Michael Shannon out there healing the human race.

 

 

• The social media post you may have even seen sort of suggests it is predicting the future, but he was speaking about his present day. Still, this is very prescient:

“Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.”

Fact Check: It’s Claimed That Einstein Warned a Time Will Come When the Rich Control Means of Communication. Here’s the Truth https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-claimed-einstein-warned-180000545.html

 

BE AS WATER, MY FRIEND

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SPACE

 

• FIRST TIME IN HUMAN HISTORY, we’ve captured a meteorite impact on camera:

Canadian man’s home security camera captures the sight and sound of a meteorite strike https://www.npr.org/2025/01/16/nx-s1-5259837/meteorite-strike-sound-canada-home-security-camera

 

 

• A new NASA flagship telescope being designed to seek out strange new worlds that could support life as we know it. Called the Habitable Worlds Observatory, the telescope is so massive it may even need to ride a next-gen megarocket like SpaceX’s Starship to reach space; it will also require new technological innovations to hunt for Earth’s twin across the light-years. Yet, even with such hefty demands, this project was tapped as a top priority for NASA in the Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020 (Astro2020), an influential report that aims to set a roadmap for the astronomy community within the decade following its release. https://www.space.com/space-exploration/search-for-life/nasa-wants-a-super-hubble-space-telescope-to-search-for-life-on-alien-worlds

 

 

 

• Beam me to the stars: Scientists propose wild new interstellar travel

“Chemical rockets that we use today, even with the extra speed boost from flying by planets, or from swinging by the sun for a boost, just don’t have the ability to scale to useful interstellar speeds.” Most theoretical studies on “beam riders” for interstellar travel have focused on laser beams, which are composed of particles of light called photons. Notable examples include laser-powered interstellar ramjets and laser sails. Ramjets propel spacecraft by compressing hydrogen gas collected from the interstellar medium, with energy supplied by a laser beam transmitted from a distant source. In contrast, laser sails use the momentum of photons from the laser beam to push the spacecraft forward.

Most theoretical studies on “beam riders” for interstellar travel have focused on laser beams, which are composed of particles of light called photons. Notable examples include laser-powered interstellar ramjets and laser sails. Ramjets propel spacecraft by compressing hydrogen gas collected from the interstellar medium, with energy supplied by a laser beam transmitted from a distant source. In contrast, laser sails use the momentum of photons from the laser beam to push the spacecraft forward.

While acquiring funding may be challenging, the scientists argue that compared to alternatives like laser-pushed sails, electron beams could achieve 10,000 times the range, thus requiring less power, and be capable of propelling heavier spacecraft. “The cost of making a big beam scales with the power, so the relativistic electron beam approach may be significantly more affordable,” said Greason.

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/tech/beam-me-to-the-stars-scientists-propose-wild-new-interstellar-travel-tech

 

 

• This is like that scene from the Aronofsky Sphere film, Postcards from Earth:

It could be a banner day for spaceflight today (Feb. 4), with five rocket launches planned in 24 hours, four of them from the U.S. alone. https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/new-record-coming-5-rockets-scheduled-to-launch-in-next-24-hours

 

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SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

 

• YEAAaaaahhhh… not sure they’ve seen The Matrix, but this is utilitarian, functional, and massively impressive use of Lovecraftian Eldritch abomination robotic tentacle nightmares, created by the University of Science and Technology in China: Super-strong TENTACLE robot can lift 260 times its own weight, pick strawberries and even get you toilet paper https://whatsthejam.com/world-news/super-strong-tentacle-robot-can-lift-260-times-its-own-weight-pick-strawberries-and-even-get-you-toilet-paper/

SpiRobs: Logarithmic spiral-shaped robots for versatile grasping across scales https://www.cell.com/device/fulltext/S2666-9986(24)00603-3

 

 

• Microsoft has unveiled a new quantum computer chip. How does it work and will it transform technology? https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-02-21/microsoft-quantum-computing-chip-explained/104958916

 

@rillotok 20 years of hard work have led to this very moment ? the Majorana 1 and a huge leap in quantum computing as we know it #tech #quantum #quantumcomputing #microsoft @Microsoft ? original sound – rillo

 

 

• Purely AI-generated art can’t get copyright protection, says Copyright Office https://www.theverge.com/news/602096/copyright-office-says-ai-prompting-doesnt-deserve-copyright-protection

 

 

• Just the dystopian hellscape that is your robot to engage with your autistic child going offline and “dying”. Now, since this video, it sounds like the failing company has come up with an ad hoc solution to create a server to keep the robot going, but the idea that something both technological, but inescapably important as a bonding and growth “friend”, could go offline. I don’t think it was meant to teach autistic children the notion of death.

