p>I spent about 7 weeks in New Zealand and a couple of weeks in Australia in the early 2000s. People in both countries told me something along the lines of "If Australia is the United States, then New Zealand is Canada." This is not really accurate, of course, but it is true that Kiwis and Aussies are frequently compared and contrasted by their own citizens, and by others. Here's a Kiwi who is eager to set the record straight.

Rhett and Link invite Sofie Dossi, the "human pretzel," to fold herself into suitcases, drum cases, aquarium tanks, and suitcases.

California is the United States agricultural juggernaut. Produce from California feeds the world and drives one of the largest economies on the planet. A side-effect of Trump's beloved, family destroying ICE raids is a massive labor shortage.Fruit rots on the vine. Children lose their parents.Via Bloomberg:Their absence threatens segments of the largest state economy, including retailers, restaurants and the Central Valley’s $47 billion agricultural industry, which provides more than half of the fruits, nuts and vegetables in the country. That broad, 450-mile swath of California yields an eighth of the country’s agricultural output.The farm industry is already struggling to find workers like Maria’s husband. More than 55 percent of 762 farmers and ranchers surveyed in a California Farm Bureau Federation report from October 2017 said half of their land continues to go unattended because of an ongoing labor shortage directly related to U.S. immigration policy.Of the state’s more than 2 million farm laborers, 1.5 million are undocumented, according to Tom Nassif, President of the Western Growers Association, a 92-year-old industry group representing farmers in California, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. Although Nassif and the association have supported Trump since the early days of his campaign, he says the raids and decades-old immigration policy for farm workers are harming the industry and state economy.

I found out about Shit Ghost from this Reddit thread: "My seemingly normal project manager abruptly quit his nice paying job a couple years ago for unknown reasons. I facebooked him today out of curiosity to discover he is now dresses up in costume as a character he calls "Shit Ghost" and makes really obscure music and art."Here's more about Shit Ghost:The anonymous weirdo known as Shit Ghost has been tweaking Seattle audiences for a couple years now, performing in a white Spandex mask, white turtleneck and Archie McPhee costume glasses while stretching time—and his vocals—like saltwater taffy in ten-minute-long, ambient rock excursions. Like his on-stage persona, Shit Ghost’s music is both soothing and discomforting, gentle and gently maddening. You won’t notice you’re being lulled into a dissociative fever dream until you’re already there, and by then it’s too late, and you’re fine with it.I just had a vision of a bored, deskbound copro-eidolic entity upping and shouting to its colleagues, "That's it! I'm becoming a project manager!" and floating angrily off.

File under No Thank You: The Screenholder:Watch, play with or listen to your phone or tablet in the shower. 100% waterproof. Even use your camera. Features multiple phone and tablet sized pockets on outside to hold your device. Different height levels for everyone from tall adults to children. Touch interaction from the inside of the shower or bath, change songs, play games, scroll through the news.[via Shitty Future]

According to Engadget, America's futurist military think tank, DARPA, wants to figure out the means to slow down the biological functions of the human body to provide more time for medics and doctors to treat their wounded patients.If the notion of biostasis sounds like the stuff of science fiction to you, that's because it totally is – at least for now. While some creatures are able to regulate the cells in their body to the point where they can survive long-term freezing or dehydration, humans are, comparatively, delicate little snowflakes. We bleed out, we die. By finding a way to slow down or freeze the functions of our bodies, combat-injured soldiers could have more time to make it to life-saving treatments away from the front lines. Were DARPA to find a way to do this for soldiers, the rest of us could likely wind up benefiting too. In the past, other medical technologies, antihemorrhagic compounds, like those found in QuikClot bandages, found their start on the battlefield, but have made their way into the civilian market.If you're interested in seeing how DARPA's biostasis program pans out, you'd best get comfortable. DARPA won't even start answering the questions from companies looking to throw science at the problem until later this month.Image via Military.com

Storm Emma, a massive weather system that brought bitter cold and snow to the U.K. this past week did a lot of damage to power grids, forced the closure of schools and caused havoc for anyone looking to travel anywhere in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland (the Republic of Ireland took its share of knocks, too.) Perhaps worst of all, was the destructive effect the drastic drop in temperature had on sea life in the water surrounding the United Kingdom. This YouTube video shot at Ramsgate Beach in Kent, illustrates what a change in temperature can do to a delicate species of animal--if this isn't a prime example of why climate change is such an important issue, I don't know what is.

