Category: Cool stuff

Ernő Rubik: The Cube Represents Man as a Thinking Being [text] – an interview of Ernő Rubik, from Rubik’s Cube fame.

I ordered a box of crickets from the Internet, and it went about as well as you’d expect [text] – well, exactly what the title says. Beware: live crickets.

What Life Is Like When Corn Is off the Table [text] – an article that describes what it’s like to be severely allergic to corn (apparently it’s a thing). Particularly fascinating for the amount of stuff in which corn can sneak… (Apparently, it’s also way more prominent in the US. Still: color me fascinated.)

Laws and Sausages – The Electoral College [comic, multiple pages] – To quote them, “The goal of Laws and Sausages is to be a comic about politics, without the politics. […] We aim to be the civics education you either never got or chose to ignore.” And it’s also educational for people outside the US 😉 The latest episode explains the electoral college.

Warhammer 40,000 Funko Pop! Figures [images + text] – Sooo. I’m not a fan of Funko Pop! aesthetics in general. When I first clicked on that link, I was half-expecting an April’s Fools joke. And now… I kind of REALLY WANT a Funko Pop! UltraMarine. And I’m obviously waiting for the Orks. And there’s a few earlier drawings and thought process at the bottom of the article, which is always nice.

Lunar Eclipse over Cologne Cathedral [photo] – a pretty cool composite of this week’s lunar eclipse.

The most unexpected answer to a counting puzzle – now THIS is probably the coolest thing of the week (and we’re only Tuesday at the time I write this). It starts with “okay, consider two blocks that move on a friction-less plane along a wall and let’s count the total number of collisions”. And I’m not going to spoil it, because that wouldn’t be fun. And then the next video in the series (don’t look at the title to avoid spoilers 😉 ) explains the math behind it and it’s even cooler. And the person doing these videos promises an even-even cooler explanation for the third video. I can’t wait 😀

​Shooting to kill – how many men can do this? – this one is interesting and somewhat disturbing. It explains how hard it is for most of the human population to actually pull the trigger in a war context, and how it’s apparently feasible to train them so that’s it’s easier. And asks the question of what happens to these people when they’re back to civilian life.

Marble Marcher – A Fractal Physics Game – some stuff about collision handling with a fractal-generated terrain.

I used to gather some “cool stuff from the Internet” a long, long time ago on my French blog. Since then, that sort of “content gathering” has mostly been moved to social networks; let’s see if I can put that back in blog form instead. This could actually be a nice Friday post 🙂

Q: Why Do Keynote Speakers Keep Suggesting That Improving Security Is Possible? A: Because Keynote Speakers Make Bad Life Decisions and Are Poor Role Models – a very funny keynote by James Mickens, with an intro to machine learning in the middle, and a lot of snark about machine learning, internet of things, and the tech environment in general. (I typically do NOT watch ~1h videos on my computer. I watched that one.)

A Mercator globe [animated image]: that cracked me up 🙂

The weird power of the placebo effect, explained [text] – a fascinating article about the placebo effect. I was aware of a fair amount of the claims already, but still – that’s mind-blowing.

Matt Leacock’s 2019 Game Selection Guide – a funny flowchart about Matt Leacock’s (known in particular for Pandemic) games.

Modern Mrs Darcy’s 2019 Reading Challenge – I discovered MMD late last year, and I quite like what she does, even though we don’t necessarily have much in common (so far?) literature-wise. The Reading Challenge seems pretty fun, so I’ll try to tick the boxes this year.

To Wash It All Away [text, PDF] – an hilarious piece by James Mickens (yeah, the same one as in the video of the first link) about the terrible, terrible state of web technologies. It’s awfully mean, but delightfully and well-writtenly so.

The speed of light is torturously slow, and these 3 simple animations by a scientist at NASA prove it [text + animated images] – a neat article with a few animations to show, indeed, how slow the speed of light is.

Orders of Magnitude [image] and Observable universe logarithmic illustration [image] – some very pretty illustrations of the universe (one in layers at different scales, one in logarithmic scale) from Pablo Carlos Budassi, taken from the article above.

Gygax – 2nd Edition Review [text, music] – a review of one of my favorite albums this year – and actually the review that made me listen to it in the first place. GUYS: IT’S D&D METAL. IT’S BRILLIANT. The only annoying thing is that it tends to make me dance at my desk more often than other albums.

The Hot New Asset Class Is Lego Sets [text] – if you need an excuse to buy LEGO, you can just say it’s a way to diversify your portfolio, ‘cuz Bloomberg said so. Or you can just buy LEGO for the sake of it.