@heatherfraziertiktok This could be my last convo with moxie. Got an email saying hes being shut down forever. This is like a sad pixar movie. This robot had so much potential. Sad. #moxie #moxierobot #pixar #disney #fyp #moxierobotforchildren #moxierip #johnny5 #walle #bmo #chappie #pixarmovie #moxiementor @Embodied, Inc. @Pixar @Disney @Mark Cuban @Theo Von @Elon Musk Daily ? original sound – Heather Frazier

 

 

 

• The Flipper Zero is a CRAZY scary invention. Here Adam Savage breaks it all down. Quick rundown on uses, and yes, the terminology is very white hat, and isn’t showing you the demonic laughing of black hat hackers behind closed doors in dimly lit rooms:

Security Research: Identify vulnerabilities in wireless systems and access control mechanisms.
Education and Learning: Understand how different electronic systems work and experiment with them.
Reverse Engineering: Analyze and decode signals from various devices.
Hardware Hacking: Build custom projects and integrate with other hardware.
Everyday Tasks: Use it as a universal remote, copy access cards, and more.

 

 

• James Cameron net worth of $800 Million… you can’t take it with you, but who else would do this?

Mysterious Ultra-Wealthy Figure Building Deepwater Settlement for Human Habitation “The goal is to live in the ocean, forever.” https://futurism.com/the-byte/mysterious-benefactor-deepwater-settlement

 

 

• AI haters build tarpits to trap and trick AI scrapers that ignore robots.txt

Attackers explain how an anti-spam defense became an AI weapon.

“Aaron clearly warns users that Nepenthes is aggressive malware. It’s not to be deployed by site owners uncomfortable with trapping AI crawlers and sending them down an “infinite maze” of static files with no exit links, where they “get stuck” and “thrash around” for months, he tells users. Once trapped, the crawlers can be fed gibberish data, aka Markov babble, which is designed to poison AI models” https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/ai-haters-build-tarpits-to-trap-and-trick-ai-scrapers-that-ignore-robots-txt/

 

 

• Dark Oxygen: deep sea rocks seem to be creating oxygen away from light:

“Dark oxygen” discovery upends centuries of scientific beliefs, textbooks to be rewritten: Scientists recently reported an unexpected deep-sea development in the Pacific: certain metallic rocks seem to be making oxygen in the dark, without light or sunshine, at the bottom of the ocean. https://www.earth.com/news/dark-oxygen-discovery-deep-ocean-rocks-upends-centuries-of-scientific-beliefs/

 

 

 

• Scientists Invent Device That Straps to Any Car’s Tailpipe, Transforming Exhaust Into Electricity https://futurism.com/the-byte/device-tailpipe-exhaust-electricity

 

 

• It turns out that Juggalo makeup blocks facial recognition technology Whoop whoop! Insane Clown Posse fans may have stumbled into a way to combat public surveillance https://consequence.net/2019/07/juggalo-makeup-facial-recognition/

 

 

 

• Article on this depressingly hilarious “it’s the end, it’s over” moment:

Behold the AI Slop Dominating Google Image Results for “Does Corn Get Digested” Slopaggedon cometh! https://futurism.com/google-image-corn-ai-slop

 

it’s actually over pic.twitter.com/LaHwHikJ9A

— Insane Facebook AI slop (@FacebookAIslop) January 8, 2025

 

 

• The Cold War’s Greatest Spy Weapons and Gadgets: The Covert Tools of Espionage Masters https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/spy-weapons-gadgets-from-cold-war/

 

 

 

• Scientists Re-Create the Microbial Dance That Sparked Complex Life: Evolution was fueled by endosymbiosis, cellular alliances in which one microbe makes a permanent home inside another.

