Romy Menegazzi

Note: With the winter season soon approaching, P:R is dusting off their winter wardrobe and artist Hanie Mohd read our mind with these mesmerizing pictures of DC heroines (and a villainess or two) in full-on sweater weather. – Chris A.

By now you’re probably aware of our Society6 curated art collection, The Design Milk Dairy. Each week, I have been adding new prints to the collection, usually on a theme. The DMD offers prints for sale along with iPhone cases, t-shirts, laptop skins, and more in support of the online art community, something I’m very passionate about.

The Egg by Gabriela Da Costa

I would love to have you join me in suggesting some of your favorite prints to be included in the collection. Browse Society6 here. Or, join and start selling your own prints!

Kitchenware by Ankepankedesign (framed) – it also looks cool as a laptop skin.

Food by Aälejandro Díazs

Retro Kitchen by Elisandra

In an ongoing effort to support independent artists from around the world, Design Milk is proud to partner with Society6 to offer The Design Milk Dairy, a special collection of Society6 artists’ work curated by Design Milk and our readers. Proceeds from the The Design Milk Dairy help us bring Design Milk to you every day.

It’s nawt a doll! It’z an ACTION FIGURE!

but dat duznt meen itz nawt a pussycat doll.

I’m gonna hold you in my arms foreverrrrrrrrrrr [yawn]
Gonna try and make up for the times [Oh boy I’m tie-tie]
I hurt you sooooooooooo [falls asleep]

Romantic sloth times courtesy of Laura S. Sergio Mendes genius lyrics via Songlyrics.com.

Moar gifs dis-a-way!

Mmmmm, fresh-picked kitten peach. (sniiiff) Smells so good. We should make a pie…

A kitten a day, especially Tuesday, keeps the doctor away, Anna H. (Anna’s kitten is named Tuesday.)

I love the modular concept of the Stacks iPhone 4 case by Case-Mate. I kind of wish you could pick your own colors and customize or upload a Colourlovers palette.

…by photographing it hiding in a collecting tube:

The perfectly round reflection of the tube’s opening on the saucer-shaped eyes gives the poor guy the illusion of pupils.

I was hoping for a half-decent imitation of Thomas Shahan. Instead, I’m left with comic relief.

I woke this morning to see I’d been linked by astroblogger Phil Plait, reminding me of a pontification I’ve been meaning to pontificate.

All fields of science are more unknown than known. That’s pretty much a given considering the span between the enormity of the Universe and the subatomic details of its smallest particles. But not all fields are unknown in ways where non-professionals readily step up to make contributions. Astronomy and Entomology have this in common: regular people, working in their yards, have the ability to discover fundamental new things.

Space is huge. BugSpace is also huge. Maybe there are three million insect species. Maybe there are 5 million. Or, 15. Or, 80. No one really knows. In any scenario, though, a majority of species remain in the dark. For those species that are known, most have only a name and a location. Their food, behavior, chemistry, and genetics are simply undocumented. Thus, we know little about the species we know exist, and nothing about the rest.

But these are just words. You can catch a glimmer of the vastness of BugSpace yourself right here on the internet.

BugGuide.net serves one region, North America, that ranks among the least biodiverse of the continents. And, it contains only a fraction of the described species that occur here. Yet, have a surf through BugGuide’s database and see how quickly you get lost. Here’s a random starting point if you need one. A staggering number of bugs are out there!

Insects are large enough that most can be seen with the naked eye, and with a little magnification their features can be examined. A hand lens, digital camera, or  microscope renders the untapped diversity of insects accessible to nearly anyone. Thus, entomology is both unknown and available to the amateur, and that means discovery is ripe for the picking. Just last week, for example, a citizen-scientist rediscovered a species of lady beetle thought extinct in New York.

As another similarity between the disciplines, light pollution is terrible for both astronomers and insects. But that’s a topic for another day.

Mandy Besek makes textile-based jewelry, which she sells on Etsy that looks to be inspired by sea creatures, topography and geology.