Above: Morinaga Chocolate Cigarettes package (left) and undated Sakura Color Products Corporation Cray-Pas COLOR PAINT in STICKS ("No brush, no water, no mess / Better than Crayons / Better than Pastels"). Quick experimental thing, see 2023nov23. More in 2024, I have decreed with my face.
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Eating at the Largest Vending Machine Park in the World.
Process X: Amazing art work on the street / Japanese manhole cover mass production process.
Heathers: The Musical (2014 Off-Broadway promotional poster).
SCRUNCHIE: THE MUSICAL
One of my friends is a big Heathers fan and I ran into a very long Japanese silkscreen version of the theatrical poster at a garage sale and it was three dollars. Cheap, fast, amazing. She probably doesn’t even notice it now two decades later, just like everything you tack up on your wall, you just sort of glaze over it. Which is why I rotate all my wall hangings 90 degrees every month. The larger paintings have automatic remote-control motor mounts. You’d think it would be the smaller ones, but this is my fictional universe, get used to it.
Famous fans say farewell to the B-52’s.
Fall of 1979. Science teacher was a big nerd and also a big jock. Beefy arms. One day he comes in with a record. “This is important, you all need to listen to this.” Played the whole album.
It was very important.
Amy Poehler & Rashida Jones Take a Lie Detector Test ‒ Vanity Fair.
Hello, I recently made a strips version of Cardhouse that shows all the years on one page.
If you have a long website that you are trying to take a “rolling snapshot” of, I have some advice for you after struggling for two days with various rolling snapshot applications. Let’s look at some of them.
1) Firefox. Has in-line snapshot capability, but the window is limited to a length of 32767 pixels (this happens a lot as well). You can -make- the snapshot window longer, it just will not grab anything beyond that amount. You are given the options to grab the “whole” screen (which again, will not work for long pages) or the “current” screen but what you want to do is click your mouse in the upper-lefthand corner of whatever you want to snap and then drag, it will ignore those two options and start creating your demarcated snap window because UI. And you better make sure you are on the screen when you click to take the shot (the cursor changes when you’ve gone “out of bounds”). And it better not be 1920x20000 or longer because it will die. 1920x15XXX works. It probably dies at 1920x16385 and longer. Update: it’s even worse. I had a 50000+ pixel-long page, and the first time you can grab 15000 and the second time and the third time but not the fourth time. The max seems to be getting shorter. It’s awful. Additionally, for whatever reason(s), if your website is wider than 1000 characters and you select more than 32767 pixels, it will not even take the shot. It will just die, and the next time you try to use the program it will indicate there’s an error.
2) Sharex. Seems to be well-regarded and has a lot of options offered, and a lot of what I like to call “bolted-on cruft.” I know from cruft, I’ve written my own (non-scrolling) snapshot program. Well, the snapshot is part of the cruft. Long story. My crufty thing:
Sharex can’t handle extremely long websites (literally limiting the number of snaps to 200 or some awfully low number), and it really is a pain in the ass when it comes to just actually saving the image to your own fucking drive that I believe this is because of a back-room payment from Big Services. Save it to imgur! Save it to Your Favorite Social Media Site Here! No.
3) PicPick. Another oft-mentioned one, it can’t handle long websites.
4) Screenpresso. Wouldn’t work out of the gate.
5) Movavi. Can’t handle long websites. Also records audio/video etc. I don’t understand why there can’t just be a scrolling screenshot program w/o all this other detritus.
6) Awesome Firefox add-on. The privacy warnings were ridiculous ‒ “This program will see all your data everywhere” is what I took away from it which is why I went away from it.
7) Tweakshot. Couldn’t handle long website, redirected to its own website when I started to uninstall it.
8) Duckcapture. Requires older version of Visual C++, I wasn’t about to walk back my newer version just for a program.
9) Snagit. “Sign in for trial” no.
10) Screenshot Captor. A lot of good options. I wanted this one to be the one. But the memory max setting (which is a great idea) doesn’t seem to work. You set it, and it still has memory errors. It also for whatever reason does not show youtube images as it is scrolling through the web page taking snapshots, which wasn’t going to work for me.
11) Faststone Capture. Just WORKS. Click “rolling capture” icon. Click window. It scrolls through the web page at a good pace. You can stop it by hitting escape, it automatically stops at the end. Then it pops up a window with a big “SAVE” icon. Click it ... and it saves the image. Wow. Innovative. I haven’t tested it beyond 110000 pixels or so, YMMV. It does slow down a little as it trundles along. It is a 30-day-trial program.
The Hated One: How Kurzgesagt Cooks Propaganda For Billionaires.
Process X: The process of making chalk. A chalk factory in Japan that produces 600,000 pieces of chalk per year.
Process X is my favorite manufacturing video channel.
New Shelton Wet/Dry is my favorite “link” weblog device. I used to do a Friday Free Day url link round-up show, back in the day. People come up to me every now and then on the street, they say “Hey mister, weren’t you doing that thing with the links thing?” And I take a look at them, sort of size them up, and I say “Yep.” And they say “Well now.” And we go our separate ways.
I am replaying Watchdogs Legion campaign mode again, this time in “Resistance” mode which means everything is cranked to the maximum, and permadeath is a thing. I’ve recruited about 40 operatives so far, and lost twelve. The comment I keep seeing from people who have done a playthrough of this mode is that it is most likely what Ubisoft was aiming for in terms of gameplay, most notably because you become more calculated about who you send to do work, and how you approach difficult scenarios. For me, additionally, it also highlights the shortcomings of the game because half the time my operative died because of some overwhelming situation that involved multiple enemy drones/cars/gun-toters spawning right next to the operative. Didn’t we talk about spawn killing? Didn’t we say it was a bad thing? Just have to accept this game came out of the oven half-baked, then all the chefs quit to go work on More Profitable Game VII.
I have to describe my favorite “bug,” though. When you’re piloting a boat along the Thames or wherever, and you have a bunch of “chase drones” following you, you might want to, say, look around a bit, or get a better angle on a drone. So you move your camera view as you’re cooking through the water. The drones rotate with this view. So if you can’t shoot at a drone, or pull up its little hack-me submenu and you try to change the view to do so ‒ the drone stays in the same spot. That you’re looking. So you can’t get a bead on it, ever, as it repeatedly shoots you. Am I describing this adequately? It’s like you’re in a car speeding down the street, and another car is to your left, and you’re looking at it, and then you turn your head to look to the right and the car rotates with your view so now that car is on your right, except it’s constantly shooting at you. Finally, physics and ESP collab! I get the impression this was a temporary thing, and there is a comment in the code that said “math is hard, i owe you one (1) equation” ... then someone in the accounting department yelled “SHIP IT, KILL IT AFTER TWO YEARS BUT DON’T FIX THE DRONE ROTATE BUG, THAT’S PRETTY FUCKING FUNNY.” Probably the same reason drones along the “drone highway” look like they’re galloping half the time.
Designer in a Van: On Tour With Aaron Draplin (2017).
Ritom Pumped-Storage Plant Project ‒ Tunneling under extreme conditions [32min] Very detailed, well-explained, great animations.
A fun article about the lime rickey, which was a non-alcoholic version of the rickey/gin rickey. Ended up here because I saw a listing for a variant called a “sham rickey.”
1921 International Confectioner Magazine. George Ziegler Company. Ziegler’s Cream Peppermints. Soft, Creamy, Refreshing ‒ the Best You Ever Tasted! At all good dealers 5¢
James Hoffmann ‒ The Most Wonderfully Absurd Coffee Brewer Ever Made
Begiragons: Vending Machine Game Episode 1 (2014).
Canadian Grocer Ford one-ton truck advertisement, April 5th 1918. Chassis only, sit on the gas tank.
I am re-reading Arbitrary Stupid Goal, Tamara Shopsin’s wonderful account of the early days of the Shopsin family’s adventures running a store/restaurant in the East Village. The restaurant is still running. This is a must-have in your personal library. Related:
Saw a bumper sticker for a taco joint, design was parody of the Mystery Spot bumper stickers. Tacos Oscar ... bumper stickers are $10, all proceeds go to Black Organizing Project.
the STORY of the MOVIE of the GAME of the TRAILER
the TRAILER of the GAME of the MOVIE of the STORY
The protagonist of the moviefilm Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game is Roger Sharpe, and he authored a book in 1977 called Pinball! The accompanying photos are amazing, full-page, numerous, close-ups, etc. Includes a large number of photos of pinball environments: arcades, laundromats, etc, people playing pinball. This book always makes the cut every time I move, it’s not even a question.
Watch Dogs Legion Cinematic Trailer (2020). Reflecting back on reflections while wrapping up a permadeath/hard replay of the main campaign. Of course this is a fanciful version of actual gameplay, but also of course they HAD to show something happening that can not happen in any of the three Watch Dogs releases: riding on top of a bus while it’s tootling down a street. Just saying. Every form of transit immediately comes to a stop as soon as you clamber aboard. You can “hack” the vehicle at that point, but sometimes you just want to be an open-air passenger. But you know, pretty colors fast running person.
