“I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.”
Charles Darwin
Chronophoto Is A Fun Game Where You Guess The Age Of Photographs
I thoroughly enjoyed playing a few rounds of Chronophoto. It’s is a game in which you guess the dates of five historical photographs. The more accurate your guess, the higher your score. Each photograph has its own set of clues that give away the era — film quality, subject matter, products, uniforms, fashion, vehicles, and colorization,
My scores are all over the board, but after about 5 rounds I got a high score of 3,315. When I was wrong, I was really wrong. I did get a couple of guesses right on the spot – resulting in 1,000 points each – but being wrong is almost more interesting.
Champagne OK
This is a random clip taken from “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble” (1976). Whether it’s the botched editing job between “oooo-owwww”, the palpable sense of self-satisfaction Robert Reed exhibits after he’s contained the chaos of bubbly eruption, or the final announcement that the disaster has been averted, this tiny element of film makes me feel ok…Champagne OK! After all, having had your child banished to the purgatory of a giant bubble, wouldn’t you-yourself feel that same sense of ‘victory’ having single-handedly contained an outright onslaught of smaller bubbles?
When I was a very young kid, I remember sitting on the couch next to my mom and loving this movie, yet probably not understanding it at all. I just added this to my netflix queue and can’t wait to see it again for the first time.
Maps of Dune
The First edition, first printing of the science fiction classic “Dune” by Frank Herbert has an unusual map of the stories setting printed on the dust jacket. The linked edition had an opening bid of $6,500 but didn’t sell. I haven’t yet read (or watched) Dune but I’m posting this here for when I do.
ht: Nelson Minar
After posting this at reddit I was pointed toward these:
- Original Map by Dorothy de Fontaine (missing center)
- Hi-resolution recreation
- Map of Arrakis (Martin Sanders, from the Folio Edition)
- Map of Arrakis (Matt Griffin, Dune Deluxe Edition)
See also: The Most Accurate Maps Of Panem
The Moon Dressed In A Saturn Costume For Christmas Eve
Landscape, astro, and adventure photographer Francisco Sojuel took this incredible image of a waning crescent moon pierced by a thin cirrostratus cloud. The image appears as if it is the moon is dressed in a Saturn costume. The dimly lit silhouette of volcano Pacaya and the Guatemalan highlands drape the foreground.
The bottom-facing crescent is lit from below by the sun, just under the horizon, a few hours before sunrise. The image was taken on December 24th, 2019, two days before a solar eclipse, placing the sun almost directly under the moon and compounding the effect. The rest of the moon is lit by ashen glow via a fairly lengthy exposure time.
New Pasta Just Dropped
The culmination of Dan Pashman’s three-year passion to invent a new type of pasta shape is now ready to get into your tummy. All of his hard work has paid off with the introduction of the Cascatelli pasta (Italian for “waterfallsâ€).
Pashman and Sfoglini engineered the new shape to maximize the three main characteristics:
- Sauceability: How readily sauce adheres to the shape
- Forkability: How easy it is to get the shape on your fork and keep it there
- Toothsinkability: How satisfying it is to sink your teeth into it
Bringing the pasta into fruition seems to have been quite the ordeal. Pashman says he spent several thousand dollars and pushed the release of the shape back months, all to add half the thickness of a credit card to its shape, thus increasing the toothsinkability.
Dan has put together a five-part podcast detailing the concept, design, production, and subsequent birth of the new pasta – you can start with the first one here.
You can purchase a box of Cascatelli from Sfoglini. Though supplies appear low and you may need to pre-order.
True That, Esther Abraham Hicks
“If all you did was just looked for things to appreciate, you would live a joyously spectacular life.â€
― Esther Abraham Hicks
Longevity Primer
Laura Deming runs the $26 million Longevity Fund – a VC firm dedicated to funding early-stage companies with a high-potential for increasing human lifespans.
Her blog has an interesting primer on longevity and the science behind increasing human lifespans. It’s filled with all kinds of well-referenced facts about things that affect our aging and ability to lead long lives.
10 years ago, one of the first projects I worked on was trying to understand a weird fact about reproduction in worms. If you take little worms and get rid of their gonads (I know, it’s weird), they live ~60% longer than normal. But this only works if you get rid of the stuff inside (sperm/eggs – these worms are hermaphrodites, which means they carry around both). If you get rid of the whole thing, lifespan goes back to normal.
Don’t miss the 95 things that make mice live longer and 70 drugs in the clinic that might make people live longer sections.
Via Oreilly