For the first time, biologists made it happen in the lab. More research in a variety of endosymbiotic systems will reveal which conditions apply generally and which are specific to certain pairs. Further down the line, those findings could lead to a new kind of synthetic biology, featuring lab-grown endosymbiotic relationships, which could be a “fascinating avenue to explore biological innovation,” Vorholt said. Related: Meet the Eukaryote, the First Cell to Get Organized Cell-Bacteria Mergers Offer Clues to How Organelles Evolved Researchers Rethink the Ancestry of Complex Cells How Two Became One: Origins of a Mysterious Symbiosis Found Instead of editing organisms’ genes to create new traits, labs could engineer bacteria to perform specific functions and then slip them into hosts. “Many new features could be brought together in a symbiotic system by doing this and making them evolve together,” Partida Martínez said. By inducing endosymbiosis, researchers could potentially engineer plants to metabolize pollutants or manufacture medicines. “It will take time to design and to really tune the systems,” she added. “I think our imagination would be actually the limit.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/scientists-re-create-the-microbial-dance-that-sparked-complex-life-20250102

 

 

 

• A robot made out of vacuum parts sings with a non human robotic voice.

 

 

• Okay… this is too good, and since it’s about mathematical hacks, I have to include it here. Also, travel creates empathy, reunites people with one another and this place we live, and gives us better understand of people or cultures that are different than us. But this is a BONKERS HACK:

I always travel off-peak, outside vacation / school / work downtime or breaks. But, Conde Nast makes a compelling case against it:

According to our calculations, those who have all federal holidays off can turn their 15 days of PTO into 48 days of vacation. https://web.archive.org/web/20250115022655/https://cntraveler.com/story/how-to-maximize-vacation-days-2025

 

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COMEDY

 

• Trailer Park Boys was the best, but this clip is the funniest thing ever. I’m the monkey in charge of the bananas.

 

 

• Bill Hader is comedy, but he’s human, and here he is talking to Conan about some of the best advice I’ve ever heard about anxiety, from none other than Jeff Bridges. “Anxiety is your buddy, man”.

 

 

• Some of you whippersnappers don’t remember “sharing” the experience of TV in real-time to talk around the “water cooler”.  This Tim Conway and Harvey Korman “Dentist” sketch from the Carol Burnett show went word of mouth “viral” before viral was a thing:

 

 

• This is so CUTE. Conan met his wife in this funny remote. In his wedding vows, he even said, “You had me at emblematic”:

 

 

 

• The kettle wheezing, the overall laughter and vibe… this is purely wholesome and I freaking LAUGH EVERY TIME: A Brazilian gets creative for a job interview with some guys in Dubai.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Amin I (@dankquillius)

 

 

• You made the perfect cookie, and now there’s no more work left to do. I think about capitalism, diversification, and the fact we had 40 flavors of the same Oreo, and 30 identical detergents of the same brand with a slightly different aroma.

@dropoutdottvSTOP MAKING NEW OREOS ?? original sound – Dropout.tv

 

 

• THIS GUY IS MY SPIRIT ANIMAL: Plies, **not beefin’** with another rapper in 2017:

 

I Can’t Argue With U….. ? U ?…… ?? pic.twitter.com/jKH2URGBSH

— Plies (@plies) November 8, 2017

 

was made into a remix in 2019:

and now it’s an emerging dance trend on tiktok 2025 and I wanna do it:

https://www.tiktok.com/search?q=can%27t%20argue%20with%20you&t=1737665601271

@nanascookiez ETERNAL MOOD? #nobackandforth #bigmad #plies #nottodaysatan #badenergy #badvibes #haters #goodvivesonly #bye #fyp #foryou #fyp? ? original sound – JAXYN

@datgurlmurl2 I can’t argar with you! I’m happy ! #argue #tiktok #viral #fyp #youwannaargue #leavemealone #funny ? Argue (I Can’t Argue With You) – DJ Suede The Remix God

@scottdhenry #truestory #leavemealone #projection #miserablepeople #icantarguewithyou ? Argue (I Can’t Argue With You) – DJ Suede The Remix God

 

 

• Rich Hall and his Sniglets from 1982’s Not Necessarily the News on HBO

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MOVIES & TV

 

• Guess what? I’ve waxed and obit’d many loved and cherished people. David Lynch, I cannot. He is timeless and immortal.

I remember seeing Mulholland Drive in the theatre while living in LA. Very few films expertly get a “well that was a masterpiece but what did I just watch?” vibe. I finally get it, completely, and it was the evening of his passing my 4K of Blue Velvet arrived! It’ll be a Lynch marathon for the rest of my life.

