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A typography historian shares his favorite typefaces

Paul McNeil just published his comprehensive typographical overview, The Visual History of Type . To celebrate, he also published a list of his six favorite faces for It’s Nice That, starting with the first compact italic: The Aldine Italic / Griffo’s Italic / 1501 Few typefaces have had as great an influence on Western culture as Francesco Griffo’s Italic. At the end of the 15th century, when most books were large and heavy, Aldus Manutius commissioned Griffo to cut this compact, inclined letterform. Easily legible at small sizes, the Aldine Italic permitted the production of small, affordable, portable books suited to the requirements of an educated, mobile class of literate individuals. Over the next three centuries, the practice of publishing changed everything. By allowing texts to be reliably reproduced and disseminated in an almost limitless time frame, it triggered new ideas that profoundly challenged all forms of institutional control, leading to dramatic religious reforms, radical socio-political changes, and to the scientific worldview that initiated the modern era. • The Visual History of Type (via It’s Nice That ) Image via ilovetypography.com

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A typography historian shares his favorite typefaces

These people revealed their passwords a little too freely

Earlier this month on Jimmy Kimmel Live , random people on the street were asked to share their main internet password. Amazingly, some did… on camera, no less. ( Viral Viral Videos )

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These people revealed their passwords a little too freely

Beyond the big five, humans have dozens of senses

The five traditional senses are tied to visible sense organs, but depending on the definition, humans possess dozens of senses , including thermoception (temperature), proprioception (bodily spatial relations), nociception (pain), equilibrioception (balance), and mechanoreception (vibration). (more…)

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Beyond the big five, humans have dozens of senses

Google buys $1.1bn piece of HTC

Rumored for some time, Google’s purchase of a significant chunk of handset-maker HTC was announced today . The WSJ: Google said an HTC team that helped develop Google’s flagship Pixel smartphone will join the company. The Mountain View, Calif., company will also get a nonexclusive license to HTC intellectual property. HTC was hired by Google to be the contract manufacturer for the Pixel, a high-end smartphone that was launched last year, in part to better compete with Apple Inc. $1.1bn in cash is probably most of HTC. The company’s market share evaporated over the last half-decade but it remains a well-respected manufacturer. Alternative Betteridge headline: “Will Google buying HTC go better than Google buying Motorola?”

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Google buys $1.1bn piece of HTC

Dead man sat in truck for 8 months in airport parking lot before someone found him

A dead body sat in a pickup truck for eight months in a parking lot at the Kansas City International Airport before someone discovered it. 53-year-old Randy Potter disappeared January 17, and had parked at the airport that same day. When his family contacted the airport police to report their missing relative and to see if his truck was still in the parking lot, the police said if it was, they would find it. Astonishingly, they somehow missed it. It wasn’t until someone reported a bad odor that the body was spotted inside the truck. Apparently, according to police, Potter had committed suicide, but no other details were released. According to Time : The truck’s windows are tinted, but are light enough to allow anyone to see inside. When an airport police officer found the body, it was covered up by a blanket, according to a police report. “No one should go through what we went through,” said Potter’s wife, Carolina. “We should not have gone through eight months agonizing, speculating.” Potter’s truck had been listed in the missing person flyers circulated by Lenexa police. The family had visited the airport early on. Kansas City spokesman Chris Hernandez said city officials were gathering facts to determine how Potter’s body remained in the lot as long as it did. The economy lot where Potter’s body was found is one of three lots situated about 2 ½ miles (4 kilometers) north of the airport terminals. Shuttles carry travelers from the lot to the terminals. The airport has over 25,000 parking spaces, and clearly needs a better way of managing them. Image: Dean Hochman

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Dead man sat in truck for 8 months in airport parking lot before someone found him

New super-glue inspired by slug slime

Surgeons close internal incisions with stitches and staples but they, and their patients, would benefit from a glue that stays stuck even to wet tissue and organs. Researchers from McGill University in Montreal are making progress with a powerful new glue inspired by the the sticky slime secreted by scared slugs. Science News surveys the state-of-the-art in adhesives that take inspiration from marine worms, mussels, and geckos: Using the (slug-inspired) glue to plug a hole in the pig heart worked so well that the heart still held in liquid after being inflated and deflated tens of thousands of times. (McGill University’s Jianyu) Li, who did the research while at Harvard University, and colleagues also tested the glue in live rats with liver lacerations. It stopped the rats’ bleeding, and the animals didn’t appear to suffer any bad reaction from the adhesive… One layer of the material is a polymer, a type of material made from long molecules built from many repeated subunits, like a string of beads. Positively charged appendages dangling off the polymers are drawn to wet tissue surfaces by the same forces underlying static electricity. This first layer weaves into another layer, a water-based gel. The gel layer acts like a shock absorber in a car, Li says. It soaks up energy that might otherwise dislodge or snap the adhesive. Despite being 90 percent water, the material is both sticky and tough, Li says. The fact that it’s mostly water makes it more likely to be nontoxic to humans. ” Animal goo inspires better glue ” (Science News) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p624MDdDw4

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New super-glue inspired by slug slime

Tour of a Japanese convenience store

The convenience stores ( konbini ) in Japan are much better than the ones in the US. They are cleaner, they have tasty prepared food, and a nice seating area, sometimes on a second floor. The main chains are Lawsons, 7-Eleven, and Family Mart. Here’s a seven minute look inside a Family Mart.

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Tour of a Japanese convenience store

Rare white giraffes spotted in Kenya

In early June, conservation rangers with the Hirola Conservation Program in Kenya first spotted a white female and baby giraffe. In early August, they were able to capture this footage of the elusive pair. Like that translucent-shelled lobster that was recently pulled in, these giraffes are not albino but have a genetic condition called Leucism. That means they a partial loss of pigmentation in their skin cells. If you look closely, you can see a familiar, though faded, reticulation on the calf’s neck. A blogger for Hirola writes : In this very sighting, in Ishaqbini, there was a mother and a juvenile The communities within Ishaqbini have mixed reactions to the sighting of this leucistic giraffe and most of the elders report that they have never seen this before. ‘This is new to us” says bashir one of the community rangers who alerted us when they sighted the white giraffe. “I remember when I was a kid, we never saw them” he added. “It must be very recent and we are not sure what is causing it” he said. ( National Geographic )

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Rare white giraffes spotted in Kenya

Equifax’s dox of America: Sign up for "free" monitoring, get billed forever

Equifax dumped dox on 143 million Americans (as well as lucky Britons and Canadians!), sat on the news for five weeks, let its execs sell millions in stock, and then unveiled an unpatched, insecure WordPress site with an abusive license agreement where you could sign up for “free” credit monitoring for a year, in case someone used the immortal, immutable Social Security Number that Equifax lost control over to defraud you. (more…)

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Equifax’s dox of America: Sign up for "free" monitoring, get billed forever