I've owned quite a few vegetable peelers, and the Kuhn Rikon model (3 for on Amazon) is my favorite. The blade is very sharp and it easily skins sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and even jicama. They are really cheap, too. Buy a 3-pack and share them with your friends. Every time they accidentally cut their finger using it, they'll think of you. Read the rest
Sam Trail says he and his wife boarded a United Airlines plane only to discover that their seats had been vomited on by a previous passenger. They say that when they alerted a crew member, they were given a wad of paper towels and warned that they would be blamed for a departure delay if they insisted on having the seats cleaned by a cleaning crew.
From Click2Houston:
Sam Trail, of Houston, said he and his wife were forced to sit in a seat with fresh vomit on the back, of the seat in front of them, the floor and the seat itself.
"The seat in front of me was covered with vomit," Trail said. "They kept boarding the people and so we couldn't move. We basically had our luggage in our laps trying to avoid contact with the vomit."
Eventually a person came on board with a spray bottle and paper towels and cleaned up some of the vomit.
Image: Click2Houston Read the rest
Mexico City judge Víctor Octavio Luna Escobedo gave two people permission to use 500 milligrams of cocaine per day, saying the drug conveys benefits such as "tension relief, the intensification of perceptions and the desire [to have] new personal and spiritual experiences." According to Newsweek, the two happy cokeheads musn't sniff the drug while "working, driving or operating heavy machinery ... they are also not allowed to take the drug in public, in the presence of children, or encourage others to consume it."
Image: Pixabay. Public domain Read the rest
A month after DoorDash promised to give workers the tips that customers leave for them, the company is still withholding them, reports Vox.
At the time, CEO Tony Xu announced in a series of tweets that DoorDash would institute a new model to ensure workers’ earnings would “increase by the exact amount a customer tips on every order.” Xu promised to provide “specific details in the coming days.” The next day, Xu sent out a note to DoorDash workers, broadly outlining changes and letting them know “what to expect in the days ahead.”
But 27 days later, current DoorDash workers tell Recode that the company’s pay and tipping policies have stayed the same. The company has not made any public statements about its worker pay and how it plans to institute the changes, nor has it offered a specific date when it will fulfill its promise.
Image of dollar bill: Public Domain, Link Read the rest
Benjamin Bennett has a YouTube channel of 300 videos where he silently sits in a corner for four hours and smiles into the camera without taking a break. Yesterday he made an 8-hour video of sitting and smiling.
He also has a newer video series called "Walking and Talking" where he rubber bands a camera to a stick and delivers stream of consciousness philosophical musings for four hours per episode.
Image: YouTube Read the rest
I'm a fan of Todd Thyberg's design work and when he told me he had a kickstarter for a project with a H.P. Lovecraft theme, I asked him to describe the project for Boing Boing. Here's what he wrote:
Read the restAre you a fan of horror, expeditionary adventures from the days of old, or the tactile sensation of letterpress printed goods? Then have I got a book for you! This one, live on Kickstarter right now, is Angel Bomb's largest and most ambitious project to date!
The Miskatonic Papers is an experiential book; you don’t just read it, you explore and experience the mystery assembling it from various pieces. It’s like breaking open a time capsule and then trying to figure out what happened over 100 years ago. Composed of 50 printed pieces including letters, telegrams, drawings, newspaper clippings, a broadside, burned tatters of found stationery, and a journal which was written by hand and printed by letterpress. All of these items, letterpress printed, hand stamped, aged and weathered, comprise this Stygian work of unnameable horrors. You'll even receive a cast resin fragment of the artifact that lies at the heart of the story; painted, aged and imbued with evil.
This is my fourth book, inspired by early 20th century author and creator of cosmic horror, H.P. Lovecraft. Growing up reading Lovecraft’s stories, I fell in love with his dark horror and esoteric language. His creepy New England settings and monsters from beyond the furthest reaches of space and time inspired this young teenager, eager for an escape from his small North Dakota town.
This is the least expensive Arduino-clone starter kit I've seen. It's just on Amazon, and comes with an Arduino Uno clone, a solderless breadboard, resistors, LEDs, jumper wires, pushbuttons, and a lot more.