London product designer Dani Clode has created a prosthetic thumb, not to replace a missing digit, but simply to offer people an extra thumb, and therefore add to the human experience. She calls it the Third Thumb Project. Clode uses bluetooth controllers in her shoes, which are connected to pressure sensors underneath her toes, to manipulate the thumb. "It extends the wearer's ability. It extends the wearer's self. It's an addition to the body," she says in the video. The extra thumb allows you to easily do things like crack eggs, swipe an iPhone, and squeeze a lemon with only one hand instead of two. Now Clode is working on the Alternative Limb Project at the University College London with neuroscientists in a brain plasticity lab to design a prosthetic arm.

It has no teeth, a 2-foot long tongue, and a stick-like head. The giant anteater has lived on earth for 25 million years. But because of overhunting, its existence is being threatened.Image: Great Big Story

Researchers have found the world's oldest known tattoos -- a bull and a goat-like animal -- on a 5,200-year-old Egyptian mummy in the British Museum. From The Independent:Along with a Copper Age European of almost identical vintage, found preserved in an Alpine glacier, the ancient Egyptian is the oldest tattooed individual ever discovered.However, the Alpine mummy – often dubbed the Iceman – only had seemingly abstract groups of dots tattooed on him. The Egyptian, on the other hand, bears the earliest known example of tattoos in figurative art form.Examination of the art suggests they were made with a carbon-based pigment, probably soot.

Terence McKenna (1946-2000) was an ethnobotanist, psychedelic pioneer, philosopher, and shamanic scholar who boldly explored the mysteries of consciousness and the fringes of reason with rigor, wit, and generosity. Now, Kevin Whitesides with support of fellow travelers like BB pal Erik Davis are working hard "to collect, digitize, transcribe, store, and preserve the imprint of Terence McKenna's presence" in all media for the ages. You can help! Support the Terrence MckKenna Archives GoFundMe campaign! The incentives you can receive for participating are quite mind-blowing.There are five major sub-projects at present, all under the banner of The Terence McKenna Archives:1) A Collection Project: to find, collect, store, and preserve, either physical (or at least digital) copies of any material related to Terence McKenna. A full list of the physical & digital holdings are available at terencemckennaarchives.com.2) A Transcription Project: to transcribe all of Terence McKenna's 500+ hours of audio/video material that is freely available on the web into a searchable database. This crowdsourced, volunteer-based project is already ongoing and incredibly successful and can currently be found at terencemckenna.wikispaces.com. If you would like to help contribute by transcribing Terence's talks, please join the effort there and on The Terence McKenna Transcription Project Facebook Page.3) An Interview Project: to interview any family member, friend, colleague, acquaintances, workshop attendee, correspondent, interviewer, critic, collaborator, or any person suitably inspired or influenced by Terence McKenna.4) TerenceMcKenna.com: Terence's son owns this domain and it currently houses the Terence McKenna Bibliography, but we need resources and talent in order to build into the online McKenna hub that it can ideally be, eventually hosting the searchable transcription database, an online digital archive, and much more.5) I should mention, as a fifth, long-term, goal, that there is a lot of potential for future publications, including a comprehensive biography based on the collected archives and extended research, a volume of interviews about Terence, unpublished or out-of-print writing and interviews, etc. But, these projects will require some further development and time.The Terence McKenna Archives (GoFundMe)(photo above by Chip Simons)https://vimeo.com/256172421

Giant Pockets rounds up the options for owning an ultraportable, ultra-light computer that run an easily-accessible distribution: The World of Linux Handhelds in 2018. Thanks for Android, this is more niche than it ever was, but there's a surprisingly large number of options either already out or coming soon. Freedom is fun! So are games...I have somewhat mixed feelings about where these devices go. First, I am really glad to see a lot more activity and official support of Linux on more and more hardware, because more choice means more competition and likely better options altogether for several types of users. However, I am quite concerned with the overall trend to make such devices more and more premium, price-wise.The Gemini is very my cup of tea, and should ship imminently.

