"In Girls We Trust" is a Bic pen artwork by Helena Hauss. She depicts a $20 bill that replaces Andrew Jackson with feminist icon Princess Leia. Watch her complete the 400-hour project in about a minute: She also has a YouTube channel worth checking out: Image: Instagram / helenahauss
Lewis Del Mar has released a video for "TV" that feels like a zoetrope of collaged art. It's a follow-up to "The Ceiling," which visually feels like a variation on the theme. Image: YouTube / Lewis Del Mar
If you haven't kept tabs on the advancements in smart glasses since the Google Glass project folded in 2015, we have some news — they're getting closer. Well, maybe not Google…but other manufacturers have continued to push forward the smart glasses concept. MAD Gaze has become one of the pioneers in smart glasses technology, producing […]
Ever since the great TP shortage of 2020, it's a thought that's been inching around in the back of your mind. Should I become…a bidet person? The answer is a resounding yes. There's a reason much of the rest of the modern world embraced the bidet lifestyle decades ago. Americans use about 36.5 billion rolls […]
Batman never roars into the Gotham night without his utility belt. James Bond never embarks on a world-saving mission without stopping to see Q and picking up a few helpful gadgets. The world can be a challenging, even occasionally dangerous place — and that's never been more apparent than in the past few months. So […]
Jim Kelly, he of The Tabletop Engineer and Bexim's Bazaar magazine, has launched another new monthly publication, The RPG and Wargame Supply Sourcebook. The idea is to create a one-stop resource guide to those largely small/indie companies making and selling miniatures, gaming terrain, RPG materials, modeling tools and supplies, and other gaming-related products and services. […]
The much-anticipated Ruth Asawa stamps are here! Buy several sheets and give one of the US's most beloved and relied-upon institutions a little infusion of scratch. Image: USPS
Vacuum cleaners have come a long way since those giant bulky bag behemoths that used to take up most of the hall closet. Machines that handle that kind of cleanup now have to be more than just carpet sweepers. They need to be small, powerful, convenient, and capable of handling a variety of big and […]
Everybody's got a story. Unfortunately, not everybody has the tools to tell that story the right way. That's especially true for someone looking to produce their first screenplay. Just as with any type of writing, penning a script for the screen has a set of rules all its own. Understanding that structure, as well as […]
In Georgia, the City of Stone Mountain is shutting down public transportation, closing a park, and urging everyone to avoid the area on Saturday, when a large number of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and militia members plan to gather. Why? Located in suburban Atlanta, Stone Mountain Park is home to a giant sculpture of Confederate heroes. […]
Today, 236 employees at Pinterest virtually "walked out" to express solidarity with three former colleagues who said they experienced gender and race discrimination at the social media company. From the New York Times: Many of the employees also shared and signed an online petition calling on Ben Silbermann, Pinterest's chief executive and co-founder, to change […]
Today I chanced across a posting from someone who, in 2002, tracked down the maker of the unusual whiskey glass that the replicant-hunter Deckard drinks from in Blade Runner. They learned then that it had been in production for thirty years and was still available, and so it is today. Now, of course, you don't […]
Chad Wolf and top aide Ken Cuccinelli were improperly appointed to their leadership positions at the Department of Homeland Security, reports the Government Office of Accountability. The Government Accountability Office said Wolf and Cuccinelli assumed those jobs under an order of succession that was issued by an acting secretary who himself had no authority to […]
In South Lake Tahoe, two bear cubs were found wrassling in someone's backyard kiddie pool. I put my money on the small brown one. "While I was laying in bed I heard some noises coming from my backyard. When I looked outside my window I saw two cubs playing in my daughter's pool." screengrab via […]
Sure, the sound of the kid colliding into the trash bins is fake but it's still pretty funny! Previously: Deer performs classic drum fill from Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight" (Kottke) screengrab via YouTube
There's a lot to unpack and think about from this BBC article about the impact of solar panels on the heroin industry. The first report of an Afghan farmer using solar power came back in 2013. The following year traders were stocking a few solar panels in Lashkar Gah, the Helmandi capital. Since then growth […]
Sometimes, being trapped inside and distanced from the world, with all of the other worries you may have on your plate, leads you to wander back to darker times. I first heard this song back in 2001. I'd left the east coast in the early days of the year, to move back to Ontario. My […]
Even as the world takes tentative steps toward reopening against the ebbs and flows of COVID-19, movie theaters remain in a netherworld limbo. High-profile film releases continue shuffling as theater chains, studios and filmgoers grapple with the fact that an enclosed theater may not be a safe place to be for some time to come. […]
FiveThirtyEight made this useful guide on how to vote in each of the U.S. states. Click on your state in the map to see a lot of the information you need in order to cast a ballot this fall — by whatever method you choose. This page will be updated on a regular basis with […]
We live in an older house, and I've replaced a lot of sink and bath washers over the years. My supply was running low so I just ordered this inexpensive assortment of washers. I hope I don't have to use them soon, but it will be nice to have them the next time a faucet […]
From one of my favorite Twitter feeds, Bizzarro Bazar: these terrible magic trick. I doubt the 16th-century author tested out this trick to see if it would actually work. He probably just thought it seemed like a cool effect. Image: Twitter
