How a Bicycle Is Made
From British Council film, a short film from 1945 that shows how a bicycle is designed and manufactured.
(via stellar)
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The Birth of Breaking News
The completion of the US transcontinental railroad in 1869 in Utah was also the birthplace of the newsflash. The news was delivered via telegraph through a clever scheme: the famous golden spike and a silver hammer were each wired to the telegraph so that when hammer struck nail, the circuit completed and the news raced out along telegraph wires to the rest of the nation.1
Where were you when you heard the news of the completion of the transcontinental railroad?
At least, that was the plan. It is said the hammer swingers missed the spike and so the telegraph operator had to message “DONE” instead.↩
The View From Earth of Different Planets Replacing the Moon
What if Mars orbited the Earth at the same distance as the Moon…what would that look like? How about Neptune? Or Jupiter? Like this:
See also what the Earth would look like with Saturn’s rings. (via @stevenstrogatz)
A Pickpocket’s Story
Until his recent incarceration, Wilfred Rose was a very successful pickpocket operating on the streets of NYC.
Some of the thieves have a shtick. There is Francisco Hita, who when caught touching someone’s wallet, pretends to be deaf, the police say, responding with gesticulations of incomprehension. There is an older man who pretends to be stricken by palsy while on a bus, and then uses a behind-the-back maneuver to infiltrate the pocket of the passenger next to him.
There are flashy dressers, like the 5-foot-3 Duval Simmons, whose reputation is so well known among the police that he says he sometimes sits on his hands while riding the subway, so he cannot be accused of stealing. Mr. Simmons, an occasional partner of Mr. Rose’s, said he honed his skills on a jacket that hung in his closet, tying bells to it to measure how heavy his hand was.
Mr. Rose’s notoriety stems from how infrequently he has been arrested, and how, at least in the last 15 years, he has never been caught in the act by plainclothes officers.
See also Adam Green’s fascinating piece on Apollo Robbins from The New Yorker. Especially the bit about surfing attention:
But physical technique, Robbins pointed out, is merely a tool. “It’s all about the choreography of people’s attention,” he said. “Attention is like water. It flows. It’s liquid. You create channels to divert it, and you hope that it flows the right way.”
Robbins uses various metaphors to describe how he works with attention, talking about “surfing attention,” “carving up the attentional pie,” and “framing.” “I use framing the way a movie director or a cinematographer would,” he said. “If I lean my face close in to someone’s, like this” — he demonstrated — “it’s like a closeup. All their attention is on my face, and their pockets, especially the ones on their lower body, are out of the frame. Or if I want to move their attention off their jacket pocket, I can say, ‘You had a wallet in your back pocket — is it still there?’ Now their focus is on their back pocket, or their brain just short-circuits for a second, and I’m free to steal from their jacket.”
How Not to Get Screwed Buying a Used Car
This video about how not to get screwed buying a used car crams an astounding amount of good information into three minutes.
Update: Bold claim by Robin Sloan on Twitter:
The calm density of this video is way more “future of visual communication” than 99% of claimants to that title
I agree. That video contained more information than a 44-minute episode of Mythbusters but the pace and energy were more relaxed.
The Lowest Possible Score in Super Mario Bros
If you play carefully by not stomping enemies, not collecting coins, not eating mushrooms or flowers, and hopping on the flagpole at the very last second, you can rescue the princess in Super Mario Bros with only 500 points.
One bit is surprisingly tricky:
How tough is that jump in 8-1? Well, the timing of the liftoff, the duration of holding the jump button, and the timing of the wall jump are all frame perfect. NES games run at 60 frames per second, which means all the necessary inputs need to be timed within 1/60 of a second. In addition, the starting position before running I used not only has to be on the right pixel, but also the x sub-pixel has to fall within a certain range (technical stuff blah blah blah). In short, it’s a pretty annoying jump.
When I was a kid, I left my NES on for three straight days to flip the score in SMB, using the 1UP trick and another spot in the game to get many lives and points. Scoring lower would have been a lot quicker.
How Rope Was Made the Old Fashioned Way
This is a clip from the BBC series Edwardian Farm that shows how rope was made in the olden days.
The entire series is available to watch online.
This Sliding Door Sounds Like a Screaming R2-D2
My therapist and I have yet to figure out why, but I have a soft spot for objects that do unexpected impressions of other things and people. Like this sliding door that sounds like R2-D2 screaming. Or the falling shovel that plays Smells Like Teen Spirit. Or the door that can do a wicked Miles Davis impression. Or the nightstand door that sounds like Chewbacca. I even found one of my own a few months ago: the elevator door at the old Buzzfeed office sounded like Chewbacca as well. (via @williamlubelski)
Update: Here’s a video full of things that sound like Chewbacca.
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