United employees who helped the airline hit key goals got a $300 bonus -- until now. (more…)

I donated to Democrats in 2016, so that means that the DCCC calls me about once a week to ask for money. I always tell them no, because I support Democratic candidates through organizations like Our Revolution -- the kinds of Democrats who stand up for working people, universal health care, a $15 minimum wage, investment in renewables and curbs on the finance industry. (more…)

West Virginia's public school teachers have walked out en masse in a wildcat strike, demanding an end to decades of real-terms wage cuts that have left them among the poorest-paid teachers in America, as well as skyrocketing health insurance costs. (more…)

Street photographer Pao Buscató has gained a reputation for finding moments that feel impossibly coincidental. (more…)

Robin Sloan, the author of wonderful novels like Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore and Sourdough, also spends his time messing around with neural nets that compose and transform language in delightful ways. His latest experiment? An engine that lets you input two sentences -- and it generates a "sentence gradient": i.e. a bunch of plausible sentences that gradually slide from the meaning of the first one to the meaning of the second one. The results are pretty surreal, as you can see from sentence-pair above that Robin uses as an example. As he notes ...So, does that sentence gradient make sense? I honestly don’t know. Is it useful? Probably not! But I do know it’s interesting, and the larger artifact—the continuous sentence space—feels very much like something worth exploring.The fun part is you can input your own sentence pairings and see what the system outputs. I did a few, and they're quite surreal, such as ...Or there's this ...Then I got the idea to input the first and last sentences of a work of literature. Here's Moby Dick ...... and here's the American national anthem:This is pretty mesmerizing, I gotta say.

A theodolite is that gizmo on a tripod used by land surveyors. This explainer shows how they work, and discusses how they shifted from analog devices to the modern digital ones. (more…)

On Thursday, the first ever tie-breaker in regular game play (it's been used in tournament play) happened in Jeopardy!'s nearly 54-year history. After all three contestants answered the Final Jeopardy! clue incorrectly, two were left with the same dollar amount: $6799. Unfazed, host Alex Trebek gave one final tiebreaking clue to determine the winner. Now, if neither of them had gotten that clue correct, Trebek would have kept giving them until one of them did.(reddit)

America's favorite cowboy cosplayer/accused child molestor/senate race loser Roy Moore is pleading to his fans to give him $250,000 to "prevail against the unholy forces of evil" that prevented him from becomes God's own representative in the US Senate. According to AL.com, Moore has raised $32,235 to :fight a lawsuit filed by Leigh Corfman, one of the women who said Moore had sexual contact with her when she was a teenager. Corfman filed a defamation suit after the election, claiming Moore and his campaign defamed her by saying she was a liar and immoral."From Moore's Facebook post:I now face another vicious attack from lawyers in Washington D. C. and San Francisco who have hired one of the biggest firms in Birmingham Alabama to bring another legal action against me and ensure that I never fight again.However, I will trust God that he will allow truth to prevail against the unholy forces of evil behind their attack.I have lawyers who want to help but they are not without cost and besides their fees, legal expenses could run over $100,000. I have had to establish a “legal defense fund, anything you give will be appreciated.The liberal media, in association with some who want to destroy our Country do not want my influence in the 2018 elections and are doing everything they can to stop me.Gays, lesbians, and transgenders have joined forces with those who believe in abortion, sodomy, and destruction of all that we hold dear. Unless we stand together we will lose our Country.Christians can no longer afford to remain silent in these “perilous” times. For we know that in such time men shall become lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.We must fight, an appeal to the God of Heaven is all that is left us!Please help me fight this battle for the heart and soul of this Nation. Your financial contribution to my legal defense fund is crucial.After over 40 years of public service I cannot back down now.When I stood to bring these values and truths to Washington D. C. I was forced to fight the Washington establishment, the Republican Party, the Democrat Party, the ultra-liberal media and people such asGeorge Soros, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and many others who fear the truth.I’m sure that you cannot imagine how this has taken a toll on my wife, my children, and even my friends.My resources have been depleted and I have struggled to make ends meet, but I have not lost my faith in our God, who is our true source of strength and will never leave or forsake us.Incontinent?

