Centuries before Pantone, in over 900 pages of handwritten Dutch, the author — who identifies himself as A. Boogert — describes how to make watercolor paints.
In the 17th century, the "Golden Age of Dutch Painting," this manual was likely ubiquitous.
Now comes modern technology with a complete high-resolution digital scan of the compendium.
More at Open Culture.
Fair warning: there goes the day.
Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?
It's to be found outside the Little A'Le'Inn (pronounced Little Alien), a bar and restaurant in Rachel, Nevada, along State Route 375
(above and below),
officially known since 1996 as the Extraterrestrial Highway.
Above, four buttons which I've had on my fridge since last century.
They've never steered me wrong.
Try 'em all!
If you're not delighted with how much better your life gets let me know and I will cheerfully refund three times what you paid to read this inane post.
That's the bookofjoeWay©®™.
Remember those tiny shrimp or suchlike to which you added water and suddenly they expanded a billion or two times while you watched?
You don't?
Huh.
Maybe they were a twentieth-century thing.
No matter.
These nifty pill-like thingies work on the same principle.
Just don't confuse them with Alka-Seltzer.
No — I have no idea what that principle is nor do I care.
Sheesh.
Now where was I?
From websites:
.....
InstaCloth
Keep a washcloth always on hand!
No washcloth in your room? No problem!
Just splash a little water on one of the 1"-diameter tablets and it will unfold into a full-sized disposable white washcloth.
• Additive-free.
• Super-absorbant.
• Package dimensions: 5.5" x 2.75" x 0.5".
• Great for home, auto, camping, and travel.
.....
Pack of 8: $2.95.
2.5 million views since it was uploaded to YouTube 2 days ago.
It cannot be overstated.
When I get an email that makes me uneasy, unhappy or feel out of sorts, my response is predictable after the initial wave of alarm, anxiety et al: I move on, preferring to deal with it the next day.
No matter how disheartening the content, it's never as powerful and upsetting the next morning.
It's as if the emotional payload loses some of its power overnight.
This pattern of behavior stems from something I read early this century, to wit: "Anxiety is interest paid on a balance that may never come due."
I don't recall the source but there's truth in that epigram.
And that's all I have to say about that.
I've had these since forever: they're great for all sorts of things.
From websites:
.....
Retrieve items in jars, disposals, or drains.
Convenient hole for hanging.
Serrated handles and tips.
Stainless steel, 12" long.
.....
Two for $5.99.
Do a solid for a friend and give them the second one.
Especially delightful if they're the sort of person who thinks they have everything.
"Over 100,000,000,000 have ever lived — choose one."
"You'll draw, step by step: a year; a place; a life, each taken at random from real data."
"One life, drawn at random from over 100 billion who have ever lived."
In addition to its excellent AI capability, Perplexity Pro does an excellent job of presenting its results.
Above, how a typical response looks on my MacBook screen.
Below, what I get when I put the identical query into Google search.
You be the judge.
From the website:
.........
This incredible broom is hand made in Japan by Takada.
The bristles are made of shuro bark fiber.
The stem is gorgeous Japanese cypress.
Form meets function meets cool.
..........
$265.
Apply the McCluhan Test: Read page 69 and, if you like it, buy the book.
[via Susan Elderkin, writing in the February 17, 2007 Financial Times]
Photographed by Nicolas Reusens at the Hummingbird Sanctuary (Santuario de ColibrÃes) in Mexico City.
Said Reusens:
"When I saw the detail of this particular hummingbird, I was blown away; those tiny symmetrical feathers, perfectly aligned. Absolutely amazing!
[via My Modern Met]
One thing I've always loved doing is passing on to others things I think might be of interest to them.
I've been this way since I was in college: back in the day it was newspaper and magazine articles I'd accumulate and then mail.
These days there's a list of people and online publications I subscribe to and regularly update with things they might want to share with their readers.