Scooter/motorcycle shop, Macau, 2004. One of those places that I think of from time to time.
Process X: The process by which ultra-large MRI aluminum parts are made. Interesting Japanese aluminum factory.
The Pez Outlaw (thanks to Steve)
Not Just Bikes: These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us. “Engineers, planners, politicians, and advocates all around the world are trying to improve their cities and build more great walkable places with viable alternatives to driving. But there’s a looming trend that could undo all of that hard work: the growth of SUVs and light trucks.”
Martin’s Capsules tin. Each capsule contains acetophenetidin (1 1/2 grains), p. e. hyoscyamus (1/4 grain) (equiv. to 0.0003 gr. total alkaloids) aspirin, phenolphthalein, caffeine, alkaloid / packed and distributed by Mrs. W. S. Martin, Canton, N. C.
Bobby Fingers: Michael Jackson on Fire Diorama (via metafilter)
I finished up my Watchdogs: Legion hard/permadeath campaign replay (Ubisoft was disappointed in the lackluster sales of WDL and stopped add-on DLC/online work two years after it had been released; this is probably the last Watchdogs release ever). Given its “play as anyone” mechanic I shouldn’t have been surprised that the deaths of operatives were also treated as disposable and not worth properly documenting. I’ve already shown the operative-death screen, here’s the end credit scroll which features the names of the last nine dead operatives. The actual operative names are the least-memorable and never-spoken/used bits of data about each of them. (A) Faces would have been nice (B) even nicer, all the operatives ‒ I lost about 22. But even during play, it would only show the last nine to eleven lost ‒ I had no idea, so I’m not sure of the exact count. There is a random cut scene (from about 30?) that shows you at a gravesite, it is unmarked. “Poor NAME.VOC. What a waste.” [FX: places empty can of in-game brand soda on top of gravestone]
The end credits run 17 minutes if you have it on fast-forward 95% of the time. And now, more random whiny bits.
- No growth to characters. They’re disposable, and it’s more beneficial to use specific characters with specific traits for specific jobs but there’s always a cut scene/delay when you switch (that you can’t skip) and a re-gen of enemies that you put down w/the previous character, so what exactly is the point? W/hard mode you can’t use the unfinished transit system to “fast travel” so I ended up using character transfer to jump around the map w/o driving back and forth all the time. You can’t upgrade your weapons, you can only switch your “special” weapon when you’re out of danger (and even this is a sub-sub-menu crap UI interaction), you can’t get new weapons. Potential operatives either have good traits (again, another thing you can’t upgrade), or good weapon(s). Only some operatives “own” cars with the ability to spawn them nearby. If you have a mission that requires a fast car and you don’t have a car, you can try to find a car. I spent 10 min looking for the fastest type of car in the game that has at least two models, finally gave up.
- No challenges. I’ve complained about this before, but if there’s a job that requires a spiderbot, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have it, it’s not something you need to earn ... there’s always a spiderbot-generating box right next to it, which you can see (also on the map), and hear clicking away in the background. Wither odor/taste? Way, way too much handholding. They had an idea, then self-sabotaged it.
- Random drones fly above major roads. This is called the “drone highway.” It is incredibly flaky. If you pluck a drone out of the highway, the endless trundle of drones stops. If you are positioned in the wrong place, the drones stop. If you have a mission that damn well 100% requires plucking a drone from the highway (in the one I’m thinking of, the AI specifically says “use a drone”), rest assured, there are not going to be any drones available. So you have to do all of this deck chair switching bullshit just to use/call a more distant drone. “Fun.”
- If you deactivate a drone, it drops to hover just above the ground, constantly beeping. That’s its end state, the beeping, not ... just ... being deactivated, and dead, and lying on the ground shutting up. I have enough irritating beeping things in my actual real life, I like to drill into electronics to rip out the speakers. So you’re in a big battle, and you deactivate a drone while you’re taking cover from fire. Your new chatty friend settles down beside you: “Beep beep beep beep beep beep.” “Busy here.” “Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep”
- Approximately 50% of the living spaces in the game feature short looping audio tracks of either a strange baby crying or (this is a different track, just to be clear) a strange dog howling. This is profoundly irritating. I don’t get this pointless versimilitude in open-world games, reminds me of the flies buzzing around in Grand Theft Auto. Oooh, it’s like I’m right there being annoyed.
- Car physics, wherein your two-ton beast does a high-speed slam into a large truck and both just kind of trundle/roll down the street like they’re models made out of hollow tin. Additionally w/every minor hit, cars automatically jettison license plates in the same manner every time, and the windshield fully spiderweb-cracks in the same manner every time. Car camera work: I don’t get motion sickness, but the car camera work is the closest you can get to it virtually.
- The horrified reactions of people to a hijacked cargo drone are always the same and everyone nearby has to say something about it, just like crossing the yellow line in GTA5. Zooming out, all anyone talks about is either a specific faction/gang or mindless samples you have to hear hundreds of time (“it’s in the kitchen ... over there, on the right-hand side ...”). Please just ... if you’re making an open-source game, throw in a checkbox for npc chatter.
- Another entry from the GTA5 playbook: homeless people on the street begging, yet no way to give them money; but you can steal money from their encampments. Their chatter makes you think they’re being beaten by the militaristic police force if you can’t see them. “Help me please!” Oh right, I can’t.
- “Microdrones”: odd endless do-same-thing-over-and-over mission w/o save points. Then after you’ve struggled through 70% of it, hey, new type of mechanic w/next objective hidden/unclear. “Microdrones” pre-flight spiderbot mission: don’t let any of the 27 lasers touch the spiderbot. Oh jeez, the lasers touched the spiderbot, so that means an alarm sounds. “And?” Weeooo it is blaring. UPDATE: Turns out this was a bug. Normally if you get hit by a laser, the whole thing resets. There are a lot of bugs in this game.
Finally, stop putting graphics and text on the screen when/where I’m trying to do a thing. Speeding down a road, suddenly BAM, right at the horizon line “IMPORTANT ALERT: AN OPTIONAL DRAG-ASS MECHANIC UNRELATED/SECONDARY/TERTIARY TO YOUR CURRENT SITUATION ... NEEDS ATTENTION OR SOMETHING LOL” I don’t have good images of the text impinging on gunfights/driving because for the most part ... I was already doing things and then a thing interrupted and you want me to record that as well, what, I’ve got three hands or something?
Conner O’Malley: Endorphin Port (2022; 5min).
Mark Rober: Amazing Invention ‒ This Drone Will Change Everything (21min).
The drone shown is to be used for domestic deliveries of food etc. Large drone drops smaller drone down wire from 400 feet in the air. But you should watch this video to see the current Zipline operation in Rwanda, delivering critical medicine/blood/etc to hard-to-reach villages etc. It’s been running for six years, half a million flights, 24/7, 90 seconds between launches.
JimmyTheGiant: Why Rollerblading DIED... (2021; 20min)
I was just wondering what exactly had happened to rollerblading and randomly tripped across this video. I tried rollerblading once in a Detroit-area sports stadium that was torn down, but after I rollerbladed there. I was not good at it; I did not like it. I went back to occasionally “gleaming the cube,” as the kids say, on my rat-ass skateboard. I liked it; I was not good at it.
Side note: I may or may not have explained purchasing a Brunswick Snurfer, the antecedent to snowboards, at a Detroit-area garage sale back in the late 70s. I rode down a hill or two a few times, holding on to the front rope and regretting my decision. I was not good at it.
Now I have a skateboard and two longboards. I haven’t ridden them in years. I’m good at eating; I like my teeth.
“Amélie: the real story” a short film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (2023; 6min)
Cash In with Whirl-O-Ball (Billboard July 19, 1919). At this point Skee-Ball has been around for 11 years. It’s not clear what’s going on with the “loop” and “buckets” mentioned on this 1929 ad. It looks like a big blank nothing at the back of the machine, there. Just a square hole. I have spent countless seconds resarching this. UPDATE: The math on this doesn’t work at all. Take the minimum amount promised: $5/hour. That’s over 8c/min, and since we’re talking about nickels ... 10c/min/min. Take the minimum number of balls: six. Six balls for a nickel, but you earn 10c/min, so that’s six balls in thirty seconds. Five seconds per ball! Not only six balls, but a full game in half a minute ‒ putting in the money, Ball Release, playing, finishing. Consistently. People lined up for each machine. No. You are full of porkies, 1919 advertisement. I am not falling for your hokum.
Kirby Ferguson: Everything is a Remix (Complete Updated 2023 Edition)
The PriceMaster (2001; 32min). “Everything is for sale.” “Make me an offer!” “... the wonderful mantras of the prophet of Captive Market Capitalism (i.e. American Style Corporate Capitalism) echo pertinently on a crisp winter day in Denton, TX in the newborn hours of the great decisive 21st Century. Members of the hallowed Fast House look on and document the unfolding.” Also the best use of typographical tracking I’ve seen probably ever. It is what it is right there.
