Nine years ago, Tom Carter traveled from San Francisco to China, responding to a job posting that turned out to be a scam. He managed to find another job as a teacher, and saved enough money to embark on a 56,000 km trip through all of China's 33 provinces that lasted two years. Carrying a camera – just a a 4-megapixel point-and-shoot – Carter captured some amazing images of the widely varying landscape, people, and architecture across the nation. Photo: Buddhist pilgrim family from Sichuan. (Photo by Tom Carter via The Atlantic)

“In honor of Friday’s World Press Freedom Day, the non-governmental organization Reporters sans frontières (Reporters Without Borders) launched a campaign depicting world-famous dictators giving everyone the finger, or the international equivalent thereof”. – Kay Steiger. (Photo by Vincent Bousserez/Reporters Without Borders)

Inspired by high school architecture class where he was assigned to create simple paper models using cut paper manilla folders, San Francisco-based designer Luca Iaconi-Stewart went home to begin construction on an extremely ambitious project: a 1:60 scale reproduction of a Boeing 777 using some of the techniques he learned in class. That was in 2008, when Iaconi-Stewart was just a junior in high school.

A demonstrator wears a mask during a protest inside the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Civic Center station on August 15, 2011 in San Francisco, California. The hacker group “Anonymous” staged a demonstration at a BART station this evening after BART officials turned off cell phne service in its stations last week during a disruptive protest following a fatal shooting of a man by BART police. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

“Amphilophus citrinellus is a large cichlid fish endemic to the San Juan River and adjacent watersheds in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. In the aquarium trade A. citrinellus is often sold under the trade name of Midas cichlid. A. citrinellus are omnivorous and their diet consists of plant material, molluscs and smaller fish”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Two Midas Cichlid (lat: amphilophus citrinellus) fish are seen in an aquarium at Hellabrunn zoo on December 23, 2009 in Munich, Germany. (Photo by Alexandra Beier/Getty Images)

The main church in the town of San Damian Texoloc, Mexico stands in front of the Popocatepetl volcano as is spews ash and vapor early Tuesday, July 9, 2013. Last Saturday, Mexico's National Center for Disaster Prevention raised the volcano alert from Stage 2 Yellow to Stage 3 Yellow, the final step before a Red alert, when possible evacuations could be ordered after the Popocatepetl volcano spit out a cloud of ash and vapor 2 miles (3 kilometers) high over several days of eruptions. (Photo by J. Guadalupe Perez/AP Photo)

People take part in a water gun battle as part of the annual Songkran festival, also known as water festival, the traditional Thai New Year celebrations, at the tourist spot of Khao San Road in Bangkok, Thailand, 13 April 2023. Thailand celebrates its first water-splashing Songkran festival following a three-year pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Songkran is celebrated with splashing water and putting powder on each other's faces as a symbolic sign of cleansing and washing away the sins from the old year. (Photo by Rungroj Yongrit/EPA)

This photo provided by the Alameda County Sheriff's Office shows a man who was possibly trying to burglarize an abandoned Chinese restaurant in San Lorenzo, Calif., trapped in a grease vent before he was rescued Wednesday, December 12, 2018. Officials say he had been trapped for two days. Deputies and firefighters were called to the vacant building on Wednesday after someone heard cries for help. The sheriff tweeted that the man was trespassing and possibly trying to burglarize the empty restaurant. (Photo by Alameda County Sheriff's Office via AP Photo)