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Parents, rejoice: For the first time ever, theres a Lego brick so tiny that you cant see it, let alone step on it. The brick in question is a microscopic sculpture created by U.K.-based artist David A Lindon. Its made from a standard red square Lego, and it looks like one, too, aside from the fact that it measures just 0.02517 millimeter by 0.02184 millimeter (about the size of a white blood cell). As of this month, the brick has snagged the Guinness World Record for the smallest-ever handmade sculpture, measuring four times smaller than the previous record holder. We’ve seen lunar Legos, renewable Legos, and giant Legos, but this brick might just be the most innovative one yetand the process of creating it was almost as unusual as the object itself. The world’s tiniest Lego is the smallest of three micro Legos Lindons created, according to his website. Materials science firm Spectrographic professionally measured each Lego to confirm the Guinness record. With all three sculptures, one smaller than the other, they are so microscopic that even though you know where they are, on the head of a pin, when you look with your own eyes you still cannot see them, Lindon writes. [Image: David A Lindon/Hammond Gallieries/SWNS] Lindon has been creating micro paintings and sculptures since 2021. His past works include a version of Stonehenge small enough to live atop a miniature pushpin, a statue of Beetlejuice thats less than half the size of a match head, and a rendition of Vincent van Goghs Sunflowers that fits inside the eye of a needle. To bring his works to life, Lindon uses a Nikon SMZ25 microscope that requires a foot pedal to control zoom and focus. Then, he works with what he calls micro precision tools and materials such as micro-size pigments, dust, minerals, Kevlar strands, carbon, and carpet fibers to carve and shape his creations. Unsurprisingly, this niche practice presents a host of specific design challenges. In an interview with the BBC, Lindon shared that hes trained himself to work between the beats of his heart to prevent the pulse in his fingertips from destroying his work. To create his record-breaking Lego, he said, he worked 6 to 10 hours each night so as to avoid the vibrations brought on by passing traffic. On his website, Lindon details a slew of other threats to his work, including static electricity, sneezing, coughing, or a breath of wind from an open window. My first Amy Winehouse is still somewhere in our bedroom carpet or stuck on the sole of my shoe, we never found her, Lindon writes. Luckily, he adds, his concentration has since improved, allowing him to hold still enough to create his microscopic works of art. Still, his practice takes time: Each piece may take several months to get right, he says. While the record-holding Lego brick is unlikely to go on sale anytime soongiven that its essentially invisibleit remains a fascinating testament to the human capacity for artistic perseverance.
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E-Commerce
Spring is just around the corner, ushering in new growth, brighter days, and the heady anticipation of summer. For those of us with sizable screen time, springs arrival also means that the dreary weather is no longer an excuse for spending hours doomscrolling TikTok and Instagram Reels until our eyes glaze over. And now there’s an app that can help you feel like it’s spring year-round. Rhys Kentish is a senior software engineer at the London-based app design firm Brightec. Hes spent the past four months building an app that makes users literally touch grass before they can open social media. I was sick and tired of my reflex in the morning being to reach for my phone and scroll for upwards of an hour, Kentish says. It didn’t feel good and I wasn’t getting anything out of it. [Image: courtesy Rhys Kentish] His solution is an app called Touch Grass, currently available for preorder and expected to debut on the App Store for iOS devices around mid-March. The apps premise comes from a jab that gained popularity during the early pandemic, typically used to inform chronically online users that theyd become disconnected from real life. Touch grass [is] used when someone is doing something weird, stupid, or pointless, according to Urban Dictionary. It means they need to come back to reality, they need to get some fresh air and get back in touch with how the real world works. Kentishs app works by allowing users to select their most distracting apps, then blocking said apps by default until the user ventures outside to touch grass. Once they take a photo of grass and submit it to the app, they can then choose the amount of time theyd like their problem apps to be unblocked. Currently, the app uses Google’s image-labeling Cloud Vision API to verify that the grass has, indeed, been touched. However, Kentish says, the app has gone so viral that hes considering training his own image-detection model for cost-reduction purposes before Touch Grass makes its App Store debut. The apps current iteration includes a pixelated 8-bit logo and a grass-scanning screen inspired by retro sci-fi aesthetics. Kentish plans to use a freemium model to support the app, wherein subscribers can pay a fee to block unlimited apps and categories, view their screen time history, and purchase extra monthly skips to get around touching grass (free users get one monthly skip). According to Kentish, 50% of skip purchase profits will go toward wildlife conservation projects in the U.K. The proposition of the Touch Grass app is simple: Before your digital fatigue drives you to embark on a full-on social media detox, maybe just try getting some fresh air.
