March 26, 2021
Travel the Universe with a sheet of A4
Metric Paper & Everything in the Universe (SLYT by CGP Grey) See also (some previously): Powers of Ten, The Super Zoom, The Known Universe, Timelapse of the Entire Universe, The Size of Space
Beverly Cleary has died at 104
Televised Worlds Part 4: The Children of Pynco
Two orphans of unknown species, the sole survivors of a spaceship crash on an vast desert planet, meet two bumbling bounty hunters, and together, they discover abandoned technology, a distant world with more wonders - and hope - than it first appears to have... and each other. Oh, and did I mention it’s a series of Australian stop-motion shorts from 1997? This is PLASMO. (Note: eps 3 & 4 are listed in reverse order. Also included: the earlier pre-reboot special Happy Hatchday to Plasmo.)
But how badly will it kill you?
Do you have a young nature nerd in your life? Would they like to watch an enthusiastic older nature nerd, Dr Ann Jones, react to viral videos of Australia’s cute and deadly critters? Would they like to hear scientific tidbits about the animals we love, and those we love to fear? Then you've come to the right place. You've come to How Deadly | Australia. [more inside]
We Celebrate All Cultures
Fashion outlet Tory Burch tries to pass off traditional fisherman's sweater from Portugal as Mexican poncho, gets busted. Also maybe scamming Portuguese cabbage-shaped plates. [more inside]
Renewables met 97% of Scotland's electricity demand in 2020
Whispers to the Overburdened Heart
The Artists' Grief Deck. "These cards were made by artists and by caregivers experienced with supporting people in processing loss, to help so many of us who have lost someone or something, and who may not be able to safely grieve together.
There is no one correct way to use these cards, but we have these suggestions: [more inside]
That Zoom Call with the Lawyer-Cat, Explained
The surprising reason why the “cat” filter, made famous by the lawyer Ron Ponton’s cameo during a court hearing, was installed as the default on thousands of Dell computers.
A ten-minute film from The New Yorker explains why it happened.
A ten-minute film from The New Yorker explains why it happened.
Kanye West but make it Disney
Annie's Mac and Cheese is based in the Bay Area, but Annie is not.
Here's her story. Withey’s face was almost plastered on the original early '90s rollout of mac and cheese boxes, but she “promptly put an end to that idea,” she says. She went with her bunny named Bernie instead. Withey has a keener eye for the business side of things than she allows herself to admit (or lets on). “There's nothing more powerful than word-of-mouth advertising,” she wrote to me. She employed “guerilla marketing” tactics and would drop off Annie’s boxes anywhere she could, really. “Physically putting boxes in the hands of people was so much fun for me,” she says. [more inside]
Catbeard
Louis Coulon was a metal worker with a 6 foot long mustache and an 11 foot long beard. Sometimes he would pose for novelty postcards with his cats.
better machine readability for knowledge
Wikidata is "Wikipedia's not so little sister": "a free and open knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines." Wikidata aims to be "accessible to everyone in their language without privileging any particular language by design". Also: "A lot of technology today is trying to simplify the world by hiding necessary complexity and nuance. Conflicting worldviews need to be surfaced. Otherwise we take away people’s ability to talk about, understand, and ultimately resolve their differences. Wikidata is striving to change that by not trying to force one truth but by collecting different points of view with their sources and context intact. This additional context can, for example, include which official body disputes or supports which view on a territorial dispute." [more inside]
call me when you need
Billboard record breaking hip hop artist and queer pioneer Lil Nas X has just dropped the video to his seventh single, MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name). The release was accompanied by an emotional note to his 14 year old self.
suburban retrofitting
The People the Suburbs Were Built for Are Gone. Shayla Love @ Vice.com interviews architecture professors June Williamson and Ellen Dunham-Jones on their new book, Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges. "Since the 1990s, Williamson and Dunham-Jones have been watching the suburbs evolve. They have found that much of the suburban sprawl of the 20th century was built to serve a very different population than the one that exists now, and so preserving what the suburbs once were doesn't make sense." [more inside]
"Too toxic to ignore"
Thierry Henry, one of the greatest players in football history, has had enough of racism and bullying on social media. [more inside]
Fewer Octop(i/uses/odes) than I would have expected
Game Jams are, of course, not a new thing and there are plenty to choose from[itch.io] if you're looking to participate in one. But it's possible, likely even, that's you've never heard of Octojam.[itch.io] For the past seven years a small group of enthusiasts have spent the month of October writing games for the CHIP-8. [more inside]
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