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Tech News
80 percent of America’s canned pumpkin comes from one Illinois town
Starbucks can keep its Pumpkin(less) Spice Lattes. We, as a nation, get our real festive fix from pumpkin pies—and we’ve got one small town to thank for that. Morton, Illinois provides Americans with 80 percent of the deliciously globby, straight-from-a-can pumpkin filling that we gobble down a few months of the year. The Libby’s brand … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
Original Star Wars Storyboards Show Iconic Scenes Before the Big Screen
Luke wasn’t always a Skywalker; the original title of A New Hope was The Adventures of Luke Starkiller as taken from the ‘Journal of the Whills.’ A signed early edition of that script is part of a super cool selection of Star Wars memorabilia up for auction, including storyboard sketches and concept art. The films … Continued
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Tech News
Square Now Knows When You’re Nearing a Cafe, Will Have Your Order Ready
When Square permanently folded its Wallet app earlier this year, it quickly introduced Square Order as a way to pay ahead for nibbles and sips at coffee shops. Today it’s introducing two new features to further streamline your cafe experience. Even as it was, Square Order offered a pretty quick and easy, cash-free transaction: Order … Continued
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Tech NewsSploid
How much monetary damage did Calvin cause in Calvin & Hobbes?
Calvin and Hobbes made a lot of mischief during their decade-long run—but just how much damage did they actually do? One intrepid superfan went through every single panel and tallied the total cost of their mayhem, from $2 cracked glass jars to $4,798.83 to fix a flooded home. Even though the Proceedings of the Natural … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
9 of the Coolest Buildings of the Year, Chosen by Architects
The World Architecture Festival wrapped up last week and a whole new batch of buildings—both completed and “future” (aka not yet real)—were given the nod as this year’s best. Let’s take a look at some of the winners, shall we? What’s really fun about the awards is that they’re chosen by architects themselves, since the … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
The Eiffel Tower Is The Latest Landmark To Get A Glass Floor
One great way to get adventurous folks amped up about scaling landmarks is to make the act of being way-the-heck-up-high even freakier. The Eiffel Tower is the latest to get a stomach-flipping glass floor 187 feet above the teensy little people on the pavement below. In order to mark the Parisian attraction’s 125th anniversary, Moatti … Continued
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Tech News
How Star Wars Turned Toys And Action Figures Into A Cultural Phenomenon
To hordes of fans who grew up with the original Star Wars trilogy, owning the action figures was a fantastically hands-on way to connect with the big screen blockbusters. Plastic Galaxy is a new documentary that tells how those collectibles came to be—and ultimately changed the toy industry forever. Now it’s all but impossible to … Continued
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Tech NewsMicrosoft
If Only Windows 10 Actually Came With a New Everclear Album
People were SO MAD when Apple dropped a fresh load of free U2 into everyone’s iTunes; the merry band of middle-aged Irish men just aren’t cool anymore, man. When Microsoft unveiled Windows 10, they pulled in some real rock star power for a powerhouse album drop that cannot be denied. Welcome back, Everclear! I mean, … Continued
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Tech News
Listen To The Sunrise Via Special Weather Sensors And A Custom Synth
Watching sunsets and sunrises are some of life’s loveliest pleasures, and hey—it turns out listening to them is pretty incredible, too. Quintron, an experimental musician based in New Orleans, built a synthesizer and sensors that convert weather to sound, with special audio effects at dusk and dawn. The result is a totally dreamy soundtrack streaming … Continued
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Tech News
Report: 76 Million Households Affected by JPMorgan Chase Data Breach
Following reports last month that JPMorgan Chase was one of at least five U.S banks targeted by hackers who stole gigabytes of data, today Bloomberg reports that over 76 million households—that’s half the households in America (!)—were affected by the breach, in addition to 7 million small businesses. The revelation comes from a regulatory filing … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
Four Perfect Movie Trailers Made By Hollywood’s Reigning Master
New releases have been teased by trailers for a century now, but hot damn have they evolved into an art form all their own, and there are editors who specialize in making them. We got the inside scoop from one of the masters. Mark Woollen is a modern maestro of this very specific, super potent … Continued
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Tech News
The Concise, Complex Art Of A Successful Creative Brief
Before the creative project there is: the brief. It’s a concise communication nugget developed between a client and an artist, or an architect, or a designer, that clearly lays out the mission for the task at hand. Briefly is a short doc that explores the complexity of this short form through the perspective of six … Continued
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Tech News
Charring A Whisky Barrel Transforms It Into A Portal To Hell
Scotland might be the spiritual home of whisky, but Japan is perfecting its own unique take on the liquor. At Nikka’s Yoichi distillery in Hokkaido, watching a barrel get charred—for flavor!—looks a hell of lot like the living flames of satan’s demons are being unleashed from within those wooden staves. The fire is (obviously) put … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
Watch a 7-Ton Steamroller Make an Oversized Print on the Street
There are lots of ways to put ink on paper, so why not use a goddamn steamroller over pavement to make a massive relief print? At San Francisco’s Roadworks Festival, an old-timey industrial construction beast from 1924 that’s since been spiffed and shined made literal street art. And it was awesome. The 11th annual event … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
The Dirty, Dilapidated, and Delightful Water Towers of New York City
New Yorkers: How well do you know your local skyline? Enough to be able to tell these 23 water towers apart, and place them in the borough where they belong? It’s a day ending in “y” which means—hey look, Popchartlab has a new print out! This time the team has icon-ized a selection of the … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
This Mid-Century Legend Made Sculptural Magic Out Of Plain Paper
There’s a whole world of potential in a blank sheet of paper, but few folks can turn something flimsy and flat into 3D magic like Irving Harper. The creative legend—now 98 years-old!—did industrial and graphic design for Herman Miller during its dynamic mid-century era, but his legacy also includes an incredible personal collection of paper … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
Protect Against Sneaky Webcam Spies With This Little Pair of Magnets
I have had a teensy, torn bit of paper taped over the camera of my MacBook Air for years now because even before I knew the FBI could activate that thing without the indicator light, it always bugged me out that someone might be secretly snooping. The teensy, torn bit of paper looks janky as … Continued
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Reviews
Trek Lync Review: Built-In Bike Lights Are Great (When They’re Charged)
Wouldn’t life would be easier if all bikes came with lights built into the frame? The typical removable ones are as easy to forget as they are to steal, either of which will ruin your evening. Well: Trek’s new Lync models come with built-in lights! This matte black beaut is fully equipped with powerful LEDs … Continued
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Tech News
How An Octogenarian Preserved An Endangered Native American Language
It’s easy to take translations for granted when Google can swap between Albanian and Zulu with the click of a button, but even that tech has real world limitations. Marie Wilcox is the last fluent speaker of Wukchumni, one of 130 different endangered Native American languages in the United States that don’t have any kind … Continued
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Tech News
The Beautiful Near-Silence of Botswana’s Okavango Delta at Night
I spend most of my weekdays on my sofa sitting in front of a computer screen. I’m guessing a lot of you spend most of your weekdays in some kind of indoor office environment, also sitting in front of a computer screen. Wanna close your eyes with me and take a sonic journey to Botswana’s … Continued