Israeli artist Ronit Baranga uses white clay and acrylic paint to create beautiful ceramics and sculptures of strange and unsettling things. You may have previously seen her sets of cups and saucers with weird sprouting fingers and blossoming lips that suggest these once passive objects are now seemingly active creations that can scuttle away and deny their original use. The juxtaposition of the functional with the surreal creates a troubling unease.

Baranga has developed her ideas from crockery to children with her recent series Tattooed Babies (2017), in which she made life-like sculptures of innocent sleeping babies whose delicate flesh has been decorated with elaborate tattoos. Baranga believes it is easier for the viewer “to relate to something figurative and beautiful, something sweet and peaceful. It’s easy for you to look at it and relate to it.” Then, on a second look, the viewer is aware that something is not quite right, something deeply unsettling about this beautiful creation. Her intention is to cause a conflict between “attraction and unease.”

I was interested in the gap between the tranquility and absolute lack of awareness on the one hand, and the domineering act that will leave a permanent mark on the other hand. The tattoo as a metaphor for perception, thoughts and understandings that we “insert under the skin” of our children. Content that will become part of their lives forever, even if they are not aware of it now. Content that our parents have tattooed on us.

Born in 1973, Baranga graduated in Psychology and Hebrew Literature from Haifa University in 1997. She then studied Art History at Tel-Aviv University before attending art school at Bet-Berl College, 2000-04. Baranga liked both painting and drawing but it was working with clay that she found the best means for expressing her ideas. Clay offered Baranga something tangible and malleable, something strong and fragile. After art school, she started exhibiting her ceramics in Italy, 2007, and since then has shown her work across the world. See more of Ronit Baranga’s work here or here.
 
See more of Ronit Baranga’s work and devilish babies, after the jump…
 

 
Brandsonsale are selling an infant sized pot leaf Halloween costume.

This Halloween dress up your baby in our most outrageous costume yet! The baby marijuana plant costume is just the right combo of cute and edgy that is sure to get stares and laughs from everyone.

I don’t know about “edgy”—isn’t weed how you’re supposed round those edges off?

Of course, the predictable pearl-clutching from the predictable prigs is happening. I won’t link to Fox News here, but the dumb people on one their crappy shows had an inane discussion about it to an ultimately boring end. I say whatever, it’s one day out of the year and it’s not like anyone’s naming their child “Dank Sticky.” At least I hope no one is. And most people dress their kids to reflect their own tastes and project their own values—no baby has ever chosen to wear a Ramones onesie.

Brandsonsale have a full line of pot-related costumes for adults, too: There’s the basic-bro pot leaf:
 

 
They also offer the hilarious-to-no-one-I-would-trust “baked potato”...
 

 
...and the totally racist Rasta outfit. Tell me that’s not blackface—at least in spirit if not in actual fact—but the baby pot leaf, people complain about. Because priorities.
 

 

The vRS Man-Pram, the “masculine” baby stroller for the man who has a little… baby.

I simply don’t understand certain strains of masculinity. See, I was under the impression that caring for a tiny living creature (one which you ostensibly produced through sexual intercourse with a lady) would make a man more secure about the image of his virility. However, a survey by Czech automaker, ŠKODA, found that more than three-quarters of the 1,000 British fathers polled would spend more time strolling with Junior if only the buggy screamed “I AM A MAN!!!” The so-called “Man Pram,” pictured in all its… glory, purports to increase paternal participation in care work by assuaging what must be the most delicate egos ever to emerge from the Y chromosome. I had to read the press release for the Corvette of strollers three times to be sure it wasn’t a joke.

ŠKODA has unveiled the ultimate baby buggy, dubbed the ‘vRS Mega Man-Pram’ – a high performance vehicle that has been designed to provide the ultimate baby transportation experience. ‘King Size’ buggy is the ultimate accessory for new dads.

Milton Keynes, 25th July 2013 - To celebrate the launch of the Octavia vRS – the fastest ŠKODA ever – the company gave a team of engineers the task of bringing the same qualities that go into the car to other everyday objects. These included the vRS Man-Pram and were highlighted in a new ad launching the third-generation Octavia vRS.

The pram’s vRS style makeover fits perfectly with a ŠKODA-commissioned survey of 1,000 dads which found that two thirds (76%) admitted they would spend more time pushing baby if they had access to a higher spec and more stylish buggy.

The result is a remarkable baby carriage: standing two metres high. The buggy comes complete with wing mirrors, hydraulic suspension, 20 inch alloy wheels, oversized brake callipers, anti-stress grips and a headlamp beam for night walks. Tots lucky enough to be carried on board can look forward to “sports-style upholstery” and “adjustable lumbar support”.

 
“Lumbar support?” Have these engineers ever held a baby? They’re basically jelly that shits. Lumbar support implies a specific part of the body needs to be stabilized, as opposed to the whole of their entire jiggly little person. And that’s really the least absurd feature of this absurdly cumbersome design. Those wheels? And how counterintuitive is the idea of a butch stroller? As soon as you see it, you just know that big (little?) daddy here has issues.

At the risk of invoking the sort of language that probably produces this kind of monstrosity, I feel compelled to address the would-be customers of this ridiculous stroller… dudes, man the hell up.
 

 
Via Gizmag

 
Now you know.

(via Neatorama and Fake Science)

 
I’ve always read that beyond the ages of 3-5, a child cannot develop “perfect pitch” so it’s a very good idea to start ‘em young if you want to raise the next Yo-Yo Ma or Duke Ellington. I was always impressed by friends of mine who made a point to make sure they had things like a complete Beatles CD collection in their babies room or who started their kids with piano lessons at two, but this article, from Science Daily makes the case that expectant mothers might want to start even earlier and maybe evan wear headphones around their tummies!

It turns out that when babies are born, they’ve already been absorbing the sounds that go on around them, in particular the sounds of their mother’s voice. So much so that they are, in a sense, already speaking their parents native tongue as the exit the womb. Researchers can hear it in their first gurgles and cries:

From their very first days, newborns’ cries already bear the mark of the language their parents speak, reveals a new study published online in Current Biology. The findings suggest that infants begin picking up elements of what will be their first language in the womb, and certainly long before their first babble or coo.

“The dramatic finding of this study is that not only are human neonates capable of producing different cry melodies, but they prefer to produce those melody patterns that are typical for the ambient language they have heard during their fetal life, within the last trimester of gestation,” said Kathleen Wermke of the University of W?ɬ