Beautiful chart displays native speakers of world’s languages

Spanish designer Alberto Lucas López created this gorgeous infographic that shows the proportion of native speakers of each major language. (more…)

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Beautiful chart displays native speakers of world’s languages

Marijuana company buys entire town in California to make it weed friendly

A cannabis products producer bought the town of Nipton, California (pop. 20) for $5 million, with the intention of turning into a weed “destination.” From BBC : American Green wants to invest up to $2.5m (£1.9m) in revitalising the town to make it more tourist-friendly as well as eco-friendly. “We thought that showing that there was a viable means of having a cannabis-friendly municipality and further making it energy independent could be a way of really inspiring folks to say, ‘Why can’t we do that here?'” project manager Stephen Shearin told Bloomberg. “The gold rush built this city,” he adds. “The green rush can keep it moving the way people envisioned it years ago.” The Gateway to the Mojave National Preserve. . 30 April 2017 Nipton, CA A post shared by Prince Travels (@prince_travels) on May 2, 2017 at 9:00am PDT Nipton California. pic.twitter.com/l8PBEbFk35 — Jeff Lloyd (@lloydjbl) April 16, 2016

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Marijuana company buys entire town in California to make it weed friendly

Twelve Americans were enslaved in Africa after an 1815 shipwreck

In 1815 an American ship ran aground in northwestern Africa, and its crew were enslaved by merciless nomads. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow the desperate efforts of Captain James Riley to find a way to cross the Sahara and beg for help from Western officials in Morocco. We’ll also wade through more molasses and puzzle over a prospective guitar thief. Show notes Please support us on Patreon!

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Twelve Americans were enslaved in Africa after an 1815 shipwreck

This rare 1950s typewriter hammers out musical notations, not letters and numbers

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a typewriter that hammers out musical notations. Made for use with music staff paper, the Keaton Music Typewriter was first patented in 1936 by San Francisco’s Robert H. Keaton for use by composers, arrangers, teachers and students. The original model had just 13 keys but Keaton’s second patent for this “music typing machine” was granted in 1953 and included 33 keys. If you’ve got a spare $12K, you can pick one of these little beauties up from Etsy shop WorkingTypewriters (back in the 1950s they sold for $225). The seller writes: Estimates are that there are less than 20 machines on there, maybe even as few as 6… The Keaton Music typewriters were produced in two batches, this one stemming from 1953 and has the more elaborate keyboard. They were made with the idea that musicians would be able to quickly and precisely write out their compositions. A typewriter for music. It didn’t work as well, typing music is more laborious than typing words and it never really caught on. Watch the video to get a feel for how challenging this “typewriter for music” is to operate.

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This rare 1950s typewriter hammers out musical notations, not letters and numbers

Link Rot: only half of the links on 2005’s Million Dollar Homepage are still reachable

In 2005 a young man from England created a website called The Million Dollar Homepage and sold advertising space on it. The page is a 1000 × 1000 pixel grid (1,000,000 pixels) and he sold the pixels for $1 each. The page has 2,816 links in it. A recent analysis of all the links reveal that only 1,780 are still reachable. From Harvard’s Library Innovation Lab : Over the decade or so since the Million Dollar Homepage sold its last pixel, link rot has ravaged the site’s embedded links. Of the 2,816 links that embedded on the page (accounting for a total of 999,400 pixels), 547 are entirely unreachable at this time. A further 489 redirect to a different domain or to a domain resale portal, leaving 1,780 reachable links. Most of the domains to which these links correspond are for sale or devoid of content. The 547 unreachable links are attached to graphical elements that collectively take up 342,000 pixels (face value: $342,000). Redirects account for a further 145,000 pixels (face value: $145,000). While it would take a good deal of manual work to assess the reachable pages for content value, the majority do not seem to reflect their original purpose. Though the Million Dollar Homepage’s pixel canvas exists as a largely intact digital artifact, the vast web of sites which it publicizes has decayed greatly over the course of time. [ via Clive Thompson ]

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Link Rot: only half of the links on 2005’s Million Dollar Homepage are still reachable

Parisian canals now open to swimmers

Paris, France is making good on its promise to reopen long polluted waterways to bathers. Up to three hundred people at any time can use the lifeguard-protected pools, although the pools only have locker space for 80. Located in a part of Paris already popular as a place to stroll in fine weather, the new bathing spot is likely to prove a major hit in an already hotter-than-average summer. Early reports suggest that the water is indeed delightful, though a small residuum of green algae does make a post-bathe shower a good idea. How did Paris pull this off? The city’s been working on cleaning up the waters here for decades. Paris’s canals here were once unsurprisingly filthy, running as they do through a former industrial area once packed with cargo barges and polluted by sewage. Since the 1980s, however, regulations managing industrial run-off have tightened substantially, while Paris has invested heavily in wastewater treatment and in preventing sewage from being discharged into the canal during periods of high water. Two years ago, following a concerted clean-up, bacteria levels dropped below safe levels, and rogue bathers have been jumping in the water here for a while. Meanwhile, the Canal Saint Martin, which runs downstream from the basin down to the Seine, was entirely drained and cleaned in 2016, a process that sent a powerful visual message to Parisians that the area’s historic filth was being swept away. Via CityLab

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Parisian canals now open to swimmers

For twelve years, this family has let bees nest in their living room

In addition to benefiting from excellent feng shui, the family harvests about 15 kilograms of honey each year from their bee housemates , who showed up on the day of a wedding. (more…)

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For twelve years, this family has let bees nest in their living room

Hackers compromised smart fish tank at casino

An unnamed North American casino was hacked through an on-site fish tank connected to the Internet, reports CNN. “Someone used the fish tank to get into the network, and once they were in the fish tank, they scanned and found other vulnerabilities and moved laterally to other places in the network,” Justin Feir, director for cyber intelligence and analysis at Darktrace, told CNN Tech . Image: example of a smart fish tank (not the kind the casino had) by Duncan Hull .

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Hackers compromised smart fish tank at casino

Here’s the unusual creative process of Aphex Twin’s anonymous visual artist, Weirdcore

As part of the Nicer Tuesdays series, Designer Weirdcore treats viewers to a rare historical overview of his concert visuals for Aphex Twin . (more…)

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Here’s the unusual creative process of Aphex Twin’s anonymous visual artist, Weirdcore