Casual Friday: Stuff I Found While Clicking on Underlined Words
It’s that time again, and I’m sorry to do this to you. Not so sorry not to do it, however. Good luck deciphering that ambivalence.
I indeed have an absolute bucketload of tabs open in my browser that I want to share, but that don’t quite warrant their own posts. I’ve done these linkposts before, and it’s time for another one so I can close these tabs and free up gigs (literally) of used memory. It’s all about my system resources, people. Here we go.
Here’s a video of Lionel Messi (the reigning best soccer player in the world) versus a robot goalkeeper. Lots of nerds arguing over this on the internet (nerds arguing? on the internet? no way!) about how this robot works. Regardless of how it operates (my guess is the small camera recognizes the ball’s trajectory, plots the path in some 3D space very rapidly, and moves the robot arm to intercept), it’s amazing. Nevermind the fact that Messi’s first two shots hit the post. We’re one step closer to the Rise of the Machines, folks. Get those canned goods stocked up.
Is your child bored sometimes? Good. They should be allowed to get bored.
Want to get the heebie-jeebies while you read something? No sweat. Check out Nathaniel Rich’s story about deep water divers. Exhilarating.
Consider this a PSA in case you haven’t heard: Google is shutting down its Google Reader (an RSS feed reader) on July 1, which means one of the key Google services I use is going away. I am using both Feedly and Reeder side-by-side to see which one sticks. I am not happy about this, and I know it’s Google’s right to kill their totally free service anytime they want, but I’d be lying if I said this doesn’t make me wary of putting my critical data in a Google app. Example: Google is trying to get people to try its new Google Keep. No thanks — I’ll stick with Evernote, which has this thing called a Sustainable Business Model, so a year from now my notes app will still exist. Not that I’m bitter.
I think Kilian Jornet Burgada is superhuman. If you missed Christopher Solomon’s piece entitled Becoming the All-Terrain Human two weeks ago, don’t miss it this time.
Speaking of superhumans, how much caffeine can you have before winding up in the E.R.?
The spider who couldn’t hide. Funny! Also scary! Mostly scary! But also funny! God I’m anxious about spiders.
Here’s a brief set of photos depitcting Steve Jobs’ return to Apple in 1996. Man, I miss that guy. (Nerd bonus: the camera used to take these pics was the short-lived Apple QuickTake camera, which cleary exceled at rendering black as purple. Ugh.)
Finally, I leave you with How Animals Eat Their Food, far and away the funniest thing on the Internet this week: learn more here.
Have a good weekend, everyone.
