"Ai-Da" is an AI robot artist with an uncanny human-like face. Ai-Da has shown a series of self portraits at London's Design Museum. Watch her drawn by holding a pen in her robot hand and listen to her speak about her art in this video. She explains to us in a monotone voice that her art is contemporary, and engages with society's current issues. No two pieces are the same, as she has the ability to sketch unique portraits of what lies in front of her that the algorithm can't reproduce.
Lemons become lemonade when these actors read real-life Yelp reviews. Here's one about a bad chuck-e-cheese experience, and here's one about a man stuck in his hotel room with a gnarly case of food poisoning. These negative yelp reviews become extra hilarious when read in serious voices paired with dramatic background music. I can't get enough!
The South Pole Ice Tunnels are a network of passages underneath the Amundsen-Scott Station, a remote research base in Antarctica. The tunnels contain pipes to bring fresh water to the research base, but they also contain something unexpected.
Since the tunnels were made in 2002, various staff and visitors have ventured down into the -60°F/-51°C passageways and built shrines into the side of the ice-wall. The shrines are filled with sentimental objects, work projects, and novelty items. My favorite is the shrine containing a pig head, which can be seen in the collection of images.
In this video, Cartoonist Kayfabe talks about paintings by Robert Williams, founder of Juxtapoz magazine and ZAP comix artist. It was a lot of fun listening to the in-depth conversation about Williams' art in the video. The featured book is called Views from a Tortured Libido, a book featuring 60 of Williams's paintings with an introduction by Dr. Timothy Leary. The wacky, surreal masterpieces in the book will overload your senses with hot rods, monsters, and girls in bikinis galore.
If you've ever had multiple furbies in your home, you've probably had a chuckle watching them speak gibberish to each other. The silliness of furbies talking to each other is taken to a whole new level in this conversation between 25 Furbies. The way they're all sitting in a giant circle makes it look like they're having a serious meeting about some top secret Furby business. What do you think they are talking about?
Have you ever felt ravenous over a can of tuna fish while frantically searching for a can opener without any luck? These lifehacks will help you open the can in various ways that don't involve the use of a can opener. If you don't have any tools at all, you can simply take your can outside and find a rough surface such as a rock or concrete. Then, flip the can upside down and rub the top of it along the rough surface with force until the seal is broken. If you have a knife, screwdriver, or spoon handy, the article also explains how to use those to pop off that lid. Now, I will never have to face any obstacles between me and my canned tuna again!
Underwater welding is one of the most dangerous jobs out there, and this video explains why. Underwater welders work grueling hours and can sometimes spend 80 hours working per week. They descend as deep as 1,300 feet. All of the risks associated with scuba diving apply to underwater welders. Beyond that, the extreme heat produced by the welding can lead to fatal explosions. One little mistake could lead to catastrophic consequences. I have great respect for anyone who does this difficult and risky job.
Artist LadyBEAST can walk glass bottles like a pro. Did I mention that she's able to do this while wearing high heels? In this video by Ripley's Believe it or Not, LadyBEAST talks about her escape artistry skills and demonstrates some of her amazing abilities for us. Her bravery and talent is next level!
From Youtube:
"Balanced atop thin necked champagne bottles, LadyBEAST walks and dances across their narrow uncorked openings. Leaving her audiences breathless with her seemingly effortless tiptoe, the feats of illusion and magic don't stop there. "
Tihngs is one of my favorite instagram accounts to find inspiration on. It's filled with an incredible assortment of antique treasures. From unique hand-carved wooden spoons to old and unusual dolls, this page is always interesting to browse. I love looking at each object and wondering about its story and past life. I'd be thrilled to see this collection in person someday.
Mr. Cherry holds the world record for most nuts crushed in a minute by sitting on them. Cherry is a Japanese comedian who currently holds 26 Guinness world records in total. A few of his records include most dried peas moved using a straw in 30 seconds, longest duration to spin a fidget spinner on the nose, most drink coasters flipped and caught with chopsticks in one minute, and more. His ability to crush walnuts with his butt is pretty remarkable. He broke the world record for this particular skill in February of 2022. You can read an interview with Mr. Cherry here.
I recently bookmarked this serendipitous video of traffic footage featuring the song Olson (version 3) by Boards of Canada. It's the perfect video to unwind to after a stressful day, or if you need a quick brain break. I love how meditative the double exposure and slowed down footage of cars and trains passing by is. It fits the song perfectly.
Previously on BoingBoing:
High tech bowls and spoons use electricity to add the illusion of saltiness to your food, reports Sora News 24.