We hear so much in certain sectors of the press about how "illiberalism" is overwhelming free speech, but if this chart is to be believed it's a very selective intolerance, counterbalanced by a greater tolerance of speech in other respects.It does make you wonder what those centrist liberal sorts are stuck on when they obsess over the threat to free speech posed by teenagers at Oberlin College or whatever.The above chart is particularly fascinating: it depicts both liberals and conservatives becoming more favorable to free speech in recent years, including racism. But closer to the center, things are static. It gives me a sense of a small island of elite or establishment opinions where bickering between two otherwise barely-distinguishable poles -- anti-racist moderate progressives vs centrist moderates, if you like -- continues to dominate discussion among pundits and opinion writers while the house comes down. The far right got to occupy the ruins first thanks to Trump and the cooperation of the GOP, so we're seeing a lot more racism. In the long run, though, we'll find that "political correctness" was the most liberal form of selective intolerance that racists could have hoped for, and they will eventually become its last advocates.

A man from Nigeria named Tobi tried to pull an online scam on a guy in the United States. The would-be victim hired Tobi to make a short documentary of life in his town. The scammer accepted the job. Here's the Gofundme campaign to fund Tobi's documentary.Here's a similar story.

An inebriated gentleman at a party in West Virginia thought he was ordering an Uber to take him to West Virginia University's campus. But in his drunken state he messed up his order, blacked out in the Uber, and ended up at his house in Gloucester County, N.J. The fare came to a mere $1,635.93.According to USA Today:The report states that [Kenny] Bachman woke up two hours into the trip, but didn't want to just be dropped off in the middle of no where, so he stuck it out all the way home. 300 miles from where he was partying and staying."Afterwards I had it fully sink in," Bachman told NJ Advance Media. "Once the ride ended and I saw how much it was when I was like 'Alright, this is insane, that's just crazy.'"Uber confirmed the ride occurred, the report states, and the driver took Bachman to the destination he requested.Let's hope the party was fun.Image: Mark Warner/Flickr

Famed weirdo Zach Galifianakis decided to make an Alien-style entrance on his latest Conan appearance.[via The A.V. Club]

