July 11, 2019
Robotic hamsters and discontinued Pop-Tarts
A longform look at the people who travel cross-country to trawl discount bins for resellable oddities.
Nomads travel to America's Walmarts to stock Amazon's shelves (The Verge) [more inside]
Content Warning: Nature is Red of Tooth and Claw
Are Humans OP? In this series (more or less), TierZoo (previously) considers whether any of the current animals builds in this crazy little game we call lifeOutside are overpowered and maybe need a nerf. (CW: Sometimes shows filmed or animated animal on animal (humans are animals) violence mostly drawn from documentaries.) [more inside]
Well she's a total blam-blam
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the release of David Bowie's "Space Oddity", and assisting in the celebration is secret glamster Barbara Millicent Roberts. [more inside]
All you need is the desire to look, long and hard, into the depths.
"Maybe rather than falling in love with his twin, Narcissus showed the pool his butt, peering over his beautiful shoulder to get the view from behind. Yet we prefer to think of Narcissus gazing at his lovely face for hours, wasting away (or drowning, depending on your mythological source) because he needs to be punished for his self-love. It’s a story with a moral, one that cautions against vanity and beauty. It’s also a story about the power of reflection, and we keep telling it because it keeps being relatable." The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Mirrors [more inside]
There is a Red Dwarf AA Advert [SLYT]
Remember the TV show Red Dwarf? Well the AA [Auto Recovery Service] hopes you do! That's it. I have no idea why Red Dwarf [ A relatively obscure, British, scifi sitcom - which is now over 30 years old ] is being used to sell a car recovery service but... Well it's a thing that's happened. [more inside]
We are replacing breakfast with a daily family stand up meeting
Workplace productivity tools such as Asana, Jira, and Slack are starting to infiltrate family life.
Coquina, the stone that absorbs cannon balls
Coquina (Wikipedia) is a sedimentary rock that is composed of fragments of invertebrate shells, and it has been used as a building stone in Florida for over 400 years. At a distance, it might appear like a coarse sandstone, and it is very porous, requiring extensive preparation to use as a building material, such as in Castillo de San Marcos (YouTube clip). But its porousness can be a benefit, as seen in The Mystery of Florida's Cannonball-Eating Spanish Fort (Atlas Obscura), where coquina behaves very differently when struck by cannonballs or bullets. The material was studied recently, and here's the full report on The Impact Response of Coquina: Unlocking the Mystery Behind the Endurance of the Oldest Fort in the United States (Journal of Dynamic Behavior of Materials).
where'd the money go?
The Wealth Detective Who Finds the Hidden Money of the Super Rich, Bloomberg[possibly paywalled], Ben Steverman - "Thirty-two-year-old French economist Gabriel Zucman scours spreadsheets to find secret offshore accounts." [more inside]
You can tell by the way I use my walk
Take four minutes and twenty seconds out of your day to enjoy Buddha the obese cat receiving treadmill hydrotherapy—set to "Staying Alive." (You can hear the therapists encouraging him in the original video. Sadly, he passed away due to a congenital heart defect later that year.)
Youtube has many other examples of hydrotherapy for cats:
Youtube has many other examples of hydrotherapy for cats:
A weak kittenAnd because no post is complete without dogs: Underwater Treadmills Help To Heal Dogs
Nazzanin, the turkish van
Morph the cat getting hydrotherapy treatment for his arthritis
Luna Attends Hydrotherapy
On What We Learn
Future Cities
Tom Crowther's lab at ETH Zürich has put together an analysis of how the climate of global cities will change by 2050.
🕹️ The D-Pad is back.
Nintendo's New 'Switch Lite' Doesn't Actually Switch [The Verge] “The Switch Lite — the newly unveiled spinoff of the full-sized Switch console — doesn’t actually “switch.” Instead of the detachable controllers and TV dock that allows the standard Switch to shape-shift between a TV console, portable gamepad, and a mobile multiplayer machine, the Switch Lite has a much narrower focus on just one of those experiences — but that’s not a bad thing. Instead, it shows that the Switch’s audience and appeal extend to a different market than what the full-sized version currently serves.” [YouTube][Reveal Trailer] [more inside]
Where water is life, many on the Pine Ridge Reservation go thirsty
A pipeline’s promise is fulfilled for white ranchers while tribal communities are left waiting. [more inside]
"We request those chasing selfies don't fall in the ash dump"
Your Data, Your Money, Your Laws
Your data could be at the centre of the fight against big tech (NYT) - "Furman, a Harvard professor advising the British government on tech regulation, said that rather than relying on antitrust law alone, countries should create a dedicated regulator for the tech industry, to match those covering the banking, health and transportation sectors of the economy. He said a watchdog with expertise in the field could better review a company's behavior and use of data on a case-by-case basis." [more inside]
The Most Important Supreme Court Cases of 2019
Star of Stage and Screen
Behold Owlkitty! You don't know Owlkitty? She's only been in all you favorite movies! John Wick! Titanic! The Matrix! Iron Man! [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »