Sister From Another Mister / Lab Burgers

Ashley is my sister from another mister. We coordinated our outfits unintentionally, but looking back through these photos, I realise how alike we appear! It's probably got a lot to do with the fact that we're both wearing wigs and teeny dresses. Or maybe it's because Ashley is wearing my clothes. For this outfit post, we went on a little pretend picnic in Victoria park outside of Sydney University, after getting up super early (like 7am, haha) to make sure the light wasn't too intense for our photos! I love that I have finally found someone else who will happily sacrifice sleep, comfort and shoot for hours on end just to get the perfect photo. I am going to miss this girl! Annika's top + skirt - c/o Choies (can also get it here) Annika's bag - Thrifted Annika's socks - Cotton on Annika's shoes - c/o Yeswalker Annika's headband - c/o Milanoo Ashley's dress - c/o Chictopia (The White Pepper) Ashley's sweater - Emoda Ashley's bag - Store in Italy Ashley's shoes - Yeswalker Ashley's headband - Claire's in Japan I wanted to talk properly about lab-grown burgers the other day, but didn't have the time because of my own lab-work (I'm not growing meat, but I am doing some pretty cool stuff). You probably heard all about it on the news, though - a researcher from Maastricht University recently let two people to taste-test a $300,000 hamburger patty made from meat he had grown in his lab. Image source: Not an artificial burger but a super cute crochet burger from bottletopboy on Etsy. Why is this such exciting news? The process No animals die in the process of making lab-meat. A small amount of special cells called "stem cells" are extracted from the shoulder muscle of a cow. A "stem cell" just means that the cell has not yet decided what final form it will take - it's a normal process of growing, or regenerating body tissue after an injury. Stem cells can divide indefinitely in this "undecided" state, so after extraction they are grown with nutrients to encourage them to multiply. After you have about a million stem cells, you let them "decide" to be muscle cells by separating them into different dishes and varying the levels of nutrients and signals in the dish to mimic the inside of the animal. The cells then grow into strips of muscle. Bundle them together, and you have your hamburger patty. What this means: Much less animal slaughter and cruelty. As soon as lab-grown meat becomes commercially available and affordable, I know that I will never eat meat from actual whole animals again. I hope that in 100 years time, people will be quite appalled by the idea that we used to slaughter animals for meat. Much less environmental strain. Lab-grown meat will use 55% of the energy of the current beef industry - a huge cut when you consider how large this industry is - and will also only emit 4% of the greenhouse gases of the current beef industry. Much more free land - lab-grown meat will only use 1% of the land that conventionally farmed beef uses. Hopefully, much less starvation. The human population is only going to keep rising and currently 1 billion go hungry every day. More people = more demand for meat, so having a system in place which doesn't use as much land an energy will be easier on the planet, meaning that hopefully we can produce a lot more of it to feed everyone! Another reason to be super excited by science! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Space Age Children & Stardust

I think this is easily the coolest piece of clothing that I have ever owned. In my mind, kitsch clothes are the absolute best - which is why this skirt and my teapot dress are now my most treasured items of clothing. The print on the skirt is a 1956 illustration for biscuits, done in the space-age style (source of image - and check this link out because there is some great 1950s art to enjoy). Choies, where this skirt comes from, has got a whole bunch of wonderfully bizarre, kitsch clothes (LIKE THESE) which I am extremely appreciative of! top - c/o Sheinside skirt - c/o Choies cardigan - Thrifted necklace - c/o Les Folles Marquises hat - c/o Wholesale I absolutely love it when science merges with art. Spanish artist Sergio Albiac uses computer programs to generate his works, and his most recent project "Stardust" uses images from the Hubble space telescope to piece together portraits. For the portraits, he uses images that people from all over the world send to him. Naturally, as soon as I saw this - on IFLS, where else? - I jumped at the chance to have portraits of myself made. This is the result! You can still get your own ones done, and both help contribute to this art project and get your own space portraits - just follow the instructions on the website! "The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff." - Carl Sagan, Cosmos I hope you're all having a marvellous day! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Do We Miss Summer Yet?

