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Osama Bin Laden

Comics

Bin Laden, Zuckerberg, and Other Villains Mashed Up With Comic-Book Bad Guys

By Alison Herman on

Brazilian designer and illustrator Butcher Billy (also known as Bily Mariano da Luz) is over the “pure escapism” of comic-book art. To fix that, he’s created an awesome/creepy series of mashups between classic comic villains and real-life shady figures. Some are more villainous than others — Hitler vs. Mark Zuckerberg, anyone? — but whatever your opinion of his subjects, it’s hard not to find Luz’s handiwork impressive. Each mashup is set against a description of the real-life figure and even comes with an accompanying GIF, available at Luz’s Behance site. They’re certainly effective: if you thought Bin Laden was scary before, take a look at him with green scales and goblin eyes. … Read More

Film

Flavorwire’s Flick of the Week: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Is the Film of the Year

By Jason Bailey on

Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty is a great American film: complicated, nuanced, searching, piercing, difficult — and yet thrilling and satisfying all the same. In dramatizing the nine-year manhunt for Osama bin Laden, Bigelow examines some of the most pressing and important questions of our time; she’s asking what it is to be a “post 9/11″ American, but it’s a question she asks without actually, y’know, asking it. As with her Hurt Locker, a film that grows only more powerful and prescient, she’s patently uninterested in the pedantic. It is a film full of talk: in meetings, in interrogations, in negotiations. But she’ll do nothing so gauche as telling us what to think. The fully engaged audience gleans characterization through action, message through montage, and draws its own conclusions. … Read More

Design

This Miniature Model Helped Bring Down Bin Laden

By Caroline Stanley on

Yesterday, we looked at some mindblowing miniature versions of cities and landmarks from around the world. While lovely, none of them can touch the historical import of this once-classified model of Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, which was used to help plan the Navy SEAL raid that brought down the terrorist leader. Based on satellite images obtained by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the incredibly detailed 1:84 replica took a special team six weeks to construct, right down to the tiny concertina wire on the styrofoam walls. Crazy, right? Click through to get a closer look. … Read More

Pop Culture

The Most Surprising Twitter Trends of 2011

By Alison Nastasi on

Twitter has revealed its top trending topics for 2011 — a list that always manages to surprise us on some level every year. With millions of voices chattering in one place, the breakdown provides a fascinating snapshot of popular culture — and yes, highlights plenty of trends we should probably feel embarrassed about wasting our precious 140 characters on. If you told us on New Year’s Day that some of these names, events, and subjects would have been the words at everyone’s fingertips, we’d have been shocked. What didn’t trend is equally curious, and we examine it all past the break. Ignore the insane ramblings of today’s “#nevertrustagirl” and “#YouKnowAFatPersonInvented” topics, and see what surprised us in this year in review. Leave your picks below. … Read More

Design

Morbidly Attractive Invitations to Famous Assassinations

By Judy Berman on

Page through the Flavorwire archives and a few things will quickly become clear: that we love Patti Smith, that we have a fascination with photos of abandoned spaces, and that stylish, pop-culture-oriented graphic design abounds on the Internet. But with all the great posters and prints out there, it’s rare to see a designer do something truly unexpected, which is why we’ve spent much of the morning analyzing our own reaction to Evan Stremke’s Invitation to an Assassination series. Combining evocative minimalist images and famous quotes to create actual invitations to historic assassinations, Stremke raises the uncomfortable question of whether it’s possible to find beauty and fun in humanity’s darker moments. His invitations to the death of such beloved figures as John Lennon, Harvey Milk, and Martin Luther King Jr. may be pleasing to the eye — but it’s difficult to actually enjoy them. See what we mean — and share our ambivalence — after the jump. … Read More

Art

Street Artist Beast Gives the NYC Subway Map a Dose of Viagra

By Judy Berman on

No, friend, you are not the only who appreciates the phallic qualities of the New York subway map. Street artist Beast thinks the city has become more, er, stimulated since the death of Osama bin Laden and pasted up some posters that rotate the map to make Manhattan look primed for action, with captions like “Something changed” and “Bin is out, Nyc is up.” The website that originally reported on the posters, Brooklyn Street Art, seems to be down, but according to Gothamist‘s post,  they’ve already been removed. Which is fine, we guess, because as much as we love street art, the idea of Bin Laden’s death making New Yorkers horny, of all things, only makes us cringe. … Read More

Architecture

Pic of the Day: Bin Laden’s Mansion

By Caroline Stanley on

Dark Roasted Blend has put together a fascinating set of photos of the abandoned houses of super villains. Among the featured spots is a waterfront mansion in Winter Garden, Florida that was once the home of Khalil Bin Laden, Osama Bin Laden’s brother, who left the country soon after 9/11. (The Al Qaeda leader reportedly spent a lot of time here visiting family.) Click through to take a tour of the dilapidated structure, which was built back in the ’20s and is worth an estimated $1.5 million. … Read More