From Bored Panda: Aluminum foil looks pretty boring. It is used for packaging, insulation, cooking… and making really shiny balls that appear to have no real purpose, apparently. That’s right, thanks to a Japanese jeweler, the whole country became obsessed with refining these metal leaves, and we aren’t sure how to react. Having lived through… Continue reading Focus
Month: March 2018
Beware of the Leopard
I know this isn’t exactly breaking news, but there’s a small part of me that almost admires how thoroughly Amazon hide away the account-closing option [note]Strictly speaking, there is no account-closing link on their web site: Amazon insist that their customer speaks/chats to a Customer Service representative before they’ll let their customer instruct the Customer… Continue reading Beware of the Leopard
Reconstructed
The one disappointment I have with Expedia’s 7 ancient ruins around the world, reconstructed is that the ruin I’m closest to and most familiar with (Milecastle 39 at Hadrian’s Wall) doesn’t really match up to the other sites, size-wise or spectacle-wise. The entire wall is another matter, but the reconstruction of one fort just doesn’t… Continue reading Reconstructed
O, Canada
Watch as a Saskatchewan woman saves the day for a perplexed porcupine. I really can’t put it better than TheWhiteSkull did: That porcupine video is basically the Canadian Voight-Kampff test. [Via MetaFilter]
‘Smart’ Homes, Dumb Users?
I meant to post a link to The House That Spied on Me, a Gizmodo story that looked a little deeper into just how much data a ‘connected’ household is leaking, when I restarted this site a few weeks ago: Our 1970s apartment building did not offer enough electrical outlets for this 2018 smart home,… Continue reading ‘Smart’ Homes, Dumb Users?
Story idea
James Nicoll shares a story idea with the world: Aliens redone as a struggle between the alien and the ship’s cat to commandeer the ship’s human crew for their own purposes…
Driving tools
Who would have imagined that increased use of automated navigational information could have a down side, with more widespread use of automated mapping serving to push individual drivers into a nominally less busy route that turns out to be anything but if everyone else is getting similar advice about how to avoid a traffic snarl-up… Continue reading Driving tools
Clever monkey
The very fact that the Guardian was able to put up an article devoted to the best Stephen Hawking quotes says a lot about his fame. “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”… Continue reading Clever monkey
PDF forever?
The Portable Document Format, or PDF, is everywhere. But it’s still a format that causes headaches for the average person. […] It’s not often, of course, that the PDF gets this level of notice. The PDFs origin story is a bit more boring than that of the MP3, which was built around the contours of… Continue reading PDF forever?
Speaker-to-Animals speaks
Paul Ford is at it again in Bloomberg Businessweek magazine, explaining Bitcoin (and why the notions that lie behind it are simultaneously batty and beguiling to those who may be susceptible to Engineer’s Disease) to civilians. [note]Or should I say, given the nature of Bloomberg Businessweek’s audience, to wannabe managers.[/note] [After a basic explanation of… Continue reading Speaker-to-Animals speaks