This "house boat" for sale on Mercer Island, Washington was once the USS Manzanita, built for the US Coast Guard in 1908 and later part of the US Navy. It's now for sale for $2 million. From Realtor.com: n 1949, the boat was going to be scrapped, when a local librarian and her father bought […]
Chameleons have evolved a superfast and long tongue to grab insects in an instant. Inspired by this marvelous bit of nature, engineers at Seoul National University of Science and Technology created "Snatcher," a robotic tongue design that could someday be mounted on drones to pick up packages. From IEEE Spectrum: "For example, a quadrotor with […]
Seeya! Rough Google translation of the tweet: "It's a mini 4WD that has been tuned to be crisp."
In the last few weeks, school administrators have sent letters to parents and guardians announcing their plans for starting school in the middle of a pandemic. In McSweeney's, Kara Baskin penned a perfect parody of those letters. As a very wise person once said, "it's funny 'cause it's true." Teachers, you have my sympathy and […]
In the 1980s, someone stashed some beer and gum behind books at the Walla Walla Library in Washington State. The library is closed due to COVID-19 and undergoing renovations. From CNN: During the demolition three weeks ago, five full cans of Hamm's beer and an opened pack of Godzilla Heads gum was found in a […]
If I was at a drive-in movie in 1979 and this commercial for the snack bar played, I'd have secretly wished it was the actual film we were there to see. (via r/ObscureMedia)
Police in St. Petersburg, Florida arrested a homeless fellow who had been living in a luxury suite in Al Lang Stadium. He was apparently wearing Tampa Bay Rowdies clothing swiped from the merch shop and ate from the concession stands during his two week stay. He's now in jail on charges of burglary and "resisting […]
The US Pentagon is forming a task force to investigate military reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (aka UFOs). Over the last few years, the New York Times broke news of a similar program in the Office of Naval Intelligence, examined curious videos depicting aerial encounters between Navy jets and UFOs (above), and reported a theoretical […]
In Munich, Germany, the Circus Krone, closed due to the pandemic, is trying out a new revenue stream: They're selling jars of lion poop for use in gardens to fertilize and also deter other animals from nibbling. According to UPI, "the circus erected a large sculpture dubbed 'Mr. Poo' outside the business to celebrate the […]
Lydia Cambron brilliantly recreated the final, enigmatic scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey. My god, it's full of droplets. (via Daring Fireball)
Watch the skies! The peak of the Perseid meteor shower takes place overnight tonight! The bright quarter Moon will limit the number of shooting stars you'll see but you can still expect around 15-20 per hour depending on where you're at. The meteors are debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle burning up in Earth's atmosphere at speeds […]
"All the Difference" is a 20-minute educational film from Kodak featuring the unique comedy stylings of Mike Nichols and Elaine May, an influential improv duo of the era. Shot in 16mm, it's a tragicomic documentary about America's natural beauty and its environmental deterioration. Oh, how things have changed, right? From "Enviro-Films," a 1973 survey of […]
It's been a good summer for metal detectorists! In June, a fellow scanning a field in Rossett, Wales, UK found a 2,000-year-old Roman ingot. Around the same time, Mariusz Stepien turned up a hoard of Bronze Age artifacts in a field near Peebles, Scotland. The hoard, dating back to c.1000 BCE, is now at Edinburgh's […]
"There I Ruined It" remakes Michael Jackson's "Bad" as a foot-stompin' bluegrass ditty. I'm giving you On count of three To show your stuff Or let it be
Amaze, an illuminating and informative guide to designing magical experiences, has finally been published in English! Written by my pal and Boing Boing contributor Ferdinando Buscema and inventive designer/writer Mariano Tomatis, Amaze ("L'arte Di Stupire" in Italian) is not a book of tricks but rather a primer on "thinking like a magician." Here is what […]
Seventy five years ago today, the United States detonated an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, killing an estimated 140,000 people. A year later, John Hersey, a pioneer of "new journalism," visited the city to report an incredible feature for the New Yorker about the experiences of six people who survived the blast. The US had […]
Several years ago, scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of an infant galaxy as it appeared 13.4 billion years ago. How did they achieve this head-spinning look so far back in time? The light they measured to create the photo was emitted by the galaxy, named GN-z11, just 400 million years after […]