There's a good, long piece in this issue of Smithsonian about the scientific debate over whether trees talk to one another.Trees certainly communicate. In forests, they're connected to each other through underground fungal networks (sometimes jokingly referred to as the "wood wide web"), and they'll send carbon back and forth as needed, as ecologist Suzanne Simard explained in her wildly viral TED Talk on tree-to-tree networks.But while scientists agree that trees pick up on each other's signals, there's a question of intent. Are the trees intentionally trying to send messages to other trees? Or are they just broadcasting messages ambiently -- in the matter of course of, y'know, being trees -- that other trees just happen to pick up? Are some tree scientists overly anthropomorphizing trees, with talk of tree "mothers" that warn their child-trees of danger, or younger trees that actively try to keep alive elder, progenitor trees?It's a damn cool area of science, either way. Here's a taste of the Smithsonian piece, which is really worth reading in full: Once, he came across a gigantic beech stump in this forest, four or five feet across. The tree was felled 400 or 500 years ago, but scraping away the surface with his penknife, Wohlleben found something astonishing: the stump was still green with chlorophyll. There was only one explanation. The surrounding beeches were keeping it alive, by pumping sugar to it through the network. “When beeches do this, they remind me of elephants,” he says. “They are reluctant to abandon their dead, especially when it’s a big, old, revered matriarch.”To communicate through the network, trees send chemical, hormonal and slow-pulsing electrical signals, which scientists are just beginning to decipher. Edward Farmer at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland has been studying the electrical pulses, and he has identified a voltage-based signaling system that appears strikingly similar to animal nervous systems (although he does not suggest that plants have neurons or brains). Alarm and distress appear to be the main topics of tree conversation, although Wohlleben wonders if that’s all they talk about. “What do trees say when there is no danger and they feel content? This I would love to know.” Monica Gagliano at the University of Western Australia has gathered evidence that some plants may also emit and detect sounds, and in particular, a crackling noise in the roots at a frequency of 220 hertz, inaudible to humans.Trees also communicate through the air, using pheromones and other scent signals. Wohlleben’s favorite example occurs on the hot, dusty savannas of sub-Saharan Africa, where the wide-crowned umbrella thorn acacia is the emblematic tree. When a giraffe starts chewing acacia leaves, the tree notices the injury and emits a distress signal in the form of ethylene gas. Upon detecting this gas, neighboring acacias start pumping tannins into their leaves. In large enough quantities these compounds can sicken or even kill large herbivores.Giraffes are aware of this, however, having evolved with acacias, and this is why they browse into the wind, so the warning gas doesn’t reach the trees ahead of them. If there’s no wind, a giraffe will typically walk 100 yards— farther than ethylene gas can travel in still air—before feeding on the next acacia. Giraffes, you might say, know that the trees are talking to one another.(CC-licensed photo via Scott Wylie)

Many locals whine that tech has killed the creative vibe in San Francisco but don't bury it just yet. A merry group of urban pranksters -- who call themselves Swing Bomb SF -- have surreptitiously placed over 50 swings around the city, as a way of turning it into an all-ages "pop-up playground"! They've marked the bottom of each of these "swing bombs" with both the #SwingBombSF hashtag and a number from one to ??. They encourage folks to try and find all of their swings. However, since the project started a few weeks ago, some have already been removed. But don't let that stop you from searching them out.Head to their Instagram for clues:https://www.instagram.com/p/BfTol2sFuMc/?tagged=swingbombsfhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BfUOJfIlTuA/?taken-by=swingbombsfhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BfUCP1qFrI8/?taken-by=swingbombsfphoto by Christie Aurélio(SFWeekly)

An unreleased demo by a 17-year-old Amy Winehouse called "My Own Way" has surfaced. NPR Music reports:In 2015, four years after singer Amy Winehouse's death, Universal Music U.K. CEO David Joseph announced that he'd destroyed all of her demo recordings in an attempt to prevent anyone from releasing them posthumously. Despite that, composer Gil Cang, who wrote songs for Winehouse early in her career, has posted a Winehouse track called "My Own Way" to YouTube.Cang, who co-wrote the scratch track with James McMillan, announced on the YouTube post that the song is one "we love and want the world to be able to hear." He says he recently rediscovered the recording, made when Winehouse was in her late teens, and decided to share it.It Turns Out Not All Amy Winehouse Demos Were Destroyedphoto by Fionn Kidney(RED)

Ambassador of Americana Charles Phoenix has announced a new swoonworthy line of his & hers* vintage-inspired coordinated clothing. The matchy-matchy shirt/dress combos are a collaboration with Pinup Girl Clothing sold under the newly-formed Sir Charles of Phoenix brand. Not only are they super cute but they are available in a wide range of sizes.Get'em while they're hot!And, if you're in the Burbank area this Saturday, swing by the Pinup Girl Clothing boutique for the line's debut party from 6 PM to 10 PM. Charles will be there, along with some of his special Test Kitchen creations. Hawaiian Honeymoon printCalypso Castaway print*Of course, there's nothing stopping you from making these his & his or hers & hers (or even they & they) sets. All pieces are sold separately.

People who need custom furniture in the future may be able to feed the design into a program and then have robot-assisted carpentry do the rest. (more…)

The fellow is indignant that his reflection will not let him pass into the mirror world, where everything is so much better than here.

