July 14, 2019
Sunday Night Snacks
Myth #1: Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.
Enterprise Dog Power
Your cat is scanning, but is your dog working for you? With N. Potter's Enterprise Dog Power (YT) Treadmill (1881), your dog could be churning butter (YT), grinding stones, and separating cream. A brief history of dogs and treadmills. Previously. #animalsandsurfaces
Glory Hole puns are left as an exercise for the reader
Blown Away, a glass blowing reality competition show, made the leap from cable TV to Netflix this weekend. No doubt you’ll want to binge the show, but what if you want to see more of the contestants' work? Step inside for links to their websites, instagram feeds, etc. [more inside]
We are drowning in love on this planet inhabited by cats
Cat Planet, a music video that took over half a year to make by Uchikubi Gokumon Doukoukai (Google Translated) [more inside]
The Internet really ought to have killed cookbooks.
In fact, as the rest of the book industry found itself in a post-millennial free-fall, cookbooks were selling better than ever. This is because, coinciding with the rise of the Internet, cookbooks reinvented themselves. What once were primarily vehicles for recipes became anything but: the recipes still mattered, but now they existed in service of something more—a mood, a place, a technique, a voice. Cookbooks of the pre-Internet age remain essential, of course. But, to my mind, the best cookbooks of the twenty-first century are among the very best ever written. [Helen Rosner, writing for The New Yorker, rounds up The Best Cookbooks of the Century So Far.]
Is taking advantage of Amazon’s sale akin to crossing the picket line?
Should you boycott Amazon Prime Day? [The Verge] “It’s Amazon at its most Amazonian — fast, cheap, convenient, and totalizing. Prime Day draws you in, not just to Amazon Prime membership but to a whole world of seamless consumerism. It’s the kind of intra-corporate pride that was on display in the bizarre concert series, and much of the company’s messaging around Prime Day in general. But is Amazon really something to be proud of?” [more inside]
The Lingering of Loss
Ultimate Ungulate, going strong for more than two decades
Back in 1996, Brent Huffman noted that finding information and pictures of unusual animals online was far more difficult than he thought it should be. The empty niche of an all-encompassing ungulate site was readily apparent ... and so UltimateUngulate stepped in to fill the void, first as small personal project (April 1999 archive) to the present-day UltimateUngulate.com, from the Asian water buffalo, Addax, and Aders's duiker toWhite-tailed gnu aka Black wildebeest, wild yak, Zebra duiker, not to mention Pygmy hippopotamus, Water chevrotain and Visayan warty pigs.
#viernesdeilustración
#Viernesdeilustracion is a popular hashtag on twitter and instagram for Mexican illustrators to share their work, and every week there's a different theme. This Friday it was 'Traditional Mexican Outfits'; a few of the submissions: one, two, three, four.
MuppetFilter: DefunctTV on Jim Henson
Defunctland's six-part series on the life and career of Muppet creator Jim Henson finishes today. The series in its entirety:
The History of the First Muppet Show, Sam and Friends |
The Curse of Sesame Street |
The History of The Muppet Show |
The History of Fraggle Rock |
The History of Muppet Babies | The Final Jim Henson Hour
Happy birthday, Metafilter!
Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
Robot umpire calls baseball game
The independent Atlantic League became the first American professional baseball league to let a computer call balls and strikes on Wednesday at its all-star game. "About 45 minutes before first pitch, the public address announcer directed fans to look up at the black screen hanging off the face of the upper level behind the plate and joked that they could blame the computer for any disagreements over calls."--ESPN
Starry starry knit
Wouldn't it be cool if there was a shawl that was also a star chart? Seven years ago, Audry Nicklin built that idea into a pattern that became a virally appealing star map shawl (with some modifications), depicting the constellations as viewed from the North Pole. Nicklin later added a Southern Skies version as viewed from Antarctica. But the newest knitter pulling the stars into her tapestry has perhaps an even more ambitious vision: software engineer Sarah Spencer recently produced a 300 sqft tapestry of star charts centered around our Earth. (Previously.)
The Troubling Business of Bounty Hunting
You may not realize it, but bounty hunting is still alive and well in America in 2019. It's fueled by old laws, loose guidelines, and not-great money. In order to get a closer look inside the world of "bail enforcement agents," writer Jeff Winkler got licensed and spent months working as a BEA. What he found was a mess for pretty much everyone caught up in a broken system. A long read from GQ. "No other job is more American," writes the author. [more inside]
Contains: world without homophobia
Queer Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Recommendations, a database of queer science fiction and fantasy books. Search by genre, content, identity, and many other categories.
Before you get into a relationship, make sure they have an ID
The One who are but don't exist: Being Nubian and Kenyan.
I never thought much about national identification cards until it was time to get my own so I never imagined that it would be an experience that would change my life forever, or one that I would be writing about five years later.
( From The Elephant via a friend.) A little more about the Nuba peoples and Previously.
I never thought much about national identification cards until it was time to get my own so I never imagined that it would be an experience that would change my life forever, or one that I would be writing about five years later.
( From The Elephant via a friend.) A little more about the Nuba peoples and Previously.
Like a thriller, like a comedy, like a tragedy
The Mueller Report From Business Insider, adapted by Mark Bowden, author of "Black Hawk Down", with illustrations by Chad Hurd, art director at "Archer." [more inside]
Batter Steals First, Making Baseball History
Tony Thomas, an outfielder for the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, took advantage of a new rule (currently being tested in the independent Atlantic League at the behest of Major League Baseball) allowing a batter to steal first on a wild pitch.
100 x 75 resolution!
Did you ever think to yourself, "Hey, I probably could make a video card if I really tried?" No? Well, maybe you could! Here's Part 2.
Toronto Tomorrow
A Big Master Plan for Google's Growing Smart City - "Google sibling company Sidewalk Labs has revealed its master plan for the controversial Quayside waterfront development—and it's a lot bigger."[1,2] [more inside]
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