Financial services company Robinhood hired Collins to design its new brand identity. The illustrations Collins commissioned as part of its world-building exercises are beautiful and obviously heavily inspired by the late cartoonist Mœbius. From Collins: [From] a visual design perspective, the illustration system really takes center stage. We settled on a vision of the future […]
Julian Boilen, a full stack software engineer in NYC, created this cool map that lets you see photos of New York City in the late 1930s an 1940s. "Zoom in!" he says. "Every dot is a photo." Between 1939 and 1941, the Works Progress Administration collaborated with the New York City Tax Department to collect photographs of every building […]
Painter and director David Lynch has a nice home workshop, and in this video, he shows his hand-made iPhone holder, which can be attached to a tripod. It's nice-looking, and my favorite part is when he shows a plastic iPhone holder he bought online and says that it works well, but it was more fun […]
Writing in The Week, Ryan Cooper says, "The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has collected data for the week ending July 21, before super-unemployment expired, and found that 12 percent of households were regularly short of food, 21 percent of renters were behind on their payments, and 28 percent of children were in households with one […]
No one: Brach's: "We have candy corn that tastes like Thanksgiving foods!!" — Turkey Dinner candy corn is described as "A full course meal presented in a unique mix of candy corn flavors. BRACH'S Turkey Dinner includes all of the traditional Thanksgiving favorites. From roasted turkey, green beans and stuffing to ginger glazed carrots, cranberry […]
This "house boat" for sale on Mercer Island, Washington was once the USS Manzanita, built for the US Coast Guard in 1908 and later part of the US Navy. It's now for sale for $2 million. From Realtor.com: n 1949, the boat was going to be scrapped, when a local librarian and her father bought […]
GPT-3 is a machine-learning trained language model that generates text based on a text prompt. Cory Doctorow has been playing around with a closed-beta implementation of Sudowrite, which he describes as a "GPT3-based text generator for fiction writers. You give it characters, plot summaries, dialogue, or twist endings," and Sudowrite generates one of more paragraphs […]
Chameleons have evolved a superfast and long tongue to grab insects in an instant. Inspired by this marvelous bit of nature, engineers at Seoul National University of Science and Technology created "Snatcher," a robotic tongue design that could someday be mounted on drones to pick up packages. From IEEE Spectrum: "For example, a quadrotor with […]
There are many aspects of American culture that are secretly or not-so-secretly rooted in something absolutely abhorrent. I'm not just talking about the "original sin" of settler colonialism, or even the institution of slavery itself — although those things certainly help to inherently taint the nation's origins. No, I'm talking about all the other things […]
The question was asked by Huffington Post correspondent SV Dáte, who told the Guardian: I don't know why he called on me, because I've tried to ask him before [in March] and he's cut me off mid-question. Maybe he didn't recognise me this time. You know, he has this group of folks that he normally […]
Police in St. Petersburg, Florida arrested a homeless fellow who had been living in a luxury suite in Al Lang Stadium. He was apparently wearing Tampa Bay Rowdies clothing swiped from the merch shop and ate from the concession stands during his two week stay. He's now in jail on charges of burglary and "resisting […]
The US Pentagon is forming a task force to investigate military reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (aka UFOs). Over the last few years, the New York Times broke news of a similar program in the Office of Naval Intelligence, examined curious videos depicting aerial encounters between Navy jets and UFOs (above), and reported a theoretical […]
Quintin Smith explores Entropia Universe, the world's only cash-based MMO, still entertaining tens of thousands of players 17 years after its launch. No online game has bigger whales—players genuinely invested in playing the game in the hope of getting rich—even as you can play it for free by collecting in-game poop: "We set out to […]
I was invited to participate in a cool international art project benefiting mental health. It's called Decameron Row, and it's a website depicting buildings along a city street. Each building has windows occupied by a different artist, writer, or other creative person. When you click on one of the windows you can see a 1-minute […]
Physics may have been that class you sleepwalked your way through in high school. But while it might have just slipped under your radar throughout your academic career, you probably shouldn't have given it such shallow attention. Sure, we could focus on the immediate pluses of a career as a physicist, like the more than […]
Herman Cain "tweeted" banal pro-Trump propaganda until hours before his death of Covid, a ghastly month-long spectacle seemingly pumped out by political handlers willing to speak with Cain's voice even as that voice ceased to exist. I spectulated that this would continue after his death, a melding of Trumpian incompetence, obscenity and indifference. I was asked to stop posting on grounds of Rob He Just Died, but sadly that exortation was not made to whoever is wearing Cain's corpse today on Twitter. Read the rest
My home of nearly 20 years, the quirky California island city of Alameda, never ceases to surprise me (in good ways!). Today I learned that one of my favorite casual dining spots in town, The Hobnob on Park Street, is offering a drag queen delivery service. On Saturday, August 22, Island Fantasy, a group of local drag performers, will bring you a prix fixe menu for two (salad, pasta dish, dessert, bottle of wine) and a one-minute socially distanced performance for $70 plus required 20% tip (addtl. tips encouraged). Email hobnobalameda@gmail.com before August 20 to order.Keep it quirky, Alameda!images via The Hobnob Read the rest
Jeanine Pirro's own Fox News colleagues forced her to walk back an ominous comment Wednesday after the former judge suggested that "something's going to happen" to presidential candidate Joe Biden."For some reason, I just have this feeling that Joe Biden isn't going to be on the ticket," Pirro said during a Fox News segment."I have a sense that something's going to happen before the election and he's not even going to be on the ticket, so don't even ask me if he's going to make the four years," she added.As Pirro continued with her analysis on Biden's newly announced running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, the Fox News commentator Jesse Watters could be heard in the background expressing caution. Another commentator, Dana Perino, appeared to say on the microphone, "Oh man."Pirro would later qualify her roughly three-minute monologue, saying at the end, "We certainly don't hope that anything happens to Vice President Joe Biden anytime soon."Just another day in the death cult. Read the rest
This 1967 clip from American Bandstand starts with Dick Clark asking the kids if they think The Beatles will outlast The Monkees. Almost everyone voted for The Beatles. And, of course, they were wrong! The Beatles broke up in 1970 and The Monkees are still around, and released a (really good!) album in 2016.Then the kids are treated to 1967 promotional films for "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" and Clark asks them what they think. The reactions were mixed. One kid said it was "great." A young woman complained about their facial hair. Another said, "they look older and it ruins their image."(Via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest
"Mad About Me" is a Jizz song that was largely popularized by the Bith band Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes, who famously performed it during a bar fight at Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina in that Tatooinian town of Mos Eisley.I share this, because it's important to remember that the so-called "Star Wars Cantina Song" is, canonically, jizz.So anyway here's an acoustic guitar player who goes by AcousticTrench doing a finger-pickin' cover of the classic tune, accompanied by his dog Maple on the kickdrum.Image via YouTube Read the rest
"Jingle Bells, Batman Smells" is one of the most significant documented viral songs among English-speaking children. Because it was spread as an oral tradition for its first quarter-century, many variants emerged. Tim Scott quizzed 64,000 people on their recollected version of the song, with some surprising results.His thesis is that The Simpsons had a strong role in creating the current canonical version. However, it's clear why "Robin laid an egg" is a much better line than the competitors. First, it literalizes Robin as a bird. Second, is misgenders Robin (already a gender neutral name) by saying he laid an egg. Third, it's a thinly veiled poop joke to many little kids, who are always going to like a poop joke. Thus endeth my dissertation on why "Robin laid an egg" is the vastly superior one and true version.Don't get me started on "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man."Image: YouTube / Tim Scott Read the rest
On August 19th Netflix is premiering its 6 part documentary on the history of the video game industry. Above, the trailer. Below, the opening credits clip Read the rest
One of my favorite websites is John Sisson's Dreams of Space, which is singularly focused on vintage non-fiction children's books and ephemera about space travel. Most of the stuff he posts is from the 1950s through the 1970s, a heyday for pie in the sky visions of humans breaking free of earth's wicked gravity.This month, John is posting about books that speculated on space stations of the future. One of the books is simply called Space Stations, and was written in 1962 by Erik Bergaust. In his introduction, he writes, "This book is a roundup of all current plans for space stations. It is based on official information provided by the Space Agency and by industry. The illustrations do not depict science fiction ideas; all artwork in the book was submitted by the companies currently working on our various space projects. It is based on designs by their own engineers and scientists."Click here to see scans from the book.Book caption for the above photo: "Back to Earth! Similar in design to the first space stations contemplated by the Space Agency, this illustration shows a 3-man crew returning from orbit. Soft landing by parachutes is accomplished after retro-rockets have been used to slow down the little space station from orbital speed."Erik Bergaust died in 1978 at the age of 52. According to this Washington Post obituary published in 1968, he was "author of more than 50 books on aviation, space sciences and nuclear energy, as well as the official biographer of Dr. Read the rest
Minnesota Democrat Illhan Omar fended off a well-funded challenger in yesterday's primary election and is and is now all but certain to retain her seat in November's general. Antone Melton-Meaux vastly outmatched Omar in campaign spending, raising millions more than the incumbent, but conceded by 9 p.m. Tuesday after early results signaled a thrashing.Omar was the first Somali-American and, with Rashida Tlaib, one of the first two Muslim women to enter Congress.Omar rejected Melton-Meaux’s attacks, saying they were funded by interests who wanted to get her out of Congress because she’s effective. She also downplayed Melton-Meaux’s prodigious fundraising before the vote, saying, “Organized people will always beat organized money.”Democratic U.S. Sen. Tina Smith and Republican challenger Jason Lewis easily won their primaries in the only statewide races on the ballot. Elsewhere, in western Minnesota’s conservative 7th District, former state Sen. Michelle Fischbach won a three-way Republican race for the right to challenge Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson. Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, is one of the GOP’s top targets to flip a House seat in November.In Minnesota, we know that organized people will always beat organized money. Tonight, our movement didn’t just win. We earned a mandate for change. Despite outside efforts to defeat us, we once again broke turnout records. Despite the attacks, our support has only grown.— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) August 12, 2020 Read the rest