Say what?
joe, you've been watching too many concert films.
Casio's history can be traced back to its roots: the "ring cigarette holder" (top) invented by Kashio [see what they did there?] Seisakusho.
Launched in 1946, it caused a sensation in Japan in the early postwar period, achieving great commercial success and providing crucial financial support for the later development of Casio calculators.
Today, Casio's new CRW001-1 Ring Watch (below)
marks a return to ring-centric design.
$135.
"This map show the predicted density of underground networks created by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. These networks form one of Earth's circulatory systems, moving massive amounts of carbon, nutrients, and water across plant communities."
One of these images is of Europa, Jupiter's ice moon: the other eight are frying pans.
Can you pick out Europa?
Hint: frying pans don't have impact craters.
[via NASA]
This new concert film was the first time I'd ever heard a Billie Eilish song.
Long story short: I loved the movie.
I have a jones for live concert films, most of all those featuring Taylor Swift but also past ones like "Stop Making Sense," "Gimme Shelter," "Woodstock," "The Song Remains The Same," etc.
James Cameron — yes, that James Cameron — was actively involved in the making of this movie and often appears on camera, filming Eilish as he interviews her.
I warmed to her songs and performance as the concert progressed (unlike the concert films of Taylor Swift, which feature many shows across continents as she makes her world tours, Eilish's features just one concert along with the entire day's preparation, sound checks, etc.).
She is really something, holding the stage for the most part completely alone, unlike Swift without a highly choreographed troupe of dancers and singers surrounding her and complete changes of outfit and mood and stage sets and lighting between songs.
The bond between her arena audience and her is amazing to see.
She's also quite articulate and insightful during the Cameron interviews.
Say what?
From websites:
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Conceal the clutter and haphazard appearance of your surge protectors.
Don't be dismayed about tangled wires, bulky plugs, and bright power indicator lights.
Simply close the lid and make the mess disappear.
Two lids provide access to power switch or outlets and protect from dust.
14.5" x 3.5" x 3".
Polypropylene.
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Make sure you livestream it to your friends back on Earth (allow 3-24 minutes travel time, depending on where the two planets are in their respective orbits).
NASA's Curiosity Rover saw this on June 11, 2026.
It initially captured 11 individual photos of a sand-capped butte, nicknamed "Miraflores," with its mast camera.
The isolated feature is about 20 feet tall.
It was left behind when surrounding rock eroded, deepening the broad valley Curiosity was in.
The photos were sent back to Earth and stitched together, producing a high-resolution (6,162 x 2,576 pixels) image.
The color was adjusted to match the lighting conditions as the human eye would see if a person were standing on the surface of the Red Planet next to Curiosity.
In the photo below, you can see the butte in the distance.
The area pictured is inside the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater, in which sits Mount Sharp, an 18,000-foot-high central peak that rises from the crater.
"Billions of years ago, lakes and streams dappled the lower foothills of Mount Sharp, which Curiosity has been ascending since 2014," noted NASA.
[via PetaPixel]
From websites:
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This unique access hatch featuring a six-part cover over a built-in spiral staircase is located on Bahnhofsplatz/Gustav-Stresemann-Ring in Wiesbaden, Germany.
It opens down into the historic Salzbachkanal (Salzbach Canal) — the main underground stormwater and drainage sewer system for Wiesbaden's city center.
The staircase is roughly seven meters high, opening into the brick-arched canal below.
According to the city's own records, the subterranean canal was built between 1900 and 1907, following typhus epidemics that pushed the city to modernize its sewage system.
It was designed by engineers Josef Brix and Martin Frensch.
The heavy metal cover features segmented triangular folding lids that open outward, revealing a cylindrical brick-lined shaft with a tightly fitted spiral staircase.
The cover was designed specifically to fit this construction's access shaft.
It serves as a specialized maintenance and descent shaft for municipal engineers inspecting or working within the subterranean drainage network.
The city has an annual "Day of the Open Canal" on which public tours are offered.
Out there on the patio — it's a bird, it's a plane, it's... my can holder?
Yes.
I saw it in a Seven-11 many years ago and instantly raced to grab it before anyone else could.
No better summary exists of my take on things — then or now.
For $1.99 or whatever it cost I get at least one laugh and many smiles each day, every time I see it — which is often since I drink a lot of Caffeine-Free Diet Coke and as a result visit the WC frequently.
My philosophy (long story short): If you can't laugh at yourself, you have no business laughing at anyone else.
“Fable” is a fun game: It starts with a close-up zoom of an animal, and it slowly zooms out. Your goal is to guess the correct animal as quickly as possible.
It’s fun! By forcing you to look so closely at the zoomed-in features of these critters, it gets you to see them with fresh eyes … a nice aesthetic and existential effect.
You can pick a category of “birds”, “dogs”, or “all animals”, which I picked above. You can play against friends, racing to see who’s first to identify the game, or just do it in solo mode.
