That rug! Source: architecturaldigest.com
That rug! Source: architecturaldigest.com
I just want the American phone market to get weird.
Documenting Ridgewood’s Abandoned Tree Beds
The average pedestrian on a city stroll is more likely to notice the tall, flowering trees they see above them than the remnants of trunks no longer there. Photographer Alexa Hoyer is unique: It was the derelict, abandoned sidewalk tree beds that she couldn’t ignore when she moved to Ridgewood, Queens.
Tiny unicorns are spreading joy all over Providence. Who’s behind them is a mystery
Their less than two-inch stature makes them easy to miss. But their neon hues and satin-like sheen catch the eye of the hunter, who might almost walk by before realizing they’ve stumbled upon a treasure.
Four Things I Miss From the Golden Age of Paperbacks
As might be guessed from the fact that one publisher literally called itself Pocket Books, mass-market paperbacks were small enough that in many cases they would fit in the pockets of men’s clothing.
I’ve held on to a few of my favorite paperbacks. What great objects.
Representing Non-Linear Journeys
Now we can attempt to plot a user’s journey, to see how they move from page to page. But rather than just depicting the user’s behaviour visually, I’ve been keen to try data sonification. Well, some very basic sonification: adding a distinct sound to each type of task, so that you can (theoretically) detect patterns or oddities by listening to the data.
I’m a sucker for beep, boops, and good diagrams.
DoorDash, Uber Eats — and Tony
Tony Illes has become something of a folk hero in the Seattle area by advertising a much simpler and more human strategy. With a bunch of simple signs and a $5 delivery fee, he’s starting something of a delivery revolution from the seat of his bike.
Winter Buried by Katja Lang.
Mixtapes, T-Shirts and Even a Typeface Measure the Rise of Hip-Hop
For over a decade, cassettes were the coin of the realm in mixtapes, even after CDs usurped them in popularity: They were mobile, durable and easily duplicated.
They Didn’t Just Want to Build a Housing Shelter. They Wanted to Shift Public Perception:
Changing the way the public perceives shelters informed the design. From the nearby highway, the first glimpse you get of the structure includes an impressive mural by Australian artist Guido van Helten stretched across its 3,000-square-foot facade. A passerby might think this is an art museum, a shop, or possibly a school.
Matt Schu’s illustrations are wonderful!
This pay phone is free, but you can’t make a call. It only plays birdsongs. (Gift Link)
In all, 10 birds native to the Takoma Park area are featured, including a rooster in honor of Roscoe, a beloved community mascot that once roamed around town in the 1990s in defiance of animal control officers who tried to catch him.
When I proudly showed my journal to my wife one morning, she couldn’t help but observe that my day’s to-dos included the essential task of sewing a button back onto my Hawaiian shirt, but somehow didn’t mention that I was taking my kid in for a doctor visit that afternoon. “Maybe,” she suggested, “you should write a ‘BuJo’ entry about how you’re finally going to learn how to use our Google Calendar.”
Life is a never-ending succession of NFL teams adding ping pong tables w/stories about how they’re finally coming together as a family and enjoying each other’s company, and NFL teams removing ping pong tables w/stories about how they’re finally taking football seriously.
Room Tone 2023 features about 3 minutes of movie people trying to be quite for the 30 seconds it takes to capture “room tone - the ambient sound that (the Criterion Collection) crew records at the end of all our on-camera interviews.” Make sure you read the inspiration before you click the play button. Very fun!
From Dan Coe Carto’s 4K Rivers. “An ongoing series of vibrant river and delta images from North America and other parts of the world. The images are constructed using high-resolution elevation data.”
Scientists Destroy Illusion That Coin Toss Flips Are 50–50
The researchers determined that airborne coins don’t turn around their symmetrical axis; instead they tend to wobble off-center, which causes them to spend a little more time aloft with their initial “up” side on top.
This results in a “same-side bias of 51 percent.”
I’m such a sucker for these what’s in my bag posts. This one from Matt Mullenweg.
Here we are at the bottom of the year. The pit of darkness, cold and grim. From here we begin the ascent to glorious summer! Sun! Warmth! Leaves! Flowers! Light!
Scarface’s Tiny Desk Concert1 is pretty cool, but the best part is when he performs Mind Playing Tricks on Me. The link starts the video right at his emotional preamble about fatherhood and his craft leading up to the performance. All the feels. Plus he gets the audience to rap Bushwick Bill’s2 part. What a great nostalgia bomb!
Basically, the starfish was all headlike. This contradicts textbook descriptions of echinoderms, the evolutionary group that includes starfish, as animals that have lost their head. This study shows that “rather than losing their head, they’re almost entirely head, and they’ve actually lost their trunk,” Lowe says.
Via the always great Curious About Everything Newsletter.
What it’s like to be … is a podcast about exploring the world of work, one profession at a time, through interviews with people who love what they do. The first episode about a ballpark beer vendor is really great!
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