It’s felt like too long since we posted something on space exploration. So we took a rummage around NASA’s Image Archive, which has been loaded up onto Flickr for all to see. This shot that we love is of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module ascent stage, with Astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. aboard. The shot was taken from the Command and Service Modules in lunar orbit. This view is looking west with the earth rising above the lunar horizon. Astronaut Michael Collins, command module pilot, remained with the Command/Service Module in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Moon.

This is probably the most innovative use of tea we’ve seen in a bloody long time. German tea company Hälssen & Lyon has created the Tea Calendar, a calendar in which every day is a uniquely flavoured wafer of pressed tea leaves. Simply boil water, tear off the day from the calendar, immerse it in the hot water, let it steep, and enjoy the day’s tea. Hälssen & Lyon has only shipped the Tea Calendar to “select business partners” so far, and it is not available for purchase. Sad faces all round.

In the photo series “Ghosts in the Machine” by Mark Crummett, old electronic components serve as imaginary environments for tiny human figures (played by model railroad figurines). The “ghosts” in these machines are just folks, dwarfed by the technology that pervades their lives. Engaged in enigmatic activities in an out-of-scale, high tech landscape, workers toil on industrial-scale electronic components or move through an out-sized industrial/technical environment.

The engineers that keep Google Maps are always instaling awesome little easter eggs into the program for us to find. The most recent one is a Lord of the Rings reference. If you go to Google Maps, click “Get Directions,” select walking, and search for directions from The Shire to Mordor, this amusing Lord of the Rings Easter egg from Google will caution you that “One does not simply walk into Mordor.”

Designed by Italian firm Act Romegialli Architects, Green Box is a small camouflaged garage for a private residence situated on the Raethian Alps. While the interior is organized into a gardening room, cooking area, and a small dining/hang out space, it’s the exterior that makes this contemporary hobbit home pretty remarkable. The architects created a lightweight skeleton of galvanized metal and steel wire for the sole purpose of promoting a habitat for climbing vegetation. From a distance only a glowing light would suggest the space was even habitable.

As soon as 2014, the Burj Khalifa’s title as world’s tallest building will be no more.   Sky City, a planned 220-story prefab tower in Changsha, China, is taking its place. Broad Sustainable Building, the company in charge of the build, will begin construction on this monster next month, and aims to have it the whole thing finished in 210 days, which is mildly terrifying. Inside the 838-metre tall Sky City will be residential, office space, organic farms, recreation spaces, schools, a hospital and a keg load more.

See more over on the inhabitat.

How’s your geography skills? Or rather, how is your, ‘how well do you know random streets in random towns across the world? That’s the premise behind Geoguessr. Developed by Anton Wallen, the game will randomly dump you on a road somewhere in the world using Google Street Map and you have to then guess where you are. We can feel many a lunchtime being wasted with this one.

9 Film Frames is a single topic blog on Tumblr that presents the entirety of a movie in nine panels. The frames include anything from key plot points to popular scenes that have gone on to leave their mark in film history. The blog is an ongoing project that includes a wide variety of films from Orson Welles’ classic Citizen Kane and blockbusters like The Dark Knight and Inception to the more obscure and indie films like Melancholia and Memento, as well as David Lynch’s cult classic Mulholland Drive.

Want to see what London looked like back in the year 1927? Check out this beautiful colour footage shot in various London locations by Claude Friese-Greene, an early British pioneer of film. Frisse-Greene created a series of travelogues nearly 90 years ago using a colour process developed by his father William Friese-Greene. The film has been lovingly salvaged by the BFI, who has very kindly put it online for all to see.

It’s hard to say what’s more interesting about this video in which a CNN reporter tours the New South China Mall, the largest mall in the world when it was built five years ago, now a deserted ghost-mall. On the one had, there’s the “eerie urban landscape” of the mall itself, and on the other, there’s the comforting, sinophobic narrative of the clip: “China’s economy is huge and growing, America’s is contracting, but look, it’s all smoke and mirrors! The Chinese growth is just an illusion!” Note to CNN self, must always at least try to present an impartial view of the news to viewers.

Watch it for yourself.