Hoog: The message NASA wants aliens to see [17min].

Buckeye Manufacturing Company, Hardware & Carriage Specialties, 1898 letterhead (auction).

“You want a logo ... for a door latch?”

“The H.W. Door Latch. Yes please. Also The ‘Lightning’ Drain Cleaner, etc. All of it. Single-Tree Key Straps! So many logos!”

Pancakes Across America, a favorite from 1999, updated for 2025.

Jaiden Animations: My Funniest Fan Interactions [16min]. Double-troll.

Taskmaster: Season 19 Outtakes ‒ Part 2 [16min].

I was adding a stub to a bookcase with a drill when a tiny spider started crawling up one side. Started drill, spider immediately jumps off the other side and lowered itself to the ground on a spider-strand. It was dramatic. Sorry little spider.

Not Just Bikes: The Best-Designed Town in the Netherlands (and therefore, the world) [25min].

Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster #252: Jason Mantzoukas [1hr 20min].

[cardhouse] Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate (2015). Notable Bugs, Tips, Strange Observations, Fun Diversions, etc.

Idles: Pop Pop Pop [4min].

I am running through the first 82.3% of Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate (the tastiness of missions drops off severely for the last bit) for the fourth time shut UP. There are actual advertisements from the 19th century plastered all over the city, “fire wheels” caught my eye because “fire.” Anyway, Fitch’s Patent Fire Wheels, a fire starter assistant, probably has cocaine in it; everything did back then.

The screenshot is part of the game in which you end up going “forward” through a time anomaly or rift or [FX: moves hands back and forth] interslice to help Churchie put a stick about in WWI: The First One, but there wasn’t any money in the budget to update the posters.

they are not liable
to explosion

The chain store that put stanchions up at the entrance and made you wait for a ~30 second “security pause” before being allowed in the store has relented. There is no more waiting when you want to enter the world of their particular consumer goods. It started around fall of 2022 when everyone had decided that they could make Covid go away by completely ignoring it and not doing anything more and shutting down all the monitoring etc etc etc, so that wasn’t the reason.

The reason was obviously some mid-high level executive read that little article about waitron units discovering they got better tips if they touched a person when handing them the check.

So, flip that ... maybe we can reduce our “shrinkage” if we make sure there’s an interaction between the security guard and ALL the incoming marks, that they have to sit there and THINK about what they’re getting into vis-a-vis shoplifting our beautiful products for at least thirty seconds.

This, and the whole whiny meltdown with drug stores/grocery stores putting everything in locked cases (I stopped going to one because of this). And Target’s impending good fortune w/all the suddenly unused real estate. It’s fascinating, the contortions businesses are going through to squeeze an extra cent or two out of Current Living by making things worse. Instead of thinking hey what if we, a giant business that has been sucking the money out of communities forever, tried to put some back? At all?

It’s like dessert every day.

I have no point here, just happy to watch you eat gravel, hard, then come back for seconds. Keep doing it. Love it.

Is “giving back” going to make these places sterling members of the community, beloved, etc? Also no. Giant chain stores should just die, full stop. Giant consumer-facing businesses. There’s no need for them, they can go away now thank you. I am bringing you the opinions that matter. Mind-blowerning revelations.

A New Way to Use the Phonograph for the Entertainment of Your Children. The Phonogram January 1892, pg11. Pretends to whip the phonograph.

bloo bloo bloo
i am just a phonograph

The children were amused by the beating.

ON IT (1916 Jan-Feb Montgomery Ward Groceries Catalog).

spitballing advertisements ...

woo hoo
take phenobarbital
woo hoo
for benzodiazepine withdrawal
woo hoo

The New York Public Library Digital Collections: Automat chocolate doughnuts promotional photo.

there they are

(the donuts)

[FX: gently touches donuts]

I have been playing the daily version of Timeguessr for awhile now and need to beef up my flag/language script skills. A lot of the quizzes available are fill-in-the-blank and/or timed, so they are shunned. Ideally quizzes would be the same as the conditions w/Timeguessr ‒ here’s a flag/language, where on this world map is it. Not, here’s a word, you have thirty seconds to type the country and here’s the leaderboard every-single-time-you-answer and here’s a giant reaction gif when you’re wrong so it takes you four times longer to get through the quiz. These are as close as I can find.

Flags of the World ... Name that World Flag ... Guess the Language

It wasn’t 1927, it was 1928! Stupid stupid stupid ... I will say that the amount of points you get for dates is not balanced properly. Also the “share with friends” icons showing your score are also weighted oddly.

Dragon street art outside Giovanni’s.

Pretty sure I’ve e-chatted with this artist at least once, back when everyone had Flickr accounts before it/tech-in-general decided to explode and catch on fire and flail around and explode again.

Trash Theory: Tragedy, Togetherness & Rock Lobster ‒ The B-52’s Story

David Van Tieghem ‒ Ear to the Ground [1981; 4min]. “Van Tieghem ‘plays’ the streets of New York City as if it were a giant musical instrument. (1981) All sounds recorded live on location ‒ no processing, Foley or overdubbing.”