[via Clive Thompson]
Using high-definition open source videos and photos from NASA, John Boswell created this 8-minute-long video recap of this past April's Artemis II mission that executed a flyby of the moon, marking the furthest man has ever been from Earth.
Can't wait to watch this on Vision Pro's YouTube app: the device's micro-OLED panels each produce a 4K image which together deliver 6K resolution — not 8K, a common misconception since two 4K panels don't yield 8K in pixel-count terms.
[via Kottke]
Simone Giertz is a designer and hardware hacker famous for doing hilarious, offbeat projects. (Lots of videos of her builds on YouTube.)
Her latest? A plant inside a bell jar that contains a grow-light. There’s a slot at the bottom of the bell jar, into which she slides her phone. The grow-light only goes on if the phone is in the slot — so, in essence …
… if she doesn’t put her phone down for four hours a day, the plant will die.
As Giertz says at the end of the video:
There's something kind of poetic about it. Like if I'm on my phone, I'm not only taking away from my own life, I'm also taking away from the life of this plant.
This idea has promise.
Giertz has only made this one-off prototype, but I bet she could bring it to market.
[via Clive Thompson]
In 1911, a stick of gum made by the Common Sense Gum Company came with this handy guide to kissing a girl.
[via The Presurfer and vintag.es]
Scott Bradlee and his Postmodern Jukebox take us through the history of tap dancing since 1899, with dancer and choreographer Sarah Reich shuffling and tapping her way through various songs, from 1899's "Maple Leaf Rag" to 2014's "Uptown Funk."
[via The Presurfer]
It's that of Greenland.
Designed by Greenland politician Thue Christiansen, it was officially adopted in 1985 and features the Danish colors.
The white is symbolic of the ice and snow that covers most of the island, and the red is symbolic of the sun.
By Laura Moorhead, this appeared on the last page of the August 2006 issue of Wired Magazine.
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Chess Teacher
At last — chess pieces with the rules for how they move printed right on them!
Now everyone can play.
You get a complete set of plastic chess pieces with print-on rules for moving, a chess board, and an instruction booklet — which you won't need because the pieces are so clearly marked!
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From my longtime Crack bookofjoe Mississippi Correspondent©®™ Shawn Lea comes a characteristically deep diving investigation into the little-known origins of two great vowel-deprived comic characters of the 20th century, Mr. Mxyztptlk (above) and Joe Btfsplk (below).
Her report follows — and you can bet your bottom dollar that not one word has been.
Who came first... Mr. Mxyztplk vs. Joe Btfsplk?
Joe Btfsplk preceded Mr. Mxyztplk. Joe Btfsplk's first appearance was June 11, 1942. Mxyztptlk ((roughly pronounced Mix-yez-pit-lick, also nicknamed Mxy) first appeared in September of 1944. Joe's creator, Al Capp, pronounced Btfsplk with a "raspberries" sound, also known as a "Bronx cheer."
Mxyztplk appeared originally as a small bald man in a purple suit, green bow tie and purple derby hat. This was changed to a futuristic looking orange outfit with purple trim in the mid-1950s, although the hat remained. At around this time the spelling of Mxyztplk's name changed (by mistake) to "Mxyz pt lk".
From Wikipedia:
After the establishment of DC Comics' multiverse in the 1960s, it was later explained that the purple-suited Mxyzptlk lived in the fifth dimension connected to Earth-Two and the orange-costumed Mxyzptlk in the fifth dimension connected to Earth-One. The Earth-One version was also retconned into Superboy stories as Master Mxyzptlk.
From www.supermanhomepage.com:
The imp known as Mr. Mxyztplk first appeared in our dimension in Superman #30 (1st series, 1944) in a story by Jerry Siegel with art by John Sikela. For those who haven't seen the original story, you can find it in "The Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told" trade paperback. The bald little fellow in the purple suit and green bowtie creates all kind of havoc -- including animating a naked statue he calls McGurk. Mxyztplk describes himself as a "court-jester" from another dimension. The not very bright imp laughingly tells Superman that there is no way he can be tricked into saying the magic word "Klptzyxm" that will return him to his own dimension. Oops. Saying the word, Mr. Mxyztplk vanishes.
A note at the end of the tale says, "If you enjoyed the antics of Mr. Mxyztplk and would like to read of his further encounters with Superman, let us know on a penny postcard." Obviously, Mr. Mxyztplk was a big hit and returned many times.
The imp's name was later changed to Mxyzptlk (for the consonant-challenged among you, the letters "t" and "p" are reversed). He had a long history of antagonizing Superman, supposedly every 90 days, until Superman inevitably tricked him into saying his name backwards. This restored everything back to normal and banished Mxyztplk back to the Fifth Dimension for another 90 days. Until the Crisis On Infinite Earths series rewrote DC history.