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E-Commerce
The latest Big Tech-funded effort to improve affordable housing sees the solution in people’s backyards. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced today that its providing seed funding for a startup that helps turn backyard dwellings into new homeownership opportunities for Americans who are increasingly getting locked out. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) announced a $750,000 investment in BuildCasa, a California-based startup seeking to increase the supply of ADUs, or accessory dwelling units. The funding is part of CZI’s Affordable Starter Home Initiative, which aims to provide funding for a number of pilot programs addressing housing accessibility and affordability. Were excited about BuildCasas model because it is creating new homes within existing, high-opportunity communities that can be sold for less than typical market rate homes without utilizing public funding to subsidize the projects, which is extremely limited, Amaya Bravo-France, a program officer at the CZI, told Fast Company. [Image: BuildCasa] Founded in 2022 and named one of Fast Company‘s Most Innovative Companies last year, BuildCasa utilizes California law SB 9, which allows owners of large lots to split them up. The startups model, and its proprietary means of analyzing building opportunities, pairs landowners with developers, allowing a homeowner to sell part of their land to a developer, who can add one or two housing units and then sell them separately. The process creates additional density in existing residential areas, and adds much-needed supply to a state in the throes of a growing housing shortage. The grant will fund construction for eight housing units for those making 80% of AMI (area median income, a measure used to guarantee affordable housing goes to those in need). BuildCasa recently closed on a pair of properties in Sacramento using these grant funds, and the other six should be finished in the next two years. The Sacramento two-bedroom homes will be 650 square feet each and go for $325,000 (the area median price is $477,000). BuildCasa expects to break ground in the third quarter of this year. These kinds of lot split arrangements needs parcels that measure at least 2,400 square feet. [Image: BuildCasa] Decades of regressive housing policy and NIMBY activism on the local level has blocked this crucial missing middle development, leaving us with a catastrophic shortage of housing that young, lower, and middle-income families can afford to buy, said Paul Steidl, BuildCasas cofounder and CPO, in a statement. The only way out of this generational crisis is to build more housing. So far, BuildCasa has helped add nearly 100 units, which are either approved or under construction, across California, concentrated mostly in Sacramento and the Bay Area. One reason they havent finished any units yet is that under Californias new laws, subdividing a lot via this process can take 10 to 18 months alone. [Image: BuildCasa] Can backyard building provide affordable housing at scale? CZI says it chose BuildCasa because it believes the startup can help fill a gap in affordable housing production and provide more entry-level homeownership opportunities. [Image: BuildCasa] BuildCasas model stuck out because they utilize private capital to build these homes, but are able to offer them for more affordable rates, says Bravo-France. They also partner with homeowners to leverage their excess land to build these new affordable homes, allowing homeowners to receive a financial benefit from their land value while also contributing to solving CAs housing crisis. Part of the appeal of this model, says BuildCasa CEO Ben Bear, was the ease of land acquisition. Often, affordable housing, especially larger apartment projects, requires substantial land, which adds to the cost, and the dense collection of new units can trigger neighborhood and NIMBY pushback. By using surplus land in oversize lots, and spreading a handful of units across numerous sites, the new housing blends into the neighborhood, Bear says. Its just there, coexisting side-by-side, which is really the way development used to be 100 years ago, he says. You have different types of units, apartments, and single family homes, all on the same street. BuildCasa believes theres significant opportunity for more such units, both statewide an nationally, if laws can be amended to mirror those in California. The firms algorithm has identified 1 million parcels of land in California alone where a lot split and ADU development would be possible.
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