Meanwhile, it's winter back in Sydney. And it is damn cold. I wish I had had this cropped camisole with me while I was facing the European summer heatwave just a couple of days ago - it would have been perfect! It's actually part of a two-piece suit and it's ridiculously cool. I can't wait for the weather to warm up, and to wear it with a very wide-brim hat/floral wreath and a pair of jellies. cropped top - c/o Choies shorts - c/o Choies tights - Kmart necklace - Claire's hat - c/o Wholesale This is slightly old news by now, but on the 19th of July NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which is currently orbiting Saturn and touring its moons (including ones which might have life like Titan) took this beautiful photo. The arrow in the photo is not a massive arrow-shaped alien spaceship orbiting Earth, but rather indicates Earth and our moon, which together make up that tiny blue dot in the photo. That's what Earth looks like from 1.5 billion kilometres away! (Image from NASA) Everyone who reported on this image in the news focused on Earth (gosh, we're egocentric), but I think the really really amazing thing about the photo is Saturn (hello! It takes up a good two-thirds of the image!), how it is eclipsing the sun, and the shot of its rings! The photo will end up being stitched together with many other photos taken of Saturn, and released in a few weeks time. I'm pretty excited for it! If I could be any type of photographer, I think I'd most like to be a spacecraft ;) Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Plaid & Lace / Capturing an Asteroid

I really like pairing plaid with lace. This plaid skater skirt from Choies is exactly what I've been looking after for ages - it also looks great (although super preppy, but I don't mind) paired with suspenders. This lace shirt is also a versatile wardrobe piece - throw it on over a dress on a cooler day when you don't want to completely cover up with a sweater. I've been doing this a lot lately, now we're finally coming into some colder weather here! shirt - c/o Oasap skirt - c/o Choies shoes - Chicory socks - c/o Sock Dreams So NASA's next big plan, after sending Curiosity up to Mars last year (...who incidentally hopefully won't be obliterated by a possible collision with Mars and a comet next year, but that's another story), is to capture an asteroid and bring it into stable orbit around the Earth. What NASA want to do is to use an unmanned robot vehicle to capture the asteroid, then bring it back into orbit where it can be studied and explored by humans, and also mined for things like water - to provide to the international space station (for whom it currently costs thousands of dollars per kg of water sent there). Exactly how the asteroid will be captured is still unclear, but NASA believe with new technology coming out of physics and engineering, it can be done within 10 years. I think that this is really exciting. Although hopefully NASA will be able to figure out how to stop the asteroid colliding with all the thousands of satellites and space junk currently in orbit around Earth. It's a pretty huge job! Read more about it here. Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Synaesthesia

Beige, stripes and a bow-tie! These are some amazingly cool new stockings from my sponsor Oasap. Though pricey, I'm happy to recommend these ones because they are thick and don't seem like they'll ladder easily (I've also worn them for a few days, and they're all good so far!) There's also a black & white version instead of the so-called "nude" version for anyone with darker skin - I've always though it's pretty unfair that standard "nude" colour always actually means "nude white person" colour, because there's a heck of a lot more skin types out there than this so called "nude". Anyway. They're still cool tights. blouse - c/o Choies skirt - Wholesale tights - c/o Oasap shoes - Chicory (Japan) hat - c/o Wholesale bag - Vintage After talking about colour perception in my last few posts, a number of people brought up synaesthesia.  Synaesthesia is one of the first things to get me interested in neuroscience and the study of human perception, and it's an incredibly wonderful and weird phenomenon! Synaesthesia is a rare neurological trait, leading to the crossing over of perceptual information: that means people with it can "see colours" in numbers or letters, "taste" words, "smell" days of the week, or "feel" that certain words or numbers have distinct personalities. It can involve any of the senses. Someone talking, for example, can simultaneously be perceived as sounds and as a taste on the tongue by someone with synaesthesia. The most common form is what is called "grapheme colour synaesthesia", where individual letters and numbers are associated strongly with different colours. This type can often help synesthetes with memory tasks where long strings of words, letters or numbers need to be remembered. It's unclear which parts of the brain are involved in synaesthesia, although a leading theory is that it's due to "cross-wiring" in the brain: neurons (brain cells that can conduct electricity) that are meant to be in sensory system cross over into another sensory system. There is also a theory that all babies are born with "cross-wired" brains, which as we grow, are "pruned back", and that synaesthesia is a failure of the brain to do this properly. (Though the word "failure" puts synaesthesia in a negative light, which I don't think it should be at all. I think it would be a pretty cool thing to have - although experiencing the taste of  mouldy detergent every time you heard a particular person's voice wouldn't be so awesome). The wikipedia page on Synesthesia provides some pretty sweet reading. Hoping you're all feelin' fine, Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Fairy Bread, Sleepy Head

