A horse drawn canal boat has a lot of inertia and no brakes. If a horse towing a boat arrives at a bridge, the supervising humans must bring it to a halt, disconnect the towing rig, move the horse to the other side of the bridge, and then reconnect the tow line.
The industrious people of Industrial Era Britain thought of a better solution: the roving or turnover bridge. Whereas some bridges were simply high enough to allow the passage of the tow horse on either side, the roving bridge brought the horse up on ramps facing either direction, turning it completely around as it passed.
Pyramid Lake in western Nevada offers excellent trout fishing. But if you want to access deeper water and more fish, then you need to move away from the shore. Some enterprising sportsmen began setting up ladders into the water. Standing on top of these ladders was more comfortable than standing in the cold water for hours at a time.
Then some outfitters began modifying ladders to hold fishing gear. And then some mounted chairs on top of the ladders. In the New York Times (paywalled), Chris Santella writes:
Our ladders seemed pedestrian next to the local models — custom contraptions made by a Reno craftsman which included a platform and a padded seat.
“When people first started fishing the lake, they used milk crates,” recalled Joe Contaldi, principal guide with Pyramid Lake Anglers. “This helped them cast far enough to reach the drop-offs where the fish cruise looking for food. And it also helped them get above the cold water.” The crates gave way to conventional ladders and then to chair ladders.
Jordan Rudess, a master keyboardist, owns a Pocket Piano. This is an electric keyboard that breaks down into segments. It will continue to play even when segments are removed. With the help of his friend Maddi, Rudess played a ragtime song while losing piano segments. In the end, he's playing on only three keys!
On April 17, 1961, a small army of 1,500 Cuban exiles backed by the US government landed at the Bay of Pigs in the hope of overthrowing the Castro regime. To prepare for this great event that would doubtlessly be the start of a successful military campaign, the CIA struck commemorative coins.
Alas, for the Cuban exile troops and the people of Cuba, Castro's forces knew about the invasion and quickly defeated it. This silver coin was, as a result, never circulated.
Slava Korolev in Palisades Park, New Jersey operates the unique studio named Light Dents. He takes discarded musical instruments and turns them into lovely and eye-catching lamps, candelabras, and wine bottle holders.
Emanuele Magini, a furniture designer and scenographer in Italy, calls this chair the Lazy Basketball. It suggests a helpful distraction for the workplace or a possible prank to play on unsuspecting users just looking for a place to sit.
Sora News 24 brings us news of this amazing machine at the Sachinoyu Hotel in the mountains of central Japan. If you want to go snowboarding, you'll need training. That's why the hotel has an advanced snowboarding simulator what whips you around on a tilting snowboard as a screen displays your movements in a virtual environment:
As shown in the above video, the machine can simulate both skiing and snowboarding, and a display provides detailed biomechanical feedback by measuring data such as the angle of the skis/snowboard and the amount of weight the rider is placing on different points. By configuring parameters to simulate different qualities of snow and other conditions, the session can be adjusted to match the user’s skill level, making it a fun and educational experience for beginners and advanced skiers/snowboarders, as well as adults and kids alike.
John Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, which was fitting, as he was a towering giant of Twentieth Century American literature. Among other novels, he wrote Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. These works, and others by Steinbeck, are widely read and studied. What is not widely read is his unpublished 1930 werewolf novel Murder at Full Moon.
That's because the Steinbeck literary estate has kept it hidden in the archives of University of Texas. Dr. Gavin Jones of Stanford University described this novel and argues for its publication in The Guardian:
Set in a fictional Californian coastal town, Murder at Full Moon tells the story of a community gripped by fear after a series of gruesome murders takes place under a full moon. Investigators fear that a supernatural monster has emerged from the nearby marshes. Its characters include a cub reporter, a mysterious man who runs a local gun club and an eccentric amateur sleuth who sets out to solve the crime using techniques based on his obsession with pulp detective fiction.
The typescript even has two illustrations by Steinbeck. They depict the floorplan of the building where the murders took place, including the victims’ bodies. In the book, these are drawings made by one of the characters trying to solve the murders.
Jones described it as a world away from Steinbeck’s realist representations of the Great Depression, which may explain why he wrote this one under a pen name, Peter Pym. “Even though it is very different from Steinbeck’s other work, in a totally different genre, it actually relates to his interest in violent human transformation – the kind of human-animal connection that you find all over his work; his interest in mob violence and how humans are capable of other states of being, including particularly violent murderers.
— marvelous media engine (@EngineMarvelous) May 19, 2021
Twitter user Marvelous Media Engine made this astonishing zoetrope that shows the Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro. When activated, it shows a vividly lit Catbus dashing through the fields at night.
Some people in the Twitter thread insist that this video is fake--that this is CGI, not a physical zoetrope. I'm not sure.
The pig just wants to get some sleep, but local humans insist on running the noise making machine, which serves no apparent purpose aside from making noise. It's necessary to disable it. If the humans don't learn, it may be necessary to disable the machine permanently.
Star Trek introduced us to three-dimensional chess, which is actually playable in some variants. There are other ways to play chess, often increasing the complexity of the game. But game designer Doctor Popular went in the other direction by placing all of the pieces on a single strip of sixteen spaces.
Nonetheless, it's not simplistic like a game of tic-tac-toe. You can download the rules and a gameboard for free here.
Is your visual processor glitching? Maybe, but it's more likely that you're just looking at someone wearing new jeans from Leje, a fashion house in Paris. This company is all about contrasts:
Straight-Curve, Oriental-Western, Decomposition-Conjunction, Masculine-Feminine, Subculture-Luxury, etc.
The brand demonstrates the charming “disparities” between these elements and the harmony hidden within the contrast.
Hence the pants that are cut and resewn at jarring angles. For a mere $528, you can have pants like these!
To you, the puppy above is cute. To the bald eagle, it's a snack. That's a problem because bald eagle populations have surged in recent years due to conversation efforts, as well the generalized awesomeness of the country that the bald eagle represents. To improve their dogs' chances of staying safe from hungry bald eagles, some owners dress their dogs in armored vests, such as the CoyoteVest pictured above. The Wall Street Journal (sorry, it's paywalled) reports:
"Eagles are strong enough to carry a 12-pound salmon, so a four-pound dog is nothing," says Mark Robokoff, owner of AK Bark pet shop in Anchorage. His shop sells CoyoteVest, a protective jacket covered in Kevlar and spikes, intended to protect small pets from coyotes. Mr. Robokoff immediately recognized its potential in a state with an estimated 30,000 bald eagles. The vest is topped with bright red nylon whiskers that he says scare off the birds from above.