CGP Grey: DOES YOUR FLAG FAIL? Grey Grades The State Flags!
Your flag probably fails.
Billionbox, a South Korea “slider” hamburger chain. I will be talking about them more later in our program (27sec; 16min).
Awhile back I mentioned this fun article about the lime rickey, which was a non-alcoholic version of the rickey/gin rickey (which started with Joe Rickey’s “daily dose of bourbon with lump ice and Apollinaris sparlking mineral water”). I became a flakey rickey maven because I saw a listing for an undescribed variant called a “sham rickey.”
Then I saw something worse than a Sham Rickey: the Clam Rickey (International Confectioner 1924).
I have also included the next listing which describes a Hot Egg Coffee. This is for someone who wants a coffee-ee egg drink, not an eggy coffee, just to be clear.
“I’m gonna coffee up this egg,” I said, swirling my mug around.
Luis: BEST CROISSANT IN PARIS.
Okay I am at some sort of mezzanine resting place wrt to Mastodon. I use the normal Mastodon UI to see following (left column) and local (right column). The middle is mostly a waste, wouldn’t it be grand to have notifications underneath the input area. No, giant waste of space is better! Getting this set up was oddly annoying, certain categories can’t be moved around with the arrow keys. I’m using only three columns because you can’t assign widths to the columns either and I want wide columns. My understanding is that this is a non-innovation area; Mastodon guy has groused about people wanting to change column widths in the past. Who would have thought, a software guy who knows exactly what people need.
I blocked the images of the mastodon in the center column because no thank you. I use bird.makeup to see Twitter accounts on Mastodon.
Then, elk.zone for federated ... I don’t want to use the normal Mastodon UI because then the columns would get narrower, and because it constantly updates the feed. Elk does not; it throws everything into the ever-increasing “show n new items” text message. So I can just dip my toes in every so often, looking for accounts to follow ... I’m not going to keep up with that firehose, of course. Sample, withdraw. Sample, withdraw.
Joe: Dog of Wisdom II (thanks to Ultra)
James Rehwald: I toured a defense contractor executive’s home. #entrepreneur #capitalism #imperialism #neocolonialism #business
Road trip 2004. Somewhere near Chicago headed West. Press button receive bacon.
(12 hours later down the road) All the art books are like “you should have an aesthetic.” This is my aesthetic.
Process X: Process of mass production of rebar. A wonderful Japanese steel factory.
Irish Hills Michigan Stagecoach Stop Old-Tyme Western Demarcated Area (1973). You can see an actual authentic Cowboy™ falling off the roof after being fake shot.
Irish Hills Michigan Stagecoach Stop Old-Tyme Western Demarcated Area (2009). Just randomly drove by when they were shutting down operations, selling lamps, signs, whatever was left.
Don’t forget to stop by the Train Car Of Terror “Haunted House” Fudge Shop & Gift Shop.
Optigan Drive-In Intermission Clock in HD.
I can’t remember if I’ve ever posted this. If I have, enjoy it again. You will have a 2nd/3rd/4th chance to re-re-enjoy this when the 2023 mixtape is released at the end of the year. Also perhaps before that if I can find/fix the version I slightly edited for maximum Patriotism.
look at that
LOOK
Watchdogs Legion: Bloodline DLC (2021). Crypto scammers were already a punchline back then. Only millions? Amateur.
Did a playthrough of this DLC even though it was still sort of fresh in my mind (which is a bountiful playground). Now I have thoroughly burnt out of WDL and have no open world to visit to relax and/or make things explode.
if a video made for educational/commentary purposes within the fair use clause is “blocked” by one of the 2.5 remaining global media conglomerates, youtube puts up a garbage message on a gray screen, even though in a lot of cases the whiny takedown is reversed because it was some suckup junior executive looking to score points, get a key to the bigger washroom that has the automatic hand driers. -leave the thumbnail up-.
this is what you’re given. the icon at the lower-right goes to the youtube home page. you’re not even given a pointer back to the video creator’s home. youtube treats creators like children to be punished indiscriminately, incorrectly.
if a person is banned on twitch, there are different levels of bans and for all of them except one, the person returns to their channel. but while they’re gone, their channel does not exist. it no longer appears in your list, it can’t be searched for, you can’t see any of the previous videos or use their profile to jump to other social media sites where they are probably explaining what happened etc. -leave the profile up-.
this is what you’re given. you have to type the channel url in directly, there’s no pointer for it anywhere in the twitch universe during the ban. twitch treats creators like children to be disappeared while serving time in twitch jail.
[FX: doubles down on “don’t rely on AI” stance] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/ai-chatbot-learning/
Introducing Wood Milk: Aubrey Plaza’s Newest Product. This segment is actually an advertisement for “milk” milk, a common thick white liquid (sort of like a drinkable glue lacking adhesion) you may have forgotten about. I receive no residuals from any views or unit-pushing. I am completely uninterested in milk and most milk by-products. Ice cream, I like that though. Butter? Also good. I like to put it on a slice or two of toasted bread. Try that, for a treat.
CGP Grey: Hexagons are the Bestagons.
Right! Gachapon. Here are some gachapon. Please enjoy: gachapon.
Process X: The process of mass producing hand pallet trucks. Hand pallet trucks factory in Japan. / You are probably wondering: “Do they use each new hand pallet truck in the process of making hand pallet trucks?” Yes. Yes they do. Each hand pallet truck lifts a previous hand pallet truck until a fourth hand pallet truck finishes the hand pallet truck stack ‒ it is lifting three hand pallet trucks. Of course this means the first hand pallet truck isn’t lifting anything. 75% hand pallet truckception.
2010. I didn’t have enough wood to finish my loft so I used a handy longboard for one of the top beams.
Mon Oncle (1958).
Münecat: Sovereign Citizens: Pseudolaw & Disorder.
Cellular telephone technology. On the streets of Akihabara, Japan, May 2004. The NTT DoCoMo P252iS is about three weeks old at this point.
[SFX: Runs into room, out of breath] Sorry! Look look look, I KNOW Oscar Mayer has recently changed the name of the Wienermobile to “Frankmobile" and it’s apparently temporary and you’re thinking “Yes, now I can SWOOP in and trademark the name ‘Wienermobile’ and they can NEVER get it back BOO HAH HAHAHAHAHAH” etc and I’m hear to tell you there is already CASE LAW about this so sit down already! In Volume 3, Chapters 17-20 of the Callmann Unfair Competition Trademarks and Monopolies (Fourth Edition) there is a footnote for another lesser, unimportant case that explains the whole wienery situation:
So you’ve always been completely free to call any car you want a Wienermobile but you cannot stop anyone else from calling their car a Wienermobile. All cars could be Wienermobiles. Carry on, wiener retailers.
Don’s Pretzel Donut trademark registration. Don was clearly ahead of his time. There are at least two types of pretzel donuts: a donut that is shoved/pulled around a bit in the manner of pretzel construction so it looks like a pretzel but is a donut; and Don’s thing here, a spiritual alchemy in which an actual pretzel is liberally dipped/coated in donut flour dough and then the whole thing is fried.
I am unfamiliar with the history of any type of pretzel donut. My guess is Don is the originator of this nesting-doll type.
ContraPoints: The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling (1h 54m). If you don’t have time for the whole video, I highly suggest going to chapter seven, Why Is J.K. Rowling Like This (at 1h 26m).
Trade card for McLaughlin’s Coffee. “Drink McLaughlin’s Coffee.” “The Card House” “This is one of a set of fifteen cards” Three children and a dog are shown constructing a five-level “square” type cardhouse w/red-backed cards all facing out, the image presented w/in a diamond frame drawn atop a semi-fancy rectangular background that shows all four playing card suits, repeated in a pattern on the outer edge. The children & dog are perhaps just a little too close to the fragile structure.
Brick Technology: Making A Billion-Year Lego Clock
James Acaster on Celebrity Mastermind. Acaster’s first job was selling ice cream, thus his subject.
The problem with the history of ice cream is that there’s a lot of history of ice cream. Narrow it down a bit, like Stewart Lee here.
Of course this reminds me of the Mastermind episode as sampled in “Embrace the Contradictions.” We go there now.
Gachapon. 『本当に録音再生！レトロminiポータブルプレイヤーマスコット』7月発売予定。スーパーギミック搭載。録音。再生。可能なミニミニポータブルが登場。『本当に録音再生！レトロminiポータブルプレイヤーマスコット』
“Really Record and Playback! Retro mini portable player mascot to be released in July. Equipped with super gimmick. Record and playback. Playback. The mini-mini portable that can record and playback.”
