By midnight tonight, photographer Phil Nesmith needs to have raised $2,000 to fund his mission to the Gulf Coast. Once there, Nesmith will use a wet collodion photographic process (read: old-ass-looking photography) to document what he finds. With $2,000, he can haul his gear, his glass, and a portable darkroom there to make the images. But with 9 hours to go, Nesmith has already raised $3,370 -- and now he's on the road. more ›

The Atlantic's James Fallows points us to this Google Earth-powered tool from Paul Rademacher that allows users to overlay the size of the Deepwater Horizon spill over any metropolitan area. Placing the image of the spill over the D.C. metro area provides a stunning look at just how big this disaster really is. more ›

Happy Almost Holidays, Washington. With both Monday and Tuesday counting as a holiday for the federal government this year, most of D.C. is staring down a nice, long holiday break today. Even if you don't celebrate Christmas, federal holidays are great for a lot of other reasons besides a day off - you don't have to feed parking meters, for instance. But The Examiner reports that that fact isn't stopping people from shoveling coins into meters on holidays anyway, especially those fancy new multispace meters: last Veterans Day, the city collected nearly $1,500 from multispace meters. DDOT says it is going to put stickers on the new meters along K Street to remind people that they don't have to pay on holidays. more ›

SFist witnessed a new apartment building tszuj the skyline with spectacular, gaudy turquoise aplomb, the (informal) renaming of the Mission/SOMA neighborhood border, the return of the Maltese Falcon, the Mayor Gavin Newsom mea culpa-ing over his Hawaiian getaway during the oil spill, and double-decker buses hitting the streets of San Francisco. Oh, and some baseball player named Barry Bonds is a liar whose pants, it seems, are totally on fire. LAist continues to cover the... more ›

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too – two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the... more ›

It's another nice day out there, Washington. Or, is it? Actually forecasters are calling for rain (but no wintry mix here) in the late part of the day, so bring your umbrella even though it doesn't seem like you really need one right now. And while you're searching the depths of your closet for one, consider this question: Now that the plans for a new Madame Tussauds wax museum in downtown Washington are officially coming... more ›

Several news organizations are reporting that employees of the Federal Government working at 1425 New York Avenue should not come to work today due to an oil spill. The building involved houses the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General. There's no word on the cause of the spill or the condition of wildlife inside the building; according to NBC4, officials are not yet saying what kind of oil was spilled, so all the... more ›