 

 

• Kyle MacLachlan on Losing David Lynch, Their 40-Year Creative Partnership, and the Work They Never Got To Do https://www.gq.com/story/kyle-maclachlan-on-losing-david-lynch

 

 

 

• History! I swear you already hear the cat in your head! =)

‘A kitten on heat with a racy physique’: the mystery of the bloodcurdling cat screech used in 100s of films; Babe, Pet Sematary, Toy Story, etc a same furious yowl crops up! So who was the cat and who made the recording? We solve the enigma of the ‘Wilhelm Miaow’ https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jan/14/wilhelm-miaow-cat-mystery-babe-toy-story-pet-sematary

• This short film, Latinos vs Donald Trump, is truly a work of art. Surreal sci-fi political brilliance!

 

 

• This moment of realization from Spielberg, in why he unconsciously used computer language and music for Close Encounters, because his parents professionally did each:

 

 

 

• This guy is so creative. https://www.instagram.com/mrdiv.gif/

I am pretty obsessed with liminal space and the coming “Backrooms”, and this guy basically makes an amusement park out of what an unyielding and endlessly generating purgatory would feel like.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by mr. div (@mrdiv.gif)

 

 

• Superman: never really was a huge fan, but a group of college buddies have a battle over whether Superman needs a cape to fly. He does not. However… a friend essentially thinks Superman is the Greatest American Hero, where all the powers come from the suit. Supe don’t play that.

1. Where does Superman fold his cape when he’s Clark?
2. And does he have to wrestle all that stuff off to take a shit? If he takes too hard of a super shit, he’s gonna have super hemorrhoids.

Okay, stay on target….

Capes, essentially, just look cool… but there’s a reason why Superheroes have historically worn capes, and it’s about illustrators!

“The actual reason he, and so many other superheroes, have capes is to show how they’ve turned mid-flight. The cape would twist and form a sort of trail from where they had been, to where they currently are, thus showing movement and direction. Old artist trick. Basically like “invisible movement lines,” but it fits in more with the whole costume dealo. If they didn’t have capes, they they’d appear to be floating still in place and the reader would have no sense of direction from panel to panel. Edit: Keeping in mind that these comics were originally for below 12 year old kiddies from the 1910’s and such.”

Also it was modeled after Zorro, they just liked it, and Zorro wore a cape to blend into the shadows, hide weapons, etc.

Did you know Superman’s cape has pockets? RANDOM

Also, someone did a science experiment to figure out if capes make you fly faster. They do: https://www.reddit.com/r/mythbusters/comments/d1fygw/one_of_my_greatest_mythbusts_if_you_flew_like/

Here’s Clark in Smallville. This thread has endless images of him without the cape: https://www.reddit.com/r/superman/comments/15412s0/superman_cant_fly_without_his_suit_because_you/

Another friend thinks he flies using super flatulence.

 

 

• I forgot the 1995 Super Bowl Half Time show was once fully dedicated to a Disneyland Indiana Jones ride, and it was sorta weird.

 

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MUSIC

 

• 2 Scottish kids were denied a record deal, so they pretended to be Californian and got one. Sounds like James McEvoy is making a movie about them. A BONKERS STORY:

The Fake ‘American’ Rappers Who Fooled Everyone https://www.npr.org/2010/07/16/128567769/the-fake-american-rappers-who-fooled-everyone

• I got my Jalapeno Business up in this bitch. With Marc Rebillet and Harry Mack.

Marc Rebillet: classically trained pianist and funky looper that does everything in the moment, making it up as he goes along.

Harry Mack: The greatest freestyle rapper of all time, sorry it hurts to say, but all off the dome, based on the words:

“Jalapeno Business” SO FUNKY!

• I love sample breakdowns, and had ZERO idea that line was from Strange Days!

• Clay Pigeons, incredible storytelling by Blaze Foley

• The National Jukebox:

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. Recordings in the Jukebox were issued on record labels now owned by Sony Music Entertainment, which has granted the Library of Congress a gratis license to stream acoustical recordings. At launch, the Jukebox includes more than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925. Jukebox content will be increased regularly, with additional Victor recordings and acoustically recorded titles made by other Sony-owned U.S. labels, including Columbia, OKeh, and others. https://www.loc.gov/collections/national-jukebox/about-this-collection/

• I love stuff like that, because it leads to samples like this: Chinese Man, a group from Aix-en-Provence, I’ve got that tune:

• What else? BBC just released all their scifi music sounds for sampling:

BBC Radiophonic Workshop https://www.spitfireaudio.com/bbc-radiophonic-workshop

• DOECHII and her tiny desk concert:

 

• Yussef Dayes is the greatest living drummer, so enjoy some jazz by Mt Fuji in this mini documentary.

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PEOPLE, CULTURE & SOCIETY

 

• • • Via Ferrata (Iron Staples / Rungs in the side of a mountain for “light” climb-hiking. (AKA NOPE)

This location is apparently Mürren-Gimmelwald.

 

 

• • • Bacon was a forced meme. Let Adam ruin bacon:

 

 

 

• • • The Euthanasia Coaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_Coaster

The Euthanasia Coaster is the name given to a hypothetical steel roller coaster and euthanasia device designed with the sole purpose of killing its passengers.[1] The concept was conceived in 2010 and made into a scale model by Lithuanian artist Julijonas Urbonas, a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art in London.

Urbonas, who had formerly been an amusement park employee, stated that the goal of his concept roller coaster is to take lives “with elegance and euphoria”,[2] either for euthanasia or execution purposes.[3] John Allen, who had been the president of the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, inspired Urbonas with his description of the “ultimate” roller coaster as one that “sends out 24 people and they all come back dead”.[4]

 

 

• • • Same Train Conductor, 26 years apart. Progress, to be sure…

 

 

 

• • • John Lautner’s Sheats-Goldstein Residence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheats%E2%80%93Goldstein_Residence

@ninosbuildings Do you recognize this house? #fyp #architecture #design #brutalism ? hot slow – berlioz

 

 

 

• • • Sonder… everyone in the world has a rich, complex, inspiring or interesting life, and we’ll never know them all.

 

 

 

• • • “On Skateboarding, solidarity, and Palestine” – Palestinian skate scene in the occupied West Bank.

Four photos, article is great, and has more images: https://skatejawn.com/on-skateboarding-solidarity-and-palestine/

Related, one of my favorite films ever:

A24’s “Last Black Man in San Francisco” deals with displacement & gentrification, identity & belonging, friendship & community, loss & grief, & various forms of actual or economic apartheid, etc, & that last photo just nails a vibe from the film, & fits here for their story.

Also, 100s more photos: Yo! Sharing some images from the skate scene here in occupied Palestine. Hoping to have my photobook out in March which is a 200+ page deep dive into our small and intimate scene here. Check it out: https://huwawabooks.com/landing

Last Palestinian Man in West Bank:

 

 

 

• • • This is a pretty edgy, but well done, Wendy’s training video circa early 1990s.

@80s.90s.frenzy #throwback #oldskool #nostalgia ? original sound – 80’s 90’s Frenzy

 

 

• • • The history of the hottest, most ill-advised theme park ever made: The Wooz https://www.sfgate.com/sfhistory/article/The-history-of-the-hottest-most-ill-advised-15394648.php

 

 

 

• • • The menu from Windows on the World, circa 1989, in the World Trade Center.

 

 

 

@thedownsidepod Brennan Lee Mulligan ??’s NY ??? #newyorkcity #thedownsidepod #podcastclips #funny #standupcomedians #dropout #dimension20 @Russell Daniels ? original sound – The Downside Podcast

 

 

• • • Rare Glimpses of 1870s New York: Some of the Oldest Photos Ever Captured https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/new-york-photos-1870s/

 

 

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VEHICLES

 

• • • An artist wanted to show himself unzipping the river and ocean…. so beautiful!

An Oversized Zipper Ship Opens the Sumida River Flowing Through Tokyo https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/12/yasuhior-suzuki-zipper-ship/

 

 

 

 

Proper vehicle
byu/HornyDiggler inMujicoCity

Gene Winfield used a larger one to make the transporter for the movie Aliens.

 

U30 aircraft tug.

 

 

• • • This sailor is bonkers… 5 months from Brazil through Panama, then Galapagos, then Bora Bora, then Aussie, then Japan? Wild.

Unbelievable Skipper
byu/Past-Desk1513 insailing

 

 

 

• • • Gordon Ramsey’s [Aston Martin Valiant] worth £2.5 million seen in London yesterday.

 

 

• • • The Aston Martin Lagonda Interior: Too Cool and Futuristic for the 1970s and 1980s https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/aston-martin-lagonda-interior-photos/