If you need to learn how to use an Arduino, may I recommend my Skillshare video class? If you sign up here you can get 3 months of Skillshare videos for 99 cents. Skillshare has thousands of great videos to teach you about programming, art, animation and more. I've been a happy paying subscriber for years. Read the rest
Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music traces the history of electronic music from the early 1900s to the present through a timeline/map that has links to playlists to different subgenres. Read the rest
It sucks to be in a motorcycle accident, as Instagram influencer tifforelie was. She documented the accident by posting a series of professionally-shot photos of her lying in the road, one of which prominently displayed a bottle of Smartwater. The photos have since been deleted, but can be found here on Buzzfeed.
Buzzfeed editor Tanya Chen tweeted that tifforelie "denied to me that the Smartwater featured in one of the professional photos is a brand endorsement" and that "Smartwater confirmed to me they 'do not have a paid relationship with Tiffany.'" That settles it!
An Influencer Is Defending Her Decision To Post A Photoshoot Of Her Motorcycle Accident On Instagram
she also denied to me that the Smartwater featured in one of the professional photos is a brand endorsement https://t.co/pXe5HDcCF3 pic.twitter.com/r7tuXUNAS1
— Tanya Chen (@Tanya_Chen) August 19, 2019
My friend and former Make magazine colleague Sean Michael Ragan is making videos for my Cool Tools YouTube channel. (Subscribe to the channel here!) In his latest video, Sean reviews something called Solder Seals, which allow you to solder wires together without using a soldering iron. Read the rest
I've been using these heavy duty shop towels for years. Apart from being blue, they look like standard kitchen paper towels, but are much stronger. They're great for wiping off grease, and are the family favorite for cleaning up cat puke. Amazon has them on sale right now for a price that's less than regular paper towels: 3 for Read the rest
I got a sneak peek at the first episode of a new Great Big Story series called "Cracking the Code of Cicada 3301." It doesn't answer the question of who is behind the puzzle world of Cicada 3301 or why it was created, but that's because no one knows. Instead it focuses on a few people who have spent a good part of their young lives solving the maddeningly difficult puzzles posted by Cicada 3301. It's worth watching.
In 2012, a secretive group calling itself 3301 began recruiting for “highly intelligent individuals” online. Candidates had to prove their skills in codebreaking, cryptography and computer programming by solving a complex puzzle dubbed Cicada. It required knowledge of steganography, contacts on the ground everywhere from Seoul to Sydney, and the ability to obtain a copy of William Gibson’s famous disappearing poem “Agrippa.” What was the purpose of the puzzle? No one knows, but many set out to solve one of the internet’s greatest mysteries. At the age of 15, Marcus Wanner became one of the few to crack the code. But the Cicada challenge didn’t end there. Suddenly, more mysterious codes appeared—including a 58-page book of runes known as the “Liber Primus.”
Image: YouTube/Great Big Story Read the rest
In this excellent Mashable article about Yahoo's disastrous $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr and its subsequent mishandling is this bit:
Top Yahoo executives clashed with Tumblr, or just flat out confused employees. On one occasion, an executive overseeing [Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp] and his division perplexed employees by saying he thought Tumblr had the potential to "create the next generation PDF," according to multiple sources.
And that is why Yahoo became the next generation fax machine. Read the rest
A teenage girl lost her phone privileges so she used her 3DS to go online. Her mother found out and confiscated it. The girl resumed tweeting on her Wii U. After her mother took that away, the girl started tweeting from the LG smart refrigerator in the kitchen. The girl said her mother has made plans to remove it.
Image: Twitter Read the rest
This 15-minute explainer video might be the only video you'll need to learn as much about switches as you'll ever care to find out.
Computational biologist Mike Inouye posted this video to Twitter, saying, "This zombie snail. A parasitic worm Leucochloridium has taken over its motor functions and eye stalks, making them into caterpillar mimics so birds will eat them. The worm can then reproduce in the bird's GI tract, eventually transmitting via its faeces."
This zombie snail. A parasitic worm Leucochloridium has taken over its motor functions and eye stalks, making them into caterpillar mimics so birds will eat them. The worm can then reproduce in the bird's GI tract, eventually transmitting via its faeces 🤯 https://t.co/mP8IrGh21L pic.twitter.com/C2xc83oU54
— Mike Inouye (@minouye271) August 12, 2019
Image: Twitter/Mike Inouye Read the rest
This Wera slotted 0.5 mm x 3.0 mm x 80 mm screwdriver is on sale for just including shipping. Read the rest