Baby whales aren't very good at making various calls, but a new study shows that even adults continue to improve their calling techniques. (more…)

A post shared by Настя Рыбка (@nastya_rybka.ru) on Feb 23, 2018 at 11:41pm PST Nastya Rybka (aka Anastasia Vashukevich) (Instagram/NSFW) is a Belarusian "sex expert" who just got thrown into a Thai jail for conducting a “sex training” seminar. She has released videos of a yacht trip she took with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko. “I am the only witness and the missing link in the connection between Russia and the U.S. elections — the long chain of Oleg Deripaska, Prikhodko, Manafort, and Trump," she said in an Instragram post. She's willing to help if Mueller springs her from jail. 1. Настя Рыбка заболела в тюрьме. 2 суток на холодном полу. Кровати нет. Врача не предоставляют. 3. Сегодня был суд. По суду выпустили под залог 6 человек включая Алекса Лесли и Андрея Покера. Они были счастливые с алексом и остальными. Их из суда свободных перевезли в иммиграцию. И в иммиграции сообщили что после суда несмотря на залог их лишили тайских виз. Так, Заплатив за каждого ололо ста тыс бати они получили 10 минут свободы при перевозке из одной тюрьмы в другую. Суд разрешил выйти под залог !!! Но видимо кто то спровоцировал тайскую иммиграцию лишить всех виз за несколько минут! В суде вины своей они не признали. Вина доказана не была. По статусу они должны были быть свободными ведь они невиновны и под залогом. 3. Теперь их держат в условиях ещё хуже. Бетонный пол. Нет кроватей. Еда только то что принесут. Врача к Насте не вызвали. Она отморозила почки похоже. Состояние очень плохое. По данным наших очевидцев кто то из русского консульства воздействовал на тайскую полицию. Настя рассказала что в тюрьме приходил человек от консульства и говорил насте и алексу что лучше им признать вину и лететь срочно в Россию. Настя считает что Россия стремится чтобы она сгнила в тайских тюрьмах из-за дела Навального и из-за интервью которое она давала журналисту НБС но оно ещё не вышло, если что то случиться с ней она сказала обратиться к нбс по поводу ее интервью. Пишем как есть с ее слов. Телефонов для связи у ребят нет. Настя думает, что все это из-за ее интервью и свидетельств по поводу дела Навального, и интервью журналистам США о том разговоре на яхте(записано со слов рыбки). Настя сегодня, пока ее перевозили из тюрьмы в тюрьму сумела одолжить телефон, провести трансляцию. Ей передали слова что депутаты гос думы хотят чтобы она сгнила в тюрьме в Тайланде, она ответила что - тех кто этого хочет возможно не любят женщины, желать зла любому человеку очень низко для госдумы РФ. И эти люди ее позорят. Настя официально через свою страницу в Инстаграмм попросила США о помощи выбраться из этой ситуации. И предоставить защиту и политическое убежище 10 репрессируемым членам команды которых Россия достала в Тайланде Просьба распространить слова Насти Рыбки A post shared by Настя Рыбка (@nastya_rybka.ru) on Feb 27, 2018 at 6:10am PST From Brian Krassenstein's Twitter thread:Basically [Russian Opposition leader Alexey Navalny] has used a prostitute and her Instagram account to confirm that Oleg Deripaska is a Russian businessman was bribing the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, Sergei Eduardovich Prikhodko.Deripaska had Prikhodko vacation on his yacht for multiple days in 2016. This shows how much influence Deripaska has on Putin and the Russian Federation. It also makes it quite clear that Deripaska was an intermediary/back channel between the Trump campaign and Putin.Recall the Washington post story last year seen here: washingtonpost.com/politics/manaf… Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort emailed Deripaska and told him that he would provide private briefings to him on the Trump campaign’s progress.This in itself was HUGE news back then because Manafort offered to provide a Russian oligarch with campaign updates. It becomes a bombshell when one realizes that Deripaska is incredibly close to the Kremlin and vacations with the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia.As you may recall, Manafort owed a substantial amount of money to Deripaska from a past loan. It is almost a certainty that Manafort was providing Deripaska updates on the campaign, who then was providing Putin’s inner circle with these updates, in exchange for debt forgiveness. The relationship then likely grew as Deripaska acted as the back channel between the Trump campaign and Putin. In conclusion, Manafort is clearly the man Mueller needs to flip. If Manafort flips, the entire house comes crumbling down in a heart beat.Image: From Associated Press video.