Check out these Oasap tights! *Droooool*. Aren't they awesome? (They're not super dooper thin either, if you're thinking of purchasing them!) And yes, I cut a fringe into my new wig - and I'm not sure if I made it better or worse. Time will tell... blouse - Vintage sweater - Vintage necklace - Claire's (Japan) tights - c/o Oasap skirt - Vintage shoes - c/o Yes Walker hat - c/o Wholesale Why do we yawn? One of my new favourite science bloggers, Katie from the Molecular Circus, tried to answer this question on her blog the other day. It's a really interesting read! There are several theories as to why we yawn, and science still doesn't really know - my favourite theory is the empathy one, but it's likely there are a couple of reasons for the existence of yawning. (Click here to read her post!) Also, did I make all you guys yawn with all this talk of yawning? No? How about a photo - will that help? *YAWN* Hope you're all having a happy day! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Lace & Hearts / Mind Reading & Barnum

As promised yesterday, here is my new Choies wig and Yes Walker flats together in an outfit! It is super dooper hot weather today (Australia doesn't seem to understand that it is autumn yet), but I really wanted to wear these tights, so I paired it all with this simple, summery lace dress from Koogal. dress - c/o Koogal tights - c/o My Tights shoes - c/o Yes Walker necklace - c/o Oasap wig - c/o Choies Okay, guys. For something different today, I'm going to tell you, yes you, reading right now, some things about yourself. Before you read below, just read this list of qualities, and take tick each one off if it applies to you. And then ask yourself - does Annika know me? Has she read my mind?? (Didn't you guys know that I can read minds now?) So, here goes - Most of the time you are positive and cheerful, but there is a time in the past where you were very upset. At times you feel very sure of yourself, whereas other times you are not as confident. You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. At times you have serious doubts whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing, but generally you have had a positive influence on the people in your life. You have just experienced what is known in psychology as "The Barnum Effect". Popular with astrology sections in magazines and psychics, the Barnum effect shows how easily we can be manipulated into believing that the vaguest statements are actually meaningful insights into our own lives. Think about the above sentences. Did they apply to you? They probably also applied to most of the people reading this post. Okay, so it's likely you thought this test in particular was silly, because it's obvious that I, Annika, am not going to know all about you and your personality through some kind of psychic blogger powers. But this test, when given by some kind of authority figure (or by someone who claims to have 'mysterious powers') works extremely well. In fact, the original "Barnum test" was masked as a "personality test" (just like a self-test you might find in a trashy mag), in which psychology students in the 1940s had to answer some questions on their personality. They were then all given pieces of paper with "feedback", and asked to rate how well it applied to themselves. Most gave it a rating of 4 to 5 out of 5 for accuracy. Only afterwards was it disclosed that all the "feedback" given was entirely identical to everyone elses. (original image source) Our brains are interesting things, and it's good to know how your own one can be fooled ;) I hope you're all super well, Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr