If you want to sit in this chair, you have to be able to solve a Rubik’s Cube because the chair is a Rubik’s Cube. (Ok, technically it looks like you only need to place the four leg corners of the chair correctly, but we’re not going to pick nits on this because it is fun and loooorrrrrrrd do we all need some fun right now.)
Oh and I like how the unsolved chair in the last photo looks like it’s striking a break dancing pose. Fresh! (via moss & fog)
Tags: design · furniture · games · Rubik’s Cube
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American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history. “Over the first half of 2025, the US has cut science as never before. This disaster for American science may be a gift to the rest of the world.”
8 Forgotten Figures From the American Revolution, including Margaret Corbin, Joseph Brant, James Armistead Lafayette, and Joseph Plumb Martin.
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On global homogenetic culture. “GHC is Trader Joe’s bags outside of the States. GHC is people en masse wearing the same exact outfits on accident in public. GHC is adult dorms. GHC is a Louis Vuitton in every city. GHC is Shake Shake going global.”
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I read this piece by Jessica Winter a few months ago and it’s come in handy a few times so I thought I’d share. If you want something from someone, adopting the pose of the Kindly Brontosaurus might go a lot further than throwing a fit.
A practitioner, nay, an artist, of...
Before he died, David Lynch talked to Natasha Lyonne about AI. “Natasha, this is a pencil. Everyone has access to a pencil, and likewise, everyone with a phone will be using AI, if they aren’t already. It’s how you use the pencil. You see?”
That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose. “Not hiring enough agents leads to longer wait times, which in turn weeds out a percentage of callers. Choosing cheaper telecom carriers [can mean] many of the calls disconnect on their own.” 🤬
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Editorial Template for Every Time the United States Goes to War. “President [GUY WHO HAS COMMITTED MULTIPLE WAR CRIMES], a [REPUBLICAN / DEMOCRAT], sidestepped his [COMPLICIT / COWARDLY / TOTALLY INEPT] Congress…”
Living Colour recently visited the NPR Music office for a Tiny Desk Concert. Cult of Personality might be an all-time top 10 song for me — I vividly remember their 1989 appearance on Saturday Night Live.1 They still got it!
- I probably saw their performance on Arsenio as well, but the SNL set is the one that sticks in my brain.↩
Tags: Living Colour · music · Saturday Night Live · Tiny Desk Concerts · video
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Slice of Life (trailer) is a feature-length documentary about the American Dream through the lens of former Pizza Huts that have been transformed into everything from bars to churches to candy stores to cannabis dispensaries. A woman who runs an LGBTQ+ church out of a form...
“When I was in high school, my friends and I had a game we used to play at the mall: we would go into the Apple store and try to make it to the back wall of the store, touch it, and exit out the front without an Apple staff person talking to us.”
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ImillaSkate is a Bolivian female skate collective whose members dress in traditional cholita clothing. This is a great short documentary about the group, the challenges they face, and the change & joy they’re trying to bring to their communities.
Some people in my gen...
Busting the Top 5 Myths About the Big Bang. “Even asking this question relies on a misconception: a misconception that the Big Bang was like an explosion. As we’ve just covered, the Universe didn’t explode; it simply expanded.”
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The Internet Archive estimates the Wayback Machine will hit a lifetime total of 1 trillion archived web pages later this year in October.
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Now that summer is in full swing, you might need this Comprehensive Guide to Yellow Stripey Things, so you can tell harmless bumblebees (you can pet them!) from “asshole” yellow jackets.
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In a collaboration with the National Gallery of Art, Evan Puschak made a video about 16th-century Dutch artist (and all-around polymath) Joris Hoefnagel, who painted some of the first dedicated and detailed images of insects in the world. His paintings were so accurate tha...
Against AI: An Open Letter From Writers to Publishers. “We want our publishers to stand with us. To make a pledge that they will never release books that were created by machines.”
“The Big, Beautiful Bill assigns each American a billionaire who will live the American dream for you. You can check in on your billionaire at intervals and see how he is using your money. Maybe he’s building a 19th pool…”
The fantastic art history YouTube channel Great Art Explained has a great two-episode series on Jackson Pollock.
In Part One of my film I look at how, post World War Two, the art scene shifted from Paris to New York. How America was searching for “The Great American pa...
Ok so this is weird and delightful. Swedish electronics company Teenage Engineering makes a collection of singing wooden dolls called the Choir. The dolls are basically speakers but with some autonomy and personality…and they can work together:
what you see are eight wooden...
Could Should Might Don’t. “This isn’t a book filled with predictions and prophecies, and it makes no assertions about what the future will hold. It’s a book which unpacks how we think about the future.”
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Retraction Watch: a blog that tracks corrected and retracted scientific papers.
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