Here they are:
The Linkfest (Clive Thompson)
Dense Discovery (Kai Brach)
Scope of Work (Spencer Wright)
Kottke (Jason Kottke)
Damn Interesting Digest (Alan Bellows)
The Overspill (Charles Arthur)
New Things (Joanna Stern)
Unsung (Marcin Wichary)
Recomendo (Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, and Claudia Dalton)
It's taken me a while to realize that I will never ever hear back from Jason Kottke, Kai Brach, Joanna Stern, or Benedict Evans, but I keep sending them stuff anyhoo.
FunFact: It was around twenty years that the penny dropped and I recalled that my mother used to do exactly the same thing: every month or so when I was in college and med school I'd get a fat manila envelope filled with newspaper and magazine clippings.
Clearly the acorn doesn't fall very far from the tree.
One of my favorite things about being an Apple fanboi from inception (I bought my first Mac in the early 1980s) is how much delight I still get uncovering an Easter egg.
Above and below, the latest.
It appeared after I updated to macOS 27 (Golden Gate); I noticed it last week.
When I use the cursor to include more than one item on my desktop, the number of items included appears inside a giant red dot (top).
But wait — there's more!
If the number of items exceeds nine, the dot changes shape (below) to accommodate the added digits without altering the size of the included font.
It's the little things that give me the most happiness.
Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?
1.5 billion views!
I've loved this lamp ever since I first saw it around the turn of the century.
A 1970 design in hand-cast acrylic.
22" x 22" x 22".
Forty-five years ago when I was a buyer in search of my first house, radon was a major consideration — many potential buyers insisted on a certified radon level test done inside the house before agreeing to sign a contract (I didn't ask for a test).
At that time radon was considered by many doctors (not me, based on my reading of the contemporaneous medical literature) as a significant cancer risk and for some people high levels would cause them to walk away from an otherwise perfect property.
Time passes and like reefer madness, radon fear has dwindled away to a mere echo of what it once was.
I haven't seen radon-related articles in decades.
I happened on the EPA Radon Zone map up top and thought it would be of interest.
FunFact: Albemarle County, Virginia, where I live, is in Zone 1: "Highest potential; average indoor radon levels may be greater than 4 pCi/L (picocuries per liter)."
After I bought my house I ordered a radon test kit and followed the instructions to the letter.
The results: well over 4 pCi/L, considered at the time — and still — hazardous by the EPA.
After I got the results I shrugged and went on with my business.
Both back then and now, the potential danger of living in a house with high radon levels seemed to me not worth worrying about.
Way back in 2007 one of Mister Jalopy's "Blast From The Past" features in Make magazine was titled "Old-School Hand Tool Hacks: What I Learned From The 1963 Bureau of Naval Personnel Training Course."
Among the many interesting tips was the one featured here, which made me swoon with delight at 1) its simplicity and 2) its obviousness — after the fact.
Many have been the occasions in the past when my hacksaw proceedings have been truncated prematurely by throat-size limitation issues.
Never again.
YouTube description:
....................
"ANONYMITY" starring Rebecca Hall. A trailer for a psychological thriller.
As she prepares for a role, an actress repeatedly comes face-to-face with her masked double, forcing her to confront her own identity.
But who is real? How can we truly know ourselves? The stakes have never been higher. That is "ANONYMITY."
If you're losing sleep because your charging cords aren't overcrowding your USB hub, your ship has come in.
It comes not from outer space but rather from the fertile mind of Burlington, Vermont-based designer and inventor Matty Benedetto.
Wrote Andrew Liszewski in The Verge:
................
There's now an easy solution if your USB-C cables aren't taking up enough space.
Inventor Matty Benedetto's latest creation is a 60W USB-C charging cable disguised as a 10-foot extension cord, complete with chunky connectors on each end.
...............
Black, Orange, or Green: $25.
Enter a time machine set for 165 million years ago.