Science Youtuber Steve Mould explains why vinyl records are better than digital media. Not because they have better audio quality (I'm not getting into that argument, because I don't care much about sound quality) -- it's because LP grooves can be used in unusual ways. For instance, the spiral of an LP ends in a circular track called a "locked groove" or "runout groove" and some records include a recorded snippet that endlessly runs, just for fun. For instance, The Beatles famously added a loop of gibberish at the end of side two of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.Mould also demonstrates "interwoven tracks," which were used on horse race game recordes, with a random horse winning each time the stylus was set on the record. Mould's old toys with tiny records inside are very cool, too.

Robbin Gregorio created this papercut portrait of Olenna Tyrell, as well as many other fan favorites from Game of Thrones. (more…)

Maximize flavor, minimize cleaning.

“Only one of these nine films will win the coveted title of Best Picture—unless it’s accidentally given to someone else.”

From Nasa; check out the space agency's 3D Pluto globe.

Dinotopia artist James Gurney writes: Old people were lively and well spoken a century ago. Some of the people in these video clips were born earlier than 1840, with one man vividly recalling an event he witnessed in the Civil War."

I was lucky enough to be invited to submit a piece to Ian Bogost's Atlantic series on the future of cities (previously: James Bridle, Bruce Sterling, Molly Sauter, Adam Greenfield); I told Ian I wanted to build on my 2017 Locus column about using networks to allow us to coordinate our work and play in a way that maximized our freedom, so that we could work outdoors on nice days, or commute when the traffic was light, or just throw an impromptu block party when the neighborhood needed a break. (more…)

To launch an effective Denial of Service attack, your bots need to overwhelm your target with a flood of requests; the more bandwidth and computing-power your target has, the more you need to knock them off the internet. (more…)

Fonts in Use took a stab at identifying all of the fonts used in the Srirachi bottle label, which breaks all design rules but still looks awesome.Both the packaging and contents of tương ớt sriracha hot chili sauce bottles from Huy Fong Foods, Inc. have become condiment icons in recent decades. Sometimes referred to as “rooster sauce” because of the rooster on its label (the illustrator of which is unknown), the chili sauce features a chaotic jumble of elements on its packaging in multiple writing systems.The most prominent Latin text elements are rendered in a variety of informal script typefaces released by American Type Founders in the 20th century, namely Balloon and its shaded counterpart, Balloon Drop Shadow, as well as Brody. Smaller text on the back of the bottle is set in Impress and Tekton.Unfortunately my skills with recognizing fonts for Chinese text aren’t good enough to identify those used on the label. Any insight is welcome.[via Kottke]Image by Guilhem Vellut from Paris, France - Song Huong @ Paris, CC BY 2.0, Link

Greg at Public Displays of Confection created this delightful honey-flavored crystal candy with a sunflower pattern inside. It's really cool to see how they did it. (more…)

