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In each episode of Gweek, I invite a guest or two to join me in a discussion about recommended media, apps, and gadgets. This time my guests were Janelle Hessig, a bay Area cartoonist and writer and the marketing director at Last Gasp Publishing, and Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein, which recounts Joshua’s yearlong quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top "mental athletes.”
Power pop’s creepiest anthems, from Piper’s “Who’s Your Boyfriend?” to 90% of The Knack’s pedo-discography to the obscure but clearly blue ribbon winner for all-time creepiest song, “Daddy’s Girl” by The Secrets.
The artist Clayton Bailey and his new roadside attraction/ art gallery in the tiny town of Port Costa, CA.
Joshua's recent stay in the Congo, where he's been living on and off for the last two years with a group of Mbenzele pygmies to research his next book, on the world’s last hunter-gatherers.
Why Josh built a full-scale reproduction of Agostino Ramelli’s Bookwheel.
A great book on the value of building with hand tools called the Anarchist’s Tool Chest by Christopher Schwarz.
The book The Horror! The Horror!: Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You To Read, which has over 200 horror comic book covers and complete stories that depict dismemberment, disfigurement, sadism, bondage, torture, electrocution, blinding with red hot pokers, decapitation, and cannibalism. No wonder kids loved comics so much in those days.
Justine Haupt made this handsome and completely functional rotary cellphone. Her design is open-source and you can even buy a case kit from her company, Sky’s Edge Robotics. You have to find and carefully modify your own rotary dial, though — they’re apparently no longer made — as well as a few other components. Why […]
Samsung claims to have developed an “Ultra Thin Glass” for its new Galaxy Z Flip foldable smartphone, signalling scratch resistance and durability beyond that of similar products. But tests conducted by Zack Nelson using a Mohs Hardness Testkit [Amazon] — a set of styluses made of different materials — show that it is no more […]
There is very little evidence that Ring reduces crime. Hundreds of police departments have signed agreements with Amazon-owned Ring to obtain access to the home surveillance camera footage. Interviews with many of them, in 8 different states, show little to no evidence that Ring actually deters criminal activity.
With so many manufacturers out there these days, it’s tough to know who to trust in the ultra-competitive wireless earbuds market. If you’ve never heard of LinearFlux, you may soon. That’s because it’s a company with a stellar pedigree whose co-founders were two of the engineers behind the original success of two audio houses you […]
Two-thirds of American adults drink coffee every day. On average, they’re each drinking about three cups per day, which works out to nearly 400 million cups downed each and every day. We don’t have stats on what percentage of those cups are God awfully bad, but you have to assume with so many ways to […]
For those with a writing flair, the thought of building a career as a professional copywriter should probably have some appeal. Thankfully, it’s also an in-demand job skill with the average copywriter making a healthy $60,000 a year for their efforts. But even if you have a way with words, you still need the industry […]
In each episode of Gweek, I invite a guest or two to join me in a discussion about recommended media, apps, and gadgets. This time my guests were Janelle Hessig, a bay Area cartoonist and writer and the marketing director at Last Gasp Publishing, and Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein, which recounts Joshua’s yearlong quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top "mental athletes.” 
