This year the 149th Open Championship that was to be held at Royal St George's Golf Club in Sandwich, England, got cancelled due to obvious reasons. Last time the Open Championship was cancelled happened during the World War II.

On the official Open Championship site you can still enjoy some great content like one of my favorite documentary series "Chronicles of a Champion Golfer" and Open Championship recap videos from 1970 until now, among other video materials.

To start watching for free, you just add your email adress (this is also your login username and password). No other information is no longer required to join their "The One Club", a reason why I personally hasn't used this free service until now.

The TV series "Contact: Magnum Photos" explores in ten 30 minutes long episodes some of the most iconic photos from around the world shot by photographers from the Magnum photo agency.

This is a real treat for photography lovers so watch it over at archive.org while you can.

After having binge watching the German TV series "Deutschland 83" (2015), the TV series "The Same Sky" (2016), that is set in Cold War Berlin in the 70's, is my substitute.

East Germany (GDR), 1974. Lars Weber – young, ambitious, impenetrable – will soon have to prove his loyalty to his country; the 25-year-old knows that every step forward in the GDR comes with strings attached... For Lars, this means being sent to West Berlin as an East-German “Romeo” agent. His mission is to seduce women working in sensitive positions in the West. One of them is Lauren Faber, a high-ranking British intelligence officer and lonely single mother of a rebellious teen. Lauren's younger colleague Sabine Cutter is deeply attracted to Lars. However, none of the two is aware of the secret they share…

While Lars and Lauren constitute the core of this volatile saga of passion and deceit, other richly detailed characters on both sides of the Wall are also moving deftly among Stasi and CIA spies. The gay teacher Axel cannot bear the oppressiveness of the GDR any longer. He and a group of friends undertake one of the most foolhardy escape attempts imaginable: digging a tunnel beneath the Wall. Lars' cousin Klara, in turn, is an excellent swimmer who's blissful when she gets the chance to join the GDR Olympic Swim Team. Having grown up in the shadow of her brilliant sister Juliane, Klara will do anything to become a winner and starts taking pills that produce disturbing side effects…

As the the Iron Curtain seems impenetrable, the protagonists on either side of the wall seek security, humanity and freedom. They may have different systems and different lives, but they all share the same sky.

And thankfully for viewers outside Europe, the TV series is now released on Netflix.

A couple of weeks ago, I read an article about one of the previous winners of Sweden's "The Biggest Loser" and his on-going struggle with gaining weight despite living an active life with exercise and healthy eating. After he discussed the issue with experts, the conclusion was that his problems were due to a damaged metabolic rate caused by the TV show and its practices.

That article and New York Post's rather shocking piece " 'Biggest Loser' drugged us so we'd lose weight" has drastically changed my opinion about the show to the worse, a show that seems to include elements of drug use, isolation, starvation and humiliation.

"Bob Harper was my trainer," says Joelle Gwynn, of 2008's "Couples" season. "He goes away and his assistant comes in. He's got this brown paper bag that's bundled up. He says, 'Take this drug, it'll really help you.' It was yellow and black. I was like, 'What the f- -k is this?' "

Gwynn says she took the pill, once.

"I felt jittery and hyper," she says. "I went and told the sports medicine guy. The next day, Dr. H [Dr. Rob Huizenga] gave us some lame explanation of why they got added to our regimen and that it was up to us to take them…People chastise Bill Cosby for allegedly offering meds to women, but it's acceptable to do to fat people to make them lose weight. I feel like we got raped, too."

[…]

"When I was going through the applicant process, they told me, 'You’re not fat enough,' " Mendonca [Suzanne Mendonca, Season 2] says. She was 5-foot-6 and says she weighed 229 pounds, morbidly obese by NIH standards.

"They said, 'You need to gain 40 pounds. Keep eating.' " Mendonca entered the show at 255 pounds.

Typeface designer and font developer Mark Simonson watched the beloved TV series "Mad Men" (2007–2015) with a critical eye and found that, although visually pleasing, the typefaces used in the show together with additional props belong to a different era. Simonson's piece "Mad Men, Mad Props" is from 2008, but includes the names of several beautiful typefaces, which I found interesting and valuable for my future graphic design work.

Then there is the Gill Sans (c. 1930) problem. Gill is used quite a lot in the series, mainly for Sterling Cooper Advertising's logo and signage. Technically, this is not anachronistic. And the way the type is used—metal dimensional letters, generously spaced—looks right. The problem is that Gill was a British typeface not widely available or popular in the U.S. until the 1970s. It's a decade ahead of its time in American type fashions.

Via Mental Floss.

A set of great minimalist ads, for the final episode of AMC's show "Mad Men" by copywriter Dan Gorlov.

Via @elopezgz and @HuskySoy.

Oh, I instanly fell in love with this VHS intro of Game of Thrones! Reminds me of my favorite German youth series for some reason, must be the music.

Music is "Game of Thrones – Main Theme (80's Version)" [video] by Steve Duzz.

Via @annaborchert.

Naturalist and filmmaker Paul Rosolie's stunt is something that's never been done before: get eaten by an anaconda while wearing a custom-built snake-proof suit. Opinions seem to differ about this highly unusual experiment, some claiming that the anaconda might get seriously hurt. Eaten Alive premieres on Discovery Channel Dec 7 9/8c.