beautiful

Randomness for 9/27

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1) How to clean your ear buds. I had no reason to google this. Nope. No reason at all.

2) Ladies and gentlemen, a cat playing a theremin: video.

3) Classical sculptures dressed as hipsters, and they look great.

4) THE MATRIX as retold by Mom. Video.

5) Hilariously Bad Book Covers.

6) Attention filmmakers: The future is already here. I have been tricked by an April Fools article in September! It even says “April Fools” right there in the tags! Let’s pretend that’s a rare thing, and thank you Rose Fox for catching that.

7) A gif that demonstrates that, when the martial arts ref tells you to stop fighting, you should stop fighting.

Randomness for 9/12

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1) Myths over Miami: Homeless children create an elaborate mythology of the city all on their own. I swear, this is the most amazing thing.

2) Amazon collects the funniest reviews on its site.

3) A convention attendance discussion for authors on reddit.

4) What every New Yorker should know, in .gif form.

5) Gifs of gelatin cubes dropped onto solid surfaces. There’s something strangely healing about this.

6) Take a virtual tour of the world’s largest cave, discovered recently in Vietnam. Video.

7) “Attacks of Opportunity” helpfully explained and demonstrated. Video. This is funny enough that I’m looking up other videos on this channel. h/t Tracy Hurley

Randomness for 9/2

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1) Darkseid is impressed by Thanos’s coffee.

2) 40 Maps That Will Help You Make Sense Of The World. James Nicoll, some of these are relevant to your interests.

3) High-speed camera captures the amazing details of insect flight, and teach us a little something about how it works.

4) How to build a cat fountain in Minecraft. Video. Note: that’s not a fountain for cats to drink from. No, it is not.

5) The Most Important Book on Color Theory Is Now an iPad App.

6) Online order forms for pizza delivery places let people ask for special requests, like “Draw a wizard on the box…” and they do.

7) A printer with no paper tray. You just set it on top of a stack of paper and let it go. h/t @KeithCalder

Randomness for 7/1

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1) Mars Rover takes a billion-pixel photo so you can click and zoom around in it to explore the red planet.

2) How To Use Math To Crush Your Friends At Monopoly Like You’ve Never Done Before.

3) A series of photographs showing various types of rounds cut in the cross-section. Way more interesting than it sounds.

4) Beautiful kinetic sculptures. Video.

5) An offer of free lodging always has some kind of catch to it, right? (People are weird)

6) The Ten Best Superhero RPGs ever. I’m not obsessed with them like the author of this article and I certainly haven’t played all the games on this list, but I agree with his top two.

7) If movies were reviewed like video games.

Beautiful things we find online

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People make fun of Google plus, but like any social media it has exactly the value that you and the people you interact with put into it.

For example, Fred Hicks posted this:

It’s amazing. Seriously, you should watch it with the sound on. Don’t bother if you can’t listen, too.

Social media is a lot like real life socializing. It’s not usually what you do or where, but who’s there with you.

Randomness for 6/17

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1) Father photoshops infant baby into crazy, magical pictures.

2) Put sand on metal plate. Add pitch vibrations to metal plate. At certain frequencies, the sand will form beautiful geometric patterns. Video.

3) How common is your birthday?

4) The smelliest places in New York (and other cities), a chart.

5) Writing advice from John Green, in cartoon form.

6) Ten Famous Filmmakers Pick Their Favorite Overlooked Movies.

7) Norway plans to build world’s first tunnel for ships.

Sun Dog over the UW Campanile

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IMG_1983

IMG_1985

Taken by my wife, yesterday.

Randomness for 6/6

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1) An Excel artist. I can’t help but be skeptical about this.

2) A graph that would show what publishing’s Big Six would look like if they became Big Four.

3) A tutorial on making seamless cinemagraphs like these.

4) The Ride, a comic by Rodolphe Guenoden

5) The clip of Arleen Sorkin as Calliope Jones that inspired Harley Quinn, accompanied by a brief explanation by Paul Dini.

6) The world record for book dominoes was just set by the Seattle Public Library to kick off their summer reading program.

7) Recycled-Bike-Part Chandeliers Under a Texas Overpass

Randomness for 4/22

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1) The annual Shorty Awards have chosen the Best Quora Answer of the Year: “What does the first day of a 5+ year prison sentence feel like?” The answers that made the list of finalists are at that link as well.

2) If Facebook made a Facebook house.

3) “Tie” Chi: knotting a Windsor as a martial arts kata.

4) Chemical-free “natural” swimming pools that are cleaned by plants. This looks a) awesome b) a lot of work and c) inappropriate for Florida. Still, it’s green and gorgeous.

5) From College Humor, Batman vs. The Penguin (played by Patton Oswalt). Video.

6) 27 Science Fictions That Became Science Facts In 2012

7) Seattle’s King Street Train Station has finally received its finishing touches and is ready for a Grand Opening. And it’s gorgeous. I’m tempted to take a train trip just so I have an excuse to go down there.

Randomness for 4/8

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1) Homemade “Romance Pants”. Has to be seen to be believed.

2) Ten of the Most Beautiful Libraries Ever Built (in Minecraft).

3) The 12 Most Controversial Facts In Mathematics. I dunno how I feel about the title but the article is cool.

4) “Are you a ‘Single Interested in Michael Crichton?’ Meet the love raptors stalking OkCupid.”

5) 15 Mid-Century Modern Dream Homes that will Kill Your Children. Via James Nicoll

6) An anti-drone hoodie designed to hide your thermal signature from above.

7) Plewds, Hites, and Indotherms: Terms for the graphic language of cartooning. I’d heard of grawlixes before, but the others were names for things I didn’t even know had names. Very cool.