ラインナップ
＜１＞メタリックブルー
＜２＞ガンメタ
＜３＞メタリックレッド
＜４＞メタリックシルバー
＜５＞カセットテープとケースセット
メーカー：トイズスピリッツ
2023年7月発売予定
500円カプセル
“Lineup:
<1>Metallic blue
<2>Gunmetal
<3>Metallic red
<4>Metallic silver
<5>Cassette tape and case set
Manufacturer: Toys Spirits
Scheduled to be released in July 2023
500 yen capsule”
Alex: I Tasted The OG Fettuccine Alfredo in Rome And it Actually Blew My Mind (Alfredo Alla Scrofa).
Saw this video on Stuxnet (2011).
Which reminded me of What Barry Says (2004), because, turns out ... same person, Simon Robson.
Gachapon. カプセルトイ「手のひらネットワーク機器」 シスコや古河電工、A10が監修 「インフラエンジニアの存在知って」Xlate: Capsule toy “palm network device” supervised by Cisco, Furukawa Electric, and A10 “to let people know about infrastructure engineers.”
カプセル玩具事業を手掛けるターリンターリン・インターナショナル（東京都台東区）は6月7日、ネットワーク機器をミニチュア化したカプセルトイ「手のひらネットワーク機器」を発売すると発表した。価格は1回500円。15日から順次全国のカプセルトイ自販機コーナーで提供する。Xlate: On June 7, Turin Turin International (Taito-ku, Tokyo), a capsule toy company, announced the release of “Handheld Network Device,” a capsule toy that is a miniature version of a network device. Priced at 500 yen per capsule, the toys will be available at capsule toy vending machine corners nationwide starting on June 15.
If you are in a playful mood you can come up to me and say “Lowlands 2019” and my face will just sort of freeze up and I’ll get this weird dreamy 800-mile stare because all I’m thinking about is this.
The beginnings of the design can be found in this 2016 post by Just Van Rossum, a typographical treatment created in Python, with the subsequent design build-up created by Hansje van Halem, Marjolein Rinckes, and Jurriaan Hos. More information about the design, and extensive photos/videos of festival site branding etc. can be found here: Hansje van Halem, Jurriaan Hos, Marjolein Rinckes. It’s a whole thing. See also: 1, 2.
Lowlands 2019 ‒ de eerste bevestigingen!
Gachapon. 『イチジク浣腸 ミニチュアコレクション』発売！イチジク浣腸がリアルなミニチュアマスコットに！ Fig Enema Miniature Collection” goes on sale! Fig Enema becomes a realistic miniature mascot!
＜１＞イチジク浣腸30
＜２＞イチジク浣腸ジャバラ
＜３＞イチジク浣腸40E
＜４＞イチジク浣腸10
＜５＞かんちゃんデザイン(レアアイテム)
<1>Figure Enema 30
<2>Figure Enema bellows
<3>Figure Enema 40E
<4> Fig Enema 10
<5>Kan-chan design (rare item)
2023年6月発売予定
400円カプセル
Scheduled to be released in June 2023
400 yen capsule
(via がちゃぽん情報)
Handi NAn
PolyMatter: The Truth About China’s Social Credit System.
Drills I have known, a continuing series. Okay, yeah, you’re thinking you’ve got it all figured out. “You could buy a new NEW drill and it would last a lot longer.” Yes, but no. New drills are all torqued up and driving screws is difficult at best. This drill, you can barely squeeze the trigger and you get a crawling rotational speed, perfect for screw driving. I don’t want to have two tools when one works just as well. The problem with this drill is that there’s some electrical connection that gives up the ghost randomly, and when it does, the drill no longer works in certain positions. I tolerate it for awhile, then I go and buy another USD20 drill AS SEEN ON a popular auction site. This one has been very lightly used. I sanded the rust off the chuck, oiled it up, and it’s rarin’ to go. UPDATE: It has been my screw-driving friend these last ten+ days.
just another example of the obvious superiority of deepl ... for this twitter entry, twitter uses microsoft translate (for now, i’m sure elon will chop that out at some point because (A) it costs money (B) it doesn’t involve him):
友達に教えてもらったコインランドリー、夢みたいに綺麗で泣けちゃうな
The laundromat that my friend taught me, it’s beautiful like a dream and makes me cry.
in deepl:
My friend told me about this laundromat, it’s so beautiful, like a dream, I could cry.
yes thank you, the last one. i mentioned a long while ago that deepl properly translated japanese dates while google translate failed repeatedly.
i actually have an appendix in an upcoming book devoted exclusively to poor translations of subject material, but that was back in ye olde 200Xs when machine translation consistenly produced howlers.
i follow various “alternative means” video channels like kirsten dirksen but they always go “we found this 20 square mile piece of property that was only USD3500 and it had 17 outbuildings on it and there was a bedroom factory just down the road that went bankrupt so we bought all the bedrooms and stapled them together and that’s where we are now, we’re on the surface of neptune”
“so anyone can do this”
“anyone”
You perhaps remember a previous post about the strange auctions I occasionally run into featuring fictional collages screened onto porcelain signs. I found one account that has almost 500 of these, each unique, products and models pulled out of thin air and haphazardly bolted together. The two main themes are: here is a cheesecake model in front of gasoline-store-adjacent product; here is non-litigious mostly forgotten cartoon character in front of gasoline-store-adjacent product. For whatever reason, the cartoon characters are usually screened “simply"; there are no overlays, but the cheesecake shots are cut out and there are additional type layer(s) thrown over it. This particular vendor occasionally strays into forbidden lands, pairing Mickey Mouse with a gasoline company (not shown). Additionally I’m pretty sure in the history of advertising no major drink/food product has created an advertising campaign with a fully nude model on it (not shown).
Despite having sold eight of these types of signs (all of them of the cheesecake variety, with at least one model requiring two “CENSORED” overlays to get by the auction site’s TOS) at USD100-650, I’m still confused by the whole process. I’ve had this nagging feeling about it ever since the first time I encountered them, then I finally realized: this is very much like certain aspects of AI, selling back false history to the easily-duped/don’t-care crowd. “I found these two unrelated sources. Now they are together. $ please.”
Perhaps you have noticed that the background is the same for each top/bottom pair. So they’re not actually making the porcelain signs, they present to you the raw graphic, and then, if you want that, okay, we’ll break out the silkscreen kit.
James Hoffmann: Is Coffee Good for You? Big fan of the understated comedy bits.
Tom Scott: Climbing frames were meant to hack kids’ brains.
I am playing Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate (2015). The game is on sale at Steam ‒ I bought it + two DLCs for USD11.55. I tried to follow a link on the Ubisoft store to see if they were matching the Steam price but I got a 404. YMMV.
Apparently it is highly “underrated” at least according to my casual sifting through reviews and videos. I am thoroughly enjoying this game, it’s a big messy open world and there’s plenty to do and you can game the game in interesting ways. It might slightly help coming off of Watchdogs: Legion, both being set in London with Syndicate set in the 1860s and Legion set in the hand-waving future mit der endless drones & giant holograms.
The skill tree, money, upgrades, enemies, weapons: everything seems to work. In full concert. Even the rope launcher. Sure, 3% of the time you’re launching from rooftop to rooftop, climbing structures, or navigating waterways, the you can’t do a thing that clearly you should be able to do. It annoys less in this game somehow. I don’t think there is fall damage (update: there is fall damage), it’s just not an option to randomly leap everywhere. There are pathways but they are very forgiving and broad, you don’t notice it at all after awhile. Additionally, steering carriages/horses on the pc is a bit touchy, and there’s no way to adjust; you get used to it.
I’m glad that each of the events/encounters has a level rating, it’s swell to be level three and take out a level eight stronghold. “You’re going to need some explosives and better armor.” The hell I am, program.
So about that 1860s. The Thames is teeming, literally choked with boat traffic moving at various speeds/directions. You can play Frogger, jumping from boat to boat, securing treasure, lighting things on fire that are supposed to be lit on fire. I’ve only started the game, so I don’t have many tips, but my main one would be: if you are short on dollars, ply the Thames. There are occasional substantial scores. I don’t know if you can just wait next to one of the shipping lanes and a $$$ boat will reliably appear; I would just be hopping around and see one a few lanes away or something happening on shore. More hopping/roping.
The large amount of people walking around is perfect. You can hop on a random passenger train, there are a lot of people there, going about their business. Run through a crowded shop to lose aggressors. Ride your carriage in a borough you haven’t freed, you will run into a lot of enemies both on the ground and in/on carriages.