"This works by passing a specific wavelength of electricity from the surface of the utensil to the food which keys into the ions such as sodium chloride that trigger our sense of saltiness. In doing so these ions all get bunched together when they touch your tongue, for a heightened salty taste without actually adding any more salt."
Basically, this kitchenware will allow you to hallucinate the taste of salt, without any added sodium. I personally don't care much for salt, but I'll be eagerly awaiting the invention of silverware that tastes like sugar.
"La Mano: The Burning of Engraved Wooden Plates" is a film by Adolpho Avril and Fabian Dores Pais. The film is made from footage of a series of wood engravings that I find deeply intriguing. I love the simplicity and ghostly quality of the characters and figures engraved into the wood. This film, which was an entry into the 2019 Raw Vision short film competition, brings the engravings to life.
I've never empathized with a salad before until I watched this video. Flora by Jan Sevankmajer is a surreal stop motion film featuring a creature made from vegetables. The vegetables begin to decay at an alarming rate, with maggots galore. The poor vegetable creature has to lay there helplessly as it ripens and rots. A piece of advice: don't watch this video right before dinner.
From Youtube:
"Short animation by Jan Sevankmajer – Czech surrealist artist and filmmaker. His work spans several media. He is known for his surreal animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Quay, Shane Acker, and many others."
Previously on BoingBoing: Jabberwocky is a magical 13-minute stop motion film | Boing Boing
Have you ever been struck with the sudden fear that a rat is going to wiggle its way up your toilet and bite your bum? If you were living in bliss, unaware of this phenomenon, I'm sorry for breaking the news to you: rats CAN sometimes do this. Watch to see how rats can find their way from the sewer and into your potty. Although it's rare, rats will use air pockets to make their way up the toilet plumbing. Have fun sitting on your toilet tonight!
Here's an awesome art film called Faux Plafond by Françoise Vogel. It will make your brain spin around in circles as you watch people inside bubbles walk around a house that operates like a rotating hamster wheel from another dimension. Although the people seem completely unphased by their gravity-defying house, one of them takes the time to fix a crooked picture on the wall. They also go to outer space (with their house), throw soccer balls and tiny moons into the air, and jump around on a planet like it's a trampoline. I like these people and want to be their friend.
Adolf Wölfli (1864 – 1930) was a visionary artist from Bern, Switzerland. Here's a video compilation of his brilliantly intriciate drawings. I never tire of looking at his work. His drawings are mandala-esque, containing many images within images. Wölfli was one of the first people to be recognized as an "outsider artist". He spent a large portion of his life inside of a psychiatric hospital, where he made his drawings.
"At some point after his admission Wölfli began to draw. His first surviving works (a series of 50 pencil drawings) are dated from between 1904 and 1906." Every Monday morning Wölfli is given a new pencil and two large sheets of unprinted newsprint. The pencil is used up in two days; then he has to make do with the stubs he has saved or with whatever he can beg off someone else. He often writes with pieces only five to seven millimetres long and even with the broken-off points of lead, which he handles deftly, holding them between his fingernails. He carefully collects packing paper and any other paper he can get from the guards and patients in his area; otherwise he would run out of paper before the next Sunday night. At Christmas the house gives him a box of coloured pencils, which lasts him two or three weeks at the most (Wikipedia)."
From youtube: At the beginning of the twentieth century, Adolf Wölfli, a former farmhand and laborer, produced a monumental, 25,000-page illustrated narrative in Waldau, a mental asylum near Bern, Switzerland. Through a complex web of texts, drawings, collages and musical compositions, Wölfli constructed a new history of his childhood and a glorious future with its own personal mythology. The French Surrealist André Breton described his work as "one of the three or four most important oeuvres of the twentieth century."
Halloween time is approaching us, and Psycho by Eddie Noack is one of my favorite songs to blast during the spooky season. The song was originally written by Leon Payne and this version was recorded by Noak in 1968. and This fantastically creepy murder ballad is written from the (fictional) perspective of a killer. The melody may be sweet and warm sounding, but the lyrics are straight out of a horror film. This contrast adds a whole other level of eeriness to the song.
Polish Night Music is an ambient album by Marek Zebrowski and David Lynch. It provokes the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere, on a train, in the dead of night. The Guardian commented that the album "bypasses the sounds of groaning monsters and creaking cellar doors and instead conjures fear in its eerie atmosphere." If you want to feel like you're in a David Lynch movie, plug your headphones into this album and take a walk through town after dark, or better yet, hop on a night train.
When a bombardier beetle is swallowed by a frog, it will excrete boiling chemicals from its anus to make the frog throw it up. Basically, these beetles know how to fart their way out of death. If you have a desire to watch this disgusting yet fascinating phenomenon, here's a video of it from National Geographic.