From Science magazine: "By combining exquisitely preserved fossil insect wings with experiments on living insects, computer simulations, and machine learning, scientists have re-created what they say is a partial Middle Jurassic soundscape."
Read the original scientific paper, "High acoustic diversity and behavioral complexity of katydids in the Mesozoic soundscape," here.
Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?
Death has always had a marketing problem. Most people fear their own deaths. The debilitating terror it induces has been linked to everything from money hoarding to workaholism. And worrying about death—thanatophobia for the pub quizzers—can even be self-fulfilling. Anxiety can double the risk of death in patients with heart disease and cause others to avoid screening tests most likely to catch cancer early.
So all credit to the brave folk in Australia who signed up for a quick practice kick of the bucket—experiencing a cardiac arrest and out-of-body journey in virtual reality (VR). The ten-minute VR experience, “Passing Electrical Storms” by Shaun Gladwell, was shown at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2023. Visitors lay on a bed that initially vibrated with their heartbeat, while wearing a VR headset showing them on a table in the gallery. The simulation then takes over: as their heart rate seemingly crashes, the volunteers watch doctors try and fail to resuscitate them. After brain death, they then see themselves leave their body and appear to float through the universe before shrinking inside cells and atoms. Six large fans provide the associated cooling effects.
Participants’ reactions to the experience were analysed by researchers before being published in a journal in June. Most participants found it a pleasant trip, and many emerged less anxious about death. “If death is as simple as that, I’d be very happy,” a volunteer told the research team, led by Stefan Greuter, a design technologist at Australia’s RMIT University. Another compared the experience to yoga. One participant, brought up to believe in hell, admitted to being relieved.
A separate study in Texas, published in Frontiers in Virtual Reality, tested an 11-minute VR simulation of a near-death experience. In this case the student volunteers survived, but only after watching themselves undergo a car crash, coma, tunnels of light, serene landscapes and imagined encounters with friends and family. Reported death anxiety among participants dropped by an average 18%. “Very relaxing. I wish I could try it more than once. Maybe every night before going to bed,” one participant said. Running the test again with those who are frail, elderly or terminally ill could produce a stronger response, the researchers say. A glimpse of mortality did not, however, help everyone: a quarter of the student volunteers said the VR experience made them more anxious about death, and a third emerged more stressed.
[via The Economist]
Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?
In the order of their publication in Russia between 1882 and 1904, the year he died from tuberculosis at age 44.
The stories — the entirety of Chekhov's oeuvre in this milieu — were translated into English by Constance Garnett and published in 13 volumes between 1916 and 1922.
Free, the way we like it.
"Reading Chekhov was just like the angels singing to me." — Eudora Welty, 1977
Back in the before times, trying to contact someone, say an author you liked, was labor intensive and generally futile.
You had the choice of writing a letter to their publisher and hoping it would be forwarded and that the person would respond, or trying to winkle out their home address from written information and reference books and college catalogs (if they were associated with a school).
When the internet happened, gradually and then suddenly the walls came down: sometimes people had their own websites with a contact function or in rare cases their email address on the site.
This became ubiquitous when publishers started demanding that their authors put up a website as a condition of their contracts.
Then newspapers and magazines brought their reporters and writers out from the shadows: whereas in the old days you had to write the paper and ask them to physically forward your letter, now almost every byline is accompanied by an email address.
Recently I ran into a stone wall trying to reach an author: none of the above worked.
Then I stumbled on a new way to get in touch:
1. Go a person's Instagram (everyone who makes money by interacting with the public has one)
2. Follow them
3. A Message box will appear (it's in the lower right corner in my Instagram screenshot up top) if there's not one there already and Bob's your uncle
Using this method I've since succeeded in messaging several peeps I'd given up hope of ever making contact with, in one case after trying for over a decade.
If this trick doesn't work for you, let me know and a member of my Crack Research Team©®™ will get back to you.
They don't have Instagram as they're deep black as a condition of their employment.