You can play as either Evie or Jacob Fry, brother and sister, who have vastly different goals and demeanors, let’s say. It’s not all fluffy clouds and Boston cream pie. Jacob, sadly, is a one-note sarcastic buffoon and for whatever reason, the writers just had to flex it with every conversational exchange. Evie: Fact. Jacob: Pfffft, FaCcCcTtTttttTt. Evie: Observation. Jacob: Ha-HO, so YOU say. / God DAMN it is tiring. Unfortunately, it looks like for a large majority of the plot-based events, brother Jacob has to tag along, but sometimes he limits himself primarily to the cut scenes. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’m just going to draw a hazy outline on a particular example ... for the introduction to one collectible, you enter an underground area with a complicated machine. Evie says, oh this is someone father has talked about, who was doing this technological thing. Jacob mis-pronounces the name intentionally like a drip and replies, right, nyeah, give me a break, whatever-I-don’t-believe-it, while they are in the room with the apparatus. Erroneously confident is not an interesting wholesale character personality, not someone I’d want to play as. Lucky thing, you can play as Evie most of the time (it made me switch once to Jacob, I’m not sure why; I didn’t do any sort of event/etc when it finally let me switch back ... it may have some sort of internal timer specifically so you don’t end up with a level 20 Evie and a level 1 Jacob near the end game, say).
Also, if you are up for a lot of reading about London’s architectural/etc history then: more bonus for you; it’s not necessary, it’s just a nice side dish.
You collect flowers! Hell YES I am collecting flowers. With descriptions, and sources for illustrations. There are a lot of things to collect, and the locations aren’t marked on the map unless you see the item. You can pay to have all of each type of item revealed on the map, but I’m saving my moola for some fine-ass cloaks and cane swords.
Playing passive is pretty much impossible. Some buildings have “bosses” and the label above their heads literally reads “KILL” just in case you weren’t sure. Though you can tell your minions to do the job for you, but fresh henchperson supplies are sometimes limited. Indeed, the game even makes that a thing: here comes the train, you need to get on board and get the item, but you have exactly 30 seconds to find henchpeople because train. The maximum number of helpers you can have is a skill tree perk. I wish there were more selections on the skill tree for the henchers; there’s one such that when combat starts, the guns immediately come out, but there’s no equivalent “let’s stealth this one up” perk. Hell sometimes when I climb a stronghold roof, the underlings get the idea to go in the stronghold and start causing a scene. So I’m trying to case out the joint and suddenly I’m hearing shots, seeing people falling to the floor with my Eagle Eyes nee cheatvision skill. “Uhhh guess I’ll just be up here if you need me.” There’s a “wait” command, I am just remembering now. Ha. So that’s probably just operator failure, there.
This is also a funny thing ‒ I like stealth in this game. Not a big stealth fan, but again, somehow, this one is doing it mostly right, for me at least, and doesn’t feel tacked on.
Now I need to go back to Steam and pick up any side-thing I might have missed.
Dudes a little room, please. Dudes.
Process X: The process of making tea cups, plates and kettles. A Japanese porcelain maker used by world VIPs.
I just buy random unmatched cups and plates at garage sales. Ask me how.
The honeymoon window has passed wrt Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate (light spoilers ahead) such that a mixed bag of odd decisions and whatnot has made itself known. It’s fun “playing” with the algorithms for your followers. If you traverse the city roping from rooftop to rooftop and have a crew, they’ll follow as best they can w/o ropes. This means that they either climb the face of the building, or pop in and out of roof access ports. It’s just fun to watch. They’re all my new best pals and we go out for ice cream every day and everyone is smiling. Sometimes they get hung up on a rooftop, never to return to ground; once one of them went rogue and started shooting at everyone including me. Doubling the ice cream ration for the remaining crew.
The “repeat the same phrase endlessly when triggered” thing needs to just end. For the henchers, it’s always some sort of biting comment (selected from a short list of about six) when you’re anywhere near an enemy’s body (“serves you right,” etc). You have five followers, say, and you’re all standing in basically a fresh pile of bodies ... and everyone is repeating the same phrases over and over. I get the repeating loop thing when there’s a large selection of phrases to loop, but if you’re close to an npc and they don’t have much to loop ... they can shut up after delivering their lines, it’s okay. Additionally, way too many bystanders making sanity judgments while I’m skulking around factories and whatnot trying to save their NPC asses (“What’s her problem,” etc). It’s like people nattering about drone riding in Watchdogs: Legion: gets really old really quickly. NPCs also see dead bodies and start loop-shouting “murder!” etc but you can wave a weapon in the air and everyone scatters.
There are some screwy missions with screwy requirements. I’ve run into two so far wherein you have to follow someone [FX: everyone groans here] to protect them from snipers and whatnot. Yes, the person walks slower than your fast walk, that’s game design law, apparently. You get bonus points if you can meet some additional conditionals, and of course the conditionals are ridiculous. So far my favorite mission fail was when I was supposed to protect Karl Marx (there are a few famous people, at least two for which the writers have stapled on new bits of personality that I am sternly doubting). Hustled into a bar, took out the assailant, the cops inside saw me, I’m all “I’ll just run outside and rope up to a roof, it’s like breathing to me"; as I’m running out Marx is coming in and blocks the way; I die to coppers copping. “Oh Marx, you malignant minx.”
The game is a little too obsessed about hanging barrels. There are these barrels, on a hanging platform. You can shoot the rope, then the barrels comically miss an enemy just out of reach. This is one of the conditionals you can fail. They did the same thing in the Watchdogs series: “oh boy oh boy he just has to take three more steps” [FX: enemy turns around].
Occasionally I run into a cascading series of errors and annoying situations. A recent example. First, at your “base,” there is someone that occasionally drops a side mission. I was avoiding them but there’s a ledge nearby and the command to drop off the ledge is the same as accepting the mission, so now I’m in the mission. Second, you can’t fast travel when you’re in the middle of a mission, so I need to finish the mission. Third, the mission has the conditional: “Knock out policeman.” Nothing of the sort described in the tutorials. Everything is searchable online of course, but in the words of one random train station NPC, “put a stick about.” The documentation is a bit sparse, and the layout is a bit tatty. Fourth: “Destroy the evidence.” Oops, you were spotted almost finishing destroying the evidence. You cannot finish destroying the evidence. You will have to run away (because if you kill it’s mission fail, for this particular one) and wait until no one sees you to re-start trying to destroy the evidence. Yes. Of course. All very logical. Maybe I’ll just give up, go everywhere by foot/carriage, have this mission hanging over me forever.
The occasional mis-jump/stuck-in-a-place etc will very occasionally be the catalyst for failing a mission. The loss is a little you, a little the game. Great time to put it down for awhile.
There’s one road that is on the edge of the map, it’s very narrow with tall buildings on either side. I was on a carriage mission (some of these turn into insane chaos, it’s wonderful) with a bulky delivery. If I strayed just a foot to the right, I would get a warning (it’s the meta-story veneer to explain away things like map edges etc). I originally thought the warning was that the road itself was going to end, so I tried to turn around and it was impossible. I figured it out after awhile, but there shouldn’t have been a warning at all, with the hard line of buildings to the right creating an impassable border. There are “emergent” behaviors that don’t seem to be documented which are fun to discover ‒ like hiding in a double-decker carriage “omnibus” when you have a crew, one of them will immediately take over the reins and race through the city randomly, it’s very amusing and chaos in this game is delightful (you can also turn on your Eagle-O-Vision to reveal hidden collectibles on the map while you’re afk doing laundry, say). But the driver also triggers the edge-of-map warning, which is doubly funny. “Tell yourself, program, I’m just a passenger here.”
There are missions that are utter horseshit. “Kidnap this person with enemies all around that can break your hold on the kidnappee immediately. It’s really fun! Try it over and over. Hit E to tackle, but that doesn’t work if the tacklee is stationary because: bugs.” Oh he’s getting away in a carriage. You can’t derail the carriage: mission over. You can’t otherwise stop the carriage. I tried to jump on the carriage, but wacky physics bounced me off at a weird angle. He rides his carriage into the far corners of the map for about 30 minutes (!; I spent the time mucking about with other missions) then it reset him back to the start. Cascading errors, I don’t know how this was ever greenlit. Why is he in a carriage that cannot be stopped, only destroyed, failing the mission? Why isn’t there a maximum distance mission fail check given the previous problem? And etc. I had a few ideas about how to cheat-pass the mission. They all failed. Finally, I started blocking all exits, intending to kill everyone trapped inside except the idiot because game ire was red hot. Blocked the first one with a giant double-decker carriage “omnibus” and suddenly idiot’s icon teleported to the edge of the “escape this area” area ... so I hustled over there, kidnapped him, walked him 10 feet, mission pass w/no kill bonus. [rolls eyes for about 30 minutes]
There are follow missions. I do not understand how anyone can derive even the tiniest mote of entertainment from the videogame-follow template in general. In this game, sometimes a large mission has been broken into several sub-missions and one will exclusively be “tail this guy/cart for a good long while.” You’re too close! Now you can’t see the object, you have 24 seconds to re-see it, not like that other asshole that ran all the way across the map for thirty minutes. As usual w/following missions, ridiculous constraints. I am not a goo-goo baby. Do I have to post the video by Nakeyjakey. [pause] I’m posting the video by Nakeyjakey. It’s about hand-holding in open-world games.
