My work, in 3D as well as in painting, originates from the very idea that ultimate knowledge could very well be an erosion instead of an accumulation,” writes Laramée. “So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are.”

+ Guy Laramée

Via Colossal

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This $6,800 house was built from recycled bricks in just 5 days

While it may look unassuming at first glance, this house is truly revolutionary. The 430 square foot home is made from LEGO-like recycled plastic bricks, it cost 20,000 pesos ($6,800) to construct, and it was built by team of four people in just five days. While tackling the challenges of transporting materials to build his house in Cundinamarca, Columbia, Fernando Llanos decided to use recycled plastic to get the job done. So he teamed up with architect Óscar Méndez to create Conceptos Plásticos – an innovative system that uses plastic bricks to build homes in remote areas at an affordable cost.

To minimize the impact on the environment, the team decided to utilize recycled plastic, despite the fact that new plastic would have been easier to use. “[U]sed (plastic) requires more experimentation,” said Méndez.

Related: America’s largest modern timber building pieces together like LEGO

To create the plastic bricks, the duo obtains plastic from local recyclers and factories, which is then melted and molded into the necessary shape. The molded plastic bricks have insulation properties, resist combustion, and meet local earthquake-resistance requirements.

Since its inception in 2011, the company has increased to 15 employees and recently completed the construction of a temporary shelter for 42 families displaced people in Columbia. The company was recently awarded $300,000 by The Chivas Venture to help it expand to a global scale.

+ Conceptos Plasticos

Via Arch Daily

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Researchers want to save shrinking Swiss glacier with 4,000 snow machines

Climate change is shrinking the Morteratsch glacier in Switzerland by around 98 to 131 feet every single year. Scientists led by Johannes Oerlemans of Utrecht University think they have an answer: artificial snow. 4,000 snow machines could recycle water into flakes that could hopefully preserve the famous glacier.

Oerlemans presented the idea in late April at the European Geosciences Union annual meeting. He thinks artificial snow blown over the glacier during the summer could help protect its ice. Sunlight melts that ice, but as Oerlemans said, “as long as there’s snow on top, the ice beneath is unaffected.” According to New Scientist, if artificial snow was put over the glacier, it would be the first attempt in the world to protect a glacier on this large of a scale.

Related: Scientists hatch crazy $500 billion plan to refreeze the Arctic

Morteratsch draws tourists every year because its snout, or the end of the glacier, is easy to reach. Oerlemans said, “Locals claim it’s the only place you can reach a glacier from a wheelchair.” But the natural wonder has dwindled from an 1860 length of five miles to 3.7 miles today. Residents of nearby Pontresina asked Oerlemans and other colleagues to save their treasure. They’d heard white fleece coverings on the smaller Diavolezzafirn glacier helped it grow around 26 feet across a decade.

Oerlemans thinks Morteratsch could win back a length of around 2,625 feet in 20 years with some type of covering. A few centimeters of artificial snow fanned across a 0.2 square mile plateau high upon the glacier could help save it, according to the scientist. That may sound like a relatively small area, but it would still take 4,000 snow machines, using water recycled from meltwater lakes near Morteratsch.

Scientists are starting with a pilot project at Diavolezzafirn’s foot. They’ll blow snow over an artificial glacier to see how the method works. If they’re successful, researchers hope the Switzerland government might fund the project with the millions of Euros required for Morteratsch.

Via New Scientist

Images via Wikimedia Commons (1,2)

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Apple self-driving car spotted in California

Apple is full of surprises. Just last fall sources told Bloomberg the technology giant wasn’t going to build a self-driving car anymore. They may have scrapped plans to construct their own car, but it appears they didn’t abandon autonomous vehicles altogether. People in California recently spotted a white Lexus RX450h SUV with self-driving apparatus drive out of an Apple Silicon Valley facility.

Bloomberg obtained images of the sneaky self-driving car, glimpsed around two weeks after the company got a permit to test autonomous cars. The Lexus SUV was reportedly decked out with Velodyne Lidar Inc’s 64-channel lidar, as well as an array of other sensors. An industry expert said the equipment looked like it was purchased off the shelf, not custom-built. An Apple spokesperson would not give Bloomberg a comment on that.

Related: Apple announces goal to make products from 100% recycled materials

Here's the vehicle Apple's using to test autonomous driving https://t.co/prbKCuJBq6 http://pic.twitter.com/8oUvrXv7qC

— Bloomberg (@business) April 28, 2017

Apple is known for building their own software and hardware, as opposed to companies like Microsoft that focus on software usable on other companies’ hardware. But it appears they may be going a different direction with their self-driving cars, pursued under the name Project Titan. Last fall Bloomberg said the tech company would focus on software to be used in existing cars, which could help them get their product to market faster. They’re already up against tough competition: big players like Tesla, Uber, and Waymo, which began as Google’s self-driving project, have all made strides on their technology.

Project Titan has gone through its ups and downs. When Apple decided to zero in on software, they reassigned or laid off hundreds of engineers. Leadership changed around a year ago, with veteran executive Bob Mansfield taking over, and he’s scaled back ambitions.

So far California has given out permits to test self-driving vehicles to 30 companies, including startups, tech companies, and automakers. According to California’s DMV, Waymo and startup Zoox Inc. are also testing their technology with Lexus RX450 models.

Via Inc. and Bloomberg

Images via Wikimedia Commons and Paul Miller on Flickr

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