Fidget spinners are wonderful. Read the rest

Anil Dash's third law holds that "Three things never work: Voice chat, printers and projectors." But Joshua Rothman's long, fascinating, even poetic profile of the Xerox engineers who work on paper-path process improvements is such a bit of hard-science whimsy that it almost makes me forgive every hour I've spent swearing over jammed paper. Read the rest

In an age of ubiquitous, self-synchronizing phones, timepieces are increasingly a form of kinetic sculpture. Read the rest

What's better than a Useless Machine? One that is built on a clever, threaded "twisty vase" whose lid twirls open and shut! Read the rest

NHK's children's show Pythagora Switch features fiendishly clever, astoundingly amusing interstitial segments with beautiful little Rube Goldberg machines, possessed of a Miyazakiesque whimsy and a Mujiesque minimalism. These are wonderful -- and at 30 seconds each, you can watch a whole ton of 'em. Read the rest