There is a sub-set of missions in which you free the childrens from brutal factory conditions. So, not set in present-day Arkansas. Got it. The first time I did it, I “cleared” the mission, the children ran away, everything is great, here’s your money/XP. Returning to free roam, this was right outside the factory:
Hrm. Must have missed that one. Eh, he’s not operating a scary giant loom machine, gonna just call this a big win and exit stage right. Actually working kids are scattered all over the map. The ones that stick out, they’re shovelling coal, or actual horseshit. Always the classics with the kids. You can get children to “scrap” for you (Harpo Marx mentions doing this for a NYC tradition, once-a-year street-by-street bonfires, in his book), you can run into them anywhere on the map but they also re-spawn in particular spots. Don’t work for that guy, work for me.
You can’t sit anywhere except the carriages. Not even in the base, by the fireplace or on the cozy couch. Most everyone else sits in the base. They had a sit animation for the carriages they could have used.
The UI for upgrades/inventory is a hot mess. Quick example. The weapons “inventory” screen shows every weapon in the game. What is your equipped weapon? The weapon that is highlighted when you go to the page. Once you select another weapon, your equipped weapon is no longer marked. Putting a little arrow in or the word “equipped” above/below the weapon: not in the budget. It’s a scrolling screen, because those are fun and every time someone uses a scrolling screen in this manner it turns out that half the screen is taking up by a useless graphic. “We don’t like clutter.” I don’t like labor/delays.
I’ve read that the combat is a bit lacking compared to other releases from the franchise. I am not a good combatter, I bowed out of arcading when Street Fighter showed up, a breakthrough videogame in which two people fight in the street. My M.O. in Syndicate is to generously give away my free steak knives very quickly to as many enemies as possible, from maximal distance, to minimize potential combat. “One for you, you you you [runs across roof] you, also you two way over there. You’re all so welcome! Mission pass.”
One of the DLCs I bought “features” boy detective, Arthur Conan Doyle, famed author, gullible sort. If you have a chance, read up on his interactions with Houdini. In the game, Doyle is your annoying bloodthirsty sidekick jr. as you “solve” mysteries. The methodology they use is annoying, and that goes doubly for Doyle. Wotta creepy drip. The DLC was a dollar and change.
There’s another DLC that centers around Jack the Ripper and a review indicated that you play as him for a brief bit, so no, and definitely fucking no. Hard pass.
Sneakers (1992). Navigating by Sound.
Think of this scene at least twice a year.
School Equipment an Supplies Catalog for 1930-1931 ‒ The J. K. Gill Co. Portland Oregon.
The right-hand page features No 500 MERRY WHIRL, GIANT STRIDE, and MITCHELL SWING BOB NO. 600, all very “safe.” The MERRY WHIRL “sways in and out from the post” but “the seat always remains parallel to the ground.” Not seeing it, but I just quit coffee again today so I’m not awake yet. Seventy-five kids at a time? No thanks, just going to use GIANT STRIDE to launch myself into a brick wall.
Also, SPORTBALL. So it was a thing before it was a thing. Go team.
Tom Scott: I thought this rotating house was impossible.
I am familiar with slip rings through the guise of art, but this slip ring is next-next-level. All hail Queen/King Slip Ring. [thanks to steve]
昔から変わらぬ味『ペヤングソースやきそば』を刺繍しました【ほぼ糸暮らし#２３】(Peyoung Sauce Yakisoba / a taste that has remained unchanged for a long time.) [Almost Thread Life #23]
String Phone Sculpture. “What started as only one phone reaching across the square, ended in an invitation to all neighbours to connect via a string phone. We installed 16 phones criss crossing the square spanning up to 60 meters.”
The blobs are happy in their new, hand-built wizzinator and that’s all that’s important to me right now. Build your own whatever, generate one, hundreds of blobs at The Blob Toy. I call it Blob Blob.
Gachapon.
Sinead O’Connor ‒ The Last Day of our Acquaintance ‒ NYC ‒ City Winery ‒ 11/8/2013.
Neo: Kowloon Walled City ‒ The Densest City on Earth.
Automat June 1974. MODEL RACING / di Marina di Montemarciano (Ancona) ‒ ITALY / DUCK SHOOTING “IL MOMENTO MAGICO” / SHOT NOW “ENTUSIASMANTE!”
Type Revival for Film & TV which includes a section on automats. Additional reading: The Automat: The History, Recipes, and Allure of Horn & Hardart’s Masterpiece.
Japanese Noodles Udon Soba Hiroshima Okayama: Assemble the stall by yourself! Japanese ramen made by a man who works until midnight.
Not Just Bikes: Designing Urban Places that Don’t Suck.
The entry below is from Macros, a murdery-mystery mass-market paperback originally made available to members of my patron sponsoring account two years ago. Ran into it today looking for something else, but it reminded me that I still need to convert the actual video surfing from VHS to digital and chuck the tapes. The machine is three feet from my head and the tapes are on the floor behind me, but yeah, I apparently need more reminders.
OBS is converting the video properly, it just doesn’t have audio. Audio works on the machine and I’ve read way too much about this problem on The Internet, a hot electromic community commodity popular with the jet-set.
uhhh wtf becky
is this a me thing or a firefox thing. opera & vivaldi:
dunno, too tired. ignoring problem.
i have a tiny scale to weigh all of my illegal drugs that i make, package, and sell, illegally. i live on the edge. i certainly don’t use it to make sure i don’t go ham with the kofi creamer. anyway.
when i am done w/the scale, i like to turn it off. i don’t know why, it has an automatic shutoff. it has become a ritual. you have to press the button once to zero out the display, then again to turn it off.
so if there’s any subtle weight variance (and it’s very touchy) while you’re trying to do this, the procedure looks like this. you press the button once to zero it, but then the weight changes, and then you press the button to turn it off, but that is now your first press, because the display is not at zero. rinse, repeat.
six feet to the left, if you open the microwave a few seconds before it beeps, you got the food but -you’re not done yet-. you need to shut the door and press the “stop” button. then it can finally beep at you, and you may now leave with your crappy food.
my logitech mouse has an rgb light that you can “control” through the incredibly poorly designed “app,” and even turn it off. it’s randomly turned back on three times now, which means i have to re-install the horrible app, turn it off, and then un-install the app. i will drill it out at some point. i could break down the mouse and then re-assemble it, but using a drill on it will satisfy a deep-seated need.
these are extremely trivial annoyances, but they get under the skin because actual people created these things. death by a million micro-cuts.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (1917). Corn Saved the Pilgrims and Fed Our Pioneers / Corn Will Help Us Feed the World / EAT MORE CORN / Corn Meal ‒ Hominy Grits ‒ Samp.
caleb gamman: toy movies for adults forever
commercial shows person trying to pay restaurant bill to server and is having difficult time finding correct credit card
but then, magical magicals, someone at a nearby table wants to pay -their- bill, and they have a CELLULAR TELEPHONE with an APP to pay!
it’s SO MUCH EASIER!
hey dingus, why are you trapped IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
apps are GRAVY
cards are PHYSICAL OBJECTS which all LOOK the same and GET LOST IN YOUR WALLET GOD SO ANNOYING DISGUSTED/PUT-UPON NOISE HERE
SlickPAY® will extract the following information from your account as a condition of interaction
All your browsing history
Your current location
Your name, address, SSN, telephone number
Your pet’s medication regimen
Your blood type
Your blood
Mark Jenkins Go Figure!
Late last year: Police Broke Into the Gallery of Banksy’s Former Agent, Mistaking a Sculpture for a Dead Woman.
Mark Goodman MTV “VJ” addresses the world, MTV day 1 1981 August 1st.
“Someone put a tennis racket and ball next to him. Prep that shit UP”
posture, mark
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959) page 10-11.
Tracklib: Sample Breakdown: The Most Iconic Hip-Hop Sample of Every Year (1973-2023).
Nebraska State Council of Defense wheat poster (1914). “To Feed the Nation is to Fight its Battles / PLANT WINTER WHEAT / BREADSTUFF IS SCARCE / STRIVE FOR A BIG YIELD” etc.
MSCHF work exhibition No More Tears, I’m Lovin’ It (2022). Numerous works/photo gallery. Among the exhibits:
In 2021, MSCHF launched a project entitled Spot’s Rampage, in which members of the public were able to remotely control a Boston Dynamics Spot® robot that had been outfitted with a paintball gun and placed within an art gallery. Via livestream, viewers could pilot the robot and fire the gun, gradually destroying the space and the robot.
After first trying to bribe the collective to remove the paintball gun with the offer of two free robot dogs, Boston Dynamics publicly condemned the project for using its robot “in any way that promotes violence, harm, or intimidation.” The day after Spot’s Rampage debuted, Boston Dynamics rolled out a partnership with the NYPD.
Boston Dynamics remotely disabled MSCHF’s legally-purchased Spot® robot via an undisclosed backdoor. Subsequently, MSCHF memorialized this robotic corpse with as many guns as it could possibly fit – a portent of robots to come.