Last year, photographer Jim Young visited murder scenes and memorials in Chicago and documented what he saw with an instant camera. Last year, there were 650 murders in the area with 90 percent of them involving guns. Enough. “Though most of the [memorials] are gone,” Young says, “their photographs will be forever, and I hope memories [of the victims] will be, too.” See the series at FOTO: "Behind the Bullets"Image above:On Sept. 21, Manuel Hernandez was in a car when a minivan pulled up beside him. Someone in that van opened fire, killing the 30-year-old father of two girls. Pictured: the shattered glass of a nearby restaurant, hit by a stray bullet.Twin sisters Addison and Makayla Henning loved riding their bikes. They were just shy of 6 years old when their mother, Celisa Henning, shot them in a murder-suicide on Aug. 31, 2017. The twins’ grandmother said Celisa Henning had suffered health issues resulting from a car crash in 2015.Damien Santoyo, 14, was killed by shots fired from a car while he stood on the steps of an apartment with two other boys on Aug. 6. His killers had reportedly yelled gang slogans as they drove by, but relatives said Santoyo was not involved in any gang activity. A football player in junior high school, he was weeks from beginning high school.

TANU is a master at the magical art of coin stacking. Don't sneeze... More on Twitter: @thumb_tani(via Laughing Squid)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWU-N6HyhX0

I've lived my whole life as a pale, red headed fella. So, I say this, with authority: white people are dicks.According to Smithsonian.com, white pioneers and archeologists in the 18th and 19th centuries pumped out a bullshit story about Cahokia, once the largest Native American city north of Mexico, as having been built by the Welsh, Vikings, Hindus – anyone but the indigenous population:The city of Cahokia is one of many large earthen mound complexes that dot the landscapes of the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys and across the Southeast. Despite the preponderance of archaeological evidence that these mound complexes were the work of sophisticated Native American civilizations, this rich history was obscured by the Myth of the Mound Builders, a narrative that arose ostensibly to explain the existence of the mounds. Examining both the history of Cahokia and the historic myths that were created to explain it reveals the troubling role that early archaeologists played in diminishing, or even eradicating, the achievements of pre-Columbian civilizations on the North American continent, just as the U.S. government was expanding westward by taking control of Native American lands.So yeah: it's hard to claim that you're displacing or irradiating a gaggle of savages when they prove themselves to be part of a society with a culture and history that's just as complex as your own.Cahokia's collection of earthen mound structures aren't the only ones said to have been created by a mysterious group of builders. Similar sites can be found all over Ohio, the Mississippi Valley and well into the Southeast.Image: Skubasteve834 - EN.Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

One Hour One Life is a "multiplayer survival game of parenting and civilization building" by Jason Rohrer. Your character ages one year every minute. I'm not completely clear on how it works but I like the hand-drawn characters and graphics.

Hannah Jacobs animated this simple and clean kite-themed video for Secret For The Mad by Dodie (previously). (more…)

Marcin Nowrotek filmed a jazz quartet with a Kinect, then ran the recording through volumetric processors to give NEBULA an otherworldly 3D look and feel. (more…)

Russian digital artist Igor Lipchanskiy humorously imagines what's just beyond the edges of iconic album covers. In every case, it's him. He writes, "I like to listen to music and when I peer into the cover of the album I find a place for myself there."https://www.instagram.com/p/Bfq-Q-kjcYy/?taken-by=igor.lipchanskiyhttps://www.instagram.com/p/Be29Q20jPLi/?taken-by=igor.lipchanskiyhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BcrXD1HjWgE/?taken-by=igor.lipchanskiyhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BaUnE-Ej6hF/?taken-by=igor.lipchanskiyhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BcFOrDzjk7U/?taken-by=igor.lipchanskiyhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BV7dZNbj5Zy/?taken-by=igor.lipchanskiy(Bored Panda)

As part of her incredibly aesthetically pleasing Instagram account, Russian artist Marina Malinovaya creates these whimsical photographs in which plants and flowers stand in for tea and steam.https://www.instagram.com/p/BW4axxXFPRF/https://www.instagram.com/p/7KSHt5ltsV/https://www.instagram.com/p/BOJqzmoDmex/https://www.instagram.com/p/BNBkFgTD-si/https://www.instagram.com/p/6cAnWVFtqF/https://www.instagram.com/p/yOvSyCFtgP/https://www.instagram.com/p/BSiThWzDv3d/You can see more Floral Tea Stories, as well as other gorgeous photography, on Malinovaya’s Instagram.[via My Modern Met]