The most wasted of all days...

Have you ever wondered why the tiny tardigrade (aka water bear) is almost indestructable? Science found a clue and it's a protein.

Science also found a 19 mile wide impact crater below the ice in Greenland.

Here's where science gets freaky. Quantum switching means both the chicken and the egg came first.

How do whales show stress? In their ear wax.

Hilarious, as always. True Facts: Carnivorous Dragonflies.

There are good business opportunities and bad business opportunities and IMO this article has both. The bad one is just a bland statement about people wanting "smart" homes. The good one is that LiftMaster, the garage door people, have found that people want to optimize their garage for storage. That's pretty obvious based on the number of garages I've seen that are packed full of junque while the cars are parked in the driveway. So what kind of products might we expect from LiftMaster?

Mark Rothko, No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red), 1951. Absolutely glorious. I see shades of Monet's water lilies.

The percentage of unvaccinated children in the U.S. has quadrupled since 2001. Irresponsible. Dangerous. Unintelligent.

Tom Cruise won't be playing Jack Reacher anymore as the series is moved from the silver screen to streaming. I thought Cruise did an admirable job in the movies but I agree that he's too small to play the 6' 5" Reacher.

Brand New Roman builds a font from company logos.

On my "listen before you buy" list:

• Rapture by Tim Motzer & Markus Reuter
• the debut of the Deep Energy Orchestra
• Tycho's set from Burning Man
• Cyrus by Jamie Saft and Joe Morris
• John McLaughlin and the Fourth Dimension are Live at Ronnie Scott's (have since purchased)
• Ian Boddy & Markus Reuter: Stay
• Steven Wilson's Home Invasion
• Sonar's Live at Moods (bought this)
• Eraldo Bernocchi's set on Loose Lips (not really for purchase)
• Liquid Geometries by Bluetech (isn't that a trademark conflict with the eyeglass coating?)

Revenue from album sales dropped 25% in the first half of 2018 compared to the first have of 2017.  This article in Rolling Stone says that albums and physical albums (i.e. CDs) in particular on on the decline to death because we're reverting to a track-based, online, music economy.

Hilma af Klint, unknown

Fort Worth's West Magnolia Avenue, one of Pointwise's neighbors in the Near Southside, was named one of 2018's 5 great streets and 15 great places.

For those of you old enough to know who/what Max Headroom was/is, htere's a 4K video loop of Max's background.

In the article Quantifying Mark Rothko there are a lot of graphs like this one showing the number of paintings he made during each year of his career. While this is interesting, the payoff in this article was the image at the top of this page that I don't recall having seen before.

A lot of the Chicago Institute of Art's collection is online.

Ze Frank's latest True Facts video is about Carnivorous Dragonflies and is hilarious like all of them.

From the Student Academy Awards for animation, I suggest you watch Raccoon and The Light which is beautifully and minimally hand-drawn.

What can you do with a non-Newtonian fluid? You fill a speedbump with it that only hardens when people go over it at high speed.

Wassily Kandinsky, Circles in a Circle, 1923. This beautiful Kandinsky (how many Hidden Mickeys are included?) is from an article on generative art. Is art really about the artist's hands or their mind?

What might be the lineage from Impressionism to Modernism in painting?

Forget that. The world's oldest drawing is abstract. 73,000 years old. More here.

What do you say when your program doesn't work? #17 How is that possible?

Python is holding strong at #4 in the competition for programming language of 2018.

Proof that the Hybridizer can be just plain freaky.

Put a planetarium in your web browser with Stellarium.

See a binary asteroid.

The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing is coming up in 2019 and Buzz Aldrin has created a website Road to Apollo 11 50th Anniversary we can all follow. Yes, there's merchandise. But I'll point out that I purchased two Buzz-signed pieces at the AIAA Foundation's silent auction for much less than the stuff on that website is currently going for.

Just a cool Dutch F-16 paint job. source

Cool video footage of a pair of F-16s and a pair of F-35s doing a flyby.

Smell a scent.

Conserve a sound.

It's a little bit post-peak for this fall foliage map.

Control panel pr0n.

Artist Chuck Jones says one of these drawings is of the word "goloomb."  Can you guess which one? From an article on drawing sounds. 

The first animal on earth (558 million years ago) was a blob.

The Talmud is online.

Restoring a Jackson Pollock in front of a live audience.

At the heart of Tom Peters' The Excellence Dividend are the 14 number ones. For example, Commandment #1 - Excellence is the next five minutes. (In other words, it's not an aspiration.)

More business advice, this time from Verne Harnish. #7 Make customers want to pay for sales calls. Not that you should do this but the idea is to deliver so much value about your market that customers want to hear you speak. In other words, out-teach your competition.

From how to write the perfect sentence: "a sentence is a living line of words where logic and lyric meet."

Just a photo from the surface of an asteroid. And a great album cover.

Tom Peters has documented his 18 #1s from all his books and lectures and put them in one handy document. My favorite has always been "Excellence is the next five minutes" (i.e. it's not a general aspiration). Followed closely by "Read, Read, Read."

I'll leave you with something to a) watch and b) fiddle with. Generative Artistry hosts a live code tutorial on generating art in the style of Piet Mondrian.

...is one without laughter. e.e. cummings