Now at Cardhouse.com, a website: Books. 400+ books with links to books. Books.
Excerpt below from unread Queen Victoria: A Life of Contradictions, page 141.
I was reminded of this because occasionally I notice a vtuber’s avatar’s eye fluttering rapidly because mocap is crossing wires. It’s prevalent enough that you’d think they’d just make winking limited to a key command.
finally ... the best of the best ...
Trash Theory: The KLF: Beyond The Band That Burnt £1,000,000 / New British Canon.
Only top, top sources for Trash Theory.
Link to article: KLF is gonna rock you by Ernie Longmire.
Ridiculously Profitable/Greedy Music App: “I see that you have added a cover of Ginette Garcin’s ‘Cresoxipropanédiol en Capsule’ (1966) to your blockbuster year-end mixtape which we all are very excited about yes. Can I interest you in, do you know of perhaps, premiere USA recording artist ‘Paul Simon’? How about influential USA recording artist ‘The Talking Heads’? These are just suggestions created by a large advanced COBOL program to best gauge your interests and tastes, taste your intestines, back up a bit there, sorry. The ‘The Clash’?”
Memorize and repeat crucial instructions:
Du trisilicate anhydrique de magnésium
Du quadrisulfogaiacolate de potassium
Du glycérohydrato monoamoniacal
Du bichlorhydrate milenicophysidal
De l’orthodioxybenzenotocophérol
Du cresoxipropanediol, en ampoule
De l’aminophénisulfonacophétamide
De l’hexachlorocyclohexanysculoside
De l’acitalmine isopropyl orbiturique
De l’etabenzyl amoniocodiphosphorique
De l’acetylameniphenylarcinazole
Du cresoxipropanediol, en capsule
Piet Schreuders: The Red Balloon shooting locations (2012). Many pages.
buying coffee from ro-bot. $10.13.
[FX: inserts 13c; 13c is returned]
“...”
[FX: presses “Pay", inserts 13c; 13c is returned]
“...”
[FX: presses “Cash", inserts 13c]
“12c”
[FX: looks at ro-bot]
“...”
[FX: looks at ro-bot]
“...”
[FX: hits ro-bot; sound of penny travelling through ro-bot]
“1c”
[FX: inserts $10; $10 is returned]
[FX: inserts $10; $10 is returned]
[FX: inserts $10; $10 is returned; $10 is smoothed out]
[FX: inserts $10; $10 is returned]
[FX: inserts $10; $10 is returned]
[FX: inserts $10; $10 is returned]
[FX: inserts $5; inserts $5]
Ro-bot: “DO NOT FORGET YOUR RECEIPT”
CGP Grey: Who Owns The Statue of Liberty? (2018)
I love the stick-poking at the end. “Y’all haven’t resolved the GIFT SHOPPE, just sayin’.”
omg crossy road
crossy road! i love crossy road
i plait crossy road in an arcade with the giant screen and everything
and i tried to get it to work with an android emulator years ago but it did not work
and i just randomly found it today
crossy road! (crossy road)
crossy
road
These two videos premiered today and you’d have to be flatline dead to not be able to pull some ideas and observations out of them when considered as a set.
The Face: Who the hell are 2girls1bottl3?
This one below is important because the video is flipped as usual but they made special flipped logo hats. I only groggily noticed this because the aprons had the registered trademark symbol on the left, not right. Yes there were other larger indicators that something was goin’ Alice In Wonderland. Again: the grog. I don’t choose what grogbrain decides to focus on.
Got the tip-off on Mixie & Munchie via Mimi Smartypants.
I added a new patron processing payment thing. Eggs, one basket, etc.
The Billboard, July 26 1919. “Slack fill” from the early 20th century. Right side, middle of page, betwixt the slum. “Half pound Monogram Chocolates, packed 50 to the case, 19¢ each. Has the appearance of 1-pound package.”
“If yor are dissatisifed” ... whut
things keep stacking on top of other things and i was about ten references in when i ran across this cover of the saturday evening post (1922) by Neysa McMein. Read her wiki, she took a big bite out of the apple ...
David Lee Roth tells the story behind the “no brown M&Ms” legend. If you don’t know about this, you should watch it, even if you are not interested in Van Halen at all ever. It’s not what you think, it’s a neat little trick w/a huge pivot.
what i’ve done with my two-year quest to find a certain company’s jacket in my size is since i’ve found out that the material is a bit thin, is that it will have to also be roomy enough to have fleecy bits & hidden pockets sewn into it
then i came up with a matching hat that i would have to make from scratch and i’ve never worked with fabric ever
and so it goes, on and on over and over, wherein i have a ridiculous project and the longer it sits on the shelf the more baggage i add to it
i don’t have anyone to pass all of these projects down to
i will have to get some lovable orphans
or i could pass them down to random dogs
i did the same thing with the one page go bag list i worked on during bug out i
which became the three page go car go bag list i worked on during bug out ii
which then became the five page go car go box go bag list i worked on during bug out iii
i suspect the next time i bug out taskrabbit will become involved
does taskrabbit still exist
how do any of these still exist
Time is a precious commodity, don’t let it go to waste. I let many non-essential errands fall by the wayside to get each dainty sliver of time back.
I don’t wash my car. Every eight years or so, the luggage roof rack [SFX: appreciative whistles] starts developing some sort of life form. Green. “Christ, what now.”
Also, there’s a big sliver you can grab back, it’s called a job. They’re awful, don’t bother. See for example the huge archive of the job description game show television program What’s My Line? which ran on CBS from 1950 to 1967, took a smoke break because everyone smoked in the 60s, then trundled on from 1968 to 1974.
I glue all my saved-up time-slivers together then with that large chunk of free time I go ham sick on What’s My Line?. Binge binge binge. I suggest the celebrity ones, they’re more fun than the generic jobbie jobbers. Also from the seat of the future, you can be amazed that celebrity X gets a huge applause and you know that celebrity X is more than a year away from signing a deal that is essentially all they’re known for in current time. “Wait ’til you see ’em then, you clappie clappers. Wait ’til you see ’em later. Whatever. I am a future time lord, tenses are beneath me. Were beneath me. You know what I will mean.”
There’s also I’ve Got A Secret which is approximately the same. It’s a homework assignment. If I had been on I’ve Got A Secret, my secret would have been “I like pancakes.” No one would have guessed it.
Host: “Arlene Francis, we’ll start the guessing off with you, since I don’t know who’s actually on this show, nor do I know my own name.”
Arlene Francis: “Is your secret ... ‘I like pancakes’?”
“GOD FUCKING DAMMIT” [FX: trashes set with anachronistic limited-edition Rickenbacker 4002 bass guitar] “Jeez, this stuff was like staff back then, I’m really cutting through it” [CHROMA-KEY CAPTION: “GOD FUCKING DAMMIT"]
PS I wish, instead of the inanely long drawn-out “novel” (see what I did there) introductions they had instead done a little show ‘n’ tell with the guests. “MAKES COW BLANKETS” Okay, so show a cow blanket, I don’t want to hear accolades about Bennett Goddamn Cerf for the nth time. FF FF FF
“Cerf was known as ‘Bennett Snerf’ in a Sesame Street puppet parody of What’s My Line?” ... Fuggin’ scorched-earth policy on the Street
DRONZA: The Mechanical Talking Head / Finishing a four weeks’ run on Hammerstein’s Roof. Variety, July 1906.
I have not followed up on DRONZA. This is all I know about DRONZA. DRONZA is extremely low priority. DRONZA.
the online versions of crossy road are limited to five characters. there are ... over 100? w/"normal” versions.
crossy road used to be available as a download for the pc but they withdrew it or the contract ran out etc. there’s still a pointer to a win10 crossy road, i tried to install it on an isolated laptop but it whines about a “microsoft.advertising.xaml” package not existing.
not going to install that sort of garbage even on a backup pc.
amusingly, while doing “research” i discovered that the arcade version of crossy road was also limited in that it was just a button. you pressed the button to move forward one square. there was no “left” “right” or “back.”
it looks like there was a touchscreen arcade version as well. but i’ve only seen one image of it, no specs.
the reason i want to get the expanded 100+ character crossy road is because i have sort of hit my limit with the crossy road experience
occasionally i get into the “flow” state w/arcade games, usually pinball
the ball refuses to drain
your mind floats away from the game, now you’re watching yourself play
you shove the machine around, it doesn’t tilt because you’ve modeled the tilt mechanism in your head w/past experiences
this happened in crossy road
but the problem, just like with pinball, is that my brain wanders a bit and it falls out of the game and starts thinking about how the time would be better spent doing anything else
so the only thing left is ha-ha funny characters w/their different ways of walking/etc
i should probably just watch a youtube video
99% Invisible: First Errand (2022aug30). Starts out explaining the Japanese TV program My First Errand which then explains why it’s possible for small children to run errands on the streets unaccompanied by any adults. Spoiler alert: country not structured as auto dystopia, also not stubbornly insisting that any/nearly all progress is systematically reverted/ignored/ minimalized/glacially slowed/bulldozed. Build more lanes, cut down all the trees.
