What the hell is a singing bird pistol?
Christie’s recently sold a pair of matching singing bird pistols at auction for $5.8 million. The objects themselves are impressive and nutty.
(thx, raza)
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kottke.org posts about video
How to beat a chess grandmaster
Watch as magician Derren Brown beats a room full of grandmasters and other top chess players even though he doesn’t really play chess all that well. At the end, he explains how he did it…it’s a dead simple clever method.
Fastest driven lap around Manhattan
This guy drove the entire way around Manhattan (24 miles) in just 26 minutes, averaging 56 miles/hour and topping out at 111 miles/hour.
Someone left this typically New York comment:
I am an NYC cab driver and I promise I could beat this record in my crown Victoria. Simple factors that are unaware to the civilian driver the cabby knows. This cabby knows to drive sunday night when theres no construction work being done, this cabby knows what speed to maintain to time the lights on the westside highway and this cabby knows the quickest way from the FDR to the West side highway.
(via ★fakeisthenewreal)
Drunken African animals
Watch and listen as Randall narrates some footage of animals getting drunk from the fruit of the Marula tree. You may remember Randall from the narration on this honey badger video (“Honey Badger don’t care, Honey Badger don’t give a shit”). (via ★moth)
Slo-mo cymbal strike
A drumstick hitting a cymbal at 1000 frames/sec. More flex there than I would have assumed.
(via mlkshk)
Everything is a Remix, the ideas episode
The third episode of Kirby Ferguson’s excellent Everything is a Remix has been posted. The first episode was about music, the second dealt with movies, and the third is on technological innovation.
“I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.” — Henry Ford
FYI: the credits are actually in the middle of the video…there’s another few minutes of material after they run.
The machine that destroys everything
Forget Will It Blend…this machine asks “will it be destroyed?” and the answer is always yes.
Don’t forget the sound on this one…the machine crushing noise and soundtrack shouldn’t be missed. (via stellar)
Werner Herzog reads Go the Fuck to Sleep
For completenessesses’s sake, here’s Werner Herzog reading Go the Fuck to Sleep. The video was shot at the book’s launch at the New York Public Library last night.
See also Samuel L. Jackson’s reading. All we need now are readings by Walken, Pacino, Oprah, Ian McShane, Joan Cusack, Alec Baldwin, David Ogden Stiers, David Attenborough, and Yeardley Smith as Lisa Simpson. Internet, make it happen!
Go the Fuck to Sleep read by Samuel L. Jackson
If you thought a children’s book called Go the Fuck to Sleep couldn’t get any funnier, here’s the ultimate f-bomb thespian, Samuel L. Jackson, reading it.
Werner Herzog is also voicing an audiobook version of the book. (via devour)
Year-long Moon timelapse
This is a timelapse animation of the surprisingly wobbly Moon over a period of one year.
Note: this is an animation, not a timelapse video…i.e. there’s CG involved. More info here.
The amazing pen-spinning, phone-catching, rope-tying robotic hand
I think I’ve featured this robot on the site before (yep, here it is), but she seems to have acquired some new skills. Throwing the mobile phone into the air and catching it is flat-out unbelievable but I liked the quiet deftness of the hand’s rice tweezing.
See also the universal gripper, the salami sorter, the robot who considers towels, and the pancake sorter. (via ★mouser)
The quicker ketchup picker-upper
Not quite sure how to describe this semi-liquid picker-upper in an enticing way, but I can say that my mouth dropped open about 5 seconds in to the demo.
And here I am, still using paper towels like a sucker!
Hula hooping from the hoop’s perspective
It’s just a person tumbling around inside a hoop. (via ★interesting)
London version of “what song are you listening to?”
You may remember the New York version. This is the same deal — asking people on the street what song they’re listening to on their headphones — except in London.
(via stellar)
The dangerous three-way dance at NYC street intersections
3-Way Street is a fascinating video by Ron Gabriel that highlights bad interactions between cars, bikes, and pedestrians at a typical NYC street intersection.
There are lots of ways to show these interactions…the overhead view and highlighting are particularly effective design choices. Well done. (thx, janelle)
Neverending shampoo
This one’s pretty simple: one guy tries to rinse off some shampoo while another guy surreptitiously applies more and more shampoo to the first guy’s head.
(via ★interesting)
Timelapse clouds
A ten-minute video shows clouds forming and dissipating at timelapse speed. Quite relaxing.
Best viewed in fullscreen HD.
Subway waltz
Two NYC subway trains dancing down the tunnels…what a charming little video.
(via ★leela)
Rough space
Space photography and videography all looks pretty much the same: high contrast, lots of black backgrounds, smooth, and often sterile. Designer Chris Abbas took a bunch of photos from the Cassini Mission (to Saturn) and made them into something that is definitely not your usual NASA video.
(via stellar)
Tour of Earth from orbit
This is a wonderful seven-minute HD video tour of Earth using video shot from orbit.
Look at this neat picture of Great Salt Lake in Utah. And the variation in color? That’s due to an almost a complete blockage of the circulation of the lake by a trestle for a railroad that crosses from one side to the other. It stops the circulation and things get a little bit saltier and certainly saltier at the north end of the lake.
Never knew that about the Great Salt Lake, but you can see the effect on Google Maps as well. (via ★interesting)
Doctor Who gonna bust a cap in yo ass
Sometimes the simple things in life are best…like a compilation of clips of The Doctor shooting guns with a gansta rap soundtrack.
(via ★interesting)
Weezer covers Paranoid Android
Depending on how you feel about Weezer and Radiohead, this is either the best thing in the world or nails on a chalkboard.
(via devour)
Night sky timelapse…with a twist!
This will be the hundredth night sky timelapse video you’ve seen but probably the first one that shows the Earth rotating instead of the stars.
Best viewed full screen. (via stellar)
What song are you listening to?
Tyler Cullen went out on the streets of NYC and asked random passers-by what song they were listening to on their headphones.
Turned out to be more interesting than I expected.
A history of the crossover dribble
The NY Times has a great video on the crossover dribble, one of the most effective moves in basketball. Includes interviews with Allen Iverson, Tim Hardaway, and Dwyane Wade. (thx, aaron)
World’s best Tetris player
You think you’re good at Tetris? Think again. Hell, you think you’re good at anything? Think again, again! Tetris grandmaster Jin8 shows you how it’s done:
It starts getting insane around the 3:00 mark and then, at 5 minutes in, all the blocks turn invisible and he keeps right on going! It’s like he’s playing blindfold speed chess on the hood of a stock car!! I mean, !!!!!
ASCII videos
ASCIImeo takes Vimeo video and plays them as ASCII art. Here’s an example video: Dogboarding. I love that the player controls are all text as well…here’s a screenshot:
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