Cool Sh!t
In a Mission Impossible-style heist, an Indiana burglar was caught on camera as he attempted to rob a McDonald's. Unfortunately, his grand scheme took a wrong turn when he was unable to steal the cash register. The culprit immediately adverted to Plan B, as sketched out in his handwritten book, "Best Robbery Ideas of All Time Ever Created, Ever" as he hit up the fridge and stole at least several sub-par snack size yogurt parfaits before making a break for it. (Personally we would've gone for the frozen meat patties --more street value.)
His well-thought-out mission seemed successful as he coolly strolled by police officers with an armful of parfaits, covered in glass. It didn't take long for authorities to identify him as James Bond, "Double Oh Seven." Actually officers identified him as Christopher McGlaufin, "Worst Burglar Ever."
This is more than just a game of cat and mau5. The furry feline friend of the one and only Deadmau5 has teamed up with the people at SOL REPUBLIC to bring us the world’s very first headphones for cats. The face of the campaign, Professor Meowingtons pHd, helped to develop the cat-only headphones that contain such features as dog isolating technology, 14 sound engines delivering deep bass and high clarity, and a three-button remote and ClearTalk™ microphone. The headphones are also adjustable to fit cats of all sizes.
Just how much is a pair of these special headphones? They will run you $999.00. There were only 10 of these feline friendly headphones created, which makes them very exclusive. All proceeds acquired from the headphones will go to The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), a national animal charity focused on rescuing animals from abuse, and helping to pass humane laws.
The Olympics weren’t the only big events for America this week. In fact, it’s been a pretty huge week overall. The Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars early August 6th, to the delight of just about everyone. The Curiosity, one of NASA’s most advanced rovers is a moving laboratory on rocket boosters, equipped with cameras and ready to explore the surface of Mars. It’s a marvel of technology and it makes space exploration that much more real for everyday people. It means immediate feedback and learning about the planet. It’s as close as we can get, for now, to actually being there.
The subway system in New York is the great unifier. It’s the only place in the city where people from all walks of life, with entirely different destinations, and not one word to say to one another are in a pretty intimate space. It’s not just complaining about train delays that bring people together, however. According to photographer Ourit Ben-Haim, it’s the worlds we escape to in a good book on those trains that brings us together as well.
Ben-Haim loves reading and she loves seeing others read. There’s something magical about a person engrossed in a good book. The image was inspiring enough that in 2008 Ben-Haim snapped a photo of a person reading on the subway with her cell phone camera and it spawned a project that’s been going on for years and now has a huge following of people who check daily for more. The idea is simple, but it captures so much about Ben-Haim’s subjects, and about New York itself.
Fulfilling your daily dose of weird things from the internet, we bring you Unbaby.me. It’s a Google Chrome extension that works with your Facebook to filter a very specific thing: babies. More specifically, it filters out babies from your Facebook feed and replaces them with things the extension finds cooler. What’s cooler than babies? It seems it’s kittens, bacon, puppies, robots, tattoos and possibly Nutella.
Maybe the pressure’s on from relatives to start a family, maybe your friends just had a baby and that means at least 100 pictures of said baby per day clogging your Facebook feed, or maybe babies just gross you out for some reason. The internet has your solution, and while a filter for constant Instagram updates, pictures of food, or really bad memes might have been a bigger hit, it’s a solution for constant baby updates. The extension seems to have a collection of really popular images on the internet that immediately swap out image updates that have key words, including “so adorable”, “precious”, and of course, “baby”. It’s the brain child of Yvonne Cheng, Chris Baker and Pete Marqui, each New Yorkers who were apparently sick of baby updates from friends.
Fans of literature may find it easy to get lost in a world of books. They’re also a little more into the metaphorical than straight forward, but thanks to brilliant Brazilian artists Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo, it’s something readers can literally do. The installation, called aMAZEme, is an intricate maze built entirely out of books.
From now until August 26, lucky crowds in London can visit the Southbank Centre can explore the maze first hand. The colorful and detailed maze is something wonderful to explore and might even be a little more difficult than your standard corn maze because anyone inside will find themselves distracted by the wonderful books at every turn. It’s just one aspect of the London 2012 Festival, but it is definitely one of the most rare and eye catching experiences visitors can look forward to.
It’s rare that we stop and assess what sort of mood we’re in. No one really ever thinks to search their feelings before their morning commute into work (Who are we, Luke Skywalker?). It sounds silly, maybe even frivolous. We even resign ourselves to “fine, how are you?”s in conversation. That’s fine on the surface, but it’s also a reminder that our society isn’t great about talking about feelings, or addressing them. It becomes a problem when so many people suffer from things like depression and there’s still very little knowledge about its symptoms that are commonly known.
Stop motion animation has brought us some of the most stylized and cool-looking animated shows and movies. It spawned Gumby, Wallace and Gromit, and shaped The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s an art form that takes a ton of time and patience. Each increment of movement has to be captured by the camera. It’s almost like slowly repositioning a person and taking pictures of them over and over again.
Stop motion lovers and video game lovers alike will appreciate the stunning amount of effort that went into this one minute piece of animated goodness. FinalCutKing has brought a Super Mario level to life using just Post-It notes. How many, you say? Just 7,000. Mario takes a trip all around an office wall, literally bursting to life from what seems to be a computer emulator. His typical coin collecting, Goomba smashing, journey quickly becomes out of the ordinary, though.
Anyone with basic common sense knows that pigs have hooved feet. A creepy non-hooved creature resembling a giant rat/pig dubbed the "East River Monster" was discovered beneath the FDR in Manhattan over the weekend. Photographer Denise Ginley was walking along Manhattan's totally non-toxic, sanitary East River when she came across a bloated mystery carcass. She returned with her camera and snapped several high quality shots that easily dispel the NYC Park Department's statement that "it was a pig left over from a cook out."
Right.