We realize it's still frigidly cold in many places, but advanced planning for summer 2021 needs to start happening now. And, even with so much still up in the air about what life will even feel like six months from now, it's time to get the ball rolling today.  — Read the rest

Good against remotes is one thing. Good against the living, that's something else.

I just like watching fiberglass go on. Someday I want to shape and glass my own surfboard.

Watch the whole video to see how Device Orchestra got a toaster, two electric toothbrushes, and a typewriter to play the Imperial March from Star Wars, or just cut right to the 2:04 mark to hear it.

(The Awesomer)

screenshot via Device Orchestra

It probably sounds trite, but a quality light source in an emergency really can make the difference between life and death. While you hope to never need it, a powerful, functioning flashlight or headlamp should not only be part of your pack for any outdoor excursion, it should also be stationed in your vehicle for the day disaster might strike. — Read the rest

Bell's Brewery in Kalamazoo, Michigan tapped into a very Michigan thing, Michiganders say, to name their newest beer. No, it's not called party store (convenient store), 'jeet? (did you eat?) or doorwall (sliding glass door out to the patio)–all really embarrassing Michigan expressions, that I haven't entirely shaken since moving from Michigan to Chicago more than 20 years ago. — Read the rest

Sea shanties (and other sea songs) are all the rage on TikTok right now. The sentiments of these often plaintive songs of hard labor, love, longing, and loss seem to have found a resonance in our collective psyche. — Read the rest

In this episode of Songs That Changed Music, producer and musician Warren Hewitt breaks down 19-year-old Kate Bush's 1978 single, "Wuthering Heights," and explains what makes it such a breathtaking debut composition.

Image: YouTube

This explainer on all the ways that humans subjectively experience time is packed with all kinds of interesting factoid about how hard it is for us to accurately gauge time and place time in context. For instance, Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth were born in the same year, but where Marilyn feels like a young woman from long ago, Queen Elizabeth has always seemed like she was a stately older woman to most people alive today. — Read the rest

Neonode has been around for a while, but they are making a big push for their products in the age of pandemics.

I would want to see a LOT of data on these before I used one of these on an ATM or other input device that requires personal or financial information. — Read the rest

Helen Rosner writes a witty post about becoming intrigued by a new garlic-peeling technique that moves at rapid-fire pace, and her attempt to master it.

I won't spoil the … ending. It's a short piece, go read it.

Rosner's description:

 The video shows a pair of hands using the point of a knife to stab each clove from an intact head of garlic and pop it from its skin.

Tim "Baked Alaska" Gionet, a far-right activist and general Trump-era figure of fun, was arrested today by the FBI over his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Gionet posted video that showed Trump supporters in "Make America Great Again" and "God Bless Trump" hats milling around and taking selfies with officers in the Capitol who calmly asked them to leave the premises.

Stay abreast of all of that hot sedition tracking and arresting action, thanks to the the Sedition Tracker website and Twitter feed.

Image: SeditionTracker inset

Congrats to Cairo maker, Dina Amin. She has been awarded Best of the Year in the stop motion category by Vimeo.

If you don't know Dina's work, she is a product designer who does the coolest stop motion animations featuring products and technology. — Read the rest

It's an option virtually every small business and freelancing professional will eventually consider — do I need to rent office space? Whether it's the result of a growing staff, growing responsibilities, or simply maturing as a company, there's usually a moment for any professional organization when getting a centralized office starts to make a lot of sense. — Read the rest

Laura Preston was a painter who, in 2013, set off on what was supposed to be a one-year trip with her partner, in an Airstream. She discovered that painting on the road was too cumbersome, so she switched to making quilts. — Read the rest

The modern disposable hypodermic needle is a marvel: safe, clean, and almost painless compared to the reusable instruments many of us remember from years past. But how did this method of introducing drugs into our bodies start? Earlier physicians would wound the skin, as in variolation, but the first use of a needled instrument was in 1844, when Dr. — Read the rest

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

Image: Public Domain via Wallpaper Flare

In a week when insurgents tried to overthrow the government and the president was impeached for an unprecedented second time, the tabloids address the issues that really matter in America: Kim & Kanye's divorce, Jeffrey Epstein's murder, and the battle over Larry King's will. — Read the rest

The cloud is definitely growing up. A decade ago, you'd have been hard-pressed to find many comfortable with saving all of their documents, media, and other important files with a cloud service provider. Today, everyone is on board the cloud storage train. — Read the rest