Below: excerpt from Macros.
Ist David Odonkor den instinktiven Herausforderungen des unerbittlichen Willens der problematischsten Sportstruktur THE CIRCLE gewachsen?
Du kannst tauschen, du kannst rennen, du kannst ausdauern, aber jagst du dich am Ende nicht selbst? FRAG DEN KREIS, ER WEISS ES
Witness: What’s Life Like Inside A Japanese Prison?
Gachapon. 『全て選択してください ソフトボールチェーン』12月発売予定。SNSやPC上に出現してジワジワくるあの画面がまさかの商品化！
Select All Softball Chain ‒ Scheduled to go on sale in December, this is an unexpected commercialization of that screen that appears on social networking sites and PCs and makes you cringe!
１１月７日より全国で、真っ黒なチーズケーキアイスを竹炭パウダーを使用した真っ黒なチーズコーティングした「漆黒のチーズケーキ」が新発売されます✨ From November 7th, ``Jet Black Cheesecake’’, which is a jet black cheesecake ice cream coated with jet black cheese using bamboo charcoal powder, will be on sale nationwide (via Sweetroad5)
The Daylight Savings Time change is not difficult but for those of you new to the phenomenon, I’ve included this handy table.
Ages 0-17 Fall back 37 minutes, spring forward 23
Ages 18-28.5 Fall back 22 minutes, spring forward 40
Ages 28.6-40 Spring forward 90 minutes
Ages 41-53 Fall back 22 minutes, spring forward 32; apply topical salve provided in your complimentary DST packet
Ages 54+ Fall back 33 minutes, spring forward 34
The easiest way to remember your particular backing-forward is to make the combination four-digit number your primary banking PIN. If you are 28.6-40 years old, just double the 90, but do not fall back 90 minutes; only spring forward.
Process X: The process of mass producing the world’s most expensive rice cooker. A Japanese rice cooker factory.
I enjoy these videos, but watching complicated hi-tech items being manufactured also gives me a lingering sense of foreboding. I cannot explain it.
Also, it greatly amuses me that my rice cooker is from the before times and cost me USD8. It does not play a little songy-song when the rice is done or at $MAXFLUFFY or whatever. I am probably missing out on a higher quality plane of existence. I need to up my rice game. What 27 factors are most important to me in rice quality qualitations. I will write an essay outlining key points. Why just rice. Why not min-max all sub-par aspects. What would happen to my well-being if I had, for example, the ultimate mayonnaise experience. Unlock the potential of MAYO
Early listings for commercial films, not shown with running times, but running length, in reel-feet. Movie Picture World (1907).
Baby Has the Colic, everyone knows that’s going to get the Oscar nod this year. Catch it before it’s SRO, OK?
For all your business-related needs, it’s 2023 Mixtape.
Morten Jensen Vågen Multitool, 2022, Made in Paris.
Private Space (2020).
The Walk, (project from 2013, new edit made in 2020).
Dover Manufacturing Co., Dover, New Hampshire. Ice cream clipper. “Just remember, Mr. Retailer, it’s the squeezing ‒ the pressing that drives out the air and causes shrinkage. Every time you press a dipper of ice cream against the side of the can in leveling it off you are forcing in more ice cream per unit of volume than you bought, and reducing your profits just so much. THE NEW METHOD DISHER clips off the ice cream without squeezing, and you do not give away your profits! Think it over, and write us for some facts!” The Soda Fountain, June 24, 1924.
Gachapon. ピエール・エルメ・パリ ミニチュアコレクション ★全5種セット (Pierre Hermé Paris Miniature Collection ★ Total 5 sets)
it is amusing when a store suddenly loses its grip on reality and begins subjecting consumers to odd whims and notions
today, stanchions around entrance ‒ don’t come straight in, angle off to the side
i could almost understand this if this was a heavily-trafficked shop
it is not
there are stanchions -totally- around inside of door, cannot proceed, penned in small 6’ x 4’ rectangle
no one in store, it’s just opened
security: “please wait”
nothing happens for 30 seconds
security removes stanchion belt, allowing access to store: “thank you for waiting”
they don’t have the thing i need
as i’m leaving, scene is repeated with next person to show up
wtf was that
is someone earning their BS in performance art
Alex: How I Buy Pasta Like An Italian Chef (up your pasta game for good) (2022)
Chants of Sennaar is an interesting, casual puzzle/adventure game with a lexicographic core mechanic (the entire game isn’t colored in this manner). I had originally saved off a screen of the language-building portion of the game but you may wish to go in cold so it’s more of a surprise.
There were some gameplay decisions and tacks I didn’t understand fully (along with occasionally struggling with a new clue concept) but overall the experience was top-notch.
There’s a free demo at the Steam page that is very generous and gives you a perfect idea of what the rest of the game will mostly be like. It looks like every platform offered may have the free demo.
Bobby Fingers: Jeff Bezos Rowing Boat.
Hennessy Youngman: ART THOUGHTZ: Relational Aesthetics (2011).
You know Youngman from CVS BANGERS
Off the Rails Documentary (2016).
Vanity Fair: Edgar Wright Breaks Down Scenes from Shaun of the Dead, Last Night in Soho & More.
draw not eat 2023 (oil pastels; acrylic paint; bad lighting)
60 Minutes: Welcome to Sealand, the world’s smallest state.
Chill Goblin: WHO IS MORE PUNK: Sex Pistols or Chumbawamba?
Interesting article about pubs briefly replacing banks in 1970s Ireland.
at some point in the hand-wavey past, i posted an image of what i thought was a conbini employee showing off the latest hi-tech PET bottle crusher/holder machine along with their associated combini store PET bottle crusher/holder machine mascot. The mascot seemed like it was having a bad day, half-lidded eyes and the start of a frown. It was important to me because I am avoiding a deadline to buy a product and i don’t want to buy the product because there’s a lot of ways to screw it up. anyway. i don’t remember when i posted it, but i couldn’t find it and again, important so i started typing various search terms into deepl to convert to japanese like “conbini bottle recycle mascot” etc. i saw ... many mascots. too many. i don’t like most mascots because they have those eyes with the little white dots in them that are supposed to be light reflections just so you are reassured that yes, the mascot has corneas just like you. i like flat face cute mascots with just black circles or the like for eyes, amp up the cartoon aspect. this frog rules. i do not care if it has an associated anime/recycling campaign/key to the city/whatever.
i finally found the bastard, it is named “waketon” and is part of the “Recycling Promotion Division of the Kobe City Environment Bureau, who are well-known for their Kobe City garbage bags.” ah. i couldn’t find the actual photo ‒ it was probably taken by one of the news agencies at the promo event (there are a TON of these ... family mart: “we have a new machine what does a thing” 47 press bureaus: “ON IT”) and because most online newspapers don’t keep much of an archive, it’s on one hard drive in a osaka web newspaper’s closet
if you watch the video you can get a sense of the half-frown/sorta goin’ through the motions feeling waketon puts off
0:22 新しいペットボトルに生まれ変わったペットボトルは大切なプラスチックボトルにご協力をお願いします / New plastic bottles reborn as new plastic bottles, please cooperate with our precious plastic bottles!
0:28 [拍手] [applause]
i’ve seen other versions of waketon in which it is happier, maybe that’s a newer version
at least there’s no white dots in waketon’s eyes
CRUCIAL UPDATE: okay, i think what happened is that i took a snap of the video here like so:
waketon just wants to go back to sleep
June 1922 Confectioners Journal. Stacy’s Gold Medal Marshmallows. Whomever made this ad was completely high.
And that’s a 1922 high. That’s not an easy high to get.
i had seen what’s up doc (1972) in the theatre as a small, problematic child but couldn’t remember any of it. re-watched the “famous” drugstore scene
and they’re charging $67 for a radio. “that seems obscene.” how much were radios back then. 1972 wish book image included. roughly 1/3rd price for what looks like comparable kit.
do not shop at that drugstore.
(one of the previous pages features a radio cassette player with “Vernier slide-rule tuning for station choice” which as it turns out is actually a thing and not some marketing jagoff earning their paycheck)
let’s find a better ryan o’neal film
i should re-watch this
i should do a lot of things
Everybody In The Place: An Incomplete History Of Britain 1984-1992 by Jeremy Deller (2019)
F.D Signifier: Eminem and the White Rapper Problem.
CGP Grey: Grey Grades Canada’s Flags! (And Merry Xmas!)
CANADA FLAGS UNLOCKED [SFX: HORN OF QUALITY SOUNDS THROUGHOUT THE VALLEY]
Joe [UK]: Fern Brady On Being A Stripper, Autism Diagnosis & School In ‘A Men’s Prison.’
What A Combo (Fern Brady) “Plugging the gaps with snacks” / Tim Key
“Do you mind me talking about a food combination on your show?”