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Happy solstice 🌺☀️🌸

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Frau im Mond / The Woman in the Moon. Fritz Lang, 1929. 

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(via original_2380f3458858f7acb5cf50d22a88d7d3.png (1788×1788))

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I know these shoes

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Really happy to have been in Berlin for this. :)

Lichtgrenze

8.000 glowing balloons were installed by the former course of the the wall and released into the sky to remember the 25th anniversary of the Fall of Berlin Wall . The temporary installation based on idea by Christopher Bauder and Marc Bauder.

The footage shot in Mauer Park. Special thanks to Seda Tunca… 

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Stars in the style of Pohflepp

Milky Way

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Lovely shot by my friend Matt. <3

Ann Hamilton - The Event of a Thread

photo by: Matt Nuzzaco

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It's good to see that music snobbery does not change based on your space status. 

Music snobbery in space

Apollo 11 audio transcripts

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Very excited to be planning a trip to NYC while this is up at PS1 :)

The Rain Room is coming to NY next month! 

[more info] 

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Lovely lovely. It'd be amazing to do this on an entire globe.

Create 3D printed sculptures of your flights. 

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Space data visualization. Be still my heart.

Visualisations of all the (geotagged) photos taken from the International Space Station, by Nathan Bergey.

The full article is well worth looking at.

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Pho-tek Traveler. 

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To answer, "Why California?"

Point Reyes, California.

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The new Atoms for Peace is out. Make your ears happy.

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I remember getting an email at 2 a.m. in Berlin. I was by myself and not around anyone who knew Amit. I felt more alone than I could remember in a long time. I really just wanted to talk to my friends back in San Francisco.

After Amit was diagnosed with cancer, my perspective on life changed drastically, yet again. The first time was 7 years ago when I lost a great friend from college to a car accident caused by the rains of hurricane Katrina. That was the first time I truly realized that you can never spend enough time with the people you love.

Cherish every moment with the ones you love, resolve conflicts, be positive. Life is too short to let most things get in the way.

Look your friends and family in the eyes and say I love you as much as possible. Tell them why they are awesome.

Amit, you are so awesome and I'm glad you are here. <3

One year ago today my doctor called me in the afternoon.

I was in bed. He cleared his throat a couple times and then he told me the reason I’d been feeling weak, seeing weird blindingly bright spots in my vision, and had a fever that wouldn’t go away was because my blood was full of ineffective, malformed white blood cells.

I had AML leukemia. If I did nothing, I’d die in a few weeks.

A few hours later, I had a flight to the East Coast booked for early the next morning. I spent the night in a San Francisco hospital getting blood transfusions and antibiotics to allow me to fly.

I landed in NYC, my parents picked me up, and we drove to Yale’s Smilow Cancer Hospital. When they started pumping cell-killing poison into my bloodstream, the hospital became my home and my prison for the next few months.

I cried. I felt sorry for myself. I didn’t believe it was true.

Friends banded together and started drives across the country, then across the globe. I did interview after interview. Newspapers, TV, and radio helped spread the word. Facebook, twitter, and tumblr got people to drives. I couldn’t leave the hospital, and sometimes I was throwing up too much or too weak to talk. We kept going.

We organized online, and my prison became our stem cell drive campaign headquarters.

Friends donated time, money, connections. Strangers sent mail, hundreds of photos, and organized drives. Celebrities made videos. Tens of thousands registered to be stem cell donors. (Matches for others in need continue to come out of those drives.)

The nurses and doctors continued to pump poison into my blood, eliminating cancerous cells and healthy cells alike. They hoped to hold the leukemia at bay until a donor could be found.

A few months later, we found a donor! Friends and strangers had banded together to save my life.

I had my transplant in late January. And then began the year-long recovery process I’m currently in:

15-20 pills a day, on-and-off steroids to combat Graft vs Host Disease, nausea, weakness, muscle atrophy, scopes down my throat, probes up my nose until they hit my throat. Weekly, then bi-monthly blood tests, immunosuppressants - which keep my immune system from attacking my organs, but also make me susceptible to disease. Needles, needles, needles, so many needles, fevers, infections, severe mucositis, so much pain they gave me a button to press to give myself morphine whenever I wanted, anti-nausea drugs that resulted in weeks of lost memories, blood clots, followed by months of blood thinners, teeth issues, corneal damage, a slate of other issues a little too graphic to write about, crazy painful out-of-nowhere hand and leg cramps…

…all bumps along the road.

My counts are up. There’s no sign of recurrence yet. If I’m lucky, there never will be. I feel more normal with each passing week.

I was able to leave the hospital, and then able to leave my parents’ home.

I got to spend the summer in NYC, reconnecting with old friends, and returning to work at Photojojo part-time. I just saw my brother get married, saw a live volcano in Hawaii, saw the sun set above the clouds and the clearest night sky in the world. I visited Portland for the first time, and spent a week in SF working and seeing friends. Now we’re planning a road trip to move back West. We leave in a few weeks… on motorcycles.

A year ago I was on a plane from SF to CT because I was dying.

Today I’m on a plane from SF to CT, and I feel more alive than I have in a very long time.

Photo @ Twin Peaks last week in SF. (See pics of our adventures by following @superamit on Instagram or follow this Tumblr!)

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A man and his muppet